YES, WE CAN! – Well, um, actually maybe we can’t…not yet…later perhaps, but now? Yeah no, er, we’ll get back to you…

It has come to Elroy’s attention that there has been something of a shakeout in world events in the past 9 months and that George W. Bush been kicked to the kerb and one Barak Hussein Obama, a most unlikely black and white Christian Muslim, been elected by a desperate US population to not be George W. Bush.

Oops! What gives? It’s true that Elroy, ineffable and inerrant sage that he is, once calmly stated that Obama would never make it to the White House due to EOAS (Early Onset Assassination Syndrome) but, now that Obama has managed to navigate his way to some fairly substantial DC real estate, Elroy has had time enough to fully cogitate on the magnitude of these events and is ready to impart his considerable and weighty wisdom concerning the future of the Free World™.

The big question is what really happens at the White House? Elroy asks because that black and white Christian Muslim who runs the place does not appear to be the black and white Christian Muslim who ran towards it. Why? Well, as far as Elroy can tell, there are a 1.5 baker’s dozen possibilities.

1. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who understood that he would have to shift to the right in a pragmatic effort to avoid the second American civil war he thinks might otherwise occur.

2. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to the White House wine cellar, was taken into a small room to have a few home truths by the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security et al about the extent, effects and responsibilities of American power, both foreign and domestic.

3. Candidate Barak Obama was truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to the White House wine cellar, suddenly realised that he could make out like a bandit if he became a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests and what he hell do those bleeding heart do-gooder liberal wankers know anyway?

4. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who got some bad advise from some ex-Clinton running lackey dogs of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests on who to hire as his advisors and then allowed himself to be advised by those advisors because President Obama hasn’t actually got a clue what he’s doing.

5. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to White House wine cellar, quite simply lost his nerve at the thought of all those bitter rednecks clinging to their guns and religion, and not just in Congress, and has become a quivering protoplasm in the face of the Republican Senator’s war dance/

6. Candidate Barak Obama wass a lying bastard who said whatever his progressive liberal base wanted to hear in order to be handed the keys to the White House wine cellar and who had, in reality, only ever been a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

7. Candidate Barak Obama is a truly progressive liberal and just soooooooo much smarter than the rest of us that we cannot see the long chess game he is playing, that it will all turn out fine for progressive liberals in the long run and we will be shocked, shocked, I tells ya, that we ever thought he was even capable of being a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

8. Candidate Barak Obama believes he is a truly progressive liberal who is, as we speak, enacting a truly progressive liberal agenda for the good of all Americans.

9. Candidate Barak Obama is a truly progressive liberal who genuinely feels that compromise and bipartisanship, meeting the other side of the divide halfway, is absolutely crucial to the effective governing of the country.

10 Candidate Barak Obama is merely shoring up the moderate Republican base for 2012 as he knows his progressive liberals would sooner chew their own legs off than allow President Palin to come to pass.

11. Candidate Obama was a truly progressive liberal who knows he owes his place to the Democratic National Committee and ‘Blue Dog’ democrats and so must temper his socialist instincts in order to keep them onside and get legislation passed.

12. Barack Obama is a committed socialist/communist/fascist who ran as a centrist but who is now implementing plans to turn the USA into the USSA.

13. Candidate Barak Obama is not a truly progressive liberal but a fully paid-for stooge of the New World Order.

14. President Obama is a complete phoney who has never done a thing worth a damn in his entire life and has skated in to the White House on combination of lies, his grandparents money, affirmative action, white guilt, charm and guile.

15. Candidate Barak Obama is, was, and always bought and paid for by Wall Steet in general and Goldman Sachs in particular.

16. Barack Obama is actually Elvis Presley after having been probed by aliens at Rockwell.

17. Candidate Obama is an illegal alien from Kenya who plans to transform the USA into an Islamofascist/communist hellhole via FEMA re-education camps that ‘teach’ his special blend of Sharia law and doctrinaire Marxism.

18. Candidate Barak Obama used blak majik and witchcraft to become the supreme ruler of the world.

19. For yea Obama hath the number of the beast and it is he who be the anti-Christ.

Hmm. Maybe we here at Let’s Ask Elroy!™ should explain ourselves and break these down a little.

1. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who understood that he would have to shift to the right in a pragmatic effort to avoid the second American civil war he thinks might otherwise occur.

Fans of the Interwebs in the USA will have noticed their more, um, rural cousins installing several new gun racks to accommodate the several hundred new guns they wish to transport on the back of their 4x4 SUV pick-up trucks just in case revolution II breaks out while they’re out grabbing a 6-pack at that there licker store.

As Obama has no wish to use his next State Of The Union speech to report that the state of the union is smashed and broken beyond all possible repair and that he is being held hostage on a mountain in Montana, he is seeking to implement his agenda with great skill and diplomacy lest the militias cry havoc, let loose the dogs of war and take their pitchforks for a road trip to D

2. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to the White House wine cellar, was taken into a small room to have a few home truths by the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security et al about the extent, effects and responsibilities of American power, both foreign and domestic.

Here we enter the dark and sinister world of unknown unknowns. Maybe he was even threatened in some opaque fashion? Shown a copy of his Kenyan birth certificate? Whatever they did, Obama emerged chastened and tamed – turned, in other words, into a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

It is entirely possible that the president elect is quietly informed as to the real and absolute truth of how America makes the world work with such lines as ‘Y’remember 9/11 and the WTC? Meet Dick over here, one of his finer efforts’, and ‘George Junior – it’s amazing what a guy’ll do once you show him how his Pappy whacked JFK’ and ‘You ever read about the Businessmen’s Coup attempt back in 1937? The time when DuPont and Ford and all them guys were going to mount a fascist takeover of FDR? Well, guess what…?’ until the President elect says ‘Yeah, alright, you guys just keep on keeping on’ because he now he knows the truth he also how important it is it to keep lying about it.

3. Candidate Barak Obama was truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to the White House wine cellar, suddenly realised that he could make out like a bandit if he became a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests and what he hell do those bleeding heart do-gooder liberal wankers know anyway?

There is, of course, the chance that candidate Obama realised that here was his big chance to clean up and that a poor black and white Christian Muslim doesn’t get handed these opportunities ever day and he’ be a mug to refuse it and hell, he got here by dint of his own bootstraps so why shouldn’t anyone else, and....

4.Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who got some bad advise from some ex-Clinton running lackey dogs of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests on who to hire as his advisors and then allowed himself to be advised by those advisors because President Obama hasn’t actually got a clue what he’s doing.

Option four says that Obama is the accidental president, that he was just making a trial run ready for 2012 or 2016 and that when he won he panicked, asked Bill and Hilary who they picked to help them and did the same. Certainly the Obama administration is chock full o’ faces who have been quietly propping up the bars of DC since 1999 and waiting for a call, so maybe this is just one of those sequels they make without the lead actor but with the same crew, like the Regan/Bush Jnr show.

5. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to White House wine cellar, quite simply lost his nerve at the thought of all those bitter rednecks clinging to their guns and religion, and not just in Congress, and has become a quivering protoplasm in the face of the Republican Senator’s war dance.

So is he a lily-livered pussy who is all scared of the Republicans in the House and Congress? Is this why he has allowed a back down over the crucial Employee’s Free Choice Act? Why single-payer healthcare has gone the way of JFK? Why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are blazing unabated?

Or is he crazy brave enough to stare down the nutters and, say, institute single-payer health care and charge the rich for it, or release the prisoners in Git’mo and Bagram, or end warrantless wiretaps, or…or…or…on the face of it, it doesn’t look good, does it?

6. Candidate Barak Obama wass a lying bastard who said whatever his progressive liberal base wanted to hear in order to be handed the keys to the White House wine cellar and who had, in reality, only ever been a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

There is, of course, always the chance that he is complete bollocks and bluer than Rush Limbaugh with no Oxycontin, that he is a Republican stooge who is in place to placate the lefties and make sure that a truly progressive liberal does get to drive the ‘bus.

It’s true that he went to Harvard and rubbed shoulders with the future captains of industry, and so he could be the ultimate triangulation machine – the guy that could get it done with the backing of the left to the satisfaction of the right. Change, but not too much change…

7. Candidate Barak Obama is a truly progressive liberal and just soooooooo much smarter than the rest of us that we cannot see the long chess game he is playing, that it will all turn out fine for progressive liberals in the long run and we will be shocked, shocked, I tells ya, that we ever thought he was even capable of being a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

Option seven says that big ol’ brain of his is working just fine and that he is playing the Republicans like monkeys, running rings around them in a game of chess so subtle that the GOP think they are playing draughts. It doesn’t matter that he has caved on some vital issues, the point is that the Repubs are being played and that…that…that will be good when, er…whenever he decides to stop.

Take, for instance, the current healthcare debate. Obama said he wanted a bill on healthcare reform by August, a declaration which sent the Retail Right into a blood boiling frenzy. Conservatives have spent their summer descending on townhall meetings in demented hysterics to demand, loudly and without end, the right to be screwed royally and left to die by the health maintenance organizations they pay so much money to – ‘Give me liberty AND give me death!’ – but now that they have exhausted themselves, and shown themselves to be complete pillocks, Obama has said ‘Oh well, we’ll do it later then’.

Is this rope-a-dope White House style? Was Obama relying on the Dining Room Tables to go utterly ape and show their hand early, thus demonstrating their total inability to understand the issues and effectively dealing themselves out of the game? Is Obama banking, mayhaps, on the more moderate Republicans distancing themselves from the nutters and realizing that the left do have several very good points? We wait and see. Of course, Obama’s game might be so subtle that he never actually reveals his hand at all…

8. Candidate Barak Obama believes he is a truly progressive liberal who is, as we speak, enacting a truly progressive liberal agenda for the good of all Americans.

There is, of course, the possibility that he is completely genuine and that he believes that his legislative agenda is what he promised and that, in time, Americans will realize that he has done, is doing and will do exactly what he said he would. This is, of course, utterly silly and the most ridiculous notion, here but of course we much canvass all possibilities no matter how absurd.

9. Candidate Barak Obama is a truly progressive liberal who genuinely feels that compromise and bipartisanship, meeting the other side of the divide halfway, is absolutely crucial to the effective governing of the country.

Possibility nine postulates Obama knows that, in order to get anything done, deals must be done. His aversion to confrontation and grown-up approach to government have led him to hope that the other side will recognise his due authority and be prepared to also modify their ideas to reflect the new reality on the Hill, that is, a Democrat majority in both houses and a mandate from the American people to enact a more liberal agenda.

10. Candidate Barak Obama is merely shoring up the moderate Republican base for 2012 as he knows his progressive liberals would sooner chew their own legs off than allow President Palin to come to pass.

He knows his base will follow him, unless they manage to organize a viable and widespread third party between now and 2012, and that they will always choose him over a Republican, especially if that Republican is called Palin. The swing voters, however, are not so reliable, and if the GOP manage to nominate a candidate to left of Mussolini then they will be even less so, so the 2012 election campaign starts now. Actually, it started on November the fifth, 2008….

11. Candidate Obama was a truly progressive liberal who knows he owes his place to the Democratic National Committee and ‘Blue Dog’ democrats and so must temper his socialist instincts in order to keep them onside and get legislation passed.

The DNC might as well be Republicans, and the so-called Blue Dogs actually are. The Right have a policy of infiltration; from school boards on up, conservatives make a point of being represented, in one way or another, in every significant institution in America and the Democratic Party is no different.

12. Barack Obama is devious liar who ran as a mild-mannered centrist but who is, in actual fact, a committed socialist/communist/fascist currently implementing his nefarious plans to turn the USA into the USSA.

This through-the-looking-glass, demented world view is expounded on a daily basis by Fox News’ resident cry-baby, the certifiably insane Glenn Beck. It is, of course, completely at odds with all the available evidence, but that has never stopped Glenn before and so the USA is slowly being filled with nutbags convinced that Glenn is 100% correct without ever attempting to define the words ‘socialist’, ‘communist’ or ‘fascist’.

13. Candidate Barak Obama is not a truly progressive liberal but a fully paid-for stooge of the New World Order.

In this scenario, Obama is, was, and always will be a creature of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the Davos Forum, the frolickers of Bohemia Grove, JP Morgan and whatever other shadowy organizations run the world from behind the curtains.

Recognising that the Bush/Cheney project had maybe gone a little too far too fast, Barak Obama was plucked from obscurity by the NWO to put a friendly face on US hegemony before the world woke up and smelled the tacos, a black and white Christian Muslim guaranteed to placate citizens across the planet while the final stages of the NWO’s grand plan is put into effect.

14. President Obama is a complete phoney who has never done a thing worth a damn in his entire life and has skated in to the White House on combination of lies, his grandparents money, affirmative action, white guilt, charm and guile.

The rationale for this is the apparent ease with Obama floated into Harvard Law, the Illinios Senate and the White House. According to adherents of this theory his grandparents were loaded, he only got into Harvard as an affirmative action candidate, his two books were ghost written by Bill Ayers and that, although he is as black as he is white, he played up his dark side in order to make whitey feel a) sorry for him and b) better about themselves by voting for him.

It is held that everything about Obama is a fraud, that he is just a super-slick conman unable to utter a word without a teleprompter, that he was a completely average student, that he never wrote anything of note in all his time of editing the Harvard Law Review and that never was heard a distinguishing word from The One in all his born days.

15. Candidate Barak Obama is, was, and always bought and paid for by Wall Steet in general and Goldman Sachs in particular.

The evidence for this thesis is everywhere. Like the Bush Jnr and Clinton cabals before it, the Obama administration is livid, rife, rotten with Goldman Sachs alumni. Henry Paulson, former GS CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary, was the trigger man for the biggest heist in human history, and the swindle continues apace, so it really doesn’t matter which party is in power as GS owns the lot.

Ronnie Reagn’s Assistant Secretary of Treasury Paul Craig Roberts was once asked "Does the US Secretary of the Treasury work for the people or does he work for the banking system on Wall Street?" and Roberts said ‘He works for Goldman Sachs.’

16. Barack Obama is actually Elvis Presley after having been probed by aliens at Rockwell.

Somewhere, in the wilds of Montana, there is a lone nutter clinging to his guns who has a blog promoting option 16 and who will happily tell you how Elvis was jumped while visiting Walker Air Force Base by the resident little green men. They then inserted a probe which made Elvis blow up like a balloon before exhibiting all the outward signs of death until he emerged from his cocoon as a suave and charming African American, a result the aliens thought Elvis might appreciate.

17. Candidate Obama is an illegal alien from Kenya who plans to transform the USA into an Islamofascist/communist hellhole via FEMA re-education camps that ‘teach’ his special blend of Sharia law and doctrinaire Marxism.

Option 17 is nuttier than 16. Apparently Obama’s mama left her native Kansas for Kenya to give birth to the lurve chil’ she had created with Kenyan student Barak Obama Snr, at which point Obama Snr hopped on a plane for Hawaii that same day in order to place an ad in the birth announcement pages of the Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Start-Bulletin, and insert a Certificate of Live Birth and Birth Certificate into the medical records of the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children so that his parents could then claim that he was borned in the USA . Or something.

So, having fooled the US into giving their boy citizenship, Obama was then brought up as a Muslim and brainwashed by communists until he realized that he his soul would not rest until he had transformed the USA into an Islamofascist/communist hellhole via FEMA re-education camps that ‘teach’ his special blend of Sharia law and doctrinaire Marxism.

Variants include that idea that Barak Obama Snr was NOT his father, that he WAS born in Hawaii but lost his US citizenship in a card game in Jakarta, that his grandmother is a witchdoctor etc etc (Cont. P 96), but remember – a significant number of Americans BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE. I’m scared now.

18. Candidate Barak Obama used blak majik and witchcraft to become the supreme ruler of the world.

Given that his Grandmother is/was a witchdoctor this was not hard, having leaned all the voodoo tricks he might have needed from her by osmosis and by living for a short time in Hawaii, which is in the Pacific and therefore not so far from Haiti.

19. For yea Obama hath the number of the beast and it is he who be the anti-Christ.

Hard to prove but, if true, it would be a bit awkward for the legion of godless lib’ruls if Obama suddenly sprouted horns and a tail, declared himself to be the devil incarnate and cast said lib’ruls into the flaming pit of eternal hellfire. It would, however, lock in the hard-to-reach Satanist vote.

So Obama’s failure to fire could be down to any, or a mixture, of all of the above nineteen scenarios, but what they don’t explain is the Right’s animosity towards him because, if you care to go ‘round again, you will see that there is nothing for them to dislke.

1. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who understood that he would have to shift to the right in a pragmatic effort to avoid the second American civil war he thinks might otherwise occur.

Why wouldn’t this please the Right? They must have understood that elections have consequences and that there would obviously be changes that they didn’t like, so it looks to Elroy like American conservatives have got off quite lightly – he was hoping they might be a little more circumspect and just a tad rueful when the tables eventually and inevitably turned, but irony is not their strongest suit.

New conservative administrations across the world are marked by the radical agendas they claim they have a mandate to implement; Bush, for instance, implemented two No Millionaire Left Behind tax cuts, the PATRIOT Act and two endless wars while the GOP generally sulked, pouted, kicked the chairs and literally told them pesky lib’ruls to go fuck them selves when they expressed doubts over the GOP’s legislative schedule.

Now, however, in line with conservatives’ take-no-prisoners, partisan, fight-to-the-death, no-quarter-given, hard-line, below-the-belt, bloody, punitive and punishing approach to politics, Obama’s attempts to implement his mild agenda Is being met with calls for revolution, armed insurrection, and the wholesale spilling of lib’rul blood.

So the Retail Right rattle their sabres and hang tough, and the chance are it could be working, but the downside is that they might not get to have their second civil war after all, which is a shame because what’s the point of owning a personal arsenal the size of Belgium’s (as part of a well-regulated militia, you understand) if you don’t get to shoot some commies?

2. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to the White House wine cellar, was taken into a small room to have a few home truths by the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security et al about the extent, effects and responsibilities of American power, both foreign and domestic.

This would be great outcome for conservatives as it would mean that the true power of the state lies within the military/industrial complex, just the way they like it. Can Obama keep America safe? Only if the MIC let him.

3. Candidate Barak Obama was truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to the White House wine cellar, suddenly realised that he could make out like a bandit if he became a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests and what he hell do those bleeding heart do-gooder liberal wankers know anyway?

They profess to hate ‘flip-floppers’ but there is little the Right like to gloat over more than a leftie who has seen the light and jumped the aisle. Nary a day goes by without them spouting that spurious Churcilll ‘quote’ that goes ‘If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain’, completely oblivious to the fact that Churchill never actually said it – it first turns up as a quip from 19th century French statesman François Guizot – and that it declares all lifelong conservatives to be completely heartless; no, the bit they like is the ‘not a conservative = no brain’ equation.

(Editor’s note: The funniest attempt at making this connection was by Sean Hannity when he said ‘If you’re twenty and not a liberal you don’t have a heart; if you’re forty and conservative, you don’t have a brain.’ O how we laffed.)

For example, a Fox News favorite is one David Horowitz, a former ‘60s student Marxist radical who proves either Guizot of Hannity correct at least once a week when he denounces his erstwhile comrades to the delight of the baying herd. Other notable ideological turncoats include playwright David Mamet, neo-con godfather Irving Kristol and The Gipper himself, Ronnie W. Reagan, so one would think that the 27% of America that still call themselves ‘Republicans’ would be wetting themselves at the thought of welcoming Obama to the dark side, but there you go – they’re a hard lot to please.

4. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who got some bad advise from some ex-Clinton running lackey dogs of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests on who to hire as his advisors and then allowed himself to be advised by those advisors because President Obama is a complete fuckwit hasn’t actually got a clue what he’s doing.

This is a win-win proposition for the legions of evil. If Bill Clinton was the best Republican president the Democrats ever elected (so far) then that was down to his advisors. Indeed, Bill’s strategist/consultant/advisor/guru Dick Morris might not be on the Obama team – yet – but he was, and is, a creature of the GOP, and with ex-Clintonistas like Rahm Emmanuel, Larry Summers and Robert Reich knocking around it’s a case of Change We’ve Actually Seen Before, a situation that should cheer those that fear the establishment of the USSA no end, not least because it would prove the treasured conservative notion that Barak Obama is a complete fuckwit who hasn’t actually got a clue what he’s doing.

5. Candidate Barak Obama was a truly progressive liberal who, upon being handed the keys to White House wine cellar, quite simply lost his nerve at the thought of all those bitter rednecks clinging to their guns and religion, and not just in Congress, and has become a quivering protoplasm in the face of the Republican Senator’s war dance.

This is just Republican business as usual. Their take-no-prisoners, partisan, fight-to-the-death, no-quarter-given, hard-line, below-the-belt, bloody, punitive and punishing approach to governance is just another day at the office GOP and Obama is just the kind of eggheaded, non-confrontational kind of elitist scum that they chew up and spit out before morning prayers, so the GOP should be happy – the pres. Is under his desk in whimpering about the nasty bullies and doing what he’s told or else. Mission accomplished!

6. Candidate Barak Obama wass a lying bastard who said whatever his progressive liberal base wanted to hear in order to be handed the keys to the White House wine cellar and who had, in reality, only ever been a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

This should break them out in a skip as means that Obama has always been one of them. It means that he single-handedly pulled the wool over democrats big and small, all of them, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 62 million voters sucked in by a dyed-in-the-wool running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie who will protect the vested interests of conservative’s corporate overlords and the souls of people one might image conservatives would much rather see burn in hell. So why aren’t they smiling? Who knows?

7. Candidate Barak Obama is a truly progressive liberal and just soooooooo much smarter than the rest of us that we cannot see the long chess game he is playing, that it will all turn out fine for progressive liberals in the long run and we will be shocked, shocked, I tells ya, that we ever thought he was even capable of being a running lackey dog of the bourgeoisie happy to protect the ruling elite’s vested interests.

Again, this really shouldn’t be too much of a problem for conservatives because while Obama is playing his long game, the Republicans are winning their short one. At what point will Obama make his move? At what point will he realise that lulling the opposition into a false sense of security by letting them win is the same as letting them win?

8. Candidate Barak Obama believes he is a truly progressive liberal who is, as we speak, enacting a truly progressive liberal agenda for the good of all Americans.

Another win for conservatives as if this is what Obama thinks is a truly progressive agenda then the conservative have zip to worry about. Obama’s idea of restructuring the financial system is to put it just back as it was before the crash, dollar by taxpayer dollar, and he is merely tinkering with the window dressings of healthcare, although you wouldn’t know it from the wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from the Free Marketeers™; a TRUE truly progressive liberal, on the other hand, would be jailing Wall Street CEOs for fraud and HMO CEOs for murder AND fraud.

9. Candidate Barak Obama is a truly progressive liberal who genuinely feels that compromise and bipartisanship, meeting the other side of the divide halfway, is absolutely crucial to the effective governing of the country.

This is just a gift to conservatives. As The Republican Party’s idea of being ‘bipartisan’ is having a Democrat administration do what the Republicans tell them, Obama’s eagerness to negotiate with them just makes their lives so much easier as they can put down their cudgels and weapons of mass disruption, as per Number Five, snuggle down inside the tent and spend the next four long years torpedoing whatever bills the Dems might send along – by invitation!

10. Candidate Barak Obama is merely shoring up the moderate Republican base for 2012 as he knows his progressive liberals would sooner chew their own legs off than allow President Palin to come to pass.

This still allows the conservative agenda to continue while affording conservatives the pleasure of watching liberals suffer and squirm but still vote Obama in 2012, thus relieving the guilt of those moderates who were ‘forced’ to vote Bush in ’04.

11. Candidate Obama was a truly progressive liberal who knows he owes his place to the Democratic National Committee and ‘Blue Dog’ democrats and so must temper his socialist instincts in order to keep them onside and get legislation passed.

Another win for conservatives, as ‘Blue Dog’ democrats are merely undercover Republicans. As previously noted, it is conservative strategy to infiltrate everything everywhere, from local peace groups through to, well, the Democratic Party, and as Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, is convinced that the Dems could never break through without dragging a few GOP votes over the fence, the Repubs don’t even need to try to sneak their members onto a Democratic Party ticket – Emmanuel invites them!

And they don’t mind – jihad , as we all know, requires martyrdom, and its no different for the Anglo fundies, just a little more symbolic. Consider the strange case of Arlen Specter, a Republican Senator of forty-fours years standing who up and joins the Democrats, just like that, effectively delivering them the prize of a sixty seat filibuster-proof maority.

Why? Because Specter suddenly had a crisis of conscience? Because Specter is such principle-free opportunist that he truly thought he stood a better chance of being re-elected as a democrat? Because he is so deluded that he thought he could get away with it? Or because he is a wily old– curmudgeon who threw himself into the fire in an act of self –sacrifice that will undoubtedly have its rewards so that he could control Obama’s agenda from the inside?

What would you do? Refuse to amend your legislation and have it lose by a vote? Or do what Uncle Arlen suggests? One peculiar facet of this bizarre move is that conspicuous lack of ire it drew from Republicans from sea to shining sea – instead of lynching the traitor that just condemned the USA to the misery of socialism they just shrugged, said ‘Silly old Arlen! Oh well, it’s a free country etc’ and moved back to clobbering whichever democrat had woken up that morning.
And if costs him the 2010 mid-term election, so what? Specter’s no spring chicken – maybe he just wants to live out his twilight years at the expense of a grateful party.

12. Barack Obama is a committed socialist/communist/fascist who ran as a centrist but who is now implementing plans to turn the USA into the USSA.

Number twelve is important to conservatives as it gives their lives meaning. Instead of spending the summer slumped on the couch counting nickels and dimes for bullets and beer, the fact that a radical black communist took over their beloved nation state has had them in state of fevered animation as they swamped townhall meetings to shout that they needed to be heard and held ‘teabag’ protests where they protested the, um right to protest.

This project is unending for conservatives as they see evidence of Obama’s socialism/communism/fascism at every turn. Apparently it is the act of a socialist/communist/fascist traitor to investigate possible war crimes committed by your fellow countrymen, despite the fact that a reluctance to investigate possible war crimes committed by your fellow countrymen is a hallmark of socialist/communist/fascist regimes, and apparently it is also it is the act of a socialist/communist/fascist to attempt to deliver a speech to, sorry, ‘brainwash’ the country’s children concerning the importance of staying in school and getting good grades.

Actually, the DRTs might have a point here – say what you like about socialists/communists, at least they had sensational public education institutions. Capitalists societies, however, like to keep the citizens as stupid as possible, as do fascist societies, which raises the question of whether the retail right have the slightest idea what they are on about and whether they should have, erm, stayed in school.

13. Candidate Barak Obama is not a truly progressive liberal but a fully paid-for stooge of the New World Order.

In this scenario, Obama is, was, and always will be a creature of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the Davos Forum, the frolickers of Bohemia Grove, JP Morgan and whatever other shadowy organizations run the world from behind the curtains on behalf of Wall Street and the corporatocracy.

As such it represents another win for the GOP whose numbers also make up the membership ranks of the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the Davos Forum, the frolickers of Bohemia Grove, JP Morgan and whatever other shadowy organizations run the world from behind the curtains on behalf of Wall Street and the corporatocracy.

14. President Obama is a complete phoney who has never done a thing worth a damn in his entire life and has skated in to the White House on combination of lies, his grandparents money, affirmative action, white guilt, charm and guile.

Conservatives enjoy beating this drum as it feds into their preconceived notion that all black people are, by definition, shifty ne’er-do-wells who have not reached any positions of power hey might hold due to any hard work or application on their part.

Furthermore, it proves that affirmative action results in second rate personnel and that racism is dead which means, in turn, that they can continue to be a racist as ever while maintaining the high moral ground, and allows them to assume the victimhood they have spent so ong deriding in others. Slavery? Jim Crow? 300 years of institutionalised inequality? Get over it! There's a black man in the White House! Waaah! No fair!

15. Candidate Barak Obama is, was, and always bought and paid for by Wall Steet in general and Goldman Sachs in particular.

No worries! As capitalism is all about crushing the competition and establishing monopolies conservatives must be delighted at Goldman Sachs’ hi-jinx this last year! Thank god Goldman was able to hire yet another president to cover it’s tracks!

Yes, the GFC was nothing but a dazzling example of the Free Market™ at work as Goldman, like all good capitalist enterprises, sought to eliminate their competitors, a resounding victory for capitalism and capitalists everywhere!

16. Barack Obama is actually Elvis Presley after having been probed by aliens at Rockwell.

A definite win for conservatives as Elvis is, well, Elvis, no matter aliens have been up him and so, being Elvis and never having actually left the building, he will eventually reveal his true identity and, uh huh huh, lead the USA back to sanity with a rousing chorus of An American Trilogy. Honest.

17. Candidate Obama is an illegal alien from Kenya who plans to transform the USA into an Islamofascist/communist hellhole via FEMA re-education camps that ‘teach’ his special blend of Sharia law and doctrinaire Marxism.

Conservatives would be delighted if this was the case as it would prove them right and being right is what they care about most, happy to be locked up in the backwoods of Georgia and subjected to movies by Al-Queada and Mike Moore movies happy so long as their ‘Told you so!’ rights would remain intact.

This tendency is evidenced by the behaviour of Rush Limbaugh who said ‘I hope he fails!’, which means that he is quite prepared to see his country destroyed rather than have Obama be right. What a patriot!

18. Candidate Barak Obama used blak majik and witchcraft to become the supreme ruler of the world.

Conservatives would like this to be the case as it would explain the unexplainable, that is, how a liberal black man became POTUS. As the retail right cannot fathom that free Americans would willingly vote for the likes of Obama, this option makes them feel better as it says that 53% of the country had a spell cast over them, that they were rendered sheeple drones by The One.

The other good thing about 18 is it absolves conservatives from taking any responsibility for the way the world is, it being governed by voodoo and all.

19. For yea Obama hath the number of the beast and it is he who be the anti-Christ.

This would be a fabulous outcome for the loonier Christian conservatives as it hurries along the Rapture when they all get to ascend into heaven with The Naz and zap them muzzies good and proper, once and for all. True it means the end of everyone else on the planet, but hey – gotta support the troops!

So there you go, Kids! Mix ‘n’ match! Whatever Obama is, more and more people are beginning to worry he’s not what they thought he was. Bugger! For Elroy’s part, he's going with #7 right now because he can’t bear the alternatives, although it does weigh heavy on his mind that chess is game where pawns are sacrificed to protect royalty. Sigh.