--Prohibit corporate perks and private-jet trips while sanctioning their own taxpayer-sponsored ones.

--Decide who is worthy of being relieved of irresponsible home-purchasing decisions.

--Discourage charitable giving with their further phasing out of charitable deductions.

--Dole out money to "worthy" municipalities in order to position themselves as micromanaging federal enforcers: "Nobody messes with Joe Biden."

--Replace the free market as the engine of economic growth. You can't watch Obama operate without concluding he truly believes that government, not the private sector, generates wealth in this nation.

--Be the arbiter of income distribution for all citizens.

--Impose paralyzing cap and trade mandates on private corporations based on dubious, disputed, non-consensus-based "science," which amounts to nothing more than another tax on private industry and flies directly in the face of Obama's promises to be friendly to small business.

Almost as alarming as the foregoing, President Obama is engaged in what seems to be a deliberate effort to talk down the economy for the presumed purpose of ensuring our panic mode represses a stock market recovery long enough to fuel his frantic agenda.

Adding insult to injury, at a time when these liberals are growing government in areas never contemplated by our Founders nor authorized by the Constitution, they are eviscerating the defense budget, relaxing our foreign policy toward enemy dictators and, in effect, unilaterally declaring the war on terror over and forcing us to revert to our pre-9/11 mode of treating the war as a law enforcement matter.

If we could afford to let down our guard and sleep during this period, I'd be inclined to do so and ask whether someone would please be so kind as to awaken me when this nightmare is over.