Power, who is close to Obama, resigned March 7 after being quoted in the Scotsman newspaper saying that Clinton "is a monster" and that "she is stooping to anything. . . . The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

— William Shakespeare

If Billy Shakespeare were still with us, I’m quite certain he would do us the favor of coining some nifty expressions to describe Obamaland and its inhabitants. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that the talented English bard would relentlessly pick the beast of Obama-worship down to the very marrow of its bones.

I’ve no doubt either that the witty Bill S. would take his first, perfectly aimed quill-strike at the inevitable disillusionment of Obama followers, possessed by utterly unrealistic expectations.  ...

Hell truly hath no fury like that awaiting Obama as he fails to eradicate the worries and responsibilities of his delusional followers. The woman made famous by her YouTube proclamation that, once Obama is elected, she will no longer need worry about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage will perhaps be first to explode.

David Ignatius, of the Washington Post, has already begun the new spin on our war with Islamo-fascist terrorists. Ignatius’ spin seems right in keeping with Obamaland’s surreal expectations.

On the matter of motivation for the Islamic terrorists, Ignatius seems to believe that it’s all a matter of “rhetoric” and President Bush’s incendiary invasion of Iraq.

To which, Ignatius issues his own challenge to President-elect Obama:

Seize the moment; “turn a page,” and thereby transform the intellectual battlefield; keep the military pressure on al-Qaeda’s hard core, but discard the “war on terrorism” rhetoric.

Ignatius, among other Obama followers, is setting the stage for perhaps the biggest-bang disillusionment in all of Obamaland.

Have the Princes of Saudi Arabia, the mullahs of Iran, the imams of Cairo, Baghdad, and London, the various Palestinian factions condemned the carnage? Did I miss it? Have moderate Muslims and prominent anti-racists and anti-colonialists condemned the carnage as a racist, colonialist act? (I know, I know, if people of color are doing the shooting, the deaths of brown-skinned people do not seem to matter to them quite as much).

As I previously wrote, Islamic fundamentalists have declared a major, global war against the West and against non-Wahabi Muslims. To date, the world has refused to treat the Islamic/Islamist assault as the full-fledged religious war that it really is. No, it is not a traditional war which means that we will require non-traditional, as well as traditional means to fight it.

Today, David Altman, writing in the Jerusalem Post agrees. He believes that “while Mumbai, India does not constitute the ultimate battlefield…it will nevertheless serve as a conceptual case for future activities.”

“Without question, the approach towards fighting terrorism must undergo major rethinking. Times have changed since the main focus was the suicide bombers operating independently or in small groups, whose purpose was to injure the enemy and to draw attention to their cause.

Today, a new, different terror army, with several branches is being developed. This army includes all the elements of a military, but exploits the approach of the terrorist. The terror army enjoys the advantages of feeling exempt from any international law or convention, and of being exempt from international pressure or accountability. In addition, they handicap the power of their opponent through exploitation of the claims of internationally accepted values of human rights, correct treatment of prisoners of war, and prevention of harm to civilian populations - though none of these values apply to them, but only to their opponent.”

I have a long-time friend and colleague who left America to run an orphanage for girls in India, in Kolkata. (Like Mumbai, which used to be called Bombay, Calcutta has now become Kolkata.) She is a physician and her name is Michelle Harrison. Here is what she just wrote me.

“It’s a metastatic cancer that needs surgery and chemo, but the world still thinks some meditation and deep breathing will make it go away.”

It's looking like House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel is going to face an ethics committee investigation for, among other things, failing to report income on rental properties and supporting a tax law change favoring a big donor to an institute named after Rangel. I'm sorry to see this. I like Charlie Rangel, I think he's a decent person and a charming pol, and I'm inclined to cut him some slack because he served in the Korean War and survived some of the most horrific fighting that American men in arms have ever faced. I think it would be sad to see him lose the chairmanship of Ways and Means for sins which are more venial than mortal, just as I thought it was sad that his predecessor as chairman, Dan Rostenkowski, lost not only his chairmanship but also his seat in Congress and, for a while, his freedom for some small bits of chicanery that were dwarfed by his public policy achievements, notably in the enactment of the tax reform bill of 1986.

The more so, because I think that the tax bill Rangel brought forward in the outgoing Congress showed he was open to major changes in tax law along the lines of the 1986 bill—a lowering of rates combined with a reduction in tax preferences that have accumulated, like barnacles on the ship of state, over the intervening two decades. Rangel's bill would have cut the corporate tax rate, which is far higher than in almost any other advanced country, at least a little bit, and was intended to get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax which, because it's not indexed to inflation, threatens to cover hugely larger percentages of taxpayers every year. Taxpayers, as I have noted several times, who are concentrated in high-nominal-income, high-state-and-local-tax, heavily Democratic states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California.  ...

As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Kevin Hassett points out, serious Democratic economists and economic policymakers, like Obama's chief economic appointees—Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Christina Romer, Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee—realize that raising tax rates in a recession is disastrous public policy.

All of which lays the groundwork for a serious bipartisan tax revision bill, the prospects for which would be stronger, I think, if Charlie Rangel remains Ways and Means chairman. So I stand aside from the packs of Republican hounds who are baying for Rangel's scalp.

PARIS - There is both growing public reluctance to make personal sacrifices and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the major international efforts now underway to battle climate change, according to findings of a poll of 12,000 citizens in 11 countries, including Canada.

Results of the poll were released this week in advance of the start of a major international conference in Poland where delegates are considering steps toward a new international climate-change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

There already are reports emerging that some countries, such as coal-dependent Poland, are pushing for special treatment to avoid making major commitments to slash carbon emissions during a global economic downturn.

Less than half of those surveyed, or 47 per cent, said they were prepared to make personal lifestyle changes to reduce carbon emissions, down from 58 per cent last year.

Only 37 per cent said they were willing to spend "extra time" on the effort, an eight-point drop.

And only one in five respondents - or 20 per cent - said they'd spend extra money to reduce climate change. That's down from 28 per cent a year ago.  ...

The 11 countries surveyed were Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. There were 2,000 respondents surveyed in China, including 1,000 in Hong Kong.

It's not an either/or scenario, it's all of the above. Yes, the terrorists targeted locally owned hotels. But they singled out Britons and Americans as hostages. Yes, they attacked prestige city landmarks like the Victoria Terminus, one of the most splendid and historic railway stations in the world. But they also attacked an obscure Jewish community center. The Islamic imperialist project is a totalitarian ideology: It is at war with Hindus, Jews, Americans, Britons, everything that is other.

This isn't law enforcement but an ideological assault – and we're fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology's advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population's demographic advance among everybody else.

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don't seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn't about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It's bigger than that. And if you don't have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you'll lose.

"A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy, a coalition partner must perform," Bush said. "That means different things for different nations. Some nations don't want to contribute troops and we understand that. Other nations can contribute intelligence-sharing. ... But all nations, if they want to fight terror, must do something.  ...

"Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity," he said. "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."