I'm HOSTING The O'Reilly Factor---TONIGHT!

I'm hosting for Bill O'Reilly TONIGHT on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News Channel at 8pm and 11pm ET! Please join us for an amazing show with Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Brit Hume, Juan and Mary Katherine, Ben Stein and Bernie Goldberg! It's an All-Star lineup with Yours Truly hosting. Please tune in!

I'm Hosting "Hannity"---TONIGHT!

I am guest-hosting for Sean Hannity TONIGHT at 9pm and midnight ET on the Fox News Channel. Please join us for a great show and a great time!

The Pencil Story

Over the weekend, I watched an interview with the late, great economist Milton Friedman. It was a conversation he had with Brian Lamb of C-Span in 1994, and Friedman was his usual brilliant self. He was a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, but he had a way of describing economic freedom in the most simple yet powerful ways.

I had the great honor of interviewing him for my radio show a few years ago, and I was struck by how warm, personable, modest and funny he was. He gave me a big hug, and then proceeded to tell my radio audience why capitalism was the very best economic system in ways everybody could understand.

I thought about his famous pencil story as I watched him this weekend on C-Span. A very simple tale about the power of the free market. It was so Milton Friedman: direct, succinct, brilliant and powerful.

Our friends over at RedState.com have linked to it today. Here it is. Enjoy. And yo, Occupy Wall Street: you might learn something.

http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/2011/10/27/occupythis-free-enterprise-its-more-than-an-idea-it-works/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Carville Goes There...Again

James Carville has resurfaced with another strategic warning to Barack Obama. You'll recall that a few months ago, Carville let loose about the President's political problems. He fumed that Obama should "fire everybody," bring in a new team, shake things up.

Today, he issued a new warning on the Scott Hennen radio show:

"Let me repeat. Everything worries me in this environment. Nobody's gotten elected with these kinds of numbers. So, I'm worried in the general election. I profoundly admit that."

He went on to bash the GOP presidential field, but that wasn't the point of his appearance. Carville doesn't just flap his lips willy-nilly. His comments are always thought out and I'm sure, cleared first by Bill Clinton. Speaking of Bubba, recall that he's been hitting Obama publicly over the past few months as well, most recently about the mistake of raising taxes in an economic downturn.

So why did Carville issue this new flare?

First, while Carville is a committed Democrat, he's also a Clinton loyalist. Part of this is the old "see, we told you so!" coming from the Clinton crowd.

Second, this is to try to get the base moving.

The third and perhaps biggest element of this is that Carville, Clinton and that gang represent a more traditional kind of Democrat. They were pragmatists. Obama is a totally different brand of Democrat. He's a pure ideologue who has not and will not change course the way Clinton did to win re-election. Obama IS the far-left, and although his policies have wreaked havoc and are threatening his re-elect, he will not change. That's what Carville is really pointing to, and that's something none of them---not even the Great Master, Bill, or the Great Magician, Carville---can change.

But of course, Obama will not change. He cannot change. This is who is is. This is what he does. This is what he believes.

The O'Reilly Factor---TONIGHT!

I'll be a guest with Bill O'Reilly TONIGHT at 8pm and 11pm ET on the Fox News Channel. Please tune in.

We. Can't. Wait.

Let's take a quick look around, shall we?

Europe is teetering, about to be sucked into a fiscal Bermuda Triangle over the sovereign debt crises of many of their members.

The Middle East is aflame. Iran is on the march, controlling Syria and Lebanon and now, with our accelerated complete withdrawal from Iraq in a few months, is poised to force that nation into its sphere of influence. Egypt is falling to the Muslim Brotherhood, while the Brotherhood and other Islamists are ready to take over in Libya and Tunisia, at least behind the scenes. Turkey is experiencing its own quiet Islamist revolution and is peeling away from the U.S. and the West in favor of Iran. Saudi Arabia is engaged in a proxy fight with Iran over Bahrain and other areas for dominance of the Persian Gulf.

China is busy building up its military capabilities and economy, with scant attention from us, apart from the counterproductive trade war some in Congress would like to start.

Russia is poised to re-install KGB top dog, Vladimir Putin, as president, although he never really went away. Meanwhile, we're getting ready to allow the Russians access to some of our biggest military secrets as part of the New START agreement.

Our economy is still sucking salt: unemployment up, growth stagnant, inflation up, housing prices down, consumer confidence down. Another downgrade may be around the corner. The socialists of Occupy Wall Street and the unions are beating the incessant drums of revolution.

The good times of the Obama years keep on rolling, don't they?

Team Obama just unveiled a new slogan for its re-election efforts: We Can't Wait. Who's the genius who came up with that one? The jokes write themselves. We Can't Wait for 2012! We Can't Wait for the end of his economic reign of terror! We Can't Wait for the economy to begin to rebound! We Can't Wait for America to be respected and yes, feared, again! We Can't Wait for the skinny socialist to get booted out of office! We Can't Wait for the return of America!

We. Can't. Wait.

Now You Tell Us

One of President Obama's former top economic advisers has had a change of heart about one of their economic "stimulus" programs. Austan Goolsbee, who served as the chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, now says the Cash for Clunkers program was a mistake. He makes this statement $3 billion later.

According to Politico.com:

"[He] said Thursday that if given a second chance he would not have backed the Cash for Clunkers program or the home buyer tax credit passed in 2009 to stave off further economic distress.

""Because we didn't know if [economic recovery was] going to be short or long," the Obama administration tried measures to address both scenarios, Goolsbee explained on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

""If you look at Cash for Clunkers or the first home buyer tax credit, they were geared to trying to shift [recovery] from 2010 into 2009. Given it's taken this long [to recover], I don't think you would do that short-run stuff," Goolsbee added."

To paraphrase Adam Sandler in "The Wedding Singer:" this is information that could have been useful YESTERDAY!

Goolsbee stands by the nearly trillion dollar "stimulus" but is cutting the lesser stimuli loose. Why is he doing this now? 1. He's out of the administration so he doesn't have to lie to cover for them anymore, and 2. It's painfully clear that none of their stimuli worked to improve the economy.

At the time these Keynesian policies were being teed up, conservatives were screaming about this point: all the short-term programs like cash for clunkers and the first-time home buyers' credit did was move up demand; they did not create it. So when the programs ended, so did the economic activity. They were temporary, cosmetic actions that did nothing but warp the market.

Today, Obama's former economic adviser throws cash for clunkers under the bus. How much longer before he and others throw the Big Stimulus under the bus? Or ObamaCare? Or Obama himself? A sinking ship has no rats aboard.

Candidates Gone Wild

You can tell that the Republican presidential candidates are feeling the pressure of the compressed primary schedule. Iowa set its caucus for January 3rd. Happy new year. New Hampshire still might run its primary in December. I can't take it.

And neither, apparently can the candidates Not Named Romney. The Romney team is moving furiously behind the scenes to move up the caucus and primary dates in order to seal in Mitt as the party's nominee as quickly as possible. He's having some success, as the calendar shows, so the other candidates are freaking out. They have just a few more weeks to raise money and make their cases. And tempers are running short.

During last night's debate, Romney and Rick Perry tore it up with each other. They interrupted, cut each other off, and sniped. Rick Santorum whined and stomped his feet. Michele Bachmann ended up raising her voice to continually interject. Herman Cain was the punching bag of the evening, being the new frontrunner, but he punched back often. Sometimes he landed those punches, some were air balls. Ron Paul gassed around about god-knows-what. And Newt Gingrich spent much of his time looking exasperated at the whole hot mess.

The candidates are under pressure, and it showed last night. But if they can't handle the pressure of their own party's primary process, how are they going to handle the pressure of a general election campaign against the most brutally effective leftist machine the nation has ever seen?

And how will they handle the pressure of the presidency?

I don't believe in a super-early, compressed primary schedule. It may lock us into a candidate we may later regret. I want us to take our good old time choosing our standard bearer, and I want them to duke it out and let the best man or woman win.

But the pressure test is a good one. Watch them sweat. Grace under fire reveals presidential temperament, and heaven knows, we need a true conservative with a graceful temperament. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Two Scorpions In A Bottle

One of the most revealing stories of the week comes to us courtesy of the gossip page, Page Six, in today's New York Post. They report:

"Don't have your people call my people. That's the message President Obama's inner circle sent Bill Clinton's camp after the ex-president's posse tried to give advice on how to win re-election. The pols' aides didn't see eye-to-eye when Obama's chief of staff Bill Daley, who was Clinton's secretary of commerce, called in former Clinton advisers including Steve Ricchetti, Doug Sosnik, Joel Johnson and Joe Lockhart for a powwow with White House aides. "It was like water and oil," a source said. "They didn't seem to appreciate the advice." There was also "Obama-bashing" at a Clinton reunion in Little Rock, Ark., on Oct. 3. Obama rep Dan Pfeiffer said, "It was a broader meeting with folks whose advice, guidance and experience we value. Many there were longtime friends and colleagues of people in the Obama White House and that description of the meeting couldn't be further from the truth." Clinton's rep declined to comment."

Well, well. What do we have here? A new flare-up of the Bill Clinton-Barack Obama rivalry? Of course, the two hate each other's guts. In 2008, Bill sought a third term by running his wife for president, since he was term-limited out. And Mrs. Ambition happily went along. But they got crushed by Obama, who, to add insult to injury, ripped off Bubba's whole act from 1992. Hope and change? Bubba's. "The man from Hope?" "We're gonna bring change?" The generational shift? Bubba, Bubba, and Bubba. And of course what infuriated Bill most of all was that Barack did Bill better than Bill did.

So the hatred has been bubbling under the surface for years, and while Obama is pretty busy, Bubba is sorta not busy, so he's got more time to plot and undermine. Over the past few weeks, he's lobbed some doozies at Obama, including saying point-blank that taxes should not be raised when the economy is this bad. Of course, Bubba does it with that Clintonian smile and twinkle in his eye that tells you he's being evil but dares you to take him on. And of course, no one ever does.

Bubba is clearly up to something: bringing his people in to tutor Obama's people how to win re-election, slamming Obama's economic policies, declining to comment about any of it. What's he doing? Positioning Hillary for a primary run? For Vice President? Just taking some fun hits at the guy he loathes?

I'm not sure. But one thing's for sure: while the Bama has become a yawn-fest, Bubba was never---and is never---dull.

The O'Reilly Factor---TONIGHT!

I'll be a guest with Bill O'Reilly TONIGHT at 8pm and 11pm ET on the Fox News Channel. Please tune in.