Even though I’m of their generation, I used to wonder how it was that so many people could stand listening to Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger sing. Even allowing for honest differences in taste, I couldn’t figure out their popularity. Then one day I decided that their fans, most of whom were my contemporaries, were the sort of folks who would listen to their caterwauling and think to themselves as they played on their air guitars: “I can sing as well as that.”

In much the same way, by his mere presence in the White House, rock star Barack Hussein Obama must give hope to millions of other liberal dingbats.

In case you missed it, Obama recently referred to his latest stimulus project as intercontinental railroads. I guess that’s the one that we mainlanders will be able to take to Hawaii, aka our 57th state. I take it that from now on, when he’s not busy blaming Bush, he’ll blame his damn racist, homophobic, hostage-taking Teleprompter.

Speaking of he who must be evicted, whenever I hear someone assert that Obama is an eloquent speaker, I assume they would say the same about Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd, Jerry Mahoney and Lamb Chop.

When leaders on the Left, those like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, speak of compromise, what they really mean is acceding to their demands. It’s a characteristic they share with Islamists. It’s just one of several, now that I think about it.

In 2012, the Republican nominee might consider using “Hope and Change” as his campaign motto. It would certainly make a lot more sense next year than it did in 2008. At least this time we’d all know what it is that needs changing in the White House besides the initials on the towels.

Looking back on the first three years of this administration, I can’t decide which I’ve found more repulsive – Obama’s loony policies or his unmitigated arrogance. After all, he was the guy who vowed to heal the planet, lower the ocean and make America everybody’s sweetheart. And yet, in spite of a trillion dollar stimulus, this oaf has seen unemployment and underemployment soar; has seen nation after nation treat us like a toothless, foul-smelling, tiger; has seen his party lose one election after another; has seen his own approval numbers approach Jimmy Carter’s; has overseen the loss of our triple-A credit rating; and spent nearly two years twisting arms and bribing politicians to pass an unpopular 2,000-page health care bill that, in the end, is likely to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

So, how does The One explain this series of disasters? First, by blaming Bush, and then by blaming Republicans in Congress, referring to them as obstructionists. Just in case he hasn’t been paying attention to election results since 2008, most Americans want more, not less, obstructions to his socialist, power-grabbing, agenda.

Then, for good measure, instead of submitting a budget or offering to slash federal spending or doing something about runaway entitlements, he spent months trolling for campaign funds and golfing, pausing only long enough to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard before telling his betters to eat their peas.

Nero had nothing on this buffoon. The only difference is that Obama diddled while America burned.

Finally, like every other American, I was delighted when our State Department was able to bribe Iran to release the two hikers, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, but that initial euphoria only lasted until their plane landed, and Bauer’s first words were: “Two years in prison is too long,” adding that he hoped that their release, “will also bring freedom for political prisoners in America and Iran.”

It was at that point I decided I needed to find out more about these two nature lovers who couldn’t find a more benign place for a stroll than the bleak Turkey-Iran border.

Inasmuch as this jerk felt compelled to find a moral equivalency between the country that had tossed his sorry ass in prison and the country that had spent a great deal of time, effort and money, to gain his release, I wasn’t shocked to discover that Bauer is a freelance journalist for the San Francisco-based, far leftwing New America Media; that Fattal describes himself as an environmental activist; and that Bauer’s fiancé and fellow hiker, Sharon Shourd, who had been released a year earlier, is a member of Just Cause, an Oakland-based group that favors racial reparations, continues to oppose white colonialism decades after it ended, and even, ironically enough, finds nice things to say about Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

In a word, this nation has moved mountains in order to obtain the freedom of three typically ungrateful, brain-dead, Berkeleyites.

I sincerely hope that after their upcoming wedding, Shane and Sharon Bauer, along with best man Josh Fattal, spend the honeymoon taking a hike.