Mary Anastasia O’Grady aptly characterizes our maximum leader:

After last month’s debt-ceiling debacle, a critical mass of President Obama’s harshest critics have gone from calling him socialism’s evil genius to tagging him as merely a clueless community organizer who is in over his head.

Yet while the haggling over spending exposed many of the president’s weaknesses, it seems a mistake to underestimate his collectivist instincts. It may be true that if he cannot accomplish what he wants by decree, he loses interest fast. But it also remains evident that his worldview is largely aligned with the eternal struggle for an all-powerful state.

To recap:

. . . . clueless community organizer who is in over his head. . . . .  a mistake to underestimate his collectivist instincts. . . . . if he cannot accomplish what he wants by decree, he loses interest fast. . . . .  his worldview is largely aligned with the eternal struggle for an all-powerful state.

O’Grady is discussing how Obama has tapped gently on the wrist of Ecuador strong man Rafael Correa, having earlier slam-banged democratic Honduras.

I talked about Obama as the ’08 election day approached, in a Wed. Journal of Oak Park & River Forest column, calling him “the man of action” beloved of progressives, a.k.a. liberals.  Local libs got really mad about that.

Black culture spilleth over.

“It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people,” said Norb Roffers of Wind Lake in an interview with Newsradio 620 WTMJ. He left the State Fair Entrance near the corner of South 84th Street and West Schlinger Avenue in West Allis.

“They were attacking everybody for no reason whatsoever.”

“It was 100% racial,” claimed Eric, an Iraq war veteran from St. Francis who says young people beat on his car.

“I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn’t do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in everybody’s windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it.”

Eric, a war veteran, said that the scene he saw Thursday outside State Fair compares to what he saw in combat.

Etc.

This sort of thing presents a challenge to black-audience orators such as Fr. Pfleger of Chicago. But he would lose his audience, so he can’t do it. (Unless he’d get a different audience.)

Later:

Here’s a later story with arrests and injuries, including of hospitalized cops.

Because of the violence, Rick Frenette, CEO of the fair, announced that the fair would immediately implement a policy in which no youths under 18 years of age would be allowed onto the grounds after 5 p.m. without a parent or guardian at least 21 years old.

No youths.  Why not no black youths?

The majority leader has it to a T:

The “philosophical starting point” of today’s Democrats, as Mr. [Eric] Cantor sees it, is that they “believe in a welfare state before they believe in capitalism. They promote economic programs of redistribution to close the gap of the disparity between the classes. That’s what they’re about: redistributive politics.”

The Virginian’s contempt is obvious in his Tidewater drawl. “The assumption . . . is that there is some kind of perpetual engine of economic prosperity in America that is going to just continue. And therefore they are able to take from those who create and give to those who don’t. We just have a fundamentally different view.”

And they have a contempt for the workings of capitalism, even as they love what it produces.

. . . in market today. Galbraith’s The Great Crash had that scenario: volatility leading to bad things.

Rough stuff:

John C. Favalora is a sallow old man who looks like the corpse of Dom DeLuise. He likes attractive young men to sit on his lap and allegedly treats them to trips in the Florida Keys. He was, until recently, part owner of a company that makes “all natural” boner-inducing beverages. He’s also the Archbishop Emeritus of Miami.

Read on.

Very hot new stuff here:

House Republicans will attach a Balanced Budget Amendment to Speaker John Boehners last-ditch debt-ceiling plan, which GOP lawmakers said would move the measure to passage in a high-stakes vote later on Friday.

Republican lawmakers voiced confidence the enhanced bill would pass muster with conservatives, as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) predicted the balanced budget amendment change would bring 10 to 20 more GOP members on board.

Do this, and ball is out of the House court.

Bill Daley told Wolf Blitzer Obama gave (an apparently new) limit-raising plan to Boehner.

But he didn’t make it public? Blitzer asked.

DALEY: No, because there’s… both the speaker and – and the president had agreed and – that these sort of negotiations do not happen in public.

And we certainly believe Bill Daley on this point, do we not?

Rep. Joe Walsh, subject of today’s page-one screamer,

Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh sued for $100,000 in child support

Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than

• By: BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter/apallasch@suntimes.com
• Published: Jul 28, 2011 05:21PM

has been the man Sun-Times editors love to hate for a week now, ever since he got up close and personal with the self-described Compromiser-in-Chief in the debt-ceiling fight:

* Debt talks: Dick Durbin a voice of reason; Joe Walsh a screamer
WASHINGTON In the ongoing deficit negotiations, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is at all the White House meetings and is one of the bipartisan Gang

• By: LYNN SWEET blogs.suntimes.com/sweet
• Published: Jul 22, 2011 05:07PM

* Editorial: Joe Walsh has a loud voice, but nothing to say Joe Walsh is whats wrong with Washington.

The Republican freshman congressman from Chicagos northwest suburbs is the poster child for the uncompromising and vitriolic style

• By: Editorials
• Published: Jul 27, 2011 04:44AM

I didn’t realize Walsh was that effective. Or that he encapsulated what’s wrong with Washington. A Chicago newspaper reader learns something new every day.

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) defends himself:

WASHINGTON Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) on Thursday said a Chicago Sun-Times article about his ex-wife suing him for back child support was a hit piece but that his financial troubles do not erode his credibility as an outspoken opponent of government spending in the congressional debate on raising the debt ceiling.

Yes. Only when he gets his personal house in order is he credible as opponent of government spending. He should leave public policy alone or lower his profile until he is pure as the driven snow.

Mayor Rahm absolves himself in the matter of sending his kids to exclusive, expensive private school, not to public school:

“It is not a statement about anything else except for what Amy and I decided as parents to do for our children,” Emanuel said.

Yes it is. You reject public education because you want something better for your kids. We hear you.

And to make the point even clearer, you are putting your whole political muscle behind school choice for the rest of Chicago.

NOT.