Michael Ramirez cartoon for Jan. 20, 2009 at Investor's Business Daily

Obama’s in and he’s all about change and…copying Bush? John Hinderaker at Power Line blog notes that President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, along with his national security appointments, smacks of predecessor W. and notes that even comedians are commenting on the similarities. It doesn’t speak well of liberals, he writes, that they actually seem to be hoping that he’s lying, that his actions will somehow contradict all the rhetoric. Below, even Jon Stewart of The Daily Show jabs at the incoming president through an eerie montage of speech snippets comparing the two presidents, though the left-leaning TV news-satire host waxes apologetic.

Clinton did, Kennedy didn’t, and Geithner shouldn’t. Hillary Clinton is the new Secretary of State, but a once-favored candidate to replace her as a Senator from New York, Caroline Kennedy, has bowed out. Jim Geraghty argues for National Review Online that her withdrawal is a good thing, and that the whole case in her favor seemed built upon her royal blood. Meanwhile, for the same outlet, Byron York tears into Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick for treasury secretary whose confirmation has been stalled somewhat ironically over a failure to properly file and pay taxes, because the man wouldn’t ‘fess up in the Senate hearing. Regardless, York predicts Geithner will prevail because his Democratic allies, who lead the Finance Committee, are rushing the vote.

Obama spells setbacks for the pro-life movement. The new President has said he would sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act if it lands on his desk, and some analysts suggest the latest iterations of the bill would roll back many of the pro-life movement’s hard-fought gains—forty states restricting late-term abortions for instance. Michael J. New, writing for NRO suggests conservatives have been in this position before, under the Clinton Administration, and that the movement to ban or restrict abortions wasn’t stamped out then, so there is cause for hope. G. Tracy Mehan, III takes a slightly more practical view for The American Spectator: Obama would be well-advised not to risk losing his immense political capital when his main task is to deal with the economy.

Don’t you get it? Hamas doesn’t just want a separate Palestine, but wants the annihilation of Israel, writes former New York Times foreign correspondent Clifford D. May for NRO. Israel likely timed its recent attack on Gaza, where Hamas fighters have been in control since last year, to beat the inauguration of Barack Obama, May argues. That’s because Obama likely would have made ending the battle one of his top priorities. But Israel had to fight, May argues, and the war is far from over—just to keep things in perspective.

If Obama brings back Carterism, it won’t be good. Many commentators have compared President Obama’s foreign policy prescription to that of former President Jimmy Carter. Arthur Herman lays out a thorough explanation in Commentary magazine of how and why Carter’s policies didn’t work nearly as well as Reagan’s, Clinton’s, or even W’s. Then he worries in writing that Obama’s pledge for “aggressive diplomacy” is meaningless and that this new Carterism almost belittles America’s record for tough peacekeeping. Are we shying away from rather than donning our mantle as leader of the free world?

“I hope he fails,” Rush Limbaugh says of Obama, but don’t take it out of context. The conservative talk show host defended his statement here, noting that he would be proud to earn the headline “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails” from the “Drive-By Media.” But it’s about liberal economic policies that have failed and will continue to fail, he notes, and haven’t the liberals, after all, been out to secure the failure of Bush’s policies? R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. over at The American Spectator, comes to his defense after multiple stories (and even a senator) have focused on the sensationalism of the comment rather than the content of the argument.

Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily for Jan. 12, 2009

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem old news, but it’s entering a new phase, argues Jonathan Schanzer, deputy executive director of the Jewish Policy Center. Mark Hemingway of National Review Online discusses Schanzer’s new book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine, and relays Schanzer’s argument that the mainstream media have oversimplified the conflict by underestimating the internal divisions in Palestine. After all, Fatah and Hamas aren’t allies. Israel’s current struggle is with Gaza alone.

President George W. Bush held his final press conference yesterday morning. Fox News commentators and guests offer analysis.

And here Bush gets a little more personal with Fox’s Brit Hume. The president explains why he is so calm and content as he prepares to leave office, and tells Hume that he’s even planning to write a book that will explain and defend some of the most controversial decisions he made while in office.

Is it a new New Deal or not, and does it even matter? President-elect Barack Obama’s record-smashing stimulus plan will likely top $1 trillion when it’s finally approved. Jonah Goldberg writes over at NRO’s The Corner blog that only liberals are comparing this strategy with FDR’s New Deal and adds that conservatives feel the comparison is moot. But Pat Buchanan would apparently disagree. In an editorial for Investor’s Business Daily, Buchanan argues not only that Obama seems to be channeling Roosevelt, but that massive spending is more likely to get us into trouble than to bail us out of it. In a separate IBD editorial, Lawrence Kudlow sees a more conservative tinge to Obama’s plan, drawing a parallel to Reagan’s tax-cut plan. Big government, limited government, or something in between? Obama keeps us guessing.

Google searches are speeding climate change (but then, isn’t everybody?). A physicist is trying to publish his findings on the amount of energy consumed by Google’s data centers every time you try to run a search (the energy used boiling water for a cup of tea equals two searches). William Teach responds sarcastically at Right Wing News, suggesting that the global warming “Believers” log off and stop using the Internet. Teach writes that he did 15 Google searches after reading the article, just for fun.

Eco-warriors: stop procreating, humans hurt the planet. Feminists: stop procreating, it’s sexist. Cassy Fiano writes on her blog and on Right Wing News that the newest argument in favor of the extinction of mankind is that sexual reproduction is a sexist, culturally oppressive holdover from a less civilized time, more or less. She goes on to excoriate modern feminism as it drifts toward something like Stalinism. But hey, sex without reproduction would be really fun for about, say, one generation.

Always a rebel, Mickey Rourke’s Hollywood comeback doesn’t preclude careless comments—you know, supporting Bush. It’s unpopular in Hollywood to defend the outgoing president, writes Andrew Breitbart of Big Hollywood, but having just won the best actor Golden Globe award for his performance in The Wrestler, Rourke did just that. Bush was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Rourke said, and the situation after 9/11 would have been near impossible for any conceivable leader. Breitbart suggests that Rourke’s peer-slash-rival Sean Penn had a much inferior and less ballsy dalliance into politics when he publicly supported Fidel Castro’s regime, and writes that any “no friend of Sean Penn is a friend of mine.”