NOT THIS YEAR - AT 7:06 A.M. ET:  We enter the last two weeks of August, usually the laziest two weeks of the year.  It is the time, by tradition, that the nation's psychiatrists go on vacation, meaning some of the people we cover here at Urgent Agenda may seem especially jittery and paranoid during the next two weeks, unless they've arranged their prescriptions in advance.  In Hollywood, many stars won't know what to think, or whether to think, or will hire a personal thinker to think for them.

And yet, this year it's different.  Ordinarily, there'd be virtually no political activity in the last two weeks of August.  Newspapers would look for crime waves - two parking tickets are a crime wave in August - and TV news shows would feature the latest styles in back-to-school lunch boxes.  But look what's happening.  The political wars are ongoing, and intense.  Thousands of Americans are turning up at town meetings to protest health-care reform that ain't.  Talk radio has never been more active.

If this is August, imagine November. 

Some analysts say that Americans are just concerned about health care.  Others say that the anger, and activity, that we're seeing is a culmination of a great deal of pent-up frustration.  I think the second argument is correct.  Americans have watched a new president spend trillions of dollars, make promises that can't be kept, sponsor a cap 'n trade bill in the House that would lead to economic convulsion, go abroad and apologize for our country, and act more an emperor than a president.  They have seen attempts to change America in ways that most Americans never voted for.  They have seen a media that's forgotten the fact that 46% of voters went for John McCain, and that a good chunk of Obama voters believed they were selecting a moderate. 

A thousand-page health-care "reform" bill was the last straw.  It was really the last straw when Americans learned that a provision for end-of-life counseling was in the section of the bill on saving money. 

So there'll be no vacation from politics in the next two weeks, and we can expect major combat in the fall.  Maybe the psychiatrists should cut short their holidays this year.  They're needed back in the office.

August 17, 2009