As much as Peggy Noonan is one of the more likable conservatives, she has a bad case of cognitive dissonance going on.

She's just mailing it in. The glory days are long gone.

That Republicans kept power as long as they did. In fact, considering the general incompetence and cowardice of the bulk of the Democratic Party's leadership over the last decade, it's amazing they're not STILL in power.

Indeed, it's arguable that, absent the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, they'd be in power RIGHT NOW.

... Savannah was protected by a mortar and stone fort, Fort Pulaski, at the mouth of the river into Savannah. This fort design, with massive stone walls, was throught to be impregnable. Well, April 1862, union artillery located across the river on Tybee Island, using the new rifled cannon, breached the walls and threatened the ammunition magazine at the back of the fort. After hours of bombardment, Pulaski surrendered to the Union the next day.

Now, on hearing the news, did every fort built like this in the whole U.S. manned by the Confederacy or the Union surrender too? Did they just walk out of the forts and say, 'Damn, this is so over!" No, they went about their business. Normality, you might say. Continued their drills. Defended the fort. But the day of the stone fort was over.

Ms. Noonan uses the same method to analyze the U.S. economy. What do you call that, impressionism? Anecdotal evidence? Stupidity?

It sounds like it was ripped straight from the pages of The Onion.

This reminds me of the time then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld told Jon Stewart that from the air everything looked fine in Iraq. As far as I can tell, a complete lack of empathy for others who do't share their good fortune is a major part of being a Republican. I wonder if Noonan wrote Reagan's famous (and equally insensetive) line claiming that KETCHUP counted as a vegetable in public school lunches. It would follow the same kind of twisted reasoning.

No, not the book, the election year. Noonan's column reminds me of a college professor friend of mine who couldn't believe that Reagan was re-elected. "Nobody I know voted for him!"

Noonan's checks keep coming; she doesn't see anybody wearing rags and patches around her; there aren't beggars lining the street corners. So everything is okay, right? Her friends are still clipping coupons and complaining about the stupidity of the help.

Meanwhile, local food pantries are begging for donations, because they've never been hit this hard before. But heck, how many people do you think Noonan knows who use food pantries?

Do you watch Larry Kudlow? Not only aren't we in a recession but things have never been better. And they could be better still if only we did away with all taxes and regulations completely. I for one would be happy to listen to someone make a cogent argument in favor of reinstating slavery, or indentured servitude in the least.

It's just media heads screaming to do what they are paid to do.

... everyone was buying the super-cheap doorbuster deals, and nothing else. And by noon Saturday, the malls in my neck of the woods were half empty.

A lot of kids are going to get socks or a new coat for Christmas this year, and a lot of adults are going to go without. According to my local paper, people are buying smaller things ($20 or less), and practical things.

At my local Fred Meyer (think Target combined with groceries), people don't have carts full of junk. They have groceries.

So yes, they're still at the mall, they're still shopping. They're buying a LOT less. The ones who haven't lost their jobs are sure they might be next on the list.

I live in Tucson and it doesn't look the same as it did even six months ago. Peggy Noonan and the WSJ are ideologically driven whereas money isn't. The truth in that paradox is our current economic disaster.

Noonan's most telling observation is that she thinks 2005 was the height of prosperity. Taking a GNP (Gross National Profit) and averaging it by population does not determine the financial health of a country, only Noonan's friends.

...that since the election, Peggy is just in the period of time where she and her psychiatrist are just waiting for the thorazine and klonopin to level out in her system.

About a year and a half ago somebody cleared 5 acres at an intersection near my work, laid out streets and driveways for high-density townhouses, built the first few....and stopped. A block down the street is the ghostly concrete wall of what was advertised as an upscale pet-boarding kennel. After the walls were built, work stopped and the empty shell sits there.

I noticed the lack of air traffic last July when my wife and I flew up north not on the usual 6-acrss or 9-across seating of a high-capacity Delta jet, but a 4-across regional jet. The car dealerships around town are consolidating, leaving huge empty lots and closed barn-like buildings. Not surprisingly, one of the first was the extravagently built Hummer dealership.

Good god, how dumb do you have to be to write editorials for the Wall Street Journal?

Someone should ask her how her 401(k) is doing.

I live in Tucson and it doesn't look the same as it did even six months ago. Peggy Noonan and the WSJ are ideologically driven whereas money isn't.

Money itself is a theoretical concept, but the current implementation of that concept is certainly ideologically based. Clearly, though, the ideology of the current implementation of money doesn't cause it to behave the way that the ideologies of Noonan et al say that it should behave.

Your daughter must lead a very interesting life, Andrew :)

(Btw, there is a small typo in the article - I don't think airports are pulling out of themselves).

It's not January 20th, 2009. Then and only then will we be in a recession. Around January 21st, Miz Noonan will be seeing all sorts of signs....