Add 'civic duty' to the list of things Barack Obama hasn't accomplished by, like, yesterday…

If Cook County, Ill., had had its druthers, President Barack Obama would have shown up Monday for jury duty.

But court officials were told several weeks ago the prospect was a no-go, a White House official said today. The summons showed up at the president's home in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood.

If Cook County court officials were really clever, they would've sent a letter saying they were giving him a Nobel Prize. He'd have been on that plane in seconds.

Do you not care at all about where the Olympics are being held eight years from now? Well, join the not caring club.

Except, don't join that club! Because it turns out that the fact that the Olympics aren't going to be held in Chicago means that Barack Obama has lost his re-election bid in 2012 and also that the world has decided to impeach him from the world…

Give up, everybody else on the Internet. You will never beat Matt Drudge.

The Obamas and Oprah are lobbying hard for Chicago to get the 2016 Summer Olympics, and last night Stephen Colbert and George Wendt joined the cause. Personally, I can't help but wonder, aren't any of these people worried that if the games are in Chicago, Steve Bartman will snatch the javelins out of the air and ruin everything? (Get it? Steve Bartman? Ask your parents. Your parents are jokes-that-were-kind-of-funny-in-2003-ologists, right? Good.)

The Colbert Report airs Monday through Thursday at 11:30pm / 10:30c.

Barack Obama, this hapless idiot. Look what he's doing on Friday: instead of staying home and fixing health care or winning the war in Afghanistan, he is taking four entire hours to address the International Olympic Committee, a thing no national leader (except Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin) has ever done before, in order to support his country's bid for the next Olympics.

Four entire hours, geez, just think how much productive work Barack Obama could do in that time — why, he could read Chuck Grassley's entire Twitter feed from top to bottom, but nooooo…

Putting his political prestige on the line, President Obama has decided to fly to Denmark this week to appeal to the International Olympic Committee to choose Chicago, his adopted hometown, as host of the 2016 Games. [...]

"With all the pressing issues we're facing right now, I think hopping off to Copenhagen is problematic," said Mark McKinnon, a Republican media consultant who worked for President George W. Bush. "People elected Obama to be president — not the head of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce."

And that right there is the most damning bit of all: Chicago is only Obama's adopted hometown, not even his real hometown.

If Barack Obama is going to twiddle his thumbs for four entire hours while health care/Afghanistan burns, he could at least do it on behalf of his real hometown, in Kenya, where Lord knows they need an economic boost even more than Chicago.

If anybody knows anything about using divisive, destructive, ineffectual, ugly politics in the White House, it's Karl Rove.

So, we should at least hear him out…

"Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." That's what President Barack Obama said to Rep. Peter DeFazio in a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week, according to the Associated Press…

Members of Congress should also worry about how Mr. Obama is "keeping score." He is steeped in the ways of Chicago politics and has not forgotten his training in the methods once used by Saul Alinsky, the radical Chicago community organizer…

After all, Alinsky's first rule of "power tactics" is "power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Team Obama wants to remind its adversaries it has plenty of power, and it does. The question is whether the White House will wield it responsibly. The jury is still out, but certain clues are beginning to emerge. "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother," even if said with a wink and a smile, isn't quite the "new politics" we were told to expect.

It's amazing Rove hasn't come down with a fatal case of haemochromatosis, considering all the irony in his system.*

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* That one goes out to my dawg, Dr. Casper H. Swerzwiki. Word!

A blogger at Red State — that's red as in Republican red, not Commie red — poses the question: is anybody worried about the Obama rally that's being held in Chicago's Grant Park tonight?

Yes, a blogger at Red State is very worried about the Obama rally that's being held in Chicago's Grant Park tonight, and here's why…

The ideological core of these folks are the same aging hippies who rioted in Grant Park for the Democratic Convention 40 years ago. If Obama wins, maybe there will only be a few smallish incidents akin to what might have happened if the Sox or Cubs had won the World Series. But if McCain pulls it out, or even if it is a long night with rumors of fraud and voter intimidation by those evil GOP operatives, everything is going to be up for grabs.

Well, if they were aging hippies in 1968, what are they gonna do now that they're really old?

Destroy the city with their senior yoga moves?