By DEROY MURDOCK, Scripps Howard News Service

As George W. Bush fades to black, his presidency can be summarized with six Cs.

Here's how Barack Obama can hit an economic home run: privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Imagine it's 1964. President Lyndon Johnson just signed the landmark Civil Rights Act. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebrates by ordering his supporters to launch missiles from black neighborhoods into white communities. Picture the rockets' red glare as they rise from Watts and land in Beverly Hills. Up they soar in Harlem, and down they rain on the Upper West Side.

As recession-racked Americans try to enjoy this season of giving, this a season of taking for much of our political class. Their grabbing hands are everywhere.

Winter officially arrives with Sunday's solstice. But for many Americans, autumn 2008's final days already feel like deepest, coldest January.
New Englanders still lack electricity after a December 11 ice storm snapped power lines. Up to eight inches of snow struck New Orleans and southern Louisiana that day and didn't melt for 48 hours in some neighborhoods.

The winner of the 2008 Nero's Fiddle Award is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Leave it to diet Marxists G.W. Bush, Henry Paulson, and Ben Bernanke to saddle American taxpayers with $8.347 trillion in bailout commitments, yet not spend a thin dime on incentives to revive the U.S. economy. In fact, the faintest echo of an incentive is not a Reaganite act of commission, but a Reagan-lite act of omission.

This Thanksgiving holiday, Americans can be grateful for a government huge enough to work against itself. As cornucopian benefits flow from Washington, Uncle Sam turns out to suffer from Bipolar Bailout Disorder. Like a taxpayer-funded Push Me-Pull You, he goes both ways while consuming enormous resources on the road to nowhere.

However you regard the outcome of the November 4 election, it was heartening to watch 125 million Americans cast their ballots at precincts from coast to coast.