Patrick Ruffini gets it largely right on the intra-conservative wars. Moreover, isn’t there something more important for conservatives to talk about? Priorities, people.

If Tim Geithner is “frightening” TNR, you can imagine how investors and business people feel.

David Paterson endorsing the president’s mortgage bailout scheme isn’t exactly comforting.

If Joe Biden is “Mr. Fix It” in this administration we are in big trouble.

Will card check become an issue in the Virginia gubernatorial race? The Republican candidate hopes so.

And the bullying on card check has begun. Psst: Don’t tell anyone but the Republicans love this issue.

George McGovern is running ads — against card check. “Democracy is something that should never be sacrificed he says.” Well, 60 senators can do just that.

In the real world the stock market crash matters a lot. “So in the midst of horrible downturn, the president seems inept, and perhaps even worse, he seems to neither understand nor care about the real life of real people.The notion that the president and his party are alienated from this mainstream of productive America for whom the stock market is not like a tracking poll but is real life is the kind of realization that shapes political identities.” Wasn’t that Blackberry supposed to keep him from becoming isolated and out of touch?

The AP gives the president a hard time: things are getting worse under his watch. “Obama may have contributed to the national anxiety by first warning of ‘catastrophe’ if his stimulus plan was not passed and in setting high expectations for Geithner. Instead, Geithner’s public performance has been halting and he’s been challenged by lawmakers of both parties.”

Don Luskin observes: “We can’t blame President Obama for the mess he inherited. But we can definitely blame him for making it worse. Stocks are off 28.4% since his election, 15.2% since his inauguration, and 17.2% since his so-called ‘stimulus’ bill was enacted. To say the very least, whatever he’s doing, it ain’t working.” And take a look at that very scary graph.

Politico reports: “After an angry, swearing late night meeting among top Democrats, Congress voted Friday to give itself another five days to try to complete a long-overdue omnibus spending bill that had become a growing embarrassment for party leaders and President Barack Obama.” Where is Dick Cheney when you need him?

Mark Tapscott writes: “But now the mask is off and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality is emerging as the dominant driver of the Obama narrative. The contrast is no longer between the young, personable, historic candidate Obama and a creaky, cranky old Republican White Guy, it’s between what America thought it was getting in a President Obama (cool, reasonable and above partisanship) and what it now sees as the reality of a President Obama (government spending out of control, broken promises, more bureaucrats, etc. etc.).”

Are we stuck with Geithner because no one else is confirmable? Somehow I think Paul Volker could get through. But really, if we admit Geithner is a disaster then we are admitting things won’t significantly improve so long as he’s there. (Conversely, dumping him should be good for a stock market rally.)

Not asking Americans to sacrifice, needlessly divisive, and making a mockery of bipartisanship. George W. Bush? No Obama. And, adds Jackson Diehl: “Just as Bush promoted tax cuts as a remedy for surplus and then later as essential in a time of deficits, so Obama has come up with strained arguments as to why health-care reform, which he supported before the economic collapse, turns out to be essential to recovery. Yet as he convened his ‘health care summit’ at the White House on Thursday, the stock market was hitting another 12-year-low; General Motors was again teetering on the brink of insolvency and the country was still waiting to hear the details of the Treasury’s proposal to bail out banks. George W. Bush might well be asking: Is the president taking his eye off the ball?’”

Joel Kotkin on the Obama strategy: “Right now it seems like Chicago style interest politics with a Moveon.org spin. Money will be there for key what passes for’left’ groups – urban real estate interests, greens, smart growthers, wind/solar lobby and, the shocktroops, the public employee unions. This is not a growth strategy but a politic technique designed to knit together a coalition of poor urbanites, bureaucrats, professors, greens and the Gorite energy speculators. It may work politically but I wonder what it will do longer-term for the economy.”