Sneer, sneer, boo, hiss — and oh, boy! Did the “progressives” ever pour it on my governor, Rick Perry of Texas, for his playful reference at a Tea Party event to “secession” as an option possibly forming in the minds of sensible Texans.

“If you don’t deal with criminal behavior, then it will continue.”

That’s the lesson all right, as relayed by New Jersey Democratic Congressman Donald Payne, who, this week, acquired the standing to speak in such terms.

You really can’t have “gay marriage,” you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say.

You can have something some people call gay marriage because to them the idea sounds worthy and necessary, but to say a thing is other than it is, is to stand reality on its head, hoping to shake out its pockets.

The mind boggles, and then again, maybe it doesn’t, having become what you might call boggle-proof over repeated assertions of federal government power to do this and do that, whatever you please, don’t bother asking.

For President Pelosi and her cohorts, having swatted A.I.G. with that 90 percent bonus tax, it’s on to oversight of executive pay. At least according to the New York Times, which quotes “officials” as saying the White House is weighing a proposal to make companies “tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to ensure that competition was aligned with the financial interest of the company.”

While the Washington establishment hyperventilates over those AIG bonuses, with the president taking time to flay donors and recipients; and while Congress nervously sidles up to the multi-trillion-dollar Obama budget; yes, and while the Democrats roll out a new attack strategy to cope with the Republicans’ somewhat older attack strategy — hit pause.

In America, 2009, things happen that you once wouldn’t have thought would happen, such as deference toward human life smacked down as outworn ideology. By the President of the United States, no less. So it goes in the Age of Obama.

When the stock market is receding to the levels of a decade ago, and no one agrees on what to do, the coming of the season of penitence might seem easy enough to overlook. Or, relevant enough to engage every fiber of mind and body and spirit.

Just for beans, I Googled “free enterprise,” then clicked on “news.” Results: 11,303. Tried the same thing with “private business.” This time: 131,097. Ah, but “news” with “federal government” as the search item: 272,332.

The Republicans have a chance. Not that they deserve it. Not that they won’t blow it. Still, a chance — who’da thunk it back in those parched and yellow days of November 2008?

As Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb. 12) looms, evidence mounts: No way is all the furor over the teaching of evolution going to disappear, or even abate. Not in our own time, brothers and sisters.

What nobody is going to listen to during inauguration week is cynicism, or anything that savors thereof: the sound of pins pricking happy balloons, the minimizing tone of voice that says, “Ummm, HMMM, just you wait ...“

So in a matter of days it’s bye-bye, Bush. Then it’s bye-bye, gradually, to the cottage industry dedicated to ridiculing, castigating, smearing and trashing the 43rd president of the United States, who couldn’t have pleased this surly gang save by expiring in office (even if his expiry would have vaulted Dick Cheney to the White House).

The whole, absolute point of Christmas is to rise above the things we think we can’t do without, endearing and tasty as they seem, like department store jollity and good things to eat.

The market liked the prospect of an auto bailout. On Monday, General Motors stock soared 21 percent; Ford’s jumped 24.3 percent.

For two or three years running, it seems, all we’ve heard from the political left in the United States, concerning the war on terror, is: Aren’t we awful?

Thankful for ... what?!

The question is bound to surface the moment heads incline in reverence at the Thanksgiving table, over pre-dinner drinks, post-dinner drinks, kitchen clean-up, trash take-out.

The placard in the photo of a recent rally favoring gay marriage asks, bluntly, “Family. Isn’t It About Love?”

Well, hmm. You might indeed incline to such a view. Then, again, you might wish to broaden the perspective, in keeping with normative modes for understanding the foundational human structure we call family.

Advice for conservatives in the Age of Obama.

1. What is, is. Don’t waste valuable time with rehashes of how wonderful things used to be, or would be right now, if only ...!

Oh, all right. The Republican party didn’t manage to sell Americans on the need to elect John McCain as their maximum leader. Forget the small stuff: Republicans are happier people than Democrats. We have it on reliable authority, that of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. I invite fellow McCain voters to put aside their melancholia of the moment to wallow in the good news.

I can’t at this point think of anything new to say about the election. Here’s something old, in that case: McCain’s the one, and not just because, when it comes to “old,” he qualifies.

“Grow up or die,” Bill Maher admonishes viewers at the end of “Religulous,” which is kind of an odd statement for a guy to make on wrapping up a cinematic assault on religion: mocking, jesting, wise-guying to beat the band.

So here we are — wherever “here” is, economically, financially speaking. The House balks at the bailout. The markets tumble. What next? No expert who tells you he knows what’s ahead is to be believed, and you can tell him a colleague said so.

Not a one of us non-economists — and probably not a lot of economists either — know for sure how the Paulson-Bush rescue plan will play out now or down the line.

This may be the moment to say something warm and affirming about the marketplace economy — a “Bush doctrine” sort of positioning (if you don’t mind, Charlie Gibson) of the battlefront for the economic wars ahead.

At the news that Sarah Palin would be John McCain’s running mate, hundreds of thousands leaped to their feet. Hallelujah! Yippee! Boy, oh, boy!

It’s a nutty year, a crazy time in our national life, and I’ve decided to decide — you’ll be glad to hear this, John McCain — that the ostensibly nutty choice of Sarah Palin as running mate is nutty in all the right ways.

I might not have thought of this but for the anointing last weekend of Joe Biden as successor-designate to Dick Cheney — status to be confirmed, or disallowed, at the polls in November.

One major problem with politics — as we’ve all probably figured out by now — is that politicians view every human challenge as political in nature, meaning, particularly these last few years. Objective No. 1 in the political trade is sticking to it The Other Party.

When it’s “change” you’re merchandising, the easy phrases flow easily enough. Walls between people “cannot stand.” With “improbable hope,” we prepare to “to remake the world once again” — “a world that stands as one.” “This is our moment, this is our time,” proclaimed Barack Obama, when speaking in Berlin.