"Always look on the bright side of live. Dee do, dee do, dee do, dee do....."

(Yeah, that's a bad reference to Monty Python's Life of Brian. But I digress....) If you've been feeling blue about the President's low ratings and the Republican's current fumbling in Congress, fear not. John Hindraker has a spirit living article in which he points out that, the MSM's doom-and-gloom prognostications and dishonest polls notwithstanding, things are going pretty well:

ALMOST EXACTLY one year ago, President Bush was reelected with more votes than had ever been cast for a presidential candidate, breaking Ronald Reagan's 1984 record. Not only did Bush sweep to victory by a three million vote margin, the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate, the first time this trifecta had been accomplished since the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964. Since that triumphant moment, the conventional wisdom is that nothing has gone right for the Republicans. But what, exactly, has happened to cause such a reversal in the party's fortunes? Has the economy collapsed? Not at all. It is humming along as strongly as ever, putting ever more distance between America's prosperity and that of Europe and Japan. Have the terrorists attacked the American homeland, exposing a weakness in our domestic security? No. Astonishingly, we have now gone more than four years without a successful attack on American soil, even though newspaper headlines reveal, on an almost daily basis, the bloodthirstiness of our enemies. Have there been setbacks in foreign policy that could explain how a party that was triumphant just 12 months ago should now be in full retreat? No. We continue to make progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On a number of fronts, liberty has taken root in the vital Middle East. And no foreign power even imagines that it could rival the United States in influence.

Make your day. Read the whole thing.