Barack Obama’s “Panic Week” has come and gone, but did his White House learn anything from the historic repudiation of his leftist agenda? Putting the question another way, has Obama made the necessary course corrections or is he still refusing to hear the message that America is sending him so loudly and clearly?

Given the Democratic Party’s stunning defeat in Massachusetts, its November losses in New Jersey and Virginia and its increasingly bleak 2010 electoral prospects, one would think Obama has no choice but to follow the route Bill Clinton took to the right sixteen years ago when he stared down similar circumstances. After all, with the exception of passing his so-called “economic stimulus” bill, Obama has been unable to get any major legislation through the U.S. Congress – this despite the presence of a sizeable Democratic majority in the House and (until recently) a filibuster-proof Democratic “super-majority” in the Senate.

Imagine how tough he’ll find the sledding now.

Unfortunately, Obama remains completely tone deaf to the will of the people. In fact, the only thing that has changed in his White House as a result of these repeated electoral setbacks is the way he is pursuing his socialist agenda.

“Hope and change” obviously didn’t work, so now it’s time for some good old-fashioned “smoke and mirrors.”

After picking their jaws up off the floor following Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s shocking victory in Massachusetts – a race in which Obama’s intervention actually moved voters away from Democrat Martha Coakley – the very first thing the White House brain trust did was to “elevate the role” of a professional political operative. In fact, Obama’s “elevation” of former campaign manager David Plouffe signaled right away that any attempt on the part of his administration to recalibrate its political compass would be purely cosmetic in nature.

In fact, just three days after his party’s Massachusetts defeat, Obama was out looking for “low hanging fruit,” or a convenient enemy that all Americans – but particularly independent voters – could join him in opposing. He quickly found that enemy in Wall Street bankers, who are the same “fat cats” who then-Senator Obama supported via the TARP bailout, ironically.

Now boasting that he was “ready for a fight,” Obama proceeded to propose a new tax on these financial institutions – one that a recent Rasmussen Reports poll found was supported (conditionally, at least) by 56% of Americans.

Of course that poll also found that nearly 70% of Americans oppose extending the tax to banks that did not receive bailout money – while 72% believe that bailout recipients like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be required to pay any new tax, as well.

Next up on the agenda for Obama’s crass populist propagandists? Spending.

Because polling has consistently shown that independent voters are leery of government’s unsustainable deficit spending, Obama’s next move was to unveil a so-called “freeze” on budget growth. Unfortunately, his “freeze” only applied to 17% of the budget, and whatever “deficit reduction” it purports to accomplish would be completely consumed by growth in entitlement spending – as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments that taxpayers are forced to pick up as a result of our skyrocketing national debt.

Yet while these two populist stories were being pushed by the White House press office, behind closed doors top Obama administration officials were working harder than ever to resuscitate the very radical policies that spawned all this voter angst and distrust in the first place.

Just four days after Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, for example, Obama’s chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel met with a group of Senators at the White House in an effort to revive “cap and trade,” Obama’s massive energy tax hike. Similarly, Obama has been meeting regularly with Congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in a no-holds-barred effort to ram his socialized medicine proposal through Congress – despite its collapsing public support and weakened legislative position.

Clearly a string of defeats for Obama – including a historic setback in Massachusetts – has done nothing to deter him from his leftward march.

Of course the silver lining is that the more stridently Obama pursues these objectives in the face of mounting public and Congressional opposition, the more strident public and legislative opposition becomes toward him.

It’s been a time of Tea parties throughout America, but did anyone really believe that the limited government movement that’s sweeping across the country would arrive at the site of the original Tea party so soon?

Massachusetts? In “red?”

No matter how hard his diminishing flock of supporters tries to spin it, you can thank Barack Obama for that – not only for advancing an overreaching socialist agenda that has galvanized supporters of freedom and free markets like never before, but also for failing to motivate voters inclined to support him and his candidates.

In fact, his campaigning in Massachusetts backfired from the start – turning his endorsement into the “kiss of death.”

Consider for a moment the political impenetrability of this Democratic stronghold: Until yesterday, Massachusetts hadn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972. Not a single member of the state’s Congressional delegation was a member of the GOP. Barack Obama carried the state by 26% just fourteen months ago, and he ostensibly enjoys a 60% approval rating there.

That’s as blue a state as you’re ever going to find, and polling numbers leading up to this year’s U.S. Senate special election gave no indication that anything was going to change.

As recently as three weeks ago, in fact, underfunded and largely unknown Republican State Sen. Scott Brown trailed popular Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley by 17%. Back in November – when voters in Virginia and New Jersey were making their voices heard regarding the Obama agenda – Brown trailed Coakley by 31%.

Clearly the rest of America was slipping away from Obama and his Congressional allies, but not Massachusetts. Never Massachusetts, right?

Over the last two weeks, though, something amazing happened – an “independent voice” began to be heard, first faintly, but soon growing louder and ultimately reaching such a crescendo that it drowned out a noisy din of far left attack rhetoric.

Obama turned independents turned into “decideds” against Coakley – as these voters turned a deaf ear to him and to the millions of dollars worth of desperate noise coming from his political machine, which was supposed to be above that sort of “partisan politics.”

In addition to silencing Obama’s left-wing attack dogs, this “independent voice” also drowned out the “popular” President himself, as Obama’s last-ditch effort to save the flailing Coakley campaign resulted in the sudden, decisive end of a filibuster-proof “Obamajority” in the U.S. Senate.

When Obama made the decision to lay it on the line and campaign in Massachusetts, the race was a statistical dead heat, with surveys showing Coakley ahead by one or two points. By the time Obama had returned to Washington, D.C., Brown had opened up a nine-point lead – a margin even Obama’s vaunted union volunteer army and ACORN-led ground game would be unable to erase.

Clearly, the 40% of Bay State residents who claim to oppose Obama turned out to vote in droves, while a significant portion of the 60% who claim to support him either stayed home or ignored his advice.

To fully appreciate Obama’s “kiss of death” in Massachusetts, we need to back up and look at the broader, national picture.

In November 2008 Obama won Virginia by 6% – yet a year later Republicans stormed to a 60-40% victory in the state’s gubernatorial contest, a 26% swing. In 2008 Obama won New Jersey by nearly 16% – but a year later Republicans unexpectedly captured the state’s Governor’s Office by 5%, a 21% swing.

In New Jersey, Obama campaigned aggressively on behalf of incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine, who promptly went on to become the first Democrat to lose a statewide office in the Garden State in 12 years. The same dynamic was at work there: Anti-Obama voters came out in force, while Obama supporters stayed home.

Obviously, much has been made of the fact that Democrats outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts by a 3-to-1 margin.

That’s true, but independent voters outnumber supporters of both parties. In fact, 51% of Massachusetts voters describe themselves as “unaffiliated” compared to 37% who call themselves Democrats and 12% who describe themselves as Republicans.

According to the results of a new nationwide poll from the Wall Street Journal and NBC, Obama’s job approval rating among independents has slipped to 41% – or 12% below what it was a year ago. 1

“My message to my clients? Jump ship now,” one Democratic pollster told the Washington Post. “Obama can’t help you.”2

Indeed. At this point, his support is the “kiss of death.”

From NetRight Nation

Most Americans are by now familiar with the recent turmoil in Honduras resulting in the ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya. What many do not realize, however, is that the entire episode occurred because Zelaya attempted to violate that nation’s Constitution by gutting its highly cherished term limit laws.

Unfortunately, the stubborn insistence by U.S. President Barack Obama to continue backing Zelaya’s attempted coup — coupled with Obama’s equally adamant support of the moves by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega to gut their countries’ term limit laws — may say more about the Mr. Obama than many Americans want to know.

In 1982, Honduras adopted a new Constitution establishing a representative democracy. This new Constitution has stood for 27 years, largely because it has garnered the rock-solid support of the Honduran people.

One reason it has garnered such support is that, out of its 365 articles, it includes seven “unalterable articles” that cannot be repealed or amended. Those deal with the form of government, the extent of its borders — and the number of years of the presidential term.

Under Article 239, a president may serve only one four-year term. He cannot run for re-election – ever. For the people of Honduras, it is a vital safeguard against any attempt by any leader, no matter how popular, to return the nation to its former status as the original “Banana Republic.”

Mr. Zelaya swore to uphold Article 239 when he took his oath of office. But, that was before he became enamored of Hugo Chavez. Once that occurred, Zelaya published a decree declaring his intention to stage an “Opinion Poll” aimed specifically at amending the unalterable articles of the Constitution prohibiting the reelection of a president and of the extension of his term.

He was immediately informed that his actions were unconstitutional and that if he continued to press forward, he would be removed from office. These warnings came from the Honduran Supreme Court, the Honduran legislature, his own attorney general, and the ranking members of his own party.

Zelaya ignored all such warnings and proceeded with his plans to gut term limits and position himself to continue in office. He did so knowing full well what Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution prescribed for those who violated the term limits law:

“No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.”

On June 28, 2009, on direct orders of the Supreme Court and Congress of Honduras – in accordance with Article 239 – Manuel Zelaya was forced to “immediately cease in [his] functions.”

It’s just that simple. Which makes one wonder why Barack Obama has such a difficult time respecting the will of the Honduran people and the dictates of that proud republic’s democratic Constitution.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) introduced HJ Res 5 to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In view of Mr. Obama’s disdain for term limits, perhaps it’s time for him to make it clear that he rejects any such attempt to gut the term limits law in this country. He could start by recognizing the duly emplaced government of Honduras and showing his respect for the term limits law the people of that country so courageously defended.

From the Washington Times target="_blank" >Washington Times

President Obama pretends to be a unifying figure while consistently denigrating his opponents. This lowers public discourse and makes it harder for the country to move forward as one.

The latest example of this disturbing pattern came in a column by Mr. Obama published in Sunday’s Washington Post. In the column, Mr. Obama tried to defend his failed economic “stimulus” plan, but he wasn’t content merely to argue for his own policies. Instead, he insisted on misrepresenting the motives of those who disagree with him.

“There are some who say we must wait to meet our greatest challenges,” he wrote. “They … believe that doing nothing is somehow an answer.” And later: “There will continue to be those who argue that we have to put off hard decisions.”

But who are these mysterious people who want to “do nothing” or actually “argue that we have to put off hard decisions?” This is absurd. It is similar to Mr. Obama’s repetitive use of the straw-man argument that George W. Bush administration lawyers tried to assert that we must choose “between our safety and our ideals.” Mr. Obama labeled that a “false choice,” but it was false only because nobody but Mr. Obama asserted it was a choice in the first place.

Just because somebody makes a different choice than the president doesn’t mean that person advocates “doing nothing” or abandoning our values. Likewise with so many other of what Mr. Obama calls “false choices”: “between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy”; between “sound science and moral values”; between “facts” and “ideology”; between “conserv[ing] our natural resources” and “profit[ing] from these resources.” And so on, ad nauseam.

On the economy, those who opposed the president’s misnamed stimulus package offered numerous alternatives. House Republicans proposed a plan that the Democrats’ own economists said would create twice the jobs at half the cost. Others who rightly rejected the whole idea of a stimulus instead promoted various business tax cuts, changes in housing policies, changes in monetary policy and a host of other solutions.

Mr. Obama has cheapened legitimate debate by dismissing competing arguments. That creates the falsest choice of all.

By, Howard Rich

Sometimes it’s important to try and fathom the unfathomable.

For example, why is “thirteen” considered an unlucky number? Why do pigs continue to fly in Washington D.C. (no matter which party is in power)? And why would a nation already in the throes of unsustainable deficit spending think that it could somehow spend its way out of an economic downturn – to the tune of $13 trillion (and counting)?

That’s right – since the beginning of the current recession, the federal government has spent, lent or pledged $13 trillion on various “economic recovery” efforts.

How big is that number?

Well, if you were to spend a dollar every second, it would take 412,000 years to blow through $13 trillion.

If you were to lay 13 trillion $1 dollar bills end-to-end, you could travel to the sun and back – five times.

And if you were to put all of those $1 bills on a scale, you’d be talking about 28 million pounds – or the weight of 462 Statues of Liberty.

In a calamitous coincidence, those mind-boggling figures mirror an equally monumental sum – the $13 trillion that has been lost in the U.S. stock and housing markets since October of 2007.

As our Chinese friends would likely say, that’s an awful lot of ‘yang’ and no ‘yin.’

Worse still, even bigger numbers could be forthcoming – on both counts.

“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said last month. “If it is enough – that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”

That’s certainly a convenient perspective coming from someone whose firm has been the beneficiary of multiple bailout billions, isn’t it?

In fact, with so much money flowing out of Washington these days, it’s useful to consider just how much of it is actually winding up in the pockets of U.S. taxpayers – whose sons and daughters are ultimately going to have to repay it all.

Based on the latest calculations from the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” the answer is “not much.”

For example, President Barack Obama’s much bally-hoed “recovery” package is adding only $13 to the average American paycheck each week, which analysts agree isn’t going to do much of anything to increase consumption.

Numbers like that make you scratch your head and think about what “might have been.” Like what would have happened if our policymakers had taken the total value of all the bank and bureaucratic bailouts over the past 18 months and given that money directly to the people?

Assuming the current U.S. population of 306,000,000, you’d be talking about $42,483.66 pilfered from every man, woman and child in America to pay for propping up a failed financial system that is only further weakened by watering down the currency in this manner.

Think about that for a moment – that’s nearly $170,000 from every family of four. This is the debt to which they are being hopelessly shackled to, and they will never be able to pay it back.

Assuming this was tax-free income that could be invested back into the economy – the total amount would have been nearly equal to last year’s gross domestic product of $14.2 trillion.

That’s a huge chunk of change – in fact, it’s more than fifteen times the value of the cash currently circulating through the American marketplace.

If even a fifth of that cash was spent on domestic consumption, you’d be looking at an economic revival the likes of which this nation has never seen – a real “stimulus” that might actually justify all the borrowing.

But that’s not Washington’s definition of a “recovery.”

Instead of targeting the American people directly, they are pouring all of this borrowed money into failed banks and bureaucracies by the billions – with little to no oversight, accountability or transparency.

It’s “trickle-down” welfare – a colossal investment in failed institutions and a colossal failure to truly invest in the American people.

Trying to borrow ones way out of debt in any way, shape or form is insanity, but the least D.C. politicians could have done was to put the money into the pockets of the American people.

Maybe that would have “stimulated” something other than an explosion of government debt.