Oliver North, Townhall.com

 

On Wednesday evening, all but one of America's television networks blew off their prime-time programs and dutifully trotted off to the White House to cover an hourlong self-congratulatory news conference celebrating the first 100 days of the Obama administration. Only Fox kept regularly scheduled programming -- the network's new hit "Lie to Me." ABC, CBS and NBC should have used the same title for the O-Team's news conference.

 

The Fox "reality drama" drew a million more American viewers than any network airing Mr. Obama's version of "Lie to Me." Those who tuned in to the White House coverage were treated to an astounding defense of profligate spending, a litany of broken promises and a deceitful denial of foreign policy failures. The fawning network executives who decided to forgo an estimated $10 million in ad revenues to cover the hundredth-night carnival from the East Room have to hope their shareholders don't fire them all.

 

The "reporters" attending the news conference may be forgiven for not having had time to do the math, but the unprecedented spending in this budget is mind-boggling by any standard. In the 100 days being feted, the national debt has soared from $10.6 trillion to $11.2 trillion, an increase of $558.4 billion. If this pace continues, Mr. Obama will succeed in adding more than $2 trillion to the debt in his first year in office alone, a staggering $36,569 for every living American. Read article.

Ralph Peters, NY Post.com

 

After a mere 100 days, the "Obama Doctrine" for our foreign and security poli cies has emerged. And it's terrifying.

 

The combination of dizzying naivete, dislike of our allies, disdain for our military, distrust of our intelligence services and distaste for our own country promises the worst foreign policy of our lifetimes.

 

That includes President Jimmy Carter's abysmal record of failure.

 

The core tenets of the Obama Doctrine to date would make a charter member of the Weather Underground cheer:

 

We're to blame. If there are problems anywhere, they're America's fault. Read article.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

The Obama administration apparently is giving a green light for liberal zealots in Congress and in the Justice Department to go after former Bush-administration lawyers.

 

We are supposed to damn these out-of-office lawyers because, in a time of national crisis, they gave advice that was construed as permitting torture. In three exceptional cases, interrogators waterboarded terrorist detainees — at least one of them responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. I emphasize the adverb “apparently,” because — as has been the case from campaign-finance reform to the imposition of the highest ethical standards in history for Cabinet nominations — with the Obama administration, any ethical proclamation is usually at odds with the unethical reality.

 

The administration should tread carefully, since it is about to embark on something nefarious that could tear apart the country. Read article.

Armand C. Hale, Alain's Newsletter.com

 

Once again this administration is showing its ignorance, arrogance and vial disrespect to the American consumer as it refuses to understand and acknowledge the symbiosis between gas prices and economic stability.

 

As gas prices went down to under $1.50 per gallon, people who still had jobs, begun to loosen their purse strings and started to buy more non-essential items. Instead of helping along, the administration will add more taxes. It ignores the potential economic incentive from the base core it needs to come from, the average American taxpaying citizen.

 

Gas prices are going up again. In some areas the increase is as much as 20 to 35 cents a gallon more. The jittery markets will not continue any rally as individuals worried of continuing price increases, will stop their limited spending and hold their money for the essentials of life's existence. Read article.

John Hawkins, Townhall.com

 

Future generations will want to study Barack Obama's presidency, not only because he made history by being America's first black President, but because he also appears to be on track to be America's worst President. Sure, everybody wants to know the minute details of what Abe Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt did in the White House, but how many Americans are clamoring for the full story of the U.S. Grant or Jimmy Carter presidencies?

 

That's a shame, too, because those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it and it's not certain that America could survive another incompetent of Obama's caliber in charge -- although, in all fairness, Rome made it through quite a few emperors who were probably only marginally more on the ball than Obama, so perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic.

 

In any case, one day` when future generations of Americans are studying chapters of their American history books like, "No longer a Super Power: The Long Slide Down" or alternately, "Why We're Eating Our Own Shoe Leather Now," I'd like to think that articles like this one will be helpful for them.

 

In no particular order:

 

20) In another historic first, Obama has opened up the possibility that members of the party out-of-power now may be arrested and thrown in jail over political disagreements -- in this case, over the legality of waterboarding, making terrorists tired, and making them swleeeeeepy! Read article.

 

Political Castaway's 100 Day Assessment

Jammie Wearing Fool.com

 

Read the Political Castaway's review of Barack Obama's first 100 days. For all the slobbering and fawning you see in the media, you won't get an in-depth analysis like this.

 

Some pundits have declared the first 100 days of the Obama presidency to have been a success. While it is true that he has fulfilled some promises and has had some political victories, those accomplishments, when analyzed critically, are demonstrably harmful to the country. In fact, there are few critical decisions that the President has made over the course of the first 100 days of his administration that have not compromised our national security or worsened an already weak economic condition.

 

As a result, it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that the President has suffered from a historically bad first 100 days, setting the stage for a potentially calamitous remainder of his term. GO HERE  to read the introduction and access PDF for the full commentary by “Political Castaway.”

 

Mark Alexander, PA Pundits.Wordpress.com

 

Last fall, Barack Hussein Obama pledged that his administration would carry out a "fundamental transformation of the United States of America." Today, as we reflect on the first 100 days of the Obama regime's occupation of the executive branch, with Party allegiance in the legislative branch, it pains me to report that he has exceeded the wildest expectations of his Socialist constituencies.

 

In the wake of last year's "October Surprise" (the catastrophic meltdown of the nation's largest financial institutions), his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said of Obama's strategy, "Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things."

 

Indeed, Obama has done BIG things. In the words of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, "Obama's first 100 days have been spectacularly successful. Obama is the strongest domestic Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson. ... In just 100 days, Obama has been devastatingly effective in moving forward swiftly the most radical, government-expanding agenda in American history."

 

How did that happen? Read article.

 

Jonah Goldberg, LA Times.com

 

The hubris and overreaching of the left sets the stage for the political correction sure to come. The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama's first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.

 

There's no denying that this is liberalism's greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limits of their imaginations.

 

"The world has changed," Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. "The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes ... [in] traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over."

 

Right. "Family values" and a "strong foreign policy" belong next to the "free silver" movement in the lexicon of dead political causes. Read article.

 

Toby Harnden, Telegraph.co.uk

 

Mr Obama has begun his presidency like a man in a hurry, outlining an astonishingly ambitious agenda with breathtaking confidence at a time when the United States is facing a global economic crisis.

 

His release of four Bush administration memos allegedly supporting torture made him seem partisan and backward-looking, failing to placate the Left, enraging the Right and demoralising the CIA.

 

But, in keeping with his aides who revere him, he appears convinced of his own greatness. He wants his name to be uttered in the same breath as those of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy.

 

Rather than being an opening gambit or a clever negotiating ploy, it seems clear that his demand for sweeping change is because he wants exactly that. Read article.

 

Editors, NRO.com

 

It is no accident that “hitting the reset button” has become one of the regnant clichés of the early weeks of the Obama administration. The president has spent the last 100 days acting as though he has the power to make the world anew: to turn enemies into allies by the power of his personal charm and his self-presentation as a break with the sordid past; to re-create the automotive industry, the energy sector, and the economy in general along lines he considers more fruitful and pleasing; to ignore any vestiges of conservatism still present in the populace; to dismiss any criticism as the grunting of dinosaurs. It is Year Zero of a pallid revolution.

 

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York recently expressed the key political assumption of the governing Democrats with a frankness that he might not have ventured before the election: The era in which traditional values, a strong foreign policy, and skepticism about overgovernment were winning issues is over. If that assumption is correct, then Obama will move from triumph to triumph.

 

If it is incorrect, however, Obama’s hubris will prove his undoing. He has given the conservative portions of the country a new energy and a new unity. His apology tour and his preening over “torture” have worried hawks. He has signaled his aggressive intent toward social conservatives by opening the door to human cloning, naming a pro-abortion extremist as his secretary of health and human services, and rescinding rules to protect the conscience rights of pro-life health-care workers. He has healed divisions among economic conservatives by proposing to raise both taxes and spending. Read article.

 

Editorial, Washington Times.com

 

President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years.

 

According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises.

 

As the attached chart shows, five presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Read article.

 

Editorial, Washington Post.com

 

Last week, the Iranian regime brought American journalist Roxana Saberi before a closed court and in a one-hour trial convicted her of espionage -- a blatantly bogus charge. She was sentenced to eight years in prison.

 

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was last seen inaugurating a new facility for Iran's nuclear program, appeared at the U.N. conference on racism in Geneva to deliver a speech seemingly calculated to cause maximum outrage in the United States and other Western countries. They had, he said, "resorted to military aggression" in order to create Israel "on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of the Holocaust."

 

Thus has Iran answered President Obama's offer of dialogue and the decision by his administration to join talks on Tehran's nuclear program. To the consternation of some European officials, Washington has insisted on dropping a long-standing demand that Iran obey U.N. resolutions ordering it to suspend uranium enrichment before negotiations begin. Read article.

 

Scott Rasmussen, Rasmussen Reports.com

 

To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation’s capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.

 

The disconnect between D.C. Republicans and Republicans throughout the country has been growing for nearly 20 years, but it became more intense and noticeable during the waning years of the Bush administration.

 

Perhaps the final straw was the $700 billion bank bailout plan pushed through Congress last fall despite strong voter opposition. For all the furor unleashed this spring by congressional Republicans about President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan, the Bush-era bailouts last fall were approved with virtually no advance notice and no guidelines as to how the money would be spent. Looking back, most voters and nearly eight-out-of-10 Republicans now believe the bailouts were a bad idea. Read article.

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