Robert J. Samuelson, JWR.com

 

Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he's labeled "irresponsible"? Well, apparently much more than the massive amounts envisioned by President Obama. The final version of his 2010 budget, released last week, is a case study in political expediency and economic gambling.

 

Let's see. From 2010 to 2019, Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that's atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009. By 2019, the ratio of publicly held federal debt to gross domestic product (GDP, or the economy) would reach 70 percent, up from 41 percent in 2008. That would be the highest since 1950 (80 percent). The Congressional Budget Office, using less optimistic economic forecasts, raises these estimates. The 2010-19 deficits would total $9.3 trillion; the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2019 would be 82 percent.

 

But wait: Even these totals may be understated. Read article.

 

Jim Geraghty, NRO.com

 

Barack Obama never met Saul Alinsky, but the radical organizer’s thought helps explain a great deal about how the president operates.

 

Alinsky’s influence goes well beyond Obama, obviously. There are many wonderful Democrats in this world, but evidence suggests that rising in that party’s political hierarchy requires some adoption of a variation of the Alinsky philosophy: Power comes first. Few Democrats are expressing outrage over Nancy Pelosi’s ever-shifting explanation of what she knew about waterboarding.

 

Those who screamed bloody murder about Jack Abramoff’s crimes avert their eyes from John Murtha. The anti-war movement that opposed the surge in Iraq remains silent about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Obama will never get as much grief for his gay-marriage views as Miss California.

 

It’s not about the policies or the politics, and it’s certainly not about the principles. It’s about power, and it has been for a long time. Read article.

IBD Editorials.com

 

The environmental left is conceding that its effort to "fight" global warming is in trouble because the public has tuned out the message. So the plan is to obscure the agenda even more.

 

An agenda that eviscerates property rights, enlarges the regulatory state, increases taxes and forces egalitarianism isn't an easy sell in a nation with a legacy of liberty and free markets.

 

But some time ago, eco-activists and their allies in Congress understood that they could march the country to the left by small degrees if they disguised socialism as environmentalism.

 

And thus the environmental movement was hijacked.

 

Decades of sermonizing have indeed nudged us leftward, but we are still — for now — a nation of mostly free men and largely free markets. Credit a public that seems to grasp we don't have to kill capitalism in order to save the planet. Read article.

 

Burt Prelutsky, Townhall.com

 

Certain conservative commentators have begun taking exception to those of us who have identified Barack Obama as a socialist, a communist or a left-wing ideologue. The worst thing some of these people are willing to say about the president is that he’s a proponent of big government and increased federal spending. But that also describes George W. Bush. What would make it so ironic is that during last year’s campaign, the Democrats kept saying that voting for John McCain was the same as electing Bush to a third term.

 

In discussing the sort of person he’d like to appoint to the Supreme Court, replacing Justice Souter, who, in announcing his retirement, made his first good decision in 19 years, President Obama emphasized compassion. I’m afraid that’s exactly the sort of statement you have to expect when you put an ex-community organizer in a job above his pay grade. Compassion should no more be a prerequisite for sitting on the Supreme Court than the ability to balance a basketball on one’s nose or to juggle flatware. Read article.

 

Morris & McGann, Vote.com

 

When will the economy stop dropping because of the recession and start dropping because of the harm Obama's cure to the recession is inflicting? There will likely be a seam that will run through the polling and recession statistics in the next few months when the symptoms of the disease abate and those triggered by Obama's program begin to kick in. In short, when will the Bush recession become the Obama recession? In fact, it may already have happened.

 

Obama's popularity and the economic statistics fell, pretty much in tandem from his inauguration until early April. During this period, unemployment rose by two points, consumer confidence fell, and over 2 million jobs were destroyed. Over the same term, the president's approval ratings (as measured daily by Scott Rasmussen - www.rasmussenreports.com) fell from a post-inaugural level of 65% to 55%.

 

Then both the economy and the president's approval ratings started to climb. The former was fueled by pre-mature claims that consumer spending was rising (it turned out to be only a January post-Christmas blip) and that jobless claims were falling (they resumed their upward march in May). The stock market, impelled more by wishful thinking than by mature analysis, had its first positive month in April and optimism spread.

 

This good economic news combined with media hype about Obama's first hundred days and helped push his ratings back up over 60%.

 

But now both the economy and Obama are back on a downward trend. Could it be that the false dawn of late April was the seam we are awaiting? Could it have been the moment when the economy did what it would always naturally do and begin its recovery only to have the momentum squashed by Obama's policies? Read article.

 

Republicans salute Obama's military tack - Moves anger liberal Democrats

Stephen Dinan, Washington Times.com

 

Even as congressional Democrats feuded last week with the CIA in what at times seemed to be a throwback to the 1970s, President Obama was headed in the other direction in what may have been his most active week yet as commander in chief.

 

He pushed through the House a spending bill to finance the war in Afghanistan and reversed himself, deciding to fight the release of photos purportedly showing humiliating treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Congressional Democrats took a wait-and-see approach toward Mr. Obama's Friday decision to allow some military commissions to try terrorism suspects, but that and his other actions last week earned the president the ire of part of his political base.

 

A leader of the antiwar group Code Pink said she now wonders at what point her organization should begin to refer to Mr. Obama as a "war criminal."

 

"To see all of these turnarounds is very disappointing," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink. "I think he's afraid of alienating a lot of these military and their families and the right-wing media that has just attacked him viciously." Read article.

 

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