Wesley Pruden, Washington Times.com

 

On some days, Barack Obama shoulda stood in bed. The new year has brought him a succession of days like that. Let us count the reasons why: Scott Brown, Ben Bernanke, his sinking poll numbers, continuing bad economic news and the health care debacle. He insists he won't hit the reset button, probably because he can't find it.

 

Certain of his friends argue that it's time to give up on health care, and, like Bill Clinton, move on to something else. "Climate change" (which is what we're supposed to call global warming now) has been nominated as the topic to make everyone forget about health care "reform." The president himself is trying to rally Democrats ready to bail. Hang on, help is coming.

 

One Democratic congressman who bailed on Monday, Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas, says enough already. He says he and certain of his colleagues tried to tell the White House that they were making the same mistake Bill Clinton made, of forcing unpopular legislation on voters who wouldn't take it any more, leading to the Big Blow-Out of '94. "They just kept telling us how good it was going to be," says the retiring Mr. Berry. "The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, 'Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.' We're going to see how much difference that makes now." Read article.

Spiegel.de

 

US President Barack Obama suffered a painful defeat in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With mid-term elections looming, it means that Obama will have to fundamentally re-think his political course. German commentators say it is the end of hope.

 

US President Barack Obama has had a number of difficult weeks during his first year in the White House. Right after he took office, he had to wade through a week full of partisan bickering over his economic stimulus package combined with a tax scandal surrounding Tom Daschle, the man Obama had hoped would lead his health care reform team.

 

Then there was the last week of 2009, when a failed terror attack on a flight inbound for Detroit exposed major flaws in US efforts to identify and stop potential terrorists.

 

However, a week when Obama should have been celebrating the first anniversary of his inauguration may have been the president's worst yet. Scott Brown, an almost unknown Republican member of the Massachusetts Senate, defeated the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley for the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The defeat in a heavily Democratic state not only highlights Obama's massive loss of popular support during his first year in office, but it also could spell doom for his signature effort to reform the US health care system. Read article.

 

Jennifer Harper

 

He has an official pre-presidential logo and a dramatic custom-built dais — with columns — even before he arrived at the White House. President Obama drew instant love from the press, who were captivated by the image before them.

 

Mr. Obama garnered more coverage — and more positive coverage — than former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan during their comparable times in office, according to a study released Monday by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA).

 

Much of the Obama coverage was breathlessly positive, even melodramatic. But then something happened. Read article.

Ken Klukowski, FoxNews.com

 

The Tenth Amendment and Obamacare. -- Why the Democrats and the White House may be in for the shock of their lives.

 

Much has been written about how the Obamacare individual mandate is unconstitutional. Less discussed, however, is that another key part of the Senate’s version of Obamacare likely violates the Tenth Amendment. And some states are preparing to sue.

 

President Obama’s health care legislation is riddled with constitutional problems. The individual mandate, the employer mandate, even the buyoffs for Senators Nelson and Landrieu—they all raise constitutional issues, ranging from the limits on Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce, to the taxing and spending authority of the government, to a little known—and from the commentary thus far, very little understood—General Welfare Clause.

 

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is leading a growing group of state attorneys general who are prepared to challenge parts of Obamacare. The Nebraska kickback that bought off Ben Nelson is the central focus of McMaster’s efforts.

 

But McMaster is also studying at an issue that almost everyone is overlooking. The Senate version of Obamacare includes a possible violation of the Tenth Amendment, which provides that any powers that either are not expressly granted to the federal government, or are not expressly denied to the states, are reserved to the people or to the states. Read article.

 

John Hawkins, Townhall.com

 

Barack Obama's first year in office was one long string of gaffes, foreign policy blunders, and domestic disasters strung together in a long, terrible line. Although it's not possible to adequately catalogue every blunder in Obama's first year in something shorter than a book, here are some of the many, many blaring lowlights that really stood out:

 

1) The stimulus that didn't: The Democrats shoved through a stimulus bill that cost more than the Vietnam and Iraq wars combined. Why? Over and over again, they said "jobs, jobs, jobs." In fact, the Obama Administration said that if the bill passed, they expected it to keep unemployment below 8%. Instead, unemployment hit a 26-year high of 10.2% in November.

 

2) Pyrrhic "victory" on health care: In one of the most nauseating displays of government "sausage making" in American history, the Democrats have used open bribery to push a wildly unpopular health care bill through both the House and the Senate. The Democrats are willing to trade tax increases, increased premiums, Medicare cuts, government-financed abortions, taxpayer-funded care for illegals, death panels, rationing, and reduced quality of care for a bill they believe will help move America towards socialism. However, this is turning into the Hindenburg of political bills and could very possibly cost the Democrats the House, the Senate, and the White House over the next couple of election cycles unless Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts and helps kill the bill deader than Lenin in the next few weeks. Read article.

 

Did We Elect David Axelrod?

Ed Lasky, American Thinker.Blog.com

 

On Thursday, Mr. Obama proposed a plan that would prevent banks that receive a federal backstop from investing their own money in financial markets-what is known as proprietary trading. He also pushed for new limits on the size and concentration of financial institutions. Both moves echo the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era banking curbs that was repealed in 1999.

 

Is it Axelrod? Gee..he is well-versed in economics, finance, public affairs, domestic policy – not.

 

What about all the abuse directed towards Karl Rove – “Bush’s Brain”? At least, Rove moved into the White House only in the second term. Axelrod has the office nearest to Obama, attends important meetings, and was there as his domestic policy senior adviser from Day One. He is far more important than Joe Biden.

 

Did we elect David Axelrod?

 

In a Chicago magazine profile of him from the late 1980s (Hatchet Man: the Rise of David Axelrod) he described his dream of being an “eminence grise” – the power behind the throne . His dream has come true and it is our nightmare. A left-wing ideologue who engages in dirty tricks and who has absolutely no experience in government, the economy, world affairs, and the myriad skills needed to run the nation is helping to drive this country…off the cliff.

 

And we did not even get to vote for him. Read article.

 

Dr. Henry I. Miller, Washington Times.com

 

The inability of government bureaucrats to "connect the dots" and the resulting near-catastrophe when a Nigerian terrorist tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day are a microcosm of pervasive shortcomings of the Obama administration. The failure to prevent an attack on an airplane, train or building has obvious and immediate consequences, but when the failures are incompetent or flawed policy - and decision-making at the vast alphabet soup of federal agencies - the impacts may be both obscure and significant.

 

Most important federal government business is conducted by senior officials at the myriad departments and agencies who perform essential day-to-day policy- and decision-making. Few of these officials' appointments require congressional confirmation or receive much public or media attention, but they are critical because personnel choices ultimately are policy choices. The appointments are particularly important at "gatekeeper" government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) that are required to approve products such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other chemicals before they can be marketed. These agencies are becoming increasingly unscientific, risk-averse, politicized and easily prodded to excesses by congressional demagoguery. Their shortcomings may be less obvious and elicit less outrage than an airplane blown up in midair, but the effects can be far more devastating. Read article.

 

Jerry Richardson, Action.afa.net

 

The decades beginning with the 1960s have produced many such rebels, against wisdom, in our nation (coinciding with the outlawing of prayer in public schools--1962), and now many of these rebels (political radicals) including Barack Obama have risen to positions of power, and are eager to exercise that power in support of radical political ideology.

 

Obama despises the wisdom that comes from experience and tradition, and for this reason he does not listen to a broad cross-section of the American people, a vast number of everyday people who possess a great amount of collective wisdom, especially relative to what should not be done in the political realm.

 

It is easy, with the search-ability available on the Internet to catalog the specifics of Obama's insufferable arrogance, such as his unapologetic willingness to break pledges that he specifically made during his Presidential campaign:

 

“To achieve health care reform, "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."”

 

Obama is recorded (video and audio), publicly making this promise on multiple occasions. Yet instead of keeping his campaign pledge, ObamaCare negotiations have been conducted in secret, closed-door meetings. No press allowed. No Republicans allowed. And, obviously, the negotiations have not been conducted on C-Span. Read article.

 

Lisa Riley Roche, Deseret News.com

 

So, who was the big winner in the Massachusetts Senate race?

 

Well, the Democrat-dominated state does have a new GOP senator, Scott Brown. But former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, described as the hidden hand in the improbable victory, also scored.

 

"Romney is clearly the most influential national Republican right now. He's filled the void," said longtime supporter Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.

 

Known by Utahns for leading the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and for being a strong Mormon presidential candidate in 2008, Romney worked hard for Brown behind the scenes.

 

From the start, Romney backed Brown to be the successor to the late Edward M. Kennedy, the legendary Democrat who held the Senate seat for nearly half a century. Romney helped the Brown campaign raise money, including more than $1 million in a single day by e-mailing his own supporters nationwide.

 

And many of the same faces that accompanied Romney on the presidential campaign trail jumped on board the Brown bandwagon, including Romney's campaign manager, Beth Myers, and spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, as well as others from Romney's days as Massachusetts governor. Read article.

 

 

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