President Barack Hussein Obama has little interest in, understanding of, or affection for free markets, so he fails to understand that the fundamental relationship between government and the economy is that of parasite to host. Some functions of government are absolutely essential to a free economy.  But though government can consume wealth, and redistribute wealth, it can't create wealth.  And unless wealth is created, there is nothing to consume or redistribute.  That's why -- even when government is doing something we all agree must be done or most of us want to have it do -- government is a parasite.  All it has is what takes from the producers of wealth. A healthy host can support a lot of parasites.  A sickly host cannot.  So for our sickly economy to recover and to create an increase in overall employment, one necessary condition is to start firing government workers who are parasites on and not producers of wealth.

It's being called Climategate - the "death knell" of climate change hysteria, and of "cap and trade" legislation.  A number of the world's top scientists advocating man-made global warming may go to jail for criminal fraud - and Al Gore may never be invited to another late night talk show again. During an appearance on NBC's Tonight show Nov. 12, former Vice President Al Gore told host Conan O'Brien geothermal energy is a promising alternative to fossil fuels because "the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot." The temperature at the earth's core has been estimated at between 4,000 and 6,000 degrees Celsius.  As John Derbyshire of National Review noted, "if the temperature anywhere inside the earth were ‘several million degrees,' we'd be a star." On Friday (11/20), Mr. Gore's signature cause, anthropogenic global warming (AGW), suffered a mortal blow... if Climategate is reported fully.

President Obama took his massive ego and sparse historical knowledge to Asia last week.  The results were so ugly even the New York Times took notice.  Obama's Pacific Trip Encounters Rough Waters was its headline over a news analysis yesterday (11/19). The humiliation began in Singapore, continued in Japan with his now-infamous bow to Emperor Akihito, and climaxed in China where his communist hosts made an utter fool of him. Throughout it all, he remained cluelessly oblivious to his humiliation.

What were President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder thinking when they decided to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief architect of the 9/11 attacks, and four other al Qaeda bigwigs in a civilian court in New York City? From the standpoint of politics, this decision makes no sense.  According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Monday (11/16), only 34% of Americans support the decision to try the al Qaeda bigwigs in a civilian court.  64% say they should be tried by a military commission, as the Bush administration was planning to do. The decision is unlikely to grow more popular with time.  At a minimum, a highly publicized trial will remind Americans of the 9/11 attacks, something Democrats have been encouraging us to forget. The potential consequences for the United States of extending to these terrorists the constitutional rights afforded U.S. citizens in a civil trial are grave. And should the terrorists walk due to legal technicalities, Mr. Obama's presidency will be in the grave.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan has shined a spotlight on the intellectual and moral shortcomings of America's self-anointed elite. Journalists and Obama administration officials say they are unable to identify a motive for Maj. Hasan's murder spree at Fort Hood.  This is much more than a failure to connect the dots.  It is like looking westward from Denver on a bright and sunny day, and claiming to be unable to see the Rocky Mountains. Maj. Hasan produced a pro-jihadi slide show which he inflicted upon his fellow physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  He had "SoA," an abbreviation of Soldier of Allah, printed on his business cards.  He attended mosques where radicals preached, and he tried to get in touch with al Qaeda.  As he was gunning down the defenseless soldiers around him, he was heard shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great.)  His Moslem motive couldn't be more clear. Worse than the willful blindness with regard to his motives were the efforts by some to make excuses for Maj. Hasan's behavior.  Especially those in the Army who ignored his behavior.

Why  should I die on this hill he's chosen? If you were a cavalryman with Custer at the Little Big Horn on the afternoon of June 25, 1876, it was a little late to be asking this question. But if you're one of the 84 Democrats who represent districts carried either by George W. Bush in 2004 or John McCain last year,  the time to ponder this is before casting a potential career-terminating vote on health care "reform." The gubernatorial elections Tuesday (11/03) in Virginia and New Jersey were, for Democrats in swing districts, either a nightmare or a wakeup call, depending upon their state of wakefulness.  And perhaps Ms. Pelosi might consider waking up from her zombie trance to ask herself if it is really wise to bully from a position of weakness.

The Obama administration did a shabby and stupid thing last week. If you're a conservative, you're probably asking: "Which shabby and stupid thing was that?"  But this was a shabby and stupid thing prominent Democrats think was shabby and stupid. Virginia and New Jersey have gubernatorial elections next week.  Polls indicate that in Virginia the Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell, is likely to win a comfortable, perhaps a landslide victory over Democrat Creigh Deeds. The White House evidently agrees with the polls.  Last week the Washington Post ran a story under the headline: "Top Democrats Seek to Shield Obama in Case of Election Loss."  The Post means Dems at the White House.  Other Dems think its shabby abd stupid to bury one of your own before an election.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," wrote Sir Walter Scott in his 1808 poem, "Marmion." I doubt Senate Majority Leader Harry "Searchlight" Reid (he was born in Searchlight, Nevada) has read "Marmion." But he now has a pretty good idea of what Sir Walter Scott meant. Democrats have been tying themselves into knots in their efforts to conceal from the public the true cost of Obamacare.  Yesterday (10/21), their schemes came crashing down around Harry Reid's ears. It may be lights out for Searchlight Harry -- and maybe, cross your fingers, for Obamacare too.

Durak is a popular card game throughout Russia.  The loser among the players is dubbed the "durak" - idiot or fool in Russian.  The Kremlin enjoys playing it with Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton was in Russia this week, hoping to "reset" relations with the Russians which, she said, had been damaged by the policies of George W. Bush.  She had hoped during her visit to meet with the real power in Russian politics, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  He thought a trip to Siberia and China was more important than spending time with the American secretary of state. So while Mrs. Clinton was busy in Moscow unveiling a statue of poet Walt Whitman (you can't make this up), Mr. Putin was in Beijing pulling the rug out from under the sole Obama administration foreign policy "triumph" to date.

Most liberals aren't very religious.  But they are people of faith.  When reality clashes with a cherished belief, they cling to the cherished belief. It snowed in Minnesota over the weekend.  And in Denver, canceling a National League playoff game.  Record cold temperatures were set in Washington State, Idaho, western Montana, and Nebraska. It was unseasonably cold in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend, too.  But those who attended the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists didn't notice.  That's because they are members of the Cult of Climate Change. The keynote speaker was former Vice President Al Gore.  Mr. Gore is someone only a liberal could regard as an expert on climate change.  As The Washington Post reported, he took exactly two science courses as an undergraduate at Harvard, scoring a D in Natural Sciences 6, and a C in Natural Sciences 118.  He flunked his college entrance exams in science (488 in physics and 519 in chemistry out of a possible 800 - seems his daddy, a US Senator, got him in to Harvard.)

In 1998, an Army officer with a Silver Star for bravery in the Gulf War and a Ph.D. in American history, H. R. McMaster, wrote a revalatory book, "Dereliction of Duty."   The thesis of the book (which was based on his doctoral dissertation) is that members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew President Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, were pursuing a strategy in Vietnam based on domestic political concerns that was likely to lead to defeat, but none resigned in protest.  All preferred keeping their jobs instead of their country's honor and the welfare of their troops. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man President Obama chose to command in Afghanistan, has made clear what he thinks is needed to turn around our deteriorating fortunes there.  But President Obama is reluctant to commit the resources necessary to implement the strategy he signed off on in March.  Gen. McChrystal may thus soon face the kind of test of character the Vietnam-era Joint Chiefs failed. 

It was a metaphor for his young presidency.  Barack and Michelle Obama travel to Copenhagen in regal splendor to lobby the International Olympic Committee to support Chicago's bid to host the Summer Games in 2016.  They are given rock star treatment by our sycophantic news media.  And then they get stiffed. When Chicago finished fourth, receiving just 18 of 94 votes, the question on the minds of many people was: How would Democrats contrive to blame the debacle on George W. Bush?  The answer was not long in coming. "I thought we had really turned a corner with the election of President Obama," Illinois State Rep. Susana Mendoza told the Chicago Sun Times.  "People are so much more welcoming of Americans now.  But this isn't the people of those countries.  This is the leaders still living with outdated impressions of Americans." Meanwhile, back in in Copenhagen the Danes thought the rejection had more to do with the behavior of Barack and Michelle.

The contempt with which the president of France regards the president of the United States was displayed in public last week. Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Hussein Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24). ‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said.  "Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions, North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993." What kind of world are we living in when the president of France represents America's interests better than the president of America?

On March 14, 1980, Kirk Scharfenberg of the Boston Globe wrote a mock headline over an editorial the Globe was planning to run on a speech President Jimmy Carter had made, planning to replace it with a serious headline before publication. To Mr. Scharfenberg's horror, the mock headline was inadvertently printed in 161,000 copies.  The headline was: "More Mush from the Wimp." The headline resonated with millions of Americans because of Mr. Carter's perceived weakness on foreign policy.  Iranian militants were holding Americans hostage in our embassy in Tehran, and Mr. Carter didn't seem to be able to do anything about it.  He said he was surprised by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he didn't seem to be able to do anything about that, either. The Carter administration, Henry Kissinger said, had achieved at one and the same time "the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War." Today, Messrs. Scharfenberg and Kissinger would be talking about Mr. Carter's vertebrae-challenged successor now in the White House.

Sarah Palin was wrong when she said the provision for end of life counseling in the health care reform bills pending in Congress is a first step toward government "death panels" which will decide who gets expensive medical care and who doesn't. The death panels -- there are two of them -- already have been voted into law as part of the stimulus bill Congress passed in February.  President Obama has appointed members to them, and they have been funded to the tune of $20.6 billion. The death panels are not, of course, called death panels.  They are the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (hereinafter "Federal Council"), which will set policy, and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (hereinafter "Coordinator"), who will enforce it. The stimulus bill - Obama's "American Recovery & Reinvestment Act" of $787 billion - authorizes $1.1 billion for the Federal Council and $19.5 billion for the Coordinator.

Democrats in the House of Representatives demanded a formal disapproval of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) for shouting "You Lie!" during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress Sept. 9.  Mr. Wilson's outburst came after the president said illegal immigrants were not included in his health care plan. They got it yesterday (9/15) by a vote of 240-179, with 233 Democrats and only 7 Republicans voting for "a resolution of disapproval" of their colleague.  Big mistake.  President Obama accepted Rep. Wilson's apology.  If the Democrat leadership in the House had any brains, they'd have done the same.  Pursuing this vendetta can only hurt them, for two reasons. The first and foremost reason is because the president was lying in his speech to Congress, as the White House all but acknowledged when last Friday (9/11) it issued a "clarification" of what the president said two days earlier.

Around midnight on the Saturday (9/05) of the Labor Day weekend, the White House announced Van Jones had resigned as President Obama's "green jobs" czar. "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Mr. Jones said in his resignation letter.  "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." The lies and distortions consisted of reporting Mr. Jones' arrest during a riot, and quoting, accurately, from statements Mr. Jones had made that are overtly communist, racist, and wacko.

The war is not going well.  U.S. casualties so far this year are already higher than in any of the previous seven years of our involvement in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama must be wondering how this could be happening to him.  Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war.  He'd embraced it less out of conviction than out of political calculation.  Mr. Obama was strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, but mindful of the perception many voters have that Democrats are weak on national security.  By embracing the war in Afghanistan, he could argue he was willing to use force, too, to protect Americas national security.  He was just smarter about it than George Bush was. Now Robert Gibbs,  who is rapidly replacing the hapless Scott McClellan as the worst White House press secretary in modern times,  says the mess in Afghanistan is all George Bush's fault.  Mr. Gibbs says this about every mess President Obama finds himself in.

A bloated corpse remains, but life and spirit have left the CIA.  A troubled agency, which can ill afford it, has had a very bad week. The CIA's terrible week illustrates that CIA Director Leon Panetta has as little clout with the president as he has respect from his subordinates.  Mr. Panetta lost the respect of most of his troops when he told the House Intelligence Committee in June the CIA had concealed from it a secret program to assassinate al Qaeda terrorists.  T This wasn't true, as Mr. Panetta learned when he belatedly talked to his predecessors.  Congress was never briefed on the plan because it was never implemented. There's speculation Mr. Panetta will resign in protest, or be fired.  It may not matter very much.  The CIA has not been central to intelligence for quite some while.

The famous observation of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel needs to be updated.  Today, the last resort of the liberal scoundrel is the false accusation of racism.  It's a sign not just of moral and intellectual bankruptcy, but of desperation.  And -- with a swiftness that must seem stunning to them in the wake of the big Democrat victory last November -- liberals now have a lot to be desperate about. For the liberal nightmare may be coming true - that when they accuse folks of racism, the folks have stopped listening and no longer care.

On March 23, 1943, an overconfident Afrika Korps ran into a well prepared ambush at El Guettar, Tunisia.  The lead German tanks were slowed by a minefield, then devastated by pre-registered artillery and anti-tank gun fire. "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!" gloated George C. Scott, playing Gen. George S. Patton, in the 1970 movie "Patton." And indeed, the real Gen. Patton had read the Afrika Korps commander's 1937 book "Infanterie greift an" ("Infantry Attacks" - Patton could read German) and thus had a good idea of the tactics Gen. Erwin Rommel would employ. The Obama administration has a playbook, too.  It's "Rules for Radicals," written in 1971 by Chicago Marxist Saul Alinsky, the godfather of community organizing. Following Mr. Alinsky's tactics has worked well for Mr. Obama.  But unfortunately for him, Sarah Palin -- arguably the principal target of rule number 13 -- has read the book, too.  Which is why Ms. Palin has run over Mr. Obama's health care plan with a tank.

As the philandering husband said to his wife when she discovered him in bed with another woman:  "Who you gonna believe?  Me... or your lying eyes?" In response this week (8/11) to a question asking whether he still supports a single-payer system (one in which the government is the sole provider of health care services, as in Canada), Mr. Obama said: "I have not said that I was a single payer supporter because, frankly, we historically had a employer-based system in this country with private insurers, and for us a transition to a system like that I believe would be too disruptive." But in a speech to the Illinois AFL-CIO on June 30, 2003, Mr. Obama said:  "I happen to be a proponent of a single payer health care program."  Your lying eyes can watch him say this on video. Which brings me to Sarah Palin.

Former President Bill Clinton has returned from North Korea with Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two U.S. journalists seized five months ago along North Korea's border with China, charged with espionage, and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. This is great news for the two women and their families.  All of us should rejoice they have been freed from their unjust imprisonment.  But whether this is good for the United States depends on how much ransom President Obama has agreed to pay. With regard to America's enemies, the Obama foreign policy has been all appeasement, all the time.  It's rarely ever a good idea to help your enemies and hurt your friends, but that does seem to be the agenda of the 44th president.

The second, third, fourth and fifth most important reasons why private health insurance costs so much are: Improvements in medicine and medical technology;  frivolous lawsuits;  state mandates;  and cost switching. But the most important reason why private health insurance costs so much is because it really isn't insurance at all.  It's a baroque form of third party prepayment.

There's good reason why the 66 Democrats in the House who represent districts that were carried either by George W. Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008 are thinking about bailing on Mr. Obama's signature issue of "health care reform." Lawmakers who support the president's plan will face some sharp questions at their town meetings during the August recess.  In a Rasmussen poll released July 22, 44 percent of respondents supported Mr. Obama's effort; 53 percent were opposed. The poll's internals suggest the situation is worse for Mr. Obama than these numbers indicate.  The only age demographic to express support for the plan were 18 to 29 year olds, which, the 66 can tell you, is the demographic least likely to vote in midterm elections.  Will health care reform be, as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) predicts, Mr. Obama's "Waterloo"?  Will its failure "destroy my presidency," as Mr. Obama said himself?  That would be true only if the president makes it so, if he's more like Carter than Clinton.

A person who wrote two autobiographies before he was 45 is no piker when it comes to extravagant self regard. Virtually all politicians exhibit some narcissistic traits.  But columnist Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, asked last year: "Has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his achievements?" "Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist," writes Sam Vaknin, a psychologist who's written two books and numerous studies on narcissism.  "Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious.  They are subtle, refined, socially adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. (They) lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless." Only after lengthy tests and personal interviews can a qualified mental health professional determine whether someone suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, Mr. Vaknin acknowledged.  But for his article - Barack Obama:  Narcissist or Merely Narciscisstic? - Mr. Vaknin constructed the kind of psychological profile the CIA commissions on foreign leaders.  And it should scare you to death.

Late last month, Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote to CIA Director Leon Panetta charging the CIA "concealed significant actions from the members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week." This was a supposed CIA plan to assassinate al Qaeda leaders, concealed from Congress by the express order of Vice President Dick Cheney - supposedly.  This story cannot end well for Democrats.  Few Americans are outraged the CIA contemplated killing our enemies during a time of war.  Further, the Democrat currently in the White House is doing precisely that right now with Predator drone missile attacks on al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan.  So why was the Reyes letter written, then leaked to the press?  Because the Dems on the Intel Committee, particularly Mr. Reyes, really are dimwits.

With unemployment in June at 9.5 percent, and with the president himself now acknowledging the unemployment rate is likely to exceed ten percent before year's end, it's pretty bizarre for Mr. Obama to say, as he did in his radio address Saturday (7/11), that the stimulus bill "has worked as intended." A report from New Hampshire suggests why the stimulus bill hasn't stimulated the economy much. According to the state office responsible for tracking the funds, New Hampshire has received so far $413.6 million in stimulus funds, which have resulted in the creation of 50 jobs, all in government, most of them temporary and only 34 of them full time.  Last February, I called the stimulus bill the porkalooza, and predicted it would define Mr. Obama's presidency, even shorten it.  That's why I'm glad it passed.

"The distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are being overshadowed by that between what we might call the ‘Court Party' -- made up of the well-connected, the people who feel represented by mainstream politicians who argue over how many trillions should be spent on reforming American society, who see themselves as potters of the great American clay -- and the ‘Country Party' -- the many more who are tired of being treated as clay." So observes Princeton Professor Angelo Codevilla, with whom I was acquainted when we were both staffers in the Senate. People in the Court Party think it proper they should decide what kind of cars the hoi polloi in flyover country should drive, and how much medical care they may have. People in the Country Party are desperate for a champion to protect them from the depredations of the Court ruling elite.  So are Tea Party conservatives.  If that person were the same, uniting the two into a political force, it would sweep the field.  That champion is Sarah Palin.

Quitter.  That's what Sarah Palin's enemies, and many of her friends, are calling her in the wake of her surprise announcement Friday (7/3) that she'll resign as governor of Alaska. A big scandal must be looming, some speculate.  Sarah or a member of her family must be seriously ill, speculate others.  If either is true, we should learn more in a few weeks. Viewed from the perspective, so common in Washington these days, that the only thing more important than holding public office is seeking a higher one, Sarah Palin's decision makes no sense.  But if her priorities are different, it makes perfect sense.

At a news conference yesterday (6/23), President Barack Hussein Obama condemned the "threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days," but stopped short of criticizing the stolen election that sent more than a million protesters into the streets, or expressing support for those protesters. The president's limited criticism of the Iranian regime took place a week after the leaders of Canada, France and Germany issued stronger ones.  It was prompted, said Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times, by Sen. John McCain's "angry Senate speech Monday" (6/22) which made it politically difficult for Mr. Obama to continue to sit on the fence. But in the question session which followed his prepared remarks, the president indicated there is no amount of blood the regime can shed that will dissuade him from negotiating with it. This reached macabre proportions when Mr. Obama indicated his invitation to Iranian diplomats to attend Fourth of July parties is still open.  There are arguments for negotiating with brutal regimes.  But to socialize with the butchers while they are killing their own people is obscene.

When it comes to foreign policy, President Barack Hussein Obama is a one-trick pony, and the trick isn't working. The leaders of Canada, France and Germany have condemned, in strong and forthright language, the fraud in Iran's presidential election, and the regime's bloody repression of the people protesting it.  Of the West's leaders, only the leader of America has equivocated. Mr. Obama said he does not wish to be perceived as "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs.  He had no qualms about meddling in Israel's internal affairs when he demanded a halt to building in settlements as a precondition to peace talks with the Palestinians. In any event, the president's even-handed approach between the oppressors in Iran and their victims has not produced the result he said he desired.   In fact, his foreign policy is failing abjectly everywhere.

Barack Hussein Obama is, by far, the most popular politician in America.  And there is little doubt who is number two. The city of Auburn in upstate New York, population 28,574, held its first annual Founder's Day celebration June 6.  The most famous of the city's fathers is William Seward, who as secretary of state purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867.  To commemorate the event, the city council invited the current governor of Alaska.  The parade featuring Sarah Palin drew more than 20,000 people, according to press reports. The next day Ms. Palin traveled to Long Island to speak at a fund raiser for a charity which aids the developmentally disabled.  Before that, she and her daughter, Willow, attended a New York Yankees game at the invitation of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The following night (6/08) on his national television show, David Letterman, being the cowardly pervert he is, told two unbelievably disgusting sexual jokes about 14 year-old Willow Palin. That many liberals found Mr. Letterman's remarks humorous speaks not only to their depravity, but to their fear. 

Mr. Obama made a surprise lunchtime visit May 29 to a Five Guys hamburger joint in Washington D.C., where he bought cheeseburgers for himself and for NBC anchor Brian Williams, who was filming a "day in the life" program at the White House. While waiting for his burgers, the president chatted up a fellow customer named Walter, who told him he worked at "NGA, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency." Mr. Obama was clueless.  He had no idea what the NGA is.  After the NSA (National Security Agency) and the CIA, the NGA is America's most important intelligence agency. It's hard to imagine a daily presidential intelligence briefing that doesn't include at least some slides from the NGA. Such clueless ignorance means that he'll make a poor referee for the turf war that has broken out between his Director of National Intelligence and the CIA.

Last month Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor for the liberal journal New Republic, interviewed former clerks for judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on which Sonia Sotomayor has served since 1998. She is "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," one former clerk told Mr. Rosen.  "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue," said another. Mr. Obama had little to say about Ms. Sotomayor's judicial ability and temperament when he announced Tuesday (5/26) he was nominating her to replace Justice David Souter, who is retiring.  He praised her "compelling personal story," and her "empathy" on the bench. Ms. Sotomayor's "compelling personal story" is a better qualification for being a guest on Oprah than for being a Supreme Court justice.

The analysis of the most recent Gallup Poll by Managing Editor Jeffrey M. Jones reads like a requiem for the Republican party. "GOP losses span nearly all demographic groups," said the headline on the press release May 18.  "Only frequent churchgoers show no decline in support since 2001." The analysis will be fodder for those commentators who assert  Republicans must radically alter course or face extinction in the Age of Obama.  But the polling data Gallup released doesn't support Mr. Jones' conclusions. Exactly the same proportion of the electorate in the most recent Gallup Poll identify themselves as Republicans as identify themselves as Democrats.  This represents in the space of a month a significant gain for Republicans, and a significant loss for Democrats.  Why is Mr. Jones lying about his own polling results?

"It's terrible.  Biblically terrible.  Possibly the worst new car money can buy.  It's the first car I've ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I wouldn't have to drive it any more." That's how Jeremy Clarkson, who reviews automobiles for Britain's Sunday Times, described the Honda Insight hybrid last week. If Mr. Obama -- who has seized control of the US auto industry even though he has never run a business of any kind in his life -- has his way, all Americans will be allowed to buy are cars like the Honda Insight.

"California is a trendsetter state," Christian Probasco wrote in a 2007 magazine article.  "Every Californian fad eventually makes it way over the Sierras." The latest fad comes next week (Tuesday, May 19), when those Californians who choose to go to the polls almost certainly will guarantee California will be the first state to go bankrupt. Bankruptcy is coming to California for one simple reason:  It costs a lot to keep bureaucrats in the lap of luxury.  California's sales and income taxes are among the highest in the nation. But isn't it Mr. Obama's intention to have the rest of the nation catch up with California in taxes and bureaucrats?

President Hussein Obama's "car czar" has no experience in the automobile industry, and is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly paying kickbacks to obtain New York state pension business. A former journalist turned investment banker and Democrat party fund-raiser, Steven Rattner also was involved in a deal with Cerebrus Capital Management, the hedge fund which owns most of Chrysler, which made other Chrysler investors wonder if Mr. Rattner could decide without bias how the government should aid the auto firm.  They need wonder no longer.  We have a gangster government in the White House.