Last week I suggested that upcoming healthcare summit at the White House was just for show – a play fake to give Obama the appearance of bi-partisanship, but was really intended to set the stage for congressional liberals to “go nuclear” and ram ObamaCare through Congress using budget reconciliation rules. We got some unfortunate evidence validating my concerns yesterday.

More than a dozen Senate Democrats and 119 House Democrats are asking the president not only to use reconciliation, but also to include the most radical ideas, such as the so-called “public option.” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the third highest ranking House Democrat, said yesterday, “If you’re not going to do a 60-vote strategy, but instead a 50-plus-one strategy [reconciliation], the public option could very well be part of this package.”

This is a very disturbing development. Here’s why: The public option is a gigantic leap toward socialism and Big Government control over your life. The public option is the vehicle liberals will use to achieve single-payer socialized medicine in America. Barney Frank admits it. The radical Left knows it. And Barack Obama wants it.

Well it didn’t take long. Just a few hours after deranged Joseph Stack flew his plane on a “Kamikaze” attack into an IRS building in Austin, liberals were trying to link the madman to conservatives. The left-wing web site Daily Kos said the incident was a case of Tea Party “anti-government forces” launching their “first 9/11 inspired terrorist attack.” Jonathan Capehart writing in his blog at The Washington Post said Stack’s “alienation” reminded him of “the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.” Unbelievable! When a jihadist yells radical Muslim slogans while shooting U.S. soldiers, the left tells us it doesn’t have anything to do with Islam. But a deranged tax evader in Texas suddenly morphs into every conservative. Before the day is over they will be blaming Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney!

Here is the dirty secret the Left doesn’t want you to know. Joseph Stack’s “philosophy,” to the extent he had one, was closer to the left-wing drivel at Daily Kos and moveon.org than it is to the patriots who are in the Tea Party movement.

Joseph Stack printed his manifesto on his business web page yesterday as he took off to try to kill IRS employees. In it he rails at the wealthy, GM executives, drug companies and insurance companies. His rhetoric sounded like Obama style populism – heavy on class warfare. At the end of this drivel he attacks capitalism and approvingly quotes Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That is the same thing Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber when he assured him he just wanted “to spread the wealth around.” No, Joe Stack wasn’t any conservative – he was a left-wing populist!

Good news, friends. The stimulus bill is working just as Obama promised. Thousands of jobs are being created – and not in imaginary zip codes this time. These are real manufacturing jobs. Now, here’s the bad news – the jobs are being created overseas.

Barack Obama has talked a lot about using stimulus dollars to create new “green jobs” or “clean energy jobs.” Last month, the president said, “Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future — jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.” It seems like all the talk about green jobs was just a lot of hot air.

ABC News and other media outlets have reported recently that stimulus money specifically intended to create “green jobs” here has in fact been used to create thousands of jobs overseas. ABC noted that “Nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent on wind power … over the past year. But the study found that nearly 80% of that money has gone to foreign manufactures of wind turbines.”

According to the report, the largest award – $577 million – went to a Spanish company. One Portuguese company got $230 million of your hard-earned money. Another project that is expected to receive $450 million in taxpayer funded stimulus cash would help build a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas. It’s estimated that the project might create about 300 construction jobs. But it would also fund thousands of manufacturing jobs — in China. According to one study, as many as 6,000 stimulus jobs have been created overseas.

By the way, while the Obama Administration is wasting your money creating green jobs in China, Arizona just announced that it would no longer take part in a “groundbreaking attempt to limit greenhouses-gas emissions,” by implementing a regional cap and trade system. Why? It costs too much. State officials determined that the plan was too costly for consumers and businesses and “would slow the state’s economic growth.” But Obama and congressional liberals want to impose such a plan on the entire nation.

Even if the stimulus funds do create so-called green jobs, wind power is terribly expensive. It’s easy to understand Arizona’s decision when you consider the following analysis:

“The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in early 2008 that the government subsidizes solar energy at $24.34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and wind power at $23.37 per MWh. …Compare the subsidies to renewables with those extended to natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59). These are the energy sources (along with oil, which undergirds transportation) that do the heavy lifting in our energy economy.”

This is just more evidence of the grossly inefficient way government redistributes resources and wastes your tax dollars. Yet Obama and his liberal allies want to run our healthcare, too!

America is regrettably reaping the bitter fruit from the seeds of appeasement Obama has sown over the past year. Since taking office, Obama has made it his mission to apologize to our enemies and ignore our allies. He is the anti-Reagan, rejecting the notion of peace through strength. Rather than projecting confidence, he’s signaled weakness and put us in danger. Thugs and tyrants the world over sense that Obama is soft.

For example, Iran has executed several leaders of the pro-democracy movement and sentenced more to death in recent days with barely a peep of protest from the administration. In response to Obama’s conciliatory efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, promised a “punch” that would leave Western nations “stunned.” And Iranian “president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the Islamic regime is enriching more uranium and expanding its military facilities.

Just as serious was a statement from senior Chinese military leaders this week. Responding to U.S. arms sales to our ally Taiwan, Major General Luo Yuan said, “Our retaliation should not be restricted to merely military matters, and we should adopt a strategic package of counter-punches…” Yuan added that China could “attack by oblique means and stealthy feints. For example, we could sanction them using economic means, such as dumping some U.S. government bonds.”

China currently holds nearly $800 billion in U.S. bonds, and it is financing Obama’s astonishing spending spree. Now China is threatening an economic Pearl Harbor. Whether it’s Arab oil or Chinese credit, under Barack Obama America is becoming more dependent on our enemies, and no superpower will long survive in such a weak position.

Barack Obama grew the federal bureaucracy a bit more recently by creating a new agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor global warming. According to a press release, this new bureaucracy will provide information to individuals and decision makers as we are “witnessing the impacts of climate change … including sea-level rise … earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters.”

That’s just what we need – more liberal bureaucrats paid with your tax dollars to justify more Big Government liberal policies like cap and trade energy taxes. Of course, yesterday’s planned press conference at the National Press Club to promote the new agency had to be cancelled because of the snow storm that shut down Washington, D.C. for the past two days.

And so much for that snowmelt. As Washington continues digging out, we’re bracing for another 10 to 20 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. I guess Al Gore came out of hiding, saw his shadow and guaranteed us six more weeks of winter! With each falling flake, Al’s global warming theory looks flakier and flakier.

By the way, cap and trade is not working as planned in Europe. But some are trying desperately to resuscitate it in the U.S. Senate, despite the many obituaries written lately for this massive energy tax.

President Obama repeated his call Wednesday night for Congress to pass “comprehensive energy and climate change legislation.” Today, he picked up an endorsement of sorts, but probably not one he wanted.

Believe it or not, Osama bin Laden is a hardcore environmentalist. So much so that he’s calling for a global boycott of American goods and the dollar in order to “liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.” In his latest audiotape, bin Laden attacks American free enterprise and calls for “drastic actions” to combat climate change. The only way to stop it, says bin Laden, is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a grinding halt. Thus, the boycott of American goods and currency.

Come to think of it, bin Laden’s idea sounds vaguely familiar. Where have I heard it before? Oh, that’s right – from Barack Obama’s Science Advisor, Dr. John Holdren. In our July 29th report, I noted that Holdren was an advocate for “de-development” – a radical idea that would destroy America’s economy, especially its industrial base, via environmental regulation, because development is the root cause of economic and environmental injustice. These so-called “progressives” literally want to take us back in time economically.

The more you listen to him, the more Osama bin Laden – with his anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-free enterprise rants – sounds like a loyal, leftwingMSNBC fan. (Perhaps now I will finally be named Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person In The World”!)

While the White House and leftwing activists may be in denial about the results of last week’s special election in Massachusetts, a number of politicians appear to be getting the message. In the immediate aftermath of Scott Brown’s stunning upset victory, the White House was defiant and determined to pass ObamaCare. Having lost their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi quickly began discussing the available options for muscling their socialized medicine scheme through Congress.

Two plans emerged. One, called the “ping pong” option, would have the House pass the Senate’s bill with no amendments. But two days after Brown’s win, Pelosi said she didn’t have the votes to pass the Senate bill because of major differences. That left Democrats with reconciliation as their last option.

It’s a tricky legislative procedure, but it requires only 51 votes to pass the Senate. Major leftwing groups like SIEU, AARP and MoveOn.org were demanding Democrats move quickly to ram Obamacare through using the reconciliation process. For the past few days, it seemed likely that the Reid and Pelosi would try it.

Conservative groups were quick to sound the alarm, and our efforts are making a difference. Late yesterday evening, Politico reported that at least eight Senate Democrats (including Connecticut Independent Joe Lieberman) had expressed outright opposition or strong reservations to using this trick to pass a bill that nearly 60% of the public opposes. Suddenly, Harry Reid is saying “There is no rush” to pass ObamaCare.

President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address tomorrow night. He may or may not talk about dubious global warming, but a centerpiece of his address will likely be a dubious spending freeze. Many Americans were upset by the spending of the previous administration, but they have been shocked by the out-of-control spending of the Obama Administration. Last year, the Associated Press noted that Barack Obama’s budget “would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, more than four times the deficits of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.” (If you are a visual learner, click here.)

Not surprisingly, a number of recent surveys have found that deficit reduction and reduced federal spending are more important to voters than healthcare reform. Obama seems to have gotten that message – sort of. It’s being reported that the president will propose a three-year freeze on some discretionary spending, which will save about $25 billion a year. It’s a start, but let’s put that into perspective.

To begin with, the whole concept of a spending freeze is yet another flip-flop for Obama. As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedlyopposed the idea of a spending freeze during the presidential debates, saying it was “using a hatchet when you need a scalpel.”

This spending freeze is coming from a president who just racked up a record $1.4 trillion deficit with a failed stimulus spending bill, numerous bailouts and a budget that “increased non-defense spending by 12 percent.” One congressional aide remarked that Obama’s spending freeze is like “going on a diet after winning the pie eating contest.”

Obama’s proposed $25 billion in savings amounts to less than two percent of last year’s record deficit. And it comes just as his liberal allies in Congress are trying to pass a trillion-dollar socialized medicine scheme and yet another $100 billion stimulus plan. Clearly we need to take a hatchet to the federal budget, but Obama is only reluctantly reaching for his scalpel.

Yesterday, the president proved once again that he may well be his own worst enemy. Obama’s economic policies – tax hikes, bigger government, dramatically more spending, cap and trade, etc. – will make job growth and economic recovery much harder, not easier. Now he’s back to his full-throated rhetorical assaults against American business, and he’s sharpening his class warfare rhetoric.

The president made a surprise announcement yesterday about breaking up big investment banks. Some have described Obama’s plan as “the most far-reaching overhaul of Wall Street since the 1930s.” I realize there is legitimate concern about not repeating the mistakes of a policy based on the idea that some companies are “too big to fail.” But Obama’s comments and his Big Government solutions could have been applauded in Caracas, Havana or Moscow. It’s not surprising that a new poll of investors finds that 77% of them view Obama as “anti-business” and 80% question his ability to handle a financial crisis. (Probably because his record deficits are creating one!)

Obama has made an art form out of attacking “special interests” – banks, oil companies, hedge funds, insurance companies, etc. – industries that are responsible for hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Politically, there is a one-year statute of limitations on blaming the past eight years for everything, so he has to have an enemy. But you are left with the impression that the only employer in America Barack Obama really likes is Big Government.

It’s also ironic that on the very day the president said he “welcomes a fight” with American businesses, the Supreme Court upheld the free speech rights of corporations. Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President. You might get it! But worse than that, his policies will only deepen the recession and further the pain millions of Americans are facing.

As the nation approaches the one year anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration, administration officials are crowing about all their “accomplishments.” On the White House website, you can read about the myriad ways in which President Obama has saved the global economy, tackled climate change and made us safe.

Some of you may be dubious, but you can participate in a series of live online chats and blogs with key White House aides as they detail “what the Obama Administration has done over the past year, and where the Administration is heading on pivotal issues.” The White House may be trying to put on a happy face, but the American people clearly aren’t happy with hope and change.

Virtually every major polling outfit and news organization now finds that the president’s approval rating has tanked. Yesterday, CBS News reported that Obama’s approval rating hit a new low in its polling at 46%. Today, it’s Gallup, which reports that only 40% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy and just 37% approve of his performance on healthcare reform.

CNN and Quinnipiac University asked voters whether Obama’s first year in office had been a success or a failure. Quinnipiac found that voters were evenly divided at 45% each. CNN found 48% of voters saying Obama’s first year was a failure, while 47% said it was successful. And, after a year of Obama’s leadership, Quinnipiac found voters statistically tied when asked whether the nation would have been better off or worse off if John McCain had become president instead of Barack Obama.