Media elites and pointy-headed leftwing intellectuals are having spasms this morning over Sarah Palin. What set them off this time? A liberal blogger discovered that Gov. Palin had written some “cheat” notes on her hand to use during her speech at the Tea Party convention this weekend. Every commentator in the country is using the incident to denounce her as stupid, non-intellectual, un-presidential and unserious. By the way, the “reminders” on her palm were “Energy,” “Cut taxes” and “Lift America’s spirits.” Oh the horror!

Of course most of the media talking heads continue to think that Obama is just the smartest, coolest guy that has ever occupied the Oval Office. Most of them thought it was silly when we raised questions about why our Harvard-educated president couldn’t say “Good morning” without his co-president – the Teleprompter. And even with the teleprompter, Obama manages to display serious ignorance. In a speech last week, he told a story about a Navy corpsman apparently not realizing that the “p” and the “s” in “corpsman” are silent. Twice, with the teleprompter, Obama pronounced the word as “corpse man.” Now there’s a job I wouldn’t want.

The media and the Left desperately want America to think that only liberals are smart. I remember how Reagan was mocked unmercifully because he used note cards during his speeches. The media had nothing but contempt for Dan Quayle. And, of course, George W. Bush was constantly presented as a buffoon.

“Poor little stupid Sarah Palin,” they are all saying. She wrote “Energy” on her hand to remind herself to bring up the need for more drilling. She wrote “Cut taxes” because she believes that is how to get our economy moving. She wrote “Lift America’s spirit” because she knows America needs inspiration.

Our president doesn’t write notes on his palm. He “knows” that limiting drilling is a great idea while we grow more dependent on people who hate us. He “knows” that raising taxes on families and small businesses is just the thing to do when the economy is on the ropes. And he is too busy apologizing for America’s sins and bashing businesses to think about lifting our spirits.

So who is the stupid one?

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.

Today’s Washington Times reports that the Obama White House has “quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.” As a candidate Barack Obama said he would crack down on “the disproportionate influence of lobbyists and special interest.”

But according to the Times report, the Obama White House, which we were told would be “the most open and transparent administration in history,” is promising major donors “access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections.” One top donor was given access to the Oval Office – as a birthday present. Another donor and his family got to use the White House bowling alley. Other big givers get to watch movies with the Obamas in the White House theater.

CBS’s Mark Knoller reports that President Obama has held 23 fundraisers in his first nine months in office – that’s nearly four times as many as George W. Bush held in his first nine months.

Responding to the Washington Times report, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said, “Bill Clinton turned the White House into a hotel and coffee shop. Now President Obama has turned the White House into a full service resort complete with amenities for the highest Democrat bidder. The seriousness of this issue requires an immediate investigation… Candidate Obama pledged to clean up the muddy waters of Washington, but President Obama has jumped in head first.”

In March, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned, “President 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.” That warning is already coming true. While Congress was debating ObamaCare, a new Big Government program expected to cost $1 trillion, the announcement came last week that the United States posted a record annual deficit of $1.4 trillion. To give you some perspective, the previous record deficit, recorded last year, was a “mere” $459 billion.

But, if things don’t change quickly in Washington, one budget analyst warns that it could get a lot worse than the CBO suggests. Brian M. Riedl of the Heritage Foundation says, “The White House figures are based on unrealistic estimates of discretionary spending, interest payments and interest rates.” According to Riedl, a more realistic analysis produces deficits “$4 trillion higher than recent estimates by the Obama administration and the Congressional Budget Office.” And if spending goes unchecked by future Congresses, the budget deficit could reach $2 trillion a year by 2019.

That kind of outrageous spending is unsustainable and will bankrupt America. But it helps to explain why liberal politicians are proposing a massive new energy tax, a value added tax, new surtaxes and excise taxes and more.

Here’s a news story that you probably didn’t hear about over the weekend. Some of Obama’s staunchest supporters are beginning to question his foreign policy. Former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE), a Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War who endorsed Obama last year, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday. He congratulated Obama on his Nobel Peace Prize but criticized his foreign policy for being too “naïve.” Kerrey also criticized Obama for “apologizing for America too much.”

Kerrey wrote, “[Obama] has made too many apologies. And at this point, his strategy is too naïve and has too little coherence to be called a strategy.” Kerrey even went so far as to praise George W. Bush on Iraq. He wrote, “Then, against all reasonable predictions, President Bush chose to increase rather than decrease our military commitment. The ‘surge,’ as it became known, worked. Victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat… Great American leaders of our past had ignored popular sentiment and pressed on during the darkest hours, even when setbacks give rhetorical ammunition to skeptics.”

Kerrey is respected in and around Washington for his foreign policy opinions. In fact, he is respected so much that he was placed in charge of the 9/11 commission. Normally, when a top supporter begins to criticize a president’s foreign policy, it is a lead story on the nightly news. But then again, the mainstream media would never want to insult this Administration.

Iranian thug Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just kicked Barack Obama in the political groin. He said the worst thing he could possibly think of to insult Obama — he compared him to George W. Bush. Ouch! That has got to hurt. Obama and his leftwing allies have regularly defamed President Bush and suggested he is responsible for everything from hurricanes to wanton slaughter. To the Obamians, Bush is a war criminal. Obama was going to come into the White House and change America – and the world! The Texas cowboy would be forever forgotten.

Over the last five months, Barack Hussein Obama has made repeated efforts to convince Iran’s leaders that he was ready to do business with them. He sent the Iranian government New Year’s greetings; he apologized for his own country; he sent private “love” letters of respect to the ayatollah. (Maybe that made Mahmoud jealous.) But, alas, it isn’t enough. Barack Obama committed the ultimate sin – he reluctantly said people shouldn’t have their skulls cracked open and be shot simply for wanting basic human rights. Ahmadinejad is now demanding that Obama apologize for sounding like Bush.

It is probably too much to hope that as our apprentice president continues his on-the-job training, he may eventually learn that his own country is not the cause of the world’s woes but is indeed the only thing standing between mankind and another dark age.

- Excerpt from Gary Bauer’s Daily Report (6-25-09)
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Obama’s Numbers Falling

Last week, we reported that President Obama’s approval rating was starting to fall after a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll recorded its lowest figure to date. Now there is more evidence that the novelty is wearing off. For some time now, the daily Rasmussen tracking poll has also detected declining support for the president, and it recorded a new low over the weekend.

In assessing President Obama’s support, pollster Scott Rasmussen has developed a unique measurement – the presidential approval index (PAI). Rasmussen calculates the PAI by subtracting the percentage of voters who strongly approve of the president from the percentage of those who strongly disapprove. It is a measure of core support or disapproval.

For the first six weeks of the Obama administration, the president enjoyed strong support with a presidential approval index consistently in the double digits, with significantly more voters strongly approving of President Obama’s performance than strongly disapproving. That’s to be expected during the so-called “honeymoon” period that all presidents generally receive from the public. But in March, Rasmussen’s polling detected a “shift in the winds.” In more than one hundred days of polling since the first week of March, Obama has earned a double-digit PAI rating just three times.

And yesterday, for the first time ever, Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll found President Obama’s approval index was in fact negative at -2, with 32% of likely voters strongly approving of his performance and 34% of likely voters strongly disapproving. Today, his PAI remains negative at -1.

And here’s more news that must concern the president: His days of blaming everything on George W. Bush are coming to an end. According to a newly released Rasmussen poll, while a majority of voters still cut the president some slack on the economy, the number of voters who blame the current economic conditions on Bush is down eight points, while the number blaming Obama is up 12 points, a 20-point swing in three weeks.

Finding His Voice

President Obama struggled this weekend to catch up with Congress and the American people in voicing his support for freedom in Iran and expressing moral outrage for the oppressive tactics of the tyrants in Tehran. Friday, the House voted 405-to-1 to condemn the regime and support the Iranian people seeking liberty. Hours later, the Senate unanimously approved a similar resolution. Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Lieberman (ID-CT) issued a joint statement Friday, which read, “By acting now, Congress sent an unmistakable message of support to the courageous Iranian people at a critical moment in their history.” By staying silent, the Obama White House had been sending a message of support to the mullahs.

Saturday, the White House released a statement from the president. Here is an excerpt:

“The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights. …If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.”

While Obama’s rhetoric is getting better, his policy toward outlaw states like Iran is way behind reality. He still thinks he can negotiate with Ahmadinejad to end his nuclear weapons program. By the way, that would be a form of “meddling” that would only serve to offer legitimacy to the Holocaust-denying dictator. Meanwhile, a North Korean ship continues on its way, while suspected of carrying contraband materials in violation of U.N. sanctions. What will Obama do?

There’s another area where Obama is hopelessly behind and Big Media won’t tell you about this. For years, the Bush Administration spent money to promote pro-democracy movements in Iran. And now, just as those efforts are beginning to bear fruit, what does the Obama Administration do? The president cut the funding for those programs in his first budget to Congress.

And if you don’t think that it matters one iota if Iran becomes a free nation or if the Islamic fanatics currently running Iran are allowed to develop nuclear weapons, consider the latest statement from Al Qaeda: “God willing, the nuclear weapons [in Pakistan] will not fall into the hands of the Americans, and the Mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans.” If we ignore reality and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t matter, our next 9/11 won’t be 3,000 dead, but hundreds of thousands.

- Excerpt from Gary Bauer’s Daily Report (6-22-09)
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Barack Obama has been hailed as one of the greatest orators of our day, yet he has been silent in recent days, refusing to speak up in defense of democracy in Iran. Instead, the Washington Post reported yesterday that our president is trying not to “alienate the ayatollah,” all so he can keep alive his hopes for diplomacy with the Islamofascist regime, like Neville Chamberlain seeking “peace in our time.”

While the president stays tight lipped, the media are making excuses for his silence. Isolationists on the right like Pat Buchanan to left wingers like Keith Olbermann are all saying that President Obama should keep his mouth shut so that “American meddling” doesn’t become the issue in Iran. Guess what? The tyrants in Tehran are already denouncing America for “interventionist statements.” The idea that our words matter to this regime any more than they mattered to Hitler is laughable. But this president promised us that he would restore America’s moral authority around the world. Let’s think about that for a moment.

How did America win that moral authority to begin with? We won World War II and liberated Europe and Japan from tyrannical regimes. Then we rebuilt our defeated enemies and turned them into allies. We rallied the free world in defense of liberty against the evil empire that was the Soviet Union. And our free enterprise economy, combined with the generosity of American foreign aid and individual charitable giving, did more to create wealth and lift people out of poverty than at any other time in human history.

But somewhere along the way, Mr. Obama insists we lost our moral authority. How? According to Mr. Obama, we lost it when George W. Bush invaded Iraq and freed 25 million Muslims from the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s rape rooms and child prisons. Now it is the Left’s position to talk with tyrants rather than to stand with slaves yearning for freedom.

Today, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed the “absolute victory” of Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During his speech, he led the crowd in chants of “death to America,” “death to Israel” and “death to the U.K.” Thank goodness Obama avoided alienating the ayatollah!

- Excerpt from Gary Bauer’s Daily Report
Sign up for his End of Day Report here.