After a little more than a year in Office, Barack Obama's public approval rating has hit its all time lowest point.

According to the latest Marist poll, only 44% of registered voters "approve" of the job Obama's doing, with 47% disapproving.  The poll also found Obama doing far worse with the all-important "independent" voters, wit only 29% approving and 57% disapproving.

The numbers from Rasmussen take it a step further.  They show 47% approval and 53% disapproval generally, but when you look at how strongly people feel about him one way or another, it gets pretty overwhelming.  It shows 27% "strongly approving", but 40% "strongly disapproving" - meaning Obama's upsidedown by 13 points when it comes to people who feel strongly and are more likely to be tuned in to what's going on.  (And more likely to vote...)

The same poll also shows 75% of voters describing themselves as "angry" about current federal government policies.

Despite numerous polls that clearly demonstrate that the American people don't want the type of health care "reform" that the Democrats have proposed, Obama has indicated (yet again) that he's undeterred and will push forward to try and get it passed.

As for that pesky public opinion, Obama continues to attribute it to a "lack of understanding" on the part of the public.  They just need to do a better job of communicating he says.  Of course, this is the President who has "communicated" with the American people more than any other President in history at this point in an administration, (with at least 29 high profile speeches dedicated to his health care plans).

At a New Hampshire town hall meeting (yet another in the record number of communication attempts), Obama stated:

“We just have to make sure that we move methodically and that the American
people understand what’s in the bill,” Obama said.

“What I will not do is to stop working on this issue because it is the right
thing to do for America,” Obama said. “You got to let your
members of Congress know they shouldn't give up.”

So, what kind of impact will Obama's budget "freeze" actually have on the budget?  Since, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, the following video says quite a bit...

Pass it on.

Since the State of the Union speech, (or really since the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts), Barack Obama has been working to polish his "fiscal accountability" credentials.

He told Congress that he wanted to institute a freeze on all "discretionary" domestic spending, which is another way of saying "everything except Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, defense, interest payments, stimulus spending, bailouts and anything we want to call an 'emergency'".  This means that the "freeze" is projected to apply to about $450 billion (or 13%) of a $3.5 trillion dollar budget.

This is essentially like putting a smiley face on a death certificate.  Or rather a "fiscal death certificate", considering his new budget projects the biggest deficit in American history and a national debt of about $20 trillion in the next decade.

So while we're continuing to "not" freeze spending on entitlement programs, what exactly are we cutting? According to USA Today:

Political odds and ends...

US triple-A credit rating at risk?

You've got to wonder how long we can keep going down the fiscal road we're on and still maintain a AAA credit rating, which enables us to sell our bonds at higher rates of interest, and keep financing our big spending ways.  Turns out that thought has occurred to the people who hand out those ratings.

Moody's Investor Services, (the bond rating service), has said that the top debt ratings for the United States and the United Kingdom may "Test the AAA boundaries" due to the condition of their public finances.

Terrorists staying at Gitmo?

That's what the number two Democrat in the House of Representatives seems to be saying.  House Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said: “I think the administration realizes that this is a difficult issue,... And I think that they are assessing where they are and where they
think we ought to be, and I think that’s appropriate and I look forward
to discussing it with them.”

The brick wall the administration is running up against is that, no matter what they decide they want to do with Gitmo, Congress has to fund it.  And Republicans have introduced measures to deny funds to move the terrorists...and to deny funds for conducting trials of terrorists in US courts (as opposed to in military tribunals).

This story serves as a wonderful example of what conservatives have said about the Democrats favorite notions of how to "fix" health care in America.  That being to have the government just take the whole thing over in what is known as a "single payer system"...which means the government pays all the bills.

As conservatives have pointed out, when the government pays all the bills, it eventually moves to control the costs by rationing care.  And, with the profit motive gone, advances in medicine and the overall quality of care soon suffer.

During the course of the debate, both sides have held out countries such as Canada and England as representing what was "right" or "wrong" with this approach.

Well now comes this story from CBC News:

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 60, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he
would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a
routine procedure. ...

One of the byproducts of the intense debate over ObamaCare and the proposed entre' to a government takeover of about 1/6th of our economy is a renewed interest on the part of state legislators in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.

In other words, the scope and power of the federal government is (supposed to be) limited, therefore it can't be construed to extend to allowing Washington DC to mandate that private citizens purchase a specific consumer product.  In this case, a health insurance policy.  (via the AP)

Although President Barack Obama's push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in more than two-thirds of the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.

The polls are in on the publics response to Obama's first State of the Union speech, and the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

According to the latest Gallup poll, Obama's job approval is still under the half-way mark, at 48%.  Via LifeNews:

In the three days following the speech, Gallup shows Obama with a 48
percent approval and 46 percent disapproval rating -- unchanged from
before the address.

Philip Klein, a writer at the conservative magazine American Spectator gives
his insight on the poll.

"Going into President Obama's first State of the Union speech,
Gallup noted that annual speeches to Congress rarely affect presidential
approval ratings (in large part because the audience tends to be skewed
toward those who already support him). It turns out that despite his
oratorical skills, our current president is not different in this
respect from his predecessors," he writes. ...

As everyone knows by now, Republicans now have 41 seats in the US Senate, which means that they can sustain a filibuster on issues such as ObamaCare, if they stick together.  And it's this change in Capitol dynamics that has led Democrats to entertain thoughts of trying to pass ObamaCare by getting around the filibuster rule and use what are known as "reconciliation" rules...which would only require a simple majority for passage.

In order for that to happen however, the Democrat leadership would have to get  at least 51 of 59 Democrats go along with the extraordinary measure and, as you can imagine, some of the more "moderate" Democrats are a little skittish about doing anything that blatant - especially since the election results in Massachusetts.

But now comes word that Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson may be thinking about going along with the scheme...

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson has flip-flopped again -- this time saying that he can back the controversial reconciliation process that the Senate may use to railroad the pro-abortion health care bill through the chamber. Nelson first flip-flopped on abortion funding.

Nelson drew the ire of the pro-life movement when he changed his mind on supporting a firm ban on all abortion funding under the bill and compromised with Harry Reid to force some taxpayers to fund abortions. ...

A US Immigration judge has granted political asylum for a family from Germany due to persecution resulting from their choice to home school their kids.

It seems that the German government has an issue with parents who don't send their children to "state" schools, even going to far as to fine or jail those who do home school.  (via the Washington Times...)

The Romeikes home-schooled their children in Germany and
received fines totaling $10,000. On one occasion, Mr. Donnelly said,
police hauled their children off to school. In 2006, the Romeikes
emigrated to Tennessee and continued home schooling their children. Mr.
Donnelly said the family applied for political asylum within three
months of arriving in the U.S.

This is the kind of thing that stems from a mentality that government should have a monopoly on educating children.  It's a mentality that is threatened by a loss of control over messages.  When a government wants to control what children are (and are NOT) taught, there's a motive...and it's a sure thing it's not in your best interest.