The turnaround in Obama's political fortunes has been underway for 12 months but Massachusetts has to be a new low and watershed moment for him and his raft of spend-spend initiatives. As Maggie Thatcher said, "That's the trouble with socialists, eventually you run out of other people's money."

But when you do do a series of dirty-behind-closed-doors deals to buy votes for your hellishly expensive pet legislative projects even blue collar Massachusetts liberals can tell 'change' just morphed in 'Chicago-style politics'. Worse, when Mass. already has universal helathcare that its citizens are bing asked to stump up to pay for those states who were 'bought off', like Nebraska.

Obama's tenure looks to be a short one. While Clinton (in a similar position in 1994) reassessed and stole some key conservative economic policies to buy back public favour it is hard to see Obama doing the same. if anything his far-left politics has already run its course with what remains a mostly conservative US electorate. 

It has been posited here by a fellow Canada Free Press writer after it was raised with him by a number of others. I am already a Sarah Palin fan and only (as a Brit) came across Michele Bachmann in recent months. But from what I've heard and seen I would certainly think either would indeed be a good, solidly conservative, choice.

Michele BachmanWhether they would be two 'birds of the same feather' though, that would mean independents being put off and a dual ticket not making it because of that, is hard to say.

Is it just me? Or would this be the prettiest combo to run since Cleo and Mark Anthony?

What it amounts to, in its current form, is, as the excellent Republican Michele Bachmann puts it, the 'crown jewel of America's new socialism':

• a public option (which threatens all private options)
• Government funded abortion
• higher taxes (including new taxes on patients receiving important healthcare)
• a $500 billion cut in Medicare funding (for senior citizens)

Bachmann is calling for as many citizens as possible who want to ask hard questions of their congress representatives to congregate on Capitol Hill this coming Thursday at 12 noon in protest. If I was American (I'm English and live in the UK) I would be there. It's that important not least because, as the previous post states, the healthcare bill amounts to a further 18% takeover of the US private sector economy.

Just how much longer, with Obama in power, will America lead the world in world class private entreprenuerial business activity? If Americans don't understand the direction Obama is taking them they should come and see how socialism has debilitated the sluggish economies of Europe.

Both states went blue last November. Both look like going red this November. Though New Jersey looks a close run thing, the Republican's Bob McDonnell is currently 14 points ahead in the polls. This in a state that went 53% to 47% for Obama just a year ago.

It is clear that many pundits do see this week's vote in Virginia very much as a litmus test for national opinion - precisely why the Obama administration is apparently preparing to the throw its candidate under the bus by claiming he ran a bad campaign.

There can be little doubt that when America voted for 'change' Obama-style it had not reckoned on 30% of the private sector undergoing a government takeover by October 2009, with a further 18% threatened by the upcoming healthcare bill. More on that next, next post.

Edward Kennedy's Moral LegacyUsually it is Islamic terrorists, murderers, paedophiles, et al whose deaths grants the world some relief from their callous self-centredness. But occasionally the loss of the odd politician fits the bill, too. Edward Kennedy is such a man. 

Despicably arrogant through his life and having escaped justice for his manslaughter of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, Kennedy was a man who could always be counted upon to be on the wrong side of decency in any argument. Mary Jo's mother always described Kennedy as an arrogant man who never once indicated remorse for his actions in her daughter's death - a death which could well have been avoided had Kennedy reported the incident 9 hours before he did. The police found her scratch marks on the car's interior (she survived for a while in an air bubble).

Can we trust anything Kennedy said about this incident. Would you trust a man who constantly cheated on his wives and twice cheated (once paying someone to take his place) to pass exams at Harvard?

The usual drivel in posturing tributes are now rolling in. But on the debit side of the world's 'Decent human being' log, strike one for Senator Edward Kennedy, a spineless individual and liar - a man who this time cannot escape judgment.

At the same time we hear that 50,000 offenders have lately been let out of prison on early-release schemes. For good behaviour? For having renounced violence and crime? For sucking up to the the Governor? Not all all. Released simply to reduce over-crowding.

With the early release of unrepentant crooks, like Ronnie Biggs, multiple murderers, like Al Magrahi et al what we are witnessing is the rise of decadence and decline of high civilisation that is always exemplified when justice no longer matters in a society.

Our general lack of giving credence to justice by acknowledging that guilt matters, that punishment matters is slowly becoming alien to a scoiety which decadently believes 'correction' and 're-direction' is all that counts. Look at how the US has changed the names of its prisons to 'correctional facilities'. That shows how much Western society is losing sight of what comes first. The trouble is 'correction' comes second, punishment MUST come first, if justice is to be justice.

To listen to the White House and its supporters, in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to "Obama-care" is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole "Star Wars" cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform.

Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize a great many with the actions of a tiny few is the simple fact that Obama-care -- however defined -- has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama's handling of healthcare is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of self-proclaimed independents.

Focusing on the town halls certainly has its merits, but if you actually wanted Obama-care to pass, casting a majority of Americans as being stooges of racist goons may not be the best way to go.

Imagine if President George W. Bush, in his effort to partially privatize Social Security, had insisted that the "time for talking is over." Picture, if you will, the Bush White House asking Americans to turn in their e-mails, in the pursuit of "fishy" dissent. Conjure a scenario under which then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) derided critics as "evil-mongers" the way Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently described town hall protesters. Or if then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) had called vocal critics "un-American" the way Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) did last week, or if White House strategist Karl Rove had been Sir Spam-a-lot instead of David Axelrod.

Now I'm not asking you, dear reader, to do this so that you might be able to see through the glare of Obama's halo or the outlines of the media's staggering double standard when it comes to covering this White House. Rather it is to grasp that the Obama administration has been astoundingly incompetent.

I don't like "nice" people. Conversely, I have a sneaking regard for real political enemies who are prepared to state candidly what they are about. Which is why I mentioned Obama's long list of policy czars, above -- people like John Holdren (1970s advocate of forced abortions and mass sterilization) the new science czar, Van Jones (declared Communist) the new green jobs czar, Vivek Kundra (convicted shoplifter) the new infotech czar, Adolfo Carrion (pay-for-play scandals) the new urban subsidies czar, Nancy DePerle (lobbyist-to-regulator) the new health czar, Cass Sunstein (behaviourist and animal rights wacko) the new regulatory czar, and so on.

There are dozens of these, altogether. They are Obama's "shadow cabinet," with the advantage over his more presentable official cabinet that they can avoid congressional scrutiny in almost everything they do. They didn't need to face the Senate confirmation revelations that lost Obama so many of his earliest cabinet appointments. A mere Internet search for quotes reveals that many of them are capable of great candour, at least in the radical leftist environments from which most of them came.

The mainstream media focus is nevertheless not on them -- rich and easy pickings had they been Republican appointments -- but instead on Sarah Palin's appalling characterization of Obama's health-care agenda as not merely "socialist" but "evil"; and on her use of the term "death panels" to describe proposed bureaucratic arrangements for deciding who should be entitled to medical treatment, and how to advise the old, seriously handicapped, and ill on euthanasia options.

Needless to say the proposals themselves had been couched in "feelgood" language, with public relations campaigns at the ready in case someone like Palin called a spade a spade. She did so in full knowledge of how that publicity machine would respond.

It is assumed she will be running for president on the redneck ticket. But as we saw last week, she does not need any office to get results. For after many nice legislators had condemned her for her "unreasonable" criticisms, the U.S. Senate finance committee this week dropped a key provision to which she had referred, from the House health-care bill before them. According to the ranking Republican member, it was dropped "because it could be misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly."

That's a very nice way of saying that Sarah Palin had a point. And it is a point that would have passed unnoticed, had she confined herself to "nice" language.

A recent piece in the Washington Post noted that the only country in the world with which the U.S. has worse relations since Obama took office is Israel.

 An American administration is soft on butchers that ruleIran and desperately seeks dialogue with them, yet it is giving our friend and ally, and the only democracy in theMiddle East, a hard time.  What gives here?

Hanson: Two thoughts cross my mind:

(1) In general, for a variety of complicated reasons, Obama sees those who dislike the United States—an Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez, Ortega, etc.—as somehow more authentic and representative of their own "people." In turn, reaching out to the 'real' leadership of the disadvantaged and oppressed requires special post-colonial, post-imperial skills of a postracial, post-American leader such as himself.

In a sort of messianic role, he thinks he's our bridge to the revolutionary leadership of formerly Third World peoples. But the Iraniandemocrats in the street, the Honduran Supreme Court, a Uribe, a Maliki government, or the Israelis, all these pro-American friends for some strange reason like the United States, and, most likely, like us for what Obama would call reactionary reasons; so there is nothing sexy about them for Obama really.

(2) Israel--democratic, capitalist, Western, pro-American--is emblematic of all the things that Obama in the past has been skeptical about, since Israel appreciates our values, history, and what we stand for. Again, this is passé for Obama--as if one in a Columbia University seminar on post-imperialism were to raise his hand and declare, "Isn't it great that Israel is a beacon of democracy and Western values in the region?"

Imagine the reaction of the professor and students to that poor fellow, and, presto, there is what bothers Obama about Israel. In domestic policy terms, Israel is like the present health care system, Wall Street, the 5% who need their taxes raised, "they" who raised the bar, the insurance companies, etc., the Palestinians more like the victimized, poor American middle and under classes.

This story by 'Robin of Berkeley' published by American Thinker this morning is worth reading.

As I got into my 40's, my conservative, logical side started making more frequent appearances. I had some epiphanies: That, even with all my best efforts, the world was pretty much the same as when I entered it -- filled with both good and evil, dark and light. I had to admit, to my disappointment, that utopia wasn't around the corner, and that fate was in the hands of a Higher Power, not humans. I realized that life wasn't supposed to be easy, and that we shape our character through the hard stuff.