What the Hill reported today:

President Barack Obama’s budget will lead to deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the CBO estimated Friday.

Via Instapundit.

What the Democratic nominee for president said in October:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

And you wonder why the tea parties have taken off.

Here are the pups….. in order of seniority:

Saxby.

Shadow.

Marley.

All say “woof” and send their doggy breath in love…

Imagine you’re Chief Executive of a company.  A year after you’ve put a product on the market that your product development team said would sell like hotcakes and well, it isn’t even selling like cold cereal, you’d probably think about restructuring that department.

Well, just over a year ago, the president’s economic team promised us that  if we adopted their “stimulus,” we wouldn’t see unemployment climb above 8%–and it would have reached that peak oh, about nine months ago.  And now it’s stall at 9.7%, with jobs still being lost even though that economic team promised us new jobs would be created.

And now we’ve got the president following in Harry Reid’s footsteps and saying that his economic plan is working!?!?!  Doesn’t he realize that by saying it’s working, he’s admitting that, well, just over a year ago, his economic team got it wrong?  They predicted an unemployment rate for February  two full points below where it is right now.

(H/t for chart: Gateway Pundit.)  And heck, the unemployment rate is even higher than they predicted it would be without their “recovery plan.”

Methinks it’s time for a new economic team.  Don’t you?

From the Washington Examiner:

Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., who is under investigation by the House Ethics committee for sexually harassing a male staffer, has announced he will resign immediately rather than serve out the rest of his term.

H/t, K-Lo at The Corner on NRO:

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

Today marks the 240th anniversary of one of the pivotal events of American history, an event which would put one of the greatest patriots, for the right reasons, briefly on the side of the British, against those Bostonians agitating against British oppression.

And while those patriots were right to protest the quartering of British troops in the heart of Boston, the citizens went overboard with their taunts.  They began by taunting one sentry, standing guard outside the Custom House.  Later the crowd grew; Captain Thomas Preston, then in charge of the British garrison, dispatched several soldiers to relieve the sentry.  

Not content just to protest the soldiers, many patriots let their passions get the best of them and started pummeling the troops with snowballs and other objects.  In a panic, the troops fired on the crowd, an event which became known as the Boston Massacre.

This is not to say that the soldiers conducted themselves appropriately.  Some fired directly into the crowd instead of trying to use different means to respond.  And while Preston did not issue the order to fire, he was not able to control his men.  (Someone did yell, “Fire,” but the cry may have come from the patriots taunting the troops.)  Three men died that day (with two dying later of wounds suffered that night), with Crispus Attucks being the first to fall.  This man of mixed race (having both African and Native American Indian blood) is considered the first American to give his life in the American Revolution–even though he died five full years before Lexington and Concord.

When the soldiers were arrested, Preston, having trouble finding representation, asked  John Adams, the aforementioned great patriot, to defend him.  And reluctantly, that great man did.  He argued that the soldiers fired in self-defense, provoked by an unruly and increasingly violent mob.  Of the eight men indicted, only two were convicted, but on the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Even as Adams’ defense spared the lives (or at least ensured the freedom) of the soldiers and reminded Americans that the soldiers did not act out of malice, the incident still served to harden sentiment against the British. It reminded Americans that the British had stationed troops in the heart of the City of Boston, an unwarranted (or so it seemed to the patriots) assertion of royal authority. (more…)

A couple weeks ago, you know about the time the citizens of Massachusetts elected a Republican to fill a Senate seat Democrats had held since the twilight of the Truman Administration, I thought I had read somewhere that President Obama planned to pivot away from health care and focus on jobs and the economy.  And while he may have given a speech hither, thither and yon on the economy, his focus at least since last June has been on overhauling the nation’s health care system.

Of course, he’s taken the occasional break to focus on other (more) pressing issues, like the war in Afghanistan, but he really seems bound and determined not just to effect some reform in health care, but to enact some major changes to the system.  While it might be smart politcally, as David Freddoso put it in the Washington Examiner yesterday, for Obama to retreat from his ambitious overhaul and seek instead “a cosmetic victory, after which he should privately acknowledge defeat and run like hell from this issue as quickly as possible,” the Democrat ”has already shut himself off from this path by committing to the position that incremental health reforms would be ineffectual.”

As another pundit put it, he “has put all of his eggs in the healthcare basket.”

Remember, the president, like all of us, only has a limited number of hours in the day, so he can’t devote his attention to every issue.  But, in recent days, it seems it’s been all health care all the time.  He held all all-day health care “summit” with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders.  It not only took time to convene and conduct the summit, but it also took time to prepare for it.  Meanwhile he’s been having meetings in the White House, trying to strong arm wavering Democrats to support his overhaul.

Soon, he’ll be traveling to Philadelphia and St. Louis to stump for reform. (more…)