By Paul Rahe, Powerline

Obama's unbound ambition to rule over all

President Obama has one distinguishing feature. He is a man of rigid self-discipline. Politicians are a lot like actors: they tend to be vain; and, more often than the rest of us, they are presented with the temptations to which the vain are prone. Many–one thinks of Bill Clinton, John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford–succumb. If, however, in his personal life as an adult, Barack Obama has strayed from the straight and narrow, we have heard nary a word. It is, in fact, a sign of his astonishing self-discipline that we know next to nothing about his life apart from what he chose to impart in the two autobiographies he published.

For a long time now, for longer than we can perhaps imagine, every move he has made has been carefully calculated, calibrated, and choreographed. In this regard, he is in the fullest sense what every politician aims to be: a self-made (one might even say a self-invented) man. It is easy to see why someone like Evan Thomas should think him a god.

Once in a while, however, when Obama gets separated from his teleprompter, the mask slips a tad. On the hustings, Joe the Plumber caught the candidate off guard and got him to admit the truth about his plans to effect a redistribution of wealth. Something of the sort happened again last week–when, at a carefully staged rally for the administration’s health care proposal, to which the flacks who run ABC News tellingly invited no one who regards the current healthcare arrangement as even remotely satisfactory–President Obama responded to a question by acknowledging that his plan aimed to reduce medical costs by aligning “incentives” in such a fashion as to discourage the sick and the dying from undergoing “additional tests” or taking “additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care.”

Obama’s choice of words was, as always, soothing. But anyone familiar with the healthcare debate will immediately recognize what he left unsaid. We all know that, wherever there is socialized medicine, there is rationing. Cutting costs is, in fact, its rationale, and this end is achieved by a refusal on the part of the government to pay for care that the bureaucrats judge uneconomic. Already now, in the semi-socialized system to which we have been made subject, those consigned to HMOs come up against gatekeepers charged with shaving costs by restricting care.

Eric Maqrtell, Orlando properties

Cap & Trade will have detrimental impacts on homeownership

Among other provisions that control nearly every aspect of our lives, the Waxman-Markley energy bill has a requirement that forces the entire United States to use a National Building Code based on the green building standards of California. Regardless of whether your house is in Miami, Florida or Bangor, Maine, you’ll have to adhere to the standards used in a state that has one of the most moderate climates in the U.S. The construction industry is really going to suffer.

The bill forces sellers to have an energy inspection prior to being able to sell their home. Windows, appliances and insulation will have to be inspected and approved by a government inspector and modifications would have to be made for compliance before you can close the sale.

Basically, you won’t be able to sell until you go through the expense of bringing your house up to the new code. This will cost a prohibitive amount in many cases. For example, let’s say that you own an older house which you bought in 2003 for $250,000 and you now need to sell. Not only has the value fallen to or below the level of the mortgage due the the drop in prices, but you are now faced with re-insulating the entire house, installing new windows, and changing the HVAC & other appliances. The total cost for this type of renovation might easily come to well over 10% of the house’s value.

It begins to look as if defaulting on the mortgage might become even more common. The real tradegy is that low income families are more likely to live in older houses which won’t meet the new standards and which will require major upgrades. I thought that we weren’t going to see any new taxes on people who make less than $250,000. What a cruel joke!

By Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times

Clinton told Obama to toughen up

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran’s crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.

At his June 23 news conference, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and outraged” by Iranian behavior and “strongly condemned” the violence against anti-government demonstrators. Up until then, Mr. Obama and other administration officials had taken a softer line, expressing “deep concern” about the situation and calling on Iran to “respect the dignity of its own people.”

Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first.

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By Newt Gingrich, American Solutions

Obama is pushing the trojan horse of a "public option"

President Obama said something at his White House healthcare event last week that offers a disturbing hint of our future under his vision of health reform.

He suggested one way to save costs is not to spend on procedures that “evidence shows [are] not necessarily going to improve care” for the sick and the dying.

“Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller,” the President said. Maybe.  But the question is, who decides?

Who decides if those extra dollars will or will not be spent on your care or the care of someone you love?  Under the plan advocated by President Obama and his allies, that someone will be a government bureaucrat.

And even if that bureaucrat has the best of intentions, and even if he does his job well — especially if he does his job well — his main concern won’t be you or your loved one.

His only concern, if he’s doing his job right, will be for the government’s bottom line.

It’s his choice, not yours.  Surgery costs too much.  Make do with the painkiller.

By Bruce Walker, American Thinker

For the first time Obama has a higher disapproval rating

Slowly, methodically, consistently, the reliable Rasmussen Poll has been tracking the most vital numbers of the Obama Presidency.  General, soft numbers like “Do you approve of the way the president is handlings his job?” really mean nothing.  In times of crisis, most people will answer “yes.”   This is particularly true when a young articulate president who is splattered over every single magazine in every grocery checkout line with happy photos with his wife and kids, and when every tough question — both of them — in his press conferences is simply ignored.

It is not the soft, fluffy feelings about Obama that really matter.  It is the intense feelings about him.  Obama began his presidency with a lot of very enthusiastic support.  About forty-five percent of Americans “strongly approved” of the job he was doing, while an anemic fifteen percent of Americans “strongly disapproved” of the job he was doing.  In a couple of months, that gap between the “strongly approve” and “strongly disapprove” closed to a gap of between eight and ten points.  The number who strongly approved glided down into the high thirties, while the number who strongly disapproved just about doubled, into the low thirties.

From April to mid-June, Obama seemed to have a fairly comfortable margin between his strong supporters and strong opponents, sometimes closing to a point or less and sometimes widening to about ten points.  But the last couple of weeks have not been kind.  Several days, the percentage of Americans who strongly disapproved of Obama was actually greater than the percentage of Americans who strongly approved of Obama.  As of June 30, the number of strongly disapprove is actually two points greater than the number who strongly approve.