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Obama's budget nears $4 trillion, but right now, it's hard to tell exactly how much bigger this budget really is than Bush's $3.1 trillion budget because Obama's budget includes spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush used to hide that spending in emergency bills. But the war in Iraq costs about $120 billion a year. Afghanistan is less. So this is still a tremendous increase in spending. This budget will push the deficit to $1.75 trillion. And stupid Republicans give this guy a pass for having the temerity to talk about fiscal responsibility after his stimulus boondoggle, the housing bailout boondoggle, and this monster budget and budget deficit.

Republicans are already starting to attack the budget. This article says it's a $3.55 trillion budget. WSJ says it's $3.6 trillion. Foxnews said it was $3.75 trillion. The media has surrendered all objectivity, and we can't even get an accurate number for how much this budget will cost. On the one hand, it's just comical to see Republicans complain about an outrageously irresponsible and destructive budget after they passed 8 outrageously irresponsible and destructive budgets while George Bush was president. On the other hand, just because Bush and Republicans were outrageously irresponsible and destructive for 8 years is no excuse for Obama and Democrats to be more outrageously irresponsible and destructive now. I feel kind of slimy now that Republican aristocrats are suddenly aligned with me.

Obama's team says this budget is essential to getting socialized medicine - I mean universal coverage. $635 billion. But Obama's plans are design to fail. His plan is intended to force Americans into universal coverage and to have healthy people subsidize unhealthy people. Many Americans will drop their private coverage and take government coverage, driving the costs into the stratosphere. Obama will hike taxes even more to pay for the new costs. Other Americans will refuse to play by Obama's rules and get health care on the expanding black market. The American people won't stand for this, and Obama knows it. His plan is designed to fail. Then Obama will force socialized medicine on us as the "only" alternative to evil and rich Americans who won't do their patriotic duty and buy into Obama's plan.

Obama goes after foreign profits and tax havens. Even though Obama appears dumber than Dan Quayle, there's no doubt his advisers told him this would force companies to flee America to lower tax countries at a record pace. The only rational conclusion is Obama does not have America's best interests at heart. He knows his policies are destructive to America. He's punishing Americans for some perceived slight.

Those changes are part of a package that would raise taxes on business by $353.5 billion over the next 10 years, which could help fund other tax cuts or spending, or reduce the deficit.

What these tax increases will do is harm domestic energy production and our economy and send jobs fleeing overseas. This almost has to be Obama trying to implement black liberation theology, punishing white people for subjugating blacks, and implementing Marxism, doesn't it?

Stanley Kurtz of the National Review claims that "A scarcely concealed, Marxist-inspired indictment of American capitalism pervades contemporary 'black-liberation theology'...The black intellectual's goal, says Cone, is to "aid in the destruction of America as he knows it." Such destruction requires both black anger and white guilt. The black-power theologian's goal is to tell the story of American oppression so powerfully and precisely that white men will "tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil."

And doesn't that relate to AG Holder calling America a country of cowards?

Instead of seeking the unity he claims to be endorsing, Obama is following in the footsteps of communist community organizer, Saul Alinsky—to whose memory Obama contributed a chapter in a collection titled “After Alinsky.”

Trying to inflame white guilt and black anger? It sure was divisive.

The Heritage Foundation explains the really bad consequences of Obama's cramdown bill.

It's bad enough the legislative branch uses earmarks to steal our political freedom, but Obama's cabinet members added earmarks into Democrats new $410 billion omnibus spending bill. So under Obama, the executive branch is stealing our political freedom too. Let's hope this is a one-time event because this bill is a holdover from last year, but don't bet on it.

Any carbon cap would be a huge tax increase. Obama and McCain were in lockstep on this policy. It's be kind of nice if voters actually had a viable option for good government in an election instead of just terrible Republicans and Democrats.

This guy should be charged in US courts. He wasn't captured on a battlefield. He was captured in Chicago.

Harvard has turned my claim that liberalism is literally insanity - liberals are divorced from reality and no matter how many times over how many centuries their policies fail, they continue to support them - and asks if libertarianism is mental illness. Too funny. Since libertarianism has never failed, and it created the greatest country the world has ever known, the answer is no. This conference proves liberalism is insanity because these people think the free market failed despite that our money system is 100 percent socialist institution, our income tax is Marxist and government policies created the subprime housing market.

As funny as this sounds, it's still dangerous. I predict this is the first volley in a coordinated effort by the academic left to brainwash college students into thinking that anybody who supports free markets has a mental problem, thereby dismissing any free market argument from debate.

Even Robert KKK Byrd recognizes that Obama is executing a power grab - increasing the power of the presidency at the expense of the other branches and the people. Just like Bush on super-steroids. Obama is trying to pull the entire apparatus of government into the White House. When it comes to the fundamentals of governing - the power of government, the role of government, the power of the executive branch, etc. - Obama is like Bush's, bigger, stronger, nastier twin. I think George Bush was misguided but well intentioned. I think Obama knows exactly what he's doing. I think he intends to harm our country, and he's organizing to limit any opposition including from his own party - which is already starting to rain down on him.

John Boehner says Republicans want to work with Obama, but Pelosi stands in the way. That's why John Boehner should never have been elected minority leader. Why in the world would Republicans want to work with a man who is intent on destroying everything that made America great? John Boehner is part of the problem, not the solution. Quit playing nicey nice with this closet Marxist and starting fighting for the freedom and severely limited government that is our birthright and made America the greatest country in the world. That's the position that would give Republicans majorities like the Democrats have now. And those majorities would only increase as freedom increased, causing prosperity and security to increase along with it.

Everybody is recognizing that Barack Obama is like George Bush on steroids, including Mises scholar in a review of Mencken's Note's on Democracy.

Mencken then turns to Democracy and Liberty. He contends that the common man has no interest in liberty: "he is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. He longs for the warm, reassuring smell of the herd, and is willing to take the herdsman with it."

We see far too much of that today, but I think voters prefer prosperity, and prosperity flows from freedom, not government. And that's how a leader will turn this around.

Murray Rothbard, one of the titans of the Austrian theory of economics, explains the business cycle that we're living right now in a very easy to understand fashion. This is very well written, though a bit long, and well worth the time spent reading it, imo. Rothbard fingers Coolidge's interventionist policies for sparking the crisis that Hoover and FDR turned into the Great Depression and reminds the world that only Mises predicted the Great Depression.

Democrats cancelling D.C. school voucher program that has saved thousands of kids from failing schools. Unfortunately for Democrats, the families who depend on those vouchers love them, and they traditionally vote Democrat. Democrat policies are being exposed as harming the people they pretend to support.

China's government faces a challenge to its authority because of the economic downturn. We've been stupidly making the Chinese tyrants richer and propping up their tyrannical government. The key to making China free is for the world to stop funding China's economic growth. We didn't defeat the Soviets by making them rich. And we want to make China free ASAP, because it becomes a more dangerous power every day. Adopting the FairTax would but an immediate brake on Chinese growth as international companies suddenly shifted from building in China to building the US and US products, no longer punished by the US tax code, would drop in price on the world market (Chinese good would increase in price in he US), promoting US goods at the expense of Chinese goods. No change toward China is necessary to encourage China to become free. We just need to adopt the FairTax.

Cato points out the obvious: President Obama is lying when he talks about fiscal responsibility. Obama's rhetoric is once again at odds with his policy. This article has a graph that points out several significant things: Ronald Reagan dramatically cut domestic spending even with a Democrat congress; Bush the Elder Democrat dramatically increased domestic spending with a Democrat Congress; Bill Clinton kept Bush's high spending flat until the Republican congress cut it again after 1995; Bush the Younger Democrat increased it again when he took office; but nobody comes even a little bit close to the kind of outrageous spending Obama is planning. Obama is definitely planning to transform America in his Marxist image through the use of government force. The way our economy is right now, during this recession, is how Europe's economies are all the time. Obama's spending would make this recession the new way of life in America. This is change the American people won't stand for.

Cato laughs at Obama's assertion that his trillions of dollars will be spent wisely. It's impossible. The amount of fraud and waste in government is not simply proportional to the amount of money involved, it rises faster than the increase in money involved. The only solution to government waste, fraud and corruption is severely limiting the size and scope of government.

Hayek explains that labor unions' failure to accept lower wages in a recession, which leads to unemployment instead of reduces wages and steady employment, prompts continued inflationary policy. He further predicts, in 1970, a worldwide inflation, based on this. That's exactly what we've seen since 1970. This is a transcript of a lecture, and I found it kind of hard to read. Or maybe not so hard to read, but far too long for the information imparted.

Reason describes how D.C. residents have just decided to ignore the Constitution, which they once acknowledged, in order to get a vote in the House of Representatives. If these people want representation, they can move to a state or change the Constitution. Living in D.C. gives those citizens special influence over representatives - they see them every day - that the rest of us don't have. That's why they the Founding Fathers didn't give them a vote. It obviously wasn't an oversite. The Founding Fathers governed from D.C. too.

I agree with Reason that the current best policy for North Korea is deterence and leaving South Korea and Japan to defend themselves. If the North Koreans get a missile that can reach the US, then I would support destroying it on the pad before launch. We shouldn't trust to missile defense in that scenario. Missile defense must always be a backup plan.

Michelle Malkin exposes the poster children for ACORN and Obama's mortgage bailouts, and they aren't pretty.

Bobby Jindal's speech is unusually bland.