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Enthusiastic, entertaining, energized and eminent, President Obama's demeanor and delivery at the State of the Union belied his political reality. Unbowed, unbroken and possibly unaffected by the recent midterm Republican wave, Obama displayed his great skill by delivering an emotional teleprompter-driven speech that was a throwback to his first election. Varying tempo, pitch, passion and inflection, his speech was more a theatrical performance than a delivery of a prewritten, pre-released text. He was unbounded by his political reality. Possibly no one in his staff had informed him that he had 90 fewer elected Democrats in his audience than has any...

WASHINGTON -- No matter what President Obama said about the state of our union Tuesday night, the economy's prognosis is not good. Who says so? A hefty majority of the American people in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that sought their opinion about the economy's health. Roughly six in 10 said it was "not so good" or "poor." Six years into Obama's painfully slow recovery, jobs are hard to come by in many parts of the country and wages remain flat. Hourly earnings actually fell last month, the U.S. Labor Department reported last week. It's gotten so bad that...

resident Obama sure is consistent. His State of the Union address sounded like his other speeches: What I've done is great! America is in a much better position. We've created a manufacturing sector that's adding jobs. More oil is produced at home. I cut deficits in half! Give me a break. The deficit is lower now not because of any prudence on Obama's part but merely because the $800 billion stimulus spending blowout didn't continue. All the president does is increase spending: free community college, free Obamaphones, free birth control, etc. Yes, our annual deficit is lower, but it's still...

Here's a suggestion for Joni Ernst, the new Republican senator from Iowa, who will deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union address Tuesday night. Get a chorus together and open with this old Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne number: "It seems to me I've heard that song before; it's from an old familiar score, I know it well, that melody." Advance leaks of the president's address indicate he will call for higher taxes on the wealthy and successful in order to pay for programs for the poor and middle class. This is boilerplate Democratic wealth redistribution we've heard since...

RUSH: Here's Al in Boise, Idaho. Hey, Al, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Yeah. My one football thing is to say, "Way to go Broncos." RUSH: (laughing) CALLER: But my thing is, I'm an employee at the airport, and we heard that Obama's coming Wednesday and I'm wondering why in the world is he coming here. I mean, right now I'm sitting here in a store and I just saw two guys with guns at their side and everybody here has concealed weapons and they have flags flying on their cars and, you know, why...

Mid-January is the time to ask the annual question: Are we ready for a big, noisy, overhyped prime-time production that has outgrown its simple origins and usually leaves us feeling both gorged and disappointed? If not, you may want to skip the State of the Union address and prepare for something humbler, like the Super Bowl. President Barack Obama has been doing his best to make a low-news event a no-news event, by traveling the country unveiling the sort of programs presidents normally use the speech to unveil: free community college, paid job leaves, universal broadband access and more. By...

The Justice Department is about to put the squeeze on the Standard & Poor's credit rating service for the tune of $1billion, roughly its 2014 profit, and a fine meant to send a message, according to a Jan. 12 report in The New York Times. The message: Do not tangle with the Obama administration. The charge: Standards & Poor's analysts misrepresented their sincere opinion of securities, and instead downplayed the amount of risk associated with the securities, specifically Residential Mortgage-Back Securities and Collateral Debt Obligations, in order to ingratiate themselves to the companies issuing the securities. This charge, which Attorney...

I am guessing you don't know one of the major things President Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world's war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart -- as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It was something that will thrill the anti-business, anti-energy extreme environmentalists but will not warm the hearts of American businesses and energy producers, and it is not good news for America's currently overhyped economy. Yes, you heard me right; despite all the faux euphoria projected by...

The Obama administration is historic. That’s something we hear constantly from media elites, from congressional Democrats and, frankly from the White House itself. And they’re right. This administration has overseen a historically slow economic recovery; it has overseen the ceding of more ground to terrorists than ever before; it rung up more debt than every previous administration combined, and so on. It is historic. Another way in which the Obama administration is historic is in its employ of Islamic theologians in positions where such expertise isn’t required. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has spent the last week explaining to...

In the wake of President Obama's pathetic disengagement over the Islamic jihadist attacks on Paris, people are once again decrying his lack of leadership, but the problem is something more fundamental than leadership. Even if Obama were a gifted leader, when it comes to many issues, especially confronting radical Islam, he wouldn't know where to lead us. If you misapprehend a problem, you can't possibly navigate, much less lead, toward a solution. From the beginning of his term in office, Obama has evidenced a deep moral confusion, a distorted worldview perhaps based on a bizarre upbringing. It's not that he...

WASHINGTON -- A remark often attributed to 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli says there are three lies used to support a weak case in government: "lies, damned lies and statistics." That acidly iconic remark, popularized by Mark Twain, certainly applies to the boasts, promises and outrageous exaggerations often made by President Obama. Obama will be remembered for telling us over and over again that our existing medical insurance policies were safe from Obamacare, and that no one could take them away from us. When millions of Americans began getting cancellation notices telling them that they had to apply for...

Rarely has one group so utterly failed to elicit sympathy in my radio audience as the Harvard faculty did Monday as I related the contents of Robert Pear's report on their distress at rising health care costs brought on by the arrival of Obamacare's tsunami on their shores. Imagine the surprise of President Obama's cheering section when the check arrived repaying their loyalty with skyrocketing deductibles and demanding immediate payment. The story has significance far beyond Harvard, of course, because it so nicely presents the true and no-longer-hidden costs of Obamacare, perfectly framed by the surprise of clueless elites at...

Most of you quickly figured out how Obama’s new amnesty plan creates more Democratic voters. Did you know his new Cuba policy does too? To wit:First off, Obama did not “lift the Cuba embargo.” Instead he further loop holed it with executive orders, a process that started when he first took office. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996, you see, codified some of the vital economic sanctions against Cuba into U.S. law so a full and genuine “lifting of the embargo” requires a Congressional vote. But the required votes to lift them are not there. Every year for the past 20 or...

Dateline: January 23rd, 2015: Washington: Republicans in the House and the Senate do THE slam dunk in the Democrats’ face by passing the Keystone XL Pipeline authorization. Not only does the bill authorize the controversial pipeline, but it also comes in at 11,571,283,475 pages long. “Take that, Pelosi!” Boehner shouts at the Rose Garden ceremony where Obama signs the bill. “Read that before you pass it byotch!”That’s right: Obama agrees to sign the Keystone bill in the Rose Garden because on page 2,351,546,379, buried in a footnote, the bill authorizes construction of the pipeline so long as no actual “pipes”...

CNN was agog (not a word I get to use in a sentence every day) with the results of a new poll released right before Christmas that showed President Barack Obama's job approval ratings shooting up in the polls. The apogee of the shot? 48 percent. No, the ratings didn't rise by 48 percentage points, they rose to 48 percentage points meaning, a majority of Americans still do not approve of the job the President is doing. I was on CNN Friday morning with one of my favorite debate partners, Maria Cardona, who proclaimed the clouds having parted and the...

There is no way to sugarcoat the past year, except to say that, with a rare exceptions, it's been one of our nation's worst in many years. In the areas of greatest concern, things have grown a lot worse for those in the bottom half of the income scale in a still-uneven, job-challenged economy across most of the nation. The Gallup Poll reports this week that only 23 percent of all Americans they survey each month "were satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S." That number has precipitously fallen to "the lower end of what Gallup has...

Hide your Santa’s, hide your reindeer, and take down your wreaths …because big government is regulating everything! That’s right, the government is now turning all its nanny state hate towards the holiday season – and in a move that would make even the Grinch blush, President Obama’s bureaucracy is proposing new regulations on the use of traditional Christmas lights and other holiday decorations. This month the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) un-wrapped new proposed federal regulations that if enacted, would categorize certain Christmas lights and other “seasonal decorative lighting products” as posing a “substantial product hazard” to the public at...

Since last month’s election, the President has been a busy fellow. He’s traveled to China, heralded what he called a “turning point” in American military affairs, “signed a Presidential Memorandum that prohibits future oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay” and land areas near it and announced a new director for the White House Council for Strong Cities, Strong Communities, to boot.FRC takes no formal position on these issues, or on those that follow (with one exception). Rather, they are listed to make the point that Mr. Obama is not going suddenly to become an inactive Chief Executive. He...

For a long time, the U.S. ostracism of Cuba has been like the vintage American cars on the streets of Havana: obsolete but imperishable. It didn't topple the Castro government, didn't force human rights progress and didn't unite the world behind us. Yet failure was no enemy of longevity. There are many reasons for its endurance. But if you're parceling out responsibility, you have to start with a curious invention of the founding fathers that we know as the Electoral College. Without it, our Cuba policy never would have persisted for so many years -- which is a reminder that...

Did you notice the timing of President Obama’s economic lifeline to Castro as announced on December 17th under the guise of “changing our relations” with the people (emphasis mine) of Cuba?” No? But you have noticed the price at the gas pumps, right? These two items are closely related ….Oh and by the way, every atom of evidence shows that the actual people of Cuba actually want U.S. sanctions against the Stalinist regime that tortures them tightened. So perhaps President Obama should stop insulting the intelligence of Cuba-watchers by claiming to speak and act on their behalf. Here’s their reaction...