Obama Administration progress report

President Barack Obama was sworn in three weeks ago today. Since then:

• He has advocated for a stimulus package in excess of $800 billion built on the theory that government spending will promote economic growth. How deficit spending marks "change" from the previous eight years has not been explained. Obama has also promoted the idea that only the federal government has the resources to pull the economy out of its recession, apparently oblivious to the fact that the government is broke with a multi-trillion (aka 1,000,000,000,000, aka one million million) debt.

• Has advocated for greater federal involvement in education, health care and energy among other issues. Again, how this deviates from previous policy is not explained.

• Gave an interview with Al Arabiya in which he called for a restoration "of the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." Obama apparently forgot the numerous hijackings, bombings and other attacks on Americans during this era.

• After running a campaign based on "hope" has proceeded to inject a sense of doom and foreboding into discussions about the economy, warning of impending disaster and "catastrophe" on several occassions.

• Has deliberately mischaracterized the positions of his opponents, inaccurately stating that they believe in doing nothing with the possible exception of tax cuts, that will cure everything. This is intellectually dishonest and unbecoming of him.

• Has put in place new rules that enable federal agencies to require that union labor be used on government contracts, meaning that more money will be required to accomplish the same amount of work.

• Is strangely attempting to transfer the power for conducting the census from the Commerce Department to the White House. More on that here.

• Meanwhile, Obama's allies on the Hill are using the stimulus bill to engage in stealth moves to promote socialization of health care and roll back welfare reform. Most disturbing here is not the moves themselves, but the willingness to do this without a real debate.

It's almost enough to make you miss Chimpy Bushitler.

Update: Oh yeah, and the Democrats are trying to get us to kick off a trade war.