Fred Barnes says that it’s clear that the president is an utter economic illiterate:

Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That’s too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession–that’s not too much to ask.

But the president talks as if free market solutions are nonexistent, and in his mind they may be. Three weeks after taking office, he said only government “has the resources to jolt our economy back into life.” He hasn’t retreated, in words or policies, from that view.

…A good example of Obama’s economic shallowness is his unrelenting defense of the $787 billion “stimulus.” Enacted in February, it has had minimal impact on the economy. Yet Obama has no second thoughts. He says he wouldn’t change a thing about the stimulus. It has “already saved jobs and created new ones,” he said at the press conference, neglecting to note that 2 million jobs–a net 2 million–have been lost since it was passed.

That was clear even during the campaign, to those of us who are not. Unfortunately, most people (including most journalists) are in the same boat as the president.

Victor Davis Hanson muses on how things might be if President Obama had lived up to the false campaign promises of candidate Obama.

A blue dog is shocked, shocked that his own party leadership is duplicitous:

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

I’d have some sympathy if I didn’t think that they were so naive as to finally notice this kind of behavior.

Anyway, it’s good news for the rest of us, if the latest radical attack on freedom and the Constitution is stopped in its tracks.

Andrew Klavan applies the probes to the president.

It’s not like it’s anything new. He’s been talking crap ever since he started running for president (if not his entire career). The only difference is that now, when people can compare his promises and rhetoric to his actual actions, they’re starting to really notice:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8 (see trends).

Just 25% believe that the economic stimulus package has helped the economy.

…Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Today marks the first time his overall approval rating has ever fallen below 50% among Likely Voters nationwide. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove.

I don’t see anything in sight to arrest the trend. He doesn’t seem to realize that people are starting to see through him. The only thing that has been propping him up (as it did during the campaign) is continued fawning from the media.

With this more generally applicable opening:

A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains. This of course is evidence of a rigged game. The government can’t possibly monitor and regulate absolutely every transaction that takes place in a country. Stalin and Hitler couldn’t do it by a long shot. So anything that displeases the ruling regime can easily be laid at the doorstep of freedom and be used as an excuse for stamping out whatever traces of liberty still exist.

The other part of the rigged game is to have so many laws that it is almost impossible to get through a day without violating one or another, making every citizen a subject of the state, vulnerable at all times to prosecution on unrelated issues if she doesn’t toe the state line.