almost 7 in 10 say he will be able to implement the health care law passed in March 2010 and remove most troops from Afghanistan. And most think he’ll be able to improve the economy and boost race relations in his final term

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

"You get nothing", “I get that for free.”

The budget submitted by Obama in early 2012 for FY2013 proposed $3.8 trillion in new spending, an increase of 31 percent over the final Bush-Democratic Congress budget, and a 9 percent increase over the budget Obama signed two months into his term. So where exactly has spending been "cut"?

...the federal government [is] on track for a fifth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits under Obama. As these deficits show, Obama hasn't done anything to bring the government in line with its revenues.

"... it was, I think, critically important at the beginning of this administration to actually increase the deficit. That was the exception to the rule. That was the way to stimulate the economy. It cannot become the normal rule. If it becomes the normal rule, we are on a path that goes nowhere good.”

we're not paying our bills; we're adding to the running tab and borrowing 40 cents on the dollar to make it look like we're covering our obligations.

“U.S. oil production grew more in 2012 than in any year in the history of the domestic industry”

As much as Republicans would like to decry President Obama as the 2nd coming of Liberal Satan whose sole mission is to wreck the U.S. economy via some sort of socialist Jihad, the reality is that on some issues President Obama is actually more inline with that of a moderate Republican. Granted moderate Republicans rarely exist anymore and in some parts of the country you’re more likely to find a unicorn from Narnia than a moderate Republican. If you fancy yourself a conservative … this next part might hurt your brain.

President Obama has overseen the largest production of domestic oil in one year than at any time in American history. Stop. Re-read that and make sure that it sinks in. I know that’s not what they said on Fox News; according to Fox – the Obama administration is overseeing an assault on oil production in America because he’s so beholden to the very powerful green lobby . Unlike his precessors – President Obama has actually engaged in the closest thing to an all encompassing, comprehensive energy policy for the first time since the 70′s. His policies are working and it’s about time his critics stopped whining like incessant children because they didn’t get their way. My message to those conservatives: Just shut up – really; the grownups are talking.

The Navy’s active carrier fleet already has been reduced to 10 vessels because of the retirement of the USS Enterprise in November.

The U.S. Navy plans to shut down four of its active aircraft carriers in one of the worst-case scenarios presented to Congress...

Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.

The Obama administration on Thursday said it will not stand in the way of Colorado, Washington and other states where voters have supported legalizing marijuana either for medical or recreational use, as long as those states maintain strict rules involving distribution of the drug. In a memo sent Thursday to U.S. attorneys in all 50 states, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole detailed the administration’s new stance, even as he reiterated that marijuana remains illegal under federal law. The memo directs federal prosecutors to focus their resources on eight specific areas of enforcement, rather than targeting individual marijuana users, which even President Obama has acknowledged is not the best use of federal manpower. Those areas include preventing distribution of marijuana to minors, preventing the sale of pot to cartels and gangs, preventing sales to other states where the drug remains illegal under state law, and stopping the growing of marijuana on public lands.

Remember in the final presidential debate of 2012 when the smug incumbent reminded Mitt Romney the Cold War was over?

“A few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al Qaeda. You said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” - IBD

The Obama Administration issued almost 40 percent fewer permits and took twice the time to do it. Since fiscal year 2008, the amount of time that industry needs to take to “resolve any deficiencies” in an application has tripled.

Despite cheerleading in late 2013 about the creation of 200,000 new jobs per month and a declining unemployment rate, the reality behind the headline data is grim. As analyst Dan Albert points out, almost 60 percent of jobs created in the first half of 2013 were in the lowest-wage sectors of the U.S. economy. These sectors normally account for one third of total jobs, meaning that new job creation was disproportionately low wage by a factor of two to one...all work has dignity but not all work has pay that can ignite a self-sustaining economic recovery.

About 50 percent of jobs created in the first half of 2013 were part time, defined as jobs with 35 hours of work per week or less. Some...as little as one hour per week. If the unemployment rate were calculated by counting those working part-time who want full-time work, and those who want a job but have given up looking, the unemployment rate in mid-2013 would be 14.3 percent instead of the officially reported 7.1 percent. The 14.3 percent figure is comparable to levels reached during the Great Depression...

Albert also shows that even the supposed "good news" of a declining unemployment rate reflects those workers dropping out of the workforce entirely rather than new job creation in an expanding labor pool. The percentage of Americans counted in the labor force has dropped from a high of 66.1 percent before the new depression to 63.5 percent by mid-2013.

Huma Abedin "worked for many years at a journal that promotes Islamic supremacist ideology that was founded by a top al-Qaida financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef." That would be for at least seven years (1996-2003), by the way, during which Abedin also worked for Hillary Clinton.

Let this sink in for just a moment. The journal that Huma worked for -- which promotes Islamic supremacism and was founded by al-Qaida financer Naseef, who also headed the Muslim World League, a leading Muslim Brotherhood organization -- is called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. It was edited first by Huma's father, Syed Abedin, and now by her mother, Saleha Abedin. Saleha is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. Mother Abedin also directs an organization (the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child) that comes under the umbrella of the Union for Good, another U.S.-designated terrorist organization. As McCarthy reminds us, "the Union for Good is led by Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of American military and support personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombings in Israel."

Given these alarming professional and family associations, it is hard to imagine how Huma Abedin ever received the security clearance necessary to work closely with the secretary of state. But she did, and from her powerful post, she undoubtedly exerted influence over U.S. policy-making.

The journal that Huma worked for -- which promotes Islamic supremacism and was founded by al-Qaida financer Naseef, who also headed the Muslim World League, a leading Muslim Brotherhood organization -- is called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. It was edited first by Huma's father, Syed Abedin, and now by her mother, Saleha Abedin. Saleha is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. Mother Abedin also directs an organization (the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child) that comes under the umbrella of the Union for Good, another U.S.-designated terrorist organization. As McCarthy reminds us, "the Union for Good is led by Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of American military and support personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombings in Israel."

Remember her chant, “Drill, baby, drill”? Well, how about that:

Back when gas topped $4 a gallon, Republicans chanted “drill, baby, drill” at rallies across the country — arguing more domestic drilling would increase supplies, reduce dependence on foreign oil and boost the U.S. economy. Democrats, almost universally, mocked the GOP plan. In 2012, President Obama called it “a slogan, a gimmick, and a bumper sticker … not a strategy.”

“They were waving their three-point plans for $2-a-gallon gas,” Obama told a laughing audience during an energy speech in Washington. “You remember that? Drill, baby, drill. We were going through all that. And none of it was really going to do anything to solve the problem.”