The lead in the Associated Press story reads: “The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.”

President Obama has decided to sell a government-directed healthcare system as a deficit control measure. “If we do not control these costs” of healthcare, Obama told reporters in a nationally televised press conference July 22, “we will not be able to control our deficit.” Obama stressed “the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.”

NBC’s Meet the Press Host David Gregory must have been channeling the ghost of the late, great Tim Russert Sunday with his interview of Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius on Obama’s healthcare plan.

A 10-member Massachusetts state healthcare advisory board unanimously recommended that the state begin rationing healthcare to keep the state’s marquee universal health care program afloat financially.

Texas Representative Ron Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy has endeared him to many of those who love the advice of America's Founders. His message to "bring the troops home" from not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from Korea, Germany, and Japan, echoes George Washington's words in his farewell address where the first President advised, "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

Except for dissent from Representative Ron Paul of Texas and (to a lesser extent) former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, the Republican presidential candidates blazed their way in a November 12 debate toward foreign policies where the United States would engage in two new Middle Eastern wars against Syria and Iran, re-institute the Bush Administration torture policy, abolish trials for terror suspects, and allow unlimited presidential assassinations.

President Obama announced with much fanfare in an October 21 address to the nation that "as a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end.... Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over."

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) schooled former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on foreign policy issues in the August 11 GOP presidential debate in Ames, Iowa.

President Obama addressed the nation June 22 to announce a gradual drawdown of the approximately 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by withdrawing some 10,000 by the end of this year, and a total of 33,000 by next summer.

Congressman Ron Paul issued a blistering critique of President Obama's recent proposal for Israel to surrender its territory to pre-1967 borders and create a Palestinian state.