Last week’s State of the Union address was a sad and pathetic affair, full of transparent rhetoric and demagoguery, brimming with incandescent hypocrisies, variegated with an expansive assortment of half-truths and lies, palled by a mediocrity that almost seemed intentional, detached from reality like an unmoored hot-air balloon that slowly ascends to the heavens, stuffed with dense and infuriating arrogance, and draped over our nation like a several-sizes-too-small coat with promises and ideas rendered diminutive in the shadow of the historical moment.

October 17, 2011 will be President Obama's 1000th day in office. At the beginning of his term in office, in a February 1, 2009 interview with Matt Lauer, Obama said “If I don’t have this economy fixed in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” At 1000 days in, do you think Obama will see reelection? Check out a comprehensive report card of his first 1000 days after the break and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

CNN's financial guru Ali Velshi admitted that the press didn't really challenge President Obama's proposal for tax hikes after his Thursday press conference on his jobs bill. Velshi, perhaps going soft himself, noted during the 12 p.m. hour that Obama's speech “seemed like a bit of an economics lesson” how the President attacked Republicans and their demands on the count that they don't create jobs.

While being interviewed by CBS‘s Norah O’Donnell at The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas Forum on Wednesday, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley sarcastically joked about the administration’s failure to reach out to the business community. “It’s going great,” he quipped

Politicians who are principled enough to point out the fraud of Social Security, referring to it as a lie and Ponzi scheme, are under siege. Acknowledgment of Social Security's problems is not the same as calling for the abandonment of its recipients. Instead, it's a call to take actions now, while there's time to avert a disaster.

Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he regretted his promotion of the bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, Barack Obama said, “No, I don’t.” This cavalier answer provides yet another snapshot of the arrogance and ideological fixation that drives his presidency.

VIDEO: His Mercury Radio Arts could have made almost twice as many hires if it weren’t for the uncertainty.

A few weeks ago, the President asked Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the agency’s draft for more stringent Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Although Jackson begrudgingly complied, the EPA is still moving to an ozone standard more stringent than the current one. The current ozone standard of 84 parts per billion (the concentration of ozone in the air over an 8-hour period—a drop of gasoline in a tanker truck is one ppb) prevailed..

In one of the least needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama's top political man David Plouffe, “told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. 'What I don't want to suggest is that we're sitting around and thinking everything is great,' he said.” With the White House's own economists predicting 9 percent or worse unemployment on Election Day, the president at about 39 percent job approval, college grads unable to find jobs, a quarter of American homes under water, no credible White House policy or strategy for changing things — and with most non-institutionalized Americans convinced we are in a recession that is going to get much worse — it is surpassing odd that Plouffe was worried that his fellow Democrats might think the president and his men believed everything to be hunky-dory. And yet, if it is not overconfidence driving White House strategy, what is?

The lengths Paul Krugman will go to further the lie that the rich don't pay their “fair share” of taxes knows no bounds. In his New York Times column Friday, the Nobel laureate in economics claimed, “[T] he federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes”: The [Congressional] budget office's numbers show that the federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes, which itself runs counter to the rhetoric you hear from the usual suspects

Obama’s presidency lurches from fad to fad — from gays in the military to “green jobs” to the “Buffett rule.” Hyped as a profound presidency, it has turned out to be an embarrassingly frivolous one.

From The Washington Examiner: Millions of Americans are looking for work, and the number in poverty, 46.2 million, is the highest since the Census Bureau began compiling such data 52 years ago. The slow employment growth just might be connected to the $2,000-per-worker business tax, to begin in 2014, enacted as part of the 2010 [...]

From RedState.com: For some time now, I and others have been documenting the relentless assault on economic growth by the EPA under President Barack Obama.  I feel like a broken record at times trying to beat this drum and get people to realize that while Obama doesn’t keep all of his campaign promises, destroying the coal industry is one [...]

This is genius. From The Daily Caller: I had never heard of Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) until yesterday. But if they give awards for inspired political mischief, Gohmert is an instant Hall of Famer. As reported by Mary Katharine Ham, yesterday Gohmert introduced the American Jobs Act. No, not that American Jobs Act. Not the $447 billion hodge-podge [...]

From PrisonPlanet.com: America is getting poorer.  The U.S. government has just released a bunch of new statistics about poverty in America, and once again this year the news is notgood.  According to a special report from the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million Americans are now living in poverty. The number of those living in poverty in [...]

From Fox Business: On Sept. 8 President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to present the American Jobs Act. In his speech the president outlined tax breaks for individuals and small businesses, funding for infrastructure projects and an extension of unemployment benefits. But the looming question remains: will these moves actually create jobs? There is no [...]

From Fox News: “I want to thank the members of this body for your efforts and your support in these last several months, and especially those who’ve taken the difficult votes that have put us on a path to recovery. I also want to thank the American people for their patience and resolve during this [...]

From Reuters.com: The United States lost its top-tier AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s on Friday in an unprecedented blow to the world’s largest economyin the wake of a political battle that took the country to the brink of default. S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about [...]

From The Heritage Foundation: As 2010 draws to a close, The Foundry will be posting a series of Top Ten lists highlighting some of The Heritage Foundation’s most influential work. The Top Ten Heritage Charts are below, sorted by pageviews with the 10th most popular chart on top, and the most popular chart at the bottom. [...]

From The Heritage Foundation: According to The National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession began in December 2007, lasted 18 months, and ended in June 2009. The last recession that lasted this long  began in July 1981, lasted 16 months, and ended in November 1982. No two recessions are the same. And no two recoveries [...]