Obama is declining—his ratings on his handling of the economy are actually plummeting—and the honeymoon is rapidly coming to an end. Opposition to his policies is hardening - and he is in a race to pass as much of his agenda before Democrats in the House get cold feet in advance of he 2010 mid-term elections.

Americans want progress; they expected some improvement by now after all the grandiose promises from Team Obama. The problem with creating the image of The One or The New Messiah is that expectations are then raised to such a high level that no one could ever meet those expectations.

The Obama White House cannot match the promises of the Obama Campaign in 2007-2009; yet they are going to be held up against those promises and pledges.

Polls show support for the President’s handling of the economy is declining. Stories are leaking that there is panic inside the Obama Economic Team over the failure of the Stimulus Bill to reverse the downward jobs picture. Thus the renewed talk lately of a “second stimulus” —all while we have our first Trillion Dollar Deficit—with three months left in the fiscal year!

The jobs picture is ugly; the President himself has now backtracked on the short-term picture and even he predicts it will get worse before it gets better.

Now we see a new push from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to “rahm” the nationalization of heath care down Congress’ throats in the next few weeks - all before they read the polls about how a plurality of Americans now oppose this bill.

So the clock is ticking on the aggressive, leftward agenda of the new Administration. They know they have to pass as much of their program between now and the early fall or else the window closes and the 2010 political season begins.

But what of the Republicans?

Nada. Zip. Nolo Contendre.

The GOP—as a national force—is presently in hibernation.

All the attention lately—instead of a coherent, simple and clear-cut message of credible fiscal conservatism—has been on the odd behaviors of Mark Sanford and his Argentinian ‘soul mate’ mistress followed by more drama from an erratic, over-wrought and almost sad Sarah Palin.

While Sanford is finished as a national figure, Palin is clearly not. She has a reservoir of support; the same people who loved G.W. Bush when he first ran for President in 1999 and 2000 love her now.

But there are differences in her status: the GOP candidates for Governor this year in Virginia—and New Jersey where Chris Christie leads Governor Jon Corzine by 8 points—have announced that they will not have Governor Palin in to campaign for them.

There appears to be too much downside to Palin—a toxicity that scares off these credible candidates with legitimate chances to win this November.

Still, Palin can draw big crowds and raise money and thus she will have a place inside the GOP and the conservative movement for a while to come.

But she brings more baggage than assets.

If we want to win in 2012, then we need a new candidate—perhaps someone not even on the scene today who has none of the Bush-Cheney-McCain taint on them.

The present group of GOP leaders are a desultory crew with no joy, no pizzazz and no charisma.

But despair not: who ever heard of Obama a few years ago?

Why can’t a new GOP/conservative star arise between now and 2012?

Do you want to know what was—and still is—unbelievably sad? Incredibly wrong? And just plan un-American?

That at one time over 200,000 of our soldiers who had served in the Vietnam War and had come home were in prison—many for problems related either to PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)—once called ’combat fatigue’—or related addictions to drugs or alcohol.

Many of our troops during Vietnam had gotten hooked on drugs or booze just to cope with the agonies of that war or injuries sustained there. Then they came home and were often treated like ‘war criminals,’ as the New Left labeled them in those days.

And then, sure enough, when they ran into problems with the criminal justice system and an unforgiving pubic attitude toward their problems, they were thrown into jail as if they were apart of the criminal element.

This was—and remains—one of the most disgraceful examples of betrayal in American history.

Now, once again, we are faced with hundreds of thousands of returning veterans from multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with many of the same severe problems: brain injuries and severe concussions (from IEDs)—often mis or un-diagnosed—and PTSD and addictions to prescription and non-prescription drugs and alcohol.

These vets are now also running into trouble back home trying to re-adjust to life stateside.

Here is a typical example: a US Army veteran who served three tours in Iraq. He had been trained to never go anywhere in Baghdad without his firearm firmly in his holster. OK. He survives that Hell-hole over there and returns to his home in New York City, where he remains in the Army Reserve. He does not feel safe without that firearm still strapped to his belt; his Army training had kept him alive and he could not and would not abandon its lessons. Sure enough—without doing a thing—he is arrested under NYC’s very strict new gun laws. Mere possession of a hand-gun means an automatic one-to-three year prison sentence. And that heroic veteran was sent to state prison!

This is true!

And it is just plain wrong!

Are we going to repeat the mistakes of the Vietnam War Era? Are we going to turn our back on these wonderful men and women who risk life and limb for us?

This week in New York City there was an announcement that someday will be viewed as an epic turning point in the care of our returning veterans:

Three District Attorneys—from Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County—joined with the Chief Judge of New York State, Thomas Lippman, and the Veterans Administration and some generous private charities to announce the first-in-the-nation Veterans Mental Health Court Initiative.

This program will handle those cases which involve veterans who commit non-violent crimes and who should receive treatment for their mental illness rather than be incarcerated. This will be the largest and most comprehensive program of its kind in the nation, involving two urban counties (Brooklyn & Queens) and one suburban county (Nassau) with a combined population of 6 million persons.

The New York Times story can be found here, and the NEWSDAY story here.

The real impetus for this program is to avoid that indifference we showed the returning Viet Nam Vets. They became addicts in combat or from the addictive pain medication received for their wounds. And then when they used drugs, or sold drugs to feed their habits, rather than treat them we put them in prison, often for many years.

This Veterans Mental Health Court Initiative will be very, very popular around the nation when veterans and their families hear about it.

We need every District Attorney in every county and municipality in our nation to implement a similar program, with the appropriate training for the judges who will preside over these special courts.

All our vets out there need to prod their DAs to follow the example this week of these pioneering DAs in New York.

This week’s announcement here in New York City is a turning point in our history. We are changing from the disgraceful way we used to treat our vets into a smart, flexible system which adjusts to the realities of war.

Please spread the word far and wide!!!

It has just been announced—on a Friday afternoon of a holiday long weekend—that Sarah Palin is giving up her Alaskan Governorship with a year and a half remaining in her term.

What is going on here?

Why is this happening?

Who has ever heard of giving up a governorship mid-term to—allegedly—run for the 2012 GOP nomination which is three plus years away!!??

Am scanning the TV and these debases are not seeing this thing right: they are not asking the key why on a Friday afternoon question.

Friday afternoon is the time you dump out bad news in hopes of it getting lost in the Friday late-afternoon weekend getaway syndrome.

But if Palin is all well and happy, why make such a sudden announcement like this? Why not hype it and make a big deal out of it by getting the national press to come up to Wasilla? No, she suddenly announces this today—on a Friday before the Fourth of July?

No, there is something more here. After John Ensign and Mark Sanford, there is something bad going on here. She may very well be being forced from office—suddenly indeed—because of some threatened revelation.

Am amazed at the idiocy of the so-called “political analysts” on TV; they are not thinking smartly at all. They don’t see—or don’t want to see—that this story smells to high heaven!

OK. Let’s watch this as it develops. One thing is guaranteed: it isn’t what it seems.

It has taken ten days of lies, tear gas, baton-beatings—and finally cold-blooded murder by the corrupt, filthy-rich, fraudulent hypocritical Iranian mullahs and their marauding militias to get our new President to even seem outraged.

He finally read a statement—after all, he reads everything that comes out of his mouth—at his Press Conference Tuesday afternoon that came close to echoing the feelings of most Americans that we stand with the protestors who have the right to an open and honest election.

Having the President of the United States make a statement like this is not provocative or “Bush-the-Bully-like”—something Obama is clearly afraid of seeming.

Go back to the early days of Solidarity. Lech Walensa was thrown in jail by Soviet-backed General Jaralelski. What did our then-new President Ronald Reagan do? He had Solidarity candles burning in the White House windows at night.

That image flew ‘round the world—and let everyone know just where America stood.

Why doesn’t our new President wear a green arm band—an image that would say more than any TelePromptered-statement read at a Press Conference?

Richard Wolff in his new campaign book about the 2008 Obama-Clinton race, reveals that back in 2000 when Obama ran for the House in a Democrat primary against Congressman Bobby Rush, Michelle Obama saw her husband as “cold and distant.”

That is how he now appears as President. He hides his emotions too well. He is too self-controlled, too self-disciplined in not allowing the people to feel his emotions.

A leader must connect viscerally. His approval up to now is more for the “change” we all wanted after G.W. Bush—not for anything Obama has done or fought for. In fact, he has never fought for anything—except his own political advancement. His election and the racial apect of it has made many people admire Obama-the-Symbol. But when you get past that and look at Obama-the-Man, he is hidden, cool and indeed distant.

Now we are beginning to see the polarizing of the American electorate—again. The new President’s honeymoon is coming to an end. The out-of-control spending is scaring Independents away from Obama. And he is beginning to suffer from a self-created over-exposure - a speech per day plus fawning media ‘availabilities’ like this ABC-from-the-White-House health show.

It is inevitable that people are going to grow weary of Barack Obama. And he is then going to learn that his—any President’s—coin of the realm are his appearances, his speeches, and access to him. By doing so many such appearances, speeches, YouTube weekend speeches, Town Hall Forums and Press Conferences, he is cheapening his power.

He needs to be seen a little less frequently.

And he needs to re-focus on one Big thing at a time.

As of now there are too many balls being juggled at once—and none of them are particularly popular.

As predicted here last year, by this coming October Obama will not be too popular. Yes, the Democrats will adore him and the conservatives will oppose him. But the middle—where the action in politics and government really is—is where Obama will lose support. These self-described Independent voters—many of them former GOP voters who split for Perot in 1992 and still searching for sane fiscal policies—will have abandoned Obama by the fall. But they will not be going back to the GOP either. They will sit—alone—unhappy—and wait to see if anyone speaks to their issues of responsible spending and budget practices.

The Republicans?

They have not even begun to figure out how to come back from the Bush Years.

Iran may crumble.

The government that was carried in by the mob thirty years ago may get carried out by that mob’s children.

This electrifying story can go in any direction—and already the past five days have seen things which indicate the closed, Mullah-run society is teetering on implosion:

1) Their Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has reversed himself in public—twice—on recounting the votes;

2) He is floundering over what to do as the streets erupt in violence and protest;

3) The government clampdown on foreign journalists, text messaging, cell calls, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter shows that Tehran is indeed worried about losing control of their people;

4) The people are increasingly unsatisfied by the government’s response—and thus the protests are spreading, not decreasing.

The point is: no one knows where this is headed. Is it headed toward a calm re-acceptance of the status quo? Or is it headed to either a new election or Ahmadinejad’s removal by the Mullahs as a way to calm the situation? (This could indeed happen.)

Ahmadinejad is a disgrace. He was—despite our CIAs ridiculous “research” and denials—one of the leaders of the 1979 hostage-takers in Iran. Many of our hostages to this day are adamant that he was one of the so-called students. Thus he is a criminal—and we have allowed him to get away with kidnapping and torturing 53 Americans for 444 days back in 1979-1980.

He hates America and thus rules that way as the President of Iran.

And, of course, he wants to nuke Israel off the map—or at least talk about it as a way to rally radical Jew-haters to his side and become the Number One Muslim Leader worldwide.

Apparently not all Iranians agree with his hate-filled strategies—and used last week’s election as an attempt to move Iran into the 21st Century. Unfortunately, they—and many others—naively thought a dictatorship would honestly count the votes! Duh.

Imagine counting 39 million paper ballots in two hours!

What dictatorship ever allows itself to be voted out of power?

Why does the world care so intensely about this fraudulent election and its aftermath? Because millions are praying that Ahmadinejad would be removed and Iran’s mad sprint to acquire nuclear weapons would cease. Because if it goes much farther, it is inevitable that Israel will strike—and heavily—all the key underground sites for centrifuges and other processes to develop their nuclear military capability. Israel’s hope is to retard the progress of that program.

The result of these strikes will be catastrophic: oil will zoom at once to over $200 per barrel; inflation will soar; the worldwide economy will head again back down; the Muslim world will polarize; America will be dragged into it—either on Israel’s side or, if not, the special American-Israeli relationship will be severely harmed.

All of this—and more—if this evil bastard in Tehran is allowed to continue his hate-filled, mad dash to the edge of a mid-east nuclear winter.

But perhaps all those prayers are being answered by the courageous people protesting the obviously-fraudulent election last Friday.

This is the single most compelling story of 2009. It affects us all.

Pray that—like the Berlin Wall coming down twenty years ago—God’s Hand is in this.

Most people seemed to have missed the point of North Korea’s kidnapping, trying, and sentencing-to-twelve-years-in-a-labor-camp of two young female journalists: it is totally and entirely to gain leverage over Washington with a brand new Administration in place.

Kim Jong Il learned from his father, Kim Il Song, who pioneered the technique, that the quickest way to get DC to pay attention to you is to hold Americans as prisoners. Why? Because we care!

And if the two are women—and journalists—well, that is just to good to pass up!

Look how much coverage this story is receiving. Plus, Al Gore is involved - and Pyongyang probably feels the Former Vice President can get into the Obama Oval Office and cut a deal.

What does this rogue regime want?

Duh. Money—and lots of it. In cash. In bags and suitcases.

Plus an admission of guilt by the two journalists—accused of spying—and who clearly were NOT spying. But the truth and reality are irrelevant when dealing with this crazed North Korean leadership.

Just two weeks ago we saw them launch a series of rockets—all aimed at attracting attention to themselves at a time when President Obama was focusing on Iran and the Muslim World. Kim Jong Il—like the petulant, spoiled child he has always been—is saying, “Hey, world, pay attention to me!!!

And, thanks to the news media aspect of this story, the White House has been forced to pay attention to it. Just yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about it at a State Department public event. And when that happens, it forces an issue onto the political radar screen.

This story is almost identical to the Iranian-American woman tried and held recently in Iran. She was just released—whether for under-the-table money or concessions we will never know. Or perhaps it was Tehran trying to keep lines open with the new Obama Administration while talks are ongoing about their nuclear programs.

But that woman was seized for a reason—and released for a reason. And nothing any government official on either side says publicly is the truth.

The same for these two unfortunate female journalists - who may have not even been in North Korea at allwhen thy were kidnapped.

Pyongyang has regularly “stolen” people from South Korea, Japan—and, of course, in the most famous incident of them all, they kidnapped the crew of the USS Pueblo in early 1968 and held them in brutal conditions for ten months.

In the end, they forced President Johnson to admit that we violated their territorial waters (we didn’t)—and we also (secretly) paid $50million in cash. That has never been admitted to by any US Government official.

This present stand-off will result in a very similar solution. Figure it will happen within a month or so. There may be a trip—perhaps by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson who has had past success with that regime.

But rest assured: those two women will be home this summer.

And Uncle Sam is going to pay—big time—and off the books for their release.

California and New Jersey. These two states used to hold their presidential primaries on the first Tuesday of June—the last primaries in a grueling, long process that began in the snowy cold of Iowa in January. Depleted, exhausted candidates had to criss-cross the nation for a week and advertise in the huge media markets of Los Angeles and New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

All of that is changed now. The presidential nominations are pretty much decided earlier—and these two states have moved “up” in the primary calendar.

But California and New Jersey may still be influencing and predicting our political future. Here’s how:

For almost 40 years California has been a ‘predictor’ for trends that would soon sweep the nation. The grass-roots tax revolt of the 1970’s began through referenda in California. It changed America. For the better. It re-energized an almost-dead GOP; launched Ronald Reagan on his journey to the White House; and subsequent referenda allowed the people to tell their politicians what to do—not the other way around.

However, since the mid-1990’s California’s trends have been all negative: a massive influx of illegals from south of the border coupled with a flight of middle class workers and tax-payers to neighboring states (Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Arizona). This trend—coupled with unrestrained government spending and debt in Sacramento—has brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy. It has also destroyed two successive governorships—Democrat Gray Davis and one-time GOP icon Arnold The Terminator Schwarzenegger.

These disturbing trends—massive government spending at a time when the tax base is declining thus causing huge debt—is what we are now seeing in DC!

Is this the latest national trend predicted by California?

And if it is what does this tell us about Obama, the Democrats, the GOP - and 2012?

Across the nation - in the Garden State - we have another state government over-spending and over-taxing under a liberal Democrat stranglehold on the levers of power in Trenton. Governor Jon Cozine is in deep, deep political trouble as he runs this year for re-election. His numbers are under 40% - terrible for an incumbent- and the GOP is re-energized after being out of power for ten years.

They have just nominated former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie who—correctly—is trying to focus on economic issues instead of social issues in the otherwise-liberal-blue-state-New Jersey.

Corzine is personally rich and will now set out to destroy Christie and try to paint him with a “he’s an out of the mainstream right wing nut” campaign.

If Christie can side-step that pathetic diversionary tactic by a desperate Corzine, he can win in a solid Democrat state.

And if he does—will this concentrate-on-the-economic-issues-and-massive-government-over-spending strategy become the new trend that sweeps the nation?

Let us hope and pray!