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Gallup measures the Obama approval rating that Republican give Obama vs. Democrats, the gap is 13 points more than the polarization of Bill Clinton's first year....And this is the President that was gonna bring a divided country together....(Charts)

Populist or professor? Contrite or uncompromising? President Obama will have a chance Wednesday to reintroduce himself to the nation when he delivers his first official State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. The prime-time speech, which will be aired on all major TV networks and cable stations, could hardly come at a more critical time for a president grappling with double-digit unemployment, sinking poll numbers and the possible collapse of his top domestic policy priority, an overhaul of the nation's health-care system. "As often as the president has spoken over the past year, critics on the...

(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that the issue of job creation has “permeated” the efforts of congressional Democrats over the past year. Pelosi’s statement stands in stark contrast to a bleak jobs year that saw unemployment rise to over 10 percent. “The jobs issue has permeated everything, [every] major initiative that we have,” Pelosi said at her weekly press briefing Thursday. The speaker outlined the various proposals that she said had pulled the economy “back from the brink” over the past year. “With the recovery package, we not only created jobs – about 2 million saved or...

The White House is evaluating whether to take a breather on health care or try to push for passing legislation, but is not convinced Massachusetts voters were trying to block health insurance reform by voting last week to send Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday. -snip- Gibbs said that Brown may have campaigned on stopping the health care bill but that's not why voters elected him over Democrat Martha Coakley. "More people voted to express their support for Barack Obama than to oppose him," Gibbs said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday will propose a package of new initiatives aimed at helping middle-class families, including an expanded child-care tax credit and help with retirement savings. The initiatives come as Obama is taking a more populist turn in his rhetoric, pledging to fight for the middle class and taking a tougher line toward Wall Street. A year into his presidency, Obama and his Democratic Party are seeing an erosion of his support among middle-class Americans who swept him into office. Frustration with the 10 percent unemployment rate and wariness toward Obama's plans to change...

Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home. “I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going...

The irony was breathtaking: exactly one year after US President Barack Obama’s all-conquering inaugural in January 2009, the late Edward Kennedy’s US Senate seat in Massachusetts went to the Republicans. Suddenly, Obama’s domestic agenda, and its kingpin, health care, are in trouble. It is hard to believe, after the euphoria of 2008, that Obama’s place in history may depend on a single vote in the US Senate. But it does: the 60-40 supermajority is gone, and Obamacare may not survive. Obama has not done all that badly, but expectations were so inflated that there was bound to be a let-down,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Osama bin Laden's word choice in the latest audio message attributed to him is seen as a "possible indicator" of an upcoming attack by his Al-Qaeda network, a US monitoring group warned Sunday. IntelCenter, a US group that monitors Islamist websites, also said that manner of the release and the content of the message showed it was "credible" that it was a new release from the Saudi extremist. "The Osama bin Laden audio message released to Al-Jazeera on 24 January 2010 contains specific language used by bin Laden in his statements in advance of attacks," IntelCenter said...

Waking up a Year Later with Everything turned Upside down. You almost have to feel sorry for the liberals. A year ago Obama had a 60% approval rating, Democrats were trusted more than Republicans on almost all issues and they had a huge democrat majority in congress. Yet now they must wake up each morning knowing it's all been lost, and wondering how it happened. To most liberals it all went bad this past week. They were sure that Martha Coakley would pull it out in the Massachusetts Senate race over Scott Brown. They were sure that some sort of...

White House adviser: Obama has brought 'enormous change' Posted: January 24th, 2010 11:29 AM ET Washington (CNN) - The White House rejected criticism Sunday that President Barack Obama has not delivered on his promise of "change" during his first year in office. White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said the president has brought about "enormous change." "I think what we've seen is a dramatic difference in terms of how the United States is perceived around the world," Jarrett told NBC's "Meet the Press," on the final Sunday before the president's State of the Union address. Obama's travels have established relationships...

White House brass split on stimulus stats White House advisers appearing on the Sunday talk shows gave three different estimates of how many jobs could be credited to President Obama’s Recovery Act. The discrepancy was pointed out by a Republican official in an email to reporters noting that “Three presidential advisers on three different programs [gave] three different descriptions of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill.” Valerie Jarrett had the most conservative count, saying “the Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs,” while David Axelrod gave the bill the most credit, saying it has “created more than – or saved more...

Here is video of Meet the Press moderator David Gregory today confronting Obama Adviser Valerie Jarrett about her claim that Obama has "turned the economy around." After she made the claim, Gregory interrupted Jarrett and said: "I'm sorry - you can't say you've turned the economy around when there are 4 million jobs that have been lost on the President's watch, when the Debt is higher, and the Stimulus did not produce the jobs the administration said it would."Jarrett responded with "actually I disagree with everything you just said." Jarrett had a shocked look on her face as Gregory made...

President Obama is moving swiftly to try to recover from his worst week in the White House, speeding up his schedule for engaging in the 2010 political races and planning to use his State of the Union address on Wednesday to show the public a feisty side, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. He vowed, however, that there will be “no reinventing” of the president, even though “Washington loves a shakeup or human sacrifice.” Stunned by the rejection of the Democrat in the Massachusetts Senate race last week, Obama asked David Plouffe, his...

It’s a growing trend in a turbulent economy. Conceal-carry gun permits are on the rise, especially among people you might not expect to be packing heat.

The President, who has until now preferred consensus over confrontation, vowed to drop the gloves should bankers unleash lobbyists on Capitol Hill to quash the proposals: "If these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have." Republicans intend to take him up on that. The President's tough talk was immediately ridiculed as "faux-populism" by New Jersey GOP Congressman Scott Garrett. The President did not offer specific remedies for the main source of public ire toward the banks - the executive bonuses that Mr. Obama yesterday labelled as "obscene." And the rules unveiled by the President raised as...

The Talk Shows Sunday, January 24th, 2010 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.THIS WEEK (ABC): White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C. STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Axelrod; Menendez; Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

I am a registered Independent. I voted for Barack Obama. And for that, I am sorry. I'm not sorry for you. I'm sorry for me. Because I voted for Obama for me, not for you. I voted for hope and change and all the intangibles that Obama was peddling in the wake of the financial crisis, Sarah Palin, Sept. 11 and all the other ills that shook our country in the last decade. I wanted something new. Something different. What I got was, I suppose, exactly what I voted for - a spin doctor. And not a very good one...

In early January 2007, Barack Obama dropped by the Chicago office of his chief strategist David Axelrod for a chat. Clad in jeans and his White Sox cap, Obama was fresh off a family vacation where he had tramped along Waikiki Beach, grappling with some final doubts about making the race for President. Obama acknowledged to Axelrod that, unlike so many politicians of the modern era - thorny amalgams of hubris, egocentricity and glaring need - he didn't require the presidency to achieve self-worth.

Obama's approval rating according to Gallup's tracking poll has hit a new low of 47%. Rasmussen's model, which was vindicated yet again, along with Public Policy Polling, in Massachusetts last week, shows 55% of voters disapprove of Obama's job performance and 44% approve (43% strongly disapprove and 24% strongly approve).

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One year in, President Barack Obama faces a perilous economic choice. He can't pull back the stimulus too quickly, despite the public's concerns about rising deficits, because that could kill a fragile recovery. If he steps too hard on the throttle to create more jobs, responding to another voter imperative, he risks feeding inflation and restarting the dangerous cycle. The GOP Senate upset in Massachusetts shows that the political risks of any bold move are enormous. Either way, the road ahead probably means painfully slow job creation accompanied by more government debt and higher taxes.