Barack Hussein Obama will displace regular prime-time programming on television tonight at 8PM ET to present his proposed $3.7 Trillion 2010 budget to the American people. You can watch on almost any broadcast or cable television channel, or you can watch here:

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has a mission to perform cost-ananlysis needed for economic and budget decisions on bills before the House and Senate. The CBO’s analysis of the Obama budget, as it stands in March, is here (in PDF format) — A Preliminary Analysis of the President’s Budget and an Update of CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook. As you listen to tonight’s sales pitch, remember this comment from the CBO analysis, page 14, column 1:

CBO’s estimate of the deficits under the President’s budget are higher each year than those estimated by the Administration — by $93 billion for 2009 and by about $2.3 trillion for the 2010–2019 period.

The Wall Street Journal took note:

Obama Sticker Shock

President Obama’s 2010 budget looks more astounding by the day, especially when someone other than the White House budget office is analyzing it. The latest case of epic sticker shock came Friday when the Congressional Budget Office published its assessment, which found that the proposals would increase the federal deficit by $2.3 trillion more over 10 years than the White House had claimed.

Hey, what’s a little rounding error among friends?

Mr. Obama keeps saying he has “inherited a trillion dollar deficit,” which is true. But he’s hardly an innocent bystander. CBO shows that the President is seeing that $1 trillion and raising it again and again, as far as the eye can see. In only two months, since the last CBO budget review in January, Democrats have passed laws that increase spending by $134 billion in the last six months of this fiscal year alone, and $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. And that’s all before his 2010 budget proposals….

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) put it in perspective:

“This translates to a debt-to-GDP ratio that we have not seen in this country since the end of World War II, when we were trying to pay off war debt,” he said. “If you take all of the presidents from George Washington to George Bush, and add up all of the debt they put on the books of the American people, President Obama’s plan adds more debt than that.”

Steve Elliott, President of the Grassfire Alliance, is doing something about it. In an email he said:

Obama’s putting America on the road to ruin.

Forecasting bankruptcy for our nation if President Obama’s spending blueprint wins passage, Congressional Republicans predict $20 trillion annual deficits and a weakened dollar.

It will put us all on “the fast road to financial destruction,” says Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) the ranking Republican on the banking committee….

…the President will appear on televisions across the land, and do his utmost to sell Americans on his massive spending plan– doubling public debt in 5 years, and tripling it in 10….

Later this week, Grassfire will be delivering petitions to Capitol Hill to protest Obama’s radical, big government blueprint that will greatly expand government, impose a new global warming “carbon tax,” and add at least $1.6 trillion in new taxes!

If you would like to be one of the thousands of irate taxpayers who are signing Steve’s petition, go here.

Barack Hussein Obama is seriously deficient in American cultural literacy. You will recall him saying he had visited most of our 57 states, mentioning “the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor” (not Hiroshima), and most recently repeatedly mispronouncing the company name Orion.

We have been both horrified and depressed these last few weeks as we watch this inexperienced pretender trampling American ideals and values on a path to socialism. So for a moment of humor and respite, we offer the following presentation put together by renowned satirist Iowahawk. Enjoy A Special Message from Barack Obama’s Teleprompter:

The more senior folk among us remember how the press pilloried the stumble-footed Gerald Ford. And we all know that if George W. Bush had made even the tiniest comparable gaffe they would have been all over it. So the media quietude on Obama’s numerous and egregious mistakes reeks of bias. But what is much worse, by ignoring his lack of American background the media failed to expose his lack of qualification to be president.

Related commentary:

Powerline — How Would He Pronounce “Cassiopeia”?:

Unbelievable. Orion is one of the best-known constellations, mostly because it actually looks like its namesake. So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I’m beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.

The Sundries Sharck — He’s Starting to Make Joe Biden Sound Like Daniel Webster:

He actually mispronounces “Orion” three times in three minutes and it’s obvious that the first time he stumbles over it that he suspects something is wrong. Instead of taking a moment to make sure he has the name of the company correct (which he did with the name of the owner of the company) though, he just keeps going as his teleprompter scrolls on, comfortable in his ignorance.

This is funny, but it’s also really sad. For goodness sake, I knew how to pronounce the word when I was six. How is it that our college-educated President who taught at a prestigious university had no idea how to say it until someone told him? It’s not like the company was named Eridanus or Boötes….

Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinal — A presidential plug for Orion:

Mar. 23, 2009

The idea that led to the founding of Orion Energy Systems received a presidential salute of sorts today. President Barack Obama just finished speaking at a White House roundtable on clean energy efficiency attended by Neal Verfuerth, Orion president and chief executive. Obama saluted Orion….

All terrific press for Orion, except that Obama kept pronouncing the company’s name wrong, calling it OAR-ee-on.

After finishing his remarks and talking with a few people, the president returned to the microphone and said his prepared remarks led him to pronounce the firm’s name wrong.

“I suspect this is Or-EYE-on as opposed to OAR-ee-on. Just wanted to make sure that when I’m giving you a plug, that we’ve got the right plug. It’s Or-EYE-on.”

Earlier commentary:

Michelle Malkin — Barack Obama: Gaffe machine

May 21, 2008

…what about Barack Obama? The guy’s a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign….

Chicago Sun-Times — Obama’s gaffes start to pile up:

March 28, 2007

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, 46 days old on Tuesday, has run into some speed bumps, created because of a series of missteps… It’s too early to say whether the gaffes slow Obama’s momentum — or if they become barricades, extracting a more significant price for the Illinois Democrat’s White House bid. They are getting noticed.

…and start screaming. Obama wants the power to seize United States firms.

To an historically educated ear, the words of the Washington Post headline read like a reprise of Hitler and Mussolini coming into power, and yet the article that follows makes it all sound so matter-of-fact and reasonable:

U.S. Seeks Expanded Power to Seize Firms
Tuesday, March 24, 2009  |  By Binyamin Appelbaum and David Cho

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.

Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process….

The administration plans to send legislation to Capitol Hill this week….

Using the financial crisis as cover, Barack Hussein Obama is moving the United States rapidly into Marxism and socialism. Lulled by a decade of self-indulgent materialism, the general populace concurs, being more concerned with preserving their tangible assets than with saving their freedoms.

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In theory, socialism including nationalization sounds like one of several workable modes of governance.

The motives for nationalization are political as well as economic. It is a central theme of certain brands of ‘state socialist’ policy that the means of production, distribution and exchange, should be owned by the state on behalf of the people to allow for rational allocation and operation, and rational planning or control of the economy. Many socialists believe that public ownership enables people to exercise full democratic control over the means whereby they earn their living and provides an effective means of redistributing wealth and income more equitably.

The reason that it is a disaster in practice is because the factor of human motivation is removed from productivity. When the results of workforce effort are distributed “equitably” among all the workers, no individual worker is motivated to put forth above average effort, because there will be no reward for it. Over time, the median effort declines, and the productivity of the nation falls.

The American enterprise was built on the premise of personal responsibility and rewarding individual effort — capitalism and the profit motive. That philosophy created a great nation that all others envied. Now, instead of bracing to weather this financial crisis, our government is prepared to throw away our heritage of American ingenuity and follow the path to socialistic mediocrity.

Even on the campaign trail, Obama stated his support for the “redistribution of wealth,” a euphemism for taking money from workers who have earned it and giving it to those who have not. Perhaps lulled by the Koolaid of “hope and change,” many wishful thinkers did not notice. Or, perhaps they did, and our schools have so badly failed them that they do not understand the consequences from the lessons of history.

And so we are doomed.