The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. "We can choose another future," says the newcomer with the funny name. "So I ask you to join me."

Today that view of Obama is harder to find in Indiana. A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym — except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate above 12% and rising again this summer, about a third of the employer display tables stood empty.

Job losses continued to mount in the U.S. economy last month, though at a more modest pace than expected, putting further pressure on policy makers to take action to spur growth and employment.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 54,000 last month, matching the level of revised losses recorded the previous month, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday. The revision in July layoffs to 54,000 followed an original estimate of a 131,000 drop in payrolls.

House Republicans' first move in the majority would be to extend tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) suggested Wednesday evening. 

Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said that House Republicans would look to extend the tax cuts they helped President George W. Bush pass in 2001 and 2003, which are set to expire at the end of the year. "Well, we're going to stay focused on Election Day. But I think before that, we're going to continue to demand that this administration and this Congress make it clear that no American will see a tax increase in January of next year," Pence said during an appearance on CNBC.

What's wrong with calling in the county sheriff when religious liberty becomes a dangerous thing?

[C]ome with me to the little country of Guyana on South America's northern coast. You may need to rehearse the bizarre and grim history of what happened there in Jonestown on Nov. 18, 1978—and even after that rehearsal, you may find it hard to decide whether the issues were primarily religious or political. More than 900 people died that day in a mass suicide, almost all of them having been persuaded by their leader, Jim Jones, that death together was better than life apart from each other.

A website advertising a new restaurant in Germany has called for humans to donate body parts for the menu causing outrage.

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

In a list of famous Americans with a parent (or both) born in another country, the un-bylined last page “Back Story” of this week’s Newsweek listed “BARACK OBAMA (Kenyan Father)” on the page headlined: “What’s So Scary About an ‘Anchor Baby’?”

An “anchor baby” is a child born to parents in the U.S. illegally, so is the magazine suggesting that Obama’s father, as well as parents of the 32 others in their list, were all illegal aliens at the time of the births of their famous offspring? Talk about flinging scurrilous allegations and encouraging the “birther” crowd.

A video starring and approved by Chuck Norris.  Don't upset him folks.  You won't like him when he's upset.

Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, without Katie Couric, uniquely amongst the broadcast network evening newscasts tied Discovery Channel hostage-taker/bomber James Lee to Al Gore and, even more miraculously, highlighted how Tony Blair, in his new book, describes George W. Bush as “intelligent.” Reporter Wyatt Andrews relayed in his story on the incident in suburban DC: "In an anti-corporate protest two years ago, Lee was arrested while throwing cash outside of Discovery’s offices. He said in court he had been moved to save the planet, partly by Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth."

Perhaps the most difficult economic lesson is that we live in a world of scarcity and everything has a cost. Scarcity exists whenever human wants exceed the means to satisfy those wants. For example, Rolls-Royce produces less than 4,000 cars a year, but it's a safe bet that more than 4,000 of the Earth's 6.5 billion people want a Rolls-Royce. That means Rolls-Royces are scarce. But it's not just Rolls-Royces that are scarce. It's clothing, food, land and most anything a human would want. There's not enough to meet every single want.

Some has been said and written about evangelicals "compromising" by sharing the stage this weekend at Glenn Beck's Friday night Kennedy Center event (for approximately 2,000 pastors and Christian leaders) and being seated on the platform (nearly 200 seats) of the Lincoln Memorial during the "Restoring Honor" Rally on Saturday, August 28.  This all stems from the fact of Beck's Mormon faith.

I have not been criticized for going to the rally (at least as of this date), but I have seen writing attacking two men in whom I believe: James Robison (who will not even be at the rally, but whose video might be) and David Barton.  Both of these men have impeccable credentials in our biblical faith.

An indignant President Obama complained last week, “I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.” Fine. How about plastering a copy of his presidential oath of office there instead? The kowtowing commander-in-chief is in dire need of a daily reminder that his job is to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” — not international law or global diktats.

Case in point: Last week, Obama’s State Department handed in America’s first-ever report to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights in conjunction with something called the “Universal Periodic Review.” 

The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

When it comes to politics, there may be as many opinions as cars cruising down U.S. 65. So, naturally, there are different reactions to a billboard south of Ozark that says "Voted Obama? Embarrassed yet?"

"I know the president didn't win down here, but there were a lot of people down here that voted for him, and I think I can speak for them and say we are not embarrassed yet," Matthew Patterson, executive director of the Greene County Democratic Central Committee, said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

PARIS - Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.

This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.

It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.

James Jay Lee's 'Eco Manifesto': "Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??"

In another section, Lee wrote: "All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it."

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. . . .'

[This article is often attributed to Dr. Emanuel Tanay. He sent the following to Vision to America: "I did not write the article attributed to me; I have forwarded it to some friends. Someone put my name as the author. I am not German but a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Obviously, I am aware of the danger of fanaticism. My book Passport to Life (Amazon.com) gives some of my reflections on the subject of fanaticism. The author of the article you are referring to was Paul E. Marek of Saskatoon, Canada. The original Title was 'Why The Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant.' Paul E. Marek is a second-generation Canadian, whose grandparents fled Czechoslovakia just prior to the Nazi takeover. He wrote it in February of 2006. See http://inrepair.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/why-the-peaceful-majority-is-irrelevant/ Also http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/]

It felt so odd when I first started voting for Republicans toward the end of President Reagan’s second term. I’d once been a public relations and campaign consultant for Democrats, a civil rights activist who helped elect the first black mayor of Atlanta, a campaign designer and manager who launched the career of the first woman to lead the fourth largest city in America. Although it had never been my plan to do so, I’d even served in public office myself after winning a campaign for mayor of a town in which I’d live for just a year. I won a majority of votes, defeating six candidates without a run-off, something almost unheard of.