You’d think that President Obama could spare a few minutes for a formal meeting with the leader of one of our oldest and most important allies while both are in town on business. Not so. According to the BBC:

The prime minister’s team were “frantic” after being unable to secure the talks at the UN summit in New York, a diplomatic source has told the BBC.

However, the president held private meetings with the leaders of Japan, China and Russia.

Downing Street said reports of a snub were “completely without foundation”.

Not a snub? Sounds like typical British “stiff upper lip” stuff so as not to create further tension and to minimize Brown’s domestic political embarrassment.
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A few factoids for you to use and be amused by.

• 15th: Where liberals claim the US ranks in life expectancy.
• 1st: Actual life expectancy rank if you control for deaths due to traffic accidents and homicides. That’s right, the US ranks number one among OECD countries with a mean life expectancy of 76.9 years.
• $12,680: Annual family health care insurance premium in 2008, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. If employer-based, a 70/30 employer/employee cost split is typical.
• $9,827: The annual hidden tax imposed by defensive medicine on a typical family of 4 in the US.
• $43 Million: Total contributions by attorneys to the 2008 Obama for president campaign.
• 1300%: Increase in TV ad spending by Malpractice attorneys from 2004 to 2008.

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1,300 Percent. That’s the increase in TV ad spending by malpractice attorneys between 2004 and 2008, according to a new study conducted by the Institute for Legal Reform. The number of ads over the same period skyrocketed from about 10,150 in 2004 to more than 156,000 in 2008.

An earlier blog post – Tort reform will lower costs, improve access, quality of care – discussed the annual $10,000 hidden tax imposed on a family of four by the defensive medical strategies doctors employ to avoid malpractice suits. So why is there little or no mention of tort reform in the current health care proposals?
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But is she really putting her speakership at risk, as Redstate’s post Speaker Pelosi Stands Firm on the Public Option, Essentially Tells the White House to Go Pound Sand asserts?

That moment in The Great Obamacare War arrived yesterday, when the Speaker of the House stood firm on the public option, essentially telling the White House to go pound sand.

In effect, Speaker Pelosi just called in an air-strike on her own position.

This is not going to be pretty.

It will likely cost her the Speakership. After the 2010 elections.

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Matt Frei’s commentary on the BBC News website, titled Washington diary: Obama’s slump, is so full of BS I don’t even know where to begin. Granted, it’s an opinion piece, but millions of people around the world watch or listen to BBC News every day, and the line between reporting opinions and facts is increasingly blurred, especially at the BBC.

Let’s skip by the “redefining the relationship with the rest of the world” – after all, it looks like Gitmo won’t be closed anytime soon and Iran hasn’t backed down on its nuclear threat. Instead, let’s start with Frei’s supposed neighbor, “Republican Dave”, who voted for Obama because “he could not stomach the thought of Sarah Palin being one heartbeat away from the Oval Office”. How big a factor in President Obama’s election were voters like Dave? According to CNN, 9% of self-identified Republicans voted for Obama. Referring to President Obama, Frei states: “It is the wobbly Obama Republicans – like my friend Dave – that he really needs to worry about.”
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Will Obama be impeached or forced to resign before the 2012 elections? Howard Portnoy’s post in Hot Air, titled Can Obama Save His Presidency? suggests just that:

The fate of the Obama presidency is, I believe, a fait accompli. The question now is not how it will end — but when. I for one am growing increasingly skeptical that he can survive a complete four-year term without the American people or himself at some point crying “Enough!”

Surely even the most relaxed definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” doesn’t cover having a far left -wing agenda, so impeachment is a non-starter. As for resignation, Portnoy’s analysis implies that it wouldn’t even occur to President Obama:

Obama was born into a radical political world view fostered by both his natural parents and, in the absence of any parent after his mother’s death, reinforced by Frank Marshall Davis, a black activist and champion of identity politics. When he came to Chicago as a young adult, Obama sought out and found the same sorts of people, from Wright and Pfleger to William Ayers.

How surprising then should it be that, for Obama, socialism is the norm — the gold standard according to which he sets his political compass and by which he attempts, however futilely, to plot America’s future course. It is his socialist philosophy that informs and infects his policies and his understanding of the job of President.

Jennifer Rubin in Commentary suspects that Obama is being told what he wants to hear:

I suspect that so long as there are allies and advisers whispering in his ear that all he needs is some rhetorical tweaking, we won’t see anything approaching a substantive revision of his agenda. If the president doesn’t correct course, the voters may do it for him in 2010. But for now, don’t get your hopes up for a swing to the center. After all, Obama is being told, and no doubt believes, that the mantle of liberalism has been passed to him from Ted Kennedy. He won’t give it up—unless the voters force him to.

Obama would never resign under any circumstance, even with an increasingly likely repudiation in 2010 elections. The more reasonable question to ask is if Obama’s actions and policies will limit his presidency to a single-term. Make no mistake – he will be the Democratic candidate in 2012. The next presidential election is 38 months away, and something – perhaps a foreign-policy win – will occur to improve his standing in the polls. Combine this with some rhetorical moderation in 2010-2011, and talk of a single-term presidency will evaporate.

Besides, can you imagine Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi as President?