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Our No. 1 trading partner, Canada, isn't stupid. When Obama threatened last February to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement on his own terms, our northern ally started looking abroad to other markets.

They found a big one in Europe, which seems to have few hang-ups about increasing exports and signing free-trade treaties. Last Friday, Canada and the European Union held the first talks toward an eventual free trade agreement between the two.

U.S. allies are wise to seek other partners no matter what the U.S. climate — the U.S. downturn no doubt plays a role too. But it started with noises out of the U.S. about pulling up the drawbridge.

With a global downturn, free trade makes more sense than ever. That ought to be an election issue for the U.S., which needs to stay globally competitive. Sadly, it's not.

Agree or disagree, there's no doubt that protectionism will make America poorer and less influential, protecting nothing. Outsourcing is particularly full of misperceptions.

"Look at the auto industry — Japan started by exporting to Canada and the U.S., and now produces cars in the U.S. They did it because the market itself is in the U.S. We see exactly the same thing in Europe. More car plants are going up in Germany and France than Bulgaria and Romania, even though the labor costs are lower there."

With the possibility of a protectionist Democratic president (Barack Obama) working with a protectionist Democratic Congress, the U.S. may be the odd man out when it comes to free trade.

Pity. Because free trade, as any economist will tell you, inevitably boosts the economies of those who engage in it. So others, like Canada, Colombia and Europe, will continue down the free-trade path — toward greater wealth for their citizens — while the U.S. sits on the sidelines.

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On March 1, the Hawaii Medical Service Association began enrolling children in the state Keiki (child) Care program. The grand plan was to provide medicine for every child between birth and 18 years old who didn't otherwise have coverage.

But then parents who could afford coverage began dropping their private plans and placing their children in the program. Gov. Linda Lingle's office, seeing a sure disaster ahead, pulled the plug on the patient last week, citing "budget shortfalls." There simply isn't enough money in the state treasury to fund it.

As socialist health care programs go, Keiki Care was small scale. Officials designed it to accommodate about 3,500 children. It never got that big. By the time just 2,000 children had enrolled, it had become obvious that it was not going to work.

Yet allegedly credible politicians and empty-headed dreamers want to forcibly socialize health care for the entire U.S. and provide coverage for 300 million Americans.

They tell us repeatedly that such a system will actually lower medical costs. Of course it will — but only if health care is rationed, less high-tech care and advanced drugs are used, and people lose the right to choose their own doctor.

Every government that has experimented with such universal health care plans has experienced similar ailments. Britain? Long wait times and shabby care. Canada? The same. Sweden? Its problems are, not so remarkably, similar to those in Britain and Canada.

Severe problems begin when large numbers in universal-care nations begin to help themselves to the "free" health care provided by the government. Since they believe someone else is paying, they run to the doctor for conditions they would not otherwise spend their own money on. That leads to system overuse, the symptoms of which are long wait times, overworked doctors, substandard care and soaring costs that must be borne by taxpayers.

Barack Obama is promising a tax cut that most politicians will love.

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Much of the income-tax cut Obama is promising to give to 95% of Americans is not a tax cut at all, but a federal transfer in the form of a check from the U.S. Treasury to families not paying any federal income tax.

If the American public takes this fiscal sleight-of-hand seriously, the more politicians tax those paying income taxes to fund transfers to those who are not, the more credit they will receive for cutting taxes.

And any attempt to restore fiscal sanity by resisting higher taxes on those who pay income taxes and reducing transfers to those who do not, will be ridiculed as a tax increase on the poor.

Telling a friend that the love of his life is a phony and dangerous is not likely to get him to change his mind. But it may cost you a friend.

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It is much the same story with true believers in Barack Obama. They have made up their minds and not only don't want to be confused by the facts, but also resent being told the facts.

Some of Sen. Obama's most fervent supporters could not tell you what he has actually done on such issues as crime, education or financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, much less what he plans to do to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear nation supplying nuclear weapons to the international terrorist networks that it has supplied with other weapons.

The magic word "change" makes specifics unnecessary. If things are going bad, some think that what is needed is blank-check "change." But history shows any number of countries in crises worse than ours, where "change" turned problems into catastrophes.

We know that Obama opposed attempts to put stricter regulations on Fannie Mae — and that he was the second largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. We know that this very year his campaign sought the advice of disgraced former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines.

Fannie Mae and Raines were at the heart of "the mess in Washington" that Barack Obama claims he is going to clean up under the banner of "change."

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How can someone who served Ronald Reagan as he fought the Cold War, George H. W. Bush as he fought the Gulf War and George W. Bush as he fought the global war on terror support a man from leftist circles in Southside Chicago who has bragged, "I will slow our development of future combat systems" and who promises "direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions"?

Among Powell's rationales is his "difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court." Would he rather have another ACLU activist like Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court instead of a John Roberts or Samuel Alito?

It's not a perfect calculator, but here you can put in your taxable income for 2008 and calculate your tax bill, and then do the same for the tax rates of 2000, before the Bush tax cuts went into effect.

For example, let's say you're part of a married couple, filing jointly, with $60,000 in taxable income. In 2008, you would pay $8,198. If you have the same amount of taxable income after the Bush tax cuts are repealed, and tax rates return to 2000 levels, you'll pay $11,100.

You get to be more patriotic in Joe Biden's mind to the tune of $2,902, out of your pocket and into the government's coffers. Gotta spread that wealth around, you know.

But don't worry. Barack Obama says he won't raise taxes on people making less than $250,000, and provide a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans. He promised.

McCain aide Mark Salter: Sullivan “seems to have lost his f***ing mind”

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” runs Sully’s tagline, quoting Orwell. Consider Salter’s struggle won. Doubtless this righteous salvo, too, will be assimilated into the unified field theory of Trig Trutherism, probably as evidence that Sully got too close to the truth in his scary smart insinuation about Palin buying off the hospital staff where Trig was delivered.

I’m not going to quote the money passage lest it discourage you from reading the whole worthwhile interview. I’ll quote this instead:

JG: Looking back, do you think there was something false about your salad days with the press?

MS: No, I’m trying not to draw general lessons about the press or us or the meaning of life out of all of this. Otherwise I’d despair. I think the media is driven by a need to see this history happen. And I think they’ve rationalized it, they think they’re on the level with McCain, that he’s not the old McCain. But he is the old McCain. He just doesn’t know what happened to the old press corps. They rationalize a reason to go get him. Every Obama attack they carry. Every McCain criticism of Obama they rush to blunt even before Obama does.

Tom Bevan reminds us Salter’s not the first campaign aide to detect this dynamic.

Would a President Obama veto a new Fairness Doctrine if Congress enacted one? It's doubtful.

The Fairness Doctrine was an astonishingly bad idea. It's a too-tempting power for government to abuse. When the doctrine was in effect, both Democratic and Republican administrations regularly used it to harass critics on radio and TV.

Second, a new Fairness Doctrine would drive political talk radio off the dial. If a station ran a big-audience conservative program like, say, Laura Ingraham's, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative. But liberals don't do well on talk radio, as the failure of Air America and indeed all other liberal efforts in the medium to date show. Stations would likely trim back conservative shows so as to avoid airing unsuccessful liberal ones.

Then there's all the lawyers you'd have to hire to respond to the regulators measuring how much time you devoted to this topic or that. Too much risk and hassle, many radio executives would conclude. Why not switch formats to something less charged - like entertainment or sports coverage?

527 ad: “Concerned about Obama?”

WaPo: Government distortion created the financial collapse

It should be the end of social engineering by Congress by distorting private lending markets.  That won’t happen until people hold the architects of this failure to account.  That starts with honest and high-profile reporting of the causes of the collapse, and the Post takes an important step with its lead editorial today.

Next, perhaps the Post can report on the distortions Democratic politicians are making in hiding this truth from the voters.  Perhaps they can publicly scold Barack Obama for blaming the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on “deregulation” and the policies of an administration that tried on numerous occasions to get Congress to act responsibly in regulating business practices at the GSEs.  Maybe other newspapers can finally mention how Barney Frank and Chris Dodd kept insisting that all was well at Fannie and Freddie, the latter while taking sweetheart loans from a Fannie Mae-linked lender and taking over $160,000 in Fannie/Freddie contributions — while chairing the committee that oversaw the industry.

At least this is a start.