Michael Ramirez is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for Investor's Business Daily. Some of his best work has been compiled at the newspaper's Web site for your viewing pleasure.

Check out the best Ramirez cartoons from the past year at the IBD Web site.

So let me see if I get this straight. The "Cash for Clunkers" program is the only part of the $787 billion stimulus package that is working, so the Obama administration pulls the plug on it. Is that about right? Makes perfect sense.

House Minority Leader John Boehner made a good point today:

"There are a lot of questions about how the administration administered this program. If they can't handle something as simple as this, how would we handle health care?" the Ohio Republican told The Associated Press.

And this from Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., who has heard complaints from dealerships about how incompetent the government is on a fairly straightforward program.

"The federal government can't process a simple rebate. I've got dealers who have submitted the paperwork three times and have gotten three rejections," Hoekstra told the AP. "What is a dealer supposed to do?"

They rushed through a TARP bailout for banks that is full of fraud, waste and mismanagement.

They rushed through a $787 billion "stimulus" bill that is full of pork spending and has failed to create any jobs.

They rushed through an energy bill that is really a huge energy tax in disguise.

Now Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats want to rush through a $1.5 trillion government-run health care overhaul.

Haven't we learned anything from the mistakes of the past six months?

Paul Howard, director of the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Tarren Bragdon, chief executive officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, want to know why the rush to turn health care over to the government.

From their column in Investor's Business Daily:

Rather than fix the system's underlying problems (the tax treatment of health insurance and perverse payment systems in the Medicare and Medicaid programs), Democrats stand poised to heap more taxes, fees and regulations on private businesses and insurers. The only hope for fiscal sanity is the public's growing unease with Congress' profligate spending.

The Congressional Budget Office scored the original Kennedy-Dodd bill (from the Senate health committee) costing $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with similar tallies for other bills in the House and Senate.

The oddity is that White House experts suggest that as much as 30% of all health care spending — about $700 billion annually — in the U.S. is wasted every year, more than enough to pay for health coverage expansions and still have plenty left to pay down the deficit.

So where's the savings in Democrats' legislation?

Read the full column, "How To Stop This Rush To Failure And Fix What Really Needs Fixing," at the newspaper's Web site.

As if Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats havent' done enough damage to the U.S. economy, a new report warns that another recession could hit in late 2010.

This assumes the U.S. recovers from the current recession, which has dragged on for 18 months and has been prolonged over the past six months by Obama's ill-advised economic policies.

From a story by Kent Hoover in the Philadelphia Business Journal:

The end of the recession is "literally just around the corner," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's chief economist said, but there is a 15 percent to 20 percent chance of another economic downturn by late 2010.

Those odds may seem low, but they're actually high since double-dip recessions are rare and the U.S. economy grows 95 percent of the time, said the chamber's Marty Regalia.

He predicted that the current economic downturn will end around September but that the unemployment rate will remain high through the first half of next year. Investment won't snap back as quickly as it usually does after a recession, Regalia said.

Inflation, however, looms as a potential problem because of the federal government's huge budget deficits and the massive amount of dollars pumped into the economy by the Federal Reserve, he said. If this stimulus is not unwound once the economy begins to recover, higher interest rates could choke off improvement in the housing market and business investment, he said.

"The economy has got to be running on its own by the middle of next year," Regalia said.

Almost every major inflationary period in U.S. history was preceded by heavy debt levels, he noted.

On the bright side, a "double-dip" recession in 2010 will most like result in a backlash against Democrats in the midterm Congressional elections. The end of a Democratic majority in Congress would put a stop to Obama's socialist agenda for the remaining two years of his term.

Read the full story, "Economist: U.S. may see double-dip recession by late 2010," at the Philadelphia Business Journal's Web site.

The Pew Research Center has an exhaustive analysis of Barack Obama's job approval numbers as he approaches 100 days in office.

Obama's 63 percent approval rate matches that of another Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, who also registered a 63 percent approval rate at the same period of his presidency. And we all know how well Carter's presidency fared, don't we?

Ronald Reagan's job approval numbers reached 67 percent after 100 days in office in 1981, according to Pew.

From the Pew survey:

Obama's job approval stands at 63%, while 26% disapprove of the way he is handling his job as president. His approval rating is up slightly from March (59%). Opinions about Obama's performance remain highly partisan. Fully 93% of Democrats approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, compared with just 30% of Republicans. Independents' opinions fall in between, with 58% expressing positive views of his performance and 27% negative opinions.

The numbers that jump out are the approval ratings among Democrats and Republicans. There really are two Americas.

More from Pew:

Pew Research previously found a greater partisan gap in Obama's early job approval ratings than in the ratings of past presidents. That continues to be the case. Obama's approval rating among Republicans (30%) is about the same as Bill Clinton's at a comparable point in his first year (25%), but Democratic approval -- particularly strong approval -- is much higher than it was for Clinton. Fully 79% of Democrats very strongly approve of Obama's job performance; only about half as many Democrats (39%) expressed very strong approval for Clinton at this stage in 1993. Obama's highly positive ratings from members of his own party also surpass Bush's 71% very strong approval among Republicans in April 2001.

For more numbers and comparisons with previous presidents, click here.

Still need convincing that the mainstream media is overrun with liberals?

William Tate, writing in Investor's Business Daily, says media donations favor Democratic Party candidates over GOP candidates by a ratio of 100-1.

Since less than 50 percent of registered voters are Democrats, how is it that journalists would favor one party over the other by a ratio of 100-1? Could it be that liberals in overwhelming numbers have control of the news media?

From his op-ed piece, "Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1" --

An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans.

Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.

Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.

And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected, they are more substantial than the amount that Obama has criticized John McCain for receiving from lobbyists: 96 lobbyists have contributed $95,850 to McCain, while Obama — who says he won't take money from PACs or federal lobbyists — has received $16,223 from 29 lobbyists.

Is there a liberal media bias? Is the sky blue? Is Al Gore making a ton of money from global warming hysteria? Yes, yes and yes.

Tate says liberal media bias is obvious and pervasive:

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money.

Even the Associated Press — no bastion of conservatism — has considered, at least superficially, the media's favoritism for Barack Obama. It's time to revisit media bias.

True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is no media bias. It is we, the hoi polloi, who reveal our bias by questioning the neutrality of these learned professionals in their ivory-towered newsrooms.

Read the full column at the IBD Web site.