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POLITICS: In retrospect, we should hardly have been surprised at the incredible corruption and irresponsibility being displayed by the administration and its congressional cohorts. After all the many bridges to nowhere, millions is frivolous phony pork-barrel research, union and big business kick-backs, and countless sexual and financial indiscretions, the only thing Obama and company are now doing differently is cheating more blatantly. The political establishment and their media call-girls dismiss the citizenry as a medieval Lord would his vassals. But like Marie Antoinette before them, King Louis Obama XVI and court are about to learn the hatred of big government has gone mainstream and come November, the rules are about to change. Just ask the Libertarians.

LIBERTARIANS: “The Libertarian Party denotes a belief that the powers of government should be very strictly limited, e.g. to foreign affairs, national defense, law enforcement, etc. Libertarians believe that government has no business providing health care, old-age pensions, managing the economy, etc., etc. Libertarians, unlike anarchists, believe in the rule of law, but they are very much against the legislation of morality. Libertarians support drug legalization, for example, on the theory that people have the right to do what they want as long as it doesn't injure anyone else. But they have no problem with laws against murder, robbery, rape, etc.” Tom Gregg, 28 February 2000.

LANDSCAPE: Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of the Washington Examiner, notes the emergence of the Libertarian movement led by Ron Paul as a key indicator in the shift in the political landscape. “The Republican establishment piled scorn on the Libertarian presidential candidacy of Ron Paul in 2008,” he says. “Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling. His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP's handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders -- all statewide officeholders.” He goes on:

What happened? Did America suddenly develop an insatiable appetite for 74-year-old, cranky congressmen from Texas? Is the gold standard catching on? Paul will not likely be the next president. And his son still faces the most arduous part of his journey as Democrats spend millions to paint him as soft on defense, lax on drug enforcement and too radical on welfare programs.

MAINSTREAM: But there's no doubt that the Libertarian message of freedom of individual choice and of restating government intervention into our lives by the  powerful special interests that pull Washington's strings has gone from the radical precincts of the Right and Left to the mainstream. It turns out that watching Goldman Sachs, the United Auto Workers, public employee unions and a raft of other vampires drain the treasury at America's weakest moment in a generation will make a person pretty hacked off.

After Barack Obama's election, Democrats assumed that the American people were battered, bruised and ready for a morphine drip of European-style socialism. Republicans, shocked by their stunning reversals, figured the Democrats were right and started looking for technocrats of their own.

And in a political system fueled by special-interest money, it was hard for the leaders of major parties to imagine anything other than an activist government. After all, if you pay for someone to get elected, you don't expect him to just sit there.

WRECKAGE: Just 18 months ago the leaders of both parties were quite sure that Obama would be the popular, transformative president he aspires to be. The Republicans who emerged from the wreckage of November were certain to look a lot more like Charlie Crist and Mitt Romney than Marco Rubio and Ron Paul.

But Crist's embrace of Obama economics seems to have utterly destroyed his chances at a Senate seat that was once his for the taking. Romney, considered a near lock for the 2012 Republican nomination, has seen his candidacy badly damaged by a populist revolt against the passage of a national health care plan that looks like the one he designed for Massachusetts. Obama, who said that passage of his health plan proved that Washington could still do big things, finds himself deeply at odds with an electorate that is not confident of government's ability to do anything at all.

His election has turned out to be not the result of a national lurch toward government intervention but his own skill at disguising his policies, the failures of the Republican Party and the bursting of the lending bubble.

SURPRISE: A year ago, the tea parties caught most everyone by surprise. It was a conservative flash mob and hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets. Republicans scrambled to get to the head of the parade and Democrats claimed that it was all a put-up job by their enemies in the special interest wars.

The press tried to treat what had been a spontaneous outburst as if it were a traditional political party and asked all the questions they teach in journalism school: Who's in charge? Who are they opposed to? Is it racist?

OFF GUARD: This year, the political parties and the press will not be caught off guard. Republican politicians will address tea party rallies, Democrats will denounce the supposed puppeteers of the movement and the press will look for hate speech. But few will glean the real meaning of the protests or the booming support for Ron and Rand Paul. It's not about the Pauls themselves or the guys with the "Don't tread on me" flags. It's about the people at home who might not be willing to march in the park or join the next Paul money bomb, but who don't blame the folks who do.

Libertarian sentiment has finally gone mainstream. A movement that said that people should do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't hurt anyone else couldn't compete during the culture wars that began in the 1960s. But after two wars, a $12 trillion debt, a financial crisis and the most politically tone-deaf president in modern history, Americans may have finally given up on big government.

And the lies and deceit keep piling up. Obama is out there every day attacking Wall Street and demanding all manner of takeovers to go along with his seizure of half of American industry already. And guess who is paying his bills – fat cat bankers.

SEC ACTS: Last week, The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with defrauding investors, alleging that Goldman let a big hedge fund fill a financial product with risky sub-prime mortgages and then failed to disclose that to the product's buyers. The SEC said in the civil complaint that Goldman and Fabrice Tourre, then vice president, created and sold opaque collateralized-debt obligations, or CDOs, that hinged on the performance of sub prime-mortgage-backed securities.

Goldman Sachs called the accusations "completely unfounded in law and fact," and refuted key points of the complaint in an extensive rebuttal, claiming that the firm itself lost $90 million in the transactions. Goldman faces steep fines and be on the hook to repay nearly $1 billion of investor losses. The charges mark the first action regulators have taken against a Wall Street firm for betting on the housing market’s collapse, and represent another blow to an investment bank under attack about how it handled the financial crisis.

PAYING OFF OBAMA: But guess what Goldman Sachs's employees and executives saw in 2008? In his successful White House bid, Obama had no better source of funds: He raised $996,595 from people identifying Goldman as their employer.

Let's put that number in perspective: It's the most any politician has raised from a single company since campaign finance reform. It was four times what John McCain raised from Goldman. It's more than the combined Goldman Sachs total of every Republican in 2008 running for President, House, and Senate.

The hedge fund, Paulson & Co., paid Goldman $15 million to create the CDO in early 2007, when the U.S. housing market and related securities were beginning to show signs of distress, the SEC complaint said. According to the SEC, Goldman Sachs failed to disclose that Paulson played a significant role in selecting the CDO's portfolio, but the firm then bet against it by entering into a credit-default-swap transaction with Goldman to buy protection on certain layers. As a result of that bet, Paulson made about $1 billion, SEC said. And then he gave it to the community organizer to take over the firm. It is no wonder people hate government – this White House is marking new highs on the stink test.