Nearly 2/3 of Americans oppose any further car bailouts.

Only 38% support the mortgage bailout.

Not a headline the White House wants to see: “No Confidence: Dow Closes At Six-Year Low; Wall Street Drops 800 Points on Heels of Obama’s Plan to Save Economy.” But the facts are the facts: “The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 90 points today and 800 points, or 9.7 percent, in the 10 days since the Obama administration announced major reforms to stimulate the economy, keep banks afloat and save millions of homeowners from foreclosure. But since the banking reforms were unveiled Feb. 10, the Dow has reached a new bear market low — the lowest since Oct. 9, 2002.”

Larry Kudlow picks up where his colleague Rick Santelli left off: “President Obama’s massive mortgage-bailout plan is nothing more than a thinly disguised entitlement program that redistributes income from the responsible 92 percent of home-owning mortgage holders who pay their bills on time to the irresponsible defaulters who bought more than they could ever afford. This is Obama’s spread-the-wealth program in action. Team Obama is rewarding bad behavior. It is enlarging moral hazard. It is expanding its welfarist approach to economic policy.” Really, if you are going to get cash from the government for not paying your mortgage why keep paying it?

Paul Krugman keeps wondering ” Who’ll stop the pain?” Should we break it to him that there is no tooth fairy and no recession-ending fairy either?  It is a recession for goodness sakes — asset values have to fall, businesses need to reorganize, and individuals need to get their personal balance sheets in order before we can recover. He knows that, right?

Peter Baker explains how the Census figured in Judd Gregg’s departure, and why it really does matter.

Michael Ledeen suggests Eric Holder go visit Quantico where there is ample diversity and not much rumination about race — they are too busy building a cohesive organization to fight our real enemies. Read the whole thing, as they say.

Perhaps it was a slow news day at A.P.: “President Obama walks briskly in rain, with no umbrella, for helicopter ride to Andrews AFB.” No umbrella!? How daring, how fascinating!

Mark McKinnon tells the president to knock it off: “It’s time for less mope and more hope. You were elected because you are a walking, talking hope machine. Plug that sucker back in and crank it up to ten. There has been some debate in the opinion pages about whether the FDR or Ronald Reagan approach to a bad economy is the best remedy. Putting that aside, there is one thing they had in common: They were unblushing optimists. And they communicated their enthusiasm until their half-full cups ranneth over.”

On a similar note, Newt Gingrich think this administration “is beginning to resemble Jimmy Carter all over again.” Well, ever since Obama started with the doom and gloom routine, and pumping up the size of government, those Ronald Reagan analogies sure disappeared.

Charles Krauthammer is worried about the “supine diplomacy”: “I would like to think the supine posture is attributable to a rookie leader otherwise preoccupied (i.e., domestically), leading a foreign policy team as yet unorganized if not disoriented. But when the State Department says that Hugo Chávez’s president-for-life referendum, which was preceded by a sham government-controlled campaign featuring the tear-gassing of the opposition, was ‘for the most part . . . a process that was fully consistent with democratic process,’ you have to wonder if Month One is not a harbinger of things to come.”

Jake Tapper notes that the Vatican didn’t give Nancy Pelosi her photo-op. And he boils down the Vatican’s statement: “The Pope told Speaker Pelosi that abortion is a sin and always has been (see ‘consistent teaching’) — and that she as a Catholic legislator is especially responsible for doing all she can to stop it.” Whatever your views on the topic, it is amusing, to say the least, that Pelosi thought she’d avoid getting rebuked by the Pope (indeed get some brownie points for her devotion to Catholicism) after her public misstatement of Church doctrine.