Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
Rest assurred, if the Obama campaign could have figured out a way to demonize George W. Bush to explain Obama’s failure in his first debate, they would have done so. After all, that’s pretty much how they’ve explained ALL THE OTHERObama failures up to now.
The Obama campaign has been reeling since losing the first Presidential debate of this election cycle in front of 67 million viewers. They’ve tried–and thus far failed–to craft a narrative to explain away the debacle in Denver. Previously, we reported to you that Obama Senior Advisor David Plouffe, who ran the President’s successful 2008 campaign, (falsely) accused Mitt Romney of lying. In a rare comedic moment from the typically robotic former Vice President Al Gore, he suggested on Current TV that the Mile High City’s altitude was the reason Obama was low on energy and enthusiasm. And, of course, Obama’s chronically dishonest deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and several others passed the buck to the moderator, Jim Lehrer. None of the above caught on, even with the mainstream pro-Obama media.
Now the Obama Administration is floating their latest excuse: that the campaign, particularly John Kerry (who played the role of Romney in simulated debates), did not channel Mitt’s aggression enough.
From CBS’s “This Morning”:
Norah O’Donnell: “Some Democrats say [Obama’s] campaign needs a wake-up call. Bill Plante is here with that part of the story. Bill, you’ve been talking to your sources; what are they saying?
Correspondent Bill Plante: “Well Norah, they’re simply upset and really outraged. They blame the President’s team, first of all, for not preparing him to meet the challenge of an aggressive Mitt Romney. They say that nobody in the room challenged him, including the guy that he was debating with, John Kerry, because, as they say, he wants to be Secretary of State so he’s not going to get in the President’s face. And Presidents are used to deference; they’re not used to people challenging them like that. So they think that the debate prep was terrible, but they also fault the President himself for not understanding that Romney was going to be more aggressive.”
The 2012 Obama campaign continues to be a stark contrast from their 2008 effort. In 2008, then Senator Obama used youthful ebullience, soaring rhetoric, and a precise campaign infrastructure to capture the hearts and minds of the American people. In 2012, the President seems increasingly lethargic and quick to make excuses for missteps on the campaign trail.
What once was “Hope and Change” is now “Mope and Blame,” and this time it’s John Kerry under the President’s bus.
Actually, we ought to lay the blame for a president who was clearly incompetent on the backs of the American people, who were so dispicably foolish in 2008 it was unreal. But as stupid and as depraved as it is to believe the Emperor had clothes on in 2008, anybody who still thinks the naked turd stinking up the presidency is anything but an empty suit when we desperately need a leader is simply in the category of “demon-possessed.”
Voters by and large believe that President Obama’s economic policies have contributed to the persistent malaise in the economy, according to a new poll.
The CBS/New York Times survey finds that 64 percent of voters believe that Obama’s policies have contributed significantly or somewhat to the persistent weakness in the economy. Still, 81 percent of voters believe the same about the policies of former President George W. Bush.
Obama leads Mitt Romney in measures of middle class security — with 52 percent of respondents saying that Obama will do more to help the middle class. The survey also finds that 52 percent of voters believe that Romney’s policies favor the rich.
Obama’s relentless assault on Mitt Romney’s business record are also showing no real signs of significantly shaping the race. Sixty percent of voters say that Bain makes no difference, while 23 percent say it makes them less likely to vote for him. Seventy-three percent of voters say that Romney’s wealth makes no difference.
Romney gets better marks on handling the economy, with 49 percent of voters saying he would do a better job than Obama. Romney also has an advantage among voters on the budget deficit, taxes, and illegal immigration. Voters trust Obama more on foreign policy and social issues. Obama has only a one point advantage over Romney on handling of terrorism issues, 44 to 43 percent.
Overall, Romney and Obama are essentially tied — with Romney edging Obama 47 to 46 nationally. That’s in line with other national surveys showing an extremely close race.
The poll surveyed 1,089 adults.
Obama Campaign Guru David Axelrod was asked for his reaction to the fact that the American people were finally beginning to realize that Obama ought to be held responsible for his mess. A picture is worth a thousand words:
This pretty much means that massive election fraud that Democrats generally depend upon probably won’t be enough and Obama will have to create a crisis and declare martial law so he can suspend the elections and finally put an end to the illusion that America is a constitutional republic.
Note to universe: George Bush has not been president for four years now. Perhaps it’s about time for somebody else to take responsibility for the economy. But Obama will sure never step up to that job.
“Favor the rich” means to give the only people who have the resources to hire you to give you a job. Unless you’re handing out resumes to all the poor people you know, anyway.
Just remember, if Obama is president for life and lives to be 100, he’ll spend the next fifty years blaming George Bush much the way the Soviet Union ultimately blamed seventy years of bad weather for their inability to grow enough food to feed their people.
If you like living in a failing nation and having a leader who blames everybody but himself for his failure to lead, elect Obama. Because more than anyone else on earth, he’s your guy. If you want to get out of this national quicksand we’re in, the for the love of God please give someone else a chance to do what Obama has now thoroughly proven he cannot do.
Anyone want to try defining “overnight” for me, just so that we have a rule of thumb going forward? On Inauguration Day, I would have accepted “2009″ or even “his first two years in office” as plausible answers. Instead, five months out from election day, somehow dawn still has yet to break. His braintrust is now actually on the cusp of arguing, in all seriousness, that it’s unfair to judge him on what’s happened in the jobs market over the course of his entire first term.
What do you do when America’s just taken an economic gut punch, with a vicious European uppercut soon to follow? You hold six fundraisers, naturally:
With Republicans steamrollering ahead with a group of well-fed Super Pacs and an increasingly successful money effort by Mitt Romney, President Obama Friday will attend six fundraisers, a possible sign of budding desperation for a campaign that is lagging far behind its initial fundraising expectations.
Obama will travel to Minneapolis, where he will ensconce himself at the Bachelor Farmer Restaurant for three successive fundraising events. Afterward, he moves on to Chicago for a fundraiser at the Chicago Cultural Center and then two events at what appear to be separate private residences.
Have a look at who’ll be at his Chicago fundraiser. It must be a comfort to him, with so much going wrong, to spend time with old friends.
Incidentally, here’s what today’s atom-bomb jobs report did to his reelection odds on InTrade. A surprisingly small dip, all things considered, but I think they’re in the ballpark of what his actual chances are right now. If next month’s report is a stinker too, though, expect Romney to surge past him and become the new favorite in November:
His new Plan B on the economy? The thingamajig stimulus.
I’m sorry, maybe I’ve got a Rip Van Winkle thing going. Apparently I went to sleep last night AND WOKE UP THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER.
I know, I know: it’s BUSH’S fault Obama is to fundraisers what Barry Bonds was to home runs (especially given the fact that both cheat as much as necessary to get what they want).
If you want four more years of miserable excuses for abject failure, please vote for Barack Obama in November.
Let me get this straight: the man who has blamed George Bush for FOUR YEARS of his own failures actually stood up and made a courageous decision all by himself? Seriously?
It’s time to take another drink again, you liver-failed alcoholics who are still in the Obama drinking game.
Every time there’s “unexpected” news – such as poor economic news or anything that would undermine the liberal thesis that Obama is our messiah – ye who are playing must take a drink.
Most of the players are dead now and the few who are still living are very, very sick waiting for their new donor organs (the argument being, “I’m NOT an alcoholic; I’m just a guy who trusted Obama”):
Leadership: Obama Administration Drafted Memo to Blame Military if OBL Mission Failed
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Sean Hannity tonight that the Obama Administration drafted a memo to protect the president from blame if the mission to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden would have failed. That way Obama could blame the general instead of taking the blame himself. Mukasey wrote about it this week in The Wall Street Journal.
“That was a highly lawyered memo (designed to protect the president politically)… I think there’s going to be more that’s going to be tumbling out about that escapade but so far that memo is enough.“
And, of course, this surprises no one who is familiar with Obama’s leadership style.
Mukasey also contrasted Obama’s leadership style tonight to Lincoln and Eisenhower as he did in his WSJ Opinion piece earlier in the week.
Lincoln took responsibility in August 1862 for failures that had been attributed to General George McClellan—eventually sacked for incompetence—and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Lincoln told a crowd that McClellan was not at fault for seeking more than Stanton could give, and “I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged upon the Secretary of War.”
Dwight Eisenhower is famous for having penned a statement to be issued in anticipation of the failure of the Normandy invasion that reads in relevant part: “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
A week later, when the success of the invasion was apparent, Eisenhower saluted the Allied Expeditionary Forces: “One week ago this morning there was established through your coordinated efforts our first foothold in northwestern Europe. High as was my preinvasion confidence in your courage, skill and effectiveness . . . your accomplishments . . . have exceeded my brightest hopes.
Eisenhower did mention himself at the end: “I truly congratulate you upon a brilliantly successful beginning. . . . Liberty loving people everywhere would today like to join me in saying to you, ‘I am proud of you.’”
Here’s what Mukasey said in the Wall Street Journal:
The first anniversary of the SEAL Team 6 operation that killed Osama bin Laden brings the news that President Obama plans during the coming campaign to exploit the bragging rights to the achievement. That plan invites scrutiny that is unlikely to benefit him.
Consider the events surrounding the operation. A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president’s celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: “The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out.”
Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm. McRaven’s, not the president’s. Moreover, the president does not seem to have addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence value—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast.
The only reliable weapon that any administration has against the current threat to this country is intelligence. Every operation like the one against bin Laden (or the one that ended the career of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen and al Qaeda propagandist killed in a drone attack last September) dips into the reservoir of available intelligence. Refilling that reservoir apparently is of no importance to an administration that, after an order signed by the president on his second day in office, has no classified interrogation program—and whose priorities are apparent from its swift decision to reopen investigations of CIA operators for alleged abuses in connection with the classified interrogation program that once did exist.
While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president, consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission accomplished by SEAL Team 6:
“I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . .”
That seems a jarring formulation coming from a man who, when first elected, was asked which president he would model himself on and replied, Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln, on the night after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender ended the Civil War, delivered from the window of the White House a speech that mentioned his own achievements not at all, but instead looked forward to the difficulties of reconstruction and called for black suffrage—a call that would doom him because the audience outside the White House included a man who muttered that Lincoln had just delivered his last speech. It was John Wilkes Booth.
The man from whom President Obama has sought incessantly to distance himself, George W. Bush, also had occasion during his presidency to announce to the nation a triumph of intelligence: the capture of Saddam Hussein. He called that success “a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq.” He attributed it to “the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks.”
He did mention himself at the end: “Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.”
That is not to say that great leaders, including presidents, have not placed themselves at the center of great events. But generally it has been to accept responsibility for failure.
Lincoln took responsibility in August 1862 for failures that had been attributed to General George McClellan—eventually sacked for incompetence—and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Lincoln told a crowd that McClellan was not at fault for seeking more than Stanton could give, and “I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged upon the Secretary of War.”
Dwight Eisenhower is famous for having penned a statement to be issued in anticipation of the failure of the Normandy invasion that reads in relevant part: “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
A week later, when the success of the invasion was apparent, Eisenhower saluted the Allied Expeditionary Forces: “One week ago this morning there was established through your coordinated efforts our first foothold in northwestern Europe. High as was my preinvasion confidence in your courage, skill and effectiveness . . . your accomplishments . . . have exceeded my brightest hopes.
Eisenhower did mention himself at the end: “I truly congratulate you upon a brilliantly successful beginning. . . . Liberty loving people everywhere would today like to join me in saying to you, ‘I am proud of you.'”
Such examples are worth remembering every time President Obama claims bin Laden bragging rights.
Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general from 2007-09, and as a U.S. district judge from 1988 to 2006.
A version of this article appeared May 1, 2012, on page A15 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama and the bin Laden Bragging Rights.
You’ve got to understand the situation Obama faced: what would have happened to Obama politically if he had been told exactly where bin Laden was hiding and he refused to get him??? When you ask yourself that question, it wasn’t a courageous decision to go after Osama bin Laden: it would have been a far more politically courageous decision NOT to go get him; because furious intelligence and military professionals would have resigned in protest and then made very sure that Obama paid politically for refusing to get the man who murdered 3,000 Americans. And let’s not forget that this is now the age of Wikileaks.
Obama would not have politically survived if he had refused to get bin Laden; he might literally have been impeached – with Democrats joining Republicans to wash their hands of this turd.
Obama did what Obama had to do to protect Obama.
And the memo pretty much proves that Obama took the “protect Obama at all costs” meme as far as he could possibly take it.
Don’t blame Obama. Never blame Obama. Obama is he who must never be blamed. You are not allowed to hold him responsible for anything that ever has happened or ever will happen or you are a racist. Well, if you vote Republican you’re already a racist a priori; so you’re a DOUBLE racist.
We are now well into the third year of Obama’s presidency. We are going on the third year of abject failure from a man whose only real experience had been in community agitating.
They have answers at all because they’re entire economic and moral philosophies are depraved and false. All they have is blaming Bush. Because Obama isn’t responsible for his presidency. In fact, we should re-elect Obama so we can have another five plus years of abject failure that we can hold Bush responsible for.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Home construction in the United States is all but coming to a halt.
Americans are on track to buy fewer new homes than in any year since the government began keeping data almost a half-century ago. Sales are now just half the pace of 1963 — even though there are 120 million more people in the United States now.
Here’s another reality in God damn America: food prices skyrocketing out of control. That’s “change,” too. From the LA Times:
On Wednesday, the U.S. Labor Department reported that wholesale food prices jumped 3.9% in February over January, the highest monthly increase in 37 years. Economists expect to see a similar uptick in what consumers are paying for food at retail when the Labor Department releases its consumer price index Thursday.
“Food prices have been rising a lot faster, because underlying costs have really shot up. You’re seeing some ingredients up 40%, 50%, 60% over last year,” said Ephraim Leibtag, a U.S. Department of Agriculture economist. “When you see wheat prices close to 80% up, that’s going to ripple out to the public.”
It’s a good thing we spent an entire year passing ObamaCare. Because who really needs an economic base? And so what if it’s profoundly unconstitutional? And so what if the economy goes straight down to hell where one day Democrats will be spending eternity for murdering 53 million innocent human beings.
“Unexpected” is the very favorite adjective of the mainstream media these days. And it will continue to be their favorite adjective until Obama is finally driven out of office in the same spirit of disgrace and abject failure that Jimmy Carter left under.
When a Democrat – and most especially when a liberal Democrat – is president, every single new negative economic report is an utter surprise that no one could possibly have every expected.
When a Republican is running the country, by contrast, no matter how good things might be, it’s actually a bad thing.
The media’s bias is simply mindboggling. As I have frequently documented:
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks have begun the trading day down, with a disappointing jobs report souring investors’ mood. The Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are all seeing modest declines in early trading.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Economists had expected better, but the Labor Department reports the nation’s employers added only 39,000 jobs last month. That was a sharp drop from the 172,000 created in October. It also pushes the nation’s unemployment rate to 9.8 percent. It’s now been above 9 percent for 19 straight months, the longest stretch on record.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Commerce Department reports orders to U.S. factories fell 0.9 percent in October. That’s the biggest drop since May. Plunging demand for commercial and military aircraft was the biggest factor. Excluding transportation, orders were off 0.2 percent.
A Labor Department report released today reveals job creation in November was down by 133,000 jobs from October, bringing the total unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent.
This was a declared the most recent Unexpected Development in our long unemployment saga by the media. Private-sector job creators are facing massive tax hikes, which the President and his Party say they will defend to the bitter end. The cost of labor has skyrocketed due to a poorly designed, constantly mutating health care bill, which keeps spitting out unforeseen, but universally expensive, consequences. Somehow there are “analysts” who think they will respond to these factors by expanding their operations and hiring more people. Such analysts now live in a constant state of surprise.
Only 39,000 jobs were added in November, which makes it the sixteenth consecutive month in which unemployment has remained above 9.5%, the worst record since the Great Depression. You may recall that the Democrats predicted 7% unemployment by now, after a peak below 8%, if their trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill was passed. The Republican House Ways & Means Committee certainly does, and put out a press release to that effect this morning.
The ABC News report of the new unemployment figures contains an interesting quote from Daneil Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO’s Office of Investment, who thinks employers are squeezing more work out of few people by exploiting a “climate of fear”: “There are five applicants for every opening. You have to work harder, or your job either will be done away with or outsourced. Companies would just as soon open a factory in India as Peoria.”
No, they wouldn’t, or they already would have done so. No CEO looks at pins in Peoria and Calcutta on a world map, shrugs, and says “Whichever. I don’t know, flip a coin.” They choose Calcutta because they have to. They outsource when hiring American workers, or building facilities on American soil, no longer makes economic sense. Both sentiment and practical considerations cause them to prefer American locations. No sane executive would prefer to manage facilities on the other side of the world, commuting thousands of miles for meetings or inspections. If companies truly would “just as soon open a factory in India as Peoria,” there has been very little stopping them for decades. Are we supposed to believe America just keeps winning those coin tosses?
Furthermore, the idea of reducing personnel needs by enslaving current employees through a “climate of fear” is ignorant rubbish. Anecdotal cases surely exist, but the bulk of job creation, on a national scale, is a response to demand. The ABC report makes much of the contrast between falling job creation and rising corporate profits, missing the point that long-term hiring decisions are made in anticipation of future opportunity. Uncertainty breeds hesitation and thwarts expansion.
Look at it this way: suppose the government simply hired everyone, and guaranteed them a splendid income. What would they all do? The government could give them make-work jobs, but this would not be a response to demand, so it wouldn’t last very long. Every aspect of the economy, from consumer prices to interest rates, would be thrown wildly off kilter by a horde of people getting paid $30,000 per year to do whatever a government bureaucrat can think up… or more likely do nothing at all while waiting for the Federal Bureau of Imaginary Jobs to come up with something. The government would quickly go bankrupt, while citizens waiting in line to buy ten-dollar loaves of stale Wonder Bread. You don’t have to imagine what this looks like – just crack open a history book and look up “Soviet Union.”
Only demand and opportunity sustain job growth. People need each other. The only way government can help them hook up, and generate wealth through commerce, is to get out of the way. Wise observers will expect robust, sustained job growth when they see signs of that happening.
This marks the nineteenth consecutive month of unemployment being over 9%. The media continues to vilify George Bush, but do you know how many months the unemployment rate was over 9% during the Bush administration? Try ZERO.
The worst month for unemployment for George W. Bush was 7.8% – which, interestingly, was the same worst month as Bill Clinton (who, as we all know, paved the streets with gold) had.
Nineteen straight months of 9+ percent unemployment. Versus zero months. So we blame the guy with the zero months for the record of the guy with the nineteen straight months. And this from the very people who constantly harp about “fairness.”
Let’s blame the guy who had one of the best records for appointing people with private sector business experience, rather than the guy with the worst record in history:
Whatever we do, let’s NOT blame the guy who doubled and then tripled the debt in the most massive spending binge in American history:
But the media prefers “the unexpected” to “the truth.”
For the record, I am rather fed up with “unexpected” lousy economic news that anyone with a scintilla of common sense saw coming before Obama even took office.
I’ve already written (and still more here) about increasing numbers of Democrats doing a tacit “credit Bush” move – as opposed to the mindless failure of responsibility inherent in the “blame Bush” garbage – by demanding that ALL of the Bush tax cuts be extended at least temporarily.
So you’ll have to forgive me for changing the emphasis of the following excellent article, even as I preserve its substance.
Yes, Democrats are increasingly starting to change their tune on the Bush tax cuts. Previously, they were blaming Bush’s tax cuts for the economic collapse; now growing numbers of them are saying they should be extended. But let’s not forget to examine the classless, tasteless, and clueless demagoguery that is daily spit out of the Obama White House.
After John Boehner reiterated his call to extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts expiring at the end of the year, the White House once again tried hammering him as an extremist looking to protect the rich at the expense of the middle class. House Democrats will undercut that messaging with their own call to put off tax hikes for the next couple of years. In a letter circulating on Capitol Hill and reviewed by Politico, Blue Dogs and other Democrats tell Nancy Pelosi that this is no time to raise taxes or to extend the uncertainty:
POLITICO has obtained a draft of a letter from rank-and-file lawmakers to Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer urging them not to let tax rates rise for Americans at the highest income levels.
“We believe in times of economic recovery it makes good sense to maintain things as they are in the short term, to provide families and businesses the certainty required to plan and make sound budget decisions,” the House members write in a letter that was being circulated for signatures on Friday and is expected to be delivered today or Tuesday.
Reps. Jim Matheson (Utah), Glenn Nye (Virginia), Melissa Bean (Ill.) and Gary Peters (Mich.) drafted the letter and are working to gather support, mostly from the moderate Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions, for at least a temporary extension of the rates for top income earners as well as those in the lower brackets.
This comes at the same time that Boehner’s remarks have stirred controversy — although largely from the absence of context. The media originally reported them as a retreat back to the White House petition. Instead, Boehner said that he would vote to approve a bill that only extended the middle-class portion of the tax cuts if that was all that was offered. Boehner scoffed at the notion that he was holding those tax-cuts extensions hostage, which a moment’s thought would prove correct. Pelosi has a 77-seat majority in the House, and can pass anything Democrats want.
Clearly, some Democrats are now wondering if they want a class war right before the election. That kind of strategy plays well in districts like Pelosi’s, but is falling flat in the rest of the country. Democrats played that card in 2006 and 2008, and after four years of control in Congress, it’s no longer a trump card. Democrats need to find a way to generate growth, and the only way to do that is to get people with capital to put it to work — which the coming tax hikes will prevent.
The Obama administration is doing its best to portray Boehner as an extremist. Unfortunately for Obama, his own party shows that it’s the White House on the extreme, pushing tax hikes in the middle of an economic stall. It also points to a bigger problem with the strategy, which is that punching down below one’s weight is never a good idea. Instead of marginalizing Boehner, the White House is practically lending him the bully pulpit by putting Boehner at the same level as the President. That helps the GOP, because most of the electorate understands that tax hikes will be disastrous for the economy — and Obama doesn’t exactly have a track record of success that gives him the benefit of the doubt.
So Chris Boehner is saying that, as a principled conservative who believes in the radical premises that Americans actually deserve to keep more of the money that they earned, he wants tax cuts for everyone. But if he can’t get tax cuts for everyone, he’ll vote to give tax cuts to as many people as he possibly can.
Versus Obama (i.e., Obama Akbar!!!), whose position is that he will screw every single American and screw the entire economy unless his Marxist class warfare system prevails. Because, dammit, he wants to have all the centralized commissar power to “spread that wealth around.”
And Obama calls Boehner the “extremist.”
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is deceitfully misrepresenting Boehner’s principled position into some kind of retreat.
Boehner told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “If the only option I have is to vote for those at $250,000 and below, of course I’m going to do that.”
But, he said, “I’m going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.”
And, he said, “I’ve been making the point now for months that we need to extend all the current rates for all Americans if we want to get our economy going again and we want to get jobs in America.”
I know, I know, what an “extremist.” And, of course, Obama – who will blow up the entire country if he doesn’t get absolutely everything he wants – what a “moderate.”
And, of course, the media is clearly accurately representing Boehner’s view as a “retreat.” Because, as any fool (and only fools, fwiw) knows, no conservative wants tax cuts for the middle class. They just want tax cuts for the rich. Because conservatives are evil and they hate the middle class.
When Mark Twain said, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get it’s boots on,” he could have been talking about the American mainstream media. Because that seems to be their standard operating procedure. It is most certainly Barry Hussein’s.
I have written about the fact that tax cuts for “the rich” are the best way to increase both jobs and government revenues. The arguments are on our side. And in fact rather than being “extremist,” the position of favoring lower taxes for ALL Americans is the reasonable one we can take. I hope you take time to read that.
The American people are now recognizing that Obama was fundamentally wrong about his stimulus; he was profoundly wrong about his ObamaCare; he was flagrantly wrong about his cap-and-trade system; he was terribly wrong with his green jobs nonsense; he was terrible wrong about immigration issues and the Ground Zero mosque; he endangered America by being completely wrong on Iran; and now he couldn’t be more wrong about his tax policy.
Where has this clown been right about anything?
Obama has said in his usual demagogic way, “If I said the sky was blue, they’d say no.” The problem with Obama’s analogy is that if he said the sky was blue, it would probably be nighttime and the sky would actually be black. Look at the sky at 2 AM and tell me it looks blue to you. Obama began his presidency with a lie, PROMISING he wouldn’t run in 2008. And not only has he never told the truth since, but he has proven that he is disastrously incompetent, as well. The other problem with Obama is he’s not saying things like “the sky is blue” that everyone can reasonably agree to; he’s saying extremist, radical things that will implode this country. If Obama would only pursue semi-reasonable policies, he’d get support from Republicans.
Let’s realize that Obama is a demagogue, a liar, an incompetent, and unfit to be president. Let’s do an even better job ignoring him. Let’s realize that if the mainstream media reports something, it is very likely at least mostly untrue. Let’s realize that cutting taxes for everyone – especially the people who actually create jobs in this country – is far and away the best path to prosperity. And let’s realize that we need conservative policies if we’re going to get out of this hole and move forward
More and more Democrats are admitting that increasing taxes on the rich people who actually create jobs would be a foolhardy thing to do.
That pours a big giant can of water on the fire Democrats started in the whole blame-Bush-for-the-economic-meltdown thing. Bush’s tax cuts were the biggest straw man for Democrats. And now some of the most prominent Democrats are saying we need to keep those same tax cuts that Democrats were universally demonizing only months ago.
WASHINGTON — Congress seems increasingly reluctant to let taxes go up, even on wealthier Americans.
Worried about the fragile economy and their own upcoming elections, a growing number of Democrats are joining the rock-solid Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to let some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts expire.
Democratic leaders in Congress still back Obama, but the willingness to raise taxes is waning among the rank and file as the stagnant economy threatens the party’s majority in the House and Senate.
“In my view this is no time to do anything that could be jarring to a fragile recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, a first-term Democrat. […]
“It’s going to be hard to resist a one-year extension for everybody, given the state of the economy,” said Clint Stretch, a tax expert at the consulting firm Deloitte Tax LLP. “That’s where I think the ball is moving.”
The tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush. They provided help for both rich and poor, reducing the lowest marginal rates as well as the top ones and several in between. They also provided a wide range of income tax breaks for education, families with children and married couples.
Taxes on capital gains and dividends were reduced, while the federal estate tax was gradually repealed, though only through this year. […]
Another freshman Democrat, Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama, said he would like to see all the tax cuts extended for two or three years, if lawmakers cannot agree on a more permanent plan.
“Party leaders are not my directors or my boss,” Bright said. “My boss is my constituents, and I’ve heard from a vast majority of my constituents that they don’t believe in tax increases on anybody at this point in time.”
Bright is high on the re-election endangered list, one of roughly four dozen Democrats in districts won by Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.
In the Senate, where Democrats need unity and at least one Republican vote to overcome filibusters, at least three Democrats and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have said they want to extend all the tax cuts temporarily.
Several Democratic candidates for Senate have also come out in favor of extending them all, including Robin Carnahan in Missouri and Jack Conway in Kentucky.
“Jack Conway was in favor of the Bush tax cuts when they first passed (in 2001 and 2003), and he’s in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts now,” said spokeswoman Allison Haley.
An article in McClatchey Newspapers points out that if Democrats try to hike taxes on the rich, it will be Democrats who stood in the way:
WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are poised to play a leading role this month in thwarting their party’s effort to raise income tax rates on the wealthy.
Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have been eager to extend the breaks for individuals who earn less than $200,000 annually and joint filers who make less than $250,000. Those who earn more would pay higher, pre-2001 rates starting next year.
However, a small but growing number of moderate Democrats are balking at boosting taxes on the rich. Many face electorates that recoil at the mention of any tax increase. Some represent areas that are loaded with wealthier taxpayers. Further, some incumbent senators who don’t face voters this fall are reluctant to increase taxes on anyone while the economy remains sluggish.
Without their support, the push to raise rates on the rich probably will fail. […]
Many Democrats and Republicans are eager for a tax cut battle, seeing it as emblematic of each party’s economic principles.
“Now the administration is calling for a massive tax hike on small businesses in the middle of a recession,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who maintains that higher rates on the wealthy would hit small business hard, a point the Obama administration disputes.
“So it’s no surprise,” McConnell added, “that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track and that Democrat policies have failed to do anything to fix their top concern, the economy.”
Democratic leaders are convinced that voters won’t buy that argument. Not only will the public back higher taxes for the rich, but “we have an opportunity to generate $700 billion that could go to deficit reduction and badly needed programs,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus.
The middle class-only extension is thought to have strong support in the House, where Democrats have a huge majority, but some Democrats are reluctant.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., represents the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, one of the nation’s wealthiest districts. Median family income there in 2008 was $117,892, well above the national average of $63,211. He said that repealing the top rates would have political consequences.
“Sometimes we forget how we became the majority. We did it by winning some affluent districts,” he said.
The bigger problem for Democrats looms in the Senate, where Majority Leader Reid’s immediate problem is getting the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the measure. Democrats control 59 seats, and at least three of them — Bayh, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota — have signaled that they won’t back a permanent repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy.
They suggest a way out of a stalemate — temporarily extending all the expiring tax rates — but so far the leadership isn’t going along.
Sean Neary, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, said the senator backed such an extension “for now.”
“The general rule of thumb is that you do not raise taxes or cut spending during an economic downturn. That would be counterproductive,” Conrad said.
Nelson also offered what’s become the centrist Democratic mantra. He, too, said he’d back extending the tax breaks for the wealthy “for at least a period of time because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery.”
That stand could be even more popular with Democratic candidates for the Senate who aren’t incumbents. The hottest races are in conservative states, such as Kentucky, where Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway are battling for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning.
Of the expiring tax cuts for the wealthy, Conway spokeswoman Allison Haley said that he “believes we should extend them now, especially when so many Kentucky families and small businesses are struggling under this recession.”
In Missouri, Republican U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan are in a tight race. Despite a welcoming embrace with Obama at a Kansas City fundraiser in July, Carnahan said last week that she wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone.
“Now is not the time to raise taxes,” she said.
In Indiana, U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., who’s seeking to replace Bayh, told the Evansville Courier & Press this summer that all the Bush-era tax cuts should become permanent.
That position makes sense, said Brian Vargus, a professor of political science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, because Indiana is “an overwhelmingly Republican state … and there is never support for taxes or public goods.”
So from this article we see the term “moderate.” And the moderates are those Democrats who see a compromise to the looming war over tax cuts: keep them all for now. Don’t hike taxes on the only economic class of Americans who have the wherewithal to actually create jobs. Keep the the tax cuts for at least a year, if not 2-3 years. But the hard-liner Democrats are willing to see the tax cuts end for EVERYONE in order to maintain their Marxist class warfare principle of punishing the rich for being successful.
Democrats offered two reasons in their unrelenting demagoguery of George Bush: 1) they said the tax cuts caused the economic disaster; and 2) they said Bush’s refusal to regulate caused the economic disaster.
But 1) is now blown apart, given DEMOCRATS’ current acknowledgment that the Bush tax cuts – yes, even for the rich – weren’t the bogey man Democrats have been saying.
And 2) suffers from the flaw that Bush DID try to regulate the entity most responsible for the meltdown that befell the economy in 2008, and the ONLY reason that entity was not reformed and regulated was because DEMOCRATS blocked Bush at every turn.
That entity was the Government Sponsored Enterprise, or GSE, commonly known by the brand names of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was Fannie and Freddie that expanded and ultimately exploded using dangerous subprime loans (see also here). It was also Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who bundled thousands of bad and good mortgages together into instruments called “mortgage backed securities” and sold them to the private sector. And when no one could separate the good from the bad, uncertainty paralyzed the banking system and led to the crash.
In 1999, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest home mortgage underwriter, relaxed credit requirements on the loans it would purchase from other banks and lenders, hoping that easing these restrictions would result in increased loan availability for minority and low-income buyers. Putting pressure on the GSE’s (Government Sponsored Enterprise) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Clinton administration looked to increase their sub-prime portfolios, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development expressing its interest in the GSE’s maintaining a 50% portion of their portfolios in loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.[10]
As noted, subprime mortgages sky-rocketed during the initial era of loosening of terms throughout the 1990’s. From a low of 5% of mortgages in 1994, to 14% in 1997, to 23% in 2005, subprime mortgages continued to boom in the early 2000’s. Following the 2004 initiative policy change spearheaded by a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital, subprimes became an even greater investment vehicle for investment banks and institutions in the U.S. and around the world. Since 1994, the securitization rate of subprime loans has increased from approximately 32 percent to nearly 78 percent of total subprime originations.[11]This further exposed the financial community to the effects of the coming housing bubble.
Democrat policies created the housing bubble that Christina Romer acknowledges was the cause of the destruction of the US economy.
And the refusal of Democrats to reform and regulate Fannie and Freddie exploded that bubble.
Again, Bush was right. Democrats were profoundly wrong.
The mainstream media propagandists refused to report the truth. They kept broadcasting a lie, and naive and frankly stupid Americans rewarded the Democrats who created the economic disaster with total power.
And we’ve been paying for that stupidity for the last two years.
As of today, Obama is at a dismal 42% approval, and in danger of plunging into the 30s. 45% of Americans now strongly disapprove of Obama, versus only 24% who still strongly approve of the job he’s doing “fundamentally transforming” our economy into a pre-industrial barter system.
Obama is in full meltdown mode as all of his campaign rhetoric is being revealed for the lies it always was:
And Democrats are deservedly going to meltdown right along with him.
Are you sick of Obama and the left unrelentingly blaming Bush for everything that is happening going on two years after he left office? Do you think that Obama will ever man-up and actually become responsible for his presidency?
Me too, and me neither, respectively.
I went more than a little off on a liberal who dredged up this demagogic rhetorical garbage:
In Europe people laugh at us leaving in false dreams, wall streets spending false money, Bush starting a false war etc.
America is the land of dreams, how come? Idiots like George Bush can get elected to president. If he can Become president, then what can the smart people do? Jump to pluto?.
Do you really expect Obama to fix the worst recession in 80 years in a bit more than 18 months? Which was created by 8 years of Reagan, 4 years by bush, Clinton’s last period and 8 years by Bush? What is he some kind of god?
I didn’t vote for Obama but I expect him to put us in the right direction in this 6 years (he most likely) has left. in 2007-2008 they estimated that the recession will peak in 2012, so there is still a lot left. Just imagine how it would be with Palin/McCain. McCain who wanted to keep Bush’s politics moving and Palin who thought Africa was a country.
Here was my response:
First of all, I must pause to mock you for making Europe the gold standard of measurement. I guess if you like Nazism, fascism, Marxism, socialism, and genocide up the wazoo, Europe must be the coolest place on earth. I can see why you lefties love it so much.
What was it that Jefferson said? “The comparison of our governments with those of Europe, is like a comparison of heaven and hell.” Not that you give a damn what Jefferson said about anything.
Let me assure you that the Iraq War – which 60% of Democrat Senators voted to authorize (just for the record) – was a REAL war indeed.
Here’s a record of how Democrats were for that war before they were against it:
Now, you want to see a REAL idiot in action? How about a guy running for president who thinks there are 58 states? This is a man who is so fundamentally ignorant he doesn’t even know jack squat about his own country.
“It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”
So let’s talk about what a total and absolute ideologue you are to condemn Sarah Palin for a bogus fabricated quote that she didn’t even say, and to then defend a guy who is on video saying something about 20 times as stupid. Because that’s how the Democrat Party operates, in a nutshell.
For the factual record, Obama actually called Europe a country. How is that not just as stupid as calling Africa a country?
“One of the things that is a huge advantage for America compared to countries like Europe is, actually, we’re constantly replenishing ourselves with hungry, driven people who are coming here, and they want to work, and they start a business, and our population is younger and more dynamic, and that’s a good thing!”
Which is to say that Obama is unfit to be president by your own deceitful example.
And as for Bush being an idiot, at least he didn’t need a pair of damn teleprompters to say his name right. Maybe Bush would have sounded more “intelligent” to you if he read absolutely everything he said at every venue he went to off his teleprompters.
Which is why he needs to bring one everywhere – even to sixth grade classrooms – to not sound like the gibbering idiot he truly is.
So, oh, yeah, the country is much better off with its “Genius-in-chief,” isn’t it?
You don’t give one damn about the truth; you live in your own self-created reality in which Sarah Palin is stupid for something that she never said, while Barack Obama who said something stupider than Sarah Palin ever said in her life is still brilliant.
You would be completely ashamed of yourself, if you were capable of that attribute of moral character.
I write an article that shows how BY THE DEMOCRATS VERY OWN STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT Obama is the worst president in American history. And you’ve got nothing to say about that. Nothing but more “blame Bush.”
Another demonstration of your rabid leftist ideology that will NOT be fair: the economy goes into an absolute TOILET under Obama, but he’s not responsible for any of his policies.
Why is it that you refuse to hold Obama to any kind of standard at all – even the standard he set for himself? The Obama administration said this was a terrible economy, but he had the solution, that his stimulus would keep unemployment from going over 8%. And by his own administration’s standard did he not utterly fail? Wasn’t he elected to make the economy better, instead of far worse?
And what do we say about the fact that unemployment is going up, rather than down? Wasn’t Obama supposed to make things better rather than worse?
WASHINGTON – Employers appear to be laying off workers again as the economic recovery weakens. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November.
It was the third straight week that first-time jobless claims rose. The upward trend suggests the private sector may report a net loss of jobs in August for the first time this year.
Initial claims rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Construction firms are letting go of more workers as the housing sector slumps and federal stimulus spending on public works projects winds down. State and local governments are also cutting jobs to close large budget gaps.
The layoffs add to growing fears that the economic recovery is slowing and the country could slip back into a recession.
Isn’t Obama kind of going the wrong way, Mr. “Blame Bush”???
We’ve got all kinds of measures showing that things are far worse than they ever were under Bush. But you, total rabid fundamentalist leftist ideologue that you are – can only shout “blame Bush!” all the louder.
With consumers and businesses keeping a lid on expenses, more and more small and mid-size restaurants are throwing in their dish towels and closing up shop. […]
Nationwide, the number of restaurants dropped in 2010 for the first time in more than a decade, according to NPD, falling 5,202 to 579,416.
So, wow. That means that things haven’t been this bad since Bill Clinton was president and the Dot-com bubble he created blew up. That means that things were NEVER this bad under George Bush.
Bush inherited a terrible economic situation, too. First of all, the Dot-com bubble that Clinton passed to Bush created huge economic upheaval – to the tune of Nasdaq losing 78% of its value. Trillions of dollars of Clinton economic growth were just blown away like a fart in a hurricane. The mainstream media didn’t report the facts of Clinton’s recession because they are shockingly biased liberal propagandists. Which is why so few Americans trust them anymore. Clinton took all the credit for the Dot-com build-up; Bush got all the pain when it blew up, suffering a huge recession that was all on Clinton’s tab. Then you add to that the 9/11 attack, which crippled the airline and tourism industry for months, and you should understand how bad Bush had it. But he didn’t blame Clinton a gazillion times; he manned up and solved the problem. He took an economic lemon and made 52 consecutive months of job growth. In contrast, Obama hasn’t solved anything. All he’s done is blame and demonize.
In the wake of news about a spike in new applications for unemployment benefits comes another potentially troubling sign: A record number of workers made hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter.
What’s more, the number of workers borrowing from their accounts reached a 10-year high, according to a report issued Friday by Fidelity Investments.
Wow. Again, things haven’t been so bad since the last time a Democrat was president. Again, it was NEVER this bad under George Bush’s presidency.
WASHINGTON: The US trade deficit widened in September by an unexpectedly large 18.2 per cent, the most in more than 10 years, as oil prices rose for the seventh straight month and imports from China bounded higher, a US government report showed on Friday.
Hey, again, things weren’t so bad since a Democrat president last ran things. And it was never so bad under George Bush.
How about all the foreclosures? Surely Obama has made that better? Oops. Again, things were NEVER this bad under Bush’s presidency:
Foreclosure crisis doesn’t seem to be loosening its hold on the housing sector. After declining for the last three consecutive months, foreclosure activity is back up in the United States.
As per the ‘Foreclosure Market Report’ released by RealtyTrac, an online marketplace, giving insights into foreclosures, 325,229 houses received foreclosure filings in the nation, 4 percent up from June.
Not only there has been a jump in the number of houses receiving filings, the foreclosures have exceeded 300000 for the 17th straight month. One in every 397 houses received foreclosure notice from the lenders in July.
Hmmm. Obama’s been president for all of those 17 months. And Bush was president for none of them. But it’s all Bush’s fault, anyway, isn’t it? At least if you’re a hypocrite liberal, it is.
Under Obama, and ONLY under Obama, foreclosures are up 75% in the major metropolitan areas:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year’s first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday [in its midyear 2010 metropolitan foreclosure report].
Unemployment was the main culprit driving foreclosure actions on more than 1.6 million properties, the company said.
“We’re not going to see meaningful, sustainable home price appreciation while we’re seeing 75 percent of the markets have increases in foreclosures,” RealtyTrac senior vice president Rick Sharga said in an interview.
Has Obama done anything to solve this problem – which was why our economy blew up in the first place? Absolutely not.
Obama failed – because he is a failure, and failing is what he does:
WASHINGTON – Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.
The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say.
More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.
“The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
There’s “hope and change” for you. A failed president with failed policies.
As an update (August 24), I add the following headline:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sales of previously owned U.S. homes dropped in July to their lowest pace in 15 years, implying further loss of momentum in the economic recovery.
Existing home sales dropped by a massive 27% in July. And, again, omigosh. We haven’t seen terrible numbers like this since the last time a Democrat was president. We NEVER saw anything like this during the Bush era.
How about budget deficits? Bush never had a trillion dollar deficit in his entire presidency, and the Democrats still blamed him for his spending; but the CBO now says that Obama will run a trillion-plus dollar defict next year, making it three years in a row. And we will have massive trillion-plus dollar deficits for as long as the eye can see because of Obama’s reckless unsustainable spending programs and the debt they will create. How about this? Obama’s deficit for July alone was more than Bush’s entire 2007-year deficit! And how about this one? Obama outspent Bush’s entire eight-year presidency’s deficit in just 20 months – after demonizing Bush for his spending!!!
From The Wall Street Journal, which, unlike the New York Slimes, the LA Slimes, the Chicago Tribune, and other major liberal papers, ISN’T actually financially and morally bankrupt:
Mr. Obama cannot dismiss critics by pointing to President George W. Bush’s decision to run $2.9 trillion in deficits while fighting two wars and dealing with 9/11 and Katrina. Mr. Obama will surpass Mr. Bush’s eight-year total in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt. If America “cannot and will not sustain” deficits like Mr. Bush’s, as Mr. Obama said during the campaign, how can Mr. Obama sustain the geometrically larger ones he’s flogging?
Bush’s deficits were 2-3% of GDP. Obama’s are at 12.8% of GDP – which is five to six times higher and bringing us closer and closer every day to the point of collapse.
Are the people better off under Obama than they were under Bush? I don’t think so:
How about bank failures? We kind of need banks for a healthy economy unless we want to go back to the barter system, you know:
Banks are failing at double the rate of last year. During 2009, which the government claims was the peak of the recession, the total number of bank failures at this point in the year was 40. It is already 83 for this year.
For the record, only 25 banks failed under Bush in 2008. That number soared to 140 banks under Obama’s watch in 2009. And now we’re already past 118 bank failures this year in 2010 with four more months to go.
Do I want to go back to Bush’s “failed policies” when unemployment never got above 7.6% and averaged 5.2% for his presidency? As opposed to “moving forward” with Obama and his 10%-and-rising level? Pardon me, but I’ll take Bush.
Democrats are currently saying, “Do you want to go back to the way things were when Republicans were in control?”
So, yeah. I WOULD like to go back to the way things were when Bush and Republicans were in control. And I frankly want to know what idiot wouldn’t?
As for your question as to whether Obama is some kind of a god, I can’t help but point out that it wasn’t conservatives who kept putting the halo on Obama’s head:
A funny video provides a giant montage of Obama halos.
CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.
Economists have declared the economic recession over largely over, but most Americans don’t share their optimism, and they are increasingly blaming President Obama for their money woes.Mr. Obama’s approval rating on the economy has tumbled five percentage points from last month, according to a new CBS News poll, with just 40 percent of those polled expressing full confidence in his actions.
More than half of those questioned (54 percent) said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy. Last month, 45 percent approved. The drop in approval has been seen mostly among independents, just 35 percent of whom now say they approve.
Three in four Americans think the effects of the recession will linger for another two years or more. Just 20 percent said they believed the recession’s aftereffects would continue to weigh on their lives and livelihoods for another year or less. The public is generally more pessimistic now than in February.
The national unemployment rate continues to hover just beneath the 10 percent mark, and it is estimated that many more Americans are underemployed – meaning they have given up looking for a full-time job, or are working fewer hours than they would like.
The poll shows widespread concern among Americans when it comes to employment. Seven in ten Americans rated the job market in their area “fair” or “very bad”; only a quarter of those polled described it as “good”.
There did appear to be some optimism that the job market would improve over the next year — but not a lot. While 28 percent said they expected the job market in their area to get better over the next year, twice as many — 56 percent — said it would likely remain the same. Another 14 percent predicted even fewer available jobs in the coming years.
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 966 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone July 9-12, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.
This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
Gee, Obama. So much for your “summer of recovery.” Got any other crap-sandwich assurances for us?
You can’t lie and weasel your way out of this one. You’ve kept giving us “Are you going to trust me, or are you going to trust your lying eyes?” rhetoric. And, well, we’re finally starting to open our eyes.
As the job market in the United States continues to shrink more and more Americans are simply giving up hope. This is great news for the unemployment rate but for many jobless it leads to breadlines and homelessness.
The jobs are not coming back! The United States job market must add 125,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with young people entering the jobs market. For “recovery” to happen the United States would need to add closer to 250,000 jobs monthly. This is simply not going to happen. […]
The unemployment rate dropped from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent, the lowest level since July 2009. But it fell because 652,000 people gave up on their job searches and left the labor force. People who are no longer looking for work aren’t counted as unemployed.
Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.”
Which is a pretty good way of realizing that your crappy policies are useless. Why look for work when there’s “no possibility” to restore the lost jobs under Obama Hussein?
WASHINGTON — Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.
“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the overseas community in the past two years,” said Jackie Bugnion, director of American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group based in Geneva. “Before, no one would dare mention to other Americans that they were even thinking of renouncing their U.S. nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”
I guess you’re going to have to redouble your already maximally demagogic rants blaming Republicans for everything.
The mainstream media propaganda depicted you as transcending the political divide and rising above petty politics, Barry Hussein. But all you’ve gone is demonize and demagogue a now increasing majority of the American people.
Start Thinking Right 