Just Asking: How Much Credit For Getting Osama Bin Laden Does Obama Truly Deserve?

When I first heard about the assault on the compound in Pakistan that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, I was happy and proud as an American.  And willing to give Obama credit where credit was due.

It seemed like a gutsy move – which the mainstream media narrative quickly seized upon: the political consequences for Obama would have been quite negative if the mission had failed.  It would have reminded everyone yet again that Obama is a reincarnation of Jimmy Carter.  And the whole “Desert One” fiasco would have surely been remembered.

But take just a second and look at it from the opposite perspective; you know, the one that the mainstream media has never once considered for even a nanosecond.  What would have happened had Barack Obama decided NOT to try to take out bin Laden?  What would have happened – more to the point – when the American people were informed that Barack Obama had known for certain where Osama bin Laden was, and refused to try to get him?

Wouldn’t that have had even MORE DISASTEROUS consequences???

And, the thing is, it is a near certainty that that information would have gotten out.  There would have been sufficient disgust in both the CIA and in the Pentagon that somebody would have made sure that the news got out that Barack Obama – who had PROMISED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE that he would go into Pakistan to get bin Laden – had cowardly refused to keep yet another promise.

Imagine for just a second the abundant campaign ads: slow-moving video of Osama bin Laden, followed by footage of the twin towars collapsing, followed by Barack Obama giving his word to get bin Laden, followed by the evidence that Obama knew for at least half a year where bin Laden was hiding, and refused to even try to get him.

It would have been just as “bold” for Obama to decide that an operation to get bin Laden was too risky, and jeopardized critical U.S.-Pakistani relations to too high a degree.

Barack Obama was forced into a position where he had to rely on the U.S. military to save his political hide.  And the U.S. military came through for him.

And how does Obama repay that military?  By literally gutting their budget, that’s how:

President Obama has targeted the Department of Defense to absorb more than 80 percent of the cuts he has proposed in next year’s budget for discretionary programs.

Does Obama deserve credit for that?  Really?  Is he out right now campaigning as the guy who just gutted the military he commands, or is he out campaigning as the commander-in-chief of a glorious military?

People should hear that RIGHT NOW Barack Obama is taking an axe and gutting the Navy SEALs, and the Nightstalkers who brought them in and out of that compound, and the Screaming Eagles he visited yesterday, and the entire rest of the military.

People should know that Barack Obama demonized the primary means of interrogation that got us Osama bin Laden.  And there is no question that waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” methods led us to the breakthroughs we needed to get bin Laden:

Ex-CIA Counterterror Chief: ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Led U.S. to bin Laden
By Massimo Calabresi Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, who was investigated last year by the Justice Department for the destruction of videos showing senior al-Qaeda officials being interrogated, says the harsh questioning of terrorism suspects produced the information that eventually led to Osama bin Laden’s death.

Jose Rodriguez ran the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 to 2005, the period when top al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and Abu Faraj al-Libbi were taken into custody and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) at secret prisons overseas. KSM was subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques. Al-Libbi was not waterboarded, but other EITs were used on him.

“Information provided by KSM and Abu Faraj al-Libbi about bin Laden’s courier was the lead information that eventually led to the location of [bin Laden’s] compound and the operation that led to his death,” Rodriguez tells TIME in his first public interview. Rodriguez was cleared of charges in the video-destruction investigation last year.

Even career Democrat and Obama appointee for Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta has openly acknowledged that waterboarding was an instrumental part of this intelligence effort:

Asked by NBC-TV’s Brian Williams about the information obtained from detainees that led to the bin Laden takedown, Panetta replied:  ‘We had multiple series of sources that provided information with regards to this situation.  … Clearly some of it came from detainees [and] they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of those detainees.”

When Williams asked whether “waterboarding” was one of those techniques, Panetta replied:  “That’s correct.”

We have the following from the CIA analysts and the CIA director at the time, describing how essential the enhanced interrogations were to the knowledge that the CIA learned:

CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): March 2003, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured and according to U.S. officials, the self-described architect of 9/11 was immediately taken into the CIA enhanced interrogation program and waterboarded. It was three to four months later, according to U.S. officials, that KSM was asked about the courier who was known only by an Al Qaeda alias. He downplayed the courier’s importance. The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee says the implications of the CIA’s early leads are clear. […]

A former senior intelligence official says the waterboarding of KSM, quote, “took his spirited defiance into a zone of cooperation,” adding that the harsh interrogation tactic critics described as torture was not used to elicit information but rather to alter the detainee’s mindset. Philip Mudd is a former CIA analyst.

PHILIP MUDD, FORMER CIA ANALYST: Having seen this stuff on the inside, that’s not a debate. That is a done deal. The information we got was invaluable. So debate the cultural side and the political side, but please don’t debate the intelligence side.

HERRIDGE: In a radio interview with FOX, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said there is no question the CIA program including waterboarding laid the foundation for bin Laden’s capture.

MICHAEL HAYDEN, FMR CIA DIRECTOR ON FOX NEWS RADIO (via telephone): That database was kind of like the home depot of intelligence analysis. You know, it was incredibly detailed stuff.

HERRIDGE: As for its role in identifying this compound in Pakistan —

HAYDEN: It would be very difficult for me to conceive of an operation like the one that took place on Sunday that did not include in its preparation information that came out of the CIA detention program.

HERRIDGE: 2004 and 2005 are described as turning points. Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi, a gatekeeper for Osama bin Laden, were both in the CIA secret prisons. U.S. officials say for a second time, KSM downplayed the courier significance and al-Libi denied knowing him. The men’s adamant denials appeared to be an effort to protect the courier and U.S. officials say it, quote, “sent up red flags for the CIA” because other detainees consistently claims the courier maintained bin Laden’s trust.

And if you don’t believe EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE KEY PEOPLE INVOLVED, just accept that Bush and HIS gutsy decision to approve waterboarding led us to the knowledge that Osama bin Laden (UBL) was using couriers, the pseudo-names of those couriers that led to intelligence ultiamtely finding their actual names, and even the very city where Osama bin Laden was hiding:

Which is to say that the entire Obama presidency was spent mining information from waterboarding that Obama personally demonized and from a program that Obama shut down.

And we now know that Osama bin Laden was in this compound that we learned about from waterboarding for at least five years.

Every single major fact that we learned we learned from waterboarding and from enhanced interrogation techniques.  And the rest of it was simply a matter of confirming what we knew from waterboarding and from enhanced interrogation techniques.

People should KNOW that Barack Obama demands that the United States of America should be nearly blind.

People should also know that on his second day in office Barack Obama shut down and terminated the CIA intelligence program that actually developed the information that got bin Laden.  They should know that America no longer has that capability, and that thanks to Barack Obama we could never even begin to do that again – likely for years to come, given the difficulty of developing such intensive programs.

And people should know that RIGHT NOW Barack Obama is continuing to try to criminally prosecute the incredible men and women who gave us the intelligence breakthroughs that got Osama bin Laden:

In normal times, the officials who uncovered the intelligence that led us to Osama bin Laden would get a medal. In the Obama administration, they have been given subpoenas.

On his second day in office, President Barack Obama shut down the CIA’s high-value interrogation program. His Justice Department then reopened criminal investigations into the conduct of CIA interrogators — inquiries that had been closed years before by career prosecutors who concluded that there were no crimes to prosecute. In a speech at the National Archives in May 2009, Mr. Obama accused the men and women of the CIA of “torture,” declaring that their work “did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts — they undermined them.”

Now, it turns out that those CIA interrogators played a critical role in the killing of Osama bin Laden, which the president has rightly called “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaida.”

Even NOW Obama is refusing to do anything to stop the prosecution of the men and women who gave us bin Laden, even as he flies around taking credit for getting bin Laden.  Should we be giving Obama credit for that???

This nation should be grateful to George W. Bush, and for his courage and foresight to develop the programs and to create the capabilities that ultimately won us this victory against Osama bin Laden.  It was the courage of George Bush that resulted in waterboarding – which Bush and his key advisors KNEW would be used by vile cowards like Barack Obama to demonize them.  But they knew it had to be done, and they did it.

In the same way, Bush created the Guantanamo Bay (“Gitmo”) detention facility.  Bush expanded the rendition program that had been used by Bill Clinton.  Bush created the Patriot Act.  Bush approved of domestic surveillance.  Bush set up the military tribunals that had been used by Democrats like FDR in previous time of war.  Bush established the indefinite detentions of the most hardened terrorists.

Barack Obama personally demonized and vilified all of these things.  But he is using them to this day because they had to be done.

I would argue that the hero of this is George Bush; and that Barack Obama is a self-aggrandizing coward who was forced to use virtually all of the programs that he self-righteously demagogued for political advantage in a way that is frankly treasonous.

Right now we have a treasure trove of intelligence that is likewise nearly entirely the result of the work of George W. Bush.  But be advised: if we don’t shut down al Qaeda now, we probably never will due to the massive failures of the man who sits in the Oval Office as we speak.

“In terms of Mr. bin Laden himself, we’ll get him running. We’ll smoke him out of his cave and we’ll get him eventually.” — George W. Bush, October 11, 2001

It was always just a matter of time.  And the time came during the misrule of a hypocritical fool.

CBO Says Real 10-Year Cost of Senate ObamaCare Bill Still $2.5 Trillion

The American people will pay an additional one trillion dollars in taxes over ten years than they otherwise would have paid to finance the Democrats’ takeover of health care.  That is a brutal fact.

When the Democrats say their bill is “deficit neutral” what they mean is that they made drastic cuts in the Medicare budget and drastic increases in our taxes in order to create the illusion that it was deficit neutral.

Here’s some more brutal facts that your mainstream media will not tell you about regarding health care.

CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion

With Obamacare, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly — except for the first part.

The Congressional Budget Office’s score is in for the final Senate health bill, and it’s amazing how little Americans would get for so much.

The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years. But that’s not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those “10-year costs” would kick in before the fifth year of that span. In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion — for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill’s full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion — according to the CBO.

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion . They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill’s pledge to cut doctors’ payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up — which would reduce doctors’ enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019.  Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How’s that for “reform”?

Even MoveOn.org says that the bill is “a massive giveaway” to private insurance companies. The CBO estimates that, from 2015-25, private insurers would receive $1.0 trillion in subsidies from the American taxpayer — the insurers’ apparent price for giving up their freedom and being controlled by the government. Congress would mandate that Americans buy the insurers’ product and would redirect massive sums of taxpayer money to make that mandate more feasible. So, if insurance companies are your idea of a worthy object of philanthropy, then Obamacare is for you.

And this is the bill that Ben Nelson has decided to support?

One hopes that Nebraska voters — and all other voters in other states who have sent Democrats to Washington — are making a list and checking it twice, keeping track of votes on Obamacare.

As Harry Reid keeps senators in session rather than letting them go home to be with their families and celebrate Christmas, it’s important to remember that this bill would not go into effect in any meaningful way until more than an Olympiad from now. Thus, it is the American voters — and not the current Democratic Congress or the current president — who will ultimately decide its fate. Providing reminders to representatives in both chambers of that in the coming days will be crucial to beating back the onslaught of proposed legislation that, even if it passes the Senate, would at least have to passed again by the House and would likely have to go back through both chambers in compromised form.

Posted by Jeffrey H. Anderson on December 19, 2009 07:49 PM | Permalink

There’s a frightening game being played with the truth.  And willingly or not, the CBO is helping the Obama administration lie to the American people.

A big part of the problem is that the CBO has to take Congress’ word for everything in their scoring – and the Congress (especially this Congress) is a bunch of liars.

If Congress has a huge spending bill, and tells the CBO that they will pay for it by picking the right numbers and hitting the mega-jackpot every year for the next 20 years, then the CBO must assume that the bill will be paid for – and thus “deficit neutral” in its scoring.

Maybe I’m not being clear enough.  So I’ll provide another example.  If Congress says that they will pay for their spending bill by summoning a winged fairy who will wave a magic wand and create a trillion dollars from nowhere, the CBO must count that trillion dollars in their scoring toward a “deficit neutral” bill.

Back in July, Obama summoned the director of the CBO, Douglas Elmendorf, to the White House. Republicans were outraged by this unprecedented event.  The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled, “Bullying CBO.”

Some have thought that Elmendorf was in fact intimidated, because their scores suddenly became much friendlier to ObamaCare.  But I personally believe it was simply a matter of the White House learning how to write a bill so that it would appear “deficit neutral” in a CBO score.  Democrats, in other words, learned how to use the right gimmicks to get the right results.

So if Congress says that it will increase taxes by a trillion dollars, then the CBO has to take it as gospel truth in its calculations.  But the fact of the matter is that tax revenues go down dramatically as tax rates go up (and see here also) for the simple reason that more and more people change their behavior and start sheltering their assets.  In the same way, when a bunch of new fees are imposed, people will start buying less and less of what will suddenly become more and more expensive.

The more of your own money you are allowed to keep, the harder you will work, and the more you will risk your money by investing.  The more you are taxed, the more you will adjust your behavior by protecting what you have, and the less you will be willing to take risks for a shrinking reward.

Bottom line: the federal government will collect far less in revenue than it thinks it will.  Revenues are already down dramatically as the White House and congressional Democrats have repeatedly vowed to end the Bush tax cuts (i.e. raise taxes) and increase taxes across the board.

In the same way, if Democrats tell the CBO that they will create savings by cutting the Medicare budget to the tune of half a trillion dollars and apply that “savings” to ObamaCare, then the CBO must assume that that will be the case.

It’s frankly difficult to believe that the Democrats will actually gut Medicare as they are saying they will do.  Will they really take $500 billion from Medicare?  Really?  And utterly outrage seniors who have counted on that benefit for decades?  If they do, they will pay dearly for it in every election until those seniors finally die.  If they don’t, you can add at least half a trillion dollars to what the Democrats say their bill will cost.

The same thing applies to the “doctor fix.”  Democrats will either follow through with their plan to make Medicare so expensive to doctors and hospitals that many medical professionals stop accepting it, or else they won’t.  If they do, the Medicare system will collapse.  If they don’t, then you can add hundreds of billions more to the cost of their health care plan.

The Washington Post put it this way:

“A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday. The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.”

And to pay for that fiasco, the Democrats are playing games that even liberals recognize are gimmickry and trickery.

As the government increasingly takes over, costs are going to go up (as they always do when government starts administering programs) and quality is going to go down.

The very people people who are going to increase our health care spending by trillions of dollars are preaching fiscal responsibility and the need to reduce our spending even as they do it.

The hypocrisy, stupidity, and lunacy of the government is enough to make one scream.

Exposed: Obama’s Lie That Democrats Don’t Want Government Takeover Of Health Care

The big lie: Democrats do not want a government takeover of your health care.  This claim is so blatantly false that it is positively unreal.  But count on Obama and his propagandists to keep repeating the big lie over and over and over again.

As health care plan continued to sink in public approval, Obama recently said:

“First of all,” Mr. Obama said, “nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. I’m tired of hearing that. I have been as clear as I can be. Under the reform I’ve proposed, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor; if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody, you know?”

When Obama says you can keep your plan, he’s not telling you the truth – as his plan itself reveals.  This Wall Street Journal article is utterly damning in its exposure of what the Democrat’s plan quietly takes away in five years.  But for the time being, let’s stick with Obama’s claim that “nobody’s talking about some government takeover of health care.”

Obama said on June 15th:

“What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system. … So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this – they are not telling the truth.”

The only problem is that that is patently and demonstrably false.  Barack Obama is lying to you without shame.

NOBODY is talking about some government takeover of health care?  Nobody is talking about bringing government run health care?  Really, Barry Hussein?  Then how about Democrat Barney Frank, chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee?

Asked on July 27th why we shouldn’t simply start out with a single payer government takeover of the health care system, Barney Frank responded:

“Because we don’t have the votes for it. I wish we did. I think that if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer and that is the best way to reach single payer. Saying you’ll do nothing till you get single payer is a sure way never to get it. … I think the best way we’re going to get single payer, the only way, is to have a public option and demonstrate the strength of its power.”

Watch him yourself:

In other words – after acknowledging that liberals don’t have either the popular American support or the votes in Congress for a single payer government-run universal health care system – Frank proceeds to say that the best pathway to that very system that “nobody is talking about” is the Democrat’s “public option.”

Nobody’s talking about it, Barry?  You liar!

How about Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who co-sponsored HR-676?

She said:

“A public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer” – Rep. Jan Schakowsky (to wild applause).

You can watch her, too.

Schakowsky clearly states that her “public option” will put the private insurers out of business, which will necessarily lead to government Obamacare.  As the public option artificially lowers prices by constant subsidies from taxpayer dollars, how can private insurers who MUST make at least break even stay in business?  And when the private insurers are gone, what possibility will be left but government care?

Senator Russ Feingold similarly sees the ultimate goal of the current health care plan to be a single-payer universal health care system.  And, yes, you can watch him saying it, too.

Well, maybe Obama is just hunkering down in his bunker completely ignorant of what Democrats are saying all around him, one might argue.

Sorry, Charlie.  That falls down on its face because of the simple fact that Barack Obama himself is on the record being a proponent and advocate of a government-run single payer universal health care system.

Senator Barack Obama’s Speech on Health Care Reform, Delivered on May 29, 2007 at the University of Iowa:

“The very first promise I made on this campaign was that as president I will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term in office.”

B- bu- bu- but Barry Hussein said “nobody’s talking” about a government takeover.  B- bu- bu- but he’s on record vowing to SIGN just such a universal health care bill into law by the end of his term.  How can you say “nobody’s talking about it” when you promised to sign “it” into law by the end of your term?

And this wasn’t some come-late-to-the-party talking point.  Oh, no. Here is Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause) “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out.  A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.  Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

So, when Barack Hussein Obama says, “nobody’s talking about some government takeover of health care,” he couldn’t be more personally dishonest.  He is lying to the American people.  HE HIMSELF been talking about it, and he’s been talking about it for YEARS.  Just as many other Democrats have been and are right now talking about it.

And “Trojan horse”?  Oh, yeah, a Trojan horse with massively high costs due to inherent government inefficiency, political pork, and fraud, and with rationing of health care resources leading to delays and flat denial of care, is being wheeled into the United States of America.  Open it at your grandparent’s peril.

And don’t think that these people won’t fight as dirty as necessary to win.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky:

“This is not a principled fight.  This is a fight about a strategy for getting there, and I believe we will” – Rep. Jan Schakowski

So it’s a Trojan horse that can be smuggled into our camp using the most deceptive and deceitful means, because this isn’t about principle, but about Statists imposing the total government control over our lives they’ve always yearned for.

Or you can ask influential Democrat health care strategist Dr. Jacob Hacker:

“Someone once said to me that this is a Trojan horse for single-payer, and I said, ‘Well it’s not a Trojan horse, right?  It’s just right there!  I’m telling you!  We’re going to get there. Over time, slowly, but we’ll move away from reliance on employment-based health insurance – as we should – but we’ll do it in a way that we’re not going to frighten people into thinking they are going to lose their private insurance” – Dr. Jacob Hacker, New America Foundation.

Hacker denies that the “public option” is a Trojan horse for the simple reason that it is so blatantly OBVIOUS that it’s not really a “Trojan horse” – it’s just “right there” in your face.  His plan is to treat the American people like the proverbial frog in the pot of heating water: don’t frighten us into jumping out; just gradually cook us to death.

White House shills are accusing conservatives of taking these politicians out of context.  But you can watch them yourself to see that they are on the record saying EXACTLY what we say they are saying.  And it’s a deceitful and fraudulent pack of lies to claim anything else.  You’re not supposed to believe what your lying eyes see and what your lying ears hear: you’re supposed to just believe the shifting liberal talking points that adjust the Democrat’s propaganda and demagoguery to suit the needs of the moment.

Did I say “demagoguery”?  I think I did!  So I’d better cite Nancy Pelosi, the Demagogue of the House of Representatives herself:

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”…

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” added Pelosi, who stood outside her office long after her press conference ended to continue speaking to reporters, even as aides tried in vain to usher her inside. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure with pre-existing conditions, you know, the litany of it all.”

Just realize that 84% of Americans are satisfied with the quality of care they are receiving from these “immoral villains.”  Meanwhile, it’s NANCY PELOSI Americans overwhelmingly view as being “immoral” and “villainous.”

Apart from the patent dishonesty and demagoguery, ask yourself this question: “Without the private health insurance that Nancy Pelosi – and now the Democrat Party itself – is demonizing, how long do you think we’d have our present private health care system?  The answer is, “Less than a nanosecond.”

So every single time you hear a Democrat attack private health insurers, just recognize that they are in fact attacking the private health care system, even as they seek to impose on you a choice-denying, care-depriving, exorbitantly expensive government system in its place.

You literally cannot trust anything the Democrats are saying on health care.  They are lying about literally everything as they try to impose socialized medicine onto a once-free society.

Obama In The ‘We Don’t Mind ‘Cause You Don’t Matter’ Sub-50% Polling Range

One of the most readily understandable political calculus equations is the presidential poll: as long as a president is above 50% in the polls, he continues to hold a majority; but if he falls below 50%, he becomes increasingly irrelevant.  The nation is no longer behind him.  The lower he gets under 50, the more irrelevant he becomes.

Six months into the Obama presidency, Americans are already starting to say, “You see, Barry, it’s all a question of mind over matter.  We no longer mind because you no longer matter.”

For what it’s worth, the first time President Bush dipped below 50% according to Rasmussen was February 2004.  So Barry has to have set some kind of record for “sucking speed.”

Democrats and liberals feasted on George Bush like a herd of swine feasting on a trough full of carrots.  And in the case of the Barack Obama presidency, suppertime is coming very, very early.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Friday, July 24, 2009

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8 (see trends).

Just 25% believe that the economic stimulus package has helped the economy.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.

Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Today marks the first time his overall approval rating has ever fallen below 50% among Likely Voters nationwide. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Democrats continue to approve of the President’s performance while 80% of Republicans disapprove. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 37% offer a positive assessment. The President earns approval from 51% of women and 47% of men.

These updates are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. Most of the interviews for today’s update were completed before the President’s nationally televised press conference on Wednesday night. The first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after the press conference will be released on Sunday.

Zogby has Barry Hussein at 48%.

Now, the last paragraph of the article becomes interesting because this means the poll does not take into account Obama’s truly suck performance at his July 22 press conference or the subsequent flap over his racially biased and frankly incredibly stupid comment about the Cambridge police “acting stupidly” in arresting an emotionally out-of-control African-American Studies professor.

So the easy money is betting that Sunday we’re going to see Obama down even more.  And then more.

Hot Air has a couple of insightful paragraphs describing the poll’s nuances on just why Obama is starting to poll as badly as he is:

It marks the first time that Obama has gone underwater since he started his remarkable run for the presidency in early 2007.  Undoubtedly, voters have now put the responsibility for the economy squarely on Obama’s shoulders after six months of worsening indicators.  The steep decline in support for his health-care bill represents in part a lack of confidence in his ability to deliver after the failure of the massive stimulus package, which he promised would put America back to work.

Even the Democratic gender gap has mostly been wiped out for Obama.  Although crosstabs are not available on daily tracking reports, Rasmussen’s poll shows an approval rating of 51% among women, just two points above the overall average.  If Obama had hoped to maintain the traditional Democratic inroads with women with his focus on health care, that appears to have backfired, as the survey on that issue earlier in the week showed women opposing it by a 50%-46% edge, with men more clearly in opposition at 53%-44%.  Why? Pluralities among both genders believe that their personal coverage will get worse under ObamaCare.

Unemployment is at 9.5% – and is expected to rise to 10% and beyond by the end of the year.  That sure isn’t going to help Obama become “Mr. Popular.”  And if that isn’t bad enough for him – and for the country he’s misleading – a new employment forecast by Obama’s own Federal Reserve foresees high unemployment numbers for at least the next five years.

But wait, as they say: there’s more.  Respected Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney predicts that unemployment will rise to 13% or higher.  She’s the analyst with the nickname, “The woman who called Wall Street’s meltdown,” so right now I’m giving her more credibility than Obama’s people who said that if their stimulus passed unemployment wouldn’t rise above 8%.

And there’s yet even more.  We don’t calculate unemployment the way we used to.  We used to calculate unemployment based on the number of people who would like to have a full time job but don’t have one.  Bill Clinton changed the way unemployment was tabulated.  But if this were in the 1980s, we would be reading about 16.5% unemployment.  And if THAT number doesn’t frighten you enough, how about the possibility of 20% by the end of the year?

Remember all the talk about Barack Obama being compared to FDR?

Now we’ll get to celebrate Obama-as-FDR right – with Great Depression levels of unemployment, which will likely lead us into another Great Depression.  The first FDR didn’t fare so well with the first Great Depression; and I think the second FDR will do an even lousier job.

It will be fun watching Barry “ride the slide” to political hell.

It won’t be so much fun watching the Late Great U.S.A. sliding into economic hell right along with him.