With QE3 Federal Reserve And Obama Administration Fully Qualify For Definition Of Insanity (Doing SAME Thing Over And Over And Expecting Different Results)

Things aren’t getting better.  Obama told you a lie.  Democrats have been telling you lies.  I (and other conservatives) have accurately and reliably told AND PREDICTED the truth from the get-go.  As I will document in this article.

First of all, the QE3 that was launched today is an open recognition of the failure of the Obama administration by the Federal Reserve.

The initial title of this article – as you can see by examining the link itself – was “GOLDMAN: Bad Jobs Report Puts Odds Of QE Next Week Above 50%.”

GOLDMAN: It Looks Like QE Is Coming Next Week
Joe Weisenthal|Sep. 7, 2012, 8:47 AM

Quick blast outta Goldman.

BOTTOM LINE: With today’s August employment report showing a nonfarm payroll gain of 96,000 and an unemployment rate of 8.1% because of a drop in the participation rate, we expect a return to unsterilized and probably open-ended asset purchases at the September 12-13 FOMC meeting.

MAIN POINTS:

1. We now anticipate that the FOMC will announce a return to unsterilized asset purchases (QE3), mainly agency mortgage-backed securities but potentially including Treasury securities, at its September 12-13 FOMC meeting. We previously forecasted QE3 in December or early 2013. We continue to expect a lengthening of the FOMC’s forward guidance for the first hike in the funds rate from “late 2014” to mid-2015 or beyond.

So this isn’t a “good thing.”  This is a bad thing.  The 200 point increase in the stock market is a temporary blip and ultimately only the institutional investors who can move money around in microseconds will be able to benefit from it.

Here’s another article I wrote back in August that cites proof that the QE3 that we just saw Friday is the result of the Obamanomics disaster.  The Fed simply didn’t launch QE3 because Obama’s economic policies are working; they did it because Obamanomics has utterly failed.

Second, let’s look at the “success” of quantitative easing:

Here’s more on that from an article I wrote back in August 2011.  Notice that I predicted with complete accuracy that QE2 would fail and that we would be at precisely the point where we are now trying a THIRD round of quantitative easing.

And this isn’t really even “QE3”; it’s really “QE4.”  Because Operation Twist basically WAS QE3.  It was certainly at the very least a “primer” for QE3.  I’m hardly the only one to say that, as it’s rather easy to show.  Just how many times do we have to keep trying this???

As long as Wall Street keeps getting its massive doses of sugar (really more like crack cocaine) from the government, it keeps feeding and feeding from the massively-government-subisidized feeding trough.

Look at the chart above and answer this question: if I were a drug addict pursuing doses of crack, how would a graph of my behavior look different?  I’d have my hit (QE1) and then crash; then I’d take another hit (QE2) and then crash; so I’d need another hit (QE3).  And then another one, ad infinitum.  That is the nature of destructive addictive behavior; and the addict either changes or he dies.  We’ll see in November if we’re ready to change or if we want to keep pursuing economic crack until we collapse and die as a nation.

How many times do you keep doing the same thing?  Now that we are at “QE3,” how is this not the classic definition of insanity???

What do you think the odds are that the market is going to tank again just like it did the first two times in anticipation of a QE4????  And you need to realize that a vote for Obama IS a vote for QE4.  And QE5.  And we’ll be a banana republic before Obama’s Fed would have a chance to do a QE6.

Not counting QE3 today, the Federal Reserve has pumped (or dumped) more than $2.3 trillion in money that it invented by adding zeros to their computer under Obama.

Let me ask you a question?  Where did that $2.3 trillion go?  Are you richer???

You sure aren’t.  In fact, even if you blame the ENTIRE recession on Bush (as liberals invariably do), Obama has still been very nearly TWICE as disastrous for household incomes in his “recovery” than you can blame Bush for during “his” recession.  You’re being lied to every single day.

When George Bush left office, a senior citizen with $300,000 in bonds – basically a fairly average retirement nestegg – could collect $1,500 a month in interest.  Which was enough for them to live on and be able to have the principal for emergencies and hopefully be able to leave that principal to their children.  But Obama and Bernanke have obliterated that; now that same $300,000 is producing only $200 a month in interest.  Which is very obviously nowhere NEAR enough to live on.  And so senior citizens are eating away at that nestegg that they counted on at a very alarming rate.  Obama and his failed policies have screwed these people – and the mainstream media will NOT talk about it.

Now the Fed balance sheet is going to be over $3 trillion.  And you can add to that shocking tally another $40 billion every single month for the foreseeable future.  Before Obama took office, it was $800 billion.  Nobody’s talking about what that massive devaluation of our currency is going to ultimately cost us.  Nobody is talking about the fact that the people who are going to pay the highest tax as a result of this action – and it IS a regressive tax – will be retirees who will see the value of their savings drop even as they look at interest rates and pension funds that pay them nothing.  Retirees are not in a position to snort the crack of quantitative easing; they depend mostly on bonds.  And the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have decided to stab the bond market  that older investors necessarily depend upon in the heart to artificially inflate the stock market.  Until they have to do it again.  And again.  And of course pretty soon again and again after that.

Commodities like oil and food – which conveniently are being ignored as proof positive that we are already seeing MASSIVE inflation – will continue to go up and up and up (see here and here and here for examples).   The fact of the matter is that prices are rising dramatically and HAVE BEEN rising dramatically, and what just happened today will sure that they CONTINUE to rise dramatically.  And everybody but Obama and the Federal Reserve know it.

I put it in biblical terms here.  And I pointed out:

The only thing propping up the economy under Obama’s morally and fiscally idiotic policies is QE2. Banks and major businesses are not being allowed to fail (it’s all too big too fail in an increasingly fascist system in which the government dominates the banking and corporate spheres). Right now, the system Obama has only made more broken is being kept afloat in cash being created out of thin air. The last time quantitative easing ended, the DOW immediately lost 16% of its value in two weeks. And QE2 is set to end in June.

This means QE3, and then of course QE4. Because “QE” means “Quack Economics” far more than it should mean anything else.

I also pointed out that this would fail way back in 2010.  And I pointed out that all the Federal Reserve is doing is monetizing Obama’s damn insane deficits.

But the real inflation monster is still yet to come.

Back in May of last year I wrote this:

QE2 is the economic equivalent of sugar in nutrition. Will it provide quick energy? Sure it will. Will that quick energy come at the expense of future health? You bet it will.

Right now, as a result of the Obama Federal Reserve’s policy of increasing the monetary supply by buying debt from itself (literally creating money out of thin air), there is more economic activity. Right now, as a result of this policy, credit rates are lower. Fewer banks and corporations are going under because of the ready access to cheap money. Investors see the stability and invest.

We should all feed our children tons of sugar, so we can enjoy the short term bonanza of frenetic activity.

Unless you worry about all the cavities, the weight gains, the diabetes, and of course that huge depressing crash with all of those catastrophic health consequences that necessarily come later.

The first time we ended QE1, the stock market lost 16% of its value in two weeks. Which is to say it didn’t work the first time for the same reason it won’t work this second time. Or a necessary third time, etcetera.

One of the more sinister effects of quantitative easing is that it essentially becomes a tax on saving. You were busy at work putting away as much as you could during a period when your money was worth more. But now, as a result of artificially increasing the money supply, all that money you accumulated in saving is worth less. Why is this? Because you can increase the money supply all you want, but you’ve still got the same finite amount of goods and services. And when you’ve got twice as many dollars in the money supply as you had before, over time those same goods and services will cost twice as much as before, and so on.

Right now, prices are going up dramatically on virtually everything that matters. And yet the only ones who refuse to admit it are the federal government and its staunchest mainstream media propagandists who think and report what the Obama regime wants them to think and report.

In another article I wrote over two full years ago:

An increase in the money supply is rather like an overdose of drugs. And in this case the effect of the overdose will be hyperinflation. Basically, the moment we have any kind of genuine recovery, our staggering deficit is going to begin to create an ultimately gigantic inflation rate. Why? Because we have massively artificially increased our money supply beyond our ability to actually produce real wealth, and that means that money will ultimately be devalued. There’s simply no way it can’t be. If simply printing money solved financial problems, the government could just mail everyone several million dollars, and we could all retire. The problem is that more money chasing a limited supply of goods simply pushes up prices higher and higher without doing anything to solve the underlying economic problems. If we have a recovery, with increased economic activity, there will be increased demand on the money supply, forcing an upward climb in interest rates as a means of controlling the currency. And then we’ll begin to seriously pay for Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s sins. Paradoxically, the only thing preventing hyperinflation now is the recession, because people aren’t buying anything and therefore aren’t competing for those limited goods.

THAT is why we haven’t yet experienced truly catastrophic inflation YET.  But the moment we ever actually start to get out of the economic hellhole Obama has dug us into, we will see inflation at levels that will shock and dismay you.  You mark my words.

Now that we are officially at QE3, I want you to watch this video to see what necessarily awaits you:

Get ready, because the American economy WILL be going on a scary ride:

Critical Failure Overload: Which Obama Failure Should We Focus On?

There seems to be a genius to Obama’s incompetence.  He is failing on so many levels, in so many ways, all at the same time, that nobody can possibly keep track of them all.

Which means, paradoxically, that the more failures Obama accumulates, the better he looks, as coverage of all the failure is dissipated such that nothing receives the focus it needs to penetrate the American culture of distraction.

A few days ago, the media hailed Obama’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and replacement by Gen. David Petraeus as a magnificent act of presidential leadership and decision-making.  Let’s not mention that the same figures on the left who were hailing Petraeus yesterday were demonizing him when Bush appointed him to take control over the Iraq War and the surge strategy that won that war.

Obama is turning to Bush’s general and Bush’s Secretary of Defense in order to overcome the failure created by utterly failed Democrat Party ideas.

Chief among those utterly failed Democrat ideas is the timetable for cut-and-run.  Democrats wanted to impose this guaranteed-to-fail strategy for Iraq, but Bush prevailed and won the war.  Now they want to make sure we lose in Afghanistan, as Afghans who want to stay alive realize who will still be there a year from now (i.e., the Taliban), and who won’t (i.e., the United States), and that they’d better not ally themselves with their “timetable for withdrawal” all-too-temporary American allies.

We find that the July 2011 timetable for withdrawal was a purely political decision that had no military justification or support whatsoever.

Of course, the failure in Afghanistan comes as a welcome relief to day 72 of the even bigger failure in the Gulf of Mexico.

The leftwing media is essentially shouting, “Hey, take your eye off that total failure over there on the Gulf Coast.  Look over here!!!  Obama fired a guy that pricked his thin-skin and appointed Bush’s general to save his liberal ass.  And he gave a speech!!!  Don’t waste your time thinking about the fact that BP took the cap off the leaking hole so that 104,000 gallons of oil per hour could pour out of the sea floor.  Don’t look at the possibility that as much as 4.2 million gallons of oil are pouring out of that damn hole Obama can’t plug every single day!!!

Come on!  Obama’s got Bush’s general now!!!  The one whom Obama and every other Democrat demonized three years ago while he was winning in Iraq!!!”

Well, go ahead and take a look at how terribly Obama is failing in Afghanistan.  Look at how Obama doubled Bush’s last body count in 2009, and how he is now on pace to double his own doubling of Bush’s body count this year.  Look at how terrible a job Obama is doing mismanaging the various top-level civilian and military personnel who are clearly not on the same page with one another as personal fiefdoms rather than the mission dominate (see also here).  The divisions – which underscore that Obama’s entire Afghanistan plan is in freefall – aren’t pretty.  And don’t forget to look at the fact that “Those divisions are of Obama’s own making, stemming from his lack of leadership and failure to make a firm commitment to victory in Afghanistan.”

While you’re at it, take a look at the fact that, by the standards Democrats used to attack Bush in 2004, Barack Hussein is the worst president in American history bar none.

The Obama-failure in Afghanistan is a distraction for the Obama-failure in the Gulf of Mexico.  And the Obama-failure in the Gulf of Mexico is a distraction for the Obama-failure in the economy.

Look at the fact that a full year and a half later, jobless claims continue to go up “sharply.” Look at the fact that new home sales have plunged to the lowest level ever recorded.   Look at the fact that that disaster followed the news that Obama’s mortgage modification program had officially imploded.  And look at the fact that bank foreclosures have doubled under Obama’s “wreckovery.”

One in four homeowners are underwater in their mortgages, and are increasingly just bailing out and walking away from their responsibilities in Obama’s God-damn-America.  Consumer confidence is down dramatically.    And oil prices are way down for the very bad reason that our economy is in such bad shape no one can afford to go anywhere.  And, of course, our stock market just took a very cold bath yesterday.

Where are we supposed to look to see an area in which Obama HASN’T failed?

Look at everything, if you have time to contemplate all the failure that Obama has brought.  But don’t be distracted from taking time to watch the spill cam footage every day, or following the latest tracking of Obama’s oil spill and its contamination of the Gulf Coast, or following the Obama-regime-caused inability to clean up the mess.

As you watch the daily disaster unfolding, don’t forget to remember that Obama is the guy running the show.  Or that the show looks like a chicken running around after its head has been cut off

Obama’s Katrina: Gasoline FAR More Expensive Under Obama – And Price About To Skyrocket

I remember the Democrats demagoguing President Bush when the price of gas when up, because that’s pretty much all that Democrats know how to do.

Well, let’s see: the price of gas was $1.84 cents for regular and $2.27 for diesel the week after Bush left office.

And what is it now?

OH MY GAWD!!! It is now $2.85 for regular, and $3.08 for diesel as of April 26th.

Let’s see.  Math, math, carry the 1…  OH MY GAWD!!! That’s a 55% increase in the price of gasoline from George W. Bush.

Where’s Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to demonize the president over the price of gas???  Where are the congressional investigations???

Oh, that’s right.  Democrats are great at demagoguing, as long as they’re blaming everybody else.  Not so good at taking any kind of responsibility for themselves and what happens under their sordid misrule.

Boy, does hope and change crap ever suck when you stop and think about the actual world.

And expect it to go up.  And maybe up and up and up.

“Solidly above $3 a gallon” anyway (quote also cited here).  Maybe as much as $5 a gallon, if this drags on as long as some experts are now saying.

Now, let’s say a little more about Barack Obama’s “Hurricane Katrina.”

George Bush was demonized from one side to the other, and then up and down as well.  Why?  Because, according to the Democrat demagoguery, George Bush waited two whole days before he brought all the resources of the federal government to bear on Katrina.

Here’s a typical liberal salvo from Bill Maher:

“Finally today convoys of troops and aid started to arrive along the Gulf Coast. Five days after the hurricane hit. Kind of makes you miss the innocent days when Bush only sat on his ass for seven minutes. It only took him four days to make a plan, but finally today he said he had a plan. Unfortunately it’s a faith-based plan that involves getting two of every animal onto a big boat.”

Well, this BP drilling site went “boom” nine days ago.  And Barack Obama dithered for an entire week before doing a damn thing.  And now we’re facing an ecological disaster.  And the weather – which was quite nice while Obama was doing nothing – is now a huge hindrance to clean-up efforts.

Which is to say, not only is this all Obama’s fault, but further, that Barack Obama is actually at least three-and-a-half times more to blame for his dithering than Bush was to blame for his.

And, now, as a result of all that Obama dithering, we’ve got a massive crisis that is going to cost Americans billions more at the pump.

Do unto Obama as liberals did unto Bush.  Blame Obama.  Treat him the way he treated Bush.  Judge him by his own standard, and find him sorely lacking in competence or compassion.  It’s his fault that gas has gone up 55% – so far.  It’s his fault that we have a massive crisis.  And it’s his fault that gas prices are going to skyrocket even more than they already have under his misrule.

Biased Media Slants Falling Oil Prices To Suit Liberal Talking Points

It’s really quite remarkable how the elite media distorts in whatever way is necessary in order to continue to drive home its liberal agenda.

CNNMoney.com ran a story yesterday that claims that the recently falling fuel prices (which most would see as a good thing) are actually a bad thing – a harborer of looming recession:

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Oil prices are falling sharply, and that’s good news. But not nearly as good as you might think.

No doubt the drop, down to $120 by mid-day Monday, gives strapped consumers relief at the gas pump. Prices have dropped below $4 a gallon and could be headed toward $3.50, going by trading in wholesale futures markets. Any decline will be welcomed by Americans struggling under the burden of falling house prices, rising layoffs and stagnant wages.

But falling oil prices also suggest that the recession the U.S. has so far avoided is well on its way, as consumers pull back from the spending spree that drove economic growth earlier this decade. A weakening economy will mean more layoffs, further pressuring already reduced spending.

“There is no doubt that with gasoline prices dipping below $3.90 a gallon we have a bit of a reprieve on the energy front,” Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg wrote in a report Monday, “but the reality is that this is a chicken and egg game because the decline is reflecting the consumer recession.”

The liberal media mantra is this: the Bush economy is terrible. The implication is this: you need to vote Democrat for the sake of “change.”

There is an unrelenting presentation of negatively-viewed coverage on the economy when Republican administrations are in power – especially during election years. And the identical economic statistics – or even worse numbers – are somehow are viewed in a more positive light when Democrats are in power.

Stop and think about it:

First of all, Americans are doing all the things that liberals have been wanting them to do: they are driving significantly less, using less oil. They are trading in their big gas guzzlers for economy cars. Heck, they’re even inflating their tires! Americans are doing what liberals have been telling them to do for years. Yet somehow, this amounts to dire news for the economy.

Let me simply assure you that this media narrative would be entirely different if Barack Obama were president.

Second, why did Americans drive so much less? Because gasoline was so overpriced. Only liberals don’t get the fact that when something becomes more expensive, people will use less of it.

Because the price of oil is a function of the relationship between supply and demand, when the demand is reduced, the supply becomes greater and the price goes down. It had nearly nothing to do with “oil company price gouging” or “speculator’s manipulation.” It had almost everything to do with the fact that China’s and India’s massive increase in oil consumption accounted for the fact that the relationship between world demand and world supply was beginning to drive up the relative value of oil.

President Bush’s ending of the executive ban against drilling for offshore oil immediately resulted in the biggest decrease in oil prices in 17 years as the market reacted to the promise of increased oil supplies in the future.

Meanwhile, lying demagogue Harry Reid attempted to take credit for the price reduction, claiming that the Democrats’ legislation against speculation was what was actually reducing the oil prices. That’s been proven to be patently false, however: the speculation bill went down in defeat, the Democrats went on a five week vacation, and yet oil prices have continued to drop. Had Reid been even partly right, the speculators who got out of the market fearing the Democrats’ bill would have jumped right back in. Yet somehow that’s just not much of a story for the elite media.

The media have repeatedly told Americans that we are in a dire recession when such is not the case. We haven’t had any negative growth quarters, and the last quarter was a positive 1.9% and an increase from the previous quarter. And while our economy has clearly cooled off, it is still the best on the planet.

You can always look at the bright side, or look at the dark side on anything.  And again and again, in every way possible, the media looks to frame its coverage of the economy in order to favor Democrats and hurt Republicans.

Democrats Demagogue and Lie About Oil – As Usual

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday as his Democrats failed to move their energy bill:

They’ve come up with the most unbelievable dodge that I can remember. They said, ‘We’re not going to do anything on speculation because it’s no longer important,’ even though it’s part of their bill.

But that’s a bald faced lie, and he knows it.

Republicans have repeatedly said they were willing to deal on speculation, and alternative energy, and other things the Democrats want. But they insist that drilling on federal lands – which is now off limits on and off shore because of Democrats – be part of any package they will support. As usual, Democrats prove themselves to be dishonest manipulators rather than straight dealers.

You want another example of Democrats’ bald faced lies – again from the top Democrat in the Senate? Speaking again about speculation (i.e. the oil futures market), Reid said:

Something that will lower prices by 20-50%. And I think that, uh, one of the reasons the price of oil has gone down… you’ll note that it has gone down since we started, introduced, since we introduced our legislation dealing with speculation.

No it isn’t, and he knows it. On July 14, President Bush ended the executive ban on offshore drilling. The very next day saw the price of oil take the biggest drop in 17 years.

Within two days of Bush’s signing the executive order, the price of oil dropped from nearly $145 a barrel to $130.73 a barrel. And within four days, it had dropped to $128.88. And Harry Reid wants to take credit for this drop in price with his incredibly airheaded speculation bill that never really had a chance of overcoming a filibuster to begin with?

In the House, Democrats are putting the energy bill on the “suspension calender” in a move that will require a 2/3 majority to pass any legislation, but which prevents the Republicans from adding ANY amendments to allow for drilling on federal lands or contribute in any way.

Democrats are so paranoid that a drilling amendment might be introduced that they would rather scuttle any meaningful vote whatsoever.

Why did President Bush lift the ban?:

The White House announced today that President Bush will lift an executive order banning offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at stepping up pressure on Congress to end the prohibition it imposed in 1981.

The futures market reduced the price of oil because they saw the very real possibility that the American political system might finally get itself in gear to increase the supply of oil. Increased supplies lower prices. It’s as simple as that.

It is just like the Democrat Party to do everything possible to cause the problem for restricting the oil supply, and then try to claim credit for lowering prices. They are the worst kind of backstabbing liars you could possibly ever deal with.

To add to the sheer insanity of the Democrat’s position on energy, Sen. Charles Schumer said the same day:

The bottom line is very simple. We Democrats believe in the future when it comes to energy policy. We believe in alternative energy, we believe we have to wean ourselves away from oil and dependency from people like Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Putin. And they want to throw themselves right into their owns because big oil wants it. So the equations is simple. The Republicans equal big oil and the past. They do what big oil wants. We democrats represent alternatives weaning ourselves away from oil and the future.

So Democrats state that they have no intention of doing anything to increase the supply of oil or doing anything meaningful to reduce the cost even as they blame the Republicans who ARE trying to increase the oil supply.

Or to put it another way, how on earth can Democrats be both for oil and against oil at the same time?

And pandering demagogue that Schumer is, he labels Republicans as stooges of the oil companies which he and other Democrats have repeatedly demonized.

Oil companies certainly have their flaws. But they have one essential virtue: they produce oil. And in demonizing oil companies, Democrats have long-since crossed the line into demonizing the oil that these companies produce.

Or, to put it in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s words:

“Those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is, coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, its Global Warming, its ruining our Country, its ruining our World.”

Democrats are clearly opposed to oil. And that’s why the supplies are so low and the prices are so high.

You just remember something. Right now we are dependent upon oil. That is why Al Gore keeps flying his fuel-gobbling private jets and getting himself ferried around in gas-guzzling convoys of SUVs. Oil is what we have, and it is very difficult to go without it – even for the hypocrites who tell everyone else to do so.

Democrats like Schumer and Reid are not just part of the problem – they ARE THE PROBLEM. Because of Democrats, we are doing nothing to tap our own massive energy resources. Because of Democrats, we are therefore forced to go to the very dictators that Schumer named and give them $700 billion a year for something we could be producing ourselves.

We can either go on listening to one stupid self-serving lie and excuse after another, or we can vote these fools out and elect men and women who will allow this country to provide itself with the energy we need.

A Hope For Some Rare Awareness About The Economy

I was in a Wal Mart store a little while back, and got into an argument with an older employee with whom I have periodically chatted.

In that discussion, I discovered that the man was a Democrat, and a pretty liberal one to boot.

And I learned that he had a terribly flawed memory about the Clinton years.

His primary contention was that he had never seen the regional economy so bad. He told me, “When Clinton was president, I had no trouble finding work. But now this Wal Mart job is the best I can get.”

Well, to put it into six words: he’s wrong, wrong, and more wrong.

The Press Enterprise, Riverside County’s (and the Inland Empire’s) largest paper, had a front-page article on July 19 titled “Inland unemployment rate hits 8 percent, highest in 9 years.”

I didn’t have to pull out my calculator to realize that “nine years ago we were in the height of the Clinton presidency.

So why on earth was my liberal Democrat friend at Wal Mart so completely wrong?

Partially because that’s precisely what the media told him to think (you ever hear that sarcastic expression, ‘If I want your opinion I’ll give it to you’?).

John R. Lott did a study that demonstrated that the media viewed the economy through rose-colored glasses during the Clinton years even when the economy was in fact entering a recession. By contrast, we have been hearing the word “recession” for the better part of a year now under a Republican president even when the economy was actually growing and even though the economy is STILL not in recession according to the standard definition of the term. When Bill Clinton was president, the media largely saw even negative news through rose-colored glasses. By contrast, throughout the Bush presidency, the media has been hypercritical – as well as hypocritical – of virtually every economic development.

It is simply a demonstrable fact that the media have for years given Democratic administrations’ economic performance every benefit of the doubt, and given Republican administrations’ economic performance an unrelentingly critical review. Republicans aren’t angry that the media is portraying the economy as being in a recession; they are angry because the media subjectively and unfairly refuse to evaluate Democrat-managed economies by the same standards.

And when it comes to the economy, perception often becomes reality, because people who think that the economy is tanking will invariably begin to act in ways that subsequently cause the economy to tank. As one example, if people are continually told that the economy will worsen and the housing market will continue to decline, will they buy homes now, or will they hold off and wait for the market to further decline and lower prices further? But by waiting, they are actually contributing to the market’s actual decline.

So the same media that helps to create positive perceptions of the economy during Democratic administrations helps to undermine the economy during Republican administrations. They frequently resort to downright irresponsible reporting to do so. And when Democrat and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich used the term “DEPRESSION” to describe the Bush economy, he was going beyond even the irresponsible media and pandering to the very lowest form of demagoguery.

Is our economy really doing so terrible?

Just to demonstrate how horrifyingly irresponsible Robert Reich was in his prediction of a “Bush depression” on March 14, 2008, the VERY NEXT DAY the story emerged that the United States continues to have the best and most competitive economy in the world!

I hate to be rude, but Reich revealed himself for the vile little pandering and demagoguing rodent that he is. Yet rabid little rat or not, he continues to be paraded from elite media network to network with all the fanfare of an enlightened analyst who truly understands what is going on.

My liberal friend at Wal Mart assured me that the economy was always great under Clinton, and that Clinton balanced the budget. The fact that neither statement is true doesn’t matter. Today’s liberals are fitted with psychological filters designed to prevent truth from entering their minds.

First of all, Bill Clinton most certainly did not get off to all that great of a start as president. If he had, he wouldn’t have contributed to the greatest landslide in political history with a massive 52 seat swing in the ’94 midterm elections that put the Republicans in power for the next dozen years.

Furthermore, President Clinton – all ubiquitous media misrepresentation aside – most certainly DID NOT balance the budget. What he did was fiddle with the numbers to pay off the public debt by borrowing from the intergovernmental debt (particularly from the Social Security Trust Fund). The so-called “Clinton surplus” is simply a myth: The national debt continued to grow and grow and grow, and the last Clinton budget was $133.29 billion in the red.

And when President Clinton left office, he also left President Bush with an economy that was very definitely stumbling into a recession about as bad as the one we’re stumbling into now. He also left President Bush with Osama bin Laden (when he rejected a Somali offer to literally hand him over to us) and with an al Qaeda that was growing stronger and stronger after repeatedly attacking the United States throughout the Clinton administration.

Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that:

Clinton’s failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger’s assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.

Please don’ think that the vicious 9/11 attacks – which President Clinton could have nipped in the bud by taking out its chief leader and architect – didn’t massively hurt the U.S. economy. Yet a liberal media ensured that President Bush duly received all the blame for both the recession and the attack.

The Press Enterprise article points out that a year ago, the two-county unemployment figure was a reasonable 5.9%. If anything, we have Nancy Pelosi and her “commonsense plan” to thank as much as anyone for the dramatic increase that has taken place during the oversight of a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. But you can count on the fact that the media will never connect the economic downturn to the Democrat’s control of Congress the way they routinely connect President Bush to it.

What’s caused the dramatic negative economic turnaround in the last year?

Is it the sky-high increase in oil prices? I have written again and again that it is Democrats – and Democrats virtually alone – who deserve the blame for the current situation by refusing to allow us to act in a responsible way by drilling the oil we have right under our feet and right off our shores.

See my articles (in order from the earliest to the most recent):

Democrat’s ‘Commonsense Plan’ Revealed: Let’s Nationalize the Oil Industry

Blame Democrats for Sky-High Gas Prices

Democrats Block US Energy Independence, Send Gas Prices Soaring

Democrat’s Ideological Stand Against Domestic Oil Terrible for US Economy & Security

If You Want $12 A Gallon Gas, Vote for Obama and Democrats

Pelosi, Reid, and Obama: The Three Stooges of American Energy Policy

Is it the secondary market fiasco and the subsequent housing market collapse? While Republicans deservedly merit some of the blame, let us not forget that it was Democrats who demanded that poor and unqualified borrowers had to have access to home loans. And let us not forget that the principle political figures involved in the subsequent scandal have been Democrats (Former Fannie Mae Chairman and former Barack Obama key assistant Jim Johnson, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad headline the list among other prominent Democrats).

The media that would have left no stone unturned in launching exhaustive and well-covered investigations into Republicans in any kind of similar situation has conveniently allowed the Democrat’s scandal to vanish off the headlines. They continue to play the part – of Democrat apologist and enabler – that they have chosen for themselves all along.

And we saw an all-too typical example of Democrats and the media ganging up to harm the economy under a Republican administration. Sen. Charles Schumer unnecessarily notified the public of the impending federal takeover of IndyMac in California, creating the equally unnecessary lines and panic among account holders. And then there was the media flocking like vultures, breathlessly envisioning one worst-case scenario for the American economy after another.

Don’t you DARE try to claim that Democrats – who were so utterly consumed with investigating baseball players’ for allegations of steroid abuse and with repeatedly demonzing oil executives at one communist-type show trial “hearing” after another that they were entirely blindsided by the secondary market collapse – were one iota less to blame than the Republicans even at their worst.

And don’t you dare believe that Republicans under George Bush mismanaged the economy in spite of the Democrats’ best attempts to keep it rolling smoothly along. If anything, it was precisely the other way around.

My liberal friend is responsible for unquestioningly believing the liberal media spin rather than engaging in the critical thinking that would let him see the truth about the disinformation campaign going around all around him. Please don’t make the same mistake.