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Early Jobs Projections Could Haunt Obama in 2012 – NYTimes.com

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com11/4/11

Friday's tepid jobs report brings a fresh reminder of the stubborn difficulty President Obama and his team face in overcoming the argument that his administration has failed to address unemployment.

Droves Of Democrats Balking On Obama 2012 | Politicons

politicons.net11/14/11

Radioactive Obama… Politico has a piece highlighting the droves of Democrats that are refusing to back Obama in 2012. …

Just one year from the 2012 election and President Obama is in an extremely perilous political situation.

The poor economy he inherited hasn’t recovered and has most likely worsened.

Published unemployment is stuck above 9% with real unemployment being around 18.5%

Long-term unemployment is at record post-war levels.

The housing sector, where most people’s personal wealth was and is concentrated, remains mired in deep recession.

The scandals surrounding Republican-led investigations into Solyndra and Operation Fast and Furious are deepening.

Obama Had Overwhelming Majorities In Both Houses Of Congress

Although the President had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress in his first two years, he has only two major legislative achievements to his credit:

The stimulus bill.

And Obamacare.

The stimulus bill is generally perceived as having been worse than a total failure, because it’s perceived as having been motivated more by politics than economics, and because much of the $800 billion was directed towards public service union members and liberal causes; i.e. "green energy", rather than real economic recovery.

Obamacare also remains deeply unpopular with the general public and is headed for the Supreme Court, which could well find its key provision unconstitutional next summer, just as the election gets into high gear.

The Economy And America’s Status

Budget deficits soared during the Obama years, with three trillion-dollar-plus deficits in a row.

And this has caused the national debt to swell to a level that, relative to GDP, has not been seen since the end of World War II and for the first time ever, the United States lost its AAA credit rating, which was a deep embarrassment for the country and also the administration.

Obama’s Ratings

So it shouldn’t be surprising that under these circumstances, that the President’s approval ratings have been in sharp decline, with some of his key supporting groups, including the youth and Hispanic voters to a greater or less degree abandoning him.

Obama’s Re-electability

No recent President was re-elected with unemployment above 7.8%, and that was in 1984, when unemployment was falling rapidly as a major economic boom accelerated.

So What Happened?

How did a man who three years ago won a higher percentage of both the popular and electoral vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide almost fifty years ago find himself fighting such uphill odds to keep the White House?

The answer to that seems to lie in the somewhat exceptional circumstances that existed during the 2008 election, and Barack Obama’s personality which fitted the times.

In 2008, the American electorate was thoroughly tired of both the Bush administration and the Republican Party, which had lost its majority in Congress in 2006 for the first time in twelve years.

The Republican field of presidential candidates in 2008 was a weak one, with the eventual winner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, widely perceived as being too old for the job.

So Obama, who was only forty seven years old, seemed in contrast, like a breath of fresh air.

He seemed personable, articulate (nobody had yet focused on his TelePrompTer) and he was the first ever bi-racial candidate for a major-party nomination with any serious chance of winning.

His biggest opposition was Sen. Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate who also had a serious chance of winning, but she was already well known to the American people, having been First Lady for eight years; and she carried a lot of baggage from her husband’s administration.

Obama, in contrast, was a blank slate and to some extent still is because of the main stream media which is still protecting him.

Obama Hid His Tracks

Obama only served a little over three years in the US Senate, where his record was thin, and he mostly voted "present” rather than take a stand on issues.

Which we can now see was because he didn’t want evidence that could later be used against him.

How Obama Won

The Obama campaign used his lack of Washington experience to the fullest, much like Herman Cain is using his now.

They cultivated an image of a new kind of president, one who would cut through the old Washington merry-go-round of partisan bickering and special-interest pandering.

He would be post-partisan, a President who would throw the special-interest moneychangers out of the temple of the nation’s capital.

Obama’s biggest advantage in the 2008 election however, was that the mainstream media, failed to reveal any of his major negatives, such as having been and active member of the New Party (communist) and promoted all of his seeming positives; simply because it so desperately wanted to see an extreme left-wing, bi-racial candidate elected.

So What Happened To Candidate Obama’s Promises?

Running for President and being President, are two entirely separate matters however, and once in the White House a new Obama emerged, one who was quite different from the post-partisan, special-interest-bashing one.

What metamorphosed, was a hyper-liberal ideologue who attended to his special interests, such as labor unions, as assiduously as any other Washington politician had ever done before.

And what’s more, an arrogance and a rigidity that had not been seen in the candidate before, became increasingly evident, and expressed itself in such things as his State of the Union speech in January 2010, wherein he publicly criticized the Supreme Court, many of whose members were sitting in front of him for one of its decisions, which was totally unprecedented behavior.

Soon Gone Was The Bi-Partisanship

"I won the election”, he bluntly told Rep. Paul Ryan when the latter tried to negotiate regarding Obamacare, and it resulted in his two major pieces of legislation passing with almost no Republican votes in either house.

The Tea Party

What happened next was a groundswell of opposition to the Obama administration’s big spending ways which quickly became known as the Tea Party, and it’s something that Obama naively or arrogantly ignored for too long.

Obama Vainly Ignored The Clear Writing On The Wall

Republican candidates did extremely well in the off-year elections of 2009, winning the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia with control-the-spending campaigns, and even greater evidence of voters’ dissatisfaction was when Scott Brown, who was a little known Republican, won the special election to fill the Senate seat of Democratic icon Ted Kennedy in deep-blue Massachusetts in January, 2010.

Obama Has Been Slow To Learn

Obama simply made a few token political adjustments, and in November, 2010, a tidal wave election gave decisive control of the House back to the Republicans and added seven Senate seats to their column, with Republicans also winning races for governor and state legislative seats across the width and breadth of the country.

Obama did admit that he had taken a shellacking, but he seems no more willing to change his ways than before because his latest plan to stimulate the economy is little different than his first one, and it has no chance of being enacted.

Can Obama Win Reelection?

Unlikely unless:

The economy turns around.

The Republicans nominate another weak candidate, which is possible.

The Supreme Court upholds Obamacare, or avoids making a decision before the election.

Obama’s biggest problem however seems to be that he’s totally egocentric and believes that his way is the only right way.

It’s highly unlikely that he’ll change, and increasingly likely that he’ll be a one term president, which is something that he said that he’d prefer.

"I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president".

And if that comes to be, then he’ll be able to say that he was right about that too!

Prison Planet.com » Rick Perry Would Back Israeli Attack On Iran

www.prisonplanet.com11/4/11

29 Responses to “Rick Perry Would Back Israeli Attack On Iran”. Quantummonkeybutt says: November 4, 2011 at 10:24 am. Nobel Peace Prize Winning Barack Obama (a.k.a. 'Baraq 'u Vama'): “War!!!” Perry: “War!!!” …

In Rick Perry's Speeches, a Growing Anti-Washington Theme …

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com11/4/11

As the Cain controversy explodes, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is sticking to economic themes.

The somewhat obvious answer is, most likely, "Yes" to both questions.

But Why?

Dan Henninger categorically says what he thinks the U.S. can learn from Texas

The Texas Economy Is Huge

Rick Perry says that Texas is the most successful state in America and he’s right because Texas’ economic output even exceeds Mexico’s and Australia’s and is close to that of India’s.

Rick Perry has been governor of Texas for nearly eleven years, but does the logic of politics lead us to conclude that the governor of the nation’s most successful state is, ipso facto, the best man to be president of the economically gasping United States?

Texas, unlike California, isn’t America’s most beautiful state, and through October this year parts of Texas had 90 days of 100+ temperatures, yet companies and people keep moving into the high heat of Texas.

From Dan Henniger’s Wonderland

In a preview of his "Wonderland" column, Dan Henninger discusses what he thinks the U.S. can learn from Texas.

In 1990, one of the world’s biggest companies, Exxon Mobil, left New York City for Dallas. Exxon’s former CEO, Lee Raymond, says the move in part was indeed about costs and New York State’s notoriously overbearing tax authority. But it was also about working amid a culture of competence.

"It’s just the attitude in Texas of getting things done and doing them well".

This is about something beyond low taxes and no unions:

"In Texas the people tend to be farmers or individual businessmen, and they have this attitude".

"We have to make do with what we have and work together to get things done and survive".

"It’s can-do and that attitude permeates everything there".

Alan Boeckmann, until recently CEO of Fluor Corp., which is an engineering and construction firm, says:

"Regulatory and legal hassles pushed Fluor out of California. Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley. California had its own version. There were constant class-action suits over Fluor’s benefits. It could have been settled, but not in California. That’s how the game is played there".

And when word of the 2006 move got out.

"California made no attempt to keep us. In Texas, things started to happen quickly, without us initiating them. The Irving Chamber of Commerce did orientation sessions for employees and spouses, even helping with new-house searches, and a street was renamed a street ‘Fluor Drive’, which in California or the Northeast would be laughable".

Smaller Fish Too

Ed Trevis, who is a smaller fish, is also happy.

Ed is a California-educated Brazilian immigrant and tech entrepreneur who operated in Silicon Valley for 25 years and moved Corvalent Corp. to Austin for similar reasons.

He had to hire a firm just to do California’s compliance.

"In California you are always doing something wrong".

"What I found in Texas is that from the standpoint of running a business, cost of living, education, the labor pool, quality of life, it just blew other states out of the water. I heard this constantly. People enjoy being in business in Texas".

More Points Of View

Technology consultant Bob Barker says while taking a visitor around the nearby hills,

"Austin may have more Ph.Ds driving taxis than any city in the country".

Austin’s famed population of big and small technology companies has suffered layoffs.

But Barker says:

"No one wants to leave. They stay, plugging into Austin’s numerous business-support networks. In Austin you discover a primary reason beneath Texas’ success. It’s about competition plus collaboration. It seems everyone in Texas high-tech knows everyone, and if they can help each other, they will".

David Booth, who moved Dimensional Fund Advisors’s headquarters to Austin from Santa Monica in 2008, puts Rick Perry’s role in perspective:

"He understands his job isn’t to get in the middle of everything".

Fluor’s Alan Boeckmann seconded that, and Mr. Booth and others said this is also true of the Texas lieutenant governor, its attorney general and the comptroller.

"They are very supportive of business",

says Lee Raymond,

"In the sense of moving things along. If there is a rock in the road, they want to know what they can do to move it out of the way".

Mr. Booth says:

"This isn’t merely the ‘pro-business’ bias of a Rick Perry or any other governor. Texas’ pro-business bias goes back about 175 years and never died. It’s just that they believe in the whole Horatio Alger myth down here. It’s hard to understand if you haven’t lived here".

Texas Or California?

Obama chose the California model and not the Texas one and look where America’s at!

The Texas mentality would be the same with or without Perry but he gave it free rein rather than bridling it, and it worked.

So This much Should Be Obvious

Texas, not California had better be the American future.

And somewhere inside of him, Rick Perry of Texas understands this distinction.