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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!

An “Act of War”: Obama’s Destruction of the U.S. Energy Industry …

Kevin Mooney tabulates the damage that the Obama administration is doing to the Gulf economy, and to the energy industry generally: Ten oil rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico since the Obama Administration imposed a …

Publish Date: 08/23/2011 22:10

http://mayrantandrave.com/2011/08/23/an-act-of-war-obamas-destruction-of-the-u-s-energy-industry/

Bob Chapman: Obama's Deliberate Destruction of America …

1 comment to Bob Chapman: Obama's Deliberate Destruction of America. David. October 1, 2011 at 9:41 am · Reply. I am going to have to agree with Chapman. I think the destruction of America has been a deliberate attempt. …

Publish Date: 10/01/2011 6:51

http://sgtreport.com/2011/09/bob-chapman-obamas-deliberate-destruction-of-america/

As promised, the Obama administration fundamentally transformed America!

America is now in serious decline.

Income is lower.

Unemployment is higher.

Jobs are fewer.

Government is much larger.

Federal spending is way up.

America’s global economic status is way down.

The world-view of our country and our economy is in the pits!

And perhaps worse still, hardly anyone sees any sign of economic recovery or improvement.

Let’s look at the Labor Department data on the number of Americans 16 and older unemployed for 52 weeks or more during the five most recent recessions:

1976   750,000

1982 1,600,000

1994 1,200,000

2004 1,100,000

2010 4,300,000

Total government spending averaged about 19% of gross domestic product from 1996 to 2007 and rose to about 21% in 2008 but in the three years of the Obama administration it soared to 25%.

Why Did It Happen?

The Obama administration is focused on its increasing control of health care, propping up labor unions, increasing taxes, and expanding the scope and size of government.

In the first 70 years of the 20th century, American and European economic growth increased together, but then the Europeans shifted toward socialism, and their growth lagged.

And America is rapidly moving toward the European model, and we are starting to see its detrimental impact.

President Obama’s recent spending and tax policy proposals would only make things worse.

He wants to increase the federal deficit by increasing spending and providing some targeted, but short term, payroll tax cuts.

And this is at a time when we need to bring the federal deficit down and fast!

Obama’s Plan

Although Obama’s plan would actually increase the deficit by $447 billion over the next year or two, Obama says his increase will be "paid for", and to do it, he’s proposed a series of permanent tax increases.

But America’s economy is already facing two significant tax increases.

The first will be the end of the Bush tax cuts in December 2012.

And because of ObamaCare, starting in 2013 taxpayers making more than $200,000 will pay an additional 3.8% on investment and interest income.

The Near End Of Giving To Charity?

The new Obama proposals include reduced itemized deductions allowed for any individuals earning more than $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married couples) and included in that proposal, is a government plan that would take some of the money that would have gone to charity and instead funnel it to federal government spending.

The Effect Of Tax Increases

Tax rate increases more often than not bring in reduced tax dollars!

The Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds demonstrated in his recent Wall Street Journal piece that the 28% tax rate on long-term capital gains brought in $36.9 billion a year from 1987 to 1997, while the current 15% rate in 2004 to 2007 brought in $96.8 billion per year.

Did Obama Change His Tune?

Last December when the president extended the Bush tax cuts, he acknowledged that tax hikes both slow economic growth and deter job creation, something he seems to have forgotten!

The higher taxes on energy producers are particularly discouraging, given the importance of energy to our economic recovery and the administration’s continued clampdown on energy production.

Can It Get Any Worse?

Sadly, "Yes".

In another measure that is counterproductive to economic growth, the Obama plan includes extending benefits for the long-term unemployed, even though studies show that long term employment benefits raise the unemployment rate from 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points.

President Obama has said that:

"Everything in [his new] bill will be paid for", and that it "will not add to the deficit".

But it will be paid for in the future, and the president is effectively saying that we should add some more to the deficit now in return for promises of future spending.

The Bottom Line

None of the administration’s programs bode well for the good or for the future of America or its people.

American Enterprise Institute’s Director of economic policy Kevin Hassett said earlier this month:

"The Obama administration’s position throughout this recovery has been that the U.S. can have the highest corporate tax on earth, a big regulatory crackdown, and a vast expansion of labor-union power and still expect a positive jobs story because of cash-for-clunkers and green jobs. This jobs report indicates how much damage that view has done".

In the end, the newest Obama proposals are proof that his recent centrist posturing was just that, posturing.

The new proposals are a continuation of the old Obama New Party (read communist) policies, and they are policies that sadly have extended the recession, stifled economic growth, and will for some years to come, weaken America!