Lore Pohlman

It appears that about 40% of the country makes up a core of blue… people who are wedded to their leftist philosophy as if it were a religion… they believe it will succeed despite all evidence to the contrary. From the economic malaise it has inflicted on the United States to the economic meltdown that is playing itself out in Europe to the wholesale abandonment of the leftist policies by governments from Beijing to Delhi to Hanoi. Despite the complete lack of a single demonstrable example of a sustained success of the Marxist / Keynesian / Alinsky philosophy, they still believe and it appears that virtually nothing anyone in the red corner can say can change their minds.

Today the aspirations embodied by their messiah are no longer just theoretical solutions and aspirational promises. This is not 2008 when the press could blame all of America’s woes on a reviled Bush White House. It’s not 2008 when Barack Obama could tell stories about how he plans on putting America back to work by rebuilding our infrastructure and creating green jobs. It’s not 2008 where Barack Obama could promise to make America respected again in the eyes of the world by closing Guantanamo and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s not 2008 where Barack Obama could rail against George Bush’s “years of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility.” On the contrary, in the summer of 2011 President Obama finds himself in the middle of a perfect storm of failure, yet it seems to have no effect on his followers.

The most recent issue is of course Solyndra. The solar panel company that was the poster child for the green jobs that were the key to fulfilling his campaign pledge to future generations that (his election) “was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” In 2009 the Administration gave the company $535 million in loan guarantees and in March of 2010 the President toured the company, declaring “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith.” Today the company sits bankrupt and taxpayers are out half a billion dollars. What’s worse for President Obama’s green jobs agenda is the fact that apparently each of those touted green jobs costs $5 million…

On the jobs front the President has just gone back to Congress and requested that they give him an additional $500 billion for a second stimulus program… because his previous $1 Trillion stimulus plan worked so well. The President suggested that his stimulus program (circa 2009) would bring unemployment down to 7.1% by August of 2011. In reality, his stimulus program did pass yet unemployment stands at 9.1% today. Fully two million more Americans are unemployed today than were promised by the President.

On the single most important issue of the day, jobs, President Obama has demonstrated not only that he is out of ideas, but that he wants to double down on the same bad ideas didn’t work in the past… and he wants to pay for the whole thing by raising taxes by $1.5 trillion. Unfortunately for him, things don’t look any better anywhere else. Domestically, inflation is on the rise, the economy is on life support and federal deficits are larger than at any time in history. Internationally, America’s leadership is once again so strong that the Palestinians are heading to the UN to ask for recognition despite US opposition, the Arab spring threatens to put Islamists in charge across the region, Europe is crumbling and Asian allies wonder about America’s commitment to the region as Taiwan is left twisting in the wind by the administration’s decision not to sell the island nation 66 new F-16 fighter jets for fear of offending the Chinese. Politically, the President’s leftist policies have so pummeled the citizens of New York that last week the GOP captured a house seat that had been held by the Democrats since 1923.

While the nirvana that was to be ushered in by Hope and Change has not materialized, it’s not because the administration has demurred from putting its policies in place. On the contrary, they’ve done so in most cases either by legislation or executive action. Despite all of this failure, a solid 40% of the electorate still supports President Obama and the discredited policies of the left. One wonders how is it possible that seeing all of this they could still believe? Then again, maybe it’s not so difficult to understand. A sign of a religion after all, is believing in something despite all empirical data that suggest it might not be true, or perhaps more accurately, the lack of empirical data that suggest it is true. The difference between a religion and the leftist policies of President Obama is that the former typically promises nirvana in the afterlife while the latter is supposed to be focused on this one. Nothing can prove Heaven doesn’t exist and therefore believers continue to believe. It’s called faith. History on the other hand, from FDR right up to Barack Obama, demonstrates clearly that the socialist, redistributive policies of the left simply do not work. Yet, the believers still believe, and vote accordingly. That fits Einstein’s definition of insanity. In this case it might just be called stupidity.

It's All Bush's fault

As you know --- every problem that Obama has faced – and failed to address successfully – is really Bush’s fault. It is rumored (not really) that Obama has a version of the Presidential Seal on his desk with a new slogan: “It’s Bush’s Fault.” You’re probably aware of the Solyndra scandal. Here’s my best attempt to simplify the scandal into bullet points: Obama decides that he is the one who will decide where the new jobs will be, and he wants green jobs. Green jobs make liberals happy. Since Obama thinks that green jobs are cool, he decides to throw taxpayer money to private businesses who promise him green jobs. Solyndra needs money. So Solyndra gets in line for some ObamaMoney. Obama thinks that Solyndra is the perfect backdrop for his green jobs program, so he designates Joe Biden to go make a speech at the groundbreaking for a new Solyndra facility. But wait! Solyndra has applied for a $500 million plus loan guarantee, and the application hasn’t been approved yet! Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget tells him that the loan isn’t a very good idea. Obama remembers, though, that Solyndra principal George Kaiser is huge contributor to his campaign. Emails fly at the White House. Some suggesting that the loan guarantee isn’t a good idea, some saying we need to move ahead on this project. Somewhere along the line the loan agreement is modified to protect Solyndra investors while putting the American taxpayers on the hook. Obama administration officials actually sat in on some Solyndra board meetings while all of this, and Solyndra finances, were being discussed. (Imagine of Bush administration officials had sat in on Enron board meetings.) The loan guarantee goes through. The administration gets their day in the sun with Joe Biden speaking at Solyndra headquarters. About a year later Solyndra is in the tank. The taxpayers take it on the chin for over $500 milllion. The Democrats blame Bush, saying that the loan application happened during the Bush administration, not Obama’s. The Republicans are rude enough to point out that the Bush administration rejected the Solyndra loan application. It only gained new life when Obama took office and started spouting off about green jobs. The FBI raids Solyndra headquarters. Democrats and the Obama folks go into pure defense mode. Where does this go from here? That is going to depend on whether or not the ObamaMedia is compelled to really cover the story.

Solyndra and Green Jobs

Lest we forget that in 2009, Barack Obama appointed an avowed communist, Van Jones, to be his greens jobs czar. That’s right, a communist was the president’s “special advisor” on one of the pillars of his economic plan: green jobs. Actyually … that was pretty much what you might have expected, since so many communists went running to the environmental movement when the world communist movement collapsed. I just want us to remember this mindset as we approach this story about how the Obama administration then went and “invested” $535 million in the now bankrupt solar company, Solyndra. In September of 2009, the Obama administration heralded a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra as a “game changer” for the green energy movement. Vice President Biden emphasized that Solyndra would be creating thousands of permanent jobs: “Jobs you can raise a family on, green jobs, jobs that will serve as a foundation for a stronger American economy.” Biden said, “These are the jobs that are going to define the 21st century and the jobs — going to allow America to compete and to lead like we did in the 20th century.” So much for that. In January of this year, Solyndra was able to refinance its loan. During the time of the loan’s restructuring, the Energy Department kept a close eye on the company, even having DOE officials sit in on board meetings. Then in the summer of 2011, the CEO of Solyndra made several visits to Washington, apparently maintaining that the company was stable. Then just weeks later, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy. Now we have federal agents scouring through documents from homes of Solyndra’s CEO and founders. There will be hearings in Congress this week as to whether the DOE was misled by Solyndra on the stability of their investment. Look, folks. This is what happens when you have government officials picking the winners and losers, all with your tax dollars on the line. Barack Obama wouldn’t know how to create a job if his own job depended on it. The fact that this iconic green jobs investment failed so epically is an extremely bad PR situation for Obama. But more importantly, it is bad for those people who lost their jobs on the false promise of a green jobs future.

Too cute by half.

The Big Zero caved. Now he'll deliver his usual shopworn leftists cliches on TV opposite the opening game of NFL football. He's also embarked on a desperation campaign to "run against Washington," as if he (or any) president isn't the very epicenter of what IS Washington.

Obama's cave-in is being played in some media as "bowing to Boehner." Well, why not? He's bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia and half the Muslim dictators of the middle-east, so why not the Speaker of the House?'

One wonders what the broader public reaction had been if he'd tried to stick with the date opposite the Republican presidential debate and no Republican House or Senate members even showed up and let him speak to a half-empty chamber. Of course, it would show a "lack of respect". But who's kidding whom? They don't respect this phony, anyway.

Let's see ... I can watch Obama blather liberal -- and failed -- economic cliches, or I can watch the Packers vs. the Saints. It may take me as long as one second to decide ...

This dyspeptic dude is the very antithesis of Churchill's classic description of an old British political hack as "a modest man, with much to be modest about." He flunks the first part, anyway. The second, he fills abundantly.

We’ve all been waiting with pregnant anticipation for Dear Ruler to return from his vacation and explain to us his grand jobs plan … right? Oh yeah! We’re saved! Barack Obama, the smartest man ever to become president, has a plan! Finally, after more than two and one-half years in office, Our “sort of a God” president who had to “step down” into the office of the presidency is going to step forward and part the unemployment waters so that his people can march across a red-carpeted seabed to the wonderful world of employment!

I feel this strange tingly thing going up and down my leg!

Now since Obama is going to present us with his “plan,” we can imagine that it will be in the form of a comprehensive business plan, right? After all, that’s where we need to create the jobs. So I’m guessing Obama is going to present us with some goals for American Business and a detailed plan on how we will achieve those goals.
This is going to be just swell!

But, alas! Something has happened! After Obama left for his oh-so-well-deserved vacation and his handlers immediately started to downgrade expectations for his jobs plan. Now we are all saddened to learn that it isn’t actually going to be a plan any more. Drat! Not a plan? Now we’ve learned that suddenly it became an outline. Oh, okay .. so screw the specifics on how to achieve our goals. Now we are just going to get an outline. Fantastic. I’m sure it is still going to be a fantastic outline – something worthy of the Great and Powerful Obama.

Uh oh .. hold on. Now we’re hearing that perhaps an outline became too much for us to expect of Dear Ruler. Now, according to deputy spokesman Josh Earnest, we can anticipate “some reasonable ideas that can have a tangible impact,” Left in the lurch again. Now we’ve been downgraded to some “reasonable ideas.” Well, I’m sure that with all of his experience in business and finance, and considering his understanding of the dynamics of private sector business growth and hiring, Obama will come roaring in the game with “reasonable ideas” that are sure to empty the unemployment lines in no time flat.

Who the hell am I kidding here? The American people feel more negatively about our economy than they’ve felt in decades … and that’s because the American people know that we have a man in the White House that has no clue in the world what he is doing. He’s a freaking community organizer and leftist activist, for Gawd’s sake – not a brilliant economic mind. This man doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to run a sandwich shop, yet there he sits on his godly throne telling us that he is going to save our economy with some “reasonable ideas” that will be written on two stone tablets when he comes down from The Mount of Martha’s Vineyard. What a load of purified horse shit.

So at this point, what sort of “reasonable ideas” can we expect from Obama? They damned sure won’t be ideas that will encourage private businessmen to start spending some of their money to expand and hire. Remember … to Obama, the private sector is “the enemy.” His words, not mine. We did, however, have two more have surfaced as of yesterday. These ideas, by the way, would be able to be accomplished without any legislation or need to battle with Republicans in Congress. They would be:
#1: Increase the number of college graduates in engineering and give companies incentives to hire them.

Really? How many small business owners do you know out there who are sitting on their hands right now because they’re concerned that there’s just not enough engineering graduates to go around? And incentives? What kind of incentives? Know what this sounds like to me? Do something to artificially boost the number of engineering students in colleges and then use taxpayer money to entice businesses into hiring them when the graduate. Yeah, that ought to work. I can see the Dow going through the roof right now.

#2: Employ construction workers to retrofit commercial buildings to make them more energy efficient.

Oh yeah. Weatherization II. Oh … and green jobs. Gotta love those green jobs.
Roll the tape: “The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.”

Then there’s that weatherization program in Seattle. You remember that one, don’t you? And that’s what we’re talking about here in Obama’s “reasonable idea.” Weatherizing commercial buildings. In April of 2010 Bite Me Biden and Mike McGinn, the mayor of Seattle, had a little soiree to announce a $20 million federal grant (borrowed funds your children will have to pay back) for weatherizing Seattle homes. Oh yeah .. what a big deal THIS was going to be. Think about it! It was going to create 2000 jobs! Amazing! So fast forward to now, and what do we have? A total of three homes have been weatherized and 14 jobs have been created; most of them administrative and temporary.

But wait! There’s more! Here’s a peak at how that is working out for California:
Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.

The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on.

Look, folks .. these ideas are all well-and-good but they are not based on any semblance of reality. This is nothing more than government picking the economic winners and losers: The government wants green jobs and construction workers to succeed, therefore it will create and fund a program to do something that otherwise would not be done in the private marketplace.

At one point in his presidency, Obama pledged to create five million green jobs over the next ten years. Five million green jobs. Instead, we have 2.5 million fewer people working today than the day he was inaugurated. From the looks of things, pushing green initiatives seems to be a jobs killer, not an economic boost: “A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.”

All Obama needs to do is unleash the private sector. Unshackle businesses from the binds of burdensome regulations and stifling taxes. Let the marketplace determine whether or not it needs energy efficient buildings or more engineers in the office place. Trying to create artificial demand will only hinder true demand and therefore true economic growth.

Here's an idea---Stay in Martha's Vineyard, let Joe Biden stay in Mongolia, send Pelosi and Reid to Libya to organize the new government and just stay the hell out of the way.

Fool me 1,238,451 times shame on me

President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature.
It is now official that the majority of you are corrupt morons:

A. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 236 years to get it right and it is broke.

B. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 76 years to get it right and it is broke.

C. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 73 years to get it right and it is broke.

D. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 47 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.

E. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 46 years to get it right and they are broke.

F. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 41 years to get it right and it is broke.

G. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 34 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.

AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ??

Real World DC

Imagine that Barack Obama was voted to become CEO of a large corporation. At the time he assumed leadership, the company was headed downhill. Fast. The first thing he did was fire anyone who actually had any business experience, either with that company or another in a similar field. After three years at the helm, all that Obama managed to do as CEO of that company was increase its spending by 25%, lose 2.5 million workers and grow the company by less than 2%. Do you think that he would still be the CEO of that company or do think that the board of directors would have yanked him out of there?

It's not Obozo's fault.

Libs, Progs, Dems .. all of them are upset that their guy Barack Obama is a tragic failure, so they are going to try and blame these failures on something else. I cited two main sources of blame for Obama’s failures: The Tea Party and George Bush.

The downgrade of our credit rating has validated this theory. Unable to cope with the idea that their guy, Barack Obama, royally screwed up and is now responsible for the first credit downgrade in U.S. history … they are pointing fingers. Big time.
So the #1 scapegoat over the weekend was … the Tea Party! Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:

Obama’s 2012 campaign strategist/chief dogwasher David Axelrod says that this “a tea party downgrade.” He says that we would never have been in this position if the tea party hadn’t put up a fight in debate over raising our debt ceiling. Axelrod said, “It was the wrong thing to do to push the country to that point. It was something that should never have happened that clearly is on the backs of those who were willing the see the country default: those very strident voices in the tea party.”

John Kerry echoed Axelrod’s comments about this being “a tea party downgrade.” He said on “Meet the Press”: “This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal.” Remember that this is the same man who said that the tea party should not be given equal air time. On Friday’s “Morning Joe” he said, “The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual … It doesn't deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do.”

Howard Dean also chimed in to blame the tea party’s influence on the debt ceiling debate for the recent U.S. credit downgrade. He said on CBS's "Face the Nation”: "This is a tea party problem … They are totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they've been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it."

The progs at MoveOn.org are upset with Dear Ruler for being too soft on the Tea Party, which is ultimately to blame for this mess. The executive director MoveOn.org Justin Ruben said over the weekend, “It’s hard to see how we avoid a Tea-Party recession if the president who has the biggest megaphone in the country is not willing to speak clearly on the issue.”

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman blogged over the weekend: “On one hand, there is a case to be made that the madness of the right has made America a fundamentally unsound nation. And yes, it is the madness of the right: if not for the extremism of anti-tax Republicans, we would have no trouble reaching an agreement that would ensure long-run solvency.”

The next victim of the Lib, Prog, Dem blame game was the Bush tax cuts or our failure to increase taxes on the evil, filthy, disgusting rich.
Daniel Gross is the Yahoo Finance economics editor. He wrote over the weekend that it was our failure to increase taxes that led to this downgrade, which was intentional sabotage by the GOP: “Recent events have sapped the agency's confidence that the government can and will do what is necessary to align revenues with spending commitments. And it's difficult to escape the conclusion that America's credit rating was intentionally sabotaged by Congressional Republicans … It has long been obvious to all observers -- to economists, to politicians, to anti-deficit groups, to the ratings agencies -- that closing fiscal gaps will require tax increases, or the closure of big tax loopholes, or significant tax reform that will raise significantly larger sums of tax revenue than the system does now.”

Former Obama administration car czar Steven Rattner recently called Tea Partiers economic terrorists. In light of the credit downgrade, he took to the airwaves to blame our deficit crisis to begin with on … the Bush tax cuts! He said on Sunday’s “This Week”: “But you do have one group of people who are saying no tax increases, never, no how, when in fact the tax decreases under President Bush partly got us in this problem. If you take today’s one and a half trillion dollar deficit, a trillion of it is from excess spending. 400 billion of it is from the Bush tax cuts.”

The Obama administration itself is seizing on one portion of the S&P’s report to try and convince the American people that if we had agreed to Obama’s plan, which included tax increases, that our credit rating would never have been downgraded. But as I pointed out above, tax increases are not what forced the S&P’s hand … it was our massive spending and the inability of the S&P to feel confident in our future ability to cut spending that ultimately led to this downgrade. Increasing taxes on the evil rich will have no bearing on that.

Perhaps the most asinine of all these excuses over the weekend was this one from ABC's Cokie Roberts. She manages to blame this all on … our Constitution!
In a discussion on “This Week,” Cokie Roberts said the following: 'The problem that we have here is the Constitution of the United States of America which actually does require people to come together from different perspectives.”
The Constitution is the problem?

What sort of yak squeeze is this woman sniffing?

Prog Speak

A little lesson in ProgSpeak. This is where liberals take common words or phrases that have become tainted in public discourse, and assign new words that will pass public scrutiny but which, to the left, means exactly the same thing.

One of the first things the left had to do was to get rid of the word “liberal.” People instinctively (and with good reason) don’t like the word “liberal.” So … now the word among the enlightened is “progressive.” I just shorten it to “Prog.” Sounds nicer, and reminds me of the frog in the frying pan routine. Then you remember “spending” of course. Well the people aren’t all that comfortable with government spending right now, so the new word for the left is “investing.” Yup! The government does “spend” on projects anymore; it “invests” in them.

Here’s the latest. Liberals have figured out that the term “tax increase” doesn’t exactly send a tingle down our collective legs. So … now “tax increases” have become “revenues.” Who, after all, can object to the government increasing revenues in the middle of a debt crisis? Don’t we need revenues to pay off our debts and to cover the costs of government’s essential services? Well of course! But there are at least two ways the government can increase revenues. One, the method preferred by Progs, is to raise taxes. The other, favored by the right, is to grow the private sector economy.

You might remember the last time we even came close to a balanced budget. The Republicans were in control of the House and Clinton was president. There was also something happening in the private sector called the “Dot-com revolution.” Sure, that later became the Dot-com bust and erased projections of budget surpluses – but the point is that it was growth in the private sector that brought the revenues that almost led to a balanced budget.

I did a lot of reading over the weekend about this credit rating downgrade. A common theme in these articles and opinion pieces was that the United States needed to cut spending AND increase revenues. But … when you read these pieces you will see that the only type of revenue increase they recognize is raising taxes! Where is the discussion about growing our economy? A growing economy means increased government revenues --- but you would never know that listening to the Obamatrons and the ObamaMedia! It’s all about tax increases.

Bottom line --- these people think that dollars spent by the private sector carry not near the economic impact that a dollar spent by government does. It’s all about government – and political power.

Downgrade

How about that credit downgrade to round out an immense week for Obama and our political elite in Washington?

Let me give you a brief look at how it all went …

April 2011: There is “no risk” of a downgrade to our AAA credit rating – Treasury Secretary tax cheat Timothy Geithner.

August 2, 2011: After months of debate, Obama signs a debt ceiling increase, which potentially includes $2 trillion in spending cuts.

August 5, 2011: Standard & Poor downgrades the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from AAA for the first time in our history.

August 7, 2011: A Standard & Poor's official says there is a 1 in 3 chance that the U.S. credit rating could be downgraded another notch if conditions erode over the next six to 24 months.

August 8, 2011: We waiting for the Treasury Secretary/tax cheat to tell us that there is “no risk” of a downgrade to our AA+ credit rating.

After all that, how did we get here? According to the S&P, they were dissatisfied with how politicians in Washington handled the haggling over budget cuts.

Additionally, S&P is not at all confident that we will be able to follow through on the proposed cuts. The head of sovereign ratings at S&P is a guy by the name of David Beers. He says that the S&P was worried about the "degree of uncertainty around the political policy process. The nature of the debate and the difficulty in framing a political consensus ... that was the key consideration." The key to maintaining our current rating, not slipping further, and hopefully bumping back up to our AAA rating will be spending cuts. Period. End of story.

While the S&P says that tax increases would be nice, that is not the key for any future downgrade. The key will be spending cuts.

I own guns--Do you?

"I've decided to have guns in the house."

Those were the simple words of Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell, after fending off an armed intruder in his house.

His wife, daughter and grandson were about to hit the sack late Saturday, when the thug broke in, attacking his daughter.

The wily 77 year old tried to stop him, but it was Boswell's grandson's loaded shotgun that caused the punk to flee in the opposite direction.

Yep, if there's one thing you can learn from a shotgun: you never run at one.

Now, publicizing tales like these do nothing but good, for they remind the common thug of a key life or death question: what house would you rob, if you could?

One in which the owner is armed, or not?

And it poses a question to everyone else: if you're the victim, would you rather be armed - or not?

Me - I don't want to depend on the kindness of strangers, I prefer to depend on the accuracy of my shot.

Of course, the biggest gun control advocates will disagree, but they all work in well-protected media networks, surrounded by well-trained, well-armed security.

You don't.

Guns are a conservative, libertarian way of privatizing safety.

It's also the best way to keep good people free.

And bad people scared.

Obama is completely in over his head.

At the end of last week, Goldman Sachs dropped a bomb that does not bode well for reelection chances of The Chosen One. It goes a little something like this …
Following another week of weak economic data, we have cut our estimates for real GDP growth in the second and third quarter of 2011 to 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively, from 2% and 3.25%.

Our forecasts for Q4 and 2012 are under review, but even excluding any further changes we now expect the unemployment rate to come down only modestly to 8.75% at the end of 2012 …

But the slowdown of recent months goes well beyond what can be explained with these temporary effects. … final demand growth has slowed to a pace that is typically only seen in recessions. .. Moreover, if the economy returns to recession—not our forecast, but clearly a possibility given the recent numbers …

So much for keeping our unemployment rate under 8% if we passed his grand stimulus plan. This is also coupled with news of the worst consumer confidence since March 2009. A Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer confidence fell to 63.8, which is the lowest level since the early months of Obama’s presidency. Of course, Bloomberg News reported this fall in confidence as “unexpected.”

I know you’ve heard this before .. but this is the worst recovery from a recession since World War II. In the past we’ve relied on growth in the private sector to bring us out of recessions. Government stimulus programs have NEVER done the job. So what’s the big difference this time? The difference is an anti-capitalist named Barack Obama in the White House and a Democrat Party that has become even more radicalized.

Since being sworn in Obama has done absolutely NOTHING that would cause a small businessman – the ones we depend on for new jobs – to say “Now THAT’S more like it! Now let’s get this business going!”

At this point we’re not going to see business become energized until after the 2012 presidential election – and the defeat of Barack Obama.

Let's make a Deal---(No Thanks)

Could we see a deal today? This is apparently what Barack Obama has told Congressional leaders .. that we need a deal by today or we must start to make contingency plans. This must be because these talks are really starting to crimp the Democrats’ style up there in Washington. Democrat leaders like Nancy Pelosi “are almost too busy” to continue listening to what is going on in the debt limit meetings. Yup, you heard the woman! We need to get this situation resolved because we can’t be bothered to keep up with the debate .. it is taking up too much precious time. Princess Nancy was particularly perturbed at the thought of having to drive all the way to Camp David for meetings. God forbid our rulers in Washington have to actually put themselves out to do the job they were hired to do.

But Barack Obama says that he is willing to risk his job over this battle for a long-term deficit deal. Dear Ruler says, “This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this.” This is a crock. You can bet the farm that to Obama his presidency comes first and the fiscal health of this country comes second … or third … or wherever. Any attention he is paying to this situation is centered on preserving his reelection chances. The polls say the voters are concerned – so suddenly Obama is concerned.

But consider his recent history …..

Barack Obama wasn’t insistent on a long-term deficit deal when he ignored the recommendations for his own deficit commission for months.

Barack Obama wasn’t insistent on a long-term deficit deal when he proposed a budget earlier this year that would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion.

Barack Obama wasn’t insistent on a long-term deficit deal when he signed ObamaCare into law, which will likely add $4 to $6 trillion to the deficit over its first 20 years.

Barack Obama wasn’t insistent on a long-term deficit deal when he increased discretionary spending by nearly 25% his first two years in office.

You can’t help but feel, though, that it will be the Republicans who will probably get the blame for any repercussion from this debt ceiling battle. A new Quinnipiac poll released yesterday shows that most voters (48%) would blame congressional Republicans if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. These results were fueled, I believe, by Mitch McConnell’s hair-brain idea to give the president the power to raise the debt ceiling on his own; Republicans are so worried about being blamed and how this will affect the election in 2012.

The Republicans need to remember that they are in charge in the House because of the energized voters on three basic issues in 2010. It was really very simple:

Smaller government.
Lower government spending.
Lower taxes.

Mitch McConnell needs to remember that the voters did not turn out to the polls and put Republicans into office so that they could make phony spending cuts, increase taxes or come up with hare-brained ideas on giving Obama the power to increase our debt ceiling on his own.

For the last six weeks, Joe Biden has been hosting “talks” on our budget crisis. As of yesterday, the shit hit the fan. GOP representatives in the talks Eric Cantor and Jon Kyl pulled out of the talks. The reason? The inability to come to an agreement on taxes. We’ll get to more on that in a minute, but the Democrats insist on raising taxes in order to come up with a deficit-reduction package of $4 trillion, which would be tied to an increase in the federal debt limit. The Republicans do not want to raise taxes. And after six weeks of this song and dance, Cantor and Kyl realized that they weren’t getting anywhere. So now the task rests in the hands of Barack Obama, John Boehner and Harry Reid. Meanwhile, Eric Cantor says that he will propose a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.

Barack Obama … it’s time to take a stand. Will you fight to increase taxes as your fellow Democrats insist, or will you recognize the effect of lower tax rates on economic behavior? I assume that wealth envy will ultimately prevail.
So what if Democrats manage to convince the Republicans (not like with a Republican-led House) that we need to end the Bush tax cuts and return to the tax rates we had under Bill Clinton. That’s no longer good enough. Why? Because our government spending has grown tremendously since the days of Clinton! Don’t they get it? This isn’t a revenue problem.

It’s a spending problem. Here are some specifics from the Washington Examiner:

In 2000, the last full-year of President Clinton’s administration, tax revenues were 20.6 percent of GDP, according to the CBO. (The White House Office of Management and Budget puts it slightly higher, at 20.9 percent, which places it in a tie with 1944 for the highest ever level in U.S. history). But the CBO’s long-term fiscal outlook released yesterday predicts that by 2035, total spending will reach a stunning 33.9 percent of GDP if lawmakers pursue their predictable course. That means even if revenues returned to the coveted pre-Bush tax cut levels, there would be a 13 percent difference.

Yet President Obama’s former OMB director Peter Orszag has written that, “a sustainable level is more like 3 percent (of GDP) or lower.” So that would put the deficits, even with Clinton-era revenues, at more than four times their sustainable levels.

Increasing taxes is a Democrat strategy to pander to wealthy envy voters. This has nothing to do with our debt or deficit and everything to do with re-election.

Off the cliff

Yesterday the CBO rocked the news cycle by releasing new estimates on our future fiscal situation. It wasn’t pretty, though that shouldn’t come as a shock to you. The CBO released what is being referred to as a more “politically-realistic alternative scenario.” So these numbers are based on what the CBO expects to happen in the future: the Bush tax cuts will be extended and Medicare spending will not be cut.

So what was the result of these new numbers?

Federal debt as a share of our GDP will be 109% by 2021. By the year 2035, it will be closer to 190% of GDP.

Wow. How in the world did we get to this point? Well Barack Obama surely didn’t help. His own stimulus plan managed to nearly DOUBLE our debt. The Washington Examiner reports:

The 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook, released Wednesday morning, reports that the “the combination of automatic budgetary responses” and Obama’s stimulus “had a profound impact on the federal budget.” According to CBO projections, before Obama’s stimulus became law, federal debt equaled 36 percent of GDP and was projected to decline slightly over the next few years. Instead, thanks in large part to the stimulus, debt reached 62 percent of GDP by 2010.

So in the wake of this news about our debt, what are the Democrats planning to do? They have two ideas.

#1: Spend more money. No, this is not a joke. A headline from Reuters, not from the Onion, reads: Democrats call for new spending in US debt deal. Yesterday, Democrats in the Senate called on Joe Biden to include “new economic stimulus spending” in his deficit reduction talks. You just read the information above … Barack Obama’s grand stimulus plan nearly DOUBLED our debt, and what do we have to show for it?

#2: Increase taxes. Because the CBO numbers assume that the Bush tax cuts will be extended, the Democrats immediately claim that if it wasn’t for the Bush tax cuts, these CBO estimates wouldn’t be nearly as dire. Guess what, they would be. According to the CBO’s own alternative scenario, even if the Bush tax cuts are extended along with the Alternative Minimum Tax, “federal revenues as a share of GDP will still exceed the post-war average by the decade’s end.” Even if the Democrats managed to repeal the Bush tax cuts, therefore increasing taxes on millions of Americans … would that solve our debt crisis? Of course not! I’ve shared the following information with you before, but considering this latest push to repeal the Bush tax cuts, it is worth sharing again …

In a static world repealing these tax cuts would get you about $3 trillion over ten years. Our federal deficit is almost one half of that every year. Static world? That’s the wonderful world of liberalism where you operate on the assumption that nobody ever changes their economic behavior when tax rates go up or down. History shows that when tax rates go some people reduce their economic activity, and other simply shift their earnings around to avoid the higher taxes … and they do it legally.

But don’t believe me; believe the experts at the Heritage Foundation. I’d highly recommend that you read this column in the Wall Street Journal by Brian Riedl:

The Bush Tax Cuts and the Deficit Myth. I’ll give you just a few of the highlights:

… the much-maligned Bush tax cuts .. caused just 14% of the swing from projected surpluses to actual deficits (and that is according to a "static" analysis, excluding any revenues recovered from faster economic growth induced by the cuts). The bulk of the swing resulted from economic and technical revisions (33%), other new spending (32%), net interest on the debt (12%), the 2009 stimulus (6%) and other tax cuts (3%). Specifically, the tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 are responsible for just 4% of the swing. If there were no Bush tax cuts, runaway spending and economic factors would have guaranteed more than $4 trillion in deficits over the decade and kept the budget in deficit every year except 2007.

Why are Democrats pushing the repeal of the Bush tax cuts? Because they can’t stand the idea that you can spend your money better and more efficiently than they can. And by “better” I mean that you have the power of choice to spend your money wherever you see fit, without the point of a gun. It takes politicians out of the equation, thereby diminishing their power over you.

The Obama Economy

The ObamaMedia is beside itself right now .. it can’t seem to understand why or how Barack Obama’s economic policies aren’t translating into jobs and growth. This must be the case because they seem to be caught quite off-guard with all of these “unexpected” jobs figures. Unwilling to blame their savior, Barack Obama, they are now trying to come up with other ways to justify this lousy economy.

I know … let’s blame the Republicans!

Take a look at this headline: Are Republicans Intentionally Sabotaging Economy For Political Gain? Can you believe that? The headline doesn’t ask if Democrats are scaring the diapers off old ladies for political gain. Not, it’s the Republicans sabotaging the economy.

Even though the Democrats held the presidency and the Senate since 2009 (the Democrats have held both houses from 2007 until last year), somehow it is all the Republicans’ fault. The Democrats haven’t presented a budget in how many years now? And it’s the Republicans who are sabotaging the economy? I’ve said it since the day Barack Obama was inaugurated .. I hoped that he would become the greatest president this nation has ever seen and that our economy would flourish over the next years. This is because I care about this country that I love more than I care about a Democrat getting credit for ‘saving’ it. Unfortunately that has not turned out to be the case. I now believe based on the decisions that Obama has made as president, that he has a fundamentally different idea of what makes this nation and our economy great. He is a man who believes in a centrally planned economy and bigger government. How is that working out for us?

If the rate of labor force participation in June 2011 were the same as it was in June 2009 (65.7%), the reported unemployment rate would be 11.2% rather than 9.1%. If June 2011 labor force participation were 66.2%, which is where it was when Obama promised that his “stimulus” program would prevent unemployment from exceeding 8.0%, the June 2011 unemployment rate would come in at 11.9%.

Being a leader means taking ownership of your triumphs and your failures, but with the ObamaMedia in tow, Obama isn’t really forced to do that.

Tony "Bada Bing" Weiner

That Anthony .. what a weiner!

OK …I’ll leave the weiner jokes to the experts, and to my Twitter followers. Someone did suggest that Barney Frank and Anthony Weiner could open a snack bar in Manhattan … Weiners and Franks. But I digress ….

OK, so Anthony Weiner lied. Big surprise, right? Now we have everyone and their hamster demanding that Weiner resign immediately. Others are saying that Weiner should pull out of contention in the next NYC mayoral election.

Look … he’s a liar. Not the first in Congress, won’t be the last. He’s a symbol of Washington power. These people – and I’m talking on both sides of the aisle – start to believe that they’re so powerful that they can get away with almost anything. Weiner got caught in the zipper of prevarication. That’s gotta hurt … look! He’s crying!

But should he resign? Frankly, I would rather he didn’t. Right now he’s a disgraced leftist House member. If he resigns he will just be replaced with a non-disgraced leftist House member. The disgraced variety of this particular vermin is much less dangerous than the non-disgraced.

As for the possibility of a Weiner being mayor of New York? Sure – that’s going to happen.

Rather than sitting around demanding his resignation, let’s take not of how Weiner handled this debacle when the news first broke. Not only did he lie (par for this hole) but he blamed it all on right-wingers. It was that evil Andrew Breitbart behind this terrible plot to disgrace a very important and effective member of congress. Yeah! That’s it! This is a right-wing plot and the result of all that right-wing hatred out there.

I want Weiner to remain right where he is. First – he’s weakened. Second – we don’t need him hosting a show on CNN (The Weiner Factor?), and third; he stands as a constant reminder of the knee-jerk “blame the right wing” yak squeeze liberals love to float when they’re caught with their pants bulging.

Some folks in ObamaLand are talking about a new stimulus bill.

Obama’s first stimulus plan cost around $800 billion and change. You are hard pressed to find an economist who will tell you that this $800 billion played any meaningful role in an economic recovery. Remember Dear Ruler telling us that if we didn’t have the stimulus bill unemployment would remain above 9%. Were you paying attention on Friday? Unemployment is still above 9%.

Let me tell you how this stimulus plan was developed. It’s just this simple: Obama comes into office with a mandate to do something to bring us out of the recession and to get people working again. There was a problem though. Obama had no clue what to do. He had no experience he could draw upon to develop a recovery plan. He did have a mindset though, and that mindset was that government is good and the private sector is bad, so whatever was to be done had to strengthen government and involve the private sector only to the degree absolutely necessary. So Obama went to Nancy Pelosi and simply told her to get the Democrat caucus together and instruct them to dust off any and all spending plans they’ve been proposing or considering over the past few years and put them into a giant spending bill. Keep it under one trillion dollars, and we’ll present it to the people as a stimulus bill. Whether or not it really contributes to an economic recovery will be beside the point. The plan will give Democrat members of congress the ability to go to the voters in their home districts with “Look at the money I brought back to our district” newsletters and speeches.

And so it goes--the unions benefited, the public service workers held on for another year, but in the end it did nothing.

They bought his act and now they have to defend him

It’s no wonder that the ObamaMedia isn’t all that enthused in covering the 2012 presidential election … because it means that somebody is challenging Their Guy … Their almost-a-God … Their Messiah … Barack Obama – the man who had to “step down” to the Oval Office (Now the Offal Office).

The ObamaMedia is my name for the mainstream Washington and New York press corps. Right now, with very rare exception, those in the mainstream media are suffering from a severe case of Obama-awe, or “ObamaAwe.” This awe-inspiring leader of ours has turned the mainstream media into a roaming hoard of zombies who have no desire to report the news in an objective manner. Their job gets in the way of wiping up the drool from their ObamaZombie state of existence. Sufferers of ObamaAwe experience a myriad of symptoms including tingles up their legs, delusional cases of mistaken identity – mistaking Obama for God – or even a lost sense of reality.

For example, the ObamaZombies can’t seem to understand why spending close to $1 trillion of money that we don’t have isn’t working out so well for our economy. Most students who just graduated from a government high school could tell you why our current economic state isn’t all that “shocking” … though the ObamaMedia seems to think it is.

This ObamaAwe is starting to affect their work, as reporters are being forced to cover potential Republican challengers to Obama’s throne. As Politico points out, by this time in 2007, major newspapers and newswires already had assigned reporters to leading candidates in the race for the 2008 presidential bid. Such is not the case with the current crop of Republican candidates. Why would the ObamaMedia want to “go behind enemy lines” and cover the camp that could potentially unseat their Dear Ruler? Would Obama think less of any ObamaMedia member who dared to write a fair news report on a Republican, much less a glowing report? And let’s not forget what happened to the Boston Herald. Its reporters were shut out completely from a local Obama Boston fundraiser after the paper ran a Mitt Romney op-ed on the front page and didn’t give the president’s visit the same “fair” treatment.

What it really comes down to is that the next presidential race is going to force the ObamaMedia to defend “their guy.” They are finally going to have to come to grips with the complete and utter failure of his presidency. When asked to present facts, they will be left with drool stains and quip about racist Americans who don’t support Obama because he is black.

Barack Obama won one election based on nothing but his charisma. Even with four failing years as President of the United States to add to his credentials column, looks like he will have yet another campaign with nothing but his charisma to hang his hat on.

Debbie Does DNC

The Democrats don’t seem too warm and fuzzy over the proposed Republican plan for Medicare reform. So you may be asking yourself … what is the Democrat plan for Medicare? Let’s let DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Shultz take a crack at that one:

Like I said, the Republicans have a plan to end Medicare as we know it. What they would do is they would take the people who are younger than 55 years old today and tell them, ‘You know what? You’re on your own. Go and find private health insurance in the healthcare insurance market, we’re going to throw you to the wolves and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions. We’re going to give you X amount of dollars and you figure it out.’

Oh, that didn’t really answer the question … did it? After that response, can you tell me any more information about what the Democrats plan to do about our Medicare system? The answer is not only no but hell no. All they have is the fact that people are ignorant and don’t like the idea of changing how their Medicare is handled. So the Democrats’ brilliant plan is to have no plan, but simply demagogue the only reform that actually exists.

How’s that for leadership?

This wasn’t the only piece of brilliance from Debbie Wasserman Shultz over the weekend. According to her the evil Republicans think that illegal immigration is some sort of crime … the horror! Wait, what? Illegal immigration IS a crime, you twit. She says, “the Republican solution that I've seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries, and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrest them all.”

Yep--she said it---I rest my case.