The Obama Disillusionment

Note:  You might want to start at the Barack Obama Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

Mr. Obama has never competently managed any business or organization in his life.  (See this page for details.)  There is only thing he has proven to be really good at — spending other people's money.  The American people aren't very excited about that aptitude.

The people who voted for hope and change are getting very little of either.

On this page:

(At this point, there are only two sections.)

Disillusionment sets in:  the wheels are already coming off.

Association with Obama is now a political liability.

On another nearby page:

Obama and his team are incompetent.

Obama is helpless without a teleprompter.



Note:  The newest material is at the bottom of the page.

We've Figured Him Out.  The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008.  They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.  They ignored his anti-white writings in his books.  They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright. ... The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.  Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth.

Obama vs. Honduran Democracy.  If the Obama administration were a flotilla of ships, it might be sending out an SOS right about now.  ObamaCare has hit the political equivalent of an iceberg.

Americans should get wise by Thanksgiving.  By Thanksgiving, if the present polling trend continues, President Obama will slip into the cold shadow of unpopularity.  If we are fortunate, his political blitz to radically remake America also will have run out of fuel and stalled.

Fatal Conceit.  [President Obama's] constant drumbeat that failure to act now will produce catastrophic results is more indicative of presidential hubris than sound legislative strategy.  The White House believes its "all in" approach of high-visibility speeches, media appearances, and town hall meetings is the way to win.  In reality it's contributing to health care's dropping popularity.

The Great Race.  The tonsils comment, the Special Olympics gaffe, the historical blunders in Cairo, etc. suggest not a hip, smart, postracial candidate, but an inexperienced, though tough-minded, tribal Chicago pol.  If all that results to below 50% approval, there will be an entirely new politics. ... Obama is about one or two more gaffes away from a stampeding herd of House Democrats.

Cult Leaders Make Lousy Presidents.  Space limitations don't allow for a thorough listing of all Obama blunders so we will just look at a few.  There is the Revolving Door Cabinet of Chicago thugs and Clinton retreads.  We have the Turbo Timmy Geithner embarrassment.  We are treated to a near daily blather fest from the always incoherent White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. ... But the real fait accompli for the new president was the remarkable passage of that National Tragedy euphemistically referred to as the "Stimulus Bill".

President Obama's approval ratings  are slipping fast according to a new Gallup poll. His poll numbers have now dropped nearly 15 points and are at the lowest level since he has been in office as President.

Yes we can ... change the channel.  The image we're forming of Obama is still soft, but it's starting to dry.  And it's beginning to look like a guy who is more infatuated with being a celebrity than a president.  Someone who would rather play with the White House toys than get to work. ... Even some of Obama's love-sick supporters have head-slapping buyer's remorse.

Where are the jobs, Mr. President?  All year, Democrats have made promises about job creation.  If Congress passed the trillion-dollar "stimulus," they promised unemployment would not rise above 8 percent.  Five months later, unemployment has spiked to 9.4 percent, with President Barack Obama now admitting that he expects it to reach 10 percent later this year.  So what has the "stimulus" given us?

Welcome to the 'Hope' Economy.  After being asked when the public should begin judging the success of the nearly $800 billion stimulus plan, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs answered, "I think we should begin to judge it now."  Let's take his advice.  The administration warned that if we failed to support a stimulus package, unemployment would hit a dire 9 percent by 2010.  With the stimulus, unemployment, it claimed, would stay in the 8 percent range.  This week, the Labor Department announced that the jobless rate jumped to 9.5 percent, higher than it's been anytime since August 1983.

After Obama Fails.  A failed presidency for Barack Obama could turn into liberalism's worst nightmare.  Barely six months into his term, the 44th president has succeeded in generating the most widespread and serious discussion of secession since the Civil War.  Despite what Newsweek's Evan Thomas may claim, Obama is not the "God" who will bring us together but the autocratic sponsor of an overbearing, oppressive leviathan from which a growing number of Americans are seeking refuge.

Barack Obama's honeymoon on the wane.  Barack Obama's remarkable political honeymoon may be over, as new opinion polls show US voters expressing doubts about his plans to reform healthcare, rescue the car industry and close the Guantanamo Bay jail.  According to the latest opinions polls, Americans are also worried about their new President's management of the US budget as spending blows out.

Change People Are Starting To No Longer Believe In.  Sure enough, bit by bit, much of the president's agenda is starting to come apart like a cheap trailer in a tornado. ... More and more Americans appear to be having serious misgivings about healthcare being under the exclusive or predominant control of the same folks that bring you the U.S. Postal Service (which is itself struggling mightily with disorganization and threatened with having to cut services).

Why Obama's big economic gamble is failing.  A string of new polls seems to show that America's belief in the wonder-working power of Obamanomics has begun to fade.  A Pew poll found President Obama's economic approval rating has fallen to 52 percent from 60 percent in April.  A Wall Street Journal poll found 53 percent disapprove of his handling of GM and Chrysler vs. 39 who approve.  And the New York Times found that 60 percent don't think Obama has a "clear plan" to deal with the monstrous budget deficit.

Visual Evidence the Obama Team Completely Misjudged the Stimulus Impact.  To get the stimulus passed, the Obama administration promised the moon, and had no idea whether it would work.  One hundred and twenty-one days since the stimulus passed, there is still no sign that it is doing what it was designed to do — mitigate the recession and put Americans back to work.

Obama Hopelessly Adrift on Foreign Policy.  [Scroll down]  And then, for a cherry on top of this rancid sundae, Obama takes a question from, of all places, the Huffington Post, without giving a similar opportunity to any conservative blogger.  So much for bipartisanship! ... One has to wonder, of course, if George Bush would have been allowed to get away with taking questions from Michelle Malkin. ... Obama, meanwhile, is behaving in exactly the way one would expect a leader with no foreign policy experience or credentials to behave.

Canada's incredible shrinking love affair with Obama.  A lot of Canadians, like Americans and the rest of the world were swept up in Obamamania.  Obama's approval ratings north of the border far exceeded those of our own leaders but given the current crop of federal party leaders, this is hardly surprising. It didn't take long for reality to come crashing down.

The Great Overreach.  The stimulus bill has failed.  Barack Obama has failed.  The Trojan Horse of Hope and Change crashed into the guardrail of reality, revealing an army of ideologues and activists inside.  Now, before I continue, let me say that Barack Obama will still be popular, he will still get things done, and he will declare victory after signing a stimulus bill.  But Obama's moment is gone, and politics is about nothing if not moments.

America — what have you done?  President Obama has had, by general consent, a torrid First Fortnight.  To put it another way, it has taken precisely two weeks for the illusion that brought him to power to be exposed for the nonsense that it so obviously was.

There May Be the Will but Not Necessarily the Way.  Barack Obama will not bring peace to the Middle East.  He will not end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  Though he may part the waves, cool the planet, stop the oceans from rising, this dispute will prove beyond him.

Neither stimulus nor change.  Only three weeks into President Barack Obama's administration was all the time it took for many Americans to see through the fog of rhetoric to the ugly details hidden behind.  President Obama promised to end politics as usual in Washington and give us an earmark-free recovery plan that would jolt the economy by saving the housing sector and rebuilding national infrastructure.  That is not even close to what we actually got.

The Impending Obama Meltdown.  At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution.  Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world".

Barack Obama is a novice — and it shows.  The activists who formed the backbone of Mr Obama's election campaign appear less than energised.  Few answered his call for house-party gatherings at the weekend to build support for the economic stimulus plan. ... Governing, as Mr Obama is finding out, is not like an election campaign.  Mr Bush's failures will give him some leeway and his transformative appeal remains potent.  But making decisions and operating the levers of power is something completely new to him.  And it shows.

The Quickie Honeymoon:  The obvious parallel to the Daschle debacle is the Zoe Baird imbroglio, wherein Bill Clinton's initial nominee for attorney general was forced to withdraw on Clinton's first full day in office.  Then as now, the salient controversy involved the failure to pay taxes on an haute bourgeois indulgence:  in Daschle's case, a borrowed car and driver; in Baird's, a nanny and chauffeur who were undocumented immigrants.  (Will these people never learn?)

Obama's Leninism:  Obama's recent frustrations and impatience over the "Stimulus Bill" have less to do with his claims of "catastrophe" and "crisis" and much more, it seems to me, to do with his breathtaking inexperience in a true marketplace of ideas.  And just where was Obama supposed to learn how to debate?  In liberal academia?  From his "adversarial" minions in the press?  Community organizing?

Obama's Busted Bubble.  Obama's current woes derive from the fact that he has hit the real world head-on.  His bubble now lies shattered around him.  Absolutely no single decision or effort by the new administration has worked out as planned.  With two months to prepare, unparalleled cooperation from the preceding administration, full control of the government, and an almost disturbing level of public support, Obama has misfired more completely than any other administration in history.

Obama is headed for a one-term presidency.  Obama is making himself the symbol of what's wrong with Washington rather than being the agent of change in Washington.  Democratic pols like Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York think voters don't care about pork in the stimulus bill, but lots of now-former Republican members of Congress know better.  Earmarks are indeed, in Sen. Tom Coburn's evocative term, "the gateway drug to federal spending addiction" and the basic ingredient of the culture of corruption in Washington that has driven the approval rating of Congress into the single digits.

So far, it's been Obamateur Hour.  It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single "event" to throw him off course.  Instead, he threw himself off:  "Is Obama tanking already?"  (Congressional Quarterly)  "Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?"  (The Financial Times). ... The ship didn't need to hit an iceberg; it stalled halfway down the slipway.

Barack Obama:  Could he turn into a 'zombie president'?.  If he is not successful in filling the financial black hole, Mr Obama will find his work in Washington difficult to carry out — without an economy in recovery, public-spending plans and tax-cutting projects will be severely hamstrung, and he faces the realistic prospect of the financial crisis casting a shadow of paralysis over his entire term.  He could become the zombie president.

Stumbling out the gate:  Barack Obama flubs his first big test.  It's not easy to waste a mandate and a honeymoon at the same time, but President Obama seems determined to try.  You know he's off to a lousy start when his most favorable reviews came after he said, "I screwed up."  Did he ever, and not just once.  If he keeps going this way, America will be saying, "We screwed up."

No TV magic in Obama's press performance.  After watching President Barack Obama's first primetime news conference, I am beginning to think the thrill is gone — his TV magic and mojo have deserted him.  Maybe, folks like me were just a little too quick in elevating him to the pantheon of great radio and TV communicators like Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as masters of the media of their times.

So Far, Amateur Hour.  The first however-many days of Barack Obama's presidency have been a study in amateurism.  Many suspected that Obama wasn't quite ready, but kept their fingers crossed.  Optimistic disappointment is the new holding pattern.  What's missing from Obama's performance isn't the intelligence that voters acknowledged in electing him.  It's the experience they tried to pretend didn't really matter.  Experienced politicians, after all, got us into this mess.

Why Obama's new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks.  Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?  In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question.  But these are not normal times.  They are times of great danger.  Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it.

Barack Obama is 'screwing up' on the economy.  Be very afraid.  If you didn't get a chance to read Martin Wolf's column in the FT yesterday, then take the time.  It makes a powerful case which is genuinely troubling.  Wolf thinks Obama may already have fluffed his biggest calls on the only subject that matters right now — the economy — and that he's in trouble.

Where's the President Obama who promised to unite us?  The sense of disappointment in Obama is spreading, as are concerns about the consequences of a bait-and-switch presidency.  The global selloff in stock markets after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put out a half-baked plan for fixing the financial system is a clear verdict.  His arguing that investors missed the point is telling.  Once again, a White House has all the answers and everybody else is wrong.  Obama, like his predecessor, doesn't lack for confidence, only for others who share it.

The Audacity of Irony.  For the last 24 months a youthful Barack Obama has daily offered unspecified "hope and change" idealism — all set against the supposed cynical wrongdoing of the tired Bush administration.  In the unhinged manner in which his supporters turned a center-right president like George Bush into some sort of sinister reactionary, so too they deified a rookie senator as the long-awaited liberal messiah.  How could irony not follow from all that?

Obama Meets the Real World.  The first month has been ragged, and some disturbing signs have arisen.  It's still very early — Obama has yet to complete his first full month in office, after all ... But one thing is for sure:  the adjustment has been harder than he and his team envisioned, and the results are underwhelming.  The problems are more complicated than they said.  It seems as if President Obama is spending half his time trying to lower the expectations of what he can achieve.

What Happened to the Hopemonger?  It's long been said that presidents are only as powerful as their public perception.  Already, President Obama has lost a measure of his hopefulness at the moment he most requires it.  The public seems to have noticed.  And there are some in Washington who speculate that Obama's standing could still worsen.  "Obama is in a much weaker position than his poll numbers suggest and I think that the whole thing could collapse on him sooner rather than later," Doug Schoen, one of Bill Clinton's former pollsters, said.

Forget 100 days, Obama's honeymoon is already over.  The hopes which attended President Obama's inauguration were so unprecedentedly, soaringly, stratospherically high that it was inevitable the process of coming down to earth would be bumpy.  But few expected the descent to be so rapid.  In the last few days the President who was welcomed across the world as not just America's, but the globe's, redeemer has turned into — well, into just another politician.

Investors Unimpressed with Obamanomics.  The old saying that money isn't everything seems to epitomize President Obama's inept attempts to jumpstart the economy by throwing $2 trillion to $3 trillion at it.  Nothing appears to be working.

Obama Stumbles.  Government is an impatient judge.  Although the President was sworn in only last month, his country already feels a little rattled. After the beguiling eloquence of his campaign, the Obama that Americans see in the White House looks less sure-footed.

We're Losing Our Country, But What Can We Do?  From the moment Barack Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, the leftists who control Congress have — at his behest — gone on a drunken binge of runaway spending vis-à-vis an $850-billion faux "stimulus" program that rewards failure and punishes success.  It is already clear that The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should be renamed The American Relapse-And-Needs-Resuscitation Act, as is evidenced by both the simultaneous plunge of the Dow and the president's polling numbers, as well as an epidemic case of buyer's remorse.

Top 10 Obama Blunders in Just One Month.  Phony bipartisanship, tax cheats in the Cabinet, the Census Grab, and many others.

One month in, Barack Obama's approval slips, disapproval doubles.  One month down, 47 to go.  And Barack Obama's poll numbers have slid almost 10% already.  According to the latest Gallup Poll, the new president's approval rating of 68% in January has slipped now to 63%, about average for recent new presidents one month in.  What isn't average, however, is Obama's new disapproval rating — 24%, or 50% higher than the 16% average for a month-old new presidency.  And it's twice the 12% disapproval rate that Obama had last month.

The new socialists:  It has now become fashionable for America's socialists to come out of the closet.  Elected officials advocating ideological viewpoints that would have elicited derision and laughter only a few months ago are now emboldened to openly promote socialist policies.  They feel safe because America's chief executive has embraced an agenda that is quickly moving America toward socialism in which the goal is to have all power vested in the state and any dissent is quashed.

Obama Just Doesn't Get It.  Obama does not perceive things are substantially worse or that his "strategy" is failing.  He also seems to have the timing terribly off as he discusses an onslaught of taxes and regulation while the economy is staggering.  And to make matters worse we have no General Petraeus to help guide us back from the brink of ruin.  We have instead Tim Geithner.

Voters' Obama Folly Coming Home to Roost.  It's only been 7 weeks since the man whose resume fits nicely on the back of a postage stamp became the most powerful human being in the universe.  As Presidents go, Barack Obama has proven at least one thing true:  change is like the flip of a coin.  Change can bring the best of times; change can bring the worst of times.  And anyone over the age of twelve ought to have known that.

Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth.  It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration.  Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true.

Formerly Useful Idiots.  Lenin famously said of liberals in the West that they were "useful idiots."  A number of really smart (go ahead, ask them) people endorsed Obama only to find out that they were hoodwinked.  He's not the guy they fell in love with.  It's the morning after, and they've been forced to confront the fact that he's a fraud.  A forgery.  In John LeCarre's "Smiley's People" master spy George Smiley points out that "the more one has paid for a forgery, the more one defends it in the face of all the evidence to the contrary."  And, these people have paid plenty for their forgery.

Squaring Off With Obama:  I have to hope for the sake of our country's future that when people voted for Obama they really had no idea what a disaster he would be, even though I kept warning them that he was a left-wing lug nut.  It seemed to me that his legion of fans had been hypnotized or sprinkled with fairy dust.  They blindly accepted that words like "hope" and "change" were complete sentences that actually added up to a national policy.

They didn't vote for the policies.  The message of the polls is that he had better start selling his policies harder, because they are showing signs of not going over very well.  Moreover, the unpolled elites, including those within the Democratic Party, have started to ask questions aloud about whether their man is competent; and as we know from painful history, such uncertainties from an elite tend to "trickle down."

Tongue-tied Barack Obama is turning into Jimmy Carter.  Obama has never run anything other than his presidential campaign.  He doesn't know the difference between governing and campaigning and he's sticking with what he knows. ... He was always happiest with an autocue [TelePrompTer] and Republicans are rightly now having a lot of fun pointing out his security blanket like reliance on the plastic screens for even basic announcements.  But since he became president, the old magic has been missing. ... The most striking aspect of the Leno appearance is that while he's all smiles and self-regard, Obama is flat out not funny.

Barack Obama:  Just a "Regular Guy"?  [Obama] was presented to the American electorate — by his own campaign and by the press, as well — as a person of intellectual substance.  Even his critics have credited him with an impressive intellect.  But now, the doubts are increasing, and more and more Americans are beginning to wonder whether Obama is really up to the job.  How ironic that the President decided to portray himself as "the common man" just as an increasing number of Americans begin to suspect that, truly, that's all he is.

Obama surrenders his agenda.  At his news conference Tuesday night [3/26/2009], President Obama stressed the four most important goals he hopes to accomplish this year:  health care reform, energy legislation, education reform, and deficit reduction.  But by the end of the hour-long session with the White House press corps, Obama had retreated on three of the four.

Obama's new TV image:  tired, uptight and cranky.  President Barack Obama ended his six-night, buy-my-economic-proposal-please TV tour Tuesday with a prime-time news conference.  And while not much hard news might have come out of the session, there was at least one major change there to be seen in Obama's TV image.  Gone was the cool, composed, almost serene Obama who seemed to enjoy the back and forth of his masterful first meetings with reporters following his election.

Obama Cracks Up.  The AIG bonuses, alienating our allies, that Special Olympics crack on "The Tonight Show" — there's certainly plenty of competition, but this was probably the worst week of President Obama's nascent administration.  The problem wasn't just bad decisions followed by rash reactions and changing stories.  The mistakes, oversights, cover-ups, and bad press of this past week all hit Obama in the most sensitive spots, undercutting the pillars on which he had built his rare transpartisan appeal.

Death of the Obama dream.  Well, that was fast.  On March 20, only two months after the cosmic anointing, Vanity Fair, of all places, unloaded on Barack Obama, in the terms it had reserved for the past four or five years for the likes of George W. Bush.  Well, not the whole magazine, but one of its writers, media writer Michael Wolff, took an axe to the president, in a posting beginning "Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter," ending "This guy is leaden and this show is in trouble," and titled "Barack Obama is a Terrible Bore."

Rebooting America's Global Image Not Going Well.  One of President Obama's signature boasts was that his election would, to use his term, "reboot" America's image in the world. ... His election, he promised, would transform America's global image.  How's that project going?

Choking on Hypocritical "Green" Legislation.  President Obama's anti-oil cap-and-trade legislation that will effectively levy a carbon-emissions tax on businesses and on all Americans will likely be one of the first casualties of his liberal agenda.  But its Republican opponents won't kill it.  A growing army of Democratic lawmakers, largely from the Midwest where that segment of the economy is heavily dependent on coal-fired power plants and factories, are turning against it — perhaps enough to prevent his climate-change plan from even reaching a vote in Congress.

No, He Can't.  Barack Obama was always going to disappoint.  When you promise almost everything to almost everybody — I'll stop the fighting in Iraq but I'll also keep going after al Qaeda there; I'll make the economy grow more but I'll spread the wealth around, and so on — you will inevitably let many people down.  Human beings, even those who read fluently from teleprompters, simply cannot walk on water.  But few expected the wheels to come off the new administration so quickly.  Just weeks into its existence, the Obama White House is in trouble.

A Big, Fat Failure.  Well, it's about time.  The Beltway is waking up to the realities of President Obama's budget plan, which taxes, spends, and borrows as far as the eye can see.  The president's vast new commitments in the areas of health care, energy, and education have already spooked small-government Republicans and the foreign investors who help finance America's public debt.  Now even some Democrats are beginning to realize that the president's fiscal policies are unsustainable in the long — and maybe medium — run.  What took them so long?

The Obama We Knew But Denied:  A vast array of Americans seem to still be scratching their heads in wonder at how a complete political knave has been elected to the highest office in the land with nary a single real accomplishment on his resume. ... In fact, I would venture to say at this juncture that it was Obama's race — and nothing else — that enabled his election to the presidency.

President Obama's Miscalculated Transparency:  More and more supporters are waking up to the reality of the man they helped put into the White House. ... Obama himself repeatedly vowed to bring "transparency" to the presidency.  He's certainly accomplished that, in spades.  Which is precisely Obama's problem and why his presidency is doomed.

Obama:  Buyer's Remorse.  The existing regulation of U.S. banks was not accompanied by anything faintly resembling actual scrutiny and oversight.  It was the government that had created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up and "securitize" all those bad loans banks and mortgage companies were required by law to make.  The short-term spending in the billions that has been made is widely regarded as a massive waste of taxpayer dollars.

"Change" Turns Out To Be Too Expensive and Unpopular.  The Obama change machine is grinding to a halt. ... But it seems never to dawn on them that the items on their agenda are problematic even within their own party.  Where is the governing majority in favor of cap-and-trade?  There isn't one. Do moderate Democrats want to raise billions and billions in new taxes to pay for nationalized health care?  The public at large certainly isn't enthusiastic about it.

Stimulus Results:  Unemployment Soars.  The unemployment rate now stands at 8.5 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.  So much for President Barack Obama's claim that the "stimulus" bill's would "create or save 3.5 million jobs."

Those Pesky Democrats.  The Democrats, if united, wouldn't need the Republicans to push through the Obama agenda.  But time and again we have seen resistance — to reconciliation as a means of pushing through cap-and-trade and health-care, to limits on deductibility of charitable donations, and to card check.  Moderate and conservative Democrats have not been shy about speaking up when they think the president is out of step with their constituents.  The same may be true on defense cuts.

Hopebroken and hopesick, Obama fans need a new start.  All is not well in Obamafanland.  It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. ... Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

California unemployment rate reaches 11.2%.  Unemployment in California shot to 11.2% in March, the highest level since the state began keeping records.  What's more, the number of people out of work for almost a year rose by 9.4%, and has now doubled in the last 12 months.

What's Obama smiling about?  The Obama presidency is becoming a reverse fairy tale:  The prince is turning into a frog. ... What about integrity in government?  Judging by his gutter-ball series of appointments and attempted appointments, I am beginning to think that either his vetting process was actually looking for crooks or the president is moving in the wrong circles.  Obama put a tax-cheat in the U.S. Treasury, tried to put an even bigger tax-cheat in Health, and only reluctantly dropped an accused influence peddler as commerce secretary.

Obama's hired brain:  "TEA PARTIES... unhealthy."  The pain on their faces is real.  Team Obama are failing in their attempt to socialize the U.S. and one of two things will be forced upon us all.  We will change their direction or they will change ours.  The constitution empowers us to do the latter!

Obama's Interrogation Mess.  The president, having started a fire by recklessly releasing memos describing interrogation tactics, and then having poured gasoline on the flames by reversing himself on the banana-republic notion of investigating his political rivals, cannot douse the resulting inferno simply by saying, Oh, never mind.  The president is reeling because he sees his legislative agenda going up in smoke.

When the Obama Backlash Comes.  The budget deficits he proposes are staggering.  The trillions of dollars he wants to spend are incomprehensible.  There is no evidence that stimulative government spending even works.  Obama is apparently racing to remake America in a socialist mold before public sentiment turns against him.

Unemployment:  109 cities at 10% or higher.  Unemployment rates in 109 metropolitan areas reached 10% or higher in March, almost eight times more than a year earlier, according to a government report released Wednesday [4/29/2009].  Just 14 cities reported jobless rates of at least 10% last year, the Labor Department said.

Barack's in the basement.  President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is.  But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years.  According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969.  The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86.

Suckers United for Change.  If the words, "I've been had," are not at this juncture forming in the mind of nearly every Obama voter, I would give terrific odds that he has been brainwashed and needs to reclaim his common sense before the clock strikes 12 on the United States of America.  We live in a dangerous world, where no quarter will be given those whose brains have been turned to mush.  If you were an Obama Cult follower, the time to wake up and smell the coffee is right this very minute.

Rising Unemployment Rate Undermines Obama's Goal to Create 3.5M Jobs.  President Obama has vowed to create 3.5 million jobs by 2010.  But the latest unemployment report shows Obama will have his work cut out for him.  The economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April, bumping the unemployment rate up to 8.9 percent, the highest in 26 years, according to the Labor Department report released Friday.

Obama Loses His "Cool".  When the generation of Americans under the age of 30 gets around to realizing that this handsome young president might not be nearly as cool as they'd hoped, it won't be hard to affix a date on when the milk began to sour. ... Scratch a young Obama voter and you won't necessarily find someone who likes bailouts or cares about financial market regulations one way or another.  Instead you're likely to hear about how the awful Republicans wage wars, bait gays and racial minorities, and basically act like a bunch of mean old white men.  Party membership and voting are frequently more about group identity than philosophical orientation about the proper role of government.

Michigan's jobless rate climbs to 12.9%.  As expected, Michigan's unemployment rate edged higher in April, rising three-tenths of a percentage point to 12.9%.  The Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth said the state's hard-hit manufacturing sector shed another 22,000 jobs in April, while the state lost 38,000 payroll jobs across all industries during the month.

Obama talks a good game, but can't deliver.
 Gitmo speech exposes Obama's shallow rhetoric.  On Nov. 14, 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama met with employees of Google at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. ... Obama spoke at length about Iran.  He spoke at length about Pakistan.  And then he said, "Last point, Guantanamo.  That's easy.  Close down Guantanamo."  The audience broke into applause. ... That wasn't the first, or the last time he said that; Obama went down his national security laundry list hundreds of times during the campaign, rarely, if ever, giving Guantanamo more than a few words.

An Overleveraged Presidency.  Like a troubled bank, President Obama is overleveraged. When a bank makes risky loans and many of them default, the bank goes bankrupt (or gets bailed out).  When a first-term president adopts risky policies and many of them fail, his prospects for sustained public approval and reelection diminish.  One of Obama's policies — the decision to close the Guantánamo prison within a year — has already gotten him in a jam.

The Gordian knot of Guantanamo Bay.  Barack Obama is popular and trusted far more than his Republican rivals on all issues, including fighting terrorism.  Yet he and Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, are locked in a public battle on terrorism policy and Mr Obama is losing. ... Mr Cheney attacks Mr Obama's position — closing the camp at Guantánamo Bay and forbidding coercive interrogation methods — as "recklessness cloaked in righteousness".

Roosting Chickens Plague Obama.  The Obama administration had the sort of week they'd rather see disappear down the memory hole.  But unfortunately for the president, the trouble may just be beginning.  First, on the economic front the notion that we are going to bounce back soon from the recession is proving to be a pipe dream. ... Moreover, the result of the president's spend-a-thon and the Fed's hyperactive printing press has been a plunge in the U.S. dollar and renewed fears of stagflation. ... This governing business is hard stuff.  And it is made harder by an administration which has used photo-ops and speeches in lieu of thoughtful policy.

Obama is impressive — scarily so.  The phenomenon of "buyer's remorse" is associated with seeing something one has purchased in a new light.  What seemed so enchanting in a shop window may look rather tawdry when we get it home, especially in the moment when we realize that it is non-returnable.  Thus a plunge from public favour may be very sudden, and its consequences may endure.

Obama:  The Great Disappointer.  There have to be millions of American liberals, gays and left wingers totally disappointed with President Barack Obama today.  It would seem that he, like they, were the idealists running headlong into the brick wall of harsh realities, and will now be running headlong into each other.

Reality Hits Obamanomics.  When the president let it slip that our current fiscal situation — ever higher mounds of debt — was "unsustainable," some pundits shrugged it off as a "long-term" problem.  Not so long-term.  The Wall Street Journal explains that Treasury yields have shot up, reaching 3.7% on 10-year notes, the highest since November.  Why are bond purchasers demanding higher rates?  They are spooked.

Plan A is not working
Obama's Plan A is Not Working.  On January 10, two of President Obama's economic advisors (Christine Romer and Jared Bernstein) put together a report in which they projected the effects of President Obama's economic recovery plan. ... Unemployment was supposed to peak in the middle of 2009 at about 7.9% and then decline thereafter.  But in April 2009, it hit 8.9%.  The actual unemployment [percentage] demonstrates that, despite Obama's recovery plan, unemployment has continued to rise steadily.  His plan is failing to meet its projections, even though it has already cost our government hundreds of billions of dollars in debt that taxpayers will eventually have to pay back with interest.

Obama's ambitious agenda:  The Social Security trustees announced this month that the program will begin running out of money in just seven years, and the Medicare trustees said Medicare's Part A hospital fund will be insolvent one year later.  Saving these programs from financial collapse would be a major task in and of itself.  Mr. Obama, however, wants to do it all — including bail out the economy; create a government health care system; pour billions more into education, including a new college-tuition program; and end the nation's reliance on fossil fuels.  And that's just for starters.

The Popularity Gap.  Obama's supporters and the media (excuse the repetition) never tire of telling us how darn popular he is.  This is supposed to defang his opponents, or warn the public off of even debating his policies' merits.  But the public is hardly thrilled about his policies.

A REAL Problem for Obama.  On his second day in office, President Obama issued an executive order to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within one year — without any plan for how to dispose of the 241 detainees held there.  With the clock ticking, the president is discovering that closing Guantanamo is more easily said than done, especially now that his own party in Congress has deserted him. ... His greatest obstacle could be a national security law — and one that he voted for.  The REAL ID Act of 2005 prohibits anyone affiliated with terrorist activity from entering and living in the United States.

Obama Rated Highest as Person, Lowest on Deficit, Spending.  While 67% of Americans view President Barack Obama favorably, his overall job approval rating and his ratings on specific areas are less positive.  At the low end of the spectrum, only 45% of Americans approve of Obama's handling of federal spending, and 46% of his handling of the federal budget deficit.

The Unsustainable Obama Presidency.  Though much is made of Obama's extremist ideology, thus far his decisions have been plainly political.  His destructive machinations are coming much more hastily than anyone could have presaged.  There is no question that Obama has grossly overreached.  Polls are starting to show a widening gap between Obama's personal popularity versus his policies.  Is the Obama presidency, like the cars we will soon be compelled to buy, built to fall apart?

Barack's Issues Wane.  At last, there is convincing evidence that Obama's poll numbers may be descending to earth.  While his approval remains high -- and his personal favorability is even higher -- the underlying numbers suggest that a decline may be in the offing.  Even as he stands on his pedestal, the numbers under his feet are crumbling.  According to a Rasmussen poll, more voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the economy, by a margin of 45-39.

Enviro-nazis Ultimate Solution.  Like many Americans last November, I voted for change.  I had hope.  I no longer have hope since the president I voted for never mentioned a fraction of the agenda he now espouses.  I did not vote to lower my standard of living, humble as it may be.  Nor did I ask to jump into the economic abyss in order to "save" the planet.  When the economic chickens of this agenda do come home to roost, many people will change their perception of the whole quasi-religious scam known as "climate change."  Once you view the fall you're about to take, it's natural to turn around and take a good look at who is pushing you.  I voted for change, not economic suicide.

Obama Begins to Implode.  I didn't think he would be stupid and/or politically incompetent enough to try to govern openly from the left but he has.  Moreover, he has rushed through radical (and radically destructive) programs and piled up a mountain of dangerous sovereign debt to do so.  And now the chickens are coming home to roost.  By moving so radically and dramatically he unified Republicans right out of the box.  He did this through executive orders on borders, stem cell research, and by announcing he was going to close Gitmo among other things.  This unity on the right was accomplished within six weeks of his Administration and will one day rank as one of the most inept, and self-defeating political acts in presidential history.

Dem mutiny on climate bill grows, says Peterson.  More and more Democrats are ready to vote against Speaker Nancy Pelosi's climate change bill, according to a congressional committee chairman who opposes his leader.

Obama's White House is Falling Down.  In the sixth month of his presidency, Obama has turned an economic downturn into an economic disaster, taking over and trashing entire companies, and driving the nation deep into deficit spending expected to pass 10 trillion dollars.  Abroad, Obama seems to have no other mode except to continue on with his endless campaign, confusing speechmaking with diplomacy.  It is natural enough that Obama, who built his entire campaign on high profile public speeches reported on by an adoring press, understands how to do nothing else but that.

Public Starting to Question Obama Economic Policies.  A flurry of polls show President Obama's personal popularity remains high, with few Americans blaming him for the financial crisis.  But the polls also show the President is losing public support for his economic policies.

39% Now Blame Bad Economy on Obama's Policies.  While most U.S. voters still blame the Bush Administration for the nation's economic problems, a growing number are inclined to blame President Barack Obama.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of voters now say the country's economic problems are caused more by the policies Obama has put in place.  That's a 12-point jump from a month ago.

President Barack Obama's poll numbers start to wilt.  Eroding confidence in President Barack Obama's handling of the economy and ability to control spending has caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest levels since he took office, according to a spate of recent polls, a sign of political weakness that comes just as he most needs leverage on Capitol Hill.

For President Obama, the honeymoon is officially over.  One job of journalists is, to borrow a horse racing phrase, to "call the turns" of developing news.  Yesterday [6/23/2009], the White House press corps called the end of the Obama honeymoon.  By peppering the President with forceful questions on Iran and other big topics and by challenging some of his slippery answers, reporters captured the changing tone in the country.  Like the end of a real honeymoon, blind infatuation is giving way to a more accurate view of reality.

Debts, Doubts Continue Obama's Slide.  The national news media was still trying to deal with the administration's agenda as gently as possible, as if everything was on a steady course.  But his top proposals are dangerously off course and headed for defeat.

Turning Point for Obama Presidency?  These are critical and difficult days for Mr. Obama.  His job approval ratings, while still high, have fallen.  His support among independents, the crucial swing vote in American politics, has dropped from 60 percent in April to 45 percent now.  His health care proposals are in some trouble on Capitol Hill, amid growing public alarm about the staggering amount of deficit spending they will require.

Obama's promise of a new beginning now hollow.  [Obama] swept into office on a high tide of good will and anticipation.  He was going to fix Wall Street.  He was going to end the war in Iraq.  He was going to bring a new era of transparency to government.  He was going to stimulate a faltering economy and give new hope to a shrinking, frightened middle class.  He was going to close the prison at Guantanamo and end the torture policies of his predecessors.  There was even a hope that we would investigate how we went wrong and who ordered it.  He came to town on a white horse, riding a staggering wave of popular approval in the polls, a golden leader in a golden moment with a golden opportunity, and then he did what?  Nothing much.  Nothing different.

Unemployment at highest level in 25 years.  The turmoil ravaging General Motors and Chrysler generated big jumps in joblessness last month throughout the Midwest, sending Michigan's unemployment rate above 14 percent and pushing three nearby states into double digits.  Jobless rates in Illinois and Indiana surpassed 10 percent, while Ohio's approached 11 percent, according to data released Friday [6/19/2009] in a Labor Department report.

The unemployment problem is bigger than we think.  Unemployment rose to 9.4 percent in May, up from 8.9 percent in April and the highest jobless rate in 25 years.  That's 14.5 million Americans out of work, but it's not the whole story. ... As the Associated Press notes, the combined unemployment and underemployment rate jumps to 16.4 percent.  That's one out of every six people who want a full-time job.

Health Care Will End Obama's Honeymoon.  In the last two weeks we've seen President Obama endure treatment that he isn't exactly accustomed to:  harsh criticism from his own party, a significant slip in the polls, and unfavorable headlines instead of glowing, inflated puff pieces.  It seems that biting off more than he can chew when it comes to health care, government intervention into the private sector, and ballooning deficits have left him choking...

Obama's deadly hand revealed.  Among American Jews, a degree of buyers' remorse has been detected recently.  Almost 80 percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama as President.  Those of us who warned that this man would endanger Israel were scorned.  How could that possibly be, said the secular, liberal American Jews.  He's a Democrat, he's black and he's pro-abortion.  With this triple-lock of unassailable virtue, how can he be bad for Israel?  Now some of them are getting an awful feeling that they may have made the biggest misjudgment of their lives.

Obama's Cloudy Crystal Ball.  Today's New York Times explores why the White House was wildly off in its employment projections when it was trying to sell the stimulus package.  If you remember, the economic team said that if we passed the stimulus, unemployment would be around 8 percent now and without it, we'd be looking at unemployment in the double digits.  Well, we passed the stimulus, and unemployment is 9.4 percent anyway, and the White House now concedes it will rise above 10 percent.

Nation's Unemployment Rate Edging Closer to Double Digits.  The Labor Department is scheduled to release a report Thursday [7/2/2009] expected to show the nation's unemployment rate edging closer to double digits.  Wall Street economists predict the jobless rate will rise to 9.6 percent in June from 9.4 percent in May.  That would mark a 26-year high.

Our Melting President.  Obama began his presidency with a lot of very enthusiastic support.  About forty-five percent of Americans "strongly approved" of the job he was doing, while an anemic fifteen percent of Americans "strongly disapproved" of the job he was doing.  In a couple of months, that gap between the "strongly approve" and "strongly disapprove" closed to a gap of between eight and ten points.  The number who strongly approved glided down into the high thirties, while the number who strongly disapproved just about doubled, into the low thirties.

Obama 'meddles' in Honduras — and chooses the wrong side.  President Barack Obama has made it clear that he does not want the United States to be seen as "meddling" in Iran's internal politics.  Never mind that the Islamic Republic has been "meddling" in our affairs for the past three decades, if such a bland word can be used to characterize the seizure of our embassy in 1979, the killing of 229 American servicemen in 1983 and the planting of roadside bombs to kill our soldiers in Iraq.

Barack Obama makes basic error over balance of power in Kremlin.  President Obama has made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrives in Moscow today.  His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday's man and to drive a wedge between the Prime Minister and President Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin.  Mr Medvedev is in office but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Mr Putin's support and intentions.

Obama: 'I am not naïve'. That brief statement of Barack Obama's last month seems every bit as risible as Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook", after one reads the article on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Obama wrote for the student newspaper his senior year at Columbia. ... Obama naïve?  Throw in sophistic, jejune and purblind to everything isn't a neat fit into ideological cubby holes that haven't change in two decades and you'll be on the right track.

Tilting at Windmill Jobs.  About the best we can say about yesterday's June jobs report is that employment is usually a lagging economic indicator.  At least we hope it is, because the loss of 467,000 jobs for the month is one more sign that the economy still hasn't hit bottom despite months of epic fiscal and monetary reflation.  The report is in many ways even uglier than the headline numbers.  Average hours worked per week dropped to 33, the lowest level in at least 40 years.  This means that millions of full-time workers are being downgraded to part-time, as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water.

Job Losses Dampen Hopes for Recovery.  Mounting job losses rattled hopes yesterday [7/2/2009] that the economy is on track to grow later this year, showing that prospects for American workers are terrible — and still getting worse.  Employers reduced their payrolls by 467,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department said, far more than forecasters had expected.

No second stimulus, please.  When the President signed his $787 billion stimulus package into law, he confidently asserted that unemployment would not exceed eight percent.  If Congress hadn't passed it, he warned, it would rise to nine percent by 2010.  Well, unemployment reached 9.5 percent last month, meaning, by the President's own logic, that his stimulus package has failed.

Powell airs doubts on Obama agenda.  Colin Powell, one of President Obama's most prominent Republican supporters, expressed concern Friday [7/3/2009] that the president's ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of government and the federal debt too much.

Obama Worshippers Offended by Criticism of The Apology Tour.  Some who voted for Obama are starting to realize what a terrible mistake they made.  Even Colin Powell is starting to become disenchanted by Obama's ultra-liberalism.  Under President Obama's leadership, our country is rushing headlong away from its founding and Constitutional principles toward the abyss of defeatism and destruction.  Those who supported Obama for president should all be ashamed of themselves.

Americans are getting cold feet over Democratic proposals.  The economic distress of the 1930s led Americans to favor less reliance on markets and more on government.  The economic distress of the 1970s led Americans to favor less reliance on government and more on markets.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect, as many political liberals have been predicting, that the economic distress of the late 2000s will produce a shift in the 1930s direction.  But it doesn't seem to have happened yet.  Or so the polling evidence tells us.

California's Nightmare Will Kill Obamanomics.  The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling.  The reason is simple.  If Obama's health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California's.  Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year.  The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

Obama's Katrina.  The economy is shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. ... The difference, of course, is that Katrina afflicted a city and a few states, while the recession afflicts the whole country.  Unemployment is 9.5 percent and rising fast, certain to go higher than 10 percent.  And what is the federal government doing about it?  Not much.

Ohio's Ominous Political Storm Clouds.  If there is one set of polling data that must be sending chills down the spine of President Obama and his political aides, this is it: ... Among independents, only one in three people in Ohio approve of Obama's handling of the economy — and his overall job approval rating among independents is only 38 percent.  These findings are significant in several respects.  First, Ohio is not Mississippi.

America Souring on Hope and Change.  As if we were speaking another language, the Democrats are ignoring all the signs that they are overstepping in expanding the federal government and spending like there's no tomorrow:  The first signs of a revolt are apparent in the polls.

Obama's Iceberg.  The jobs report last week opened a long gash beneath the waterline of President Obama's legislative agenda.  Few realize it, but a scramble for lifeboats is about to begin.  On closer inspection, the economic news, which seemed bad, is even worse. Not only did unemployment rise to 9.5 percent but wages fell, undermining the consumption needed to revive a consumption-driven economy.

Independents begin to edge away from President Obama.  In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.

Blame Obama.  When will the failing U.S. economy become President Obama's problem? ... Job losses continue to mount, despite his promises that his "stimulus" plan would create jobs and stop rising unemployment.  The housing market shows no sign of imminent recovery, with prices continuing to decline and more homeowners falling behind on their payments.  Retail sales fell again in June...

The Audacity of Conceit.  If the people who formulate the administration's economic policy are so smart, why is it so disastrous?  Last January, these wizards of smart predicted that if Obama's stimulus package were passed, the unemployment rate would not go beyond 8 percent by the end of the year.  At this point, it is nearing 10 percent and shows no sign of slowing down.  How could they be so wrong with their vaunted brilliance?

Growing Worries about Our Pied Piper.  I think the Obama presidency is going to encounter far more public skepticism than one would expect in the usual post-honeymoon political adjustments.  Why?  Because our president often acts and talks as if he were at war with what we might loosely call "human nature."  There is a growing collective recognition that things simply do not work the way Obama thinks they do.

Obama's Popularity Plummets in Ohio as Residents Express Impatience.  Patience may be wearing thin for President Obama's economic initiatives to produce results -- at least in Ohio -- as a new poll shows the president's popularity plunging in that critical swing state.  The president's approval ratings from Ohio voters dropped from 62 percent in May to 49 percent this month in a new Quinnipiac University poll, making it the first state in which Obama's job approval has dipped below 50 percent.

The end of Obamania.  When he ran for president, Obama said his election would be "the moment the rise of the oceans began to slow."  And when he made his first big foreign trip in April, he was hailed by adoring crowds — and almost-as-adoring politicians — in Britain, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.  But last week, in Russia and Italy, Obamania was little more than a pleasant memory.

The Balloon Deflates.  The stimulus hasn't worked.  Cap-and-trade and health care reform are in trouble.  The can't-we-all-get-along foreign policy isn't leading to a more peaceful world.  And the administration seems to have no idea what to do about Guantánamo.  Congressional Democrats are nervous.  Even Obama's media base is concerned.

Guess What?  It's Not Working.  Despite everything Obama and Democrats have done — or, perhaps, because of everything they've done — the bad economy appears to be getting worse.  Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both hit two-month lows, and financial analysts are starting to speak bluntly about the grim prospects ahead.

Obama's stimulus plan is not working.  President Barack Obama's plan to attack the recession through massive deficit spending is not producing the results the president promised in February when he convinced the American people to go deep into hock in the name of creating jobs and boosting economic growth.  Obama is well into spending the $787 billion approved by Congress for his stimulus programs, and yet the unemployment rate is still climbing and economic recovery remains elusive.

Welcome Back, Carter.  The stimulus package has failed to stimulate as trillions of dollars of debt are being laid upon our children and grandchildren as we build turtle tunnels and try to save marsh mice.  The Obama administration is trying to get money into the economy instead of leaving it where it was in the first place through tax cuts.  As we near double-digit unemployment, it is failing as Carter failed, and the cry goes up:  Where are the jobs?

Bam's Slipping Grip on the Public.  [Scroll down]  Only 39 percent of voters say that Obama is doing an excellent or good job on the economy, 11 points lower than his overall job approval.  Forty-three percent say he's doing fair or poor.  As unemployment continues to rise and even Obama predicts that times will get worse, this gap on economic issues will likely rise.

More bad polling news for the Dems and Obama.  For the second time since Obama took office, Republicans have been leading Democrats on Rasmussen's Generic Congressional Ballot for three consecutive weeks.  The gap between the two parties matches the previous record of three points; however, it is the first time that the gap between the two parties has been that wide for two consecutive weeks.  If the GOP holds its lead for a fourth week, it will be a record.  Ditto if the amount of that lead exceeds three points.

Why Europeans are turning against Obama.  President Obama's policies have now begun to open the eyes of the most hardened socialist in Europe and the reality of world without the United States being the economic and military super power thus potentially ushering in the demise of Western Civilization has become a frequent topic of conversation.  I must confess I never thought it would take less than 6 months into the Obama presidency before articles would appear in one of the most liberal and anti-Bush publications in Europe, Der Spiegel, castigating President Obama.

Obama wags the dog.  President Obama's political strategy has finally crystallized: When all else fails, blame Bush-Cheney.  And make no mistake about it — all else has failed. ... Congressional Democrats and Obama seem to be disturbingly comfortable with placing partisanship before national security and are not above manufacturing a scandal as a means to achieve their objective.

Michigan unemployment tops 15%.  Michigan became the first state in 25 years to suffer an unemployment rate exceeding 15%, according to a report released Friday [7/17/2009] by the Labor Department.  The state's unemployment rate rose to 15.2% in June.  It was the highest of any state since March 1984, when West Virginia's unemployment rate exceeded 15%.

Jobless rate tops 10 percent in 15 states, DC.  Unemployment topped 10% in 15 states and the District of Columbia last month, according to federal data released Friday.  The rate in Michigan surpassed 15%, the first time any state hit that mark since 1984.

Just Say Yes.  [Scroll down]  Another poll tells us that the number of those who believe the Democrats are doing a good job of running Congress is a whopping 18 percent.  On top of that, the President's own numbers are lagging, with seven percent more voters expressing strong disapproval than strong approval. ... Add to this the 9.5 percent unemployment, the utterly decimated consumer confidence figures, and the current Presidential administration is blundering full speed ahead with zero gas in its tank.

What's Next, Mr. President — Cardigans?.  According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president's approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April.  Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to "accomplish too much," and 57 percent think the country is on the "wrong track."

Is unemployment actually much higher? Like close to 20 percent?  Every month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six "measures of labor underutilization" (i.e. unemployment).  The official unemployment rate used by politicians and the media, referred to as U3, measures the percent of the civilian labor force that is out of work.  But U3 does not include so-called "discouraged workers" who have completely stopped looking for jobs, "marginally attached" workers who had not searched for a job within the past month, or those involuntarily employed part-time instead of full time.

Barack Obama feels the heat, changes the play.  Health care reform, which once appeared flush with momentum from earlier congressional victories, is now on a slog through no less than five committees, which include Democrats who either aren't sold on Obama's expansive vision or can't figure out how to convince voters to pay for it.

Obama Is Delaying the Economic Recovery.  Unemployment continued to rise in June to 9.5%, with the loss of almost another half million jobs in the month (467,000).  Stretches of the country can be considered in a depression, with the unemployment rate for Michigan at 15.2%, California 11.6%, Nevada 12.0%, Oregon 12.2%... Over 100 urban areas now have unemployment rates over 10%.  Adult male unemployment nationwide is already in double digits at 10%.  Black unemployment is 14.7%, with Hispanics at 12.2%.  Teenage unemployment is 24%, with black teenage unemployment close to 40%.

Unemployment in Chicago area reaches 11.3 percent.  The unemployment rate in the Chicago metropolitan area continued to surge in June, reaching 11.3 percent, up from 6.9 percent a year earlier and the highest level since July of 1983, the Illinois Department of Employment Security said Thursday.  The rate is up from 10.7 percent in May and from 9.9 percent in April.  It exceeds the state's 10.3 percent rate and the nation's 9.5 percent rate.

The Obama dream turns into nightmare.  As recent Gallup surveys have shown, the United States remains a largely conservative nation, and Obama's brand of high spending, high taxing neo-socialism is increasingly rejected by the American public.  While much of Europe, including Britain, is moving rightwards, America is the only major country in the Western world whose leadership is dramatically moving to the left.  Although he ran for the presidency largely as a centrist, Obama's government is without doubt the most left-wing administration in American history.

Obama's dwindling power.  Superficially, the United States appears to have a presidential system, but in fact it more and more resembles a parliamentary form of government.  When a president loses the approval of the majority of the voters and polls reflect that his ratings have fallen substantially below 50 percent, he loses his power.  In this context, polls are like parliamentary votes of no confidence in European systems.

Poll Shows Majority of Americans Think Country Is Heading In Wrong Direction.  That was fast.  The hope and optimism that washed over the country in the opening months of Barack Obama's presidency are giving way to harsh realities.

Obama poll numbers take a dive.  Barack Obama now has a negative approval score for the first time since his victory last November:  49% approve, 51% disapprove.  Among those who feel strongly one way or the other, 30% strongly approve, 38% strongly disapprove.

Obama's Fall by the Numbers.  Barack Obama is now the tenth most popular president of the last twelve at this stage of his presidency (six months since his inauguration).  A president with huge majorities in both houses of Congress, an adoring national media, enormous and constant media exposure, a fractured and rudderless opposition party, and bold plans to restructure America (change we can believe in) should be doing much better.

Obama's Popularity Falling -- But Not Among Blacks.  On Monday, the daily presidential tracking poll for Rasmussen Reports showed that Barack Obama no longer has the job performance approval of a majority of Americans.  His overall approval rating was down to an even 50 percent.  Released on the same day was a demographic breakdown of that rating:  only 41 percent of white Americans approve of the job he's doing, while 97 percent of blacks approve and 58 percent of all other ethnicities combined approve.

The Editor says...
 I suspect the blacks will approve of him as long as he continues to be black, no matter what he does.

Obama's long six months.  The observation of Barack Obama's six-month anniversary as President has received much less attention than did his 100th day.  All the portentous comparisons with FDR have died away, and the administration is in a fierce struggle to salvage two of its most ambitious legislative projects -- cap-and-trade to reduce carbon emissions and universal medical care. ... All the celebrations of a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate (after the brazen theft of the Minnesota Senate election by leftist comedian Al Franken) will not mitigate the public's eroding confidence in the administration; nor their misgivings about higher taxes, bone-crushing deficits and socialized, coercive, health care.

Popular faith in Obama dwindles amid setbacks.  As the recession continues to bite and congress refuses to play ball on health and climate change, the honeymoon seems to be well and truly over for the US President.

Looks like Statism Doesn't Sell After All.  Enthusiasm for President Obama's "subsidize everything, regulate everything" agenda is falling.  Now is the time to pile on.  The American people deserve real change, not the retreat to the collectivist past being sold by the administration.

The God Who Bleeds.  The latest Pew survey shows that only 38 percent of Americans approve of [President Obama's] handling of the economy.  In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, fewer than half of respondents (48 percent) say Obama can be trusted to keep his word.  Gallup has his approval rating at a new low of 52 percent, and Rasmussen has it below 50 percent for the first time.

Traffic to Obama's White House Web Site Has Plummeted.  The traffic at President Obama's official White House Web site — whitehouse.gov — has fallen from a post-Inauguration peak to nearly the same level it was during the waning days of the Bush administration.  The dramatic drop in traffic has happened despite the Obama Administration's complete redesign of the site.

What Green Jobs?  President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his stimulus package to building a new green-based economy rich in renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon.  But despite the price tag, not one green job yet exists.  It comes down to a problem of etymology.  No one can yet agree on what a green job actually is.

Everything That Rises Must Converge.  [Scroll down]  While Obama is known as a talented communicator, it turns out that the more people hear about the health care plans, the more fiercely they oppose them, and this is true even if you remove Republicans from the equation.  Among independents who said they've heard little or nothing about health care legislation, just 35 percent opposed; but among those who said they've heard a lot about the proposals, opposition doubled, to 70 percent.

Why Obama is failing.  Obama is rapidly losing credibility with the public because it was not a leftwing agenda that the public voted for last November.  His difficulties stem from voters belatedly grasping that the values dictating public policy are not theirs but those of the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.  With hindsight, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, ACORN and the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate added up to more than we thought.

Obama 'Impervious to Empirical Evidence'.  Unlike Obama, the public can see the world as it is and recall history as it actually occurred.  We know carbon emissions will only increase so long as India and China refuse to shackle their own economies.  We know Keynesian boondoggle spending doesn't work to pull us out of recessions — and hasn't created any jobs this time around. ... Despite his disdain for facts, Obama cannot evade reality indefinitely.  Unemployment figures and polling data are real.  Deficit figures are real.  And the public's unease with political zealotry is real as well.  Unless Obama gives up his aversion to empirical evidence, the voters will deliver a dose of reality.

Obama vs. the 'Outside Agitators'.  As the various Obama initiatives — socialized medicine, "stimulus" spending, cap-and-trade — grow less and less popular with the voting populace, yesterday's bulging-vein, red-in-the-face Bush-haters are discovering that public discontent manifests itself today in old-fashioned, tried-and-true, rough-and-tumble methods:  booing congressmen at town meetings and shouting down weaselly answers, holding up signs in front of television cameras, marching in protest — even criticizing President Obama on the Internet!

Obama's punctured gravitas:  Barack Obama's political glass jaw is the illusion of gravitas that was successfully sold to enough Americans to get him elected.  His stentorian deep voice persuades many, never mind the pablum of vague clichés he dishes out.  Rush Limbaugh brilliant punctures the illusion by speeding up the tape and raising Obama's register when he plays excerpts of the president speaking.  Minus the deep voice, with an altered rhythm no longer hypnotically caressing the listener, the banality of the actual words becomes clear.

Angry White Men.  The Obamaites had best wake up.  Opposition to health-care reform is surging, and Barack Obama's campaigning has gone hand-in-hand with collapsing support, just as George W. Bush's barnstorming did for Social Security reform.

47!  Rasmussen's latest overall approval rating for President Obama: 47% — a new low for him.  Left-wing Bush-haters ... will note that "the Messiah's" current approval rating, midway through His eighth month, is a mere twelve points above Bush's number, 35%, when Bush left office.  And need I mention that Bush's number came after eight years of "objective press" savagery.  Obama's comes after eight months of "objective press" puffery.

Poll:  Obama Approval Rating Drops to 47 Percent.  President Obama's approval rating has dropped to 47 percent, a new low, according to the Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll.  The survey released Thursday [8/13/2009] showed 52 percent of those polled disapprove of Obama's performance, while 47 percent at least somewhat approve.

Obama Enthusiasts Fail to Back Obamacare.  There were lots of reasons people voted for Barack Obama last November.  The best and most convincing arguments for him never were actually "for" him, but were against John McCain and the GOP.  Most of Obama's voters, at least those who put him over the top, never wanted a federal takeover of their medical care.

54% Say Passing No Healthcare Reform Better Than Passing Congressional Plan.  Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this year.  However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.

Worst. Hires Rate. Ever.  It's not enough for most people to know what the unemployment rate is and whether it's going up or down.  It's not enough for investors and entrepreneurs living during some of the strangest times in American financial history.  And it's not enough for citizens trying to decide whether the policy proposals now in Washington are worthy of their support.

Is Obama a Lame Duck?  With his passive management style — which inevitably led to overreaching and heavy-handedness by Congressional Democrats — Obama has made himself largely irrelevant on many of the issues he ran on, from health care "reform" to "resetting" our foreign relations.  Here are seven signs that Obama's political suasion is waning.

Plan B Time Is Here.  It turns out there is nothing too big to fail, including the grand plans of Barack Obama.  Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) acknowledged as much yesterday [8/17/2009] in regard to the health-care meltdown.  Faced with enraged Americans at town-hall meetings, Boyd threw in the towel, saying he would "be willing to scrap everything" and start from square one.  First health care; next — you name it.  The whole Obama horizon is ready for a reset.

Why 'Obama-care' is failing:  [Scroll down]  The Obama administration has been astoundingly incompetent.  Lashing out at the town hall protesters, playing the race card, whining about angry white men and whispering ominously about right-wing militias is almost always a sign of liberalism's weakness — a failure of the imagination.

In Government We Trust?  Instead of whining about conspiracies, the average congressman getting yelled at this summer by his own constituents might ask:  How come these people don't trust me?  The Democratic leadership and the progressive left think the town halls emerged from the electric fog of conservative talk shows, but the Obama proposal since early June never had an organized opposition.  It has been sinking beneath its own weight.  It is the weight of doubtful government.

Obama unaccustomed to having his lies challenged.  American citizens have been vilified, marginalized, lied about and smeared by these Washington hucksters.  Good people, frustrated at the arrogance of their government, are being called names like a mob, Nazis, evil-mongers, terrorists, etc.  Meanwhile, the president and Congress are watching the poll numbers they live by fall into the basement.  I wonder why.  Most of us learned in kindergarten that when you call other people names, they are not likely to react kindly.  And they certainly are not likely to vote for you again.

Democratic Party ratings plummet.  The percentage of Americans who hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party has slipped below 50 percent for the first time since President Barack Obama took office, according to a new Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday [8/19/2009].  Only 49 percent of Americans now hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party, down from 62 percent in the same poll shortly after Obama assumed office.

Obama's Well Organized Community Is Falling Apart.  It's now official — the average American is not as stupid as Washington DC Democrats and their international leftist friends thought.  Their mystery messiah has already gone from hero to zero after only seven months in power, and Obama has now become a noose around the neck of every American Democrat, and every international fascist who "hoped" Obama could usher in Marxist "change."

The Strange Case of the Obama Meltdown.  The Spell is Broken. Cap-and-trade, the mega-deficits, the apology tours, and the sleaze of some appointments and congressional grandees (cf. Rangel, Dodd, Murtha, etc.) were stimulants, but not in themselves enough to awaken the somnolent American people from their collective trance.  Yet health care was like a shot of adrenaline that jolted the patient out of his slumber.  Suddenly hope and change no longer worked like the swinging watch and "you're getting sleepy" lingo.  Voters are feeling they've been "had" and were mesmerized into being used for an extremist agenda.

Obama's Brick Wall:  The American People.  Obama's free-falling poll numbers are not the result of a misinformation campaign from a small sliver of unruly conservative opponents, as the administration wants you to believe.  They are a reflection of the public's reaction to Obama's policies and his own comprehensive misinformation campaign to dupe the people into believing America is unsalvageable without fundamental change.

Slipping into quicksand:  President Obama, once considered as politically agile and deft as a gazelle, is now looking increasingly like a deer caught in the headlights.  His poll numbers on everything from job approval to his handling of the economy, health care, taxes and bailouts are dropping faster than a cement shoe in the Hudson River.

Out There in America.  What has coalesced, it seems, over the past week is the perception that Obama is angry, panicky, and without a game plan, and that his critics no longer cower.  In short, out there something has changed:  opposition and criticism of the president is everywhere — in mainstream media, in casual conversation, and in local press.  The assumption that Obama knows best has been shattered...

The Obama messiah delusion has well and truly exploded.  [Scroll down]  Retreat, however, is now turning into a rout, as politicians return to Washington after scrubbing off the tar and feathers acquired at town hall meetings across the Union.  For Obama now, the desperate priority is to get some kind of healthcare measure through Congress — any cosmetic legislation that will save his face and his presidency.  Whatever it is, it will be a pale imitation of his grand socialist vision.  Americans have risen to the occasion: at a historic moment they have decisively rejected Big Government.

Stop Digging?  [President Obama] is losing large slices of independents, moderate Republicans, and conservative Democrats who fear his polarizing attempts to transform America.  At precisely the same time, his left-wing base is hectoring him to get even more self-destructively statist — as if proposed record tax hikes, corporate and bank takeovers, socialized medicine, cap and trade, race/class/gender agenda appointments, serial apologies abroad, and a $2 trillion annual deficit just didn't cut it.

Survey Shows Obama's Base Is Eroding.  There is no question that health care is badly wounding the president.  And the divisions on the Democratic side are widening, stretching from a gap into a gulf.

Bam's $2 Trillion Friday Surprise.  The Obama administration did it again last week — getting bad news out on a Friday evening to minimize press coverage.  Within hours after President Obama left Washington for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, the Office of Management and Budget leaked word that, sometime this week, it will revise its projection of the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years from $7 trillion to $9 trillion.

The Collapse of Obama's Hot Air Balloon.  What we're seeing with Obama's plummeting poll numbers is a quick case of buyer's remorse.  More broadly, Gallup reports that conservatives now outnumber liberals in all 50 states, with more Americans self-identifying themselves as conservative than at any time in the past four years.

Real Unemployment At 16 Percent.  Steven Camarota analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on America's unemployed rate, which was officially at 9.7 percent in June.  The official jobless population was 15,095,000 at that point.  But when those who work part-time involuntarily and those who may hope for work but have not actively sought work are factored in, that month's jobless rate rises to 16.8 percent.  America therefore had an estimated underutilized labor force of 26,573,000 million people that month.

Why the 'O'-ministration will implode in weeks:  Never has an administration who had more firepower at their disposal, been set to so totally fail in the next six to eight weeks.  It is nearly a foregone conclusion.  It is nearly unavoidable.  And it defies all logic given the sizable majority the administration has in both houses of Congress.

You Think Obama Has Poll Problems.  Much has been written about Obama's stark and speedy decline in the polls.  However, voters like Congress even less.

Obama, the Mortal.  Let's be clear:  This is a fall, not a collapse.  He's not been repudiated or even defeated.  He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.  But what has occurred — irreversibly — is this:  He's become ordinary.  The spell is broken.

U.S. unemployment rate jumps to 26-year high of 9.7%.  The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high of 9.7% in August as nonfarm payrolls fell by 216,000, the 20th consecutive monthly decline, the Labor Department estimated Friday [9/4/2009].

Obama's declining support among whites.  After a summer of health care battles and sliding approval ratings for President Obama, the White House is facing a troubling new trend:  The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked hardest to attract.

Panic at the White House.  In the dark days of the Iraq war, when valiant U.S. troops faced down multiple enemies who obeyed no rules of war, President Bush never panicked.  Even when his approval rating dropped below 35 percent, the president slugged it out for better or worse, depending on your worldview.  The same cannot be said of President Obama, who is now reeling under the pressure of his collapsing health care vision.  The latest evidence of this was a posting on the "Organizing for America" website, which was set up by Obama in January.

The Crashing Liberal Agenda.  After an adventurous and, at times, treacherous August recess, lawmakers return to Washington, D.C. this week.  Liberals hope to jumpstart the President's agenda, which has stalled because public support for his big-ticket initiatives has crashed.  The swing in public sentiment can be seen in President Obama's approval rating, which is hovering around 50 percent.

The Goldilocks Principle in American Politics.  Obama is in early trouble and the fate of his presidency may be at stake.  The presidency that many thought might resemble FDR's is looking more and more like Jimmy Carter's.  The aspirations of last November are becoming the trepidations of this September.

Some Blacks Now Have Doubts About Obama.  According to the Pew Research Center, the president's approval rating nationwide is now 10 points lower than last April.  Included in this is a three-point drop in his approval among blacks.  You might say, Star, a drop in approval ratings among blacks from 95 percent to 92 percent is trivial.  But I say not so.  If we assume this reflects the 16 million blacks who voted for Obama last November, a three point shift means there are about a half million blacks who now have buyer's remorse.  This is meaningful.  You take real risks going against the establishment in black America.

Obama's Failure of Credibility.  The cause of Obama's freefall in the polls can be reduced down to one simple word, "Credibility."  Credibility is the board game of politics and the rules are fairly simple. ... Obama and his lackeys actually thought that getting into the White House meant an endless free ride.  Now they are slowly beginning to realize they were wrong.

So far, Obama's failing miserably.  Obama is trying to fundamentally alter the American economy by backing sweeping environmental, labor and health care legislation.  He wants to change the way Americans consume energy, unionize and see their doctors.  So far, he's failing miserably.

California Joblessness Reaches 70-Year High.  California's unemployment rate in August hit its highest point in nearly 70 years, starkly underscoring how the nation's incipient economic recovery continues to elude millions of Americans looking for work.

Who's Threatening Obama?  While criticism of Obama and his policies has been intense, some of the strongest attacks on Obama have come not from the right, but from the left. ... While the Communist Party USA is strongly supporting the President, there are many on the far-left who despise him.  Citing Afghanistan and other issues, some of the Marxist true-believers already view Obama as a sell-out.

The Trouble with Obama.  For a talented man who ran a textbook campaign and was declared a great president before he even took office, Barack Obama has been having a rather hard time.  The Midas Touch of 2008 has seemed to desert him.  The famed oratory has not made a difference.  The uniting president has turned into the ultra-divider.  The music has died.

A PR Nightmare for the Obamas.  Obama's messianic appeal is wearing thin, both at home and abroad.  I think that once Sarkozy essentially said to the world, "The emperor has no clothes," the Obama facade crumbled.

Jobless Rate Climbs to 9.8 Percent in September.  If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

Mugged by Reality.  Barack Obama staked his entire campaign for the presidency on the premise that the world doesn't have to be the way it is.  Obama promised a new brand of "direct, presidential diplomacy" that would resolve the conflicts between the United States and its adversaries and he promised to remove the partisanship from the conflicts in Washington.  Well, it turns out George W. Bush didn't make the world the way it is.

Obama's Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency.  There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama's presidency in recent weeks:  that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.  Chicago's dismal showing yesterday [10/2/2009], after Mr Obama's personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President.

Where Have All the Stickers Gone?  Here's a bulletin based on an unscientific survey and verified by friends:  Obama stickers are getting harder to spot.  That's right.  The ubiquitous blue stickers with the round, red-white-and blue symbol are coming off the bumpers.  Even in northern Virginia, which has large pockets of yellow dog Democrats, the stickers are disappearing.

Barack-in-the-box shelved: Frenzy fades.  Heather Courtney and David Marzo apparently plowed some retirement savings into the production of a lot of jack-in-the-boxes with smiling Barack Obama puppets insidie, and they've got 3,000 sitting in a warehouse — $29.95 each, when they sell.  Sales, they say, have slowed to a "drizzle."

The Trauma of Obama.  Interestingly, there's this eerie silence about Obama.  You don't hear a peep about him.  Of course, liberals are still foaming at the mouth about Sarah Palin, tea baggers, birthers, and all things conservative.  But adulation for Obama:  Missing in Action.  A telling sign:  the life size black and white cardboard doll of Obama in a storefront near my office has been taken down.  Where did it go — to the local recycling center with other discarded Obamabilia?

Early retirements mean unemployment is worse than 9.8%.  The stimulus backfired.  It undermined confidence in the economy.  And people are reacting.  Not only are companies cutting back on employees, but workers are throwing in the towel.  Rather than look for another job, they are retiring or filing for a disability.

Support For ObamaCare Reaches New Low.  A new poll by Rasmussen Reports finds that President Barack Obama's plan to take America's health-care system in an even more statist direction has less support now than ever before.

No Master Plan at All.  It may be that the whole Hope and Change routine has been little more than a lot of cheesy special effects — and a cynical game to convince the public that the great and powerful leader really is worthy of awe.  The people are finally figuring out the act.

Obama wins popularity contests, not much else.  President Obama is following the advice of that great philosopher Woody Allen, who once said that "eighty percent of success is showing up."  In health care legislation, foreign relations and, now, the Olympics, Obama believes his very presence is enough to bend the world to his whim.  But even Allen allowed for 20% of something else.  I'm guessing good ideas and effort.

Flail.  Your foreign policy is in such nerve-racking disarray that even the president of France is horrified; your public relations outfit at the New York Times has begun to reconsider signing you as a client; every step you take heightens tensions with your opposition; ... Really, are you an evil genius with a plot to take over the world just pretending to be an empty vessel?  Or are you actually an empty vessel pretending to be a president?

Jobless rate hits 17 percent.  America's jobless crisis is much worse than the 9.8 percent unemployment rate reported Friday [10/2/2009].  To understand how there are many more unemployed than the government reports, it's necessary to look at the numbers used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the unemployment rate.  The Household Survey numbers paint a bleak picture that no one is discussing.

Whom Will Barack Blame for His Olympic-Sized Failure?  The IOC bloodletting made Barack Obama — who soon may be regarded as the worst president in American history — look like the dissociative bumbler many of us know him to be.  The president put his prodigious ego on the line only to have it flailed like an intelligent student in a women's studies class.  At Copenhagen, Barack came, saw, emoted, and got duly slaughtered.  Even his omnipotent teleprompter couldn't have put a positive spin on the happenings.

Obama's Job-Killing Agenda.  [President] Obama is pushing a job-killing agenda that promises to expand an already bloated government while simultaneously shrinking individual freedom.  In its latest official tally of jobs being lost per month, more than seven months after Obama's $787 billion non-stimulating stimulus bill was rushed through Congress, the Labor Department reported that 263,000 more jobs were lost in September, increasing the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent and bringing the total number of unemployed to 15.1 million.

Barack Obama sees worst poll rating drop in 50 years.  The decline in Barack Obama's popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

Polling Polls:  Americans Independent and Irate.  A poll of opinion polls shows that Americans are undergoing rapidly changing attitudes.  RealClearPolitics, a national polling aggregator, shows that Americans are becoming less and less thrilled about the direction of the country and with the job Congress is doing.  Support has been peeling off steadily, says RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan.  The danger for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party is the independent voters' shift away from Democrat policies.

What happened to Obamamania?  Many Obamenthusiasts were thrilled by the idea of putting Obama in and getting George W. Bush out.  They achieved their goal a year ago.  What more is left? ... "We are the change we are seeking," Obama said during the campaign.  Well, the Obamenthusiasts got that change.  Now they can go back to gardening or Sudoku.

Obama's Fight to Win or Lose.  Obama is exactly where he didn't expect to be.  His popularity has declined at a record rate.  His supposed power of persuasion has turned out to be nonexistent.  More Americans oppose his health care initiative than support it.  And Republicans are prepared to combat him and Democrats on every major provision of it.

The Obama Revolution Is Over.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  Obama was going to change the face of American politics.  Instead he has made it less attractive to a growing share of the public.  Whether it's trillion-dollar deficits or government-run health care, Americans are at last coming to terms with what they voted for.

Welcome to the "Post-Obama" Era!  69,000,000 voters fell for the smoke and mirrors and the fairy tale promise of CHANGE, without so much as a clue as to what that change might represent.  How many of those 69,000,000 votes would have been cast for Barack Obama had his Marxist leanings been understood?  How many would have voted for a man who would denigrate American leaders and policies while on foreign soil? ... How many would have voted for the man who has created a stealth cabinet of czars in order to avoid Congressional oversight?

A deathblow to ObamaCare.  Obviously, [Chris] Christie's victory is a body blow to Obama after Corzine outspent the Republican by five-to-one and the president put on a serious push for the incumbent.  Corzine's defeat sends a message that the nation is moving sharply against Obama.

Jobless Rate Jumps to 10.2% as Labor Market Still Weak.  The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 10.2 percent in October, breaching the politically sensitive double-digit barrier for the first time in 26-1/2 years, even though the pace of job losses slowed.

How many more jobs will Obama kill?  Unemployment has hit 10.2 percent, the highest level since the 1983 recession.  Obama administration officials will no doubt try to spin this latest bad economic news by noting that unemployment is typically a "lagging indicator."  That was true in the old days, but it won't cut it in the age of the global economy and Internet-driven 24/7 news cycle.

The Editor says...
 It's the worst economy since the Great Depression!  I mean, it must be.  John Kerry said so, back in 2004 (Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4]), and the economy was in much better shape back then.  Why isn't Senator Kerry repeating his claim today?

What Jobs?  One has to hope that the Obama administration does not believe its own rhetoric about the supposed success of its fiscal stimulus program in generating new jobs.  For while the administration assures us that the fiscal stimulus is generating new jobs according to schedule, the U.S. labor market continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

Doctor's note required to read this column.  Were you shocked that the nation's unemployment rate in October jumped to 10.2 percent, the first time it has been in double digits since 1982?  Did the fact that another 190,000 jobs disappeared from the US economy last month cause you to lose sleep?  Well, if you couldn't handle those numbers you should not read any more of this column.

Sinking numbers for Obama, Democrats.  The victories by Republicans in two Governors races last Tuesday appear to have lifted the party's prospects in 2010 and in 2012 in the minds of voters with 58% of those surveyed by Rasmussen now believe the next President will be Republican.

Blame Obama for Sky-High Unemployment.  This wasn't supposed to happen.  At the end of February, after the $787 billion stimulus was approved, the Obama administration predicted that unemployment would average only 8.1 percent this year.  Indeed, in February the unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent.  Yet, unemployment now stands at 10.2 percent and keeps rising.  There is also another, wider unemployment measure seldom mentioned.  When you count the unemployed who have become so discouraged that they have given up looking for work or have only accepted a part-time job, our country now has an unemployment rate that stands at a staggering 17.5 percent.

Has Obama Peaked?  Yes, He Has.  To listen to some pundits, Barack Obama's public image began taking a serious beating when the off-year election returns came in a week ago.  Or maybe it was the undeserved Nobel Prize, his approach to the war in Afghanistan, or when he revved up his pursuit of national health-care reform.  But the pundits, as usual, are wrong.  In reality, Obama peaked the night he was elected.

Clueless Summit.  Next month's "Jobs Summit" at the White House promises to feature a lot of posing and preening by Washington politicians.  Unfortunately, despite lots of photo ops, it's not likely to result in many jobs.  Something's wrong when the government of the most prolific job-creating economy in history has to schedule a "summit" to decide how to create jobs.

Remember When.  Massive spending and big promises do not a great leader make.  So now, here we are.  Unemployment is higher, confusion about the war is greater, and division in our country is fiercer.  The platitudes of hope and change are gradually being replaced by the pragmatism of liberty and responsibility.  While of the real hope of America lies in the people of the nation, too many people in this nation have put their hope in one man.

Unemployment rates rise in 29 states.  A growing number of states reported rising jobless rates in October, and thirteen states reported unemployment rates above the national average of 10.2%, according to a government report released on Friday [11/20/2009].  Overall, jobless rates increased in 29 states and the District of Columbia last month, while they fell in 13 states, according to a monthly Labor Department survey on state unemployment.

Signs of a scandal brewing?
 Anita Dunn's Husband Becomes White House Counsel.  [Scroll down slowly]  A highly placed Washington attorney ...[says] "I'm surprised not only that the press seems to be ignoring the fact that two presidential lawyers have left at about the same time, [...] "but that no one seems to care that for the first time, I think ever, we have a President's personal attorney also serving as White House counsel.

Gallup:  Obama below 50% for first time.  Most other pollsters already have Barack Obama's job approval into plurality positions at best; Rasmussen has him under water at 47%/52%.  The others that have Obama in majority territory have big sampling problems that overstates Democratic support.  But undoubtedly, having Gallup confirm the trend emphasizes the point that Hope and Change isn't selling any more.

A Good Time Not to be a Democrat.  Despite the grand triumph of the Democratic leadership in ramming a government health care takeover through the House, things are not going well for the Dems.  Indeed, one suspects that the ideological crusade to socialize American medicine at any cost is one of the chief factors driving down support for the governing party.

What Happened?  Plainly, Obama's poll numbers have hit the skids, as poll after poll registers new lows in approval and new highs in disapproval.  More independents now disapprove than approve of his performance.  And more voters disapprove of his handling of specific issues such as health care.  So what happened, and why now?

The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed.  As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked:  nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.  According to the government's broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed.  The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

Poll Numbers Crash.  Here is some more sobering poll news for Obama:  The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday [11/24/2009] shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.

Inside the numbers:  How Obama has fallen.  We've all seen reports that Barack Obama's job approval rating has recently fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll for the first time since the president took office in January.  A look inside those numbers — Gallup publishes a weekly breakdown of its results by demographic groups — shows that there are a lot of other firsts in the polling.

Dems' Canary In The Coal Mine.  Everyone is watching and waiting for the "canary in the coal mine," that Democrat whose retirement will tell us how nervous incumbents really are about their chances in 2010.  Is Kansas Rep. Dennis Moore, who abruptly announced his retirement on Monday, that canary?

Growing public backlash over Obamacare.  Two-dozen Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, who voted for the House version of President Obama's increasingly unpopular health care reform, are beginning to feel a growing public backlash.  ReversetheVote.org has already raised $123,105 that will be dedicated exclusively to defeating all 24, including Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in 2010 if they don't reject the final conference committee version of the bill.

The Five Obama Fails.  Nearly one year after Obama's inauguration, we have an economy heading in the wrong direction, unemployment rising, a deficit that will double, banks failing, a war command which is virtually ignored, 9/11 terrorists given Constitutional rights at a civil trial, and an administration hell-bent on destroying — not "reforming" — the world's best health care system.

Barack Obama is so last season.  For Barack Obama, the magic is gone.  He's here, but the glamour has vanished.  He still talks, but few people appear to be listening.  Sometime in spring, it began to be noticed (by Fred Barnes, among others) that he was losing the power to move people, or shape their opinions.  When his agenda began meeting resistance, he gave a series of speeches and resistance grew stronger.  The more he explained, the more people disliked what he said he was doing.

Blue Dog John Tanner to retire from House.  Tanner becomes the second Blue Dog Democrat in two weeks to retire rather than face what could have been a contentious re-election in 2010.

Bam:  Man in the muddle.  Perhaps it was inevitable.  A man who voted "present" 130 times in the Illinois Legislature couldn't possibly morph into a savvy and decisive leader of the free world in such a short time.  Yet even the pessimists among us are alarmed by the cloud of uncertainty and confusion hanging over the White House.  Less than a year on the job, President Obama seems to have run out of both charm and ideas.

Obama's 47 Percent Approval Lowest of Any President at This Point.  President Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.

You gotta love this.  According to Politico, President Obama's support has declined to the point that only 50 percent of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush.  Forty-four percent say they'd rather have Bush.

Obama's Humbling Year.  President Obama's slide has indeed been steep, steady, and historic.  There are a dozen or so political data points that all point in the same direction.  His act has grown tired and stale in an astonishingly short period of time.

Democrats Whistling Past Graveyard.  The unexpected victory of Republican Jimmy Higdon in the Kentucky state Senate special election — despite a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage — is another fire bell in the night that national Democrats are going to ignore.  Marking the 33rd Republican win in the 50 or so special elections since 2008, the Kentucky race was a referendum on health care reform.

Why Are We Tiring of Obama?  [Scroll down]  He is experiencing the sharpest popularity decline in the history of first-year administrations.  The problem is not just that he inherited a bad economy; Reagan did too. ... Instead, after 11 months there has emerged a series of bothersome incidents that the public has come to associate with Obama, both the man and his philosophies.

Obama goes from dazzle to drone.  Obama's sagging numbers are less a regular presidential "approval rating" than a measure of the ever-widening gulf between the messianic ballyhoo and his actual performance.  For Americans interested in not pre-crippling the lives of their as-yet unborn children and grandchildren, his windy leave-'em-wanting-less routine is currently one of their best friends.

The Most Boring Man in the World?  Barack Obama's vibe used to be a cross between JFK and Beatlemania.  Now it's fading into "Oh, him again?"

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.  The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday [12/12/2009] shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.  Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16.  That's the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

'Welcome to Obamaville' Sign At Homeless Tent City, Media Mum.  A sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville Colorado's Fastest Growing Community" appeared at a homeless tent city in Colorado Springs this week.  You probably didn't hear about it because outside of two Colorado television stations nobody found this newsworthy.

Obama:  What a Difference A Year Makes.  Americans and the rest of the world have had a year in which to watch Barack Obama and it has been one of constant disappointment and growing fears.  That trend is unlikely to change.

The Obama Agenda Is Sinking Fast.  These are difficult days for modern liberalism.  The high hopes and expectations of Obama and his supporters are crashing down all around them.  And those who pronounced the death of conservatism earlier this year look sillier and sillier with every passing month.

A time of universal deceit.  Gallup's just-released Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll shows that for the first time, most people — 55 percent — rate members of Congress low or very low for honesty and ethics.  Senators come in slightly better at 49 percent.  A whopping 9 percent of members of Congress and 11 percent of senators get high or very high ratings in honesty and ethics.

Amid rumbling discontent, Dems head for the exits.  While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scrambles to assemble 60 Democratic votes for health care legislation that, according to the realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls, is opposed by a 53 percent-to-38 percent margin, several Democratic members of the House are scrambling for the exits on what is starting to look like a sinking ship.

Just The Plan For How Not To Create Jobs.  The biggest political issue today and in the 2010 election is that one in six Americans are jobless.  The political party that offers a solution has the best chance of victory — but, so far, both parties just don't seem to get it.  We are told that the unemployment rate is 10.2%, but that's only part of the problem.  When you add discouraged Americans who have quit looking for a job, plus the underemployed (i.e., working only part-time while seeking full-time work), the figure rises to at least 17.5%.

Americans Souring on Democrats.  Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult economy and a wave of public discontent, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.  The findings underscored how dramatically the political landscape has changed during the Obama administration's first year.

The President Is No B+.  Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year:  49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.  There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative.  But something else is happening.

Why Independents Are Abandoning Obama.  President Obama road into office on the coattails of some horrible economic realities while promising Americans "hope and change."  The nation needed both to energize new policies and to help us continue down the path to recovery, specifically in the areas of job creation and economic growth.  Those who ignorantly — and I use this word literally not pejoratively — voted for him, have now woken up saying to themselves over and over and over again, "What the heck have I done?"

The Health Care Bill Is Political Suicide.  [Scroll down]  But the biggest problem in 2009 was not really that liberals didn't turn out to vote.  The problem was that the Democrats lost Independents and moderates.  Take Virginia.  There was a substantial drop-off in Democratic performance from 2008 to 2009.  But the real change this year is how Independents voted (as was the case in 2006).  Independents in Virginia voted 49%-48% for Obama in 2008, but gave Bob McDonnell a 66%-33% landslide win in 2009.

Obama, the laughingstock.  Is our President, and America itself, becoming laughingstock of the world to be ignored and dismissed, if not ridiculed, as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have?  The world has taken measure of the man and he has fallen short.

Anti-war activists losing patience with Obama.  Abby Tomlinson voted for President Barack Obama, hoping that he would help end the war in Iraq quickly.  But the Lubbock woman said she's disappointed in what the "peace" candidate has accomplished along those lines, nearly a year after taking office.  Two wars continue.

Obama, left behind.  Boy, this "Obama Derangement Syndrome" really has gotten out of hand.  Why, just this past week the decreasingly popular president has been called a "bald-faced liar," "an executive who can't bring himself to lead," and even an "Uncle Tom."  And that's just by liberals.  The progressive crack-up, before Obama even reaches the end of his first year, has been an awesome and occasionally humorous sight to see.

Dreading our future.  President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment.  I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another.  Shame on me.  Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable bore.  The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions.

Nearly 60 percent Say President Obama's Decisions 'Bad for America'.  A majority of Americans believe an increased government role in health care would lead to more government corruption, while a plurality of Americans think that scientific data supporting man-made global warming is "mostly falsified."  That is what a new poll by Survey USA reveals.  The poll also shows that 58 percent of Americans believe that decisions by the Obama administration have been "bad for America," as opposed to 37 percent who think Obama's decisions have been "good for America."

A Political Earthquake.  In today's Rasmussen presidential poll, only 26 percent of the nation's voters strongly approve of Barack Obama's performance as president, while 43 percent strongly disapprove — giving him a Presidential Approval Index rating, a sum calculated by subtracting the number of strong disapprovals from the number of strong approvals, of negative 17.

The Health-Care Backlash.  The collateral damage to Obama from this bill is enormous.  More than any candidate in our lifetime, Obama won based on the aesthetics of politics.  It wasn't because of his record; he barely had one.  And it wasn't because of his command of policy; few people knew what his top three policy priorities were.  It was based instead on the sense that he was something novel, the embodiment of a "new politics" — matured, high-minded and gracious, intellectually serious.  That was the core of his speeches and his candidacy.  In less than a year, that core has been devoured, most of all by this health-care process.

Big Government Backlash.  President Obama's approval rating has sunk below 50% for the first time, but for our money the bigger polling news is the way his agenda is turning the public against activist government.

Griffith said Dem agenda is reason for his party switch.  Freshman Rep. Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) announced Tuesday afternoon [12/22/2009] he will switch to the GOP, citing the Democratic agenda as his reason.  Griffith said Democratic legislative priorities, including healthcare reform, are harmful to the country.

Are Democrats exiting the sinking ship?  Part 6.  [Congressman Parker] Griffith's party switch reduces the magic number of seats Republicans need to pick up in 2010 to get a majority in the House from 41 to 40.  It also raises the question of whether newly elected Democrats in similar seats — Bobby Bright in Alabama 2 and Travis Childers in Mississippi 1 — will choose to switch parties.

The Death Of Moderate Democrats.  Rep. Parker Griffith, the newly minted Republican, is typical of his class of freshmen Democrats from heavily John McCain districts.  For them to survive, they need to switch parties.  Otherwise, they — and the damage they have done — will be two-year footnotes to history.

US voters give Barack Obama an F.  Barack Obama gave himself a B+ on Oprah Winfrey's White House Christmas Special on ABC, but the American public is far less generous.  The latest influential Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of likely US voters gives Obama a thumping 56 percent disapproval rating — an F grade by any measure.

"Shut up" is a favorite Democrat talking point.  "This is not an administration that takes bad news well," Jennifer Rubin wrote on Commentary's blog, referring to Robert Gibbs' fit when asked to explain the Gallup poll showing the president taking on water, sinking into the high-to-mid 40s, and losing ground fast.

Democrats' Blues Grow Deeper in New Poll.  Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult economy and a wave of public discontent, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.  The findings underscored how dramatically the political landscape has changed during the Obama administration's first year.

Obama's year of falling swiftly.  As Barack and Michelle Obama prepare for their first Christmas in the White House, they might wonder why he has fallen so swiftly from being virtually a national icon to the unhappy status as among the least popular occupants of the Oval Office since modern polling began.

The Editor says...
 Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Obama are unpopular because they're a couple of America-hating communists bent on destroying this country from the inside out.  Oh, and incidentally, they didn't spend Christmas in the White House -- they were on the beach in Hawaii.

That's typical of the wealthy liberal elite who pretend to watch out for the "little guy."

Are Democrats exiting the sinking ship? Part VIII.  Some more bad news for the very able Chris Van Hollen, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:  four more Democratic challenger candidates have decided not to run.

Obama's last year.  A Democrat strategist told Bryon York of the Washington Examiner that House empress Nancy Pelosi was comfortable with losing "20 to 40" seats in the lower chamber as the price for getting health care "reform" passed. ... If even Pelosi is writing off up to 40 seats, it should be a bright year for Republican House candidates.

What's More Important Than Being Electable?  Being Able To Govern.  The shine is off.  Recent tracking polls have shown the president's popularity trending downwards under 50%.  And both Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen show President Obama in tight races with Republican front-runners, and even with some non-Republican front-runners. ... Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) comes within eight points on Public Policy Polling.  Yes, the 75-year-old Texas congressman is nearly as close to Obama as John McCain was in 2008.  This suggests a growing number of Americans, as of this moment, would vote for anyone over Barack Obama.

Dorgan announces retirement.  In a huge surprise, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) has just announced [01/05/2010] he will not seek reelection.

GOP momentum on the rise.  Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King, one of only two Republicans remaining in the Empire State's House delegation, is reconsidering a run for the Senate seat held by appointed Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.  Momentum is building.

Democrats exiting the sinking ship?  Part X.  Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, has decided not to run for reelection in November and will retire at age 68.  He has served in public office since he was elected North Dakota Tax Commissioner in 1968 and has won 12 statewide elections.

The Democrats' Sinking Ship.  The back-to-back Senate retirements of Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd may be just the beginning.  The people have seen the future of health care reform and found it doesn't work.  Apres moi, le deluge.

Obama's failed freshman year.  President Obama's freshman-year foreign policy was the worst in living memory.  At the dawn of 2010, the United States finds itself noticeably weaker in international affairs than it was when Mr. Obama took office, and there are no signs of improvement in the year ahead.

Out-to-lunch O living out a disaster film.  When the alarm first went off — the 3 a.m. phone call — they hit the snooze button, putting the president's personal comfort ahead of the country's.  Everything since has been damage control, including yesterday's endlessly advertised meeting with his national security team.  Obama's remarks afterward were direct and forceful, but the door of doubt about his national security leadership has been blown off the hinges.

Abandon ship!  Party is sinking.  Sen. Chris Dodd's announcement yesterday that he would abandon his hopeless bid for re-election is only the latest in an alarming and growing body of evidence that President Obama and Democrats in Congress have blown through more political good will in one year than most parties do in a decade.  With elections still 10 months off, 13 incumbent congressional Democrats have decided to give up rather than face the certain wrath of voters.

Dodd, Dorgan out; 5 other Senate Dems vulnerable.  While two Senate Democrats already have seen the handwriting on the wall and bailed out of re-election races, five others trail Republicans in states where President Obama and his trillion-dollar health-care-reform plan are increasingly unpopular.  From Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trails badly, to Arkansas, where Sen. Blanche Lincoln is polling at just 40 percent in head-to-head matchups with four possible Republican challengers, opposition to the health-care bill is reverberating.

Number of long-term unemployed hits highest rate since 1948.  On Friday [1/8/2010], in the December unemployment report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the number of people out of work for 27 weeks or more hit 6.1 million Americans, or 40 percent of all 15.3 million jobless.  This is the most since 1948, when the data was first recorded, according to the Department of Labor.

A Year Ago, Obama Was Invincible.  Remember President Obama's huge victory, when he received 365 electoral votes and had historic approval ratings?  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Obama's Independent Woes Intensify.  January's IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index fell 3.6% to 50.8 — barely holding above the neutral 50 level and 20 points below Obama's level when he took office.  High unemployment, an unpopular health care plan and security fears are all taking their toll.  Independents led with a 6.5% decline — 21% since September — to 44.3, a new low for Obama.

Obama's Polling Blues.  The raft of bad polling data continues for President Obama.  When voters were asked in a CNN/Opinion Research survey published on Tuesday to rate Obama's performance since taking office, 48 percent judged it a failure while 47 percent saw a success.  This corresponds with a new Quinnipiac University poll released today [1/13/2010], showing voters split 45-45 on whether Obama's first year was a success or failure.

Majority Would Vote Against Obama.  A year into his tenure, a majority of Americans would already vote against Pres. Obama if the '12 elections were held today, according to a new survey.  The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else.

The Once-Appealing Barack Obama.  [Scroll down slowly]  That was what we were promised.  What we got instead is a president who increased the divisions in our nation, the most partisan and polarizing figure in the history of polling, one who is dogmatic and has been as generous to special interests as any we have seen.  The efforts to buy votes in pursuit of the Obama agenda has added sewage to the cesspool.  This would hurt any president under any circumstances; for Barack Obama, whose allure was based almost entirely on his ability to convince the public that he embodied a "new politics," it has been doubly damaging.

The Roots of Obama Worship:  Obama recently awarded himself the grade of "a good, solid B plus" for his performance in office, but the public is not as lenient.  The gap in the assessment between Obama the candidate and Obama the president is enormous.  Having entered office with a public approval of 70 percent, he has fallen today below 50 percent, the steepest such decline at this point of any first-term president in the postwar period.  Obama also has the lowest approval rating at the end of a president's first year.

Obama's Cross of Arugula:  Obama ran as a thoughtful, cool-headed, competent intellectual who was going to bring both parties together to develop and implement solutions to America's most serious problems.  But ... after a year of bailing out Wall Street and car makers, passing a stimulus that didn't produce any tangible results for Main Street (i.e. jobs), and focusing most of his energy in pushing a partisan health care bill through Congress using backroom deals with industries and individual Democratic Senators, huge swaths of the country have lost confidence in Obama.

Lights out as America gives Obama notice to quit.  Exactly one year after his inauguration as President, the electorate of the most liberal state in the Union — the Kennedys' Camelot — served notice to quit on President Pantywaist, the busted flush.  If Obama cannot hold Massachusetts, he has no prospect of winning any state in an election for a presidential second term.  The Messiah is toast.

The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama:  Taxpayers have come to see politics as usual masquerading as economic recovery.

Existing-home sales take biggest fall in at least 40 years.  Existing-home sales took their biggest tumble in at least 40 years last month as the impact of a buying spree spurred by a tax credit for first-time buyers waned, according to industry data released Monday [1/25/2010].

America's Fourth Great Awakening.  Some among the heaviest of Obama Kool-Aid drinkers are awakening to the performance gap between the campaign myth of Obama versus the reality of his inability to govern.

Obama says he 'would rather be really good one-term president'.  President Barack Obama said that he "would rather be a really good one-term president" than have two mediocre terms.

Obama's 'Train Wreck' Ahead.  Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve that showed how low tax rates boost economic growth, is warning anyone who will listen that the economy is headed for a "train wreck" in 2011 that will make the current recession look tame by comparison.

Presidential Sins.  [Scroll down]  Looking further ahead, Senate Democrats will have a combined total of 43 seats at risk in 2012 and 2014, some held by incumbents who barely squeaked into office in the 2006 and 2008 banner elections for Democrats.  Republicans, meanwhile, will have to defend only 22 seats, all held by survivors of [very tough elections]. ... Does all this sound like a political landscape shaped by a "B-plus" Democratic president?

The Weight Around the Democrats' Ankles:  Barack Obama.  President Obama has attempted, through his health care plan, one of the most ambitious government takeovers of the private economy in our lifetime.  Republican lawmakers have, to a person, declined to assist Obama in this effort.  Opposition by the out-of-power party is not unusual — although the degree of polarization we have seen during the Obama presidency is unprecedented.  Barack Obama is the most polarizing first year president since the 1950s, when Gallup first began polling on this issue.

Beyond Hope and Change.  Trillion-dollar annual deficits, high unemployment rates, a bleak tomorrow for future generations, and unprecedented erosion in the public's trust of the nation's leaders are becoming the legacy of President Obama and his administration.

Obama Hits Lowest Approval Mark.  Independent voters see Pres. Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin, according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their expectations.  The poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, showed just 44% of registered voters approving of Obama's job as president.  47% disapprove.  But among indie voters, Obama's approval rating sits at a terrible 29%, while his disapproval rating is at 57%.

Poll shows voters abandoning prez in droves.  President Obama's overall approval rating has sunk to a new low — and independent voters who propelled him to the White House have gotten downright sick of the job he's doing, according to a devastating poll released yesterday [2/8/2010].  Obama's job-approval rating has tanked to a dismal 29 percent among independents, the Marist College survey found.  His disapproval rating is nearly twice as high — 57 percent.

Press room laughter dies down.  The White House press room was a jovial place to be in the early days of President Barack Obama's presidency. ... But the laughter has been reduced by half in recent months:  In the first six months of the Obama administration, briefings produced an average of 179 laughs per month.  Over the past six months, the average has dropped down to 89.

More about News Media Bias in President Obama's Favor.

A Less Perfect Union.  [Scroll down]  Now every presidential campaign begins with expectations that are too high and goals that cannot be achieved.  But Obama and his team did more than any other campaign in our lifetime to promise changes of almost biblical proportions, ushered in by a person some of his supporters took to be almost a demi-god (during the campaign his advisers referred to him as the "Black Jesus").  And now, just a year into his presidency, it has all come crashing down around them.

Zugzwang:  Democrats' 2010 Dilemma.  So should Democrats and President Obama pursue an activist agenda and please the party base, or pull back the throttle and play small ball to attract independents?  They can't do both.  Welcome to Zugzwang.

Scaring a president straight isn't easy.  [Scroll down slowly]  Some of the union chiefs are threatening to sit out the November congressional elections.  Several of the self-selected leaders of the civil rights movement are muttering in their coffee cups as well.  They're afraid the president will abandon the agenda everyone else has already abandoned.

Obama Loses the Country.  Two polls released today [2/11/2010] give us a peek at the political peril that confronts Obama and the Democrats.  Gallup shows him in a statistical tie with a generic Republican opponent in 2012.  In short, voters are very open to a change in the Oval Office.

Barack Millstone Obama.  The news that Democratic Senator Evan Bayh is retiring is another stunning blow for a Democratic party that is already reeling. ... It will accelerate almost every bad trend for Democrats (more retirements, fewer entries into national races, more intra-party acrimony, and more panic).

USS Obama is sinking.  To shore up the hole between the revenue and expenditures, the government has to borrow money, and foreign nations serve as its lenders through purchases of U.S. Treasuries.  The administration has defended the nation's ability to service these debts, but it's becoming ever more difficult to believe its claims.

From 'hope & change' to 'duck & cover'.  Curling up into the political fetal position and begging others to do what he does not have the guts to do himself, President Obama yesterday [2/18/2010] issued an executive order establishing the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Pick an Excuse, Any Excuse.  Obama's defenders note that he is personally popular, which is at best debatable.  But even if that were true, Obama's personal political capital is as non-transferable as an out-of-state check drawn in crayon.  It's certainly useless in getting ObamaCare or cap-and-trade passed.  And, so far, it hasn't helped Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts.

Obama's approval hits basement.  President Obama's approval numbers in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll have been quite volatile the last few weeks but today reached a new basement level — with only 22% expressing strong approval, and 41% strong disapproval.

Obama Too Focused on Expanding Government.  At the dawn of the Obama administration, there were some optimistic conservatives who refused to buy the media-peddled scenario of the new age of liberal dominance.  But few could have known just how thoroughly President Obama's agenda would be rejected this year — not just by Americans but by the world.

Obama the philosopher king.  Mr. Obama's initiatives haven't stalled because of partisanship but because they are transparently bad for America. ... The reason Mr. Obama began to run into problems had less to do with partisanship than with public opposition to his ideological agenda.  When the ambiguous "hope and change" theme was replaced with a series of hard-left policies, America balked.

The Charge of the Democratic Health-Care Brigade.  I don't think there's ever been a situation like this in American political history.  Every way you look at it, Democrats are boxed in, forced to choose between extraordinarily unattractive options.  What makes it especially noteworthy is that this was a calamity they summoned entirely upon themselves.

Confidence In Economy's Future Is At Lowest Point of Obama's Presidency.  Views of the country's short- and long-term economic future are gloomier these days than they have been at any time since President Obama took office in January of last year.  Forty-two percent (42%) of American adults now expect the U.S. economy to be weaker in one year's time, up three points from January and the highest level found in 14 months of regular tracking on the question, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Anti-Obama Sentiment Sweeps the Nation.  What if President Obama had changed the way Washington does business, taken steps that actually improved the economy, offered a scaled-back, moderate agenda, and recruited a few Republican allies in Congress?  Had he done those things, would there be a powerful, anti-Washington tide today?  Of course not.

No We Can't.  One casualty of the serial crises confounding American politics of late is President Obama's charisma, heretofore seemingly one of his greatest assets.  As Politico pointedly asked, "Obama's charisma:  Where did he leave it?"  Pundits and commentators have even raised the question of whether he might after all be "just another politician."

Stopping the Runaway Congress:  The recall of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez took a step forward yesterday [3/2/2010] with a promising oral argument in New Jersey state court. ... So if the New Jersey courts allow the recall there to proceed, that means all 12 of these Democrat incumbents could be added to the ballot this year, putting majority control of the Senate even more in play.  That could cause Congressional Democrats to be more reluctant to follow Barack Obama off a political cliff.  The 12 Democrat Senators potentially on the hook for a recall election will be more likely to decide they better spend more time listening to their voters than to Barack Obama's ideological entreaties.

Early election disaster warnings don't help Democrats.  As Democrats go charging into a hostile electoral landscape, one thing they count in their favor is the foreknowledge of the resistance they face.  But foreknowledge does not ensure wise choices, especially if you only have a partial picture of the terrain.  Remember, Gen. Custer knew there were Indians in the valley.  He just didn't know how many.

Look On the Bright Side.  [Scroll down slowly]  We don't need polls to tell us what our family, friends, and co-workers think.  The most common thing I hear from among my Democrat friends is regret for having voted for Obama.

The end of the road for Barack Obama?  It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well:  it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not.  The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll:  The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday [3/10/2010] shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.  Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21.

Obama's approval:  New low in Gallup.  Just 46 percent of those surveyed over the past three days voiced approval for the job that President Barack Obama is performing, with 45 percent voicing disapproval, Gallup reports today [3/11/2010].

A seal of disapproval.  Barack Obama's popularity has plunged in a fireball down a mountainside and into a ravine over the past year:  After enjoying positive ratings of near 70 percent following his inauguration, Rasmussen Reports said this week that 43 percent of voters strongly disapprove of Obama's performance, as opposed to only 22 percent who strongly approve.

'Tis better to kill the health care corpse now.  There's abundant evidence that Mr. Obama's toxic agenda seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes.  Democrats with a bad case of nerves (this includes most of them) finally admit that Obamacare has "problems," and several Democratic office-holders in Missouri suddenly had business elsewhere when the president showed up for a rally in St. Louis this week.

Even the Democrats don't want to be seen with him.
 Demand for Obama wanes among moderate Democrats.  Moderate House Democrats facing potentially difficult reelections this fall have a message for President Barack Obama:  Don't call us; we'll call you.  Interviews with nearly a dozen congressional Democrats on the ballot this year reveal a decided lack of enthusiasm for having Obama come to their districts to campaign for them — the most basic gauge of a president's popularity.

Obama Unwelcome on Campaign Trail.  This week may provide the answer to the big political question of 2010:  how many Democrats are willing to walk the plank for President Obama's healthcare "reform" plan?  There may not be as many as the president and Speaker Pelosi think.  And some of them apparently aren't among the "Stupak Dozen," the anti-abortion Dems who have already declared themselves against the bill.

NBC poll:  17% approve of Congress.  If Americans are divided about how their congressman should vote on the health-care bill, the same can't be said for their views on Congress.  According to the new NBC/WSJ poll, whose full results will be released beginning at 6:30 pm ET [3/16/2010], only 17% approve of Congress' job.

Is Obama Making A Threat Or A Promise?  President Obama is threatening not to help any Democratic lawmaker who opposes his health care overhaul, according to the U.K.'s Telegraph. ... Is this really a threat?  Vulnerable Democrats already are running away from Obama.

Self-Slaughter.  If you want a sense of how much this whole process is damaging the Obama administration — the apostles of "hope and change," you'll recall — take a look at Robert Gibbs trying to answer whether the "Slaughter Solution" constitutes the kind of up-or-down vote the president promised.  It's almost painful to watch.  The unmasking of the Obama presidency continues, one day at a time.

The world watches our president fail.  President Obama has many times declared the debate on health insurance over.  He was right.  His side lost.  And so for the past six months, the president has used taxpayer money to buy congressional votes.

New Gallup Poll finds Americans suddenly souring more on Obama.  Americans, apparently unhappy with President Obama insulting Asian allies by twice postponing his long-planned trip there this week, have turned against the Democrat in a major poll.  Now, a new Gallup Poll finds, Obama's public approval rating has suddenly fallen to the worst level since he took office however many years ago that seems.  He was right around 70% in January of 2009.  Today [3/18/2010], Gallup reports, the ex-senator has plunged to a 46% approval rating.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.  The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday [3/20/2010] shows that 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.  Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21.  That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President.

Washington DC disconnect:  Barack Obama's dead cat bounce.  To listen to the pundits and soak up what the media is saying here in Washington DC, you'd think that President Barack Obama is running at about 70 percent in the polls and cruising towards being re-coronated in 2012.  The polls, however, tell a different story.

Obama Greeted by Boos at Nats Stadium.  President Obama tossed the ceremonial opening pitch of the 2010 baseball season this afternoon in Washington, but as he emerged from the home dugout he was greeted with plenty of boos along with the cheers.

Joblessness:  The Kids Are Not Alright.  Unemployment today doesn't look like any unemployment in the recent American experience.  We have the astonishing and dispiriting new reality that the "long-term jobless" — people out of work more than six months (27 weeks) — was about 44% of all people unemployed in February.  A year ago that number was 24.6%.  This is not normal joblessness.

Obamacare predictions were way off.  [Obamacare was supposed to] serve as the model for even more Democratic "successes."  Not quite.  Democrats rammed the Senate bill through the House only because it had first passed the Senate, so that cannot happen.  Democrats are wrung out, and Republicans have no incentive to compromise.  They know Obama's inept at selling his issues, and more so with his candidates.  Ask Gov. Deeds, D-Va., Gov. Corzine, D-N.J., and Sen. Coakley, D-Fantasy, how much Obama helped them.

Sorry:  No bump for Obamacare.  Last September, just as public opinion was beginning to turn against Obamacare in a serious way, Bill Clinton made a bold prediction.  "The minute health care reform passed," he said in a policy forum in New York City, "President Obama's approval ratings would go up 10 points."  Clinton's prediction reflected the wishful assumption of many wishful liberal-leaning pundits and think tank analysts, as well as the strategy of Obama's political advisers.

Obama(doesn't)care Taking Surprise Hits.  As President Barack Obama is attempting to steamroll yet another enormous policy change through Congress against the best interests of Americans, we would be well-advised to keep abreast of the frauds that are already being exposed about Obamacare.  Last week, reality dealt Obamacare twin blows — not that Obama will care.  An analysis inside his own administration and a report from New York state shed the grim light of reality on this monstrosity before its Draconian provisions have even gone into effect.

Poll finds Americans in an anti-incumbent mood as midterm elections near.  Members of Congress face the most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994, with less than a third of all voters saying they are inclined to support their representatives in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

A 70-seat tsunami?  The Democrats' current tactic of prioritizing legislation to weaken Republicans' standings (among all voters on financial regulation, among Hispanics on immigration, among young voters on cap-and-trade and the environment) doesn't really address their current problem, which is that the Democrats' standing among voters is at a record low and that they're getting pasted in polls despite the fact that the Republicans' standing among voters is not particularly high.

Young People Deserting Obama.  The youth are drawn to lofty ideals, and three years ago, Obama's rhetoric was full of them.  He promised transparency, post-partisanship, and a newer, better Washington.  Now, we're realizing this rhetoric didn't matter and was "just words, just speeches."

Failure-in-Chief.  The controversies over the Arizona immigration plan and the Obama Administration's response to the oil spill in the Gulf may not seem related, but they have a key common characteristic:  both originate in the failure of Washington.  In both cases, President Obama faces a real danger of a political backlash from which he will be unable to recover.

Another Dem bites the dust.  Another rat leaving a sinking ship?  David Obey has been a fixture as a Democratic member of Congress since 1969 and is chairman of the powerful House Appropriations committee.  He won re-election easily in 2008.  Now he is announcing his retirement, joining the band of Democrats who have decided to leave their seats before the door hits them on the way out.

Poll:  Obama has Lost Almost Half of his US Jewish Support.  United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.  The US Jews polled were asked whether they would:  (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else.  42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer.  12% said they did not know or refused to answer.

Democrats on the Run in Hawaii.  If you're looking for a sign that Republicans' message of fiscal responsibility and government accountability will win this November and Democrats will struggle to defend their reckless agenda, look no further than Obama's home district in Hawaii.

Caulkers, Clunkers, and Coakley:  [Scroll down]  In his Inaugural address, Obama spoke of the dawn of a new "era of responsibility."  He was going to make Americans believe in politicians and government again.  A year later, disgust for both is higher than ever.  His administration has proven to be as ordinary, corrupt, and unimaginative as any other, if not more so.  The hype has amounted to a cavalcade of nothingness: a stimulus package that hasn't stimulated the economy, bailouts for corrupt unions, frivolous programs for clunkers and caulkers, bribes to pliable pols, global warming dilettantism preached to Americans in a jobless torpor, a Justice Department that looks like an annex of the ACLU, a rhetoric of transparency coupled with a reality of secrecy, and a partying and porous White House that enjoys the trappings of power while not accomplishing anything to justify them.

Obama Buyer's Remorse.  President Obama's disappointing performance has indisputably brought enormous buyer's remorse to many of his fans, the feeling that the "purchase" (i.e., voting for Obama) was a mistake.  And while little can be done until November 2012, it may be useful to analyze why thoughtful people were seduced and, furthermore, learn to avoid future hoodwinking.

Another Very Bad Night for Obama, Democrats, and the Media.  You know it's bad night when a win is actually a loss.  Perhaps the worst news of the night [of 5/18/2010] for Team Obama was the Democrat win in the special election in Pennsylvania for Jack Murtha's seat.  Huh?  Yep, Mark Critz is a "Rush Limbaugh Democrat" who campaigned against almost everything Obama and Murtha support.  Frankly, he was more conservative than the McCain campaign of 2008 and more apt to criticize Obama than is, say, Lindsay Graham.

Las Vegas jobless rate hits record 14.2 percent.  Unemployment in Las Vegas in April shot to a record high of 14.2 percent with an estimated 140,900 residents out of work.  The state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation also said the Nevada jobless rate hit a record high of 13.7 percent for the month.

Jobpocalypse now.  This week, the Senate is expected to extend jobless benefits to more than 5 million Americans through the end of the year.  It is the sixth time in nearly two years that they've expanded or extended unemployment benefits — putting off, again, a day of reckoning our political leaders seem unwilling to face.

Poll:  Public Opinion of Democratic Party at All-Time Low.  Americans are dissatisfied with both major political parties, but the public's approval of the Democratic Party is at its lowest level ever, a new CBS News poll shows.

The petulant president.  Presidential petulance was on full display this week.  When 56 percent of the American people disapprove of the job you are doing, you've got a problem.  When you're the president of the United States and 56 percent of the American people disapprove of your job performance, you've got an enormous problem.

Barack Obama's credibility hits rock bottom after oil spill and Sestak scandal.  George W Bush's unpopularity and perceived incompetence was encapsulated by the way he dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Candidate Obama branded it "unconscionable incompetence".  Central to Obama's appeal was his promise to be truly different.  His failure to achieve that is now at the core of the deep disappointment Americans feel about him.

What's Driving Obama Down?  President Obama's job-approval rating just hit an all-time low.  And there's a pattern behind the trifecta of issues that are driving the drop — the oil spill, the Arizona immigration-policing law and the fallout from the Greek crisis.  After four months of hovering between a low of 46 percent approval and a high of 49 percent, Obama just fell to 42 percent in the daily Rasmussen polls.

The real unemployment rate?  16.6%.  The Labor Department's statistics don't include the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work.  This alternative measure creates a much higher number.

The Political Noose Tightens for Dems.  Among the problems for Democrats is that the narrative of the election — a bad economy, profligate spending, misplaced priorities, and the Obama administration's general incompetence — is just about baked into the cake, absent some extraordinary intervening events.  And the news for President Obama and Democrats continues to get worse rather than better.

The Coming Resignation of Barack Obama.  Months ago, I predicted in this column that President Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let alone have a prayer of being reelected.  Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection.  I am now ready to predict that President Obama will not even make it that far.

Unpresidential Obama.  Perhaps this is the "change" portion of the agenda.  In recent days, President Barack Obama has eclipsed his unflappable campaign image, exposing himself as man with a melting point, a Mr. Once-Cool turned hot.  After 18 months, his approval ratings continue to drop as his losses outpace his wins and his rock-star status of 2008 feels more garage-band as the dog days of summer descend on deflated Washington.

Never Letting a Serious Crisis Go to Waste.  [Scroll down]  By last Thursday [5/27/2010], the daily Rasmussen tracking poll revealed that 26 percent of Americans strongly approve of the President's job performance, while 42 percent strongly disapprove, giving Mr. Obama a Presidential Approval rating of minus-16.  A USA Today/Gallup survey found that 53 percent of Americans rate his handling of the crisis as "poor" or "very poor" while only 43 percent still are satisfied.  Nevertheless, Americans continue to support oil exploration.  By a significant margin, Texas voters still want more offshore oil drilling.  Similar percentages hold nationally.  However, for this White House, proceeding with new drilling would "waste" the crisis.

Who's Ready for a President Biden?  The whole point of Biden as VP was to provide Obama with impeachment insurance.  A President Biden is going to be a tough sell.  True, he is a dimwit.  But, at least we know who he is and his history.  Biden has a son who served honorably.  He spent his formative years in America and understands our traditions.

Poof Goes the Myth.  Politico is running a symposium:  "Is Obama's brand 'irrevocably shattered'?"  OK, not the discussion the White House wants to see raging.  That tells you something right there:  the media-Obama love fest is over.  The pretext is the Andrew Romanoff scandal.  But it could easily have been triggered by the president's all-time low weekly approval rating (46%) in Gallup or the BP spill or the Joe Sestak flap.

Obama's Youth Brigade Burns Out.  [Scroll down]  The young people working in the White House are supposed to be the truest of true believers. ... But as the campaign juggernaut settles into the grind of governing, many junior staff across the administration are heading for the exits, burned out and tired of life in the Obama bubble.

Hero to zero.  Never has any US politician's reputation crumbled so quickly.  Obama's position is beyond dire.  According to Rasmussen's latest ratings, just 25 per cent of Americans "strongly approve" of Obama's performance, while 41 per cent "strongly disapprove".  His presidential approval rating is -16.  His ratings for honesty and for being firm and decisive have plummeted.

Democrats suffering from 'Messiah Fatigue'.  President Obama is angry at God for making it rain in Chicago, and irked at the oil spill, making him pack up between his vacations and make trips down again to the Gulf.  Ideologues argue about over whether corporations or government tend to be the least competent, ignoring the proof that the answer is both of them.  And Democrats are having their own kind of crisis, a sort of buyer's remorse at a very high level, which sounds like Messiah Fatigue.

Jobs report a nightmare for Obama progressivism.  [Scroll down slowly]  Progressives generally, and Obama especially, encourage expectations as large as the 1,428-page (cap-and-trade), 1,566-page (financial reform) and 2,409-page (health care) bills they churn out as "comprehensive" solutions to this and that.  For a proper progressive, anything short of a "comprehensive" solution to, say, the problem of illegal immigration is unworthy of consideration.  For today's progressive president, the prospect of a jobless recovery is a comprehensive nightmare.

Obama Sinks to a New Low ... in the Polls.  The bad news for Democrats keeps rolling in, day by day.  And as the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf continues unabated, the job picture remains bleak, trust in government reaches all-time lows, and disdain for Congress approaches all-time highs, there's little reason for Democrats to view the midterm elections with anything less than anxiety bordering on panic.

Obama should stop trying to play the cowboy.  [Scroll down]  The crisis has turned into Obama's Hurricane Katrina.  His own reputation as chief executive is on the line; and with a 'Washington Post'/ABC poll showing that 69 [percent] of Americans think the government has been "not so good" or "poor" in its handling of the spill, the Democrats' control of Congress is also threatened at the mid-term elections in November.

Obama Failing on the Things the Public Cares Most About.  We've seen oodles of polls of late, all reflecting a precipitous decline in Obama's approval ratings.  But none is more interesting than the poll by the Economist.  It is all the more fascinating — and devastating for Obama — because it is a poll of all adults, not registered or likely voters, which normally would tilt more to the Left.  In other words, among likely voters Obama would probably be doing even worse.

I Know Who's to Blame.  After just a year and a half, it is virtually impossible by any measure to see the regime of Barack Obama as anything other than a failure.  Elected on lofty rhetoric espousing the nebulous agenda of change, hope, prosperity and unity, his first, only, and hopefully truncated term in office has turned into a cold, clammy, national nightmare.

The Bottleneck is Always at the Top.  The more the President flexes his media-enhanced, teleprompter-controlled, highly-reverberated communication skills the more people don't want what he's selling.

Obama can't talk away these problems.  The first 18 months of his presidency were all talk as Nancy and Harry and Rahm handled the details of which friends to layer $900 billion upon.  Health care "reform" was more talk among Democrats, with almost no immediate consequences until 2011 and most years beyond that.  The show went on.  But unemployment didn't begin to abate, and voters did not begin to cheer Obamacare.  Then suddenly an oil platform explodes, Israel's enemies stage a provocation, the jobs don't arrive, the Iranians push ahead with their plans, and Obama finds himself pushed by events to decide hard things and do more than talk.

The Liberal Tipping Point Away from Obama.  [Some have pointed out] the grave disappointment expressed last night about Barack Obama's speech on the part of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Howard Fineman.  This is a significant development, because it indicates this is a liberal tipping point — both tactical and emotional — away from Barack Obama.

The Left Turns on Obama.  The far-left in America is turning on their guy Barack Obama.  After his speech on the oil disaster a few days ago, the crazy left Greek chorus on MSNBC hammered the president.  He wasn't specific enough, he was too weak, I don't sense "executive command," they wailed.  You would have thought they were talking about President Bush.

Obama's Approval at All-Time Low.  President Barack Obama's weekly approval rating is at an all-time low for his presidency, according to the Gallup Poll, and it is especially low among those 65 or older, those who are married, and those who attend church every week.

Americans Who Don't Attend Church Form Base of Obama's Support.  President Barack Obama's overall approval rating stood at 49 percent for the most recent three-day period, and at 50 percent for the week ending May 8, but it would be lower than that if America consisted exclusively of people who attend church with some regularity.  Non-church goers form the base of Obama's support, according to Gallup polling data.

Middle Class Is Abandoning Obama.  The middle class is abandoning President Barack Obama, according to data released by the Gallup Poll.  The only income bracket among which a majority still says they approve of the job he is doing as president are those earning $2,000 per month or less.

Are Liberals Breaking Up with Obama?  [Scroll down]  The fairytale aspect of liberals' affair with Obama is, I think, that they — like the infatuated teenage girl — saw in him only what they wanted to see.  The gaping holes in Obama's résumé got short shrift, while his teleprompted eloquence had them all a-swooning.  Like the teenage girl who wants to hear or see nothing amiss about her new beau, liberals turned a deaf ear and blind eye to every troublesome bit of Obama's idealistic folderol and defended his lack of executive experience on the ridiculous notion that he was above those sorts of things because he was, after all, rather like a god.

Obama in the Bunker.  The Obama White House is in full bunker mode.  Don't believe me?  Here's the definition of "bunker mentality from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Allusions:  In politics, a "bunker mentality" is an embattled frame of mind, often accompanied by an aggrieved sense of being unfairly under attack.  The term is most often applied to American Presidents who suffer political reverses and assume a surly, defensive posture — all critics are enemies; if you're not for us you're against us; etc.

Record 57% Of Americans Disapprove Of Obama's Performance.  That's a new low for President Obama in the latest Rasmussen poll.  Just 42% approve of his performance, matching a record low.

Americans' Opinion of Obama's "Change" Promise Is Itself Changing.  Barack Obama won the presidency by promising change that both Democrats and many independent voters could "believe in."  The latest Towery Poll of the nation illustrates why his approval rating has plummeted.  It also shows how far the president has to go to recover from what is starting to look like a disastrous presidency.

Slickness won't save sinking Obama.  Is there anyone left who is proud of voting for Obama?  Affirmatively proud, I mean, not merely glad they didn't vote Republican.  Anyone? ... The only legitimate reason for supporting Obama was because he's a great speechmaker whose rhetoric could impact reality.  Only he's not and it can't.

Democrats driving off a cliff.  Last week, President Obama's job approval rating sank to 46 percent in a Gallup poll, matching the lowest weekly job approval rating of his presidency.  Few Americans were surprised.  Obama's bumbling response to the BP oil spill drove the latest decline in his popularity almost equally among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Confront a Liberal Today.  [Scroll down]  It's vital at this very opportune teaching moment, when the Obama they saw as a political savior is standing proverbially naked on the Gulf, to confront them with the choice they made.  To call them out.  To ask the hard questions:  Are you sure you voted wisely?  Are you happy with the change we've gotten?  Do you still have hope in liberal big government to solve all the world's problems?

Has the President Lost His Bearings?  The slo-mo implosion of Obama's presidency is the topic du jour among just about everyone these days.  From the yuppie-occupied tables at the neighborhood Starbucks to every main street beer joint and pool hall, in every golf club tavern and even at ladies' luncheons, the question of what went wrong and why is foremost in every American mind and on their lips.

NPR Poll is Bad News for Democrats.  The last week of House polls have reinforced the view I have held from April of this year that a 50-seat loss or so is the midpoint scenario for Democrats this fall, rather than the 25-40 seat range that most analysts seem to be talking about.

Barack Obama:  the most unpopular man in Britain?  In January 2009 Barack Obama was hugely popular on this side of the Atlantic, and could have walked on water in the eyes of the British media, the political elites, and the general public.  In June 2010 however he probably qualifies as the most despised US president since Nixon among the British people.

The Editor asks...
 What did the British have against Nixon?

Dems Turn On Obama.  To the left, the oil spill is not an index of presidential competence or an issue in the political sphere.  It is a daily gushing of poison into the Earth's waters as a direct result of the president's failure to stop it.  They blame BP.  But they already hate oil companies.  And they blame Obama, too.  And they are coming to dislike him.

Does Barack Obama want to be president?  [Scroll down]  But the question here is not his qualifications.  They are no longer particularly relevant.  This is a beaten man, struggling to show he is not, even though everybody knows he is.

Obama's Collapsing Base.  In a single year Obama lost the support of independent voters and liberal Republicans by passing the left's agenda.  And this year, he is well on the way to losing the support of the left for not passing enough of their agenda.  Being too left wing for mainstream America, and too mainstream for the left is not a new problem for the Democratic party.  It's a problem they've faced since what had been the counterculture became the party establishment.  But it's a special problem for the man who rose to power as the poster child of the left.  Barack Hussein Obama.

'Wal-Mart Moms' Turn on the Democrats.  The bad news for Democrats keeps pouring in.  Now it comes from Wal-Mart moms — women with children under 18 who shop at Wal-Mart.  They tend to be Democrats and more of them than not voted for President Obama in 2008.  But they're leaning Republican this year.

Confidence Waning in Obama, U.S. Outlook.  Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the country and less confident in President Barack Obama's leadership than at any point since Mr. Obama entered the White House, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Obama and Dems heading for electoral disaster.  All around, there are Democrats telling us their prospects for November are looking up.  Things aren't as bad as Republicans say!  Health care is becoming more popular!  The country wants financial reform!  People still like Barack Obama!  Isn't Joe Barton awful!  They're fooling themselves.  The basic indicators of voters' intentions — their general mood and attitude toward the policies of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid — are clear and solid.

Obama:  The Boy Who Would Be a Man.  Barack Obama is, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, a "man-child."  He is a boy who would be a man, a weakling who wants to look strong, and an inexperienced politician who wants so much to be a venerated leader.  To the chagrin of our nation, he is also our President:  a fact that sane people, including many who inexplicably voted for Obama, are starting to regret more and more as time goes by.

The Presidential Rorschach Test.  [Scroll down]  I can almost defend President Obama.  After all, he told us he was a blank screen.  And a blank screen can't be expected to actually do anything.  His supporters who are now angry and disappointed with him are like patients who hear the results of their Rorschach test and get furious at the inkblots.

Too brilliant to fail.  An irresistible force is meeting an immovable object on the field of perception, and causing an odd sort of storm.  The irresistible force is the growing idea that Obama has failed as a leader on a number of items:  "Engagement" has failed; our allies are angry; the oil keeps gushing, his ideas are job killers; the recession goes on.  His party lost three big elections under his guidance and seems poised for a drubbing.  The harder he pushes the country's laws leftward, the more its politics bend to the right.

Unprecedented Arrogance.  You'll recall that during both of President George W. Bush's terms, Democrats, including Obama, castigated him for destroying the economy, despite the existence of empirically verifiable robust growth during some seven of those eight years.  Now that Obama has been in office for a year and a half and his economy is failing by all objective measures, he and his Democrats demand, once again, that we ignore the empirical evidence in front of our faces and bow down to them in reverent gratitude for ensuring that things are not worse than they are.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.  The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday [7/2/2010] shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president.  Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20.

GOP tries to nationalize elections; Dems resisting.  Democrats and Republicans are framing the elections in starkly different terms, with GOP strategists painting it as a national referendum on President Barack Obama and the party in power, and Democrats working feverishly to make all politics local.

Teachers' Union Shuns Obama Aides at Convention.  For two years during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama addressed educators gathered for the summer conventions of the two national teachers unions, and last year both groups rolled out the welcome mat for federal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  But in a sign of the Obama administration's strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face heckling.

A Hapless Administration.  Last week was extraordinary. The President's economic advisor, Christina Romer, declared that Americans should be feeling pretty good about the June jobs report.  After all, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7 to 9.5% because 650,000 people were so discouraged that they gave up looking for work.  "We've known for some time," she said, that things would get bad before they got better.  Romer's advice to those losing their homes, their cars, their medical insurance, and all else was "Be patient."

The boomer defection.  This is turning into a tough election year for Democrats, and most of the reasons are familiar:  The economy is stalled, President Obama's popularity is sagging and voters are in an anti-incumbent mood.  There's an "enthusiasm gap" too.  Republican voters are fired up and ready to vote, while liberals are dispirited.

Obama's "False Narrative".  [Scroll down]  According to the True Narrative, Obama the Great acted with wisdom and courage to forestall another Great Depression.  The charges of profligate spending have been manufactured out of thin air.  The stimulus package has been a spectacular success.  ObamaCare will bend the cost curve down.  The economy is doing swimmingly.  The outreach to the Muslim world has led to unprecedented breakthroughs.  Nation after nation — Iran, Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, Venezuela — are bending to Obama's will.  And all the problems America faces — from nearly 10 percent unemployment to polarization to acne among teens — are owing to Obama's predecessor.  Yet ... Obama has become massively unpopular among independents.

Obama approval rating takes dive as he faces anti-business charge.  A new poll out Friday [7/9/2010] showed a new benchmark:  a majority of Americans now disapprove of Obama's job performance.  The Economist/YouGov survey of 1,000 U.S. citizens from July 3 to 6 showed that 52 percent disapprove of Obama's job performance.  And Obama's approval in the poll was at 43 percent, a concerning number for the White House.  Gallup's daily tracking poll, which averages all polls over the last three days, showed Obama Friday at 44 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval.

The Looming Catastrophe Of Hope and Change.  You know things are really starting to go south for the Obama administration when its journalistic functionaries and spear-carriers on the left are starting to openly fret and worry as they begin to feel November's chill wind blowing.  The visions of historic change, social justice and a plum government job are gradually being replaced by nightmares not just of defeat but repudiation.  The racket has been exposed by its own audacity.

Charges That Obama Stole the Nomination From Hillary Clinton.  Maybe the New Black Panther intimidation case is not an isolated event.  This could be the tip of a very large iceberg.

Democrats Realize the Cost of Obamaism — to Them.  If Republicans win big in November, it may not mean the end of the Obama presidency (we certainly have learned that two years in politics is forever) but it will end his aura of political invincibility.  Those Democrats who survive will need to chart their own course.  And internationally, friends and foes will begin to calculate and calibrate their behavior, knowing Obama may be a one-term president.

Faith in Obama at a new low.  Nearly 60% of American voters say they lack faith in President Barack Obama, according to a public opinion poll published on Tuesday [7/13/2010].  The results of the Washington Post/ABC News poll are a reversal of what voters said at the start of Obama's presidency 18 months ago when about 60% expressed confidence in his decision making.

Americans have lost faith in Barack Obama.  The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll is a major blow to the White House just four months before crucial mid-terms in November.  According to the poll, "nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country", and two thirds "say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working."  A staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president's decision-making, with just 42 per cent saying they do.

Election looms for Democrats:  How bad can it be?  For nervous Democrats, the big question now is:  How bad will November's congressional elections be?  The answer:  Pretty bad.

You Keep the RINOs, I'll Take the Conservatives.  Here we are heading into a campaign season where the people of this country are righteously angry.  They're angry about all of the taxing, and spending, and debt, and illegal immigration, and incompetent response to the oil spill in the Gulf, and having socialized medicine rammed down our throats, etc. etc. ad nauseum.  Large majorities of the American people have said, time and time again, that they don't want any of this, and they plan on throwing out the bums who have foisted all of this onto us.  Obama and his policies are more unpopular now than at any previous time.

Dems Have Lost Voters' Policy Support.  President Obama's troubles with a weakening economy are outracing his excuses, triggering political turmoil and angst among Democrats who now fear they will lose majority control of Congress in November.  The White House is getting slammed by one economic bombshell after another.  The data coming in during the past week suggests that economic growth had slowed down to just over 2 percent in April through June, far from the 3.5 percent that had been forecast.

Obama is losing control of the Democratic Party.  Of course, Democrats were cheering as they followed Obama off a cliff during the heady days of 2009, so they should share in the blame for the wasted moment.  But they won't.  They'll keep blaming Obama.  Churlish, perhaps, but very human.  Obama, who could once do nothing wrong, now can't seem to do anything right in Democratic eyes.

Obama's Job Approval Lowest in Wyoming at 29%, and Utah, 34%.  President Barack Obama's job approval rating is lowest in Wyoming and Utah, according to the Gallup polling company, which tracked the numbers for all 50 states and the District of Columbia from January through June 2010.

President Haters.  During the worst ecological disaster of the era, as all levels of his administration repeatedly fumbled the ball, Obama golfed, partied, listened to Paulie Beatle, and went on vacation no fewer than three times.  Let them eat cake!  In direct consequence of these actions and countless others, Obama has become a hated man.  That hatred will only grow.

Liar, liar:  Why Obama is failing.  [Scroll down]  Now we are where we are.  We have a president that no one wants to listen to because we do not fully believe him.  His own party is deserting him not just because they know his ideas are unpopular.  They also know he is unable to convince anyone.  We have shut him off.  And now the revelations of J. Christian Adams have shown that his Department of Justice has a racial bias not entirely dissimilar to those of Reverend Wright.  Again the MSM is doing its best to ignore this, but the damage is still there and growing and Obama will not be able, this time, to make a speech in his defense.

A Year After Honeymoon Ends, Whites, Men and Independents Desert Obama.  It was a year ago this month that President Barack Obama began losing voters.  In the 12 months since, he has had legislative victories that appear — especially in the case of health care — to have cost him large amounts of both political capital and political support.

Obama Girl Is Nowhere to Be Found.  Democrats will be gulping this morning at the Quinnipiac Poll's latest results.  For the first time in the survey's history, Americans believe by a 48% to 40% margin that President Obama doesn't deserve re-election.  Almost as stinging, a plurality believe the country would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008.

Congress hits historic bottom in Gallup Poll.  Only 11 percent of Americans have "a great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in Congress, the lowest rating ever reached by any of the 16 major institutions ranked in public esteem by Gallup's Confidence in Institutions survey since 1973.

Youths turn on Obama.  Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama's "Yes, we can" message are now saying "Maybe not" — and are backing away from the president in a worrisome new poll for the White House.

The Unpresidential President.  Barack Obama has managed a rare feat in American history:  The longer he is president, the less presidential he has become.  Obama has reversed the usual process of growth and maturation, appearing today far more like a candidate for the presidency — and a very ordinary one at that — than he did during the latter stages of his campaign.

Record 50.1% Disapprove Of President Obama.  For the first time, a majority (50.1%) of Americans disapprove of President Obama's job performance in the Realclearpolitics.com poll average.  Just 44.9% think he's doing a good job.  The weak economy, which helped carry Obama into the Oval Office in 2008, is now dragging him and his fellow Democrats down on the cusp of the midterm elections.

Jumping Ship.  Christina Romer, the chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers becomes the first high-profile rodent to leave the foundering economic ship that is Obama's "fundamentally transformed" America.

Dropouts, underworked push U.S. rate to 16.5%.  Included in the national jobs report out Friday was an important — and uglier — number that often gets lost in the noise around the official unemployment rate.  Officially, the U.S. jobless rate is 9.5 percent, but by a broader measure the rate is well into double digits — at 16.5 percent.  The larger number — called the U-6 unemployment rate — counts jobless people actively seeking work but also includes those who have stopped actively looking for a job and part-time workers who want more hours.

Time to admit Obamanomics has failed.  It's no coincidence that Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, announced her retirement the day before Friday's brutal unemployment report.  With 131,000 more jobs lost in July, and downward revisions of 97,000 for the previous two months, it's easy to see why she would start looking for the exits.

Peak Obama.  Thirty-one months after the start of the recession, last week's jobs report for July was a fiasco.  The Labor Department reported yet another 131,000 jobs lost in July.  The Department also revised the June report downward to show 221,000 jobs lost that month from 125,000.  The unemployment rate remained at 9.5% only because 181,000 additional discouraged workers left the work force, and so were not counted as unemployed.  That makes one million who have fled the work force since April.

The stunning decline of Barack Obama.  While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president's own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party.

Obama approval rating falls into new danger zone.  One month ago on July 12, Obama's approval and disapproval both stood at 47 percent in the Real Clear Politics poll average.  On Tuesday [8/10/2010], the president's approval had fallen to 44.4 percent.  Disapproval had jumped to 50.4 percent.

Barack Obama is abandoned by the Left as his approval ratings collapse.  When your own tribe turns on you, you're in serious trouble.

Majority in Gallup daily poll disapprove of Obama for first time.  A majority of those surveyed by Gallup disapproved of President Obama's job performance for the first time.  According to the Gallup daily tracking poll released on Tuesday, 51 percent of U.S. adults said they disapproved of how Obama was handling his job, compared with 42 percent who approve.

Obama's Point of No Return.  There comes a moment in a failing presidency where the incumbent, through some single gesture, action, or statement, crosses a certain line from beyond which there is no return. ... With Obama, we have an abundance of riches:  the multiple vacations, the legal harassment of the state of Arizona on behalf of illegals, the clownish response to the Gulf oil blowout.  But when historians come to select the moment when Obama went over the edge of the world, I think they'll find the great Iftar mosque speech of August 13, 2010 hard to beat.

How-To Guide for Cleaning Up Obama's Mess.  These are trying times for the White House.  The President is embroiled in a controversy over the planned mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, and he's losing friends on the professional left for unflattering comments from his spokesman.  Liberal candidates would prefer he keep his distance on the campaign trail for fear that he could alienate independents.  Meanwhile, America is adrift.

Obama approval rate in Texas drops to 34 percent.  President Barack Obama's job-approval rating has dropped to 34 percent in Texas, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released this afternoon [8/23/2010].  Lone Star State voters are more hostile to Obama than the rest of the country.  The president's national approval rating stands at 47 percent, according to Rasmussen's daily tracking poll.

Honey, I Shrunk My Approval Ratings.  In what will rank as one of the all-time presidential PR disasters, we're now well over half way through what the White House called "the summer of recovery."  And what a recovery it's been.  Earlier this month, first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high.  The unemployment rate remains at 9.5% and 18.4% of workers are out of a job, can only get part-time work, or have given up looking for a job altogether.

African-American leaders express dissatisfaction with President Obama.  With President Barack Obama's approval ratings dipping below 50%, members of his strongest voting bloc have also started to voice displeasure with the way he has chosen to govern.

Economic Growth Rate Downgraded to Anemic 1.6 Percent in Second Quarter.  The Commerce Department is revising downward the economic growth from April to June to 1.6 percent — a decline from the original 2.4 percent forecast and much slower than the 3.7 percent of the first quarter 2010.  The barely-there number isn't enough keep pace with population growth, which needs about 3 percent annualized growth just to break even each year and prevent unemployment, currently 9.5 percent, from rising.

Obama Is Driving America Crazy.  Rasmussen has discovered that just 26% of voters "think Obama shares the same political views they have."  It adds that, "nearly two-out-of-three U.S. voters (65%) remain at least somewhat angry at the current policies of the federal government, including 40% who are very angry."  Also, "most voters believe the Democratic congressional agenda is extreme while a plurality describe the Republican agenda as mainstream."  No wonder Obama's job approval in several national polls is at or close to its all-time low.

Obama's Epic Failures.  Barack Obama returns from his August vacation with a growing pile of problems facing him on just about every front.  The economy is in a nosedive, his party is on the brink of losing its majority and the country is losing faith in his ability to lead.

Our Hula Hoop President.  Hula Hoops are a cheap plastic toy that are easy to use but can only really do one thing well:  go in sometimes entertaining circles; Barack Obama is a skilled and dispassionate speechmaker whose once dazzling speeches now begin to be seen as circular exercises in talking without any passion or conviction.  The next stage of the fad product life is the most tragic and the most inevitable:  rapid brand decline.

Obama's electoral coalition is crumbling.  Surprisingly, support for the president among Latinos, young people and women has dropped as much as it has among groups that were considered less likely to stick with the president, such as white males, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.  Support among suburbanites has dropped dramatically too, surveys show, while African American voters remain Obama's most loyal constituency and his fiercest defenders.

20 Signs That The Economic Collapse Has Already Begun.  The United States is rapidly becoming a nation where poverty is absolutely rampant.  As poverty continues to spread, crime will not be far behind.  Meanwhile, the international community wants to impose a global tax on us so that they can "redistribute" even more of our wealth around the world.

Obama's Summer of Discontent.  As a candidate for President, Barack Obama promised hope, change and a new direction for America.  Unfortunately, the initial hope has turned into despair, while the change has been negative.  Cleary, the country is going in a new direction, but it is toward a deeper recession, not an economic recovery.

Unemployment rose in 27 states last month.  Unemployment grew in more than half of U.S. states in August, the largest number in six months, as private employers aren't hiring enough to offset the loss of census jobs.

A Failing Presidency and a Broken Party.  Having worked in the White House, I can assure you this is not what Obama and his team of advisers wanted to hear — certainly not from a hand-picked audience at an economic town hall forum that is being broadcast on television six weeks before a crucial midterm election.

Obama at all time low.  President Barack Obama is contending with the lowest approval rating of his 20-month presidency, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll finds.  The president's approval rating now stands at 42 percent — an all time low in CNN polling and 8 points lower than where Obama was only three weeks ago.

Obama's CNBC Townhall Was a Disaster.  The training wheels have come off, and not even the combined effort of all the Beltway media to keep the president on his bike and moving forward is working.  The economic policy "team" is scattering like a too-popular-too-soon boy band after a second album, and the White House's "enforcer" Rahm wants out to run the efficient-and-thoughtful-by-comparison city bureaucracy of Chicago.  And we aren't even at the halfway point of the term yet.

What Is a Narcissist To Do?  [Obama] can no longer credibly portray himself as an outsider looking to change the status quo.  He is largely responsible for the status quo, which, by the way, is anything but static.  The "quo" is dynamic and is heading straight into the gutter, with our federal government 1½ steps through the bankruptcy door, nationalized medicine merely a heartbeat away, our national security going south and a chief executive and commander in chief determined to continue on the same perilous path.

Quick!  Call the union hall and round up some warm bodies.
 Obama Team Still Looking to Fill Crowd for University of Wisconsin Rally.  President Obama campaign found plenty of enthusiasm among students in the 2008 presidential race, but 2010 is another year — and with seats to fill at a Tuesday [9/28/2010] rally at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Obama team took the step of sending an e-mail message to supporters in search of an audience.

The Humbling of an American President.  He came into office not only promising to create jobs, restore prosperity, open doors of opportunity, cut health-care costs, and reduce our "mounting debt" but also to end divisions in our politics, transcend partisanship, put an end to the blame game, provide unprecedented transparency, stop the rise of the oceans, and heal the planet.  Those were his words, his claims, his commitments.

5 key reasons why Barack Obama's future looks increasingly bleak.  A new Gallup poll suggests the November mid-terms could result in the biggest victory for Republicans in the House since 1894.  Gallup's latest poll is absolutely devastating in its analysis of the Democrats' prospects for November 2, projecting a 13 point lead for the Republicans based on higher overall turnout, and a staggering 18 point lead if turnout is low.

Obama's Presidency Is Unraveling.  For the better part of a year, Obama has given the impression that he would rather be "right" in the eyes of his base than president.  (Unlike Henry Clay, he chose not to do it by investing heavily in infrastructure, but in government workers.)  If voters come to sense that Obama is serious about this, they may help him out by taking the job off of his hands.  This presumes, of course, that his fellow Democrats do not do it before they get a chance.

So Much Worse Than Carter.  The most important fact to take from the September unemployment report released last week is that almost three years after the recession began the economy was still losing jobs!  Almost 100,000 (95,000) additional jobs were lost last month from the economy overall.  That makes 400,000 jobs lost since May.

J'Accuse:  Halperin lays out the critical case against Obama.  President Obama has lost Time Magazine. ... [Mark] Halperin refers to Jobs Fairs across the country as "the breadlines for the Obama years."  And after criticizing the GOP for not offering alternatives, Halperin skewers Obama for wasting time trying to demonize the opposition.  I may be wrong but this might be the first time that outright charges of incompetence by Obama have figured so prominently in an article in the old media.

Obama enthusiasm fades in unlikely place: Wisconsin.  This is not a place where you'd expect President Barack Obama's hopes of a new liberal era to founder. ... Now, thanks largely to the president, the Badger State is leaning right.

President Obama's faithful losing hope as the magic fades.  This president gives rousing speeches.  He did it again yesterday [10/16/2010].  He bounded out onto the Hynes Convention Center stage, all youth and vigor, open-necked white shirt, navy blazer.  But he didn't sell me, or reassure me.  And he obviously knows he's having trouble connecting — even with true believers.

Obama Approval Ratings Lowest of Presidency.  President Barack Obama's approval rating has dropped more than 18 points since taking office to an all-time low of 44.7 percent, according to a new Gallup poll.  The results of the poll, released Thursday [10/21/2010], average approval ratings from more than 90 thousand respondents during the third quarter of 2010, July 20 through October 19.  Only three presidents since 1954 — Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter — received lower marks in the seventh quarter of their presidencies.

The Bender Is Over.  Whatever happens on Election Day, the heroic phase of Obama's presidency is over.  It is over not simply because he will spend the rest of his term playing defense rather than conquering new ground for liberalism.  It is over because the assumptions that underlay that first phase of his presidency have already been discredited.

Obama Pleads for Women's Vote.  Barack Obama's pandering to the feminists makes him look like the suitor who is unwilling to face up to his beloved's announcing she will marry another man.  In desperation, he showers her with expensive gifts, hoping to win back her favor.  A majority of women were captivated by Obama's charms in 2008.  Now, according to the pro-Obama New York Times, Obama is reduced to pleading with them "not to abandon the Democratic Party in its hour of need."

The Rage Against Citizens United.  Taking office in January 2009 as president, Barack Obama's achievement was everywhere called historic.  He was at the pinnacle of American life.  Two years later, he may be on the cliff's edge of another historic achievement — the electoral wipeout of his party with some of the Democrats' longest-serving and revered members of Congress disappearing in the avalanche.

Democrats making excuses for poorly attended Obama rally.  Yesterday [10/31/2010], Obama staged a rally at Cleveland State University.  Unlike the 2008 era of hopenchange, Obama spoke to an auditorium that had thousands of empty seats.

Has History Passed Obama By?  Barack Obama's dream of being a transformational president who alters the course of his country died 48 hours ago.  The message America sent Obama and the men and women America sent to Congress to replace his allies impel one to ask:  Why would he want a second term?

A Broken President.  As the nation swept the Democrats to the curb on November 2, the sheer relief of having been rescued from consignment to a collectivist dustbin was a blast of pure oxygen.  Obama was not only crushed; he was disowned.  While the absolute gains in Congress and State Houses all across the country were stunning enough, it was the speed of the about-face that was astonishing and epic.  Just two years ago, Obama was hailed as a 21st-century Lincoln, the figurative progeny of FDR and JFK combined.

The Incredible Shrinking President.  Barack Obama's global stature has taken a catastrophic fall, as evidenced by his latest trip overseas.  Even the New York Times cannot avert its eyes from the disastrous decline in his (and therefore America's) influence.

Dismal Jobs Numbers Expose a Leaderless White House on Economic Policy.  As today's calamitous jobless numbers report came out and the official unemployment rate spiked to 9.8%, Obama's economic dream ended.  The economy is now his mess.  It's his car that's in the ditch.  There will be no economic recovery any time soon for millions of American workers under this president.  And that may end up being Barack Obama's political legacy.

Obama's Approval Hits New Low Amid WikiLeaks Scandal.  Barack Obama vowed in 2008 to bring the country back into the international community, but Americans are starting to worry that it is instead once again becoming the "pitiful giant" it was in the 1970s.  A new IBD/TIPP poll finds Americans continuing to sour on Barack Obama and becoming increasingly fearful that his handling of the WikiLeaks scandal and other international crises is dragging the country down before the rest of the world.

He Has Met the Enemy, and They Are Him.  Mr. Obama has mastered the ability to look both unprincipled and graceless at the same time.  There is also a touch of bipolarity in this administration that is doing a fair amount of damage to it. ... Notoriously thin-skinned and accustomed to worshipful treatment by those around him (including the press), Obama is now clearly disquieted.  On some deep level, Obama must understand that, at this moment at least, his presidency is coming apart.

Obama's final betrayal.  President Obama has made a fatal political mistake:  He has shattered his progressive base -- perhaps permanently.  His liberal hour is over.  This is the real meaning of the White House's tax deal with Republicans.  Contrary to the administration's spin, the agreement is not a "compromise."  It is a surrender — an ideological betrayal of the Democrats' central economic principles.

The future still looks grim for Barack Obama.  There is still no sign at all of any kind of near- or long-term recovery for President Obama after his midterm shellacking in early November.  If anything, one month on from the Congressional elections which brought the Democratic Party to its knees, the outlook is getting even worse for the Obama presidency, and the notion of an Obama bounce is simply a pipe dream at the moment.

Union boss:  'How dare you want to keep your money'.  Liberals are up in arms over President Obama's grudging compromise with congressional Republicans on extending the Bush-era tax rates.  Indeed, the level of recrimination and venom directed at Obama from his erstwhile base is quite stunning. ... Even his most loyal allies, the unions, are expressing contempt at his decision to at last — two years into his presidency — bow to political reality and negotiate with the opposition party.

The sky is not falling, Obama's fairytale is.  With individual rights being tossed on top of the ash heap on an almost daily basis, it's difficult to peer all the way down to the foggy bottom for a look at where things stand in real time.  But the bottom line on what is happening during the fundamental Transformation of America is crystal clear.  There's an impostor calling himself president in the Oval Office with a shadow government of the radical agenda crazed czars running the circus.

Stunning new Gallup Poll finds 13% of Americans still approve of Congress.  A fresh Gallup Poll released this morning reveals that somehow 13% of Americans still approve of the job being done by Congress.  The new Gallup survey did not identify those people, understandably.  However, even though it is a surprisingly high number given the work not done there in recent years, the 13% is a record low job approval for Congress since Gallup began compiling such data in 1974.

Our "Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain" Moment.  At some point in late 2010 once optimistic independent voters, moderate Republicans, and centrist Democrats stopped listening.  They abruptly concluded that their 2008 Barack Obama proved not to be the great uniter, the great communicator, and the greater humanist who was to bring the country together around "centrist" values.  At about the same time, a once ecstatic liberal base began to worry that President Obama was not the brilliant postracial social organizer, the brilliant progressive explicator, and the brilliant big government architect who would take a center-right country with him hard to the left.

3 Out of 5 Americans With a Strong Opinion about Obama Don't Like Obama.  A Rasmussen poll released yesterday [12/23/2010] ... shows that, by a margin of 3 to 2, likely American voters who have a strong opinion about Obama's performance strongly disapprove of his performance — the exact same ratio as on Election Day.  Among all likely voters (not just those who feel strongly), Obama's approval rating has moved from minus-3 points on Election Day (48 percent approving, 51 percent disapproving) to minus-4 points today (47 percent approving, 51 percent disapproving).

Obama Destined to Be a Footnote in Presidential History.  Barack Obama has set a course that will leave his legacy as no more than a footnote in American presidential history.  For all of the bluster and glory, for all of the pomp and circumstance, and yes, for all of the anticipated hope and the promised change, the whirlwind of hype and expectation surrounding the president a mere two years earlier has virtually dissolved.

White Flight:  By any standard, white voters' rejection of Democrats in November's elections was daunting and even historic.  Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats, according to the National Election Poll exit poll conducted by Edison Research.

Nevada Unemployment Rises to 14.5 Percent.  Nevada's unemployment rate hit a new high in December, jumping to 14.5 percent despite employers adding 2,700 jobs, officials said Friday [1/21/2011].

Proteus-in-Chief.  Right now gas prices are skyrocketing.  The housing market is in worse shape than ever.  Food costs are climbing.  We are adding billions to the deficit every day.  The world abroad is not safer, and in fact it's heating up.  Unemployment remains over 9 percent.  A Proteus-in-chief can change only his own shape, not the shape of things as they are.

Why Can't Obama Do the Math On Jobs?  Unemployment fell last month, but only because Americans have given up looking for work in record numbers.  On net, 319,000 quit looking for work and left the work force in December.  In November, it was even worse, 434,000.  Over 1.5 million American have left the workforce since August.

The Essential Barack Obama.  [Scroll down]  Barack Obama floated in on a wave and found himself as President of the United States.  However, there are now no other currents to float upon, there are no other waves to ride.  There are no longer massive adoring crowds to deceive.  There are no more titles to capture.  For the first time in Barack Obama's life he is accountable, and upon his shoulders rest the lives and fortunes of millions in the United States and the world.  He has repeatedly shown that he cannot deal with, and will never be able to shoulder responsibility, as he is at his core self-absorbed, dishonest, and without coherence in his personal beliefs and convictions, thus putting the United States into long-term economic and international peril.

Major decrease in high schools applying for Obama graduation speech.  CBS News reported Monday [3/7/2011] that the White House has seen a decrease in applications requesting the president deliver high school commencement addresses.

Obama news conference registers 3.7.  The Real Good Talker has lost control of the political narrative in the nation's capital, which is very hard for an incumbent president to do.

People Are Starting To Notice.  Recent poll data suggest that Americans have woken up to the fact that Barack Obama is an empty suit, and the Democrats have nothing to offer in terms of policy solutions.  First, President Obama.  Today's Rasmussen Reports finds that among likely voters, President Obama has matched his lowest standing ever.  He now ranks at -22 on the Approval Index, defined as the difference between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of his performance.

Obama approval in near free fall.  This is quite extraordinary when you consider the president has committed American forces to a war in the Middle East.  It is extremely rare for a president not to get a nice little bump in approval from the public as they instinctively back the president in a crisis.  But from poll to poll, Obama is seeing his numbers reach their nadir, or near bottom for his presidency.

A clueless presidency adrift in a sea of confusion.  According to the Quinnipiac survey, Obama is now at the lowest approval level of his presidency, with his weakest reelect score ever:  ["]American voters disapprove 48-42 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing and say 50-41 percent he does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012, both all-time lows, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.["]

Declining Approval Numbers for Obama Among Blacks.  Gallup reports that President Obama's approval rating among blacks has fallen to an all-time low of 85 percent.  His rating fell five points in the last month alone.  Although on an absolute basis Obama's approval among blacks remains high, this number should be worrisome for the Obama 2012 presidential campaign.  Approximately 2.9 million more blacks voted in 2008 than in 2004.  Obama received 96 percent of that vote.

Obama No Longer Enjoys Majority Approval In Any Income Class.  President Barack Obama's approval among the poorest Americans dropped to an all-time low of 48 percent last week, according to the Gallup poll, leaving the president with less-than-majority approval among all income brackets reported in Gallup's presidential approval surveys.

Gallup: Obama approval hits all-time low.  President Obama's approval rating has hit it all-time low of 41 percent, according to the Gallup daily tracking poll.  A three-day average of the poll shows that 50 percent disapprove of the job he is doing as president, two points shy of his all-time low.

The Attack of the Cash Register.  President Obama's support among blacks and Hispanics has fallen to new lows according to a Gallup poll.  Black support declined by 7% and among Hispanics by 11%, farther than at any point since his inauguration. ... But there's another possible reason besides Libya and the deficit:  inflation, starting with energy prices.  The poor, including and especially blacks and Hispanics, are being hardest hit by increasing energy costs.

Dictating is Easy; Leading is Hard.  They were happier times.  Headier times.  President Barack Obama and his Democrats held strong majorities in both the House and Senate.  Dreams of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" were at hand.  Best of all, nobody could stop them, and they reveled in it. ... Fun times, fun times.  But they're over now.  The American people responded as Americans do, the Tea Party movement arose, and when November came they flipped the House to the GOP and left the Democrats barely hanging onto control in the Senate.  It was just enough change in the overall power structure to quell the hijinks.

It's All Coming Apart.  Despite Government propaganda and manipulated statistics to the contrary, our economy continues to deteriorate.  For every "green shoot" highlighted by the Government and its lackey media, multiple contra-examples are cited by independent analysts.  To continue to deny reality risks credibility.  Perhaps that is why S&P, arguably a sock-puppet of Wall Street, on Monday [4/18/2011] made its announcement regarding the financial condition of the US.

President's approval rating declining.  A CNN Poll of Polls compiled and released Friday [4/22/2011] indicates that 45 percent of the public say they approve of the job the president's doing in the White House, with 48 percent saying they disapprove of how Obama's handling his duties.

Brutal NYT/CBS Poll for Obama.  The New York Times is burrying [sic] the lead on their latest poll.  The numbers are just brutal for the White House:
  •   70% of Americans feel things in this country are seriously off on the wrong track.
  •   80% rate the national economy as bad (44% fairly/36% very).  Only 19% rate it as good (2% very/17% fairly).
  •   39% think the economy is getting worse, only 23% say it is getting better.
  •   57% disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.

Hope and change? A national gloom descends over Obama's America.  You know things are really going badly for the White House when even The New York Times, the most powerful bastion of liberalism in America, is warning the president he is in serious trouble.

America needs Fox News.  You can bet that if George Bush were president, the media would be out for blood.  You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not notice that gas is four smackers a gallon, real unemployment is still above 10 percent, America is trillions in debt with no end to annual trillion-dollar deficits in sight, we are still in two wars and itching for another one in Libya, China is poised to eclipse our economy in just a couple of years, and 25 percent of our kids do not graduate from high school.

Four in 10 approve of Obama's handling of economy; marks all-time low.  Four in 10 registered voters approve of President Obama's handling of the economy, a new poll found.  According to the McClatchy-Marist Poll, released Thursday [4/28/2011], 57 percent disapprove and the remaining 3 percent are unsure.  The 40 percent approval rating marks a record low for the McClatchy-Marist poll.

Obama's approval freefall.  The Gallup weekly survey shows that support for Mr. Obama has for the most part dropped across the board since the middle of March.  There were some signs of durable support from college graduates and liberal Democrats, and conservative Republican approval levels are steady — at 11 percent.  Most surprising, and perhaps most alarming for the White House, are the disproportionate approval drops in key support groups.  Approval from those aged 18-29 declined at twice the rate of the general population.

How the Smartest President Ever Becomes a One-Term President:  The news for the nation and the president continues to get worse.  Today [4/28/2011] we learned that in the first quarter of this year total economic output for the country grew by an anemic 1.8 percent.  This was a significant slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2010, when the growth was 3.1 percent, which was itself unimpressive, especially in the aftermath of a recession, when one would expect growth to be much more robust.

55% of Americans Prove Failure of Education.  Last Friday, a new CNN survey showed that 80% of Americans believe the economy is in poor shape.  Who could argue with them?  With unemployment ticking back up to 9%, home values still sliding, surging gas prices, lackluster confidence on the part of consumers as well as business leaders, and an apparently out-of-control national debt with no visible signs of solutions that are agreeable to both sides, we seem to be stuck in doldrums for the long run.  Here is the shocker in the same survey:  55% of Americans blame former President Bush and the Republicans for the mess we are in!

Obama the Desperate.  We are nearly two years into economic recovery, and our country still faces record high levels of unemployment.  The Obama years represent the highest levels of sustained unemployment since the Great Depression.  It's hard not to think that the administration's unrelenting hostility to the private sector in general and to companies and industries that create jobs in the United States isn't responsible for this deplorable situation.

Obama Economy Worse Than 1970s.  America's middle class is getting poorer; a record number of middle class workers are out of work.  If you are lucky enough to have a job, your wages aren't going up, but you are facing higher prices for everything.

The Obama slowdown.  The experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research say the Great Recession ended in June 2009.  After that, it looked for a brief period as if there might be a surge of economic growth as an oppressed private sector fought to break free of the malaise.  It hasn't happened, and the latest numbers are far from encouraging.

0-97 Unanimous rejection.  The budget proposal released by the White House back in February didn't win a single vote in the Senate on Wednesday [5/25/2011] — the final tally was 0-97.  Senate Republicans pushed for the vote as a counterpoint to the defeat of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan.

Not A Single Senator Supports Barack Obama's Budget.  Today [5/25/2011], in what would be a major news story if the times we live in were not so bizarre, the Senate voted 97-0 against President Obama's FY 2012 budget.  Obama's budget was such a joke that not a single Democrat was willing to support it.

Obama Goes Doh!-for-97, 98, 99, 100!  Mr. Irrelevant, the man formerly known as president, was in France when news came that the Senate unanimously rejected the Jerry Lewis gag budget that the administration submitted to Congress in February.  The vote was 0-97 against, with three Senators voting "not present."  Can you blame them?

Bad jobs report is a five-car alarm for Obama's campaign.  While incumbent governors fear prison breaks and weekend furloughs gone bad, incumbent presidents fear bad jobs numbers.  Today's Labor Department numbers spell trouble for President Obama's re-election prospects.

To keep his job, Obama needs more jobs.  President Barack Obama cannot escape one giant vulnerability as he bids to keep his job:  Millions of voters still don't have one.

Another Devastating Jobs Report.  The May jobs report is out, and it is not good.  The Labor Department reported only 54,000 jobs created, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.1%.  Not only that, the March and April numbers were revised downward.

The Job Market: Far Worse Than It Appears.  In normal times, it's usually acceptable for data users to stick with seasonally adjusted (SA) information while avoiding the adventure of delving into and analyzing the raw, not seasonally adjusted (NSA) stuff.  But these are not normal times.  We're at the three-year point of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy, an appellation I applied in early July 2008, when I recognized that the economy was fundamentally changing, and not for the better.  In abnormal times such as these, you cannot be sure that the SA data adequately reflects what's happening in the raw NSA information.

Three things missing from American bookstores  ...compared to a couple of years ago.  1. Bestsellers by the repulsive Michael Moore.  2. An endless selection of Don't-You-Hate-Dubya books.  3. Brown-nosing biographies of Barack Obama.  Even the book-buyers of the West Village, Santa Monica and Madison, Wisconsin, have worked out that he's *not a very good president*.

Obama seeks reshaped image for 2012 run.  The Obama Brand in 2008 was pretty simple:  Hope and change.  Then things got complicated.  The jobless rate on Friday ticked above 9% again.  The housing market nationwide continues to fall.  Gas prices are straining family's summertime budgets.  President Obama's signature health care law to expand insurance coverage doesn't command majority support more than a year after it was signed into law.

More Americans Think Economy Will Never Recover.  Americans are growing increasingly doubtful about direction of the US economy, according to the latest survey from business-advisory firm AlixPartners.  In fact, an increasing number, some 61 percent, say they don't expect to return to their respective pre-recession lifestyles until the spring of 2014, if ever.

Bin Laden bounce definitely over for Obama.  Those who forecast Barack Obama had sealed his second term as president with the killing of Osama Bin Laden look to be wrong.  According to a new poll, the 'Bin laden bounce' has already evaporated.

Barack Obama is floundering in a sea of bad news.  If last week wasn't bad enough for President Obama with the release of a series of dire economic reports, this week is looking even worse, kicking off with the resignation on Monday evening [6/6/2011] of his chief economist Austan Goolsbee.  On Friday Goolsbee struggled to explain an unexpected rise in unemployment figures, comically describing them as a "bump in the road", hardly reassuring news to the nearly 14 million Americans who are now out of work.

Daily economic briefings disappear from Obama's White House schedule.  At some point during the first two years of his administration, President Obama stopped receiving the daily economic briefing that he requested when he took office.

The Editor says...
 I take this as an admission by President Obama that he can no longer blame the state of the economy on George W. Bush.

Decline and fall of the American empire.  America clocked up a record last week.  The latest drop in house prices meant that the cost of real estate has fallen by 33% since the peak — even bigger than the 31% slide seen when John Steinbeck was writing The Grapes of Wrath.

The U.S. Economy's Bad News Deluge.  Anemic jobs numbers, cratering home prices, stock market plunges — the only upside to all these depressing figures, says Gary Rivlin, is they may force Washington to stop obsessing over the deficit and fix unemployment.  It was only a month ago that the Obama administration was reassuring us that the economy was on the right track.

The Editor says...
 Obsess is not an intransitive verb.

Goolsbee heads for the hills.  It can't be easy serving as chief economic adviser to President Obama.  The harder Austan Goolsbee has worked to implement the administration's borrow-and-spend philosophy, the worse the economy has become.  No wonder Mr. Goolsbee wants to get out of town.  If only he were more honest about it.

Gambling Man.  Suddenly, it seems, we are witnessing a crisis of confidence — the first outward sign of an inward glimmer of doubt in the mind of the most self-absorbed and self-congratulatory president in the history of the United States.

Read this article:
 Obama's Road to Nowhere.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median period of unemployment is now nine months -- the longest it's been since they've been tracking the numbers.  Long-term unemployment is worse than in the Depression.  Life goes slowly waiting for a fast-food job to open up.  This is Main Street, Obamaville:  All bumps, no road.

Obama speaks to half-empty fundraiser.  President Obama's re-election campaign swept through Florida on Monday [6/13/2011].  Obama spoke at three fundraisers, including one that was open to the public.  The largest fundraiser had a disappointing turnout.  Politico reported that only 980 tickets were sold for the event at the 2,200 seat Adrienne Arsht Center.  The upper level of the center was completely empty, the second and third levels only partially full, according to Politico.

The Obama Campaign Team's Electoral College Obsession.  The Obama team is committed to creating or preserving two jobs:  Obama's and Joe Biden's, and if the electoral calculus in the spring of 2012 suggests that a new VP may help more in a difficult race, Biden will be jettisoned, too.  The generic ballot tests suggest an unnamed Republican runs about even with Obama at this point.  Obama's bin Laden bounce has disappeared, and he now has an average approval score in the high 40s again, down from the low 50s.

African American unemployment at 16 percent.  The economy and jobs will be big issues in Washington again this coming week.  While unemployment among the general population is about 9.1 percent, it's at 16.2 percent African Americans, and a bit higher still for African American males.

Why the Jobs Situation Is Worse Than It Looks.  The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression.  In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000.  From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs.  This is contrary to all previous recessions.  Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.

The New Desperation of Team Obama.  Team Obama is looking more desperate these days.  The signs of desperation are clearly visible — Obama playing to a half-packed house in Miami, Obama using increasingly shrill arguments that his job creation efforts are working, Geithner's threats regarding the debt ceiling and the Democrat-influenced mainstream media's increasing criticisms of the Republican slate of presidential primary candidates. — If Obama's policies are so successful and if the country is doing so well, why do Americans see this growing desperation in Team Obama?

Top 10 Scariest Economic Developments.  [#1]  Jobs surge, but only at McDonald's:  The Labor Department's June unemployment report shows anemic job growth and that the jobless rate ticked up to 9.1%.  Even worse, of the 54,000 jobs created, fully half were people hired by the McDonald's fast-food chain.  With jobless benefits starting to end for some, there is little hope for millions of unemployed Americans.

The Jobless Summer.  Perhaps you've already noticed around the neighborhood, but this is a rotten summer for young Americans to find a job.  The Department of Labor reported last week that a smaller share of 16-19 year-olds are working than at anytime since records began to be kept in 1948.  Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001.

Obama's blue-collar blues.  Mr. Obama's declining support among white working-class voters in Nevada is unusually steep.  The Silver State boasts the nation's highest jobless rate, at 12.6 percent in April.  But the drop highlights an important development about the 2012 election.

Now Can We Say Obama Economic Plan Fails?  With unemployment now at 9.2% and job growth at a standstill, is there anyone not blinded by ideology or rank partisanship who can't see that Obama's spend-and-regulate economic plan has been an utter failure?

Barack Obama, Prince of Gloom.  With almost perfect and abject symmetry Barack Obama stood at a podium in the Rose Garden addressing the nation's latest depressing employment figures as the last space shuttle flight prepared to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center.  Our ever-worsening levels of joblessness and the end of American manned space flight are both Obama's handiwork.  He owns them.  Everything he touches seems to crumble to dust.

America abandons Obama.  So much for hope and change.  With the economy growing worse and worse, the grand promises of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign have faded as the reality of malaise takes hold.

The President's New Clothes.  Once upon a time, there was a vain president in far off Washington whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes and have parties.  He began by holding weekly soirées, and then twice per week, and then three times per week.  And at each soirée he loved to show off his new clothes and played with the presidential Teleprompter telling ever more outrageous stories.

From Rock Star to Rock Bottom.  Obama poll numbers remind us that the light that burns twice as bright lasts half as long.  With only a 40% approval rating, Obama's popularity is pretty much based solely on the opinions of people on the government dole, thus a 40% rating is technically "rock bottom."

Obama approval drops to 39%.  President Obama's disapproval hit 54% in Gallup's three-day running averages.  He also fell to 39% approval of the job he is doing.  Both marks are records for Obama.  His approval is at its lowest.  His disapproval is at its highest.  In other words, he is at negative 15%.  If Obama were a TV show, he would be canceled.

44% say they definitely will not reelect Obama.  Buried deep in the internals of The Washington Post's latest poll, and not reported at all in their front-page write up, is some troubling news for President Obama's reelction prospects.  Fourty-four percent of American adults, and 46 percent of registered voters, told The Post they definitely will not vote for Obama's reelection.  Only 20 percent of respondents said they deifinitely will vote for Obama in 2012.  Thirty percent said they would consider it.

Some unions to skip 2012 convention.  About a dozen trade unions plan to sit out the 2012 Democratic convention because they're angry that it's being held in a right-to-work state and frustrated that Democrats haven't done enough to create jobs.

Only 20% would re-elect Obama.  A new Washington Post poll is out.  It found only 20% said they will definitely vote for President Obama in 2012.  Another 33% would consider voting for him.  44% said they will definitely not vote for him.

Obama's 'Counteroffensive'? Please!  Seeing as President Obama cannot govern, he's had to go back to campaigning — an activity with which he's quite comfortable but decreasingly successful, as evidenced by his falling poll numbers and his endless, repetitive speeches.  I don't just throw out this governance charge lightly.  The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama is no longer receiving daily Oval Office economic briefings.  More troubling, he doesn't even appear to have much of an economic team left to advise him.

The View From Martha's Vineyard.  As he and his daughters bicycle around the summer playground of the Northeastern elite, Martha's Vineyard, President Obama is steadily bleeding away both the support of the nation and that of his most loyal constituency.  Several times, his approval rating in Gallup's daily tracking poll has sunk to 39 percent, with disapproval reaching 54 percent.

35% approval in Pennsylvania.  No Democrat since Harry Truman in 1948 has won the presidency without Pennsylvania.  President Obama may get the chance to break that streak next year as those bitter clingers in Pennsylvanians are turning their back to the One Term President.

Barack Obama, One-Termer.  Every day, thousands more Americans are giving up on Barack Obama's presidency.  We see this anecdotally as well as in poll data.  This, I think, is the real reason why Obama's Martha's Vineyard vacation is so out of tune.

Barry's Failing Blame Game.  From the golf courses of Martha's Vineyard to the shores of Tripoli, President Obama's re-election strategy is running out of steam. ... The Teflon has worn off.  Unless the media can save him — or the Republicans nominate another John McCain — Obama will be "one and done."

Obama's Approval Drops to All-Time Low of 38%.  Only 38 percent of Americans say they approve of the way Barack Obama is handing his job as president, according to Gallup's daily tracking poll released today (which averages the president's approval over Gallup's previous three days of polling).

Obama hits new low in Gallup daily tracking poll.  Gallup posted it's [sic] daily presidential tracking poll and the numbers for the president continue to look dismal.  According to Gallup, President Barack Obama's job approval rating has hit another another all time low.  Only 38 percent of those polled approve of the job president is doing while a whopping 55 percent disapprove.

Messiah of Hate.  Glamor is all that Obama ever had.  With the greasepaint off, there's nothing there but a surly kid with greying hair.  An obnoxious posturing preening brat parading down the runways of the world with his media entourage in tow.  Some actors can change from one costume to another, but he is the costume.  Worse yet, he isn't even the costume.  He's the lights, the stirring music, the hours of anchor commentary, the deliberate pauses, the photographic halos, the teleprompter and the building expectation.  Take those things away and there isn't even an empty suit.

Obama in winter.  A gossip Web site reports that The New York Times is working on a story that the president is depressed.  That's unconfirmed.  But if he isn't depressed, I'd hope the self-proclaimed "paper of record" would investigate why on earth he's not.

Bad News for Obama From the New York Times.  The New York district, Charles Schumer and Andrew Weiner's old district in Queens, has been in Democratic hands since 1923.  If a Democrat can lose in that district, a Democrat can lose anywhere.  And they know it!

Has Obama Learned Anything?  Democrats lose a special election in a congressional district they have controlled since the 1920s and which was framed as a referendum on the president.  There's a possible scandal brewing over the White House's effort to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion dollar loan to a solar-panel manufacturer, Solyndra.  The most recent Census Report shows median household earnings fell for the third consecutive year, back to 1996 levels.  A record number of Americans are in poverty. ... And that's just today.

Obama's None-Too-Divine Comedy.  The decision of who will become the next president of the United States will be made long before November of 2012.  After the current president's most recent tour de farce before a joint session of Congress, it is rapidly becoming a foregone conclusion who it's not going to be.  The Obama-adoring New York Times concedes that their manufactured politician may be in deep trouble as his own base begins to abandon him.  Independents have already done so.  The right was never on his side.  Even the Washington Post doesn't flinch from using the word "laughingstock" when referring to the petty political antics of Obama.

Blacks leave Obama.  According to a Washington Post/ABC News survey, [Obama's] favorability rating among African-Americans has dropped off a cliff, plunging from 83 percent five months ago to a mere 58 percent today — a drop of 25 points, a bit more than a point per week!

On Deaf Ears.  President Obama spent most of this month pressuring Congress to "pass this jobs bill," but he can't even get his own party to support it.  He's quickly turning into a leader without any followers.

Overrated.  [Barack Obama] has gone from sterling campaigner to put-upon leader; from the new FDR to the next Jimmy Carter; from being the orator who could hold millions spellbound to the man who moves no one at all.  The man who promised everything is delivering nothing.  Journalists who wept when he won the election now grind their teeth in despair.

Mourning In America.  The president admits that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago — a fact he can hardly deny.  But he steadfastly refuses to own up and take blame for his policy failures.

Do Dems Dare Dump Barry?  Rasmussen tracks presidential popularity, but the crucial number is in the strongly disapprove category.  These are voters highly unlikely to change their minds and strongly likely to show up on Election Day.  This number has been hovering for weeks around 45%, and once it hits 50%, then whoever opposes Obama in November will win.  Gallup shows that Republican voters are much more excited about voting than Democrats, which simply reinforces the Rasmussen numbers.

It's Hard To Be a Racist.  Just look at the unemployment statistics.  White unemployment is 8 percent, and black unemployment is double that, at 17 percent, and in some cities, black unemployment is near 30 percent.  It's gotten so bad under Obama's presidency that New York's Urban Justice Center has appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council for help.  But Obama's tired of black complaints.  Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus to "Stop whining!"

Obama's jobs plan blocked in Senate.  President Obama received a slap from members of his own party Tuesday [10/11/2011] as the Senate voted 50-49 to block his $447 billion jobs package.  The jobs plan, which the president has spent much of the last month touting on a cross-country tour, fell well short of the 60 votes it needed to proceed.

Obama Cannot Resign, He Must Be Defeated.  According to newly released internal White House emails, however bad things are now, they're about to get worse.  The messages, which originated within the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010, admits the train wreck of the Solyndra loan and indicates that "bad days are coming."  "What's terrifying," the note reads, "is that looking at some of the ones that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better."  It's important to note that these emails were released by Democrats themselves so, in all likelihood, this is the version of the story that presents the best possible picture of the Obama administration's future.

Obama's bus tour a flat failure.  The question is, when will reality set in for Obama?  ["]Closing out his bus tour on a low-key note, President Obama made a pitch for his jobs package at a firehouse, where a subdued crowd needed a bit of prompting to applaud his proposal to boost the economy.["]  Anytime a crowd needs "prompting" to applaud what a president says — especially on friendly turf with presumably his core supporters in attendance — you might want to get out the butter and jam because you know the prez is toast.

Announcing Retirement, Dem Congressman Bashes Obama.  Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., announced his retirement from Congress this afternoon — and he issued a scathing parting shot at President Obama's track record on his way out.  In a statement explaining his decision, Cardoza, a leader of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, said he was "dismayed" by the administration's "failure to understand and effectively address the current housing foreclosure crisis."

Strike Two for Obama's 'Jobs' Package.  One week after the Democrat-led Senate rejected President Obama's American Jobs Act in its entirety, the Senate on Thursday [10/20/2011] also rejected the first attempt to pass the bill piecemeal.  In a 50-50 test vote — with three Democrats joining every Republican — the Senate rejected legislation that would have supported jobs for teachers and first responders.

What Change Looks Like Under Obama.  This was their moment.  This was their time.  And they've had their chance.  The Obama record is one of almost undiluted failures.  And no group of Americans have been hurt more by his failures than the poor, the weak and defenseless, and those living in the shadows of society.

Even Obama's Cheerleaders Are Falling Away.  President Obama's cheerleaders are starting to peel away along with his approval ratings, and it's a fascinating sight to behold.  They offer different reasons, but they all boil down to one obvious thing — Obama is first and foremost about Obama — and one less obvious:  He has been a failed president.

For Election Year, MTV Drops 'Choose or Lose' Slogan.  After nearly 20 years of "Choose or Lose," MTV is changing the name of its election season campaign. ... The name change is, in part, a statement about the cynical mood of the youth voting bloc.  While young people turned out in unusually high numbers to support Barack Obama in 2008, MTV's research into "Choose or Lose" found that many felt they had lost anyway.

The Editor says...
 Indeed we all lost a great deal, thanks to the teenagers' vote.

The Beginning of the Negative Campaign.  2012 will be the most negative campaign we have ever seen in our lifetimes.  President Obama cannot run on his record because the Hope and Change he brought us is actually higher unemployment, more government debt, and a path toward bankruptcy.  In fact the Democrats have already begun running negative ads against Republican contenders.

Obama's Revolving Door Widens as White House Chief of Staff Quits.  The abrupt departure of Bill Daley, President Barack Obama's third White House chief of staff, reflects what pundits say is a highly politicized White House that is focused on only one objective:  winning re-election in November.  "It's now totally a political operation — only politics," Democratic pollster and Fox News analyst Doug Schoen tells Newsmax.  "Everything else, and everyone else, takes second fiddle.  Everyone and everything is expendable, when re-election is at stake."

Gallup: Only Carter was less popular.  In his third year as president, Barack Obama was less popular than all but one president — Carter — since Harry Truman in their third year as president.  According to Gallup, President Obama's average approval was 44.4% in Year Three of his administration, above only Jimmy Carter.

Gallup state numbers predict huge Obama loss.  Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday [1/31/2012], and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried.

The bad news behind the January jobs report.  Three years after Obama became president, even the official unemployment rate still remains high.  The newly released 8.3 percent unemployment rate is still a half a percentage point higher than when he took office.  But that still might be looking at the bright side.  If we include those who have given up looking for work and those who could only find part time work, the unemployment rate stands at almost an entire percentage point higher than when Obama entered office.


Association with Obama is now a political liability

Nobody wants to be seen with him, if they care about being re-elected.

Obama Defeats Specter.  Let's back up and stay focused on why, exactly, Arlen Specter lost this race — and had his career ended.  Two words:  Barack Obama.

A Bad Day for the Obama Agenda.  The wave that started last year is continuing to gain velocity, size and force.  This week's elections confirmed what the evidence has shown since last summer:  Mr. Obama's agenda is a political killer and his endorsement is of little help.  If there is a big takeaway from what happened on Tuesday, that is it.

Change boomerangs on President Obama.  Change is Barack Obama's political calling card and the fuel that propelled his never-waste-a-crisis agenda — but change is boomeranging big time on the president in a turbulent and unpredictable 2010.

America's Repudiation of Obama's America Continues.  [Scroll down]  Both Coakley and Specter enjoyed commanding leads over their opponents prior to Obama's active engagement in their races... There was no eleventh hour visit for Specter — but only because Obama's political advisors read the handwriting on the wall and were desperate to avoid yet another embarrassing image of their boss with his arms draped around another losing candidate.

Party like it's 1994.  The best strategy for Republicans running for office this November?  Get President Obama to campaign for your Democratic opponent.  It's a plan that appears to be working rather splendidly for the GOP so far.

Obama's lazy tribute to Daniel Pearl.  Barack Obama's remarkable powers of oratory are well known:  In support of Chicago's Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio.  He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley's bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican.

Freshmen Run Away From Obama.  The House Democratic freshmen who rose to power riding candidate Barack Obama's coattails in 2008 are now eager to strut their independence heading into the midterms.

This is great news!
 Obama to visit Bay Area to bolster Boxer's bid.  President Obama will land in the Bay Area today to raise money for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's re-election campaign as an anti-incumbent wave has Republicans in blue California convinced this is their best shot in years to oust their liberal nemesis.

The Obama Effect.  Democrats are going to have to think really carefully about how they deploy Barack Obama for campaigning this fall.  Polls we've conducted nationally and in several different states over the last few weeks have found that a candidate being endorsed by Obama is much more likely to elicit a negative response from Republican voters than a positive one from Democrats.

Governor candidate Bill White has 'no plans' to attend Texas events with Obama.  President Barack Obama's fundraising trip next month to Texas probably won't include a joint appearance with his party's pick for governor, Bill White.  "He has no plans to attend," White spokeswoman Katy Bacon said Tuesday [7/20/2010].

Sorry Mr. President, my schedule is full.  Signs accumulate that the President is becoming political kryptonite for Democrat candidates.  August 9th huh?  Let me check my calendar.  Oh darn the luck Mr. President, I'm going to be making a campaign stop at the Johnson County Fair.  My schedule is really packed right now, but maybe we can do lunch in... say... mid November.

To Help Fellow Democrats in the Fall, Obama May Stay Away.  As lunch was served in the Roosevelt Room of the White House one day last week, President Obama assured the nine Democratic members of Congress sitting around the table that he would do anything he could to help them survive their fall elections.  Even, he said, if it meant staying away.

Texas Democratic candidates distance themselves from Obama.  When President Barack Obama visits Texas on Aug. 9, the state's top-tier Democratic candidate, gubernatorial nominee Bill White, will likely be miles away, reaching out to voters in Johnson County near Fort Worth.

Democrats Hide from Obama in Atlanta.  The rats scurry for cover.  In this report from Jeff Hullinger at Atlanta TV 11Live.com, we learn that in Georgia Democrats don't want to be seen in the company of the usurper-in-chief.  Look for this trend to accelerate as we get closer to the elections.  But everyone should be aware that while they don't want to be seen in public with him they still are supporting his agenda.

Obama to Dems:  Don't worry, I won't campaign for you.  According to The New York Times, Obama is resigned to the fact that his unpopularity might be a hindrance for Democrats trying to get reelected in November.

Democrats Scatter Monday as Obama Comes to Town.  President Obama made his first Atlanta appearance since his inauguration.  The President flew into town Monday morning [8/2/2010].  If you think it was a time for Democrats running for office to rally around the chief executive — you probably haven't been following the campaigns this summer.

How Does Obama Measure Up?  President Obama is under water in public opinion polls, judged more unfavorably than favorably.  He now pops up in Republican campaign ads that link Democratic candidates to his unpopular administration.  And a growing list of Democrats would rather he stay away while they are running for office this year.  He's a political liability to his party.

Obama in Texas:  Awkward!  President Obama looks a little nonplussed by his official greeter in Austin.  No matter — the governor was just showing up his opponent, Democrat Bill White, who buzzed around for weeks saying he wouldn't appear with Obama in Texas today.  Perry gave Obama a letter asking for more help along the border.  White's snub was all the rage in the coverage, but the White House snorted audibly at the suggestion that Obama was somehow insulted.

Paging Bill White.  When President Barack Obama traveled to Austin today for three events, one Democrat was notably absent.  Bill White, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor running against incumbent GOP Gov. Rick Perry, did not appear with the president today, raising questions about the commander-in-chief's political capital in the Lone Star State.

The Obsolescence of Barack Obama.  [President Obama's] fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago.  He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008.  But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races.  Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past.

Keep Your Hands Off Texas, Mr. Obama.  Hundreds of people braved temperatures exceeding 100 degrees on Monday [8/9/2010] to send a message to President Obama:  "Keep your hands off Texas."  Hours after Obama visited the city for a Democratic fundraiser and a speech to University of Texas students, speaker after speaker at the Hands Off Texas rally contrasted Texas' somewhat vibrant economy with a much bleaker national picture. ... Speakers were gleeful that a number of Democratic candidates were campaigning elsewhere in the state and were not in Austin to join the President.

Obama is the key to the U.S. Senate race.  If the race is about Joe Manchin, he wins. ... If the race is about Barack Obama, the Republican wins.

Obama's visit to El Paso comes at tough time.  President Barack Obama will arrive in El Paso at a time of discontent, when the country's economic and labor market looks as uncertain as the future of its foreign policy. ... This emotional moment with historic significance does not mean Democratic candidates in Texas and New Mexico want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the commander in chief.  Even in El Paso, where an overwhelming 68 percent voted for Obama in 2008, candidates facing tough races in November will not be on hand for his speech.

Obama Comes to Wisconsin, Feingold Disappears.  President Barack Obama's spending Labor Day afternoon in Milwaukee at an annual union festival.  It's quite a party:  Parade organizers were still looking for volunteers to help carry the giant protest puppets of the Earth Goddess and such.  Pity, then, that Russ Feingold, the incumbent Democratic senator in a neck-and-neck race, can't hang out with the president.

Senator Russ Feingold tours Wisconsin during Obama visit.  US Senator Russ Feingold did not appear with President Obama at Laborfest, instead he campaigned in three Labor Day parades. ... With polls showing his election race so close, FOX6 asked Senator Feingold if he was trying to distance himself from the President by not appearing with Obama at Laborfest.

October Surprises.  The Democrats will probably suffer historic losses in both the House and Senate in less than 60 days.  The 11th-hour campaigning of the now-unpopular Barack Obama on behalf of endangered congressional candidates will not change much.  In fact, most embattled Democratic candidates don't want the president to even set foot in their districts.

The Obama Heyday Is Over.  Barack Obama hit the campaign trail this week to resurrect some of that hopey-changey stuff and to complain that his critics talk about him "like a dog."  Turns out the president wasn't, in fact, referring to his own party.  Voters might be forgiven the confusion.  It isn't as if Democrats have been showing Mr. Obama much love.  Quite the opposite.  Seven weeks from Election Day, the vulnerable wing of the majority has finally found itself a campaign issue:  blunt opposition to Mr. Obama and his agenda.

Enough with the Czars.  These days, Obama is politically toxic and stymied at every turn.  His stimulus plan has been rebuffed by a large segment of his party.  He's not going to get any further pieces of major legislation through, and the Senate has had it with his extreme, wacky nominees.  So once again, he placates his base and does an end-around the Senate confirmation process.

The Biggest Target is Liberalism.  This past Labor Day weekend, Russ Feingold, one of the most left-wing politicians in the historical record, avoided Obama as if he were carrying rabies, remaining at the far end of the state while Obama addressed union members, certainly some of Feingold's favorite constituents.  Dozens of Democrats are now distancing themselves from ObamaCare in a desperate effort to dodge the electoral tsunami now on the horizon.

Democrats Flee as Obama Speaks.  As President Obama delivers yet another speech on his healthcare debacle — this one on the 6 month anniversary of the bill's passage — he may notice some of the people who won't be clapping:  members of his own party.  Like aristocrats aboard a sinking steamship, Congressional Democrats are madly scrambling for whatever life vests they can find.

Rep. Russ Feingold Skipping Obama Rally in Wisconsin.  Democratic Party Chairman Timothy Kaine says he sees no slight in Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold skipping a campaign rally tonight where President Barack Obama is appearing on his behalf.

Loneliest man in DC.  Barack Obama has gone from a failing president to flailing at ghosts.  Even allowing for desperate times, his desperate measures are a national embarrassment. ... But it's impossible simply to ignore Obama.  He is the president of a troubled nation, and he regularly reaches new depths of demeaning the office as he fights public will.

Obama as Roman emperor — the rise and fall of the propaganda master.  Two years ago, Democrats were clamoring to ride in on Barack Obama's coat tails.  Proximity to the Obama persona was a prized political asset.  Today, amid dim presidential polling numbers, anxious Democrats are keeping their distance.

Dems who can't risk Obama visit welcome Clinton to campaign.  Embattled Democrats are increasingly turning to former President Bill Clinton to prop up their campaigns in the final weeks before November's midterm elections.  The former president is far and away the biggest draw for the party less than a month out, hitting races in states where Democrats would rather President Obama stay away.

Democrats reluctant to campaign with Obama.  Party members who are up for reelection are happy to benefit from the president's fundraising abilities, but most are keeping their distance as his job approval rating has fallen.

Where Is Obama Going?  Obama is now politically toxic in many states.  So where is he going on the campaign trail?  The White House schedule is telling.  He's going to Delaware, where the Democrat is already running away with the race.  He's going to Massachusetts, the bluest state until the voters disregarded his advice and elected Scott Brown.  He's going to California and Nevada, but for fundraisers, not big public events.  He's going to Rhode Island, where one supposes he can do no harm.

So, Barack, What Happened?  President Obama is not welcome in many parts of the country.  Even some members of his own party don't want to be seen with him.

Democrat Civil War Already Underway.  The long knives are going to come out after the election, when Democrats wake up to the damage Barack Obama has done to their party.  I have long suspected that there will be a serious effort behind the scenes to get him off the ticket in 2012, as happened to LBJ, or even out of the Oval Office before his term is over.  Those Democrats who want to survive in office — particularly those Senators facing re-election in 2012 — will see Obama at the top of the ticket as their pathway to political oblivion, along with their party.

Obama's Plight.  Just two years after sweeping into power on a platform of hope and change, Obama finds himself and his agenda a political liability to Democratic candidates throughout the nation.

Haley Barbour: President Obama's on the ballot.  Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said Tuesday's midterms will be "a referendum on President Obama's policies and he has treated it as such — that he is having to defend the Obama presidency in this election."  "He's in whole hog," Barbour said in an interview for the POLITICO video series "Countdown to 2010."  "He's worked hard, he's gone everywhere.  I think he's gone some places where he probably hurt their chances. ... That's why I say Democrats are running from Barack Obama like scalded dogs."

Democrats distancing themselves from Obama.  It's been a tough summer for swing-district Democrats seeking reelection in 2012 with a president at the top of the ticket whose approval ratings are in the weeds.  As these members begin to focus on their reelection bids after Labor Day, they are increasingly calculating how close is too close to an unpopular President Obama.

Memo to Dems: Dump Obama before it's too late.  In a hugely influential New York Times editorial, psychologist Drew Westen lamented that Obama's problem is himself.  "Like most Americans," he wrote, "at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue."  There is still time for Democrats to fix this — but only if they force their leader not to seek a second term.

Anatomy of Democratic Angst over Obama.  The furor comes not so much because he has embarrassed them on national security and seems increasingly detached from the job, but because that he nearly destroyed the congressional Democrats in 2010, often hovers below 40 percent in popularity, and has the potential to really do some big-time damage to the party in 2012.

The Public Has Rejected the Democratic Agenda.  Obama's popularity has plummeted to little more than 40 percent approval.  Suddenly, Democrats worry that the public anger could be contagious.  It might infect them as well -- in the way a sinking George W. Bush hurt congressional Republicans up for reelection in 2006.

New strategy for Dem candidates: Deny all knowledge of Obama.  Sounds like if the Democrats want to pull out of this dive, they need to start following the George Costanza Rule:  Listen to their instincts and do the exact opposite.  Or they could just become Republicans.

Obama's Empty Threats.  [Scroll down]  Obama is acting as if his approval ratings are in the mid-60s instead of the low 40s.  He's acting as if Republicans fear him instead of Democrats like Senator Claire McCaskill, who no longer want to be seen with him.  The president is acting like his agenda is popular rather than radioactive.

Aimless Obama walks alone.  President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government.  He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.  Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops.

Ballot box poison.  The film industry has its box office poison — actors who are guaranteed to turn any movie into a bomb.  President Obama is the political equivalent:  Ballot box poison.  Democratic congressmen from Pennsylvania are making Pittsburgh their personal no-fly zones on Tuesday [10/11/2011], when President Obama visits to extoll [sic] the virtues of the training center of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 5, which receives millions from Washington to retrain laid-off workers for jobs that don't exist.

Obama arrives in Virginia today. Which Democrats will be with him?  President Obama arrives in the state Tuesday [10/18/2011] as part of three-day North Carolina and Virginia bus tour to talk about the economy, but it's not clear how many Virginia Democrats will be with him.  As we reported today, Democratic state legislators are none too eager to support Obama, let alone be seen with him.

In tight Virginia races, Democrats cutting ties to Obama.  Three years ago, Democrats in Virginia couldn't get enough of Barack Obama — a popular, transformational figure running for his first term as president.  But as Obama arrives in Virginia Tuesday for a two-day swing to promote parts of his jobs plan, some Democrats are distancing themselves from him — even in supposedly blue Northern Virginia.

Obama's Coming! Run!  In 2008, Obama carried Danville with 59 percent, Newport News with 64 percent, Fredericksburg with 64 percent, and Charlottesville with 78 percent.  But Virginia has state legislative elections this year, and the initial Obama list coincided almost perfectly with a selection of incumbent Democrats who are desperate to distance themselves from the national party.

Democrats duck President Obama.  In trips to Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — all states that he carried in 2008 — members of Congress were notably missing from the president's side.  Though none came out and said they were deliberately avoiding him, they didn't have to: Dodging a presidential candidate who's riding low in the polls is a time-honored political practice.

Dems Run and Hide From Obama.  Politico is reporting on a trend others have been commenting on for some time:  Democratic candidates are treating Barack Obama? as if he has a communicable disease. ... In North Carolina, only Senator Kay Hagan, who isn't up for reelection until 2014, and veteran Representative Mel Watt, who represents a majority black district, appeared with the president.  North Carolina's six other Democratic House members took a pass, offering a variety of excuses.


Voter remorse       (Unpaid advertisement, presented as a public service.)



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