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's only one section.)

Disillusionment sets in:  the wheels are already coming off.

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.

Why I dumped Obama's party.  Republicans offer our only hope in slowing the Obama "change" juggernaut before the America of unbridled optimism and opportunity goes the way of the buffalo.  I don't want my great-grandchildren growing up in cradle-to-grave government care, where only the privileged few may afford a car, or own a home, or get non-rationed health care. ... Second, the popular myth that the Democratic Party is the party of tolerance and big-tent ideas is spectacularly false.  A fiscal conservative such as myself is treated by Obamaniacs like a ringing cell phone in church.

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.

Jobless rate jumps in Nevada, Las Vegas.  Unemployment continues to set records in Nevada and Las Vegas, and experts forecast higher joblessness in coming months even as the city's biggest resort begins hiring Monday.  Unemployment has spiked nearly a percentage point statewide, jumping from 12.5 percent in July to 13.2 percent in August, the state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation said Friday [9/18/2009].

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.


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