Note: You might want to start at the Barack
Obama Index Page, especially
if you arrived here by using a search engine.
Mr. Obama has never competently managed any business or organization in his life. (See
this page for details.)
There is only thing he has proven to be really good at — spending other people's
money. The American people aren't very excited about that aptitude.
The people who voted
for hope
and change are getting very little of either.
On this page:
(At this point, there are only two sections.)
Disillusionment sets in: the wheels are already coming off.
Association with Obama is now a political liability.
On another nearby page:
Obama and his team are incompetent.
Obama is helpless without a teleprompter.
Note: The newest material is at the bottom of the page.
We've Figured Him Out. The
American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much
to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American
diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright. ... The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a
student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar. Now, the American
people are starting to wake up to the truth.
Obama vs. Honduran
Democracy. If the Obama administration were a flotilla of ships, it might be sending out an SOS
right about now. ObamaCare has hit the political equivalent of an iceberg.
Americans should get wise by
Thanksgiving. By Thanksgiving, if the present polling trend continues, President Obama will slip into
the cold shadow of unpopularity. If we are fortunate, his political blitz to radically remake America also
will have run out of fuel and stalled.
Fatal Conceit.
[President Obama's] constant drumbeat that failure to act now will produce catastrophic results is more indicative
of presidential hubris than sound legislative strategy. The White House believes its "all in" approach of
high-visibility speeches, media appearances, and town hall meetings is the way to win. In reality it's
contributing to health care's dropping popularity.
The Great
Race. The tonsils comment, the Special Olympics gaffe, the historical blunders in Cairo, etc. suggest
not a hip, smart, postracial candidate, but an inexperienced, though tough-minded, tribal Chicago pol. If
all that results to below 50% approval, there will be an entirely new politics. ... Obama is about one or two more
gaffes away from a stampeding herd of House Democrats.
Cult Leaders Make Lousy Presidents.
Space limitations don't allow for a thorough listing of all Obama blunders so we will just look at a few.
There is the Revolving Door Cabinet of Chicago thugs and Clinton retreads. We have the Turbo Timmy
Geithner embarrassment. We are treated to a near daily blather fest from the always incoherent White
House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. ... But the real fait accompli for the new president was the remarkable
passage of that National Tragedy euphemistically referred to as the "Stimulus Bill".
President Obama's approval ratings
are slipping fast according to a new Gallup poll. His poll numbers have now dropped nearly 15 points and are at the
lowest level since he has been in office as President.
Yes we can ... change the
channel. The image we're forming of Obama is still soft, but it's starting to dry. And it's
beginning to look like a guy who is more infatuated with being a celebrity than a president. Someone who
would rather play with the White House toys than get to work. ... Even some of Obama's love-sick supporters
have head-slapping buyer's remorse.
Where
are the jobs, Mr. President? All year, Democrats have made promises about job creation. If
Congress passed the trillion-dollar "stimulus," they promised unemployment would not rise above 8 percent.
Five months later, unemployment has spiked to 9.4 percent, with President Barack Obama now admitting that
he expects it to reach 10 percent later this year. So what has the "stimulus" given us?
Welcome to the 'Hope'
Economy. After being asked when the public should begin judging the success of the nearly $800 billion
stimulus plan, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs answered, "I think we should begin to judge it now." Let's
take his advice. The administration warned that if we failed to support a stimulus package, unemployment would hit
a dire 9 percent by 2010. With the stimulus, unemployment, it claimed, would stay in the 8 percent
range. This week, the Labor Department announced that the jobless rate jumped to 9.5 percent, higher than
it's been anytime since August 1983.
After Obama Fails. A
failed presidency for Barack Obama could turn into liberalism's worst nightmare. Barely six months into
his term, the 44th president has succeeded in generating the most widespread and serious discussion of secession
since the Civil War. Despite what Newsweek's Evan Thomas may claim, Obama is not the "God" who will bring
us together but the autocratic sponsor of an overbearing, oppressive leviathan from which a growing number of
Americans are seeking refuge.
Barack Obama's honeymoon on the
wane. Barack Obama's remarkable political honeymoon may be over, as new opinion polls show US voters
expressing doubts about his plans to reform healthcare, rescue the car industry and close the Guantanamo Bay jail.
According to the latest opinions polls, Americans are also worried about their new President's management of the US budget
as spending blows out.
Change
People Are Starting To No Longer Believe In. Sure enough, bit by bit, much of the president's
agenda is starting to come apart like a cheap trailer in a tornado. ... More and more Americans appear to be
having serious misgivings about healthcare being under the exclusive or predominant control of the same folks
that bring you the U.S. Postal Service (which is itself struggling mightily with disorganization and
threatened with having to cut services).
Why Obama's
big economic gamble is failing. A string of new polls seems to show that America's belief in the wonder-working
power of Obamanomics has begun to fade. A Pew poll found President Obama's economic approval rating has fallen to
52 percent from 60 percent in April. A Wall Street Journal poll found 53 percent disapprove of his
handling of GM and Chrysler vs. 39 who approve. And the New York Times found that 60 percent don't think
Obama has a "clear plan" to deal with the monstrous budget deficit.
Visual
Evidence the Obama Team Completely Misjudged the Stimulus Impact. To get the stimulus passed, the
Obama administration promised the moon, and had no idea whether it would work. One hundred and twenty-one
days since the stimulus passed, there is still no sign that it is doing what it was designed to do —
mitigate the recession and put Americans back to work.
Obama Hopelessly Adrift on Foreign
Policy. [Scroll down] And then, for a cherry on top of this rancid sundae, Obama takes a question from,
of all places, the Huffington Post, without giving a similar opportunity to any conservative blogger. So much for
bipartisanship! ... One has to wonder, of course, if George Bush would have been allowed to get away with taking questions
from Michelle Malkin. ... Obama, meanwhile, is behaving in exactly the way one would expect a leader with no foreign policy
experience or credentials to behave.
Canada's incredible shrinking love affair with
Obama. A lot of Canadians, like Americans and the rest of the world were swept up in Obamamania.
Obama's approval ratings north of the border far exceeded those of our own leaders but given the current crop
of federal party leaders, this is hardly surprising. It didn't take long for reality to come crashing down.
The Great
Overreach. The stimulus bill has failed. Barack Obama has failed. The Trojan Horse
of Hope and Change crashed into the guardrail of reality, revealing an army of ideologues and activists
inside. Now, before I continue, let me say that Barack Obama will still be popular, he will still get
things done, and he will declare victory after signing a stimulus bill. But Obama's moment is gone, and
politics is about nothing if not moments.
America —
what have you done? President Obama has had, by general consent, a torrid First Fortnight. To
put it another way, it has taken precisely two weeks for the illusion that brought him to power to be exposed
for the nonsense that it so obviously was.
There May
Be the Will but Not Necessarily the Way. Barack Obama will not bring peace to the Middle East.
He will not end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Though he may part the waves, cool the planet, stop the
oceans from rising, this dispute will prove beyond him.
Neither stimulus nor change. Only three weeks into
President Barack Obama's administration was all the time it took for many Americans to see through the fog of
rhetoric to the ugly details hidden behind. President Obama promised to end politics as usual in
Washington and give us an earmark-free recovery plan that would jolt the economy by saving the housing
sector and rebuilding national infrastructure. That is not even close to what we actually got.
The
Impending Obama Meltdown. At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork
for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution. Abroad, some really
creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world".
Barack
Obama is a novice — and it shows. The activists who formed the backbone of Mr Obama's election
campaign appear less than energised. Few answered his call for house-party gatherings at the weekend to
build support for the economic stimulus plan. ... Governing, as Mr Obama is finding out, is not like an election
campaign. Mr Bush's failures will give him some leeway and his transformative appeal remains potent.
But making decisions and operating the levers of power is something completely new to him. And it shows.
The Quickie Honeymoon: The obvious
parallel to the Daschle debacle is the Zoe Baird imbroglio, wherein Bill Clinton's initial nominee for
attorney general was forced to withdraw on Clinton's first full day in office. Then as now, the salient
controversy involved the failure to pay taxes on an haute bourgeois indulgence: in Daschle's case, a
borrowed car and driver; in Baird's, a nanny and chauffeur who were undocumented immigrants. (Will
these people never learn?)
Obama's Leninism:
Obama's recent frustrations and impatience over the "Stimulus Bill" have less to do with his claims of
"catastrophe" and "crisis" and much more, it seems to me, to do with his breathtaking inexperience in a true
marketplace of ideas. And just where was Obama supposed to learn how to debate? In liberal
academia? From his "adversarial" minions in the press? Community organizing?
Obama's Busted Bubble. Obama's
current woes derive from the fact that he has hit the real world head-on. His bubble now lies shattered around him.
Absolutely no single decision or effort by the new administration has worked out as planned. With two months to
prepare, unparalleled cooperation from the preceding administration, full control of the government, and an almost
disturbing level of public support, Obama has misfired more completely than any other administration in history.
Obama
is headed for a one-term presidency. Obama is making himself the symbol of what's wrong with Washington rather
than being the agent of change in Washington. Democratic pols like Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York think voters don't
care about pork in the stimulus bill, but lots of now-former Republican members of Congress know better. Earmarks are
indeed, in Sen. Tom Coburn's evocative term, "the gateway drug to federal spending addiction" and the basic ingredient of
the culture of corruption in Washington that has driven the approval rating of Congress into the single digits.
So far, it's been Obamateur
Hour. It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single "event" to
throw him off course. Instead, he threw himself off: "Is Obama tanking already?" (Congressional Quarterly)
"Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?" (The Financial Times). ... The ship didn't need to hit an iceberg; it
stalled halfway down the slipway.
Barack Obama: Could he turn into a
'zombie president'?. If he is not successful in filling the financial black hole, Mr Obama will find his work
in Washington difficult to carry out — without an economy in recovery, public-spending plans and tax-cutting projects will
be severely hamstrung, and he faces the realistic prospect of the financial crisis casting a shadow of paralysis over his
entire term. He could become the zombie president.
Stumbling
out the gate: Barack Obama flubs his first big test. It's not easy to waste a mandate and a honeymoon at
the same time, but President Obama seems determined to try. You know he's off to a lousy start when his most favorable
reviews came after he said, "I screwed up." Did he ever, and not just once. If he keeps going this way, America
will be saying, "We screwed up."
No TV magic in
Obama's press performance. After watching President Barack Obama's first primetime news conference, I am
beginning to think the thrill is gone — his TV magic and mojo have deserted him. Maybe, folks like me
were just a little too quick in elevating him to the pantheon of great radio and TV communicators like Franklin D.
Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as masters of the media of their times.
So Far, Amateur Hour. The first however-many days of
Barack Obama's presidency have been a study in amateurism. Many suspected that Obama wasn't quite
ready, but kept their fingers crossed. Optimistic disappointment is the new holding pattern.
What's missing from Obama's performance isn't the intelligence that voters acknowledged in electing him.
It's the experience they tried to pretend didn't really matter. Experienced politicians, after all,
got us into this mess.
Why Obama's new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks. Has
Barack Obama's presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But
these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can
disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it.
Barack
Obama is 'screwing up' on the economy. Be very afraid. If you didn't get a chance to read Martin Wolf's
column in the FT yesterday, then take the time. It makes a powerful case which is genuinely troubling. Wolf
thinks Obama may already have fluffed his biggest calls on the only subject that matters right now — the
economy — and that he's in trouble.
Where's
the President Obama who promised to unite us? The sense of disappointment in Obama is spreading,
as are concerns about the consequences of a bait-and-switch presidency. The global selloff in stock
markets after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put out a half-baked plan for fixing the financial system
is a clear verdict. His arguing that investors missed the point is telling. Once again, a White
House has all the answers and everybody else is wrong. Obama, like his predecessor, doesn't lack for
confidence, only for others who share it.
The Audacity of
Irony. For the last 24 months a youthful Barack Obama has daily offered unspecified "hope
and change" idealism — all set against the supposed cynical wrongdoing of the tired Bush
administration. In the unhinged manner in which his supporters turned a center-right president like
George Bush into some sort of sinister reactionary, so too they deified a rookie senator as the long-awaited
liberal messiah. How could irony not follow from all that?
Obama Meets the Real World. The
first month has been ragged, and some disturbing signs have arisen. It's still very early — Obama has
yet to complete his first full month in office, after all ... But one thing is for sure: the adjustment has been
harder than he and his team envisioned, and the results are underwhelming. The problems are more complicated than
they said. It seems as if President Obama is spending half his time trying to lower the expectations of what he
can achieve.
What
Happened to the Hopemonger? It's long been said that presidents are only as powerful as their
public perception. Already, President Obama has lost a measure of his hopefulness at the moment he most
requires it. The public seems to have noticed. And there are some in Washington who speculate that
Obama's standing could still worsen. "Obama is in a much weaker position than his poll numbers suggest
and I think that the whole thing could collapse on him sooner rather than later," Doug Schoen, one of
Bill Clinton's former pollsters, said.
Forget 100
days, Obama's honeymoon is already over. The hopes which attended President Obama's inauguration
were so unprecedentedly, soaringly, stratospherically high that it was inevitable the process of coming down
to earth would be bumpy. But few expected the descent to be so rapid. In the last few days the
President who was welcomed across the world as not just America's, but the globe's, redeemer has turned
into — well, into just another politician.
Investors
Unimpressed with Obamanomics. The old saying that money isn't everything seems to epitomize
President Obama's inept attempts to jumpstart the economy by throwing $2 trillion to $3 trillion
at it. Nothing appears to be working.
Obama Stumbles.
Government is an impatient judge. Although the President was sworn in only last month, his country
already feels a little rattled. After the beguiling eloquence of his campaign, the Obama that Americans see
in the White House looks less sure-footed.
We're
Losing Our Country, But What Can We Do? From the moment Barack Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20,
the leftists who control Congress have — at his behest — gone on a drunken binge of
runaway spending vis-à-vis an $850-billion faux "stimulus" program that rewards failure and punishes
success. It is already clear that The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should be renamed The
American Relapse-And-Needs-Resuscitation Act, as is evidenced by both the simultaneous plunge of the Dow and
the president's polling numbers, as well as an epidemic case of buyer's remorse.
Top 10 Obama Blunders in Just One Month.
Phony bipartisanship, tax cheats in the Cabinet, the Census Grab, and many others.
One month in, Barack Obama's
approval slips, disapproval doubles. One month down, 47 to go. And Barack Obama's poll
numbers have slid almost 10% already. According to the latest Gallup Poll, the new president's approval
rating of 68% in January has slipped now to 63%, about average for recent new presidents one month in.
What isn't average, however, is Obama's new disapproval rating — 24%, or 50% higher than the
16% average for a month-old new presidency. And it's twice the 12% disapproval rate that Obama had
last month.
The new socialists: It
has now become fashionable for America's socialists to come out of the closet. Elected officials advocating
ideological viewpoints that would have elicited derision and laughter only a few months ago are now emboldened to
openly promote socialist policies. They feel safe because America's chief executive has embraced an agenda
that is quickly moving America toward socialism in which the goal is to have all power vested in the state and
any dissent is quashed.
Obama Just Doesn't Get It.
Obama does not perceive things are substantially worse or that his "strategy" is failing. He also
seems to have the timing terribly off as he discusses an onslaught of taxes and regulation while the economy
is staggering. And to make matters worse we have no General Petraeus to help guide us back from the
brink of ruin. We have instead Tim Geithner.
Voters' Obama Folly
Coming Home to Roost. It's only been 7 weeks since the man whose resume fits nicely on the
back of a postage stamp became the most powerful human being in the universe. As Presidents go, Barack
Obama has proven at least one thing true: change is like the flip of a coin. Change can bring the
best of times; change can bring the worst of times. And anyone over the age of twelve ought to have
known that.
Obama's Poll Numbers Are Falling to Earth.
It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to
conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed,
a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true.
Formerly Useful Idiots. Lenin
famously said of liberals in the West that they were "useful idiots." A number of really smart (go ahead, ask them)
people endorsed Obama only to find out that they were hoodwinked. He's not the guy they fell in love with. It's
the morning after, and they've been forced to confront the fact that he's a fraud. A forgery. In John LeCarre's
"Smiley's People" master spy George Smiley points out that "the more one has paid for a forgery, the more one defends it
in the face of all the evidence to the contrary." And, these people have paid plenty for their forgery.
Squaring Off With
Obama: I have to hope for the sake of our country's future that when people voted for Obama they
really had no idea what a disaster he would be, even though I kept warning them that he was a left-wing lug nut.
It seemed to me that his legion of fans had been hypnotized or sprinkled with fairy dust. They blindly accepted
that words like "hope" and "change" were complete sentences that actually added up to a national policy.
They didn't vote for the
policies. The message of the polls is that he had better start selling his policies harder, because they
are showing signs of not going over very well. Moreover, the unpolled elites, including those within the Democratic
Party, have started to ask questions aloud about whether their man is competent; and as we know from painful history,
such uncertainties from an elite tend to "trickle down."
Tongue-tied
Barack Obama is turning into Jimmy Carter. Obama has never run anything other than his presidential
campaign. He doesn't know the difference between governing and campaigning and he's sticking with what he
knows. ... He was always happiest with an autocue [TelePrompTer] and Republicans are rightly now having a lot of fun
pointing out his security blanket like reliance on the plastic screens for even basic announcements. But since
he became president, the old magic has been missing. ... The most striking aspect of the Leno appearance is that
while he's all smiles and self-regard, Obama is flat out not funny.
Barack
Obama: Just a "Regular Guy"? [Obama] was presented to the American electorate — by
his own campaign and by the press, as well — as a person of intellectual substance. Even his critics
have credited him with an impressive intellect. But now, the doubts are increasing, and more and more
Americans are beginning to wonder whether Obama is really up to the job. How ironic that the President
decided to portray himself as "the common man" just as an increasing number of Americans begin to suspect
that, truly, that's all he is.
Obama
surrenders his agenda. At his news conference Tuesday night [3/26/2009], President Obama
stressed the four most important goals he hopes to accomplish this year: health care reform, energy
legislation, education reform, and deficit reduction. But by the end of the hour-long session with
the White House press corps, Obama had retreated on three of the four.
Obama's
new TV image: tired, uptight and cranky. President Barack Obama ended his six-night,
buy-my-economic-proposal-please TV tour Tuesday with a prime-time news conference. And while not much
hard news might have come out of the session, there was at least one major change there to be seen in
Obama's TV image. Gone was the cool, composed, almost serene Obama who seemed to enjoy the back and
forth of his masterful first meetings with reporters following his election.
Obama Cracks
Up. The AIG bonuses, alienating our allies, that Special Olympics crack on "The Tonight Show" — there's
certainly plenty of competition, but this was probably the worst week of President Obama's nascent administration.
The problem wasn't just bad decisions followed by rash reactions and changing stories. The mistakes, oversights,
cover-ups, and bad press of this past week all hit Obama in the most sensitive spots, undercutting the pillars on which
he had built his rare transpartisan appeal.
Death
of the Obama dream. Well, that was fast. On March 20, only two months after the
cosmic anointing, Vanity Fair, of all places, unloaded on Barack Obama, in the terms it had reserved for the
past four or five years for the likes of George W. Bush. Well, not the whole magazine, but one of
its writers, media writer Michael Wolff, took an axe to the president, in a posting beginning "Sheesh, the
guy is Jimmy Carter," ending "This guy is leaden and this show is in trouble," and titled "Barack Obama is
a Terrible Bore."
Rebooting
America's Global Image Not Going Well. One of President Obama's signature boasts was that his
election would, to use his term, "reboot" America's image in the world. ... His election, he promised, would
transform America's global image. How's that project going?
Choking
on Hypocritical "Green" Legislation. President Obama's anti-oil cap-and-trade legislation that
will effectively levy a carbon-emissions tax on businesses and on all Americans will likely be one of the
first casualties of his liberal agenda. But its Republican opponents won't kill it. A growing
army of Democratic lawmakers, largely from the Midwest where that segment of the economy is heavily dependent
on coal-fired power plants and factories, are turning against it — perhaps enough to prevent his
climate-change plan from even reaching a vote in Congress.
No, He Can't.
Barack Obama was always going to disappoint. When you promise almost everything to almost everybody —
I'll stop the fighting in Iraq but I'll also keep going after al Qaeda there; I'll make the economy grow more
but I'll spread the wealth around, and so on — you will inevitably let many people down. Human
beings, even those who read fluently from teleprompters, simply cannot walk on water. But few expected
the wheels to come off the new administration so quickly. Just weeks into its existence, the Obama
White House is in trouble.
A Big, Fat
Failure. Well, it's about time. The Beltway is waking up to the realities of President
Obama's budget plan, which taxes, spends, and borrows as far as the eye can see. The president's vast
new commitments in the areas of health care, energy, and education have already spooked small-government
Republicans and the foreign investors who help finance America's public debt. Now even some Democrats
are beginning to realize that the president's fiscal policies are unsustainable in the long — and
maybe medium — run. What took them so long?
The Obama We Knew But
Denied: A vast array of Americans seem to still be scratching their heads in wonder at how a
complete political knave has been elected to the highest office in the land with nary a single real
accomplishment on his resume. ... In fact, I would venture to say at this juncture that it was Obama's
race — and nothing else — that enabled his election to the presidency.
President Obama's
Miscalculated Transparency: More and more supporters are waking up to the reality of the man
they helped put into the White House. ... Obama himself repeatedly vowed to bring "transparency" to the
presidency. He's certainly accomplished that, in spades. Which is precisely Obama's problem
and why his presidency is doomed.
Obama: Buyer's Remorse. The
existing regulation of U.S. banks was not accompanied by anything faintly resembling actual scrutiny and
oversight. It was the government that had created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy up and "securitize"
all those bad loans banks and mortgage companies were required by law to make. The short-term spending
in the billions that has been made is widely regarded as a massive waste of taxpayer dollars.
"Change" Turns Out To Be Too Expensive and
Unpopular. The Obama change machine is grinding to a halt. ... But it seems never to dawn on them that
the items on their agenda are problematic even within their own party. Where is the governing majority in favor
of cap-and-trade? There isn't one. Do moderate Democrats want to raise billions and billions in new taxes to pay
for nationalized health care? The public at large certainly isn't enthusiastic about it.
Stimulus Results: Unemployment
Soars. The unemployment rate now stands at 8.5 percent, the highest in more than 25 years.
So much for President Barack Obama's claim that the "stimulus" bill's would "create or save 3.5 million jobs."
Those Pesky Democrats. The
Democrats, if united, wouldn't need the Republicans to push through the Obama agenda. But time and again we
have seen resistance — to reconciliation as a means of pushing through cap-and-trade and health-care, to limits
on deductibility of charitable donations, and to card check. Moderate and conservative Democrats have not
been shy about speaking up when they think the president is out of step with their constituents. The
same may be true on defense cuts.
Hopebroken and
hopesick, Obama fans need a new start. All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what
accounts for the change of mood. ... Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to
entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.
California unemployment rate
reaches 11.2%. Unemployment in California shot to 11.2% in March, the highest level since the state began
keeping records. What's more, the number of people out of work for almost a year rose by 9.4%, and has now
doubled in the last 12 months.
What's Obama smiling
about? The Obama presidency is becoming a reverse fairy tale: The prince is turning into a
frog. ... What about integrity in government? Judging by his gutter-ball series of appointments and attempted
appointments, I am beginning to think that either his vetting process was actually looking for crooks or the president
is moving in the wrong circles. Obama put a tax-cheat in the U.S. Treasury, tried to put an even bigger tax-cheat
in Health, and only reluctantly dropped an accused influence peddler as commerce secretary.
Obama's hired
brain: "TEA PARTIES... unhealthy." The pain on their faces is real. Team Obama are
failing in their attempt to socialize the U.S. and one of two things will be forced upon us all. We
will change their direction or they will change ours. The constitution empowers us to do the latter!
Obama's Interrogation
Mess. The president, having started a fire by recklessly releasing memos describing interrogation tactics,
and then having poured gasoline on the flames by reversing himself on the banana-republic notion of investigating his
political rivals, cannot douse the resulting inferno simply by saying, Oh, never mind. The president is reeling
because he sees his legislative agenda going up in smoke.
When the Obama Backlash Comes.
The budget deficits he proposes are staggering. The trillions of dollars he wants to spend are incomprehensible.
There is no evidence that stimulative government spending even works. Obama is apparently racing to remake America in
a socialist mold before public sentiment turns against him.
Unemployment:
109 cities at 10% or higher. Unemployment rates in 109 metropolitan areas reached 10% or higher in March,
almost eight times more than a year earlier, according to a government report released Wednesday [4/29/2009]. Just
14 cities reported jobless rates of at least 10% last year, the Labor Department said.
Barack's in the basement.
President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency,
Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years. According to Gallup's April survey, Americans
have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969.
The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to
force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86.
Suckers United for
Change. If the words, "I've been had," are not at this juncture forming in the mind of
nearly every Obama voter, I would give terrific odds that he has been brainwashed and needs to reclaim
his common sense before the clock strikes 12 on the United States of America. We live in a dangerous
world, where no quarter will be given those whose brains have been turned to mush. If you were an
Obama Cult follower, the time to wake up and smell the coffee is right this very minute.
Rising
Unemployment Rate Undermines Obama's Goal to Create 3.5M Jobs. President Obama has vowed to create
3.5 million jobs by 2010. But the latest unemployment report shows Obama will have his work cut out for
him. The economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April, bumping the unemployment rate up to 8.9 percent, the
highest in 26 years, according to the Labor Department report released Friday.
Obama Loses His "Cool". When the
generation of Americans under the age of 30 gets around to realizing that this handsome young president might
not be nearly as cool as they'd hoped, it won't be hard to affix a date on when the milk began to sour. ... Scratch
a young Obama voter and you won't necessarily find someone who likes bailouts or cares about financial market
regulations one way or another. Instead you're likely to hear about how the awful Republicans wage wars,
bait gays and racial minorities, and basically act like a bunch of mean old white men. Party membership
and voting are frequently more about group identity than philosophical orientation about the proper role of government.
Michigan's jobless rate climbs to
12.9%. As expected, Michigan's unemployment rate edged higher in April, rising three-tenths
of a percentage point to 12.9%. The Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth said the
state's hard-hit manufacturing sector shed another 22,000 jobs in April, while the state lost 38,000 payroll
jobs across all industries during the month.
Obama talks a good game, but can't deliver.
Gitmo
speech exposes Obama's shallow rhetoric. On Nov. 14, 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama met with
employees of Google at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. ... Obama spoke at length about Iran.
He spoke at length about Pakistan. And then he said, "Last point, Guantanamo. That's easy. Close down
Guantanamo." The audience broke into applause. ... That wasn't the first, or the last time he said that; Obama
went down his national security laundry list hundreds of times during the campaign, rarely, if ever, giving
Guantanamo more than a few words.
An Overleveraged
Presidency. Like a troubled bank, President Obama is overleveraged. When a bank makes risky loans
and many of them default, the bank goes bankrupt (or gets bailed out). When a first-term president adopts
risky policies and many of them fail, his prospects for sustained public approval and reelection diminish.
One of Obama's policies — the decision to close the Guantánamo prison within a year — has
already gotten him in a jam.
The Gordian knot of
Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama is popular and trusted far more than his Republican rivals on all issues,
including fighting terrorism. Yet he and Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, are locked in a public battle
on terrorism policy and Mr Obama is losing. ... Mr Cheney attacks Mr Obama's position — closing the camp at
Guantánamo Bay and forbidding coercive interrogation methods — as "recklessness cloaked in
righteousness".
Roosting Chickens Plague Obama.
The Obama administration had the sort of week they'd rather see disappear down the memory hole. But unfortunately
for the president, the trouble may just be beginning. First, on the economic front the notion that we are going to
bounce back soon from the recession is proving to be a pipe dream. ... Moreover, the result of the president's
spend-a-thon and the Fed's hyperactive printing press has been a plunge in the U.S. dollar and renewed fears of
stagflation. ... This governing business is hard stuff. And it is made harder by an administration which
has used photo-ops and speeches in lieu of thoughtful policy.
Obama is
impressive — scarily so. The phenomenon of "buyer's remorse" is associated with seeing
something one has purchased in a new light. What seemed so enchanting in a shop window may look rather
tawdry when we get it home, especially in the moment when we realize that it is non-returnable. Thus a
plunge from public favour may be very sudden, and its consequences may endure.
Obama:
The Great Disappointer. There have to be millions of American liberals, gays and left wingers totally
disappointed with President Barack Obama today. It would seem that he, like they, were the idealists running
headlong into the brick wall of harsh realities, and will now be running headlong into each other.
Reality Hits Obamanomics.
When the president let it slip that our current fiscal situation — ever higher mounds of
debt — was "unsustainable," some pundits shrugged it off as a "long-term" problem. Not
so long-term. The Wall Street Journal explains that Treasury yields have shot up, reaching
3.7% on 10-year notes, the highest since November. Why are bond purchasers demanding higher
rates? They are spooked.

Obama's Plan A is Not Working.
On January 10, two of President Obama's economic advisors (Christine Romer and Jared Bernstein) put together a report in which
they projected the effects of President Obama's economic recovery plan. ... Unemployment was supposed to peak in the middle
of 2009 at about 7.9% and then decline thereafter. But in April 2009, it hit 8.9%. The actual unemployment
[percentage] demonstrates that, despite Obama's recovery plan, unemployment has continued to rise steadily. His plan
is failing to meet its projections, even though it has already cost our government hundreds of billions of dollars in debt
that taxpayers will eventually have to pay back with interest.
Obama's ambitious agenda:
The Social Security trustees announced this month that the program will begin running out of money in just seven years,
and the Medicare trustees said Medicare's Part A hospital fund will be insolvent one year later. Saving these
programs from financial collapse would be a major task in and of itself. Mr. Obama, however, wants to do it
all — including bail out the economy; create a government health care system; pour billions more into
education, including a new college-tuition program; and end the nation's reliance on fossil fuels. And that's
just for starters.
The Popularity Gap. Obama's
supporters and the media (excuse the repetition) never tire of telling us how darn popular he is. This is
supposed to defang his opponents, or warn the public off of even debating his policies' merits. But the
public is hardly thrilled about his policies.
A REAL Problem for
Obama. On his second day in office, President Obama issued an executive order to shutter the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp within one year — without any plan for how to dispose of the 241 detainees
held there. With the clock ticking, the president is discovering that closing Guantanamo is more easily
said than done, especially now that his own party in Congress has deserted him. ... His greatest obstacle
could be a national security law — and one that he voted for. The REAL ID Act of 2005
prohibits anyone affiliated with terrorist activity from entering and living in the United States.
Obama
Rated Highest as Person, Lowest on Deficit, Spending. While 67% of Americans view President
Barack Obama favorably, his overall job approval rating and his ratings on specific areas are less positive.
At the low end of the spectrum, only 45% of Americans approve of Obama's handling of federal spending,
and 46% of his handling of the federal budget deficit.
The Unsustainable Obama Presidency. Though
much is made of Obama's extremist ideology, thus far his decisions have been plainly political. His destructive
machinations are coming much more hastily than anyone could have presaged. There is no question that Obama has
grossly overreached. Polls are starting to show a widening gap between Obama's personal popularity versus his
policies. Is the Obama presidency, like the cars we will soon be compelled to buy, built to fall apart?
Barack's Issues Wane. At last,
there is convincing evidence that Obama's poll numbers may be descending to earth. While his approval remains
high -- and his personal favorability is even higher -- the underlying numbers suggest that
a decline may be in the offing. Even as he stands on his pedestal, the numbers under his feet are
crumbling. According to a Rasmussen poll, more voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats
to handle the economy, by a margin of 45-39.
Enviro-nazis Ultimate Solution.
Like many Americans last November, I voted for change. I had hope. I no longer have hope since the president
I voted for never mentioned a fraction of the agenda he now espouses. I did not vote to lower my standard of living,
humble as it may be. Nor did I ask to jump into the economic abyss in order to "save" the planet. When the
economic chickens of this agenda do come home to roost, many people will change their perception of the whole quasi-religious
scam known as "climate change." Once you view the fall you're about to take, it's natural to turn around and take a
good look at who is pushing you. I voted for change, not economic suicide.
Obama Begins to Implode. I didn't think he
would be stupid and/or politically incompetent enough to try to govern openly from the left but he has. Moreover, he
has rushed through radical (and radically destructive) programs and piled up a mountain of dangerous sovereign debt to do
so. And now the chickens are coming home to roost. By moving so radically and dramatically he unified
Republicans right out of the box. He did this through executive orders on borders, stem cell research, and by
announcing he was going to close Gitmo among other things. This unity on the right was accomplished within six
weeks of his Administration and will one day rank as one of the most inept, and self-defeating political acts in
presidential history.
Dem mutiny
on climate bill grows, says Peterson. More and more Democrats are ready to vote against Speaker Nancy Pelosi's
climate change bill, according to a congressional committee chairman who opposes his leader.
Obama's White House is Falling Down. In the
sixth month of his presidency, Obama has turned an economic downturn into an economic disaster, taking over and trashing
entire companies, and driving the nation deep into deficit spending expected to pass 10 trillion dollars.
Abroad, Obama seems to have no other mode except to continue on with his endless campaign, confusing speechmaking with
diplomacy. It is natural enough that Obama, who built his entire campaign on high profile public speeches reported
on by an adoring press, understands how to do nothing else but that.
Public Starting to Question Obama Economic Policies.
A flurry of polls show President Obama's personal popularity remains high, with few Americans blaming him for the financial
crisis. But the polls also show the President is losing public support for his economic policies.
39%
Now Blame Bad Economy on Obama's Policies. While most U.S. voters still blame the Bush
Administration for the nation's economic problems, a growing number are inclined to blame President
Barack Obama. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of voters now
say the country's economic problems are caused more by the policies Obama has put in place. That's
a 12-point jump from a month ago.
President Barack Obama's poll numbers start
to wilt. Eroding confidence in President Barack Obama's handling of the economy and ability to
control spending has caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest levels since he took office, according
to a spate of recent polls, a sign of political weakness that comes just as he most needs leverage on Capitol
Hill.
For President Obama, the honeymoon
is officially over. One job of journalists is, to borrow a horse racing phrase, to "call the
turns" of developing news. Yesterday [6/23/2009], the White House press corps called the end of the Obama honeymoon.
By peppering the President with forceful questions on Iran and other big topics and by challenging some of his
slippery answers, reporters captured the changing tone in the country. Like the end of a real honeymoon,
blind infatuation is giving way to a more accurate view of reality.
Debts,
Doubts Continue Obama's Slide. The national news media was still trying to deal with the
administration's agenda as gently as possible, as if everything was on a steady course. But his top
proposals are dangerously off course and headed for defeat.
Turning Point for Obama Presidency?
These are critical and difficult days for Mr. Obama. His job approval ratings, while still high, have
fallen. His support among independents, the crucial swing vote in American politics, has dropped from
60 percent in April to 45 percent now. His health care proposals are in some trouble on
Capitol Hill, amid growing public alarm about the staggering amount of deficit spending they will require.
Obama's promise of a new beginning now
hollow. [Obama] swept into office on a high tide of good will and anticipation. He was
going to fix Wall Street. He was going to end the war in Iraq. He was going to bring a new era of
transparency to government. He was going to stimulate a faltering economy and give new hope to a
shrinking, frightened middle class. He was going to close the prison at Guantanamo and end the torture
policies of his predecessors. There was even a hope that we would investigate how we went wrong and who
ordered it. He came to town on a white horse, riding a staggering wave of popular approval in the polls,
a golden leader in a golden moment with a golden opportunity, and then he did what? Nothing much.
Nothing different.
Unemployment
at highest level in 25 years. The turmoil ravaging General Motors and Chrysler generated big
jumps in joblessness last month throughout the Midwest, sending Michigan's unemployment rate above 14 percent
and pushing three nearby states into double digits. Jobless rates in Illinois and Indiana surpassed
10 percent, while Ohio's approached 11 percent, according to data released Friday [6/19/2009] in a
Labor Department report.
The unemployment problem is bigger than we
think. Unemployment rose to 9.4 percent in May, up from 8.9 percent in April and the
highest jobless rate in 25 years. That's 14.5 million Americans out of work, but it's not the
whole story. ... As the Associated Press notes, the combined unemployment and underemployment rate jumps to
16.4 percent. That's one out of every six people who want a full-time job.
Health Care
Will End Obama's Honeymoon. In the last two weeks we've seen President Obama endure treatment
that he isn't exactly accustomed to: harsh criticism from his own party, a significant slip in the polls, and
unfavorable headlines instead of glowing, inflated puff pieces. It seems that biting off more than he can
chew when it comes to health care, government intervention into the private sector, and ballooning deficits
have left him choking...
Obama's deadly hand revealed.
Among American Jews, a degree of buyers' remorse has been detected recently. Almost 80 percent of
American Jews voted for Barack Obama as President. Those of us who warned that this man would endanger
Israel were scorned. How could that possibly be, said the secular, liberal American Jews. He's a
Democrat, he's black and he's pro-abortion. With this triple-lock of unassailable virtue, how can he be
bad for Israel? Now some of them are getting an awful feeling that they may have made the biggest
misjudgment of their lives.
Obama's Cloudy Crystal Ball.
Today's New York Times explores why the White House was wildly off in its employment projections when it was
trying to sell the stimulus package. If you remember, the economic team said that if we passed the
stimulus, unemployment would be around 8 percent now and without it, we'd be looking at unemployment
in the double digits. Well, we passed the stimulus, and unemployment is 9.4 percent anyway, and
the White House now concedes it will rise above 10 percent.
Nation's
Unemployment Rate Edging Closer to Double Digits. The Labor Department is scheduled to release a
report Thursday [7/2/2009] expected to show the nation's unemployment rate edging closer to double digits.
Wall Street economists predict the jobless rate will rise to 9.6 percent in June from 9.4 percent in
May. That would mark a 26-year high.
Our Melting President.
Obama began his presidency with a lot of very enthusiastic support. About forty-five percent of Americans
"strongly approved" of the job he was doing, while an anemic fifteen percent of Americans "strongly disapproved"
of the job he was doing. In a couple of months, that gap between the "strongly approve" and "strongly
disapprove" closed to a gap of between eight and ten points. The number who strongly approved glided
down into the high thirties, while the number who strongly disapproved just about doubled, into the
low thirties.
Obama
'meddles' in Honduras — and chooses the wrong side. President Barack Obama has made it clear that
he does not want the United States to be seen as "meddling" in Iran's internal politics. Never mind that the
Islamic Republic has been "meddling" in our affairs for the past three decades, if such a bland word can be used to
characterize the seizure of our embassy in 1979, the killing of 229 American servicemen in 1983 and the planting of
roadside bombs to kill our soldiers in Iraq.
Barack Obama makes basic error over
balance of power in Kremlin. President Obama has made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrives
in Moscow today. His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday's man and to drive a wedge between the Prime
Minister and President Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin. Mr Medvedev is in office
but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Mr Putin's support and intentions.
Obama: 'I am not
naïve'. That brief statement of Barack Obama's last month seems every bit as risible as Richard
Nixon's "I am not a crook", after one reads the article on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Obama wrote for
the student newspaper his senior year at Columbia. ... Obama naïve? Throw in sophistic, jejune and purblind
to everything isn't a neat fit into ideological cubby holes that haven't change in two decades and you'll be on the
right track.
Tilting at Windmill Jobs. About
the best we can say about yesterday's June jobs report is that employment is usually a lagging economic indicator.
At least we hope it is, because the loss of 467,000 jobs for the month is one more sign that the economy still hasn't
hit bottom despite months of epic fiscal and monetary reflation. The report is in many ways even uglier than
the headline numbers. Average hours worked per week dropped to 33, the lowest level in at least 40 years.
This means that millions of full-time workers are being downgraded to part-time, as businesses slash labor costs to
remain above water.
Job Losses
Dampen Hopes for Recovery. Mounting job losses rattled hopes yesterday [7/2/2009] that the economy
is on track to grow later this year, showing that prospects for American workers are terrible — and still
getting worse. Employers reduced their payrolls by 467,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department said,
far more than forecasters had expected.
No second
stimulus, please. When the President signed his $787 billion stimulus package into law, he
confidently asserted that unemployment would not exceed eight percent. If Congress hadn't passed it, he
warned, it would rise to nine percent by 2010. Well, unemployment reached 9.5 percent last month,
meaning, by the President's own logic, that his stimulus package has failed.
Powell airs doubts
on Obama agenda. Colin Powell, one of President Obama's most prominent Republican supporters, expressed
concern Friday [7/3/2009] that the president's ambitious blitz of costly initiatives may be enlarging the size of
government and the federal debt too much.
Obama
Worshippers Offended by Criticism of The Apology Tour. Some who voted for Obama are starting to
realize what a terrible mistake they made. Even Colin Powell is starting to become disenchanted by
Obama's ultra-liberalism. Under President Obama's leadership, our country is rushing headlong away
from its founding and Constitutional principles toward the abyss of defeatism and destruction. Those
who supported Obama for president should all be ashamed of themselves.
Americans
are getting cold feet over Democratic proposals. The economic distress of the 1930s led
Americans to favor less reliance on markets and more on government. The economic distress of the
1970s led Americans to favor less reliance on government and more on markets. It doesn't seem
unreasonable to expect, as many political liberals have been predicting, that the economic distress
of the late 2000s will produce a shift in the 1930s direction. But it doesn't seem to have
happened yet. Or so the polling evidence tells us.
California's Nightmare Will Kill
Obamanomics. The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple.
If Obama's health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than
California's. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the
California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.
Obama's Katrina. The economy is
shaping up to be Barack Obama's Katrina. ... The difference, of course, is that Katrina afflicted a city and a few
states, while the recession afflicts the whole country. Unemployment is 9.5 percent and rising fast, certain
to go higher than 10 percent. And what is the federal government doing about it? Not much.
Ohio's Ominous Political Storm Clouds.
If there is one set of polling data that must be sending chills down the spine of President Obama and his political aides,
this is it: ... Among independents, only one in three people in Ohio approve of Obama's handling of the economy —
and his overall job approval rating among independents is only 38 percent. These findings are significant in
several respects. First, Ohio is not Mississippi.
America Souring on Hope and
Change. As if we were speaking another language, the Democrats are ignoring all the signs that they are
overstepping in expanding the federal government and spending like there's no tomorrow: The first signs of a revolt
are apparent in the polls.
Obama's Iceberg.
The jobs report last week opened a long gash beneath the waterline of President Obama's legislative agenda. Few
realize it, but a scramble for lifeboats is about to begin. On closer inspection, the economic news, which seemed
bad, is even worse. Not only did unemployment rise to 9.5 percent but wages fell, undermining the consumption
needed to revive a consumption-driven economy.
Independents begin to edge away from President Obama.
In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally
and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.
Blame Obama. When
will the failing U.S. economy become President Obama's problem? ... Job losses continue to mount, despite his promises that
his "stimulus" plan would create jobs and stop rising unemployment. The housing market shows no sign of imminent
recovery, with prices continuing to decline and more homeowners falling behind on their payments. Retail sales fell
again in June...
The Audacity of Conceit.
If the people who formulate the administration's economic policy are so smart, why is it so disastrous? Last January,
these wizards of smart predicted that if Obama's stimulus package were passed, the unemployment rate would not go beyond
8 percent by the end of the year. At this point, it is nearing 10 percent and shows no sign of slowing down.
How could they be so wrong with their vaunted brilliance?
Growing Worries about Our
Pied Piper. I think the Obama presidency is going to encounter far more public skepticism than one would
expect in the usual post-honeymoon political adjustments. Why? Because our president often acts and talks
as if he were at war with what we might loosely call "human nature." There is a growing collective recognition
that things simply do not work the way Obama thinks they do.
Obama's
Popularity Plummets in Ohio as Residents Express Impatience. Patience may be wearing thin for President
Obama's economic initiatives to produce results -- at least in Ohio -- as a new poll
shows the president's popularity plunging in that critical swing state. The president's approval
ratings from Ohio voters dropped from 62 percent in May to 49 percent this month in a new
Quinnipiac University poll, making it the first state in which Obama's job approval has dipped
below 50 percent.
The end
of Obamania. When he ran for president, Obama said his election would be "the moment the rise of
the oceans began to slow." And when he made his first big foreign trip in April, he was hailed by
adoring crowds — and almost-as-adoring politicians — in Britain, Germany, France and the
Czech Republic. But last week, in Russia and Italy, Obamania was little more than a
pleasant memory.
The Balloon Deflates.
The stimulus hasn't worked. Cap-and-trade and health care reform are in trouble. The can't-we-all-get-along foreign
policy isn't leading to a more peaceful world. And the administration seems to have no idea what to do about
Guantánamo. Congressional Democrats are nervous. Even Obama's media base is concerned.
Guess What? It's Not Working.
Despite everything Obama and Democrats have done — or, perhaps, because of everything they've
done — the bad economy appears to be getting worse. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the
S&P 500 both hit two-month lows, and financial analysts are starting to speak bluntly about the grim prospects
ahead.
Obama's
stimulus plan is not working. President Barack Obama's plan to attack the recession through massive
deficit spending is not producing the results the president promised in February when he convinced the American
people to go deep into hock in the name of creating jobs and boosting economic growth. Obama is well
into spending the $787 billion approved by Congress for his stimulus programs, and yet the unemployment
rate is still climbing and economic recovery remains elusive.
Welcome Back, Carter.
The stimulus package has failed to stimulate as trillions of dollars of debt are being laid upon our children
and grandchildren as we build turtle tunnels and try to save marsh mice. The Obama administration is
trying to get money into the economy instead of leaving it where it was in the first place through tax cuts.
As we near double-digit unemployment, it is failing as Carter failed, and the cry goes up: Where are the jobs?
Bam's
Slipping Grip on the Public. [Scroll down] Only 39 percent of voters say that Obama
is doing an excellent or good job on the economy, 11 points lower than his overall job approval.
Forty-three percent say he's doing fair or poor. As unemployment continues to rise and even Obama
predicts that times will get worse, this gap on economic issues will likely rise.
More bad polling
news for the Dems and Obama. For the second time since Obama took office, Republicans have been
leading Democrats on Rasmussen's Generic Congressional Ballot for three consecutive weeks. The gap
between the two parties matches the previous record of three points; however, it is the first time that the
gap between the two parties has been that wide for two consecutive weeks. If the GOP holds its lead for
a fourth week, it will be a record. Ditto if the amount of that lead exceeds three points.
Why Europeans are
turning against Obama. President Obama's policies have now begun to open the eyes of the
most hardened socialist in Europe and the reality of world without the United States being the economic
and military super power thus potentially ushering in the demise of Western Civilization has become a
frequent topic of conversation. I must confess I never thought it would take less than 6 months
into the Obama presidency before articles would appear in one of the most liberal and anti-Bush
publications in Europe, Der Spiegel, castigating President Obama.
Obama wags the dog. President
Obama's political strategy has finally crystallized: When all else fails, blame Bush-Cheney. And make no mistake
about it — all else has failed. ... Congressional Democrats and Obama seem to be disturbingly comfortable
with placing partisanship before national security and are not above manufacturing a scandal as a means to
achieve their objective.
Michigan unemployment tops
15%. Michigan became the first state in 25 years to suffer an unemployment rate exceeding 15%, according
to a report released Friday [7/17/2009] by the Labor Department. The state's unemployment rate rose to 15.2% in
June. It was the highest of any state since March 1984, when West Virginia's unemployment rate exceeded 15%.
Jobless rate tops 10 percent in 15 states,
DC. Unemployment topped 10% in 15 states and the District of Columbia last month, according to federal data
released Friday. The rate in Michigan surpassed 15%, the first time any state hit that mark since 1984.
Just Say Yes. [Scroll down] Another
poll tells us that the number of those who believe the Democrats are doing a good job of running Congress is a whopping
18 percent. On top of that, the President's own numbers are lagging, with seven percent more voters expressing
strong disapproval than strong approval. ... Add to this the 9.5 percent unemployment, the utterly decimated consumer
confidence figures, and the current Presidential administration is blundering full speed ahead with zero gas in its tank.
What's Next, Mr.
President — Cardigans?. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president's
approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the
recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to "accomplish too much,"
and 57 percent think the country is on the "wrong track."
Is
unemployment actually much higher? Like close to 20 percent? Every month, the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six "measures of labor underutilization" (i.e. unemployment). The
official unemployment rate used by politicians and the media, referred to as U3, measures the percent of the
civilian labor force that is out of work. But U3 does not include so-called "discouraged workers" who
have completely stopped looking for jobs, "marginally attached" workers who had not searched for a job within
the past month, or those involuntarily employed part-time instead of full time.
Barack Obama feels the heat, changes the
play. Health care reform, which once appeared flush with momentum from earlier congressional
victories, is now on a slog through no less than five committees, which include Democrats who either aren't
sold on Obama's expansive vision or can't figure out how to convince voters to pay for it.
Obama Is Delaying the
Economic Recovery. Unemployment continued to rise in June to 9.5%, with the loss of almost
another half million jobs in the month (467,000). Stretches of the country can be considered in a
depression, with the unemployment rate for Michigan at 15.2%, California 11.6%, Nevada 12.0%,
Oregon 12.2%... Over 100 urban areas now have unemployment rates over 10%. Adult male unemployment
nationwide is already in double digits at 10%. Black unemployment is 14.7%, with Hispanics at 12.2%.
Teenage unemployment is 24%, with black teenage unemployment close to 40%.
Unemployment
in Chicago area reaches 11.3 percent. The unemployment rate in the Chicago metropolitan area
continued to surge in June, reaching 11.3 percent, up from 6.9 percent a year earlier and the highest
level since July of 1983, the Illinois Department of Employment Security said Thursday. The rate is up
from 10.7 percent in May and from 9.9 percent in April. It exceeds the state's 10.3 percent
rate and the nation's 9.5 percent rate.
The Obama dream
turns into nightmare. As recent Gallup surveys have shown, the United States remains a largely conservative
nation, and Obama's brand of high spending, high taxing neo-socialism is increasingly rejected by the American public.
While much of Europe, including Britain, is moving rightwards, America is the only major country in the Western world whose
leadership is dramatically moving to the left. Although he ran for the presidency largely as a centrist, Obama's
government is without doubt the most left-wing administration in American history.
Obama's dwindling power.
Superficially, the United States appears to have a presidential system, but in fact it more and more resembles a
parliamentary form of government. When a president loses the approval of the majority of the voters and polls
reflect that his ratings have fallen substantially below 50 percent, he loses his power. In this context,
polls are like parliamentary votes of no confidence in European systems.
Poll Shows Majority of Americans Think
Country Is Heading In Wrong Direction. That was fast. The hope and optimism that washed over the
country in the opening months of Barack Obama's presidency are giving way to harsh realities.
Obama poll numbers take a
dive. Barack Obama now has a negative approval score for the first time since his victory last November:
49% approve, 51% disapprove. Among those who feel strongly one way or the other, 30% strongly approve, 38% strongly
disapprove.
Obama's Fall by the Numbers. Barack
Obama is now the tenth most popular president of the last twelve at this stage of his presidency (six months since his
inauguration). A president with huge majorities in both houses of Congress, an adoring national media, enormous and
constant media exposure, a fractured and rudderless opposition party, and bold plans to restructure America (change we can
believe in) should be doing much better.
Obama's Popularity
Falling -- But Not Among Blacks. On Monday, the daily presidential tracking poll for Rasmussen
Reports showed that Barack Obama no longer has the job performance approval of a majority of Americans. His
overall approval rating was down to an even 50 percent. Released on the same day was a demographic
breakdown of that rating: only 41 percent of white Americans approve of the job he's doing, while
97 percent of blacks approve and 58 percent of all other ethnicities combined approve.
The Editor says...
I suspect the blacks will approve of him as long as he continues to be black, no matter what he does.
Obama's
long six months. The observation of Barack Obama's six-month anniversary as President has received much
less attention than did his 100th day. All the portentous comparisons with FDR have died away, and the administration
is in a fierce struggle to salvage two of its most ambitious legislative projects -- cap-and-trade to reduce
carbon emissions and universal medical care. ... All the celebrations of a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate (after
the brazen theft of the Minnesota Senate election by leftist comedian Al Franken) will not mitigate the public's eroding
confidence in the administration; nor their misgivings about higher taxes, bone-crushing deficits and socialized,
coercive, health care.
Popular faith in Obama dwindles
amid setbacks. As the recession continues to bite and congress refuses to play ball on health and climate
change, the honeymoon seems to be well and truly over for the US President.
Looks like Statism Doesn't Sell
After All. Enthusiasm for President Obama's "subsidize everything, regulate everything" agenda is
falling. Now is the time to pile on. The American people deserve real change, not the retreat to the
collectivist past being sold by the administration.
The God Who
Bleeds. The latest Pew survey shows that only 38 percent of Americans approve of [President
Obama's] handling of the economy. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, fewer than
half of respondents (48 percent) say Obama can be trusted to keep his word. Gallup has his approval
rating at a new low of 52 percent, and Rasmussen has it below 50 percent for the first time.
Traffic to Obama's White House Web
Site Has Plummeted. The traffic at President Obama's official White House Web site —
whitehouse.gov — has fallen from a post-Inauguration peak to nearly the same level it was during the
waning days of the Bush administration. The dramatic drop in traffic has happened despite the Obama
Administration's complete redesign of the site.
What Green Jobs? President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion
of his stimulus package to building a new green-based economy rich in renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon.
But despite the price tag, not one green job yet exists. It comes down to a problem of etymology. No one can
yet agree on what a green job actually is.
Everything That Rises Must
Converge. [Scroll down] While Obama is known as a talented communicator, it turns out that the
more people hear about the health care plans, the more fiercely they oppose them, and this is true even if you remove
Republicans from the equation. Among independents who said they've heard little or nothing about health care
legislation, just 35 percent opposed; but among those who said they've heard a lot about the proposals, opposition
doubled, to 70 percent.
Why Obama is failing. Obama is rapidly losing
credibility with the public because it was not a leftwing agenda that the public voted for last November. His
difficulties stem from voters belatedly grasping that the values dictating public policy are not theirs but those of
the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. With hindsight, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, ACORN and the most liberal
voting record in the U.S. Senate added up to more than we thought.
Obama 'Impervious to Empirical
Evidence'. Unlike Obama, the public can see the world as it is and recall history as it actually
occurred. We know carbon emissions will only increase so long as India and China refuse to shackle their
own economies. We know Keynesian boondoggle spending doesn't work to pull us out of recessions — and
hasn't created any jobs this time around. ... Despite his disdain for facts, Obama cannot evade reality
indefinitely. Unemployment figures and polling data are real. Deficit figures are real. And
the public's unease with political zealotry is real as well. Unless Obama gives up his aversion to
empirical evidence, the voters will deliver a dose of reality.
Obama vs. the 'Outside
Agitators'. As the various Obama initiatives — socialized medicine, "stimulus" spending,
cap-and-trade — grow less and less popular with the voting populace, yesterday's bulging-vein,
red-in-the-face Bush-haters are discovering that public discontent manifests itself today in
old-fashioned, tried-and-true, rough-and-tumble methods: booing congressmen at town meetings
and shouting down weaselly answers, holding up signs in front of television cameras, marching
in protest — even criticizing President Obama on the Internet!
Obama's punctured
gravitas: Barack Obama's political glass jaw is the illusion of gravitas that was successfully
sold to enough Americans to get him elected. His stentorian deep voice persuades many, never mind the
pablum of vague clichés he dishes out. Rush Limbaugh brilliant punctures the illusion by speeding
up the tape and raising Obama's register when he plays excerpts of the president speaking. Minus the deep
voice, with an altered rhythm no longer hypnotically caressing the listener, the banality of the actual words
becomes clear.
Angry White Men. The Obamaites had best wake
up. Opposition to health-care reform is surging, and Barack Obama's campaigning has gone hand-in-hand with
collapsing support, just as George W. Bush's barnstorming did for Social Security reform.
47! Rasmussen's latest overall approval
rating for President Obama: 47% — a new low for him. Left-wing Bush-haters ... will note that "the
Messiah's" current approval rating, midway through His eighth month, is a mere twelve points above Bush's number, 35%,
when Bush left office. And need I mention that Bush's number came after eight years of "objective press"
savagery. Obama's comes after eight months of "objective press" puffery.
Poll: Obama Approval
Rating Drops to 47 Percent. President Obama's approval rating has dropped to 47 percent, a new low,
according to the Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll. The survey released Thursday [8/13/2009] showed
52 percent of those polled disapprove of Obama's performance, while 47 percent at least somewhat approve.
Obama Enthusiasts Fail to Back
Obamacare. There were lots of reasons people voted for Barack Obama last November. The best
and most convincing arguments for him never were actually "for" him, but were against John McCain and the GOP. Most
of Obama's voters, at least those who put him over the top, never wanted a federal takeover of their medical care.
54% Say Passing No Healthcare Reform Better Than Passing Congressional
Plan. Thirty-five percent (35%) of American voters say passage of the bill currently working
its way through Congress would be better than not passing any health care reform legislation this
year. However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most voters (54%) say
no health care reform passed by Congress this year would be the better option.
Worst. Hires Rate. Ever.
It's not enough for most people to know what the unemployment rate is and whether it's going up or down. It's
not enough for investors and entrepreneurs living during some of the strangest times in American financial history.
And it's not enough for citizens trying to decide whether the policy proposals now in Washington are worthy of their support.
Is Obama a Lame Duck?
With his passive management style — which inevitably led to overreaching and heavy-handedness by
Congressional Democrats — Obama has made himself largely irrelevant on many of the issues he ran on,
from health care "reform" to "resetting" our foreign relations. Here are seven signs that Obama's political
suasion is waning.
Plan B Time Is Here.
It turns out there is nothing too big to fail, including the grand plans of Barack Obama. Rep. Allen
Boyd (D-Fla.) acknowledged as much yesterday [8/17/2009] in regard to the health-care meltdown. Faced
with enraged Americans at town-hall meetings, Boyd threw in the towel, saying he would "be willing to scrap
everything" and start from square one. First health care; next — you name it. The
whole Obama horizon is ready for a reset.
Why 'Obama-care' is
failing: [Scroll down] The Obama administration has been astoundingly incompetent.
Lashing out at the town hall protesters, playing the race card, whining about angry white men and whispering
ominously about right-wing militias is almost always a sign of liberalism's weakness — a failure
of the imagination.
In Government We
Trust? Instead of whining about conspiracies, the average congressman getting yelled at this
summer by his own constituents might ask: How come these people don't trust me? The Democratic
leadership and the progressive left think the town halls emerged from the electric fog of conservative talk
shows, but the Obama proposal since early June never had an organized opposition. It has been sinking
beneath its own weight. It is the weight of doubtful government.
Obama
unaccustomed to having his lies challenged. American citizens have been vilified, marginalized,
lied about and smeared by these Washington hucksters. Good people, frustrated at the arrogance of their
government, are being called names like a mob, Nazis, evil-mongers, terrorists, etc. Meanwhile, the
president and Congress are watching the poll numbers they live by fall into the basement. I wonder why.
Most of us learned in kindergarten that when you call other people names, they are not likely to react kindly.
And they certainly are not likely to vote for you again.
Democratic Party ratings plummet.
The percentage of Americans who hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party has slipped below 50 percent
for the first time since President Barack Obama took office, according to a new Pew Research Center poll released
Wednesday [8/19/2009]. Only 49 percent of Americans now hold a favorable view of the Democratic
Party, down from 62 percent in the same poll shortly after Obama assumed office.
Obama's Well Organized Community Is Falling
Apart. It's now official — the average American is not as stupid as Washington DC
Democrats and their international leftist friends thought. Their mystery messiah has already gone from
hero to zero after only seven months in power, and Obama has now become a noose around the neck of every
American Democrat, and every international fascist who "hoped" Obama could usher in Marxist "change."
The Strange Case
of the Obama Meltdown. The Spell is Broken. Cap-and-trade, the mega-deficits, the apology tours,
and the sleaze of some appointments and congressional grandees (cf. Rangel, Dodd, Murtha, etc.) were stimulants,
but not in themselves enough to awaken the somnolent American people from their collective trance. Yet
health care was like a shot of adrenaline that jolted the patient out of his slumber. Suddenly hope and
change no longer worked like the swinging watch and "you're getting sleepy" lingo. Voters are feeling
they've been "had" and were mesmerized into being used for an extremist agenda.
Obama's Brick
Wall: The American People. Obama's free-falling poll numbers are not the result of a misinformation
campaign from a small sliver of unruly conservative opponents, as the administration wants you to believe. They are a
reflection of the public's reaction to Obama's policies and his own comprehensive misinformation campaign to dupe the people
into believing America is unsalvageable without fundamental change.
Slipping into quicksand:
President Obama, once considered as politically agile and deft as a gazelle, is now looking increasingly like a deer caught
in the headlights. His poll numbers on everything from job approval to his handling of the economy, health care, taxes
and bailouts are dropping faster than a cement shoe in the Hudson River.
Out There in America. What has
coalesced, it seems, over the past week is the perception that Obama is angry, panicky, and without a game plan, and that
his critics no longer cower. In short, out there something has changed: opposition and criticism of the
president is everywhere — in mainstream media, in casual conversation, and in local press. The
assumption that Obama knows best has been shattered...
The Obama messiah delusion has
well and truly exploded. [Scroll down] Retreat, however, is now turning into a rout, as politicians
return to Washington after scrubbing off the tar and feathers acquired at town hall meetings across the Union.
For Obama now, the desperate priority is to get some kind of healthcare measure through Congress — any
cosmetic legislation that will save his face and his presidency. Whatever it is, it will be a pale imitation
of his grand socialist vision. Americans have risen to the occasion: at a historic moment they have decisively
rejected Big Government.
Stop
Digging? [President Obama] is losing large slices of independents, moderate Republicans,
and conservative Democrats who fear his polarizing attempts to transform America. At precisely the
same time, his left-wing base is hectoring him to get even more self-destructively statist — as
if proposed record tax hikes, corporate and bank takeovers, socialized medicine, cap and trade,
race/class/gender agenda appointments, serial apologies abroad, and a $2 trillion annual
deficit just didn't cut it.
Survey Shows Obama's Base Is
Eroding. There is no question that health care is badly wounding the president. And
the divisions on the Democratic side are widening, stretching from a gap into a gulf.
Bam's
$2 Trillion Friday Surprise. The Obama administration did it again last week — getting
bad news out on a Friday evening to minimize press coverage. Within hours after President Obama
left Washington for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, the Office of Management and Budget leaked
word that, sometime this week, it will revise its projection of the federal budget deficit over
the next 10 years from $7 trillion to $9 trillion.
The Collapse of Obama's
Hot Air Balloon. What we're seeing with Obama's plummeting poll numbers is a quick case of
buyer's remorse. More broadly, Gallup reports that conservatives now outnumber liberals in all
50 states, with more Americans self-identifying themselves as conservative than at any time in
the past four years.
Real
Unemployment At 16 Percent. Steven Camarota analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
on America's unemployed rate, which was officially at 9.7 percent in June. The official jobless
population was 15,095,000 at that point. But when those who work part-time involuntarily and those who
may hope for work but have not actively sought work are factored in, that month's jobless rate rises to
16.8 percent. America therefore had an estimated underutilized labor force of 26,573,000 million
people that month.
Why
the 'O'-ministration will implode in weeks: Never has an administration who had more firepower
at their disposal, been set to so totally fail in the next six to eight weeks. It is nearly a foregone
conclusion. It is nearly unavoidable. And it defies all logic given the sizable majority the
administration has in both houses of Congress.
You Think Obama Has Poll Problems.
Much has been written about Obama's stark and speedy decline in the polls. However, voters like Congress
even less.
Obama, the
Mortal. Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or
even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore
some of his clout and popularity. But what has occurred — irreversibly — is this:
He's become ordinary. The spell is broken.
U.S.
unemployment rate jumps to 26-year high of 9.7%. The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year
high of 9.7% in August as nonfarm payrolls fell by 216,000, the 20th consecutive monthly decline, the Labor
Department estimated Friday [9/4/2009].
Obama's declining support
among whites. After a summer of health care battles and sliding approval ratings for President Obama, the
White House is facing a troubling new trend: The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked
hardest to attract.
Panic at the White House. In the
dark days of the Iraq war, when valiant U.S. troops faced down multiple enemies who obeyed no rules of war,
President Bush never panicked. Even when his approval rating dropped below 35 percent, the president
slugged it out for better or worse, depending on your worldview. The same cannot be said of President
Obama, who is now reeling under the pressure of his collapsing health care vision. The latest evidence
of this was a posting on the "Organizing for America" website, which was set up by Obama in January.
The Crashing Liberal Agenda. After
an adventurous and, at times, treacherous August recess, lawmakers return to Washington, D.C. this week.
Liberals hope to jumpstart the President's agenda, which has stalled because public support for his big-ticket
initiatives has crashed. The swing in public sentiment can be seen in President Obama's approval rating,
which is hovering around 50 percent.
The
Goldilocks Principle in American Politics. Obama is in early trouble and the fate of his
presidency may be at stake. The presidency that many thought might resemble FDR's is looking more and more
like Jimmy Carter's. The aspirations of last November are becoming the trepidations of this September.
Some Blacks
Now Have Doubts About Obama. According to the Pew Research Center, the president's approval rating
nationwide is now 10 points lower than last April. Included in this is a three-point drop in his approval
among blacks. You might say, Star, a drop in approval ratings among blacks from 95 percent to 92 percent is
trivial. But I say not so. If we assume this reflects the 16 million blacks who voted for Obama last
November, a three point shift means there are about a half million blacks who now have buyer's remorse. This
is meaningful. You take real risks going against the establishment in black America.
Obama's Failure of Credibility. The
cause of Obama's freefall in the polls can be reduced down to one simple word, "Credibility." Credibility is
the board game of politics and the rules are fairly simple. ... Obama and his lackeys actually thought that getting
into the White House meant an endless free ride. Now they are slowly beginning to realize they were wrong.
So far, Obama's failing
miserably. Obama is trying to fundamentally alter the American economy by backing sweeping environmental,
labor and health care legislation. He wants to change the way Americans consume energy, unionize and see their
doctors. So far, he's failing miserably.
California Joblessness Reaches 70-Year High.
California's unemployment rate in August hit its highest point in nearly 70 years, starkly underscoring
how the nation's incipient economic recovery continues to elude millions of Americans looking for work.
Who's Threatening Obama? While
criticism of Obama and his policies has been intense, some of the strongest attacks on Obama have come not from
the right, but from the left. ... While the Communist Party USA is strongly supporting the President, there are
many on the far-left who despise him. Citing Afghanistan and other issues, some of the Marxist true-believers
already view Obama as a sell-out.
The Trouble with Obama.
For a talented man who ran a textbook campaign and was declared a great president before he even took office, Barack
Obama has been having a rather hard time. The Midas Touch of 2008 has seemed to desert him. The famed oratory
has not made a difference. The uniting president has turned into the ultra-divider. The music has died.
A PR
Nightmare for the Obamas. Obama's messianic appeal is wearing thin, both at home and abroad. I
think that once Sarkozy essentially said to the world, "The emperor has no clothes," the Obama facade crumbled.
Jobless Rate Climbs
to 9.8 Percent in September. If laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or have given up looking
for new jobs are included, the unemployment rate rose to 17 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.
Mugged by Reality.
Barack Obama staked his entire campaign for the presidency on the premise that the world doesn't have to be the
way it is. Obama promised a new brand of "direct, presidential diplomacy" that would resolve the conflicts
between the United States and its adversaries and he promised to remove the partisanship from the conflicts in
Washington. Well, it turns out George W. Bush didn't make the world the way it is.
Obama's Olympic failure
will only add to doubts about his presidency. There has been a growing narrative taking hold about
Barack Obama's presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of
lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence. Chicago's dismal showing
yesterday [10/2/2009], after Mr Obama's personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this
President.
Where Have
All the Stickers Gone? Here's a bulletin based on an unscientific survey and verified by friends:
Obama stickers are getting harder to spot. That's right. The ubiquitous blue stickers with the
round, red-white-and blue symbol are coming off the bumpers. Even in northern Virginia, which has large
pockets of yellow dog Democrats, the stickers are disappearing.
Barack-in-the-box
shelved: Frenzy fades. Heather Courtney and David Marzo apparently plowed some retirement
savings into the production of a lot of jack-in-the-boxes with smiling Barack Obama puppets insidie, and
they've got 3,000 sitting in a warehouse — $29.95 each, when they sell. Sales, they say,
have slowed to a "drizzle."
The Trauma of Obama.
Interestingly, there's this eerie silence about Obama. You don't hear a peep about him. Of
course, liberals are still foaming at the mouth about Sarah Palin, tea baggers, birthers, and all things
conservative. But adulation for Obama: Missing in Action. A telling sign: the
life size black and white cardboard doll of Obama in a storefront near my office has been taken down.
Where did it go — to the local recycling center with other discarded Obamabilia?
Early retirements mean unemployment is worse
than 9.8%. The stimulus backfired. It undermined confidence in the economy. And
people are reacting. Not only are companies cutting back on employees, but workers are throwing in the
towel. Rather than look for another job, they are retiring or filing for a disability.
Support For
ObamaCare Reaches New Low. A new poll by Rasmussen Reports finds that President Barack Obama's
plan to take America's health-care system in an even more statist direction has less support now than ever
before.
No Master Plan at All. It may be
that the whole Hope and Change routine has been little more than a lot of cheesy special effects — and a cynical
game to convince the public that the great and powerful leader really is worthy of awe. The people are finally
figuring out the act.
Obama
wins popularity contests, not much else. President Obama is following the advice of that great
philosopher Woody Allen, who once said that "eighty percent of success is showing up." In health care
legislation, foreign relations and, now, the Olympics, Obama believes his very presence is enough to bend the world to
his whim. But even Allen allowed for 20% of something else. I'm guessing good ideas and effort.
Flail. Your foreign policy is in
such nerve-racking disarray that even the president of France is horrified; your public relations outfit at the New York
Times has begun to reconsider signing you as a client; every step you take heightens tensions with your opposition; ... Really,
are you an evil genius with a plot to take over the world just pretending to be an empty vessel? Or are you
actually an empty vessel pretending to be a president?
Jobless rate hits
17 percent. America's jobless crisis is much worse than the 9.8 percent unemployment rate
reported Friday [10/2/2009]. To understand how there are many more unemployed than the government reports,
it's necessary to look at the numbers used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to calculate the unemployment rate.
The Household Survey numbers paint a bleak picture that no one is discussing.
Whom Will Barack Blame for
His Olympic-Sized Failure? The IOC bloodletting made Barack Obama — who soon may be regarded as
the worst president in American history — look like the dissociative bumbler many of us know him to be.
The president put his prodigious ego on the line only to have it flailed like an intelligent student in a women's studies
class. At Copenhagen, Barack came, saw, emoted, and got duly slaughtered. Even his omnipotent teleprompter
couldn't have put a positive spin on the happenings.
Obama's Job-Killing Agenda.
[President] Obama is pushing a job-killing agenda that promises to expand an already bloated government while
simultaneously shrinking individual freedom. In its latest official tally of jobs being lost per month,
more than seven months after Obama's $787 billion non-stimulating stimulus bill was rushed through
Congress, the Labor Department reported that 263,000 more jobs were lost in September, increasing the
unemployment rate to 9.8 percent and bringing the total number of unemployed to 15.1 million.
Barack Obama sees worst poll rating drop in 50 years.
The decline in Barack Obama's popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage
of his first term for more than 50 years.
Polling
Polls: Americans Independent and Irate. A poll of opinion polls shows that Americans are
undergoing rapidly changing attitudes. RealClearPolitics, a national polling aggregator, shows that
Americans are becoming less and less thrilled about the direction of the country and with the job Congress
is doing. Support has been peeling off steadily, says RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan.
The danger for the Obama administration and the Democrat Party is the independent voters' shift away from
Democrat policies.
What
happened to Obamamania? Many Obamenthusiasts were thrilled by the idea of putting Obama in and
getting George W. Bush out. They achieved their goal a year ago. What more is left? ... "We
are the change we are seeking," Obama said during the campaign. Well, the Obamenthusiasts got that
change. Now they can go back to gardening or Sudoku.
Obama's Fight to
Win or Lose. Obama is exactly where he didn't expect to be. His popularity has
declined at a record rate. His supposed power of persuasion has turned out to be nonexistent.
More Americans oppose his health care initiative than support it. And Republicans are prepared to
combat him and Democrats on every major provision of it.
The Obama
Revolution Is Over. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Obama was going to change the face
of American politics. Instead he has made it less attractive to a growing share of the public.
Whether it's trillion-dollar deficits or government-run health care, Americans are at last coming to terms
with what they voted for.
Welcome to the "Post-Obama" Era!
69,000,000 voters fell for the smoke and mirrors and the fairy tale promise of CHANGE, without so much as a
clue as to what that change might represent. How many of those 69,000,000 votes would have been cast for
Barack Obama had his Marxist leanings been understood? How many would have voted for a man who would
denigrate American leaders and policies while on foreign soil? ... How many would have voted for the man who
has created a stealth cabinet of czars in order to avoid Congressional oversight?
A
deathblow to ObamaCare. Obviously, [Chris] Christie's victory is a body blow to Obama after
Corzine outspent the Republican by five-to-one and the president put on a serious push for the incumbent.
Corzine's defeat sends a message that the nation is moving sharply against Obama.
Jobless Rate Jumps to 10.2% as Labor Market Still Weak.
The U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 10.2 percent in October, breaching the politically
sensitive double-digit barrier for the first time in 26-1/2 years, even though the pace of job losses slowed.
How
many more jobs will Obama kill? Unemployment has hit 10.2 percent, the highest level since
the 1983 recession. Obama administration officials will no doubt try to spin this latest bad economic
news by noting that unemployment is typically a "lagging indicator." That was true in the old days, but
it won't cut it in the age of the global economy and Internet-driven 24/7 news cycle.
The Editor says...
It's the worst economy since the Great Depression! I mean, it must be. John Kerry said so, back
in 2004 (Sources:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]), and the economy
was in much better shape back then. Why isn't Senator Kerry repeating his claim today?
What
Jobs? One has to hope that the Obama administration does not believe its own rhetoric about the
supposed success of its fiscal stimulus program in generating new jobs. For while the administration
assures us that the fiscal stimulus is generating new jobs according to schedule, the U.S. labor market
continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate.
Doctor's
note required to read this column. Were you shocked that the nation's unemployment rate in
October jumped to 10.2 percent, the first time it has been in double digits since 1982? Did the
fact that another 190,000 jobs disappeared from the US economy last month cause you to lose sleep?
Well, if you couldn't handle those numbers you should not read any more of this column.
Sinking numbers
for Obama, Democrats. The victories by Republicans in two Governors races last Tuesday appear
to have lifted the party's prospects in 2010 and in 2012 in the minds of voters with 58% of those surveyed
by Rasmussen now believe the next President will be Republican.
Blame Obama
for Sky-High Unemployment. This wasn't supposed to happen. At the end of February, after
the $787 billion stimulus was approved, the Obama administration predicted that unemployment would average
only 8.1 percent this year. Indeed, in February the unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent.
Yet, unemployment now stands at 10.2 percent and keeps rising. There is also another, wider unemployment
measure seldom mentioned. When you count the unemployed who have become so discouraged that they have given up
looking for work or have only accepted a part-time job, our country now has an unemployment rate that stands
at a staggering 17.5 percent.
Has
Obama Peaked? Yes, He Has. To listen to some pundits, Barack Obama's public image began
taking a serious beating when the off-year election returns came in a week ago. Or maybe it was the
undeserved Nobel Prize, his approach to the war in Afghanistan, or when he revved up his pursuit of national
health-care reform. But the pundits, as usual, are wrong. In reality, Obama peaked the night he
was elected.
Clueless Summit. Next month's
"Jobs Summit" at the White House promises to feature a lot of posing and preening by Washington politicians. Unfortunately,
despite lots of photo ops, it's not likely to result in many jobs. Something's wrong when the government of the most
prolific job-creating economy in history has to schedule a "summit" to decide how to create jobs.
Remember When. Massive
spending and big promises do not a great leader make. So now, here we are. Unemployment is higher,
confusion about the war is greater, and division in our country is fiercer. The platitudes of hope and
change are gradually being replaced by the pragmatism of liberty and responsibility. While of the real hope
of America lies in the people of the nation, too many people in this nation have put their hope in one man.
Unemployment rates rise in
29 states. A growing number of states reported rising jobless rates in October, and thirteen states reported
unemployment rates above the national average of 10.2%, according to a government report released on Friday [11/20/2009].
Overall, jobless rates increased in 29 states and the District of Columbia last month, while they fell in
13 states, according to a monthly Labor Department survey on state unemployment.
Signs of a scandal brewing?
Anita
Dunn's Husband Becomes White House Counsel. [Scroll down slowly] A highly placed Washington
attorney ...[says] "I'm surprised not only that the press seems to be ignoring the fact that two presidential
lawyers have left at about the same time, [...] "but that no one seems to care that for the first time, I think
ever, we have a President's personal attorney also serving as White House counsel.
Gallup: Obama
below 50% for first time. Most other pollsters already have Barack Obama's job approval into
plurality positions at best; Rasmussen has him under water at 47%/52%. The others that have Obama in
majority territory have big sampling problems that overstates Democratic support. But undoubtedly,
having Gallup confirm the trend emphasizes the point that Hope and Change isn't selling any more.
A Good Time Not to be a
Democrat. Despite the grand triumph of the Democratic leadership in ramming a government
health care takeover through the House, things are not going well for the Dems. Indeed, one suspects
that the ideological crusade to socialize American medicine at any cost is one of the chief factors driving
down support for the governing party.
What Happened? Plainly,
Obama's poll numbers have hit the skids, as poll after poll registers new lows in approval and new highs in
disapproval. More independents now disapprove than approve of his performance. And more voters
disapprove of his handling of specific issues such as health care. So what happened, and why now?
The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed.
As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly
1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed. According to the government's broadest
measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The
so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.
Poll Numbers Crash.
Here is some more sobering poll news for Obama: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll
for Tuesday [11/24/2009] shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama
is performing his role as President.
Inside
the numbers: How Obama has fallen. We've all seen reports that Barack Obama's job approval
rating has recently fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll for the first time since the president took office in
January. A look inside those numbers — Gallup publishes a weekly breakdown of its results
by demographic groups — shows that there are a lot of other firsts in the polling.
Dems' Canary In The Coal Mine.
Everyone is watching and waiting for the "canary in the coal mine," that Democrat whose retirement will tell
us how nervous incumbents really are about their chances in 2010. Is Kansas Rep. Dennis Moore, who
abruptly announced his retirement on Monday, that canary?
Growing
public backlash over Obamacare. Two-dozen Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, who
voted for the House version of President Obama's increasingly unpopular health care reform, are beginning
to feel a growing public backlash. ReversetheVote.org has already raised $123,105 that will be
dedicated exclusively to defeating all 24, including Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in 2010 if they don't
reject the final conference committee version of the bill.
The Five Obama Fails.
Nearly one year after Obama's inauguration, we have an economy heading in the wrong direction, unemployment rising,
a deficit that will double, banks failing, a war command which is virtually ignored, 9/11 terrorists given
Constitutional rights at a civil trial, and an administration hell-bent on destroying — not
"reforming" — the world's best health care system.
Barack
Obama is so last season. For Barack Obama, the magic is gone. He's here, but the glamour
has vanished. He still talks, but few people appear to be listening. Sometime in spring, it
began to be noticed (by Fred Barnes, among others) that he was losing the power to move people, or shape
their opinions. When his agenda began meeting resistance, he gave a series of speeches and resistance
grew stronger. The more he explained, the more people disliked what he said he was doing.
Blue Dog John Tanner to retire from
House. Tanner becomes the second Blue Dog Democrat in two weeks to retire rather than face
what could have been a contentious re-election in 2010.
Bam: Man
in the muddle. Perhaps it was inevitable. A man who voted "present" 130 times in the
Illinois Legislature couldn't possibly morph into a savvy and decisive leader of the free world in such a short
time. Yet even the pessimists among us are alarmed by the cloud of uncertainty and confusion hanging over
the White House. Less than a year on the job, President Obama seems to have run out of both charm and ideas.
Obama's 47
Percent Approval Lowest of Any President at This Point. President Obama's job approval rating has
fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point
in his term.
You gotta love this.
According to Politico, President Obama's support has declined to the point that only 50 percent of
voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush. Forty-four percent say
they'd rather have Bush.
Obama's Humbling Year.
President Obama's slide has indeed been steep, steady, and historic. There are a dozen or so political
data points that all point in the same direction. His act has grown tired and stale in an
astonishingly short period of time.
Democrats
Whistling Past Graveyard. The unexpected victory of Republican Jimmy Higdon in the Kentucky
state Senate special election — despite a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage — is
another fire bell in the night that national Democrats are going to ignore. Marking the 33rd Republican
win in the 50 or so special elections since 2008, the Kentucky race was a referendum on health care reform.
Why Are We Tiring
of Obama? [Scroll down] He is experiencing the sharpest popularity decline in the
history of first-year administrations. The problem is not just that he inherited a bad economy;
Reagan did too. ... Instead, after 11 months there has emerged a series of bothersome incidents
that the public has come to associate with Obama, both the man and his philosophies.
Obama goes from
dazzle to drone. Obama's sagging numbers are less a regular presidential "approval
rating" than a measure of the ever-widening gulf between the messianic ballyhoo and his actual
performance. For Americans interested in not pre-crippling the lives of their as-yet unborn
children and grandchildren, his windy leave-'em-wanting-less routine is currently one of their
best friends.
The
Most Boring Man in the World? Barack Obama's vibe used to be a cross between JFK and
Beatlemania. Now it's fading into "Oh, him again?"
Daily
Presidential Tracking Poll. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for
Saturday [12/12/2009] shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack
Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving
Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16. That's the lowest Approval Index rating yet
recorded for this President.
'Welcome
to Obamaville' Sign At Homeless Tent City, Media Mum. A sign reading "Welcome to Obamaville
Colorado's Fastest Growing Community" appeared at a homeless tent city in Colorado Springs this week. You
probably didn't hear about it because outside of two Colorado television stations nobody found this newsworthy.
Obama: What a Difference A Year Makes.
Americans and the rest of the world have had a year in which to watch Barack Obama and it has been one of constant
disappointment and growing fears. That trend is unlikely to change.
The Obama Agenda Is Sinking Fast.
These are difficult days for modern liberalism. The high hopes and expectations of Obama and his supporters
are crashing down all around them. And those who pronounced the death of conservatism earlier this year
look sillier and sillier with every passing month.
A
time of universal deceit. Gallup's just-released Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll shows
that for the first time, most people — 55 percent — rate members of Congress
low or very low for honesty and ethics. Senators come in slightly better at 49 percent.
A whopping 9 percent of members of Congress and 11 percent of senators get high or very high
ratings in honesty and ethics.
Amid
rumbling discontent, Dems head for the exits. While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
scrambles to assemble 60 Democratic votes for health care legislation that, according to the
realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls, is opposed by a 53 percent-to-38 percent
margin, several Democratic members of the House are scrambling for the exits on what is starting to
look like a sinking ship.
Just The Plan For How Not To
Create Jobs. The biggest political issue today and in the 2010 election is that one in six Americans
are jobless. The political party that offers a solution has the best chance of victory — but,
so far, both parties just don't seem to get it. We are told that the unemployment rate is 10.2%, but
that's only part of the problem. When you add discouraged Americans who have quit looking for a job,
plus the underemployed (i.e., working only part-time while seeking full-time work), the figure rises to at
least 17.5%.
Americans Souring on Democrats.
Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult
economy and a wave of public discontent, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The
findings underscored how dramatically the political landscape has changed during the Obama administration's
first year.
The
President Is No B+. Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings
of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job
performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll. There are many factors that explain it,
including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful
health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening.
Why
Independents Are Abandoning Obama. President Obama road into office on the coattails of
some horrible economic realities while promising Americans "hope and change." The nation needed
both to energize new policies and to help us continue down the path to recovery, specifically in the
areas of job creation and economic growth. Those who ignorantly — and I use this word
literally not pejoratively — voted for him, have now woken up saying to themselves over
and over and over again, "What the heck have I done?"
The
Health Care Bill Is Political Suicide. [Scroll down] But the biggest problem in 2009
was not really that liberals didn't turn out to vote. The problem was that the Democrats lost
Independents and moderates. Take Virginia. There was a substantial drop-off in Democratic
performance from 2008 to 2009. But the real change this year is how Independents voted (as was the
case in 2006). Independents in Virginia voted 49%-48% for Obama in 2008, but gave Bob McDonnell
a 66%-33% landslide win in 2009.
Obama, the
laughingstock. Is our President, and America itself, becoming laughingstock of the
world to be ignored and dismissed, if not ridiculed, as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have? The
world has taken measure of the man and he has fallen short.
Anti-war activists losing patience with
Obama. Abby Tomlinson voted for President Barack Obama, hoping that he would help end the war
in Iraq quickly. But the Lubbock woman said she's disappointed in what the "peace" candidate has
accomplished along those lines, nearly a year after taking office. Two wars continue.
Obama,
left behind. Boy, this "Obama Derangement Syndrome" really has gotten out of hand. Why, just
this past week the decreasingly popular president has been called a "bald-faced liar," "an executive who can't
bring himself to lead," and even an "Uncle Tom." And that's just by liberals. The progressive
crack-up, before Obama even reaches the end of his first year, has been an awesome and occasionally humorous
sight to see.
Dreading our
future. President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available,
is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising
one thing and delivering another. Shame on me. Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable
bore. The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions.
Nearly 60 percent Say President Obama's Decisions 'Bad
for America'. A majority of Americans believe an increased government role in health care would
lead to more government corruption, while a plurality of Americans think that scientific data supporting
man-made global warming is "mostly falsified." That is what a new poll by Survey USA reveals. The
poll also shows that 58 percent of Americans believe that decisions by the Obama administration have been
"bad for America," as opposed to 37 percent who think Obama's decisions have been "good for America."
A Political Earthquake.
In today's Rasmussen presidential poll, only 26 percent of the nation's voters strongly approve of Barack
Obama's performance as president, while 43 percent strongly disapprove — giving him a Presidential
Approval Index rating, a sum calculated by subtracting the number of strong disapprovals from the number of
strong approvals, of negative 17.
The Health-Care Backlash.
The collateral damage to Obama from this bill is enormous. More than any candidate in our lifetime,
Obama won based on the aesthetics of politics. It wasn't because of his record; he barely had one.
And it wasn't because of his command of policy; few people knew what his top three policy priorities were.
It was based instead on the sense that he was something novel, the embodiment of a "new politics" —
matured, high-minded and gracious, intellectually serious. That was the core of his speeches and his
candidacy. In less than a year, that core has been devoured, most of all by this health-care process.
Big Government
Backlash. President Obama's approval rating has sunk below 50% for the first time, but for our
money the bigger polling news is the way his agenda is turning the public against activist government.
Griffith
said Dem agenda is reason for his party switch. Freshman Rep. Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) announced
Tuesday afternoon [12/22/2009] he will switch to the GOP, citing the Democratic agenda as his reason.
Griffith said Democratic legislative priorities, including healthcare reform, are harmful to the country.
Are
Democrats exiting the sinking ship? Part 6. [Congressman Parker] Griffith's party
switch reduces the magic number of seats Republicans need to pick up in 2010 to get a majority in the House
from 41 to 40. It also raises the question of whether newly elected Democrats in similar
seats — Bobby Bright in Alabama 2 and Travis Childers in Mississippi 1 — will
choose to switch parties.
The Death Of
Moderate Democrats. Rep. Parker Griffith, the newly minted Republican, is typical of his class
of freshmen Democrats from heavily John McCain districts. For them to survive, they need to switch parties.
Otherwise, they — and the damage they have done — will be two-year footnotes to history.
US
voters give Barack Obama an F. Barack Obama gave himself a B+ on Oprah Winfrey's White House
Christmas Special on ABC, but the American public is far less generous. The latest influential Rasmussen
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of likely US voters gives Obama a thumping 56 percent disapproval
rating — an F grade by any measure.
"Shut
up" is a favorite Democrat talking point. "This is not an administration that takes bad news
well," Jennifer Rubin wrote on Commentary's blog, referring to Robert Gibbs' fit when asked to explain the
Gallup poll showing the president taking on water, sinking into the high-to-mid 40s, and losing ground fast.
Democrats'
Blues Grow Deeper in New Poll. Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the
Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult economy and a wave of public discontent, according to
a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The findings underscored how dramatically the political
landscape has changed during the Obama administration's first year.
Obama's
year of falling swiftly. As Barack and Michelle Obama prepare for their first Christmas in the
White House, they might wonder why he has fallen so swiftly from being virtually a national icon to the
unhappy status as among the least popular occupants of the Oval Office since modern polling began.
The Editor says...
Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Obama are unpopular because they're a couple of America-hating communists bent on
destroying this country from the inside out. Oh, and incidentally, they didn't spend Christmas in the White House -- they were
on the beach in Hawaii.
That's typical of
the wealthy liberal elite who pretend
to watch out for the "little guy."
Are
Democrats exiting the sinking ship? Part VIII. Some more bad news for the very able Chris Van
Hollen, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: four more Democratic challenger
candidates have decided not to run.
Obama's
last year. A Democrat strategist told Bryon York of the Washington Examiner that House empress
Nancy Pelosi was comfortable with losing "20 to 40" seats in the lower chamber as the price for
getting health care "reform" passed. ... If even Pelosi is writing off up to 40 seats, it should be
a bright year for Republican House candidates.
What's
More Important Than Being Electable? Being Able To Govern. The shine is off. Recent
tracking polls have shown the president's popularity trending downwards under 50%. And both Public Policy
Polling and Rasmussen show President Obama in tight races with Republican front-runners, and even with some
non-Republican front-runners. ... Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) comes within eight points on Public Policy Polling.
Yes, the 75-year-old Texas congressman is nearly as close to Obama as John McCain was in 2008. This
suggests a growing number of Americans, as of this moment, would vote for anyone over Barack Obama.
Dorgan
announces retirement. In a huge surprise, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) has just announced
[01/05/2010] he will not seek reelection.
GOP momentum on
the rise. Long Island Republican Congressman Peter King, one of only two Republicans
remaining in the Empire State's House delegation, is reconsidering a run for the Senate seat held
by appointed Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Momentum is building.
Democrats exiting the sinking ship? Part X.
Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, has decided not to run for reelection in November and will
retire at age 68. He has served in public office since he was elected North Dakota Tax Commissioner
in 1968 and has won 12 statewide elections.
The Democrats' Sinking Ship.
The back-to-back Senate retirements of Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd may be just the beginning. The people
have seen the future of health care reform and found it doesn't work. Apres moi, le deluge.
Obama's failed
freshman year. President Obama's freshman-year foreign policy was the worst in living memory.
At the dawn of 2010, the United States finds itself noticeably weaker in international affairs than it was when
Mr. Obama took office, and there are no signs of improvement in the year ahead.
Out-to-lunch
O living out a disaster film. When the alarm first went off — the 3 a.m. phone
call — they hit the snooze button, putting the president's personal comfort ahead of the country's.
Everything since has been damage control, including yesterday's endlessly advertised meeting with his national
security team. Obama's remarks afterward were direct and forceful, but the door of doubt about his
national security leadership has been blown off the hinges.
Abandon
ship! Party is sinking. Sen. Chris Dodd's announcement yesterday that he would abandon his
hopeless bid for re-election is only the latest in an alarming and growing body of evidence that President
Obama and Democrats in Congress have blown through more political good will in one year than most parties
do in a decade. With elections still 10 months off, 13 incumbent congressional Democrats have
decided to give up rather than face the certain wrath of voters.
Dodd, Dorgan out;
5 other Senate Dems vulnerable. While two Senate Democrats already have seen the handwriting on
the wall and bailed out of re-election races, five others trail Republicans in states where President Obama and
his trillion-dollar health-care-reform plan are increasingly unpopular. From Nevada, where Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid trails badly, to Arkansas, where Sen. Blanche Lincoln is polling at just 40 percent
in head-to-head matchups with four possible Republican challengers, opposition to the health-care bill is
reverberating.
Number
of long-term unemployed hits highest rate since 1948. On Friday [1/8/2010], in the December
unemployment report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the number of people out of work for 27 weeks
or more hit 6.1 million Americans, or 40 percent of all 15.3 million jobless. This is
the most since 1948, when the data was first recorded, according to the Department of Labor.
A Year Ago, Obama Was Invincible.
Remember President Obama's huge victory, when he received 365 electoral votes and had historic approval
ratings? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Obama's
Independent Woes Intensify. January's IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index fell 3.6% to 50.8 —
barely holding above the neutral 50 level and 20 points below Obama's level when he took office. High
unemployment, an unpopular health care plan and security fears are all taking their toll. Independents led
with a 6.5% decline — 21% since September — to 44.3, a new low for Obama.
Obama's Polling Blues.
The raft of bad polling data continues for President Obama. When voters were asked in a CNN/Opinion Research
survey published on Tuesday to rate Obama's performance since taking office, 48 percent judged it a failure
while 47 percent saw a success. This corresponds with a new Quinnipiac University poll released
today [1/13/2010], showing voters split 45-45 on whether Obama's first year was a success or failure.
Majority Would
Vote Against Obama. A year into his tenure, a majority of Americans would already vote against
Pres. Obama if the '12 elections were held today, according to a new survey. The Allstate/National
Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else.
The Once-Appealing Barack
Obama. [Scroll down slowly] That was what we were promised. What we got instead
is a president who increased the divisions in our nation, the most partisan and polarizing figure in the
history of polling, one who is dogmatic and has been as generous to special interests as any we have
seen. The efforts to buy votes in pursuit of the Obama agenda has added sewage to the cesspool.
This would hurt any president under any circumstances; for Barack Obama, whose allure was based almost entirely
on his ability to convince the public that he embodied a "new politics," it has been doubly damaging.
The Roots of Obama Worship:
Obama recently awarded himself the grade of "a good, solid B plus" for his performance in office, but the
public is not as lenient. The gap in the assessment between Obama the candidate and Obama the president
is enormous. Having entered office with a public approval of 70 percent, he has fallen today below
50 percent, the steepest such decline at this point of any first-term president in the postwar period.
Obama also has the lowest approval rating at the end of a president's first year.
Obama's Cross of
Arugula: Obama ran as a thoughtful, cool-headed, competent intellectual who was going to bring
both parties together to develop and implement solutions to America's most serious problems. But ... after
a year of bailing out Wall Street and car makers, passing a stimulus that didn't produce any tangible results
for Main Street (i.e. jobs), and focusing most of his energy in pushing a partisan health care bill through
Congress using backroom deals with industries and individual Democratic Senators, huge swaths of the country
have lost confidence in Obama.
Lights out as
America gives Obama notice to quit. Exactly one year after his inauguration as President, the
electorate of the most liberal state in the Union — the Kennedys' Camelot — served notice
to quit on President Pantywaist, the busted flush. If Obama cannot hold Massachusetts, he has no
prospect of winning any state in an election for a presidential second term. The Messiah is toast.
The
Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama: Taxpayers have come to see politics as usual masquerading
as economic recovery.
Existing-home
sales take biggest fall in at least 40 years. Existing-home sales took their biggest tumble in
at least 40 years last month as the impact of a buying spree spurred by a tax credit for first-time
buyers waned, according to industry data released Monday [1/25/2010].
America's
Fourth Great Awakening. Some among the heaviest of Obama Kool-Aid drinkers are awakening to the
performance gap between the campaign myth of Obama versus the reality of his inability to govern.
Obama
says he 'would rather be really good one-term president'. President Barack Obama said that he
"would rather be a really good one-term president" than have two mediocre terms.
Obama's 'Train Wreck' Ahead. Arthur
Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve that showed how low tax rates boost economic growth, is warning anyone who
will listen that the economy is headed for a "train wreck" in 2011 that will make the current recession look
tame by comparison.
Presidential Sins. [Scroll down]
Looking further ahead, Senate Democrats will have a combined total of 43 seats at risk in 2012 and 2014, some
held by incumbents who barely squeaked into office in the 2006 and 2008 banner elections for Democrats. Republicans,
meanwhile, will have to defend only 22 seats, all held by survivors of [very tough elections]. ... Does all this
sound like a political landscape shaped by a "B-plus" Democratic president?
The
Weight Around the Democrats' Ankles: Barack Obama. President Obama has attempted, through
his health care plan, one of the most ambitious government takeovers of the private economy in our lifetime.
Republican lawmakers have, to a person, declined to assist Obama in this effort. Opposition by the
out-of-power party is not unusual — although the degree of polarization we have seen during the
Obama presidency is unprecedented. Barack Obama is the most polarizing first year president since the
1950s, when Gallup first began polling on this issue.
Beyond Hope and Change.
Trillion-dollar annual deficits, high unemployment rates, a bleak tomorrow for future generations, and unprecedented
erosion in the public's trust of the nation's leaders are becoming the legacy of President Obama and his administration.
Obama Hits Lowest
Approval Mark. Independent voters see Pres. Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin,
according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their
expectations. The poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, showed just 44% of registered voters approving
of Obama's job as president. 47% disapprove. But among indie voters, Obama's approval rating
sits at a terrible 29%, while his disapproval rating is at 57%.
Poll
shows voters abandoning prez in droves. President Obama's overall approval rating has sunk to a
new low — and independent voters who propelled him to the White House have gotten downright sick of
the job he's doing, according to a devastating poll released yesterday [2/8/2010]. Obama's job-approval
rating has tanked to a dismal 29 percent among independents, the Marist College survey found. His
disapproval rating is nearly twice as high — 57 percent.
Press room laughter
dies down. The White House press room was a jovial place to be in the early days of President
Barack Obama's presidency. ... But the laughter has been reduced by half in recent months: In the first six
months of the Obama administration, briefings produced an average of 179 laughs per month. Over the
past six months, the average has dropped down to 89.
More
about News Media Bias
in President Obama's Favor.
A Less Perfect
Union. [Scroll down] Now every presidential campaign begins with expectations that are
too high and goals that cannot be achieved. But Obama and his team did more than any other campaign
in our lifetime to promise changes of almost biblical proportions, ushered in by a person some of his
supporters took to be almost a demi-god (during the campaign his advisers referred to him as the "Black
Jesus"). And now, just a year into his presidency, it has all come crashing down around them.
Zugzwang:
Democrats' 2010 Dilemma. So should Democrats and President Obama pursue an activist agenda
and please the party base, or pull back the throttle and play small ball to attract independents?
They can't do both. Welcome to Zugzwang.
Scaring
a president straight isn't easy. [Scroll down slowly] Some of the union chiefs are
threatening to sit out the November congressional elections. Several of the self-selected leaders
of the civil rights movement are muttering in their coffee cups as well. They're afraid the
president will abandon the agenda everyone else has already abandoned.
Obama Loses the Country.
Two polls released today [2/11/2010] give us a peek at the political peril that confronts Obama and the
Democrats. Gallup shows him in a statistical tie with a generic Republican opponent in 2012. In
short, voters are very open to a change in the Oval Office.
Barack Millstone Obama.
The news that Democratic Senator Evan Bayh is retiring is another stunning blow for a Democratic party that is already
reeling. ... It will accelerate almost every bad trend for Democrats (more retirements, fewer entries into national
races, more intra-party acrimony, and more panic).
USS Obama is
sinking. To shore up the hole between the revenue and expenditures, the government has to
borrow money, and foreign nations serve as its lenders through purchases of U.S. Treasuries. The
administration has defended the nation's ability to service these debts, but it's becoming ever more
difficult to believe its claims.
From
'hope & change' to 'duck & cover'. Curling up into the political fetal position and begging others
to do what he does not have the guts to do himself, President Obama yesterday [2/18/2010] issued an executive
order establishing the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Pick an Excuse, Any
Excuse. Obama's defenders note that he is personally popular, which is at best debatable. But
even if that were true, Obama's personal political capital is as non-transferable as an out-of-state check drawn in
crayon. It's certainly useless in getting ObamaCare or cap-and-trade passed. And, so far, it hasn't helped
Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts.
Obama's approval hits
basement. President Obama's approval numbers in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll have been quite
volatile the last few weeks but today reached a new basement level — with only 22% expressing strong
approval, and 41% strong disapproval.
Obama
Too Focused on Expanding Government. At the dawn of the Obama administration, there were some
optimistic conservatives who refused to buy the media-peddled scenario of the new age of liberal dominance.
But few could have known just how thoroughly President Obama's agenda would be rejected this year — not
just by Americans but by the world.
Obama the philosopher
king. Mr. Obama's initiatives haven't stalled because of partisanship but because they are
transparently bad for America. ... The reason Mr. Obama began to run into problems had less to do with
partisanship than with public opposition to his ideological agenda. When the ambiguous "hope and
change" theme was replaced with a series of hard-left policies, America balked.
The Charge of the
Democratic Health-Care Brigade. I don't think there's ever been a situation like this
in American political history. Every way you look at it, Democrats are boxed in, forced to choose
between extraordinarily unattractive options. What makes it especially noteworthy is that this
was a calamity they summoned entirely upon themselves.
Confidence In Economy's Future Is At Lowest Point of Obama's
Presidency. Views of the country's short- and long-term economic future are gloomier these
days than they have been at any time since President Obama took office in January of last year.
Forty-two percent (42%) of American adults now expect the U.S. economy to be weaker in one year's time,
up three points from January and the highest level found in 14 months of regular tracking on the
question, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Anti-Obama Sentiment Sweeps
the Nation. What if President Obama had changed the way Washington does business, taken steps
that actually improved the economy, offered a scaled-back, moderate agenda, and recruited a few Republican
allies in Congress? Had he done those things, would there be a powerful, anti-Washington tide today?
Of course not.
No We Can't. One casualty of
the serial crises confounding American politics of late is President Obama's charisma, heretofore seemingly one
of his greatest assets. As Politico pointedly asked, "Obama's charisma: Where did he leave it?"
Pundits and commentators have even raised the question of whether he might after all be "just another politician."
Stopping the Runaway
Congress: The recall of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez took a step forward yesterday
[3/2/2010] with a promising oral argument in New Jersey state court. ... So if the New Jersey courts
allow the recall there to proceed, that means all 12 of these Democrat incumbents could be added to the
ballot this year, putting majority control of the Senate even more in play. That could cause
Congressional Democrats to be more reluctant to follow Barack Obama off a political cliff. The
12 Democrat Senators potentially on the hook for a recall election will be more likely to decide they
better spend more time listening to their voters than to Barack Obama's ideological entreaties.
Early
election disaster warnings don't help Democrats. As Democrats go charging into a hostile
electoral landscape, one thing they count in their favor is the foreknowledge of the resistance they face.
But foreknowledge does not ensure wise choices, especially if you only have a partial picture of the terrain.
Remember, Gen. Custer knew there were Indians in the valley. He just didn't know how many.
Look On the Bright Side. [Scroll
down slowly] We don't need polls to tell us what our family, friends, and co-workers think. The most
common thing I hear from among my Democrat friends is regret for having voted for Obama.
The
end of the road for Barack Obama? It is a universal political truth that administrations do not
begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think
they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime,
characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter
as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate.
Daily
Presidential Tracking Poll: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday
[3/10/2010] shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing
his role as President. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval
Index rating of -21.
Obama's
approval: New low in Gallup. Just 46 percent of those surveyed over the past three days
voiced approval for the job that President Barack Obama is performing, with 45 percent voicing
disapproval, Gallup reports today [3/11/2010].
A seal
of disapproval. Barack Obama's popularity has plunged in a fireball down a mountainside and
into a ravine over the past year: After enjoying positive ratings of near 70 percent following his
inauguration, Rasmussen Reports said this week that 43 percent of voters strongly disapprove of Obama's
performance, as opposed to only 22 percent who strongly approve.
'Tis
better to kill the health care corpse now. There's abundant evidence that Mr. Obama's toxic agenda
seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes. Democrats with a bad case of nerves (this includes most of
them) finally admit that Obamacare has "problems," and several Democratic office-holders in Missouri suddenly
had business elsewhere when the president showed up for a rally in St. Louis this week.
Even the Democrats don't want to be seen with him.
Demand for Obama wanes among moderate
Democrats. Moderate House Democrats facing potentially difficult reelections this fall
have a message for President Barack Obama: Don't call us; we'll call you. Interviews with nearly a
dozen congressional Democrats on the ballot this year reveal a decided lack of enthusiasm for having Obama
come to their districts to campaign for them — the most basic gauge of a president's popularity.
Obama Unwelcome on Campaign Trail.
This week may provide the answer to the big political question of 2010: how many Democrats are willing
to walk the plank for President Obama's healthcare "reform" plan? There may not be as many as the
president and Speaker Pelosi think. And some of them apparently aren't among the "Stupak Dozen," the
anti-abortion Dems who have already declared themselves against the bill.
NBC poll: 17% approve of
Congress. If Americans are divided about how their congressman should vote on the health-care
bill, the same can't be said for their views on Congress. According to the new NBC/WSJ poll, whose
full results will be released beginning at 6:30 pm ET [3/16/2010], only 17% approve of Congress'
job.
Is
Obama Making A Threat Or A Promise? President Obama is threatening not to help any Democratic
lawmaker who opposes his health care overhaul, according to the U.K.'s Telegraph. ... Is this really a
threat? Vulnerable Democrats already are running away from Obama.
Self-Slaughter.
If you want a sense of how much this whole process is damaging the Obama administration — the
apostles of "hope and change," you'll recall — take a look at Robert Gibbs trying to answer whether
the "Slaughter Solution" constitutes the kind of up-or-down vote the president promised. It's almost
painful to watch. The unmasking of the Obama presidency continues, one day at a time.
The world watches our president fail.
President Obama has many times declared the debate on health insurance over. He was right. His
side lost. And so for the past six months, the president has used taxpayer money to buy congressional
votes.
New Gallup
Poll finds Americans suddenly souring more on Obama. Americans, apparently unhappy with President
Obama insulting Asian allies by twice postponing his long-planned trip there this week, have turned against the
Democrat in a major poll. Now, a new Gallup Poll finds, Obama's public approval rating has suddenly fallen
to the worst level since he took office however many years ago that seems. He was right around 70% in January
of 2009. Today [3/18/2010], Gallup reports, the ex-senator has plunged to a 46% approval rating.
Daily
Presidential Tracking Poll. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for
Saturday [3/20/2010] shows that 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama
is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a
Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded
for this President.
Washington
DC disconnect: Barack Obama's dead cat bounce. To listen to the pundits and soak up what
the media is saying here in Washington DC, you'd think that President Barack Obama is running at about 70 percent
in the polls and cruising towards being re-coronated in 2012. The polls, however, tell a different
story.
Obama Greeted by Boos at Nats Stadium.
President Obama tossed the ceremonial opening pitch of the 2010 baseball season this afternoon in Washington,
but as he emerged from the home dugout he was greeted with plenty of boos along with the cheers.
Joblessness:
The Kids Are Not Alright. Unemployment today doesn't look like any unemployment in the recent
American experience. We have the astonishing and dispiriting new reality that the "long-term
jobless" — people out of work more than six months (27 weeks) — was about 44% of all people
unemployed in February. A year ago that number was 24.6%. This is not normal joblessness.
Obamacare
predictions were way off. [Obamacare was supposed to] serve as the model for even more Democratic
"successes." Not quite. Democrats rammed the Senate bill through the House only because it had first
passed the Senate, so that cannot happen. Democrats are wrung out, and Republicans have no incentive to
compromise. They know Obama's inept at selling his issues, and more so with his candidates. Ask
Gov. Deeds, D-Va., Gov. Corzine, D-N.J., and Sen. Coakley, D-Fantasy, how much Obama helped them.
Sorry: No bump
for Obamacare. Last September, just as public opinion was beginning to turn against Obamacare in a serious
way, Bill Clinton made a bold prediction. "The minute health care reform passed," he said in a policy forum in New
York City, "President Obama's approval ratings would go up 10 points." Clinton's prediction reflected the
wishful assumption of many wishful liberal-leaning pundits and think tank analysts, as well as the strategy of Obama's
political advisers.
Obama(doesn't)care
Taking Surprise Hits. As President Barack Obama is attempting to steamroll yet another enormous
policy change through Congress against the best interests of Americans, we would be well-advised to keep
abreast of the frauds that are already being exposed about Obamacare. Last week, reality dealt Obamacare
twin blows — not that Obama will care. An analysis inside his own administration and a report from
New York state shed the grim light of reality on this monstrosity before its Draconian provisions have even gone
into effect.
Poll finds
Americans in an anti-incumbent mood as midterm elections near. Members of Congress face the
most anti-incumbent electorate since 1994, with less than a third of all voters saying they are inclined to
support their representatives in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
A
70-seat tsunami? The Democrats' current tactic of prioritizing legislation to weaken Republicans'
standings (among all voters on financial regulation, among Hispanics on immigration, among young voters on
cap-and-trade and the environment) doesn't really address their current problem, which is that the Democrats'
standing among voters is at a record low and that they're getting pasted in polls despite the fact that the
Republicans' standing among voters is not particularly high.
Young People Deserting Obama. The
youth are drawn to lofty ideals, and three years ago, Obama's rhetoric was full of them. He promised
transparency, post-partisanship, and a newer, better Washington. Now, we're realizing this rhetoric
didn't matter and was "just words, just speeches."
Failure-in-Chief. The controversies
over the Arizona immigration plan and the Obama Administration's response to the oil spill in the Gulf may not
seem related, but they have a key common characteristic: both originate in the failure of Washington.
In both cases, President Obama faces a real danger of a political backlash from which he will be unable to recover.
Another
Dem bites the dust. Another rat leaving a sinking ship? David Obey has been a fixture as a
Democratic member of Congress since 1969 and is chairman of the powerful House Appropriations committee.
He won re-election easily in 2008. Now he is announcing his retirement, joining the band of Democrats
who have decided to leave their seats before the door hits them on the way out.
Poll: Obama has Lost Almost Half of
his US Jewish Support. United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support
among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown. The US Jews polled were asked whether they
would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they
would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or
refused to answer.
Democrats
on the Run in Hawaii. If you're looking for a sign that Republicans' message of fiscal responsibility
and government accountability will win this November and Democrats will struggle to defend their reckless agenda,
look no further than Obama's home district in Hawaii.
Caulkers, Clunkers, and
Coakley: [Scroll down] In his Inaugural address, Obama spoke of the dawn of a new "era
of responsibility." He was going to make Americans believe in politicians and government again.
A year later, disgust for both is higher than ever. His administration has proven to be as ordinary,
corrupt, and unimaginative as any other, if not more so. The hype has amounted to a cavalcade of
nothingness: a stimulus package that hasn't stimulated the economy, bailouts for corrupt unions, frivolous
programs for clunkers and caulkers, bribes to pliable pols, global warming dilettantism preached to Americans
in a jobless torpor, a Justice Department that looks like an annex of the ACLU, a rhetoric of transparency
coupled with a reality of secrecy, and a partying and porous White House that enjoys the trappings of power
while not accomplishing anything to justify them.
Obama Buyer's Remorse.
President Obama's disappointing performance has indisputably brought enormous buyer's remorse to many of his fans,
the feeling that the "purchase" (i.e., voting for Obama) was a mistake. And while little can be done until
November 2012, it may be useful to analyze why thoughtful people were seduced and, furthermore, learn to avoid
future hoodwinking.
Another Very Bad Night
for Obama, Democrats, and the Media. You know it's bad night when a win is actually a loss.
Perhaps the worst news of the night [of 5/18/2010] for Team Obama was the Democrat win in the special election
in Pennsylvania for Jack Murtha's seat. Huh? Yep, Mark Critz is a "Rush Limbaugh Democrat" who
campaigned against almost everything Obama and Murtha support. Frankly, he was more conservative than
the McCain campaign of 2008 and more apt to criticize Obama than is, say, Lindsay Graham.
Las
Vegas jobless rate hits record 14.2 percent. Unemployment in Las Vegas in April shot to a record
high of 14.2 percent with an estimated 140,900 residents out of work. The state Department of
Employment, Training and Rehabilitation also said the Nevada jobless rate hit a record high of 13.7 percent
for the month.
Jobpocalypse
now. This week, the Senate is expected to extend jobless benefits to more than 5 million
Americans through the end of the year. It is the sixth time in nearly two years that they've expanded
or extended unemployment benefits — putting off, again, a day of reckoning our political leaders
seem unwilling to face.
Poll: Public Opinion of
Democratic Party at All-Time Low. Americans are dissatisfied with both major political
parties, but the public's approval of the Democratic Party is at its lowest level ever, a new CBS News
poll shows.
The petulant
president. Presidential petulance was on full display this week. When 56 percent of
the American people disapprove of the job you are doing, you've got a problem. When you're the president
of the United States and 56 percent of the American people disapprove of your job performance, you've got
an enormous problem.
Barack Obama's credibility hits rock bottom after oil spill and
Sestak scandal. George W Bush's unpopularity and perceived incompetence was encapsulated by the
way he dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Candidate Obama branded it "unconscionable incompetence".
Central to Obama's appeal was his promise to be truly different. His failure to achieve that is now at the core
of the deep disappointment Americans feel about him.
What's Driving Obama Down?
President Obama's job-approval rating just hit an all-time low. And there's a pattern behind the trifecta
of issues that are driving the drop — the oil spill, the Arizona immigration-policing law and the fallout
from the Greek crisis. After four months of hovering between a low of 46 percent approval and a high
of 49 percent, Obama just fell to 42 percent in the daily Rasmussen polls.
The real
unemployment rate? 16.6%. The Labor Department's statistics don't include the underemployed
and those who have stopped looking for work. This alternative measure creates a much higher number.
The Political Noose Tightens
for Dems. Among the problems for Democrats is that the narrative of the election — a
bad economy, profligate spending, misplaced priorities, and the Obama administration's general
incompetence — is just about baked into the cake, absent some extraordinary intervening
events. And the news for President Obama and Democrats continues to get worse rather than better.
The Coming
Resignation of Barack Obama. Months ago, I predicted in this column that President
Obama would so discredit himself in office that he wouldn't even be on the ballot in 2012, let
alone have a prayer of being reelected. Like President Johnson in 1968, who had won a much
bigger victory four years previously than Obama did in 2008, President Obama will be so politically
defunct by 2012 that he won't even try to run for reelection. I am now ready to predict
that President Obama will not even make it that far.
Unpresidential Obama. Perhaps this
is the "change" portion of the agenda. In recent days, President Barack Obama has eclipsed his unflappable
campaign image, exposing himself as man with a melting point, a Mr. Once-Cool turned hot. After 18 months,
his approval ratings continue to drop as his losses outpace his wins and his rock-star status of 2008 feels more
garage-band as the dog days of summer descend on deflated Washington.
Never
Letting a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. [Scroll down] By last Thursday [5/27/2010], the
daily Rasmussen tracking poll revealed that 26 percent of Americans strongly approve of the President's
job performance, while 42 percent strongly disapprove, giving Mr. Obama a Presidential Approval rating
of minus-16. A USA Today/Gallup survey found that 53 percent of Americans rate his handling of
the crisis as "poor" or "very poor" while only 43 percent still are satisfied. Nevertheless,
Americans continue to support oil exploration. By a significant margin, Texas voters still want more
offshore oil drilling. Similar percentages hold nationally. However, for this White House,
proceeding with new drilling would "waste" the crisis.
Who's Ready for a President Biden?
The whole point of Biden as VP was to provide Obama with impeachment insurance. A President Biden is going
to be a tough sell. True, he is a dimwit. But, at least we know who he is and his history. Biden
has a son who served honorably. He spent his formative years in America and understands our traditions.
Poof Goes the Myth.
Politico is running a symposium: "Is Obama's brand 'irrevocably shattered'?" OK, not the discussion
the White House wants to see raging. That tells you something right there: the media-Obama love fest
is over. The pretext is the Andrew Romanoff scandal. But it could easily have been triggered by the
president's all-time low weekly approval rating (46%) in Gallup or the BP spill or the Joe Sestak flap.
Obama's
Youth Brigade Burns Out. [Scroll down] The young people working in the White House are supposed
to be the truest of true believers. ... But as the campaign juggernaut settles into the grind of governing, many
junior staff across the administration are heading for the exits, burned out and tired of life in the Obama bubble.
Hero to zero.
Never has any US politician's reputation crumbled so quickly. Obama's position is beyond dire.
According to Rasmussen's latest ratings, just 25 per cent of Americans "strongly approve" of Obama's
performance, while 41 per cent "strongly disapprove". His presidential approval rating
is -16. His ratings for honesty and for being firm and decisive have plummeted.
Democrats
suffering from 'Messiah Fatigue'. President Obama is angry at God for making it rain in Chicago,
and irked at the oil spill, making him pack up between his vacations and make trips down again to the Gulf.
Ideologues argue about over whether corporations or government tend to be the least competent, ignoring the
proof that the answer is both of them. And Democrats are having their own kind of crisis, a sort of
buyer's remorse at a very high level, which sounds like Messiah Fatigue.
Jobs report
a nightmare for Obama progressivism. [Scroll down slowly] Progressives generally, and
Obama especially, encourage expectations as large as the 1,428-page (cap-and-trade), 1,566-page (financial
reform) and 2,409-page (health care) bills they churn out as "comprehensive" solutions to this and that.
For a proper progressive, anything short of a "comprehensive" solution to, say, the problem of illegal
immigration is unworthy of consideration. For today's progressive president, the prospect of a jobless
recovery is a comprehensive nightmare.
Obama Sinks to a New Low ... in
the Polls. The bad news for Democrats keeps rolling in, day by day. And as the environmental
catastrophe in the Gulf continues unabated, the job picture remains bleak, trust in government reaches all-time
lows, and disdain for Congress approaches all-time highs, there's little reason for Democrats to view the
midterm elections with anything less than anxiety bordering on panic.
Obama
should stop trying to play the cowboy. [Scroll down] The crisis has turned into Obama's
Hurricane Katrina. His own reputation as chief executive is on the line; and with a 'Washington Post'/ABC
poll showing that 69 [percent] of Americans think the government has been "not so good" or "poor" in its handling
of the spill, the Democrats' control of Congress is also threatened at the mid-term elections in November.
Obama Failing on the Things the
Public Cares Most About. We've seen oodles of polls of late, all reflecting a precipitous decline
in Obama's approval ratings. But none is more interesting than the poll by the Economist. It is
all the more fascinating — and devastating for Obama — because it is a poll of all
adults, not registered or likely voters, which normally would tilt more to the Left. In
other words, among likely voters Obama would probably be doing even worse.
I Know Who's to Blame. After
just a year and a half, it is virtually impossible by any measure to see the regime of Barack Obama as
anything other than a failure. Elected on lofty rhetoric espousing the nebulous agenda of change,
hope, prosperity and unity, his first, only, and hopefully truncated term in office has turned into a
cold, clammy, national nightmare.
The Bottleneck is Always at the Top.
The more the President flexes his media-enhanced, teleprompter-controlled, highly-reverberated communication
skills the more people don't want what he's selling.
Obama
can't talk away these problems. The first 18 months of his presidency were all talk as
Nancy and Harry and Rahm handled the details of which friends to layer $900 billion upon. Health
care "reform" was more talk among Democrats, with almost no immediate consequences until 2011 and most years
beyond that. The show went on. But unemployment didn't begin to abate, and voters did not begin
to cheer Obamacare. Then suddenly an oil platform explodes, Israel's enemies stage a provocation, the
jobs don't arrive, the Iranians push ahead with their plans, and Obama finds himself pushed by events to
decide hard things and do more than talk.
The Liberal Tipping Point
Away from Obama. [Some have pointed out] the grave disappointment expressed last night about
Barack Obama's speech on the part of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Howard Fineman. This
is a significant development, because it indicates this is a liberal tipping point — both tactical
and emotional — away from Barack Obama.
The Left Turns on
Obama. The far-left in America is turning on their guy Barack Obama. After his speech on
the oil disaster a few days ago, the crazy left Greek chorus on MSNBC hammered the president. He wasn't
specific enough, he was too weak, I don't sense "executive command," they wailed. You would have thought
they were talking about President Bush.
Obama's Approval at All-Time Low. President
Barack Obama's weekly approval rating is at an all-time low for his presidency, according to the Gallup Poll, and
it is especially low among those 65 or older, those who are married, and those who attend church every week.
Americans Who Don't Attend Church Form Base of Obama's
Support. President Barack Obama's overall approval rating stood at 49 percent for the most
recent three-day period, and at 50 percent for the week ending May 8, but it would be lower than that
if America consisted exclusively of people who attend church with some regularity. Non-church goers form
the base of Obama's support, according to Gallup polling data.
Middle Class Is Abandoning Obama. The
middle class is abandoning President Barack Obama, according to data released by the Gallup Poll. The
only income bracket among which a majority still says they approve of the job he is doing as president are
those earning $2,000 per month or less.
Are Liberals Breaking
Up with Obama? [Scroll down] The fairytale aspect of liberals' affair with Obama is,
I think, that they — like the infatuated teenage girl — saw in him only what
they wanted to see. The gaping holes in Obama's résumé got short shrift, while his
teleprompted eloquence had them all a-swooning. Like the teenage girl who wants to hear or see nothing
amiss about her new beau, liberals turned a deaf ear and blind eye to every troublesome bit of Obama's
idealistic folderol and defended his lack of executive experience on the ridiculous notion that he was
above those sorts of things because he was, after all, rather like a god.
Obama in the Bunker.
The Obama White House is in full bunker mode. Don't believe me? Here's the definition of "bunker
mentality from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Allusions: In politics, a "bunker mentality" is an
embattled frame of mind, often accompanied by an aggrieved sense of being unfairly under attack. The
term is most often applied to American Presidents who suffer political reverses and assume a surly, defensive
posture — all critics are enemies; if you're not for us you're against us; etc.
Record 57% Of Americans Disapprove Of Obama's Performance.
That's a new low for President Obama in the latest Rasmussen poll. Just 42% approve of his performance,
matching a record low.
Americans'
Opinion of Obama's "Change" Promise Is Itself Changing. Barack Obama won the presidency by
promising change that both Democrats and many independent voters could "believe in." The latest
Towery Poll of the nation illustrates why his approval rating has plummeted. It also shows how far the
president has to go to recover from what is starting to look like a disastrous presidency.
Slickness
won't save sinking Obama. Is there anyone left who is proud of voting for Obama? Affirmatively
proud, I mean, not merely glad they didn't vote Republican. Anyone? ... The only legitimate reason
for supporting Obama was because he's a great speechmaker whose rhetoric could impact reality. Only he's
not and it can't.
Democrats
driving off a cliff. Last week, President Obama's job approval rating sank to 46 percent in a
Gallup poll, matching the lowest weekly job approval rating of his presidency. Few Americans were
surprised. Obama's bumbling response to the BP oil spill drove the latest decline in his popularity
almost equally among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Confront a Liberal Today.
[Scroll down] It's vital at this very opportune teaching moment, when the Obama they saw as a political
savior is standing proverbially naked on the Gulf, to confront them with the choice they made. To
call them out. To ask the hard questions: Are you sure you voted wisely? Are you happy
with the change we've gotten? Do you still have hope in liberal big government to solve all the
world's problems?
Has the President Lost His
Bearings? The slo-mo implosion of Obama's presidency is the topic du jour among just about
everyone these days. From the yuppie-occupied tables at the neighborhood Starbucks to every main street
beer joint and pool hall, in every golf club tavern and even at ladies' luncheons, the question of what went
wrong and why is foremost in every American mind and on their lips.
NPR
Poll is Bad News for Democrats. The last week of House polls have reinforced the view I have
held from April of this year that a 50-seat loss or so is the midpoint scenario for Democrats this fall,
rather than the 25-40 seat range that most analysts seem to be talking about.
Barack
Obama: the most unpopular man in Britain? In January 2009 Barack Obama was hugely popular
on this side of the Atlantic, and could have walked on water in the eyes of the British media, the political
elites, and the general public. In June 2010 however he probably qualifies as the most despised US
president since Nixon among the British people.
The Editor asks...
What did the British have against Nixon?
Dems
Turn On Obama. To the left, the oil spill is not an index of presidential competence or
an issue in the political sphere. It is a daily gushing of poison into the Earth's waters as a direct
result of the president's failure to stop it. They blame BP. But they already hate oil
companies. And they blame Obama, too. And they are coming to dislike him.
Does
Barack Obama want to be president? [Scroll down] But the question here is not his
qualifications. They are no longer particularly relevant. This is a beaten man, struggling to
show he is not, even though everybody knows he is.
Obama's Collapsing Base. In a
single year Obama lost the support of independent voters and liberal Republicans by passing the left's agenda.
And this year, he is well on the way to losing the support of the left for not passing enough of their agenda.
Being too left wing for mainstream America, and too mainstream for the left is not a new problem for the
Democratic party. It's a problem they've faced since what had been the counterculture became the party
establishment. But it's a special problem for the man who rose to power as the poster child of the
left. Barack Hussein Obama.
'Wal-Mart Moms' Turn on the
Democrats. The bad news for Democrats keeps pouring in. Now it comes from Wal-Mart
moms — women with children under 18 who shop at Wal-Mart. They tend to be Democrats and
more of them than not voted for President Obama in 2008. But they're leaning Republican this year.
Confidence Waning
in Obama, U.S. Outlook. Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the country and less
confident in President Barack Obama's leadership than at any point since Mr. Obama entered the White House,
according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Obama
and Dems heading for electoral disaster. All around, there are Democrats telling us their prospects
for November are looking up. Things aren't as bad as Republicans say! Health care is becoming more
popular! The country wants financial reform! People still like Barack Obama! Isn't Joe
Barton awful! They're fooling themselves. The basic indicators of voters' intentions —
their general mood and attitude toward the policies of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid — are clear
and solid.
Obama: The Boy Who Would Be a Man.
Barack Obama is, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, a "man-child." He is a boy who would be a man, a weakling
who wants to look strong, and an inexperienced politician who wants so much to be a venerated leader.
To the chagrin of our nation, he is also our President: a fact that sane people, including many who
inexplicably voted for Obama, are starting to regret more and more as time goes by.
The Presidential
Rorschach Test. [Scroll down] I can almost defend President Obama. After all, he
told us he was a blank screen. And a blank screen can't be expected to actually do anything. His
supporters who are now angry and disappointed with him are like patients who hear the results of their Rorschach
test and get furious at the inkblots.
Too
brilliant to fail. An irresistible force is meeting an immovable object on the field of
perception, and causing an odd sort of storm. The irresistible force is the growing idea that Obama
has failed as a leader on a number of items: "Engagement" has failed; our allies are angry; the oil
keeps gushing, his ideas are job killers; the recession goes on. His party lost three big elections
under his guidance and seems poised for a drubbing. The harder he pushes the country's laws leftward,
the more its politics bend to the right.
Unprecedented
Arrogance. You'll recall that during both of President George W. Bush's terms, Democrats,
including Obama, castigated him for destroying the economy, despite the existence of empirically verifiable
robust growth during some seven of those eight years. Now that Obama has been in office for a year and
a half and his economy is failing by all objective measures, he and his Democrats demand, once again, that
we ignore the empirical evidence in front of our faces and bow down to them in reverent gratitude for
ensuring that things are not worse than they are.
Daily
Presidential Tracking Poll. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday
[7/2/2010] shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing
his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential
Approval Index rating of -20.
GOP tries to
nationalize elections; Dems resisting. Democrats and Republicans are framing the elections in
starkly different terms, with GOP strategists painting it as a national referendum on President Barack Obama
and the party in power, and Democrats working feverishly to make all politics local.
Teachers' Union Shuns Obama Aides at
Convention. For two years during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama addressed educators
gathered for the summer conventions of the two national teachers unions, and last year both groups rolled out
the welcome mat for federal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. But in a sign of the Obama administration's
strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at
either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face
heckling.
A Hapless Administration.
Last week was extraordinary. The President's economic advisor, Christina Romer, declared that Americans should
be feeling pretty good about the June jobs report. After all, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7 to
9.5% because 650,000 people were so discouraged that they gave up looking for work. "We've known for
some time," she said, that things would get bad before they got better. Romer's advice to those losing
their homes, their cars, their medical insurance, and all else was "Be patient."
The
boomer defection. This is turning into a tough election year for Democrats, and most of the
reasons are familiar: The economy is stalled, President Obama's popularity is sagging and voters are
in an anti-incumbent mood. There's an "enthusiasm gap" too. Republican voters are fired up and
ready to vote, while liberals are dispirited.
Obama's "False Narrative".
[Scroll down] According to the True Narrative, Obama the Great acted with wisdom and courage to forestall
another Great Depression. The charges of profligate spending have been manufactured out of thin air.
The stimulus package has been a spectacular success. ObamaCare will bend the cost curve down. The
economy is doing swimmingly. The outreach to the Muslim world has led to unprecedented breakthroughs.
Nation after nation — Iran, Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, Venezuela — are bending to
Obama's will. And all the problems America faces — from nearly 10 percent unemployment
to polarization to acne among teens — are owing to Obama's predecessor. Yet ... Obama
has become massively unpopular among independents.
Obama
approval rating takes dive as he faces anti-business charge. A new poll out Friday [7/9/2010]
showed a new benchmark: a majority of Americans now disapprove of Obama's job performance. The
Economist/YouGov survey of 1,000 U.S. citizens from July 3 to 6 showed that 52 percent disapprove
of Obama's job performance. And Obama's approval in the poll was at 43 percent, a concerning number
for the White House. Gallup's daily tracking poll, which averages all polls over the last three days,
showed Obama Friday at 44 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval.
The Looming Catastrophe Of Hope and Change. You know
things are really starting to go south for the Obama administration when its journalistic functionaries and
spear-carriers on the left are starting to openly fret and worry as they begin to feel November's chill wind
blowing. The visions of historic change, social justice and a plum government job are gradually being
replaced by nightmares not just of defeat but repudiation. The racket has been exposed by its own
audacity.
Charges
That Obama Stole the Nomination From Hillary Clinton. Maybe the New Black Panther intimidation
case is not an isolated event. This could be the tip of a very large iceberg.
Democrats Realize the Cost of
Obamaism — to Them. If Republicans win big in November, it may not mean the end of
the Obama presidency (we certainly have learned that two years in politics is forever) but it will end his
aura of political invincibility. Those Democrats who survive will need to chart their own course.
And internationally, friends and foes will begin to calculate and calibrate their behavior, knowing Obama
may be a one-term president.
Faith in Obama at
a new low. Nearly 60% of American voters say they lack faith in President Barack Obama,
according to a public opinion poll published on Tuesday [7/13/2010]. The results of the Washington
Post/ABC News poll are a reversal of what voters said at the start of Obama's presidency 18 months ago
when about 60% expressed confidence in his decision making.
Americans
have lost faith in Barack Obama. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll is a major blow to
the White House just four months before crucial mid-terms in November. According to the poll, "nearly
six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country", and two
thirds "say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working." A
staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president's
decision-making, with just 42 per cent saying they do.
Election looms for Democrats: How
bad can it be? For nervous Democrats, the big question now is: How bad will November's
congressional elections be? The answer: Pretty bad.
You Keep the RINOs, I'll Take the
Conservatives. Here we are heading into a campaign season where the people of this
country are righteously angry. They're angry about all of the taxing, and spending, and debt,
and illegal immigration, and incompetent response to the oil spill in the Gulf, and having socialized
medicine rammed down our throats, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Large majorities of the American people
have said, time and time again, that they don't want any of this, and they plan on throwing out the
bums who have foisted all of this onto us. Obama and his policies are more unpopular now
than at any previous time.
Dems Have
Lost Voters' Policy Support. President Obama's troubles with a weakening economy are outracing his
excuses, triggering political turmoil and angst among Democrats who now fear they will lose majority control of
Congress in November. The White House is getting slammed by one economic bombshell after another. The
data coming in during the past week suggests that economic growth had slowed down to just over 2 percent in
April through June, far from the 3.5 percent that had been forecast.
Obama
is losing control of the Democratic Party. Of course, Democrats were cheering as they followed
Obama off a cliff during the heady days of 2009, so they should share in the blame for the wasted moment.
But they won't. They'll keep blaming Obama. Churlish, perhaps, but very human. Obama, who
could once do nothing wrong, now can't seem to do anything right in Democratic eyes.
Obama's Job Approval Lowest in Wyoming at 29%, and Utah,
34%. President Barack Obama's job approval rating is lowest in Wyoming and Utah, according to the
Gallup polling company, which tracked the numbers for all 50 states and the District of Columbia from January
through June 2010.
President Haters.
During the worst ecological disaster of the era, as all levels of his administration repeatedly fumbled
the ball, Obama golfed, partied, listened to Paulie Beatle, and went on vacation no fewer than three times.
Let them eat cake! In direct consequence of these actions and countless others, Obama has become
a hated man. That hatred will only grow.
Liar,
liar: Why Obama is failing. [Scroll down] Now we are where we are. We
have a president that no one wants to listen to because we do not fully believe him. His own party
is deserting him not just because they know his ideas are unpopular. They also know he is unable to
convince anyone. We have shut him off. And now the revelations of J. Christian Adams have
shown that his Department of Justice has a racial bias not entirely dissimilar to those of Reverend Wright.
Again the MSM is doing its best to ignore this, but the damage is still there and growing and Obama will
not be able, this time, to make a speech in his defense.
A
Year After Honeymoon Ends, Whites, Men and Independents Desert Obama. It was a year ago this
month that President Barack Obama began losing voters. In the 12 months since, he has had legislative
victories that appear — especially in the case of health care — to have cost him
large amounts of both political capital and political support.
Obama Girl Is
Nowhere to Be Found. Democrats will be gulping this morning at the Quinnipiac Poll's latest
results. For the first time in the survey's history, Americans believe by a 48% to 40% margin that
President Obama doesn't deserve re-election. Almost as stinging, a plurality believe the country
would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008.
Congress hits historic bottom in Gallup Poll.
Only 11 percent of Americans have "a great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in Congress, the
lowest rating ever reached by any of the 16 major institutions ranked in public esteem by Gallup's
Confidence in Institutions survey since 1973.
Youths
turn on Obama. Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama's "Yes, we can"
message are now saying "Maybe not" — and are backing away from the president in a worrisome
new poll for the White House.
The Unpresidential President.
Barack Obama has managed a rare feat in American history: The longer he is president, the less presidential
he has become. Obama has reversed the usual process of growth and maturation, appearing today far more
like a candidate for the presidency — and a very ordinary one at that — than he did
during the latter stages of his campaign.
Record
50.1% Disapprove Of President Obama. For the first time, a majority (50.1%) of Americans
disapprove of President Obama's job performance in the Realclearpolitics.com poll average. Just
44.9% think he's doing a good job. The weak economy, which helped carry Obama into the Oval Office in
2008, is now dragging him and his fellow Democrats down on the cusp of the midterm elections.
Jumping Ship. Christina Romer,
the chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers becomes the first high-profile rodent to
leave the foundering economic ship that is Obama's "fundamentally transformed" America.
Dropouts, underworked push U.S. rate
to 16.5%. Included in the national jobs report out Friday was an important — and
uglier — number that often gets lost in the noise around the official unemployment rate.
Officially, the U.S. jobless rate is 9.5 percent, but by a broader measure the rate is well into double
digits — at 16.5 percent. The larger number — called the U-6 unemployment
rate — counts jobless people actively seeking work but also includes those who have stopped
actively looking for a job and part-time workers who want more hours.
Time
to admit Obamanomics has failed. It's no coincidence that Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House
Council of Economic Advisers, announced her retirement the day before Friday's brutal unemployment report.
With 131,000 more jobs lost in July, and downward revisions of 97,000 for the previous two months, it's easy to
see why she would start looking for the exits.
Peak Obama. Thirty-one months
after the start of the recession, last week's jobs report for July was a fiasco. The Labor Department
reported yet another 131,000 jobs lost in July. The Department also revised the June report downward to
show 221,000 jobs lost that month from 125,000. The unemployment rate remained at 9.5% only because
181,000 additional discouraged workers left the work force, and so were not counted as unemployed. That
makes one million who have fled the work force since April.
The
stunning decline of Barack Obama. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant
ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president's own supporters
as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White
House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
Obama
approval rating falls into new danger zone. One month ago on July 12, Obama's approval and
disapproval both stood at 47 percent in the Real Clear Politics poll average. On Tuesday [8/10/2010],
the president's approval had fallen to 44.4 percent. Disapproval had jumped to 50.4 percent.
Barack
Obama is abandoned by the Left as his approval ratings collapse. When your own tribe turns on you,
you're in serious trouble.
Majority
in Gallup daily poll disapprove of Obama for first time. A majority of those surveyed by Gallup
disapproved of President Obama's job performance for the first time. According to the Gallup daily tracking
poll released on Tuesday, 51 percent of U.S. adults said they disapproved of how Obama was handling his
job, compared with 42 percent who approve.
Obama's Point of No Return.
There comes a moment in a failing presidency where the incumbent, through some single gesture, action, or
statement, crosses a certain line from beyond which there is no return. ... With Obama, we have an abundance of
riches: the multiple vacations, the legal harassment of the state of Arizona on behalf of illegals, the
clownish response to the Gulf oil blowout. But when historians come to select the moment when Obama went
over the edge of the world, I think they'll find the great Iftar mosque speech of August 13, 2010 hard to
beat.
How-To Guide for Cleaning Up Obama's Mess.
These are trying times for the White House. The President is embroiled in a controversy over the planned
mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, and he's losing friends on the professional left for unflattering
comments from his spokesman. Liberal candidates would prefer he keep his distance on the campaign trail
for fear that he could alienate independents. Meanwhile, America is adrift.
Obama approval rate
in Texas drops to 34 percent. President Barack Obama's job-approval rating has dropped to
34 percent in Texas, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released this afternoon [8/23/2010]. Lone Star
State voters are more hostile to Obama than the rest of the country. The president's national approval
rating stands at 47 percent, according to Rasmussen's daily tracking poll.
Honey, I Shrunk My
Approval Ratings. In what will rank as one of the all-time presidential PR disasters, we're now
well over half way through what the White House called "the summer of recovery." And what a recovery it's
been. Earlier this month, first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high. The unemployment
rate remains at 9.5% and 18.4% of workers are out of a job, can only get part-time work, or have given up
looking for a job altogether.
African-American
leaders express dissatisfaction with President Obama. With President Barack Obama's approval
ratings dipping below 50%, members of his strongest voting bloc have also started to voice displeasure with
the way he has chosen to govern.
Economic
Growth Rate Downgraded to Anemic 1.6 Percent in Second Quarter. The Commerce Department is
revising downward the economic growth from April to June to 1.6 percent — a decline from the
original 2.4 percent forecast and much slower than the 3.7 percent of the first quarter 2010.
The barely-there number isn't enough keep pace with population growth, which needs about 3 percent
annualized growth just to break even each year and prevent unemployment, currently 9.5 percent, from
rising.
Obama
Is Driving America Crazy. Rasmussen has discovered that just 26% of voters "think Obama shares
the same political views they have." It adds that, "nearly two-out-of-three U.S. voters (65%) remain at
least somewhat angry at the current policies of the federal government, including 40% who are very angry."
Also, "most voters believe the Democratic congressional agenda is extreme while a plurality describe the Republican
agenda as mainstream." No wonder Obama's job approval in several national polls is at or close to its
all-time low.
Obama's Epic
Failures. Barack Obama returns from his August vacation with a growing pile of problems
facing him on just about every front. The economy is in a nosedive, his party is on the brink of
losing its majority and the country is losing faith in his ability to lead.
The Humbling of an American
President. He came into office not only promising to create jobs, restore prosperity, open
doors of opportunity, cut health-care costs, and reduce our "mounting debt" but also to end divisions in our
politics, transcend partisanship, put an end to the blame game, provide unprecedented transparency, stop the
rise of the oceans, and heal the planet. Those were his words, his claims, his commitments.
Association with Obama is now a political liability
Nobody wants to be seen with him, if they care about being re-elected.
Obama Defeats Specter.
Let's back up and stay focused on why, exactly, Arlen Specter lost this race — and had his career
ended. Two words: Barack Obama.
A Bad Day for the
Obama Agenda. The wave that started last year is continuing to gain velocity, size and force.
This week's elections confirmed what the evidence has shown since last summer: Mr. Obama's agenda is a
political killer and his endorsement is of little help. If there is a big takeaway from what happened
on Tuesday, that is it.
Change boomerangs on President Obama.
Change is Barack Obama's political calling card and the fuel that propelled his never-waste-a-crisis agenda —
but change is boomeranging big time on the president in a turbulent and unpredictable 2010.
America's
Repudiation of Obama's America Continues. [Scroll down] Both Coakley and Specter enjoyed
commanding leads over their opponents prior to Obama's active engagement in their races... There was no
eleventh hour visit for Specter — but only because Obama's political advisors read the handwriting
on the wall and were desperate to avoid yet another embarrassing image of their boss with his arms draped
around another losing candidate.
Party like it's 1994.
The best strategy for Republicans running for office this November? Get President Obama to campaign for
your Democratic opponent. It's a plan that appears to be working rather splendidly for the GOP so far.
Obama's lazy tribute to
Daniel Pearl. Barack Obama's remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In support
of Chicago's Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming speech about himself, and they
gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to support Martha Coakley's bid for the U.S. Senate, and
Massachusetts voters gave Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican.
Freshmen Run Away From Obama.
The House Democratic freshmen who rose to power riding candidate Barack Obama's coattails in 2008 are now
eager to strut their independence heading into the midterms.
This is great news!
Obama
to visit Bay Area to bolster Boxer's bid. President Obama will land in the Bay Area today to
raise money for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's re-election campaign as an anti-incumbent wave has Republicans in
blue California convinced this is their best shot in years to oust their liberal nemesis.
The Obama Effect.
Democrats are going to have to think really carefully about how they deploy Barack Obama for campaigning this
fall. Polls we've conducted nationally and in several different states over the last few weeks have found
that a candidate being endorsed by Obama is much more likely to elicit a negative response from Republican voters
than a positive one from Democrats.
Governor
candidate Bill White has 'no plans' to attend Texas events with Obama. President Barack Obama's
fundraising trip next month to Texas probably won't include a joint appearance with his party's pick for
governor, Bill White. "He has no plans to attend," White spokeswoman Katy Bacon said Tuesday [7/20/2010].
Sorry Mr.
President, my schedule is full. Signs accumulate that the President is becoming political
kryptonite for Democrat candidates. August 9th huh? Let me check my calendar. Oh
darn the luck Mr. President, I'm going to be making a campaign stop at the Johnson County Fair. My
schedule is really packed right now, but maybe we can do lunch in... say... mid November.
To Help Fellow Democrats in the Fall,
Obama May Stay Away. As lunch was served in the Roosevelt Room of the White House one day last
week, President Obama assured the nine Democratic members of Congress sitting around the table that he would
do anything he could to help them survive their fall elections. Even, he said, if it meant staying away.
Texas
Democratic candidates distance themselves from Obama. When President Barack Obama visits Texas
on Aug. 9, the state's top-tier Democratic candidate, gubernatorial nominee Bill White, will likely be
miles away, reaching out to voters in Johnson County near Fort Worth.
Democrats Hide from
Obama in Atlanta. The rats scurry for cover. In this report from Jeff Hullinger at
Atlanta TV 11Live.com, we learn that in Georgia Democrats don't want to be seen in the company of the
usurper-in-chief. Look for this trend to accelerate as we get closer to the elections. But
everyone should be aware that while they don't want to be seen in public with him they still are supporting
his agenda.
Obama
to Dems: Don't worry, I won't campaign for you. According to The New York Times, Obama is
resigned to the fact that his unpopularity might be a hindrance for Democrats trying to get reelected in November.
Democrats Scatter Monday as
Obama Comes to Town. President Obama made his first Atlanta appearance since his inauguration.
The President flew into town Monday morning [8/2/2010]. If you think it was a time for Democrats running for office
to rally around the chief executive — you probably haven't been following the campaigns this summer.
How Does Obama Measure Up?
President Obama is under water in public opinion polls, judged more unfavorably than favorably. He now pops
up in Republican campaign ads that link Democratic candidates to his unpopular administration. And a
growing list of Democrats would rather he stay away while they are running for office this year. He's
a political liability to his party.
Obama
in Texas: Awkward! President Obama looks a little nonplussed by his official greeter in Austin.
No matter — the governor was just showing up his opponent, Democrat Bill White, who buzzed around
for weeks saying he wouldn't appear with Obama in Texas today. Perry gave Obama a letter asking for
more help along the border. White's snub was all the rage in the coverage, but the White House snorted
audibly at the suggestion that Obama was somehow insulted.
Paging Bill White.
When President Barack Obama traveled to Austin today for three events, one Democrat was notably absent.
Bill White, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor running against incumbent GOP Gov. Rick Perry, did not
appear with the president today, raising questions about the commander-in-chief's political capital in the
Lone Star State.
The Obsolescence of
Barack Obama. [President Obama's] fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a
handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he
will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign
trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past.
Keep Your Hands Off Texas, Mr. Obama.
Hundreds of people braved temperatures exceeding 100 degrees on Monday [8/9/2010] to send a message to President
Obama: "Keep your hands off Texas." Hours after Obama visited the city for a Democratic fundraiser
and a speech to University of Texas students, speaker after speaker at the Hands Off Texas rally contrasted
Texas' somewhat vibrant economy with a much bleaker national picture. ... Speakers were gleeful that a number
of Democratic candidates were campaigning elsewhere in the state and were not in Austin to join the President.
Obama is the key to the U.S. Senate race.
If the race is about Joe Manchin, he wins. ... If the race is about Barack Obama, the Republican wins.
Obama's visit to El Paso comes at tough time.
President Barack Obama will arrive in El Paso at a time of discontent, when the country's economic and labor
market looks as uncertain as the future of its foreign policy. ... This emotional moment with historic
significance does not mean Democratic candidates in Texas and New Mexico want to stand shoulder to shoulder
with the commander in chief. Even in El Paso, where an overwhelming 68 percent voted for
Obama in 2008, candidates facing tough races in November will not be on hand for his speech.
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