economy

I’ve been wondering if that paragon of White House fable fabrication may be on lysergic acid… obviously slipped into his cornflakes by a stealth Tea Party type bent on destroying the Wrong House narrative.

The spin just won’t fly any more. We keep hearing the misadministration’s grandiose statements, just chock full of loaded and misleading terminology. No matter how many times they bleat their Marxist diatribe, no matter how often they disguise their true intent with the language of obfuscation… nothing but nothing will put lipstick on this pig.

Mr Plouffe has announced, “People will not be voting based on the unemployment figures in 2012″. Excuse me while I say, “What?” What universe spawned people like Plouffe and the legion of Obama apologists? Wait! That must be the answer. It’s an alien invasion (another one) and they’ve taken over the administration… lock, stock and vacation schedule.

Eight million jobs lost since the Anointed One assumed his throne. I heard an outrageous statement by some brain-damaged hack that new layoffs had virtually come to a halt. This dude hasn’t been out to California lately, has he? We’re still shedding jobs and businesses at a frightening rate. He threw that desperate thread out there as a ‘comforting indicator’ of the ‘recovery’. Excuse me? I should do an entire article on that alone… great title opportunity, too… “The Recovery That Barack Built”.

Somebody convinced that poor boob that the government’s carefully massaged math was something other than pure fantasy. I guess we can’t be too harsh on poor old David, either… he’s got plenty of company.

Here it is, David. This upcoming election will very much hinge on employment… or far more likely, the lack of. You and the other minions of the Darkside are about to meet the American people… and we’re really sick and tired. But, far more than that, we’re mad… we’re more than mad… the undercurrent in the country is rage.

We have an enraged and highly-motivated populace who intend to see the moral, social and economic destruction stopped… and stopped now. No more compromise, no more deals.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

As if a 14 trillion dollar deficit, with his name and that of his party all over it, isn’t enough already. As if the House hasn’t zeroed in on: (a) The outright repeal of health care; (b) Dismantling its various components and provisions and starving more onerous items of funding to cripple them and keep them from harming the people or the economy.

Barack Obama has done everything just exactly as though he was driving our country into economic destruction. And it sure as heck looks to an awful lot of us out here that he’s done everything according to a scripted plan.

My guess is that the Democrat Marxists, in the first flush of victory after Obama was elected, vastly overestimated the political capital that the victory had afforded them. The Marxists in the administration and in Congress misinterpreted the 2008 election results. More importantly, they completely misread the mood of the nation.

One more Achilles heel out there awaiting Mr Obama is the energy sector of the economy. With rising gas prices and the threat of even higher gas prices by next summer, the specter of four dollar a gallon gasoline is not going to endear Obama to anyone.

There are tens of thousands of men who are not working because of Obama’s drilling ban. These men, their families and friends, the very communities that helped elect Obama, now detest him. Obama may just find out that he has sold off so much of his political soul that there’s none left.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

As college students, people always assume we're Democrats. You’ve probably heard the old political saw (often misattributed to Winston Churchill), “”If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” There are numerous theories as to why. Democrats have a more optimistic, open-hearted vision for America. Young adults tend to be socially liberal. They saw a lot of themselves in Barack Obama. Liberal indoctrination by college professors. The list could stretch for miles. But today’s young adults may not be pigeonholed the same way. This year Democrats’ cannot take their votes for granted.

That doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t trying. President Obama is kicking off a series of rallies on college campuses, designed to reinvigorate the young adults who carried him into the White House two years earlier.

But the message has drastically changed. Rather than ignite young adults with his hopeful brand of politics, the President is reduced to groveling. As the Washington Post reported today,

When Obama steps onto a grass quad at the University of Wisconsin on Tuesday, he will deliver a newly tailored, more personalized campaign appeal aimed at ginning up enthusiasm, according to White House and senior Democratic officials. Plouffe said Obama will remind students of the work they put into his 2008 campaign and warn them that if they don’t reengage now, “all that could be jeopardized.”

In 2008 he advocated for change. In 2010 he’s advocating for things to stay the same? Not exactly a winning message.

But it is made even more unpalatable given the general lack of change we have actually seen from Obama. It is easy to promise change, it is much more difficult to actually deliver it. And this has been Obama’s failing. As one previous Obama supporter said in a town hall recently,

“I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for. And deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I have been told that I voted for a man who said he was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting sir.

Substitute “middle class” for “young adults” and you’ll understand the frustration that is being seen on many college campuses. We wanted something different. We were promised something different. We got more of the same.

More politics. More backdoor dealings. More big government. More spending. More wars. For young adults there really wasn’t much difference between the Obama administration and the Bush administration from which they were so disenchanted.

All told, Democrats have a much tougher sell this time around if they want to recapture magic with young people. Meanwhile, Republicans are beginning to find traction on college campuses. Take college sophomore Edward Dooley, who told ABC News that just two years ago he was a “Kennedy-worshipping, stereotypical Massachusetts liberal.” But now Dooley, like so many other young adults, finds that his political ideology has shifted to the right after being turned off by Obama’s “glossy ideals” and “lack of concrete policies.”

Beyond a failure to live up to promises, Obama’s support among the youth vote has been eroded by his failed attempts to jump start the economy. The recession has been especially hard on young people. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics youth unemployment was at 19.1 percent in July – the highest July rate since statistics were first kept in 1948.

Unfortunately for the unemployed the Democrats’ stimulus policies have done little to budge the unemployment needle. In fact, the only thing they have really accomplished is trillions of dollars of additional government debt, money that younger generations will be responsible for paying back.

As College Republican Chair Bob Kosek told ABC News for their story Republicans Rising on College Campuses,

“Hope and change doesn’t put money in your bank account to buy textbooks or pay off your student loans. It doesn’t help you get a job after you graduate either, and I think a lot of students are realizing that now.”

The rampant unemployment and dismal economy that is the Democrats’ legacy of the past two years is perhaps no clearer than on the University of Wisconsin campus where Obama is beginning his college tour. As the Washington Post reports,

The students on this leafy, generally liberal campus once constituted one of the strongest battalions in Obama’s grass-roots army. Two years later, the political dynamic has changed. Across campus, stickers, signs or chalkings for any politician are scarce. The laundromat where Obama’s young volunteers once staged late-night phone banks and planned bus trips to neighboring Iowa has gone out of business.”

A one-time hub for pro-Obama students now out of business. What a fitting, if sad metaphor for this administration.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

http://speakout.crnc.org/blog/2010/09/27/obamas-campus-tour-finding-college-conservatism-on-the-rise/

Hardly any one is out there saying the economy is good.  Just yesterday we say the unemployment rate increase over a year into a so-called "recovery". At the anemic rate (47K private sector jobs/month) we are gaining jobs it will be a decade before the economy is well. And let's not even think about the tsunami of red ink gushing out of Washington. 

But for liberal Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, all is going well out in the hinterland.

He insists the people of his district are better off than they were two years ago. As the state's top TV station's anchor put it.

I asked Murphy if he thinks his constituents are better off than they were two years ago, when he was re-elected in a landslide, and he said they are better off.    I reminded him that the state labor department may disagree.   The highest unemployment rate in the state is in Murphy’s district:  Waterbury at 12.2% up from earlier this year.   The number of jobless is also up in Torrington and Danbury.   No doubt there are plenty of people who think they are not better off than they were in 2008, and Murphy will have to persuade them otherwise.

Nor was this a one interview gaffe. Murphy is running all over the 5th District telling people times are good, and not to believe their own lyin eyes. Here's what he told the Housatonic Times while campaigning in New Milford.

“All of the anecdotal signs in Connecticut’s economy are good,” Mr. Murphy said. 

Really.  Maybe Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a fellow Democrat,was off base late last year when she said Connecticut business failures were at an all time high.. 

Or the CT Labor Department is cooking the books when they show unemployment in CT going from 6.4% at the time of the 2008 election to 8.9 % today.  

Maybe the liberal group Connecticut Voices for Children had it wrong when it said CT had the 4th worse long term unemployment problem in the nation--worse than even Ohio, Nevada and California.

Yep, that $787 billion "stimulus' worked just like you planned, Chris. You said in February 2009 when you voted for it that it would improve retail business in CT.

Rep. Chris Murphy spent some floor time talking about how the stimulus will affect a New Britain business, Angelo's Market. "The people that used to come in every day are now coming in one day a week," Murphy said, saying that small businesses like Angelo's need a stimulus that gives the people confidence to return to their normal lifestyles -- "to start to make them feel good about spending again."

Dunno about you Chris, but the only people who feel good about spending money are politicians in Washington.

And Congressman Murphy, all those vacant storefronts and billboards for leasing vacant office space in your alleged "hometown" of Cheshire must also be some sort of right wing noise machine. Surely an inability to find paying tenants is an indicia of a thriving local economy. I haven't been by Angelo's Market, but there are delis, dry cleaners and shops withing walking distance of your house that are no more--- if you actually cared to look.

Murphy's personal economy may be prospering:he has amassed a $1.5 million warchest from special interest fundraising.  No doubt he will spent it trying to convince his blue collar constituents that their economic condiitions are actually improving because of his trillion dollar spending spree.

On the other hand, Connecticut residents who want a reality-based Congressman have a superior alternative: Sam Caligiuri   

It’s like, “Ok, what’s next from this bunch?” We think in terms of protecting ourselves from, or mitigating, the damage caused by our own government.That’s a shame. We’re starting to get a bomb shelter mentality. What impetus that grows out in the private business world, to expand or to hire new employees, is crushed by government regulation and the threat of more regulation and higher taxes.

The virtual catatonic condition of the economy in our state of California, and the country at large, is causing people who never before paid much attention to political matters to find themselves joining their friends and neighbors in groups of like-minded patriots, who have banded together to proclaim the freedom and greatness of this land in the face of the real and present danger to our Republic from the radical left, now in control of the country.

The left’s pet press, and the bleating class in Hollyrude, continue to carry the DeMarxist water, running interference where they can and spinning like crazy. Interesting thing, that spin… it works usually because people have busy lives and don’t have the time or the inclination to check any further than the specious trumpeting of the lame stream press.

The spin machine has broken down. The reason it’s broken is because of the new media. Spinning is no fun if every time you open your mouth there’s some guy talking to millions of people saying “Wait a minute”. That’s the effect the new media has had on the DeMarxist spin machine. They just can’t get a lie in edgeways before five writers are tearing it apart.

As the country descended toward the abyss which is Socio-Marxism, like-minded people began to join together in a celebration of American exceptionalism. These came to be known as the Tea Parties. They swept throughout the nation, empowering Americans and uniting them against the Marxist threat. Better than 60% of the people in this country are in the Patriot Movement, or are in agreement with our message.

Yeah, we’re angry… and many of us have reason to be. There’s a difference though. It’s a focused sort of anger. It’s like we know where the problems are… we’ve done our homework. Obama and the DeMarxists will never be more dangerous than they will be between now and November 2. Let’s see if we can give them a good long rest.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

 Trust is the oil that greases the wheels of a working Democracy. Hubert Humphrey, a liberal Democrat, realized as much, saying:

“Surely anyone who has ever been elected to public office understand that one commodity above all others, namely the trust and confidence of the people, is fundamental in maintaining a free and open political system.”

But as with everything in Washington these days, the federal government is operating under a deficit – a trust deficit. President Obama and Democratic leaders have given young adults very little reason to believe them. The result is that only 29% of 18-29 year olds trust the federal government to do the right thing. Worse, only 25% of young adults have faith in Congress to do what’s right.

Our generation has been provided with very little evidence that we should believe in what the government is doing. This point has been underscored most recently in the federal government’s tone deafness to the needs of young adults. A new Harvard Institute of Politics study shows that among Millennials the economy is the overwhelming concern.

The reasons for Millennials anxiety over the economy are deep and alarming. For instance the Harvard poll finds,

• 84% of four-year college students said it would be difficult to find a job after graduation
• 60% of Millennials are concerned with meeting their current bills and debts
• 59% are worried about affording a place to live
• 46% of those who were lucky enough to find work remain concerned about losing their job

The lack of trust is partially due to young American’s belief that the government is spending too much time and money on the wrong issues. In the State of the Union Obama proclaimed that “[c]reating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010.”  Two months later, as job losses continue to mount, health care still dominates the headlines.

Millennials are taking notice of Democrat’s failure to address the economy while simultaneously spending away our chance at future prosperity. The result is a gradual shift of enthusiasm toward conservative candidates. As the Harvard poll explains,

When Millennials were disappointed by the outcome of the 2004 election, they organized in 2006 and rallied in 2008 for Barack Obama

Our generation again finds itself disappointed. This time, by the President’s unwillingness to address our generation’s dire fiscal future. Now it is time for us to organize and rally for change once again.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

Read more: www.collegerepublicans.org

by Brandon Greife

Some things don’t deserve a response. They are just so wrongheaded that it doesn’t make sense to legitimize them with an answer. A recent article by Steve Benen called “Rewarding Idiocy” is one of those things. It doesn’t deserve a response, but it’s going to get one from me, if for no other reason than it really frustrated me. Actually I’ll drop the decorum and political correctness, it didn’t frustrate me…it pissed me off.

Benen begins by saying,

By most measures, Republicans have spent the last year acting like children — reckless, disturbed children who fiddle with matches and take pleasure in playing in traffic.

For nearly 13 months, GOP officials on the Hill have engaged in unprecedented abuse of the political process, blocking good legislation, offering insane ideas in response to major national challenges, rejecting their own ideas when embraced by Democrats, and generally being an embarrassment to themselves and the country.

Believe it or not, this is the part I can accept. A liberal pundit insulting Republicans is neither new nor unprecedented. I will quibble with a few things that he said. First, the “unprecedented abuse” that Mr. Benen speaks of isn’t really all that unprecedented. If we rewind 6 years, when Democrats were the minority, they were lauding the praises of the filibuster. In fact, Democrats who are now threatening to unilaterally end the long standing practice took up arms when Republicans threatened to do the same. As Harry Reid so eloquently put it,

“If they, for whatever reason, decide to [eliminate the filibuster], it’s not only wrong, they will rue the day they did it, because we will do whatever we can do to strike back. . .I will, for lack of a better word, screw things up.”

My how times have changed.

Second, Republicans have not blocked anything close to what could be deemed “good legislation.”  The Democratic health care reform bill was a catastrophe. It simultaneously forced health insurance coverage on everyone while doing nothing to rein in costs. Making low income people, including young adults, sign up for coverage which they will be unable to afford is what I like to call “bad legislation”

Third, I’m not sure how he can characterize any of the Republican solutions presented thus far as “insane.” The health care alternative presented by Republicans, when scored by the CBO, was found to reduce premiums through increased private sector competition while also reducing the national debt. Moreover, the GOP budget proposal was found to “lower budget deficits,” “result in much less federal debt” and create “a much more favorable macroeconomic outlook.” I know the idea of efficiency and lower spending is ”insane” to many liberals, fortunately Americans disagree. As a recent Rasmussen polls shows, voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on nine out of ten key issues, and have a double digit lead on health care.

Now for the part that infuriates me. Not content to continue with the usual diatribe against Republicans, Mr. Benen turns his wrath on the public. Sarcastically he says,

“Naturally, then Republicans are making major gains in the polls.”

That little line was enough to set me off. It insinuates that Americans are too stupid to realize how awesome the Democrats are. It is a situation best described by Gerard Alexander, who recently wrote in the Washington Post

“American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.”

However, I’ll take Alexander’s insight one logical step further. Many Liberals (because I refuse to fall into the same trap of overgeneralization) don’t merely view conservative positions as stupid – they view the holders of those opinions as stupid. There is no other conclusion from how dumbfounded and ultimately dismissive many Democrats are that the people are not flocking to their ideas and the polls are not going in their favor. They attempt to cast us as a movement of uneducated, gun-toting, redneck, birthers. Influential liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, went as far as to say:

“Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumbfuckistan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally.”

We’re going to need a bigger place than the panhandle because he, like others who attempt to equate the conservative movement with morons, ignores the fact that the majority of people, smart and stupid alike, are unhappy with the direction that President Obama and the Democratic leadership are taking us.

Call Congressional Republicans dumb all you want. It’s probably not good politics in a nation that is tired of partisanship, but it’s your right. But lay off Americans. Perhaps if you took some time to reflect, you’d find it is not a majority of citizens who are stupid, it’s the majority of your ideas.

 Talk about missing the mark! 

Granted, some polls are far better than others and many of them you simply cannot trust because they are skewed to make a person appear to be ahead or behind.  Such an example would be one of CBS fame that printed “0% of African Americans disapprove of Obama.”  The flaws are obvious given the very person alone currently writing this.  On the flip side of the coin are polls that just simply show what is on people’s minds and allow you to make what you want of them.  One such poll revealed some startling concerns of the American people in terms of their priorities.   As Obama Bashing becomes as much as a leisurely past time for many as does Bush Blaming for others, it becomes apparently clear that the Obama Bashing opportunities have been handed forth on a silver platter trimmed ornate gold.

The top three priorities for Americans this year are; strengthening the economy, improving the job situation and defending the US against terrorism.  Clearly the administration has done too little and many will even argue that they have failed because so much attention has paid to three other areas; the stimulus, health care reform and cap and trade legislature.  It is here is where they have missed the mark.

A year after the stimulus, the president is passing words on a spending freeze; something many of the best economists argue should have been done a year ago.  Blow after blow suffered by health care reform was met by steadfast Democratic determination to get it passed.  The ever echoing words of the president in regards to whether or not people want it have come to fruition.  In fact, the people “who want it” has dropped steadily since 2005!  (60, 59, 56, 54, 52 to 49% each year respectively ending in the 2010 survey of “providing health ins to the uninsured”).  Not only does the word “mandatory” begin to make sense since fewer each year were actually listing this as a top priority, it makes sense why the arguments and rhetoric behind it have become so intense.  The administration has insisted on an issue that was actually dead in the water before it started.  Because of this, they used everything from race baiting to emotive desires like “broken” and the “American Holocaust” to incite and interest that clearly was not there to begin with!

Picking up the tail end of American issues of priority was “dealing with global warming” at 28%.  As with its issue predecessor of wasted time and effort of providing insurance, it too dropped markedly over the course of the last several of years.  In 2007 38% of Americans identified this as a top issue and it steadily declined to 35, 30 and to 28 percent this year.  Perhaps this is because we suffered a severe winter making it difficult to support such allegations that man is warming the planet by driving too much, or even because Obama said his plan would “cause electricity prices to skyrocket.”  Then again it may be that people have been brought to remember a not so recent attempt of such cap and trade style taxation with the ever thinning ozone layer at the hands of our gluttonous ways only to discover it was mere cow farts.  Who knows and who cares?  The bottom line is that the Obama administration has sorely missed the mark of the concerns of the people despite the fact that the people’s interests in their (the administration’s) agenda has been decreasing over the past years.  Imagine if you would, where would we be today if the administration’s priorities were that of the people they are representatives of?

Of the bashings befallen Obama, the most consistent is that he is too self-centered to put the people’s agenda before that of his own.  An ego maniacal narcissist or not, at least half the accusation is completely true.   You simply cannot hit the mark if you are aiming at the wrong target!

If the stimulus were replaced with fiscal conservatism then instead of now, and the efforts on health care reform and cap and trade legislation would have been focused on the top the American issues of concern, Obama may not have hit the bull’s eye, but he would have at least been within the mark.

As we listen to rhetoric coming out of DC, it is not clear whether or not Obama actually gets it.  The mixed signals are everywhere from Obama stating on his radio address that health care pushes in the future will be harder and more focused, to him saying he has lost touch with his base.  Of concern is the fact that he feels he must get in front of the people more.  441 speeches in 2009 and he thinks getting in front of a teleprompter more frequently will aid this problem is only a testimony to narcissistic tendencies.  T he American people want the rubber to actually meet the road, not be told the rubber is going to.  We have heard that four hundred and forty one times with far too little to show for it.  Speaking about it 500 times in 2010 will literally be more of the same.

The spark is gone, the honeymoon long since over, and the president’s influence has proven to do more damage than good.  It’s not just the polls we are talking about, it is expectations.  The American people expected much because he told them much was to be delivered.  Then he kept telling and telling while the whole time the delivery van was going in a direction the American people felt was on an unneeded route to nowhere.

The Obama Promises Delivery Van is now stopped on the side of the road on a rural route with no American homes on it.  He has the map with the target destination on it; the question is… can he read it not?

The Midas Touch. Very few people have it. Off the top of my head I think of: Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and Phil Jackson. Wherever they go, and whatever they do, they succeed. Most people don’t. The first person I think of: Barack Obama. Following his meteoric climb to the presidency he has become political poison to nearly everything he has come into contact with.

The “Obama Touch” begain with the New Jersey Gubernatorial race. The President campaigned heavily for the Democratic incumbent John Corzine in a state that should have been a lock regardless of his cameo.  A deep-pocketed incumbent in a blue state that Obama won by 16% up against an underfunded Republican who didn’t even run a great campaign. But five appearances and a slew of quotes like “[Corzine] is one of the best partners I have in the White House” later, Democrats had lost the governor’s mansion.

Same story, same result in Massachusetts where Martha Coakley fell from a 17% lead in the polls to be defeated by an upstart Republican candidate. Obama was there as well, campaigning for Coakley when the race was a statistical dead heat, hoping his popularity would save the day in the land of Kennedy’s. It didn’t. By the time Obama left, Scott Brown had established a firm 9% lead over the Democrat.

He called the 19-0 Kentucky basketball team to congratulate them on their “Hoops for Haiti” program. They promptly lost. He made countless speeches and appearances to spread the word about health care reform. It’s looking more dead by the day. He wanted to pass a comprehensive energy and environmental reform bill. Then came “Climategate” and an ongoing investigation into the science of global warming. Tough year.

A new Gallup poll shows the depth of the Obama Touch,

Obama’s lowest job approval ratings come in the areas of healthcare policy, the economy, and the federal budget deficit, which coincidentally are the three issues he has devoted the most face-time to. To some degree, this is exactly as you would expect it. The President can be seen as devoting his popularity in an attempt to rally support for unpopular portions of his agenda. It wouldn’t make sense for him to expend all of his political capital to hammer home issues that people already agree with. But this would overlook a key point behind these latest poll numbers – almost all of them represent Obama’s lowest popularity on the issue since he became President.

The more he tries to sell health care, the more people refuse to buy into it:

The more he says he’s going to work to fix the economy, the less people believe him:

What the President and Congressional Democrats must understand is that it’s nothing personal. Although it certainly cannot be said that he has the Midas Touch, it is not Obama’s mere association that is dragging candidates and policies into the abyss. It’s that Obama’s attempts to emphasize an issue are acting to highlight the flaws in the Democrats plans. People learned that although health care reform sounds great, any attempt that fails to bend the cost-curve is kinda pointless. People figured out that Obama’s plan to fix the economy, well…wait, what is Obama’s plan to fix the economy?

The Obama Touch, anything he touches suffers an immediate drop in approval ratings. But it’s a curable disease. Step 1: under-promise and over-deliver. Step 2: consult with Republicans – they have ideas that will surprise you. Step 3: align your policy goals with the public – i.e. GET MOVING ON THE ECONOMY!

- Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee