Citizen Pamphleteer

Moving Day

2011-12-14T18:29:00.002-07:00

Citizen Pamphleteer is bidding a fond farewell to Blogger and is moving to Wordpress in order to better screen out spam and open up unmoderated posting.

I would be very pleased if you came along for the house warming.

The Rule of Law

2011-12-14T07:47:00.001-07:00

In an era where political leaders and bureaucracies increasingly decide by decree what laws do and do no apply to the rest of us, here is a long overdue primer on the rule of law made in time for the Bill of Rights day on December 15:

Who Speaks For The "99%?"

2011-12-12T19:25:00.001-07:00

Obama's Incredible Shrinking Workforce

2011-12-11T10:05:00.001-07:00

The unemployment rate reported by the press is calculated by comparing the number of unemployed with the total number of workers actively looking for work over the past four weeks. Those discouraged workers who want a job, but are not looking for work, and those who are able to work, but have removed themselves from the labor pool by going on government assistance or going to school, are not counted in this labor pool, artificially reducing the unemployment rate.The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers charts tracking discouraged workers:

...as well participation in the labor force as the percentage of the overall and civilian populations:

As you can see, the number of discouraged workers not actively looking for employment has soared, while the percentage of the population actually working has plunged under Obama compared with the previous 16 years of the Clinton and Bush Administrations.Our unemployment rate is actually far worse than advertised as the government simply stopped counting millions of suffering Americans.

Hat tip to North Shore Journal for the charts.

Rediscovering The Reagan Playbook

2011-12-05T08:09:00.001-07:00

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich appears to be employing nearly every page of the Reagan election playbook.

The most neglected page of the playbook was Reagan's 11th Commandment - "Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican." Given his history as an attack dog, one would think that Gingrich would be the last person to follow this commandment. However, after taking the lead in the GOP primary polling and then receiving the inevitable attacks, Newt told his staff not to respond in kind and went on the Hannity program to compliment his competitors.

Now Gingrich has released his first television ad:

Compare it with the famous Reagan "Morning in America" ad:

Gingrich is offering Morning in America with music from the underdog sports movie "Rudy."

It will be interesting to see if the Gipper's politics retains its potency against the politics of personal destruction on steroids.

Don't Pull Out The Party Hats

2011-12-02T09:03:00.001-07:00

Last month, the unemployment rate plunged from 9.0% to 8.6%. Great news, right? Wrong.

The United States only added 120,000 jobs last month, which did not even keep up with the 172,000 in population growth. All other things remaining the same, the unemployment rate should have risen.

All other things did not remain the same, however. Even though the total population rose by 172,000, the civilian labor force declined by 315,000 from the prior month. Civilian labor participation dropped from 64.2% to 64.0%. This means, 487,000 Americans stopped seeking work altogether and either went on government disability, to school or into poverty.

The unemployment rate went down only because our available work force is shrinking out of despair.

The Great Job Massacre

2011-11-29T07:45:00.001-07:00

From the indispensable Ramirez:

Booms And Busts

2011-11-25T08:27:00.001-07:00

Below is a fascinating 1943 chart of all the previous United States business booms and busts. Click the link to download or print the full size chart.

1943chart_busibooms

Hat tip to Zerohedge.

Book Update

2011-11-22T12:34:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the slow pace of blogging over the past month. I have been working on formatting my first book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste: Barack Obama and the Evolution of American Socialism for both print and ebook. The printer has just mailed me the proof of the book and it should be for sale on Amazon in both formats and by iBooks, B&N and Google in ebook format in December.

After extensive research, I have identified the historical roots of the modern evolution of American socialism fromclassical state ownership of the means of production into a new asymmetric form– using progressive tools to achieve socialist ends, while misrepresenting theresult as pragmatic “reforms of capitalism." Elements of this evolution were embraced by the community organizing community back in the 80s and 90s, before being implemented by the Obama administration over the past couple years.

Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste will explain to libertarians and conservatives why their intuition was correct that Barack Obama has been implementing socialist policies, and to socialists and progressives why their criticisms of Obama as not being far enough left misunderstood his accomplishments. In reality, Barack Obama is the most successful President of the left since FDR.

Climategate 2.0?

2011-11-22T12:04:00.001-07:00

The basis for the United Nation's claim that the Earth's atmosphere had warmed by 6/10ths of a degree over the past century was a temperature database created by the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the British University of East Anglia. This database was not based upon the actual raw temperature data from weather stations around the world, but rather "adjusted" temperatures created by CRU itself. After several years of ignoring requests for access to this data, unknown persons leaked thousands of CRU emails, computer notes and datasets onto the internet, revealing that the CRU adjusted database was a fraud. The resulting scandal became known as Climategate and was the subject of my posts here, here, and here.

Well, the folks who leaked the initial batch of CRU emails have just released a new batch just before the latest UN climate conference with another potential quarter million emails to be released in the future. Anthony Watts' indispensable Watts Up With That? blog has the story.

Update One: You can find more here.

Truth And Consequences

2011-11-10T15:09:00.001-07:00

A private investigator employed voice analysis truth detection software to Sharon Bialek's press conference alleging sexual harassment by GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and then Cain's denials at his press conference the next day. One was found to be clearly telling the truth and the other lying:Interesting.

A Debate Of Substance

2011-11-05T21:57:00.000-06:00

Tonight, a Texas Tea Party organization held an hour and a half debate between GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich on budgetary and entitlement reform without gotchya questions, snide comments or personal attacks. The press was banished and both candidates were given as much time as they wished to discuss in detail their specific reforms. Both men ran with the format and gave the audience 90 minutes of substance - fearlessly taking on every Washington sacred cow. What a refreshing change! You can see the entire debate in the video clip below.Gingrich and Cain would do themselves and the country a service by doing one of these debates each week at different Tea Party events around the country and speak directly to the people about ideas and substance concerning the full spectrum of policy.

Yet More Global Warming Fraud

2011-10-30T14:15:00.003-06:00

After the Climategate scandal put the lie to the global average temperature record published by the British Climate Research Unit relied upon by the UN, it appears that Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) has been publishing as similarly fictional temperature record which claimed to show an uninterrrupted spike in temperatures since 1950, while his raw data shows no warming for the past decade.

Go Home And Get A Job And Get A Life!

2011-10-28T13:33:00.000-06:00

Herman Cain strikes again, this time skewering the loony left Occupation of Wall Street:

The Evil 1% Have Been Located

2011-10-19T15:07:00.001-06:00

While the self styled Occupiers of Wall Street are gathered in New York City looking for the evil top 1% of earners in America, it turns out Washington D.C. with its handsomely paid bureaucrats and lobbyists rather than NYC is the wealthiest city in America. Our tax money at work.

The TOTUS Was Kidnapped!

2011-10-19T15:02:00.001-06:00

Barack Obama is now struggling with perhaps the greatest crisis of his presidency - the Teleprompter of the United States was kidnapped!

Cain Schools Meet the Press

2011-10-17T07:34:00.001-06:00

After a shaky start, Herman Cain is becoming an increasingly formidable presidential candidate. On Meet the Press, Cain schooled NBC talking head David Gregory on one gotchya question after another:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Impressive.

You Say You Want A Revolution

2011-10-10T21:13:00.000-06:00

Some weeks ago, a horrified Democratic pollster Doug Schoen took a look at the polling of the black mood of the country and called it "pre-revolutionary. That mood is even worse today according to a trio of Gallup polls.Gallup finds that 80% of the nation thinks the United States is currently in recession and 71% of Indis and Republicans think the economy will be the same or worse next year. The Economic Cycle Research Institute's current economic projection agrees with the American people, finding we are currently or soon will be in recession. And the ECRI has a perfect record over the past 15 years predicting economic downturns.As a consequence of the economy and disagreement with this government's policies, Gallup finds that only 11% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States, with a record low 3% of Republicans and 9% of Indis feeling positive.

On the other side of the equation, the percentage of Americans reporting themselves very dissatisfied with our situation is at a historical high of 56%. While 2/3 of conservatives and Republicans are very dissatisfied, almost half of Dems also feel this way.

This mass dissatisfaction of the citizenry is affecting enthusiasm for voting in 2012 in substantially different ways. Gallup found that while GOP voters can't wait to get to the voting booth, Dem voters are as likely as not to go. The net GOP enthusiasm advantage over the Dems is 27%, the highest since the aftermath of the Bush 2000 victory with a minority of the popular vote. When you combine the GOP enthusiasm advantage over the Dems with the latest IBD/TIPP poll finding that Indis by a 54% to 36% margin believe that Barack Obama does not deserve reelection, the President is looking at prospects between that of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter.

Blaming America First Lives On

2011-09-30T13:29:00.001-06:00

Back in June 30, 1979, a defeated President Jimmy Carter blamed the American people for the energy and economic crisis of his administration in his infamous "malaise speech:"Listen carefully to the litany of Carter's complaints and how similar they sound to today.Earlier this week, an equally frustrated President Barack Obama went beyond his usual "blame Bush" buck passing to blame America for his awful economy, claiming we have "gone soft" over the past two decades:Has it ever occurred to these men that the buck stops with them?

There Is No Loon Like A Paranoid Loon

2011-09-29T15:50:00.001-06:00

Professional babbling head Janeane Garofalo theorizes that the Tea Party supports the :::gasp::: African American Herman Cain to hide their racism:

Under this reasoning, I assume that Cain as one of the first Tea Party members hates himself and is running for President to convince others that he does not hate himself.

As the mind bends...

Funny Billboard Of The Week

2011-09-27T10:41:00.000-06:00

This billboard recently went up in Athens, Alabama:

Is This The Grinding Sound Of Realignment?

2011-09-23T16:07:00.000-06:00

The Democracy Corps - a Dem Party pollster - just released its bi-yearly poll of voters in 60 swing districts and they must be knocking back serious drinks at their local watering holes. While DC furiously tries to spin its results into something positive for the Dems, the numbers give a completely different story. As reported by the National Journal:

When voters were asked whether they're supporting the Republican incumbent or a Democratic candidate, 50 percent preferred the Republican and just 41 percent backed the Democrat.

Voters in these districts said they were more supportive of Republicans than they were during the 2010 midterms, when 48 percent said they backed the Republican candidate and 42 percent said they backed the Democrat. (Republicans won 55 percent of the overall vote in these 60 battleground districts, while Democrats took 43 percent.) In 2010, Republicans netted 63 House seats - their best showing since 1948.

Whoa.

Folks, if the GOP is leading by 9 points in swing districts a year after a wave election when you would expect some reversal of the tide, what are the numbers like in nominally "safe" Dem districts?

President Obama's job approval rating in the battleground districts is just 41 percent, and only inches up to 43 percent in the 30 more-competitive seats that are a little more Democratic. Both Perry and Romney hit a near-majority of 49 percent against Obama in the battlegrounds, suggesting that voters are more concerned with casting their ballot against Obama than caring about who the Republican nominee ends up being.

A closer look into the DC charts shows that

Obama approval is -14 in districts he mostly took in 2008 and needs again to win in 2012. V

oter intensity is even more massively against Obama,

with 44% strongly disapproving vs. 20% strongly approving of the President's job performance.

These are realignment level numbers. If the election were held today, Obama loses in a landslide, the GOP gets close to 60 seats in the Senate and maybe another 10-20 House seats if they can recruit candidates to run in Dem districts.

Our Government As A Household

2011-09-21T13:11:00.001-06:00

The Gainesville Tea Party provided a useful comparison between the federal budget and a household budget:

Why S&P Downgraded the US:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385

No sane household would run their finances that way and neither should any sane government.

Clueless Campaigner-In-Chief On The World Stage

2011-09-21T12:18:00.001-06:00

While our President gave lame campaign speech before the UN seeking to win back the American Jewish vote by arguing that the key to peace is for the Israelis and Palestinians to wear one another's shoes, an unimpressed world community simply stared back in disbelief while the Palestinian president placed face firmly in palm:

During a later photo-op for world leaders, our clueless campaigner-in-chief waved to the cameras, blocking the face of the president of Mongolia:

Rush Limbaugh correctly observed that Obama is beginning to bear a canny resemblance to Mad magazine's iconic epitome of cluelessness, Alfred E. Newman:

Good grief.

AP Calls Out: "Liar!"

2011-09-20T07:48:00.000-06:00

Even the Dem leaning Associated Press is calling out President Obama's recent lies concerning our federal tax burden:

"Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million.". . .

The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government. . . .

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent. . . .

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

Thankfully, our first socialist President has foregone his faux centrist pose to offer a leftist campaign of unabashed class warfare. The voters will have a clear choice in 2012.

"I Am A Sap"

2011-09-20T06:28:00.002-06:00

The New York Times' staff RINO, David Brooks, admits: "I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap." Go to the linked op-ed and read the whole thing.

First, Obama lost the independents. Now his unvarnished class warfare has alienated the RINOs.

A Poster For Our Times

2011-09-17T16:40:00.000-06:00

Remember when America was the Land of the Free?

When The Mikes Are Off

2011-09-17T12:19:00.001-06:00

Jim Cramer and others at MSNBC have started discussing the fear and loathing American business has for our first socialist President:

Blinded By The Light

2011-09-16T10:13:00.002-06:00

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Government Motors' Branding Problem

2011-09-16T09:09:00.001-06:00

The O Stands For Zero Jobs

2011-09-02T13:54:00.007-06:00

As we enter the Labor Day weekend, the Bureau of Labor Statistics with ironic timing reports that the economy produced zero new jobs in August and the prior estimates for June and July were reduced by 58,000 jobs. In fact, absent the statistical birth/death adjustment, the United States lost 87,000 jobs last month.

It is becoming increasingly clear what kind of "progress" those 2008 Obama campaign hands ads were promising America.

Being There

2011-08-28T12:48:00.004-06:00

The Obama campaign flew their boss back from vacation a day early to attend a photo-op at FEMA headquarters to give voters the illusion, that unlike George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina, President Barack Obama was personally running the relief effort for Hurricane Irene. However, after giving a few perfunctory remarks, an obviously disinterested President appeared lost in his own thoughts:

Perhaps an aide had just notified the President that his Gallup job disapproval level had just reached a new high.

The Obama Fault Line

2011-08-27T13:11:00.004-06:00

Click to expand.

Compare And Contrast

2011-08-25T07:56:00.003-06:00

A Gov. Rick Perry for President supporter got in an early jab at President Obama with this image making the rounds of the net:

Completely Losing It

2011-08-19T07:37:00.003-06:00

A leading proponent for manmade global warming alarmism, the NASA bureaucracy is now offering a new reason to impose carbon taxes - to placate invading space aliens.

I am not kidding.

The UK Guardian reports:

Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa's Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact"

In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful...

The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations.

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

On mornings like this, I fell like I have fallen down the rabbit hole.

Deeper Into That Ditch

2011-08-09T13:17:00.006-06:00

Generally, to gain reelection, a president must have a Gallup approval rating north of 50%. Over the first six months of 2011, Obama's national approval averaged a mediocre 47%, but the individual state results are pointing toward a landslide defeat with only 16 states approving of Obama's job performance at 50% or higher.

That was then and this is now. Currently, Obama has free fallen to 40% approve v. 50% disapprove in national polling. Thus, if Obama's state-by-state average has fallen off by 7 points like his national average, he would be lucky to match Jimmy Carter' electoral vote total in 1980 if the election were held today.

Obama has completely lost the center of the electorate now.

Trashing The Good Faith And Credit Of The United States

2011-08-05T21:17:00.004-06:00

Well, the Obama regime has managed to do what no other administration in the history of the Republic has accomplished - trashed the good faith and credit of the United States. Standard & Poors just downgraded the US credit rating from AAA:

It said the bi-partisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings “fell short” of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings later on.

Meanwhile, the president is holding a hip hop BBQ at the White House as our Republic burns - his second birthday party fundraiser this week.

2012 cannot come soon enough.

"If Government Is Seen As Useless, What Is The Point Of Electing Democrats?"

2011-07-31T11:35:00.000-06:00

Dem pollster Stan Greenberg has a very interesting article in the NYT today entitled "Why Voters Tune Out Democrats." The money passages read:

In analyzing these polls in the United States, I see clearly that voters feel ever more estranged from government — and that they associate Democrats with government. If Democrats are going to be encumbered by that link, they need to change voters’ feelings about government. They can recite their good plans as a mantra and raise their voices as if they had not been heard, but voters will not listen to them if government is disreputable.

Oddly, many voters prefer the policies of Democrats to the policies of Republicans....

But in smaller, more probing focus groups, voters show they are fairly cynical about Democratic politicians’ stands. They tune out the politicians’ fine speeches and plans and express sentiments like these: “It’s just words.” “There’s just such a control of government by the wealthy that whatever happens, it’s not working for all the people; it’s working for a few of the people.” “We don’t have a representative government anymore.”...

This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government — the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974. But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?

Revealingly, after Greenberg insists that his polling suggests that voters prefer Dem policies in the abstract, the Dem pollster undermines this assertion by concluding his article to suggest that the Dem Party pull a Bill Clinton and compete with the Tea Party by adopting many of the Tea Party's ideas on tax, deficit and immigration reform.

Put Something On The Table!

2011-07-29T16:34:00.001-06:00

Amen, Mr. Speaker.

A Turning Point?

2011-07-28T18:56:00.000-06:00

The Pew Research Center reported today that Indi registered voter support for Obama reelection over a generic Republican candidate flipped from 42% for Obama and 35% for the Republican in May 2011 to 39% for the Republican and only 31% for Obama this week - a 15% turnaround in just two months.

It is hard to tell if Obama is tanking with Middle America more because of his destructive economic policies or his inept handling of the debt limit issue.

The Center Does Not Hold

2011-07-23T15:05:00.025-06:00

Can you feel the political ground moving? That is the migration of several million working men and women in Middle America changing their political allegiances.

Out With Partisanship and In With Ideology

The Weekly Standard's exceptional political blogger Jay Cost recently noted that the American electorate is moving from self-identifying as plurality Democrat to Independent. While the percentage of the electorate saying they are Republican remains near its 50 year average of roughly 30%, the voters self-dentifying Democrat has collapsed to from about half the electorate in 1964 to a hair above the GOP levels. Those former Democrats have become Indis.

At the same time, the Indis are increasingly telling pollsters that they are conservative. The New Republic's William Galston noted that, during the 2006 election giving Congress to the Dems, the Indis reported their ideological makeup as 32% conservative, 47% moderate and 20% liberal. Just four years later during the 2010 election, 8% of the Indis who used to self-identify as moderate now said they were conservatives.

Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the Indis really did not change their ideology so much as the Democrats moved far to their ideological left. In 2010, the Pew Research Center polling found that Indis thought themselves to be center-right and far close to the GOP on the ideological spectrum than to the Democratic Party. Interestingly, the ideological breakdown of the Indis was almost identical to the electorate at large. In sum, the center-right Indis perfectly represent the center-right American electorate.

Unsurprisingly, the Indis who saw the GOP as a closer ideological match to their own beliefs either voted Republican or did not vote at all in the 2010 election. In 2010, the partisan breakdown of the electorate was nearly identical to 2006. The difference between the elections was that roughly a third of the Indis switched sides from the Dems to the GOP.

The White Working Class Leaves the FDR Coalition

The realignment of the center of the American electorate is not a broad-based phenomenon. Rather, white working class voters who formed the foundation of FDR's coalition have abandoned the Democratic Party en masse. In a new study, the Pew Research Center found that the GOP advantage over the Dems in party members and leaners among all white voters has increased from R+2 in 2008 to a massive R+13 today. The most pronounced shift is among white voters with a high school or some college education and a middle or low-middle class income - the white working class (WWC). Because the number of voters who self identify as GOP members has remained largely unchanged, these migrating WWC voters are Indis who now lean towards voting GOP.

In 2010, the WWC did vote for a GOP Congress. In Third Way polling, 53% of the voters who switched from voting Dem in 2008 to voting GOP in 2010 were Indis who heavily believe that government was "almost always wasteful and inefficient" and the Dems were "too reliant on government to solve problems.

Indis disapprove of President Barack Obama by similar margins. After a brief honeymoon period in the opening months of his administration, Indi approval of the President cratered in the summer of 2009 when the first Obamacare bill was made public and has since settled in the low 40% range.

The Center of the Center

Appropriately, the center of the American electorate has shifted the hardest against the Dems in the geographical center of the country. The Pew Research Center found that the white voters shifted the most toward leaning GOP in the midwest (+17%) and the what is probably the plains and Rocky Mountain west (+11%).

This shift manifested itself in 2010 when the voters painted the center of the national House of Representatves map almost solid red:

The center of the country appears to have similar plans for President Obama in 2012. In a recent Marist poll, voters in the midwest already plan to vote against Barack Obama by a 46% to 35% margin. If the undecided break along similar lines, every single midwest state except for maybe Obama's home state of Illinois will break against the President in 2012.

A recent Quinnipiac poll of Ohio well illustrates the realignment of the Indis in the midwest. In what is traditionally a bell-weather state that votes for the winners of presidential elections, Indi voters disapprove of President Obama by a 54% to 42% margin and say the President does not deserve reelection by a similarly daunting 51% to 40% spread.

In the past, WWC voters shifted against the Dems in similar numbers to elect Ronald Reagan to two landslide presidential victories in 1980 and 1984, and then to elect a GOP Congress in 1994. However, many of these voters subsequently migrated back to the Dems running centrist campaigns after two Bush administrations went into the business of expanding the reach of government. The question is whether the current shift back to a more conservative GOP running against a far left Democratic Party is a realignment or simply another marriage of ideological convenience.

Falling Behind

2011-07-21T13:22:00.000-06:00

In horse race polling of registered voters, democratic pollster Public Policy Polling found that the undecided actually disapprove of President Obama's job performance by absolutely massive margins and, if the undecided break for the GOP candidate based on that disapproval, Mitt Romney leads Obama by the same margin George W. Bush won in 2004 and Obama is statistically tied with the other largely unknown GOP field. In an apparent nod to the fact that they were polling registered voters rather than the far more conservative likely voters, PPP admitted: "There's a very good chance Obama would lose if he had to stand for reelection today."

The President Behind The Curtain

2011-07-17T19:23:00.004-06:00

In his no holds barred style, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio points out the President behind the curtain:

The Road to 270

2011-07-17T12:45:00.015-06:00

Most early analyses of the 2012 presidential election are looking at President Barrack Obama's job approval numbers (overall and economic) and his reelect numbers (whether the voter has decided for vote for against him). However, presidential elections are not simple majority votes and are instead decided by a largely winner take all system of winning enough states to gain 270 or more electoral votes. Thus, I would like to take an early look at the 2012 electoral college map.

Actually, I would like to concentrate on the battleground states on that map. For this analysis, I see two possible groups of battleground states.

The first group are the 9 states worth 112 votes which the Republican George W. Bush won in 2004 and then flipped to the Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 - CO, FL, IA, IN, NC, NM, NV, OH, VA. Let's call these Swing States.

The second group are the 5 states worth 45 electoral votes which the Democrat John Kerry won in 2004, but in which President Barack Obama has a Gallup job approval rate below 48%. ME, NH, OR, PA, WI. Let's call these Endangered States.

Allow me to explain my reasoning for the second group. In the history of Gallup polling of presidential job approval, the lowest job approval received by a President seeking reelection in the last poll before election day is George W. Bush's 48%. This number is probably low because Bush received 51% in the poll before and 53% in the first poll after the election, and the next lowest approval is Bill Clinton's 53%. Likely, the minimum approval rate necessary for reelection is above 50%, but let us give President Obama every benefit of the doubt and make 48% our minimum approval level for reelection.

This leaves Barack Obama with a likely base of states which Kerry won in 2004 and in which he has an approval rating of at least 48% worth 199 electoral votes and the need to win battleground states worth 71 or more electoral votes. (Note: After the census reapportionment, 6 electoral votes were moved from Obama's base states to the GOP base states.)

Some caveats are necessary here. I will am using the state-by-state Gallup ratings for 2010. Gallup recently noted that Obama's 2011 numbers are largely unchanged from 2010, so 2010 will be a good proxy for the current state of affairs. Next, it is more than possible for approval numbers to move substantially over the roughly 15 months before the 2012 election. For example, Reagan's soared in 1984 with the recovering economy while Carter's plunged in 1980 as the economy moved into recession. Thus, this analysis simply examines Barack Obama's chances of reelection at this time and is not a projection to 2012.

I will look at each of the battleground states using three metrics - 2010 Gallup job approval, the percentage of respondents who self identified as a Democrat or Democrat leaner, and the drop in that self identification between 2008 and 2010.

This data will be summarized for each state as follows:

State Name (Number of electoral votes) - Category of state
2010 Approval: Percentage approving v. Percentage disapproving
Dem self ID: Percentage of those who self identify Dem or Dem leaner in 2010 (Difference from the national average); The percentage drop in that self identification from 2008 to 2010 (Difference from the national average)

For example, Colorado data looks like this:

CO (9 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 45.2% v. 46.9%
Dem self ID: 43.0% (Nat. Avg. -0.7); -5.8% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Now let us look at each state from the most to least likely Obama pickups:

NM (5 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 48.6% v. 43.2%
Dem self ID: 47.1% (Nat. Avg. +3.4); -2.8% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

New Mexico appears to have shifted from a true battlefield state to a Dem base state after Bush narrowly won it in 2004. Obama's approval is above 48% and substantially above his disapproval rate. Also, Dem self identification fell off by a much smaller amount than the nation at large and remains well above the national average. Obama should keep NM.

OR (7 EV) - Endangered State
2010 Approval: 47.8% v. 43.2%
Dem self ID: 47.5% (Nat. Avg. +3.8); -4.5% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Oregon does not appear to be particularly happy with Obama, but like NM its a Dem state with a relatively low disapproval of the President. OR should go Obama.

WI (10 EV) - Endangered State
2010 Approval: 47.8% v. 45.0%
Dem self ID: 43.1% (Nat. Avg. -0.6); -9.2% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Wisconsin is a very interesting state for the GOP because its Dem self identification collapsed over the first two years of the Obama Administration to a bit below the nation's average and highly disapproves of the President. The voters gave the entire state government to the GOP in 2010 and the partisan divide has since become even more bitter. Right now WI looks like a tossup.

PA (20 EV) - Endangered State
2010 Approval: 46.3% v. 45.8%
Dem self ID: 46.4% (Nat. Avg. +2.7); -6.5% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

PA may be a genuine tossup state now instead of the tease of prior cycles. The number of self identified Dems is still above the national average here, but many of the white working class Dems have shifted against Obama as in the Midwest as shown by the nearly even approval/disapproval numbers. The urban African Americans are suffering even more unemployment than the white working class voters. Other polling indicates that both groups are not particularly enthusiastic about voting. Thus, Obama's task is going to be to convince urban African Americans to show up to the polls and hope the white working class voters who have shifted against him stay home. That was not the case in 2010 when the GOP made serious gains.

NV (6 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 47.0% v. 45.3%
Dem self ID: 44.3% (Nat. Avg. +0.6); -4.8% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

NV gained Dem CA and Latino voters over the past decade to become a tossup state. Obama will win NV if he can match the 2008 Latino turnout for him to offset his slide with white working class voters. If however a substantial number of Latino men decide to vote against Obama as some polls are suggesting, NV will go GOP.

IA (6 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 47.5% v. 45.4%
Dem self ID: 43.5% (Nat. Avg. -0.2); -5.8% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Iowa is a traditional swing state and remains pretty evenly divided. IA is a tossup that will be taken by the party with the most enthusiasm. Watch for the Christian conservatives here.

OH (18 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 47.4% v. 45.5%
Dem self ID: 44.9% (Nat. Avg. +1.2); -7.9% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Ohio is in flux right now. Ohio lost 2 electoral votes to more economically dynamic red states during the last census reapportionment. At the same time, the percentage self identifying Dem has collapsed like in much of the Midwest. Unlike most of the rest of the country, though, the percentage of self identified GOP rose. Could it be the voters leaving OH for red states are mostly Dems? I suspect that OH will continue to go for the eventual winner.

NC (15 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 46.9% v. 45.8%
Dem self ID: 44.2% (Nat. Avg. +0.5); -5.8% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

NC moved into swing state territory when Barack Obama turned out the African American vote in record numbers and received an above average share of the white vote for a Dem. The white working class vote has shifted against Obama. The question is whether Obama can maintain the enthusiasm of the African American vote which is suffering devastating unemployment shrinking the black middle class.

ME (4 EV) - Endangered State (Split votes)
2010 Approval: 46.4% v. 45.6%
Dem self ID: 42.2% (Nat. Avg. -1.5); -10.9% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Maine has been a reliable Dem state for several cycles, but has shifted hard against the Dems in the same manner as WI. Amazingly ME looks like an under the radar tossup state now. However, at most, the GOP could only pick up 2 EVs because the other 2 are allocated by popular vote within each congressional district and the Dems will win one of those.

CO (9 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 45.2% v. 46.9%
Dem self ID: 43.0% (Nat. Avg. -0.7); -5.8% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

CO used to be a safe GOP state but has become very purple with the influx of Dem Latino and CA voters. Dems won the governor's mansion and the Senate seat in 2010, offsetting the GOP gains in the House of Representatives. However, the number of self identified Dems is again below the national average and Obama's approval is underwater. Lean GOP.

FL (29 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 45.8% v. 46.0%
Dem self ID: 42.7% (Nat. Avg. -1.0); -5.5% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Barack Obama was the first northern Dem to take FL in generations due to a record African American vote and picking up just enough white voters. However, Obama governance and a very bad economy alienated the white vote and shrank the Dem base to the extent that his approval numbers are underwater. FL is back to lean GOP. Indeed, multiple polls indicate that it may be closer to safe GOP because Obama is the Dem candidate.

VA (13 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 46.6% v. 45.6%
Dem self ID: 41.4% (Nat. Avg. -2.3); -6.1% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

VA has been a traditionally GOP state and will probably be so again. The 2008 bump in Dem self identification has disappeared as the GOP romped in 2010. GOP pickup.

NH (4 EV) - Endangered State
2010 Approval: 41.3% v. 51.1%
Dem self ID: 37.9% (Nat. Avg. -5.8); -11.4% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

With all the "Taxachusetts" refugees moving into the state, NH went from the rock ribbed "live free or die" GOP state to a leaning Dem state over the past generation. Like Maine, however, the Dem brand has recently cratered in NH and Obama's approval is so far underwater that it looks like a surprise GOP pickup.

IN (11 EV) - Swing State
2010 Approval: 43.9% v. 48.4% U
Dem self ID: 40.3% (Nat. Avg. -3.4); -6.9% (Nat. Avg. -6.4)

Indiana is a solid GOP state. The fact that it went narrowly Obama in 2008 is a testament to the magnitude of the economic panic in the Midwest. However, after two years of Obama governance, this state is no longer even close. GOP pickup.

In these battleground states, Obama can probably only rely upon 12 electoral votes, with 79 tossups and 66 leaning or likely GOP pickups. At this time, Obama needs to sweep nearly every tossup state to get to 270 electoral votes - not exactly the easiest road to reelection.

Hanging Tough

2011-07-14T12:24:00.003-06:00

During the debt ceiling negotiations over the past month, both the Dems and the GOP are keeping one eye towards how their negotiation positions are affecting their chances for reelection in 2012. Two recent polls may suggest how the dect ceiling negotiations are playing with voters.

As to Congress's reelection chances, Rasmussen is the only pollster still asking the generic congressional ballot question whether likely voters prefer a Dem or GOP to represent them in Congress. During the debt ceiling negotiations, the GOP advantage rose from 3 points last month to 6 points this week in the Rasmussen poll.

As for President Obama's reelection chances, Gallup just disclosed that registered voters prefer a generic GOP presidential candidate to President Obama by a 47% to 39% margin, the largest to date.

Click for larger image

Of course, we are a long way from the 2012 election. But using these polls as snapsots of how things stand now, the GOP's 2012 chances do not appear to be suffering from their demand for spending cuts to match any debt ceiling increase. Rather, GOP steadfastness may be appealing to their center-right voter coalition.

Here She Comes

2011-07-13T16:51:00.001-06:00

With six months to go before the Iowa Caucus, the GOP may have its first breakout candidate in Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. In contrast to polling of registered voters, Magellan and TIR recently performed polls of likely GOP Iowa caucus goers and found that Michelle is the current belle of this ball.

Magellan performed the most comprehensive polling of 1024 likely caucus goers with publicly disclosed cross tabs. This poll found that:

Likely caucus goers are a solidly conservative group - self-identifying 84% economic conservative, 76% socially conservative and 44% Tea Party members.

When asked their first choice, caucus goers prefer Bachmann over Romney by a 13 point margin (29% to 16%). Bachmann enjoys a 33% lead among Tea Party members and double digit leads in every other subcategory except among women, where she leads by 9%.

When asked their second choice, caucus goers again prefer Bachmann (20%) followed by Pawlenty (13%), Cain (11%) and Romney (10%). This suggests in a head-to-head horserace among conservative heartland voters, Bachmann leads Romney with a combined first and second choice vote by a whopping 23% margin (49% to 26%).

Among these caucus goers, Bachmann has a 99% name ID (far higher than nationally) and is viewed favorably by a 67% to 17% margin, while Romney obviously carries baggage with a far narrower 50% to 30% favorability margin. This indicates that Bachmann enjoys a rather significant approval advantage once folks get to know her.

The TIR poll used a far smaller sample with a large +/- 4.4% margin of error and must be taken with a bit more caution. TIR found:

Bachmann again leads Romney among caucus goers, albeit with a smaller 25% to 21% margin. Among the most attentive caucus goers, Bachmann's lead over Romney expands to 32% to 18%, very similar to the Magellan results.

Bachmann appears to be drawing support broadly from the former 2008 supporters of Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Fred Thompson. When viewed alongside the Magellan responses, it appears that Bachmann is hardly limited to the social conservative wing of the party as some have opined.

Bachmann is viewed favorably by an even more impressive a 76% to 11% margin, while Romney does better as well with a 66% to 25% favorability margin.

Once Bachmann gets some national name recognition, Romney could be in serious trouble. Bachmann appears to be the favorite to win Iowa. If she places in NH, Bachmann would be in very good shape heading down south.

Watch out Mitt, here she comes just a walking down the street...

Time For A Change Of Strategy

2011-07-12T22:20:00.001-06:00

The GOP House should pass a clean five year debt ceiling bill with the purpose of forcing a balanced budget, allowing $300 billion for the remainder of FY 2011, $1.2 trillion for FY2012, $900 billion for FY2013, $600 billion for FY 2014 and $300 billion for FY 2015 and nothing thereafter. Forget attaching specific cuts onto the bill.

Then tell the Dems the House is moving onto working on a new budget to fit under the new debt ceiling and welcome the Dem Senate and President to do the same.

Human Shield Political Negotiation

2011-07-12T13:25:00.004-06:00

In addition to threatening to default on the nation's public debt and plunging the nation into recession...

...now our President is threatening to stop Social Security, disability and veterans checks if the GOP does not agree to vote for his $1 trillion tax increase as part of a bill to raise the debt ceiling.

Amazing.

Obama Promises No Massive Job Killing Tax Increases Until After His Reelection

2011-07-11T16:32:00.002-06:00

Barack Obama from today's presser:

Don't you feel reassured?

Don't Bother Me With Those Fools

2011-07-11T14:17:00.007-06:00

In today's presser, CBS News' Chip Reid asked President Obama how he planned to convince the 69% of Americans who told a recent CBS poll that they do not support raising the debt ceiling to support the President's plan to do just that. Obama sniffed and condescendingly claimed the American people are not paying attention, nor should they pay attention to the national debt because they were paying him to pay attention:

Sir, someone needs to clue you into the fact that you are not emperor and the American people are not ignorant fools. You work for us.

Bait And Switch

2011-07-10T15:40:00.001-06:00

The GOP is leaking the terms Obama's "grand deal" which scuttled any substantive budget reform during the current negotiations on raising the debt ceiling.

Under the proposed tax reform of Obama's deficit commission, tax deductions would be largely eliminated to reduce income and corporate tax rates down to a top rates of 23% income tax and 26% corporate tax. This plan results in a moderate revenue increase under a static model assuming no economic effects and very likely a substantial revenue increase under a dynamic supply side model. In either case, the Dems get their tax increase in exchange for the GOP demand for lower overall rates, far more of a tax increase that playing around with the deduction period of corporate jets.

This was not enough for Obama, however. The President demanded that, after wiping out all the tax deductions, the top tax rates would increase from 23% and 26% to 35% for a trillion dollar tax increase heaped on only top earners and corporations. As a point of context, the top 1% of earners already pay 28% of all federal taxes.

Obama also declined to offer any serious structural entitlement reform.

In sum, all the trial balloons Obama floated in the press about large scale budgetary reform was a lie to get the GOP to the table, force them to walk away and then blame the GOP for the failure of the talks.

Boehner should declare the Dems are not serious and have the house enact a bill with $1 trillion in budget cuts and a $1 trillion increase in the debt limit that will run out next spring as the election heats up. Then conclude by saying the House is moving onto other business.

A Growth-less Economy

2011-07-07T10:26:00.002-06:00

When she served as an Obama Administration economic advisor, Christine Romer had the unenviable task of attempting to jive the President's claims that his "stimulus" borrow and spend spree created a "recovery summer" with the reality that ours is the worst post-recession economy since the Great Depression. Now that she has left the Administration and returned to her day job as an academic, Romer is attempting to rehabilitate her reputation as an economist by finally telling economic truths:

The Albatross Economy

2011-07-02T13:14:00.007-06:00

The GOP's theme for its 2012 campaign season is unsurprisingly "the economy stupid." Bill Clinton won election in 1992 on this theme even though the economy was actually in recovery and growing smartly. The eventual GOP challenger to President Obama has the advantage of observing that the Obama economy is the first post WWII "recovery" with no real economic recovery.

In the following video, Senator Jim DeMint gives a good summary of what you will be hearing from GOP candidates for the presidency and all the Dem senate seats up for election in 2012. You can see the Joint Economic Committee report which is the source of Demint's data here.

Demint offers a rather sober assessment. Imagine instead if GOP candidates use this awful economic data in a populist campaign message with large helpings of red meat to our millions of un and under-empoyed and their families.

GOP candidates should not need to work to hard to convince voters that President Obama's economic policies have either been enormously expensive failures in bringing about economic recovery or actually made things worse. The latest Marist polling finds that registered voters disapprove of the President's job handling the economy by a 2:1 margin, the worst assessment in this particular poll's history:

By a nearly identical margin, registered voters think that the country is heading in the wrong direction:

When you look at the Marist crosstabs, 91% of GOP, 60% of Indi and even 31% of Dems disapprove of the President's handling of the economy.

Dem pollster Stanley Greenberg has been testing the Obama reelection messages concerning the economy with focus groups and is providing very disturbing news to the Obama campaign. Time magazine's Swampland blog reports:

“No one is going to give you much credit for what you have done for this recovery,” says Greenberg, who has been testing messages in focus groups and polls for Democrats to use in the coming election. “Saying the economy is starting to make progress is bad.”...

As it now stands, the President’s stump speech features a backward-looking message at its core. Obama trumpets “more than 2 million jobs in the private sector” that have been created in the last 15 months. At a recent speech in Ohio he dismissed May’s bad jobs numbers as “bumps on the road to recovery.” In Greenberg’s estimation, this is an error on par with President Obama’s midterm election pitch, which described the nation as a car that had just gotten out of a ditch that Republicans drove into in the first place. The metaphor didn’t work, Greenberg explained in a recent memo, because “people thought they were still in the ditch.”...

When Greenberg tested messages trumpeting the recent rebound, or blaming the economy on Republican mismanagement before 2008, the results were dismal, he says. Voters did not want to hear it.

Not only do voters not want to hear Obama's false claims that the economy is in recovery and Bush is to blame for the recovery not being faster, the Marist poll suggests a strong plurality of registered voters (43% to 36%) have already decided to vote against Barack Obama a full year and a half out from the election. The polling cross tabs suggest how deep a hole the Obama reelection effort is with the voters:

The Obama coalition has fallen apart. Indis plan to vote against Obama by a 43% to 29% margin and even 10% of Dem voters plan to vote against their party's President.

26% of nonwhite voters plan to vote against Obama. Given the nearly complete African American support for Obama, this means Hispanics are deserting Obama in droves.

No modern Dem presidential candiate has won election without a substantial plurality of the female vote. Women are evenly divided and plan to vote against Obama by a 41% to 40% margin.

From an electoral college perspective, no modern presidential candidate has won election without a majority of the midwest electoral votes. Registered voters in the midwest plan to vote against Obama by a 46% to 35% margin. If this margin holds and the undecided break along similar lines, it is hard to see Obama winning a Midwest state outside of his home state of Illinois, and that could be close.

After seeing these figures and focus group reaction to the Dem message, pollster Stanley Greenberg is suggesting that the President abandon any defense of his economic record and try to change the subject.

Good luck with that strategy.

UPDATE ONE: The Wall Street Journal offers a similar comparison between the Obama "recovery" and past post-WWII recessions in the chart below:

The Dem Media Notes The Emperor's Lack of Wardrobe

2011-06-30T07:55:00.015-06:00

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the Dem media's obsequiously worshipful coverage of Barack Obama reached the point of Saturday Night Live parody:

Then during the first half of the Obama Administration, the Dem media could be relied upon to stubbornly defend all of the President's policies and overlook the dozens of campaign promises he broke. However, the mood of Barack Obama's media fan boys and girls palpably changed by the summer of 2011.

One of Obama's most faithful and enthusiastic cheerleaders, The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, penned an absolutely scathing op-ed entitled entitled Why Is He Bi? (Sigh) discovering to her horror that Barack Obama talks out of both sides of his mouth:

Our president likes to be on both sides at once.

In Afghanistan, he wants to go but he wants to stay. He’s surging and withdrawing simultaneously. He’s leaving fewer troops than are needed for a counterinsurgency strategy and more troops than are needed for a counterterrorism strategy — and he seems to want both strategies at the same time. Our work is done but we have to still be there. Our work isn’t done but we can go.

On Libya, President Obama wants to lead from behind. He’s engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi while telling Congress he’s not engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi.

On the budget, he wants to cut spending and increase spending. On the environment, he wants to increase energy production but is reluctant to drill. On health care, he wants to get everybody covered but will not press for a universal system. On Wall Street, he assails fat cats, but at cocktail parties, he wants to collect some of their fat for his campaign.

On politics, he likes to be friends with the other side but bash ’em at the same time. For others, bipartisanship means transcending their own prior political identities. For President Obama, it means that he participates in all political identities. He does not seem deeply affiliated with any side except his own.

President Obama's performance in his June 29, 2011 press conference further appalled his media supporters. When asked about his lack of participation in the negotiations to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling, the President arrogantly dismissed the complaint: "I am very amused when I start hearing comments about 'well the President needs to show more leadership on this.'" Then Obama attacked Congress for going home to their constituents during the July 4th holiday weekend instead of cutting a deal on spending and the debt. What the President left unsaid is that he has spent most of the past month at fundraisers and playing golf and is off to yet another vacation.

The next morning, CCN's Gloria Borger asked: Where are the adults in Washington?

Call me old-fashioned, but when the president and congressional leaders get into a tussle over who should be "leading" the country in matters of real national consequence, I feel like sending them to their rooms.

"Call me naive," President Obama said at his news conference today. "But my expectation is that leaders are going to lead."
Mine, too.

So imagine my surprise when the president came to his own press conference -- which he called -- without anything much new to say on possible ways get to a deal to raise the national debt ceiling. Plenty of talk about gamesmanship, about deadlines and about how even Sasha and Malia are mature enough to do their schoolwork before it's due...

What might actually have counted as news is if the president, as the nation's leader, had proposed a definitive way out of the budget mess -- or at least drawn some lines in the sand.

MSNBC's Mark Halperin was decidedly less polite in his choice of words to describe what he considered the President's effort to sabotage the debt negotiations and blame the Republicans:

My only question is what took you so long?

UPDATE ONE: Is the Dem media the only 2008 Obama supporters who now note his lack of wardrobe? The Financial Times offered an article on Michelle Bachmann today with this very interesting observation:

Last year, in the lead-up to the 2010 congressional election, Bachmann raised $13.5m, more than any other member of the House of Representatives. This year, only one Republican in the House – Speaker Boehner – has raised more than she has. In both cases, the vast majority of the money came from donations of less than $200 each, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But they are just the kind of contributions that matter. Kent Sorenson says such small donations translate into votes and activist support, and are more valuable than the larger ones that are pouring into Mitt Romney’s coffers from wealthy individuals. “In the last reporting period, Michele had more small donors than Obama did,” he says. “She is the only one out there that can rival that.”

Rapping The Stimulus

2011-06-28T19:22:00.004-06:00

Arguably, the two leading western economists of the twentieth century were F.A. Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Hayek championed free markets and Keynes provided the intellectual foundation for progressive government attempts to fine tune the economy.

Keynes is best known for his theory that government spending creates demand for goods and services which in turn increases GDP and jobs. Obama placed the Keynes strategy on steroids with roughly $4 trillion in federal government borrowing and spending since taking the office of President. Hayek ridiculed the idea that the government can create economic growth by taking money from one part of the economy, taking a slice for itself and then spending the remaining on goods and services the people are not demanding.

The group Econ Stories tries to make this all accessible to the layperson in a series of videos where actors playing Keynes and Hayek are rapping about their contrasting economic theories. In the second of the series, Hayek and Keynes debate the Obama stimulus. Enjoy.

Before The Lights Go Out

2011-06-26T20:44:00.001-06:00

The first phase of the Dem Congress' prohibition of our incandescent light bulbs goes into effect with the banning of the 100w bulb at the end of the year with the ubiquitous 60w and 40w bulbs being sent to socialist industrial planning purgatory afterward.

You have the opportunity to stock up on light bulbs at Amazon before Obama's DOE light bulb police come calling to your local store.

My several hundred should keep my house bathed in light until either the GOP take the White House and Senate to repeal this nonsense or enterprising folks like the mafia provide a "white light market" to get around our latest experiment in Prohibition.

Timing Is Everything

2011-06-23T10:33:00.005-06:00

John Merline of the Investors Business Daily decided to fact check Barack Obama reelection campaign claim that his "stimulus bill" borrowing and spending $814 billion prevented a second Great Depression.

Merline begins by noting that economists including the Obama economic team were not predicting a depression. Instead, the economic team's January 2009 white paper attempting to sell the merits of the Obama "stimulus" bill projected that unemployment would top out at 9% without more government borrowing and spending - hardly double digit Depression level unemployment.

Then Merline creates a timeline chart placing the Obama "stimulus" borrowing and spending alongside the gross domestic product (GDP):

The recessionary fall in GDP essentially ended a month before Obama took office and three months before the Obama Administration started its borrowing and spending spree.

It is unfortunate that Merline did not also add the even more inconvenient unemployment trend to his timeline. During the Obama borrowing and spending spree on the chart, the number of unemployed rose by 1.675 million.

In sum, the Obama "stimulus" bill missed the GDP recession entirely and did nothing in particular to stop the increase in the number of unemployed. Apparently, the President's reelection team is relying upon voters like you to overlook the actual facts and simply accept whatever Mr. Obama says at face value.

It's Still The Economy Stupid

2011-06-22T13:42:00.003-06:00

Bloomberg just issued the usual Dem media biased poll of non-voting adults with a Dem+5 ratio and about 6% fewer whites than actually vote. Even this gamed poll did not help President Obama's reelection prospects:

45% think that unemployment and jobs is the #1 issues, followed by 17% and 15% for government spending and deficit, respectively. The Dem issue of health care came in 4th with 10%.

76% properly view the economy a unchanging or getting worse.

55% think the proper approaches to return economic growth are to cut spending and taxes.

57% disapprove of Obama's job performance with the economy and jobs.

40% of "likely voters" say they will definitely vote against Obama in 2012 vs. 31% who will definitely vote for.

61% agree that "in 2012, President Obama will have had his chance - if the economy isn't substantially better by election day, it will be hard to vote for him."

This is why the Dems are reduced to arguing that the GOP candidates for President are unelectable rather than offering anything positive Obama has actually accomplished.

The Sun Shrugged

2011-06-20T12:43:00.004-06:00

Mel Gibson's movie Apocolypto was a story about a villager attempting to survive the Mayan decision to reverse a drought by making human sacrifices to their sun god so he would not scorch the Earth.

Reading the news during the past week, one is reminded of the madness of the Apocolypto sacrifice scene.

In our own country, Illinois and West Virginia newspapers are reporting that EPA is sacrificing electricity consumers to prevent the Sun from overheating the Earth. Households across the American heartland can expect a 40% to 60% surge in their utility bills and thousands will lose their jobs over the next few years because of EPA green house gas regulations on coal power plants.

The news gets positively surreal as we go to Australia. Having just adopted a cap on green house gases, Australia is proposing to pay hunters carbon credit bounties to kill off Australia's 1.2 million wild camels. The Aussies reason that camel burps cause one-sixth of the methane of your average automobile and sacrificing camels is more politically palatable than sacrificing cars.

If there is a sun god, he must think mankind is insane.

NASA and astronomers are reporting that the sun is going to sleep rather than scorching the Earth. Solar activity in the form of irradiance has dropped to a 12-year low, solar radio emission to a 55-year low and sunspot activity has all but disappeared. Scientists say that the signs are pointing to a "very deep solar minimum" or in layman's terms a minimally active sun.

Solar activity provides all of the Earth's heat apart from a marginal amount from the Earth's molten core. Thus, it is unsurprising that the drop in solar irradiance neatly correlates to the lack of statistically significant atmospheric warming over the past decade and a half. The last extended period of solar inactivity was known as the Mauder Minimum, which coincided with the last major global cooling during the 1600s known as the Little Ice Age.

Looking down from the sky at humanity's self destruction to impress it, the Sun simply shrugs.

I Will Be Held Accountable

2011-06-15T21:52:00.001-06:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Yes sir, you will.

More Signs Of Stagflation Today

2011-06-15T08:43:00.004-06:00

Stagflation is when the Federal Reserve increases the money supply and inflation, killing off economic growth and increasing unemployment. Two new stagflation indicators indicators hit the news today:

Over the past couple years, the Federal Reserve has doubled the money supply and the prices businesses pay with our devalued currency for raw materials has soared. Businesses are now being forced to pass that inflation onto consumers by raising retail prices. The core Consumer Price Index (CPI) (without gas and food) has risen from near zero to 3.6% now.

Meanwhile, United States manufacturing production is moving beyond slowing into a recessionary reduction.

If the CPI keeps rising, the Fed will have no choice but to raise interest rates on an economy that is already stagnant or contracting. The chances of a stagflationary recession occurring over the next year is increasing substantially.

Another Marie Antoinette Moment Brought To You By Barack Obama

2011-06-13T15:35:00.004-06:00

Apparently the Obama bureaucracy's delaying business growth for months if not years is a subject of great hilarity to our President and the collection of millionaires who make up his non-job creating Jobs Council.

I'll Bet You Didn't Know...

2011-06-13T15:28:00.003-06:00

...President Obama has turned the economy around. Apparently, NBC didn't know this either:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Obama "New Normal"

2011-06-12T09:46:00.004-06:00

In an interview that the Dem media studiously ignored during the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama promised to "necessarily skyrocket" our electricity rates to reduce alleged manmade global warming. On at least this subject, now President Obama is as good as his word.

Illinois and West Virginia newspapers are confirming an coal industry study that electricity consumers can expect a 40% to 60% surge in their utility bills and thousands will lose their jobs over the next few years because of EPA green house gas regulations.

The Obama "new normal."

Debbie Downer

2011-06-08T13:21:00.003-06:00

Here is a nice video skewering the pathological lying of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:

Worse Than The Great Depression

2011-06-06T10:15:00.003-06:00

This CBS News factoid shocked me:

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.

Who Killed The Great American Jobs Machine?

2011-06-04T11:25:00.016-06:00

Over its relatively short two and a half century history, the United States has created more jobs than just about any other nation on Earth. Our country became known as the Great American Jobs Machine. During the past two years, however, Americans can justly wonder if someone killed their vaunted jobs machine.

Two years after the claimed end of the 2008-2009 recession, the United States is mired in the worst period of high unemployment since the Great Depression. As shown by the Calculated Risk Blog chart below, we are in the midst of the only post-WWII period of L shaped unemployment - a sharp fall in employment followed by little to no recovery growth. The reality is actually worse than this chart indicates because the slight decrease in unemployment over the past year is largely due to the fact that the unemployment rate stopped counting the millions of long term unemployed who have dropped out of the workforce after giving up on finding work. Even after skipping these growing legions of discouraged workers, the government's unemployment rate is again on the rise to 9.1% in May 2011.

United States businesses have simply stopped hiring except to replace lost workers. The employment market is in a constant state of churn as millions leave one job to take another. During a recession, layoffs heavily outnumber hires until the economy picks up and the process reverses. After the 2008-2009 recession, though, the layoffs stopped but the rehiring never began. As the chart below shows, the current pace of hiring is about 20% lower than in 2007 and shows no sign of recovering.

We are entering the fourth year of an unemployment depression. This is not hyperbole. CBS News reports:

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.

What this means in plain English is that unemployed workers during the Great Depression had a better chance of finding occasional work and did not go without a job for as long as today's unemployed.

Under the Keynesian theory subscribed to by the current Administration and Federal Reserve, economic demand spurred by nearly $4 trillion in government deficit spending and a massive increase in the money supply should have caused businesses to rehire millions of workers. According to the Obama economic team, the current unemployment rate should have fallen below 7% on its way to full employment. Instead, the real unemployment rate including discouraged workers is likely in the double digits and the government appears to be at a loss on how to proceed.

If they would remove the ideological blinders, the evidence suggests that the government itself has killed the Great American Jobs Machine by debasing the currency and massively increasing regulation of the economy.

Easy Money and the Rising Cost of Doing Business

In what now appears to be a gross overreaction to fears of an 1930s style deflation, the Federal Reserve has doubled the supply of dollars over the past two years. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke actually believes that printing new currency by the trillions of dollars will not cause inflation because he opines: "The state of inflation expectations greatly influences actual inflation." In other words, inflation will stay low so long as people think it will no matter what happens to the actual money supply. Incredible.

In the real world, when a nation doubles its money supply, the price businesses and other consumers pay for commodities like oil, metals and food increases in tandem with the new currency. In the chart below, the thick blue line shows the growth in the U.S. money supply since 2009 and the thin blue line the perfectly corresponding rise in the price of commodities in dollars.

Because they do not want to lose market share to competitors, businesses will initially cut costs rather than increase the retail prices of their products in order to pay for the inflated cost of commodities. One of the easiest ways of cutting costs is to defer hires or lay off current employees. This is classic stagflation.

The Burgeoning Regulatory State and the Cost of Doing Business and Hiring

On top of soaring commodity prices, U.S. businesses must also deal with the costs to comply with the Obama Administration's exponential increase in the reach of the federal regulatory state. In January, The Economist reported:

In his first two years in office the federal government issued 132 “economically significant” rules, according to Susan Dudley of George Washington University. (“Economically significant” means that either the rule’s costs, or its benefits, exceed $100m a year.) That is about 40% more than the annual rate under both George Bush junior and Bill Clinton. Many rules associated with the newly passed health-care and financial-reform laws are still to come.

Existing rules are also being enforced more keenly. The workplace-safety regulator slapped employers with 167% more violations in Mr Obama’s first year than in Mr Bush’s last, according to OMB Watch, a liberal watchdog. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stepped up scrutiny of drugs that have already been approved for sale. Last year it barred the use of Avastin for breast cancer, not because it was unsafe but because its benefits seemed too uncertain. The regulatory workforce has grown 16% in Mr Obama’s first two years in office, to 276,429, while private employment has fallen.

According to the Obama bureaucracy's own estimates, 43 of these 132 “economically significant” rules will impose a $26.5 billion cost on American businesses.

One can safely assume that these self serving estimates are gross understatements of the real costs of this blizzard of red tape. For example, in selling their "cap and trade" legislation seeking to ration and tax the use of fossil fuels, the Obama EPA publicly claimed without any particular basis that this program would only cost the average family the equivalent of a postage stamp per day in increased energy costs. Behind the scenes, however, the Treasury Department was telling the White House that the average family would actually end up spending an additional $1,761 each year.

Former Director of OMB Peter Orzag justified the Administration's reordering of the U.S. economy by claiming: "Smart regulation can make people's lives better off." Americans who remain unemployed because of "smart regulation" might disagree.

In a revealing essay entitled Economic Stagnation Explained at 30,000 Feet, Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter recounts a conversation with a midsize business owner during a May 2011 flight. When the conversation turned to business, the owner complained that he could not afford to hire new workers even though demand for his product was rising. Because every time he turns around the federal bureaucracy is imposing a new rule on his business, a business can no longer predict the cost of labor. "How can I hire new workers today," moaned the owner, "when I don't know how much they will cost me tomorrow." "Government should act like my assistant, not my boss."

Solutions

Apparently, the United States has crossed a threshold. The economy can no longer create jobs under the twin burden of a debased currency and a rapidly expanding regulatory state. It is time to substantially reverse course.

The Federal Reserve must immediately, but gradually raise interest rates and call back the loans it made to the banks to soak up all the excess money before a stagflationary spike in retail prices forces a far more drastic response like the double digit interest rates of the early 80s which crippled the economy and spiked unemployment even higher than today.

Regulatory reform requires far more radical measures. Like a creeping cancer, the total regulatory burden on the nation's economy has inexorably risen over the past two generations despite claims of deregulation by various Presidents because the administrative state's only reason for existence is to produce more regulations and the elected branches have little control over the bureaucracy. Nearly every attempt by George W. Bush to restrain executive departments allegedly under his control was reversed by the courts. Despite riding to power on the crest of a once in a century wave election in 2010, the GOP House has not managed to reverse a single Obama Administration regulation defended by the Administration.

The regulatory state is fundamentally flawed and unresponsive to both economic necessity and the will of the voters. The only meaningful regulatory reform would be to remove all legislative power from the executive bureaucracy and return it to the Congress as required under Article I of the Constitution. The bureaucracy should be limited to recommending regulations for Congress to enact and to enforcing the law Congress enacts. In this way, the people can again control the burden of law through their elected representatives.

Liar Liar Pants On Fire

2011-06-04T11:22:00.000-06:00

Amen.

Unemployment and Reelection

2011-06-03T21:59:00.005-06:00

Statistician Nate Silver crunched the numbers and found that there is no particular correlation between the change in unemployment over a President's entire first term and his chances of reelection to a second term. Thus, President Obama's reelection chances do not appear as daunting as today's 9.1% unemployment rate suggest.

The problem with Mr. Silver's analysis is that voters do not survey the net change over an entire term and award their vote accordingly. Rather, they consider where unemployment and the rest of the economy is heading at the time they cast their ballot. Thus, the better way of measuring the effect of unemployment on reelection is the change from the prior high or low in unemployment during the middle of the President's term to the unemployment on election day.

For example, among the post-WWII Presidents seeking reelection when unemployment was above 7% on election day, Reagan won because unemployment fell by about three percent from its prior high in 1983, while Carter and Bush 41 lost because unemployment increased by about 2% from lows before the election.

The other post WWII Presidents who won reelection to a second term all enjoyed nearly full employment on election day falling off a prior high.

Obama is unique among post WWII Presidents in that his election day unemployment rate will likely be between 8% to 9%, probably closer to 9%. The only prior 20th century President to seek a second term with unemployment so high was FDR in 1936.

FDR won because unemployment fell several percent before the 1936 election. In Obama's case, unemployment has not actually fallen at all. The nominal drop from 10% to 9% was primarily because a couple million unemployed simply stopped looking for work and were no longer counted in the figure. Even that faux drop appears to be reversing as the early stages of stagflation appear to be throwing more folks out of work.

In sum, there are no data points for a President like Obama whose real unemployment rate flatlined at a high rate for the last three years of his first term. Even so, I doubt any President seeking reelection since WWII would have wanted to trade places and run on Obama's economy.

The Democrat Foreign Legion

2011-05-27T07:49:00.002-06:00

For the first time in American history, the United States government is recruiting foreign residents to become United States citizens. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is spending $3.5 million for a foreign language campaign to convince up to 7.9 million green card holders to apply for citizenship.

In an era of $1.6 trillion deficits, why are we spending any money at all on this effort? Two data points are revealing:

1) As discussed most famously in the 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, Democrats are relying on immigrants to provide them with an electoral majority, since apparently they are having a hard time convincing citizens to do so. More recently, Roll Call reported that the Obama reelection campaign is relying upon hispanic voters to put them over the top in several key western states.

2) The AP article reporting the Obama Administration's citizenship recruiting campaign mentioned making immigrants eligible to vote five times as the reason for the effort.

Is this the first time in the history of representative democracy that a political party used the government to recruit foreign voters to make up for its lack of popularity with the citizenry?

Honesty In A Politician, What A Concept!

2011-05-24T08:18:00.005-06:00

Former Godfather Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain announced over the weekend that he was running for the GOP nomination for President. Cain has never held political office before. Rather than discussing the gentleman's positions, I want to look at the man's character.

On Fox News Sunday this weekend, Chris Wallace asked Cain what his opinion was on the "right of return" at the 1:14 minute mark in the video below. Cain obviously drew a complete blank.

For those of you like Cain who are also drawing a blank, the "right of return" refers to the Palestinian demand that Israel allow several million descendants of Arabs who left Israel during the 1948 War to resettle in Israel. Israel refuses to agree to this demand because Arabs would then outnumber Israelis in their own country.

The next Monday evening, Cain appeared on Hannity on the Fox News channel. Sean Hannity ran the Fox News Sunday clip starting at the 3:14 minute mark in the video below and then asked the pointed question: "A lot of people think you do not understand the right of return?"

I almost fell out of my seat when Cain declined to spin and flat out admitted: "They are exactly right, Sean. Chris caught me off guard. I didn't understand the right of return. It came out of left field. And of all the questions I anticipated him asking me, I didn't even conceive of him asking me about the right of return. I now know what that is. The thing you are going to learn about Herman Cain, if he doesn't know something, he is not going to try to fake it or give an answer that he doesn't know what he is talking about."

Can anyone imagine President Barack Obama or nearly any other politician being this honest?

This candidate bears watching.

This Is What Change Looks Like

2011-05-17T09:03:00.010-06:00

The Battleground poll is a bipartisan effort of the GOP Terrance firm and the Dem Lake firm with a pretty solid track record. Since they started releasing over 300 pages of internal cross tabs, Battleground has become a polling junkie's ultimate fix and has some important information for the layperson who is willing to spend some time plowing through the data. Let this polling junkie try to save you some time.

I am going to compare and contrast the data from the current May 2011 Battleground poll and the CNN 2008 election exit poll. In particular, I will be concentrating on the cross tabs in the latest Battleground poll asking the questions (1) how likely are you to vote in the upcoming election (p. 1-7) and (2) would you consider voting for Barack Obama (p.263-268). These polls are not completely comparable, but I think they provide a good feel of how the 2012 presidential election is shaping up.

A Preliminary Word About Partisan Weighting and Intensity

In the 2008 exit polling, the electorate split 39% Dem, 32% GOP and 29% Indi. Obama took 89% of Dems, 52% of Indis and 9% of Republicans. Exit polling is notorious for undercounting conservatives so the actual results were probably closer than the impressive Dem +7% advantage.

The October 2010 Battleground poll had GOP and Dem turnout knotted at 41% each with the Indis breaking for the GOP congressional candidates.

The Gallup and Rasmussen rolling polls have had GOP and Dem self identification among registered voters tied for several months now.

The current May 2011 Battleground poll appears to be splitting the difference between 2008 and 2010 by assuming a Dem turnout of 43% and a GOP turnout of 40%. This appears to be an arbitrary compromise weighting by the GOP and Dem pollsters because 99% of GOP likely voters say they are extremely or very likely to vote, while only 92% of Dem likely voters make the same commitment.

I suspect the overall Battleground results are likely 2-3% worse for Obama than stated. This is why I will be concentrating on the individual groups within the 2008 Obama alliance.

Finishing and Starting LInes

In 2008, Barack Obama solidly defeated John McCain by a margin of 53% to 46% with an ahistorical turnout of young and minority voters and the largest percentage of white voters gained by a Democrat in a generation. Since his election, President Obama's popularity has dropped significantly and he lost the Democratic House and much of the Democratic majority in the Senate during a wave election in 2010 dominated by conservatives. The questions going into an all too early presidential campaign season is whether the 2010 wave has subsided and Obama can reassemble enough of his 2008 coalition to keep a majority of the vote.

The latest Battleground poll finds that 38% of likely voters say they with definitely vote against President Obama, 30% say they will definitely vote for him and 32% are still considering the matter or are unsure. In short, President Obama finds his position sliding from a 7% lead over McCain in 2008 to a 8% deficit among likely voters who have made up their minds.

How did this dramatic shift in sentiment effect the groups in his 2008 coalition?

Whites

Contrary to the Dem media spin about an imminent majority minority electorate providing an ongoing Dem electoral advantage, white voters continue to dominate the electorate, casting roughly 3/4 of the ballots. Battleground's likely voter model projects this to continue in 2012. 99% of white likely voters say they are extremely or very likely to vote, 8% better than African Americans and 18% better than Hispanics. Even with a 2008 level minority turnout for him, Barrack Obama cannot win reelection without a substantial minority of the white vote.

Battleground suggests that Obama will have a very rough time coming close to his 43% level of white support in 2008. A plurality of 45% of white likely voters say they will definitely vote against Obama, while only 22% say they will definitely vote for him. Among whites, the traditional Dem advantage among women has largely disappeared. 45% of both white men and women say they will definitely vote against Obama, while a slightly higher minority of women than men say they will vote to reelect the President.

African Americans

Although the intensity of African American enthusiasm to vote has waned somewhat from the 2008 excitement of electing the first African American president, the support of this voting block for Obama is still monolithic and will probably remain so in 2012.

Hispanics

In 2008, Barack Obama earned the hispanic vote by a 67% to 31% margin. In 2010, the pendulum swing back somewhat as GOP congressional candidates won about 34% of the hispanic vote, returning to previous Republican highs under George W. Bush. The 2012 GOP presidential candidate may do better still. Yes, you read that right.

The latest Battleground crosstabs suggest that hispanic men are joining white men in their level of rejection of Barack Obama. White men say they will definitely vote against rather than for Obama by a 45% to 22% margin. Hispanic men are close behind with a 40% to 26% margin! Hispanic women basically cancel out their men with a 36% to 14% level of definite support for the President, but a canceling out suggests Obama's hispanic support is falling closer to 50%.

Age

In 2008, voters aged 18-29 cast 18% of the ballots and those aged 30-44 cast another 29% of the votes. This was the highest youth turnout since the boomers exercised the franchise with gusto in the 1960s and 1970s. While the 30-44 cohort maintains their enthusiasm today, the 18 to 29 year olds have returned to relative apathy. The youngest voters are about 10% less likely that the other age cohorts to say they are extremely or very likely to vote. Battleground is very likely over counting the 2012 youth vote by weighting them the same as in 2008.

The lack of youth intensity is not the worst news for President Obama, however. Battleground found that the 18-29 and 30-44 age groups are equally committed to definitely vote for or against Obama. This is in sharp contrast to 2008 when Obama won the 66% of the 18-29 age group and 54% of the 30-44 group.

Because they are concentrating on the younger voters, political analysts often overlook that Obama narrowly won 45-64 year olds and narrowly lost 65 and older seniors in 2008. Currently, Battleground finds that 45-64 year olds say they will definitely vote against Obama by a 40% to 24% margin, while seniors are not far behind at 43% to 30%.

Other Groups

In 2008, Obama comfortably won the traditionally Dem demographic of Catholic votes by a 54% to 45% margin. Today, Battleground reports that Catholics say they will definitely vote against Obama by a 35% to 25% margin. This shift very likely reflects Obama's losses among white working class voters and hispanic men.

In 2008, Obama narrowly lost voters who were married with children by 3%. Today, Battleground finds that these voters are the most enthusiastic to vote and say they will definitely vote against Obama by a 45% to 26% margin.

In 2008, Obama won union members by a whopping 60% to 37% margin. Today, Battleground finds that these voters are as likely to vote against (32%) as for (34%) Obama.

Reelection Math

President Obama's reelection math is daunting.

Obama starts in an 8% hole among those who have made up their minds. Worse still, 68% of those who say they will definitely vote against the President also say they are extremely or very likely to cast a ballot to do so, while just 56% of definite supporters say the same thing. Thus, to win, Obama needs to convince at least 2/3 of the undecided to get to the polls and to vote for him. This is easier said than done.

Unsurprisingly, the undecided voters are significantly less enthusiastic about voting than current supporters and opponents. 42% of those promising to cast a ballot against Obama say they are extremely likely to cast that ballot compared with only 25% of those still considering their vote. This is because 39% of the undecided are unmotivated 18 to 29 year olds.

Next, 66% of undecided are located in safe Obama states in the NE and west coast which will not decide the election.

The groups with above average percentages of undecided include:

39% of 18 to 29 year olds

39% of hispanic women

37% of Indis

36% of unemployed men

33% of white men

36% of Dem men.

35% of those who voted for Obama in 2008.

To start, when over a third of his 2008 coalition is unsure whether they want to reelect President Obama, you know he is in trouble.

What may be motivating the groups with above average uncertainty? (Not including the overall electorate who voted for Obama in 2008). It appears to be the economy stupid.

By between 3-2 to 2-1 margins, all of these groups except male Dems think the country is moving in the wrong direction. 35% of male Dems also believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, which correlates with the 36% percent of this group who are undecided.

The economy and jobs are either the first or second most important issue for these groups. Of note, 43% of hispanic women choose this issue. Surprisingly, government and spending (21%) ranks slightly higher than jobs and the economy (20%) as the most important issue among unemployed men.

Heavy majorities between 58% and 66% of all groups apart from male Dems and hispanic women disapprove of President Obama's job on the economy.

Finally and most fundamentally disturbing, heavy majorities between 56% and 77% of all of these groups believe the next generation of Americans will not be better off economically than their parents. A horrifying 66% of young voters believe that they will not be better off. Overall, 74% of all voters in the Battleground sample believe this. The idea of the American Dream itself appears to be under siege.

Unless President Obama can cause a sea change in these opinions, I do not see how he can convince 2/3 of the undecided to go to the polls and vote for him.

Of Government Spending And Economic Recoveries

2011-05-15T08:54:00.038-06:00

Since 2008, the federal government has executed a grand experiment on our economy and our personal futures. The Bush and Obama administrations dramatically increased government spending financed entirely through debt with the goal of creating substantially greater GDP growth and substantially lower unemployment than would otherwise be the case under a standard economic recovery. Indeed, in its January 2009 white paper, the Obama economic team claimed that every addition dollar the government borrowed and spent would increase GDP growth by up to $1.57. Said more simply, Team Obama claimed that government borrowing and spending could create a 57% growth rate.

Two years after this experiment went into effect, we are now in a position to make a preliminary judgment of its results.

Since WWII, the United States has undergone four comparable recessions where the economy lost 5% or more of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - 1948, 1954, 1958 and 1980-1982. The GDP and unemployment charts below cover the entire business cycles for the 1948, 1954 and 1958 recessions starting with the recession and followed by the recovery growth and then mature growth periods before the next recession. Because the expansion following the 1980-1982 recession was so long, those charts end in 1986 after the economy entered its mature growth period. We are still in the midst of a GDP growth period following the 2008-2009 recession, so that chart ends at the present.

In the standard business cycle, you generally start with a recessionary drop in the GDP, followed by a period of rapid recovery GDP growth, and then slowing down into a period of more moderate GDP growth until the next recession. Unemployment generally lags behind movement of the GDP so that recessionary unemployment generally peaks after the GDP starts its recovery and then continues to drop after GDP growth slows down after the recovery. From the charts below, you can see that the 1948, 1954, 1958 and 1980-1982 recessions generally follow the standard business cycle:

I. RECESSIONS

1949 recession

GDP growth

Unemployment

The recovery period in the 1948 recession covered 7 quarters, GDP growth ranged from between 5.1% and 17.2% with an average of 10.5%, and the unemployment rate fell from 7.9% to 3.3% for a total drop of 4.4%

1954 recession

GDP growth

Unemployment

The recovery period in the 1954 recession covered 5 quarters, GDP growth ranged from between 4.6% and 12% with an average of 7.4%, and the unemployment rate fell from 7.5% to 4.1% for a total drop of 3.4%.

Note: For the purposes of this analysis, the recovery period starts with at least two straight quarters of GDP growth and does not count the first quarter of growth if it is less than 1% because this quarter is a mixture of both recession and recovery and its inclusion will skew the GDP growth average for the recovery period.

1958 recession

GDP growth

Unemployment

The recovery period in the 1958 recession covered 5 quarters, GDP growth ranged from between 2.5% and 10.5% with an average of 8.1%, and the unemployment rate fell from 7.5% to 5.9% for a total drop of 1.6%

1980-1982 double dip recession

GDP growth

Unemployment

The recovery period in the 1980-82 double dip recession covered 6 quarters, GDP growth ranged from between 5.1% and 9.3% with an average of 7.7%, and unemployment fell from 10.4% to 7.1% for a total drop of 3.3%

Of note, the 1980-28 recession is fundamentally different from the other recessions in that the economy suffered from exponentially higher inflation and interest rates.

2008-2009 recession

GDP growth

Unemployment

There is no recovery period following the 2008-2009 recession comparable to the previous post-WWII recessions of this severity. During the 7 quarters following the recessionary GDP drop, GDP growth ranged from between 1.6% and 5.0% with an average of 2.8%, and the unemployment rate fell from 10.1% to 9.0% for a total drop of 1.1%.

Of note, the GDP growth during the past 7 quarters is lower than the mature growth following the recoveries from the previous recessions reviewed above. The unemployment rate has only marginally dropped over his period and most if not all of this drop is because millions of discouraged unemployed are no longer looking for work and are not counted in this statistic. These facts suggest that the United States has yet to enter an economic recovery from the 2008-2009 recession and instead remain in the trough of an L shaped recession like the Great Depression.

II. STIMULUS

Some commentators have suggested that previous governments also employed government spending "stimulus" to pull out of other post-WII recessions. An examination of per capita government spending over the recessions discussed above does not support this contention.

FY1948-FY1960

This period covers the 1949, 1954 and 1958 recessions. The sudden jump in spending in 1951 was to pay for the Korean War and then for a large standing military during the Cold War. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations did not use Keynesian stimulus during the recessions. Indeed, Eisenhower reduced per capita spending during the 1954 recession to maintain a balanced budget.

FY1974-FY1986

This period covers the rapid expansion federal spending starting with the post-Watergate election of a hard left Democratic Congress through the completion of the Reagan expansion of the military in 1986. As you can see, the increase in spending is pretty even and neither Carter or Reagan employed a Keynesian stimulus during the 1980-1982 double dip recession.

FY2000-FY2011

This period covers the increase in spending during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. As you can see, both Bush and Obama dramatically increased the rate of government spending from FY2009 to FY2011. Bush increased spending to bail out the banks, but Obama expressly attempted a Keynesian stimulus.

III. SUMMARY

The data make clear that the Bush/Obama sharp increase in government borrowing and spending did not achieve the above average recovery predicted by the Obama economic team in 2009 nor did it come close to matching historic business cycle recoveries without the "stimulus" of added government spending and borrowing. Indeed, it is questionable whether the United States economy is currently in an economic recovery as that term is generally understood. Instead, the people are left with an added $4 trillion in debt and $1.5 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see.

Is it too early to declare the Bush/Obama borrowing and spending experiment an extremely expensive failure?

Credits:

The GDP and unemployment charts above are derived from TradingEconomics.com.

The government spending charts above are derived from USGovernmentSpending.com.

The unemployment rates above are derived from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Return of Stagflation?

2011-05-13T10:59:00.007-06:00

The 1970s introduced the United States to the phenomenon of stagflation - the simultaneous occurrence of high inflation and high unemployment. Stagflation is arguably the worst of all economic worlds because workers cannot find employment and inflation destroys the remaining wealth they possess.

Keynesian economics assured us that stagflation is impossible. Inflation is supposed to boost demand and lower unemployment, while a nation must suffer from high unemployment to lower inflation. One of the reasons Keynesianism fell out of favor was that 1970s stagflation inflicted both inflation and unemployment on the nation while the following period from 1983-2007 blessed it with simultaneously falling or low inflation and unemployment.

Monetarists contend that stagflation is entirely the consequence of the Federal Reserve debasing the currency by substantially increasing the money supply and thereby forcing up the price of commodities and other business costs. Such inflation is sneaky because there is a long lag between the creation of the additional currency and the appearance of the inflation. Because they are slow to raise the retail prices of their goods and services, businesses instead cut output and layoff workers to compensate for their increased costs. This reduction of GDP is compounded when the Fed raises interest rates to stem the inflation.

Assuming the monetarist theory is correct, are we seeing a return of 1970s style stagflation? Many of the same indicators are present.

In order to provide a Keynesian "stimulus" to the economy, the Federal Reserve has doubled the supply of dollars over the past two years. Because the Fed is adding dollars electronically rather than by printing actual currency, the traditional M1 and M2 measures of the money supply are missing much of the expansion. These are hyperinflationary expansions of the money supply.

As dollars flood the world economy, the currency rate of our currency is falling steadily, except for occasional pauses as capital flees the increasingly insolvent EU into the dollar. Commodity prices - including the cost of imported energy - are soaring as they did in the 1970s. Adjusted for inflation, commodity prices have returned where they were before the first stagflation recession in 1973-74.

The Fed appears to be repeating history. Instead of tightening the money supply at the first sign of commodity inflation, the Fed is waiting for the core CPI to rise before pulling back the reins. Given the lag between expanding the money supply and the arrival of CPI core inflation, the Fed will be acting far too late. Because of a similar lag in reducing the money supply and the reduction of inflation and the Fed's history of increasing interest rates until it sees a drop in inflation, the Fed will very likely raise interest rates further than necessary as it did in 1980-1983.

2011 offers good and bad variations from the 1970s model of stagflation where inflation led to a slowing of output and higher unemployment.

On the debit side of the ledger, we are starting with a severe L shaped recession with already low output and high unemployment. What happens if a new round further decreases output and raises unemployment?

On the credit side of the ledger, the current private economy maintains only a fraction of the 1970s unionized work force. In a free market, market labor compensation usually goes down as the supply of unemployed workers expands during a recession. The combination of union contracts and stagflation turned the rule of labor supply and demand on its head as union contracts mandating raises to keep up with the inflation forced businesses in turn to raise prices in what was nicknamed the "wage price spiral."

Even after subtracting unions from the equation, though, current employee compensation is still not following the rule of supply and demand. Instead of dropping as unemployment nearly doubled from 5% to 9%, employer costs for private industry employee compensation keep inexorably rising. I suspect (but do not have the data to prove) that health insurance price increases and government mandates are driving this compensation inflation. In any case, the United States does not seem to have fully escaped wage price pressures.

To sum up, the current data strongly suggests that the United States may be entering a new period of stagflation and this repeat performance may very well be worse that the last.

Having lived through the last awful stagflation, I sure hope I am wrong.

Riding Assassination To Reelection II

2011-05-11T07:30:00.003-06:00

Can our Commander in Chief get any more crass than using the SEAL killing of bin Laden as a punch line to raise campaign cash? From the LA Times:

Bin Laden’s name came up a couple of times in Obama’s address Tuesday evening at a fund-raising event in Austin, Texas.

Early in Obama's appearance, someone shouted out, “Thank you for getting Bin Laden!’’

Obama said that was a “case in point’’ – a reason for voters to let him “finish what we started.’’

Later, Obama ticked off what he described as his administration’s accomplishments: lifting the ban on gays in the military; bringing troops home from Iraq.

And then: “And because of the extraordinary bravery of the men and women who wear this nation’s uniform and the outstanding work of our intelligence agencies,’’ Obama said, “Osama bin Laden will never again threaten the United States.’’

The crowd roared.

Riding Assassination To Reelection?

2011-05-04T07:56:00.005-06:00

Progressives were literally dancing in the streets upon the news that President Barack Obama ordered a SEAL team to successfully assassinate Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Not that they particularly care about bin Laden. Progressives are instead grasping for any good news to boost the cratering reelection prospects of their President.

A cold splash of perspective is in order. Let us compare President George W. Bush's job approval bump after the Army captured Saddam Hussein with that of Obama after the SEALs killed OBL:

Both the Bush and Obama events occurred in the middle of a CNN multi-day rolling poll. Obama's job approval inched up by 1% to 52% from the day before, while Bush's job approval soared 9% to 63%.

Factoring in all polling, Obama appears to be receiving a 5% bump from offing bin Osama compared to a 15% bump for Bush from capturing Saddam.

More importantly for this discussion, the Bush bump did not get close to assuring the President a landslide or even comfortable reelection margin. The Bush bump lasted all of seven weeks. Despite enjoying a galloping economy near full employment, President Bush won reelection against a mediocre Dem candidate with only 50.7% of the vote.

This begs the question of what are Obama's reelection chances with a lesser "rally round the president" bump while the nation suffers from a seemingly never ending Great Recession with the highest long term employment since the Great Depression?

Progressives, good luck on that plan to ride assassination to reelection.

Arguing With A Progressive

2011-05-03T08:17:00.002-06:00

For conservative blogging novices who seek to "win" virtual debates with their progressive counterparts, allow me to summarize how these arguments always go down:

Progressive: 1 + 1 = 3

Conservative: How on Earth do you figure that 1 + 1 = 3?

Progressive: [Insert name of progressive expert] says 1 + 1 = 3. He/she has credentials, you do not.

Conservative: That is not evidence 1 + 1 = 3.

Progressive: Well, it's not fair if 1 + 1 = 2.

Conservative: That is still not evidence 1 + 1 = 3.

Progressive: What kind of racist, sexist homophobe are you?

Argument ends after 150 posts.

Forget about "winning" debates with ideologues who do not deal in good faith with actual facts.

The only reason to do it is for the love of the game.

Was That So Hard?

2011-04-27T07:43:00.006-06:00

Barrack Obama finally released his darn birth certificate.

The President's refusal for years to produce this simple document is one of the strangest omissions in American political history and spawned one of our great conspiracy theories.

Maybe when he writes his third autobiography as a private citizen in 2013, Obama may tell us all why he played hide and seek all these years.

On The Economy And Budgets

2011-04-26T09:11:00.004-06:00

We are in the dog days of polling between elections when the Dem media surveys heavily Dem weighted collections of non-voting adults. Only Rasmussen polls likely voters on a continuous basis. Today, the Dem firm Democracy Corps offers one of its occasional likely voter polls.

As a point of comparison, Rasmussen applies the same weighting formula at all times while DC weights based upon prior elections - in this case the 2008 presidential election. The 2008 election was an outlier with ahistorically high minority turnout and low white turnout. The 2010 election returned to more normal voting patterns, but DC is using about 12% who voted in 2008 and did not vote in 2010. The bottom line is that the DC likely voter polling is far better than the average Dem media polling, but is still predicated on a 2008 turnout model which is unlikely to repeat in 2012.

Despite some ferocious spin by the pollsters, the DC polling shows that Obama's position has not improved since the 2010 election. Voters believe we are on the wrong course by a 65% to 26% margin, disapprove of Obama's overall job performance 50% to 44% and more strongly disapprove than strongly approve by 37% to 24%.

On specific issues, DC polls asks whether the respondent thinks the Republicans or the Democrats will do a better job in each area. Voters heavily prefer the GOP to deal with the budget deficit (+19%), spending and deficits (+16%), the economy (+10%) and the economy and jobs (+8%); but are strangely tied on jobs and employment.

Voters support the Ryan Budget Plan by a 48% to 33% margin overall, with 55% of Indis and 76% of Republicans in favor.

DC then polls political spin phrases concerning the Ryan plan to see if the Dems can successfully trash the GOP plan with voters. After offering voters a long series of misrepresentations of the Ryan plan, DC does manage to convince 22% of the polled voters to switch against the plan. Anyone following the Obama campaign will recognize these misrepresentations. This polling should be a warning to the GOP to get out among their constituents and keep them informed about what is actually in the plan.

Sports Explained

2011-04-20T21:16:00.002-06:00

George Carlin on America's pastimes:

Robin Williams explains the origins of Golf:

Robin Williams on Soccer:

The Market's Verdict

2011-04-18T10:40:00.002-06:00

Less than a week after the President's latest faux budget plan, the Standard & Poors analysts provided their verdict of our nation's leadership and their insatiable borrowing:

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said today that it affirmed its ‘AAA’ long-term and ‘A-1+’ short-term sovereign credit ratings on the U.S. Standard & Poor’s also said that it revised its outlook on the long-term rating of the U.S. sovereign to negative from stable...Our negative outlook on our rating on the U.S. sovereign signals that we believe there is at least a one-in-three likelihood that we could lower our long-term rating on the U.S. within two years.

What this means in plain English is that our nation's best in the world credit rating could slip to that of Italy before President Obama's first term if we continue to borrow $1.5 trillion per year.

More than two years after the beginning of the recent crisis, U.S. policymakers have still not agreed on how to reverse recent fiscal deterioration or address longer-term fiscal pressures...In 2003-2008, the U.S.’s general (total) government deficit fluctuated between 2% and 5% of GDP. Already noticeably larger than that of most ‘AAA’ rated sovereigns, it ballooned to more than 11% in 2009 and has yet to recover.

S&P is putting the blame for the current mad rush to national insolvency squarely on the Obama Administration.

The outlook reflects our view of the increased risk that the political negotiations over when and how to address both the medium- and long-term fiscal challenges will persist until at least after national elections in 2012.

The markets do not believe President Obama is serious when he claims to support spending reductions and is looking to his replacement after 2012.

This is the most damning market indictment of an American government in my lifetime and maybe in American history.

Paul Ryan Slaps Down CBS

2011-04-18T07:47:00.003-06:00

CBS' Bob Scheiffer repeatedly misrepresented Congressman Paul Ryan's positions and tried to bait him into feuding with the President, but Ryan would have none of it.

Sarah Tells The GOP Establishment To Learn To "Fight Like A Girl"

2011-04-16T20:56:00.005-06:00

From today's Madison, Wisconsin Tea Party rally:

Sounds like someone is on the campaign trail.

EPA: What Does Killing Jobs Have To Do With The Economy?

2011-04-16T14:41:00.003-06:00

Watch as a representative from the Obama EPA furiously tap dances to avoid answering Congress' inquiry into why it does not consider whether its decrees kill jobs:

Classic.

A Nation Of Unemployed

2011-04-14T13:36:00.004-06:00

USA Today offered this depressing report today:

The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.

The falling official unemployment rate is an illusion. Millions have simply given up ever finding a job in the Obama economy and are no longer counted by the government.

We are becoming a nation where a decreasing minority of the population is expected to support the entire country.

New FDA Warning

2011-04-13T15:31:00.003-06:00

"Warning: Barack Obama speeches may cause a loss of consciousness. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery while listening to the President. If you suffer from a loss of consciousness lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical attention."

Flashback 2009: President Obama Deficit Pledge

2011-04-13T13:23:00.004-06:00

Two years and over $3 trillion in borrowing ago, our President made a now familiar pledge to the American people:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

A Singularly Unserious And Dishonest President

2011-04-13T12:28:00.011-06:00

Today, President Obama offered a fundamentally dishonest thumbnail outline of a budget plan. Here is a summary of the President's "plan" to save $4 trillion over 12 years:

1) Domestic Discretionary: Obama refuses to cut any spending for any of his own programs and instead claims that the small start budget deal of $38.5 billion in cuts this year will turn into $750 billion in cuts over 12 years.

2) Defense: Obama will convene another commission which will find $400 billion in cuts over 12 years. No specifics.

3) Medicare & Medicaid: Obama wants to strengthen the powers of his Obamacare Death Panel (Medicare Payment Advisory Commission) to lower compensation to medical providers and drug manufacturers and eliminate cost ineffective medical treatment (rationing). Obama claims that this will save $500 billion. This is probably the same $500 billion he claims will fund Obamacare.

4) "Reduce Spending in the Tax Code" (the new Obama euphemism for raising taxes): Obama wants to reinstate the 39% Clinton tax rates for and deny tax deductions to the top 2% of earners. This will allegedly raise $320 billion over 12 years.

There is no plan to reform Social Security even though it started adding to the deficit last year.

$1 trillion of the alleged $4 trillion in "savings" does not come from tax increases or spending cuts, but rather from not paying as much interest on the debt as Obama currently plans to run up. Not spending money in the future is not savings. This is a lie.

OK, so we are looking at $3 trillion in questionable and unspecified tax increases and spending reductions over 12 years or a $250 billion per year reduction in what is now a $1.6 trillion deficit - guaranteeing trillion dollar deficits are far as the eye can see or until America becomes insolvent in less than a decade.

Shame on you sir!

UPDATE: An appropriate tribute to our President's "plan:"

Gotta Stop Your Sobbing

2011-04-09T10:22:00.003-06:00

The Pretenders provide a bit of advice for Dems crying in their lattes over what must appear to them to be a non-stop series of defeats - the 2010 tsunami election, the continuation of the Bush tax rates, Wisconsin and several other states putting leashes on the unions, losing their attempt to buy a Wisconsin supreme court seat and now the first real federal spending cuts since the 1920s:

Very Nice First Step

2011-04-08T21:08:00.003-06:00

The GOP and Dems just announced a budget deal - the Dems retained a subsidy of Planned Parenthood in exchange for giving the GOP $38.5 billion in spending cuts over the next six months.

As a point of perspective, these are the first real spending cuts (as opposed to reduced increases in spending) since the 1920s.

However, this is only a small first step in reforming a government which will overspend and borrow $1.5 TRILLION this year.

It Has Come To This

2011-04-08T12:19:00.006-06:00

Dems threaten to shutdown Government to protect Planned Parenthood subsidy.

And from the category "Everything I learned about statesmanship, I learned in kindergarten:"

Priorities.

Micro Cars For Thee, But Not For Me

2011-04-07T11:34:00.004-06:00

Simple physics dictates that smaller, more fuel efficient cars provide less room to transport families and property, will provide less performance and are more dangerous during accidents. Many families know this and choose to pay for more gas in order to enjoy the safety and performance of an SUV.

Yesterday at a town hall meeting in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, President Obama ridiculed an audience member with a big family for being foolish enough to drive an SUV:

Of course. Mr. Obama's crusade to place America in poorly performing and dangerous Chevy Volt battery cars made by nationalized government companies does not apply to The One himself. The executive order mandating the government buy green cars does not apply to the President or his Administration leadership.

Some pigs are more equal than others after all.

Four More Years!

2011-04-05T12:00:00.002-06:00

The GOP ran this pretty funny parody Obama campaign ad at the same time the Obama 2012 campaign launched its slightly depressing opening offering:

Guess which ad received the more hits on Youtube?

The Voters And The Tea Party

2011-04-05T11:37:00.002-06:00

Rasmussen Reports latest polling shows that likely voters trust more and think their own views are closer to the Tea Party movement than to Congress:

48% of Likely U.S. Voters say when it comes to the major issues facing the country, their views are closer to the average Tea Party member as opposed to the average member of Congress. Just 22% say their views are closest to those of the average congressman. Even more (30%) aren’t sure....This shows little change from a survey in late March of last year.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters think the Tea Party movement is good for the country, consistent with findings since May 2010. Twenty-six percent (26%) disagree and say the grassroots, small government movement is bad for America. Sixteen percent (16%) say neither.

Forty-five percent (45%) say the average Tea Party member has a better understanding of the problems America faces today than the average member of Congress does. That figure is down seven points from a year ago. Still, today only 31% think the average member of Congress has a better understanding. Twenty-three percent (23%) are undecided.

One-third of voters continue to have ties to the Tea Party movement. That includes 22% who say they themselves are members and 12% more who say they have friends or family who belong. Those findings haven’t budged from the end of December. Fifty-two percent (52%) say they have no links to the Tea Party, but 14% are not sure.

Note to Dems: Please keep arguing that the GOP is a hostage to the Tea Party.

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Two Years Ago?

2011-04-05T11:27:00.001-06:00

If the Dems shut down their government on Friday, would that be such a bad thing?

What Actual Reform Looks Like

2011-04-05T09:16:00.007-06:00

Over the past decade, both political parties have been treating the taxpayers the way partying teenagers treat their parent's credit cards. This morning, GOP Congressman Paul Ryan proposed to end the party and cut up the credit cards by offering a real 10 year budget proposing to cut over $6 trillion (yes trillion with a "T") off President Obama's spending increase plans and offers $4.2 trillion in actual spending cuts.

Ryan accomplishes this primarily by abolishing Obamacare and transforming Medicare and Medicaid from government entitlements bankrupting the state and federal governments to checks you use to purchase your own insurance in a competitive market. Folks already on Medicare remain on Medicare. Those of use who are 55 and below and not yet on Medicare will see the new changes.

Just as importantly, Ryan proposes eliminating loopholes and lowering tax rates for individuals and businesses across the board to increase economic growth and tax revenues. According to CBO, the United States will return to full employment by 2015 under this plan.

Ryan just finished a press conference with the House and Senate Budget leadership backing his plan. Ryan must have extraordinary leadership skills to convince the GOP establishment to sign off on the most fundamental restructuring of the federal government since the New Deal.

Bravo sir!

Please announce your candidacy for President ASAP because America needs you.

Meanwhile... PLEASE CALL YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE AND DEMAND HE OR SHE SUPPORT THE RYAN PLAN.

If the establishment destroys Ryan and his plan, we will not see another real proposal for reform for another decade when the country faces insolvency. Make yourselves heard!

Like Night And Day

2011-04-04T08:00:00.003-06:00

Today, President Obama launched his reelection campaign with this inspirational ad:

Can't you feel the optimism and enthusiasm for another four years of change?

In contrast, can you remember back when when it was Morning in America?

Revealing The Assumptions Behind The Global Warming Curtain

2011-04-02T11:04:00.003-06:00

Australia is in the throes of a debate over whether the government should impose a carbon tax to address the "problem" of manmade global warming. In an address to over 100,000 Aussies at the March 23, 2011 rally against the proposed carbon tax, climate modeler Dr David Evans discusses the largely unknown flaw in the manmade global warming theory:

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: for each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three – so two thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors), only one third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Hardly anyone in the public does, but it’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements, lies, and misunderstanding spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism. Which is why the alarmists keep so quiet about it and you’ve never heard of it before. And it tells you what a poor job the media have done in covering this issue.

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot-spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10km up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, 80s, and 90s, the weather balloons found no hot-spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid 1990s.

At this point official “climate science” stopped being a science. You see, in science empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance, otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.

But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. Surprise surprise, their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the US Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.

They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade – yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected”. These people are not scientists. They over-estimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they cheat and lie to conceal the truth.

Australia's Jo Nova provides the full transcript. Read it all at her website here.

The Obama Doctrine Explained

2011-03-30T11:40:00.001-06:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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America at Not-War - Obama Defends Military Action in Libya

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President Flip Meets President Flop

2011-03-23T07:50:00.005-06:00

When in Chile, President Obama demanded that Libyan dictator Gadaffi step down and make way for democracy. The very next day in El Salvador, our President suggested that the dictator can stay if he cleans up his act. A different spring break city, a different war policy.

One can sympathize with Mr. Obama. His heart really isn't into this war thing. Maureen Dowd reported today that the women in his administration had to henpeck him into providing military assistance to the Libyan democracy movement.

A fiction author could not invent this stuff.

UPDATE ONE: Absent American leadership, the "coalition of the unwilling" enforcing the UN "no fly zone" is collapsing into confusion and backbiting.

Expect to see Jimmy Carter start to justifiably complain when people compare Barack Obama to him.