Sep 18 2009
Fly By 09/18/09
Some interesting articles I thought my be of interest.
- I thought Time Magazine has put out a pretty well balanced review of the current polarizing political environment being driven by the left and right purity wars:
Trust is a toxic asset, sitting valueless on the national books. Good faith is trading at pennies on the dollar. The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style” — the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country — is aflame again, fanned from both right and left. Between the liberal fantasies about Brownshirts at town halls and the conservative concoctions of brainwashed children goose-stepping to school, you’d think the Palm in Washington had been replaced with a Munich beer hall.
- Everyone should find it sadly ironic that the stimulus bill jobs at DHS are now going to be delayed because of unfair selection of companies and incoherent, wasteful spending.
The criticism peaked Wednesday when a senior Senate Democrat, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, said that, despite Napolitano’s assurances, he felt Homeland Security was treating the economic stimulus plan like a “bottomless pit” of taxpayer money. It was unusually pointed criticism from a member of the president’s own party about how the administration is handling economic recovery spending.
“There’s no common sense at all to a requirement that says you’ve got to put up a $15 million facility for a small port of entry that’s host to about five vehicles an hour,” Dorgan, whose state stood to receive $128 million for checkpoint improvements, said in a telephone interview.
Within hours, Napolitano promised not to begin any new border construction projects and set up a 30-day review of how the projects were selected.
- To understand how bad it is for President Obama, here is an article from the extreme left predicting Obama’s failure as a President:
A president has only so much capital to expend, both in tax dollars and public tolerance, and Barack Obama is dangerously overdrawn. He has tried to have it all on three fronts, and his administration is in serious danger of going bankrupt. He has blundered into a deepening quagmire in Afghanistan, has continued the Bush policy of buying off Wall Street hustlers instead of confronting them and is now on the cusp of bargaining away the so-called public option, the reform component of his health care program.
Those are not happy sentences to write for one who is still on the e-mail list of campaign supporters urged to back the president in the face of attacks that are stupidly small-minded. But to remain silent about his errors, just because most of his critics are so vile, is hardly an example of constructive concern for him or the country.
- Finally, we have the real bad news for the DC liberals – a Gallup compendium poll on the major issues. Gallup also tips their bias towards the left here by sorting and spinning the data in a manner that attempts to blunt the news. Obama’s best issues are on top. But those issues most important to the nation show up near the bottom. On the economy Obama is in the hole with the American people -5% [46-51%]. On health care it is even worse at -9% [43-52%]. Over half of the nation disapproves of his handling of this key issue. Most people have insurance, are happy with it, and will eject any fool in Washington DC who messes with it.
I LOVED THIS FROM AMERICAN THINKER. A good read!
Sorry honey, but truth trumps the race card
Kyle-Anne Shiver
President Obama has the rightful honor of being just as publicly scorned, ridiculed, disliked and embattled as every single white-male president who has preceded him
It’s the Economy, Stupid!
http://www.tnr.com/blogs/william-galston
william galston
Tuesday September 15, 2009
Unemployment Numbers May Put Democrats out of Work
Indeed, the most recent OMB projections show <b?unemployment remaining above 7 percent until 2012, and above 5 percent through at least 2019.
and
The number of people who want full-time jobs but have been forced to settle for part-time work has risen from 5.9 million a year ago to 9.1 million today. The number of discouraged workers—people who would like to work but aren’t looking because they believe that no jobs are available—has nearly doubled.
and
In times of high unemployment and weak job generation, a slowdown in those leaving their jobs at the end of their careers is bound to have ripple effects throughout the rest of the system.
If OMB’s projections are correct, unemployment will average 9.8 percent during 2010 and will likely stand above 9 percent on the day of the mid-term election.
Trent:
The real numbers to watch are the underemployment and adult participation. The unemployment may go down to 9% by nov 2010, however, the underemployment number could very well reach 20% by nov 2010. Discouraged workers are not counted in the unemployment rate but are counted in the underemployment rate. The adult participation number may well dip to close to 55% by nov 2010.
What that means is there are more involuntary one income households than voluntary. And the involuntary households will not vote democratic. Plus a double dip in the 1st half of 2010 would be a political disaster for the democrats.
The crucial numbers in 2010 will be polling results for the over-55 age cohort.
Older people are so disproportionately likely to vote relative to younger age cohorts that overall poll results mean nothing.
There is clear evidence that over-55’s are particularly energized by and in particular SURVIVAL ISSUE LEVEL AGAINST Democratic Public Option health care.
So the vulnerability of incumbents in 2010 must be looked at in terms of likely voters, AKA knowing the opinions of the over-55 group.
Trent, I think another factor will be in play in 2010 as well. The left hasn’t had any time to react to the Acorn debacle (other than to scream RACIST! at everyone) since this has all blown up so quickly – quicker than anyone could possibly have imagined! But as this goes on, the shock of loss is going to turn to anger, and if Obama just sits on the sidelines and votes “present” while a group that represents his most loyal footsoldiers is defenestrated that anger is going to be directed at *him*.
It was obvious in 2008 that the enthusiasm was much higher on the Democrats side, and that turnout among groups such as minority voters was the highest ever seen. That dynamic looks to be completely reversed in 2010, with all of the energy on the right and none of it on the left.
This is one of the reasons I believe that this Acorn scandal is going to end up being the biggest story of the year – if Obama does nothing to support them and lets them get crushed (as I am betting he will have to do) then he will have cut the heart out of the activist base of the Democrat party.
And just wait until the Health Care bill fails, as now I think it has to. Look at the response to Baucus’ proposal to see why.
Trent:
We will know more when the poll results from NJ and VA this November. It will be interesting to see how that demographic votes compared with 2005. I would like to see the over-55 numbers in a couple of months.
Funny that the ACORN story has revealed how much the state controlled media is controlled by the WH. The reason they missed the story was because they were running with the racism story this week by order of the WH. Everyone who is against Obama is a racist. They are still running with that meme even after the ACORN debacle. That is how controlled they are.
It is almost providential that the ACORN story broke this week. It is the perfect antidote to racism charge. Even the ACORN CEO is crying racism. That is making the WH mad, because it is ruining the anti ObamaCare is racism push. And that push had a very good chance of working, until the ACORN videos broke. Now, the right is not buying the ACORN videos are racist argument and by sheer luck are gaining courage to push back against the anti-ObamaCare is racist charge.
Sunday and next week will be interesting. Does the WH do a reset and keep the racism line going until it works? Are there more ACORN videos to be released?
Mark N, WWS,
The interesting thing with the Breitbart ACORN videos for me, given my Federal criminal fraud detection training, was that all the people shown were neither the “brightest” nor the “sharpest” people from the utensil drawer.
Yet, all of them followed the same script of issuing tax form 7b in the “No underage illegal alien prostitute brothel left behind act” play book.
That screams to me of very heavy rote memorization coaching, which makes those actions official ACORN policy and makes ACORN a criminally corrupt organization.
This has huge implications.
IMO the Democratic National Committee could be subjected to a RICO civil receivership by the Justice Department, the way the Teamster Union was, given that both were and are so intertwined in a relationship with racketeering enterprises.
This won’t happen for political reasons even in a Sarah Palin administration with 2/3 GOP majorities in both houses of Congress — any more than Gingrich’s Republican House was willing to impeach Clinton over his campaign finance ties to the Chinese given what Hailey Barbour (sp?) did as RNC chairmen — but the Democratic Party nationally, and in many states, really is in an overt on-going alliance with organized crime.
The problem for the Democratic Party is that ACORN is in the hands of hard core Lefties who will sue Breitbart & Fox News to maintain internal control. It will be very interesting because when ACORN management start dying, the civil discovery process will gut the Democratic party.
Too many of the Democrats senior elective and appointive office-holders with real power have non-trivial criminal exposure risks due to being co-conspirators with ACORN in a long-standing racketeering enterprise with the object of defrauding the government.
ACORN has defrauded the federal plus state and local governments for many years with the protection of Democratic office-holders, with whom it has shared its criminal proceeds.
Res Ipsa Loquitor
See:
http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2009/06/inside-story-of-acorn-8.html
The story is very simple. The CEO’s brother embezzled a million dollars from the organization. The CEO covered it up. Marcel Reid and Karen Inman were elected to investigate the matter and everything related to it. That’s what they did. That was their fiduciary duty. That was their job. There’s nothing heroic about doing your job. They did their job. In fact, they did it too well. As such, ACORN removed them from their board positions. You can draw your own conclusions but as my favorite Latin phrase goes, Res Ipsa Loquitor (the facts speak for themselves)