I will provide an update later today after my day job waves stop overwhelming me.

Sort of like those global warmists, who fail to recognize there has been no significant warming over the last 2-3 decades. Their statistically manipulated, cherry-picked and ‘hidden’ data claims all the diversity of weather we see around us is due to warming they only see in their unmaintained computer models. Yet a review of raw measurements shows nothing of the kind. Fantasy over fact.

When the liberal news media hailed the December unemployment rate of 8.5%, like good little journalist majors (who are mathematically stunted to middle school level math) they missed the critical details behind the number. They once again fell down on the job. But this kind of analysis is not taught in schools anymore. To think is a lost art. Today we regurgitate information.

I have been doing this analysis for months now, showing how the work force size used to compute unemployment is the real number shrinking. Not the number of people out of work or not working in their career field (i.e., working part time or lower wage jobs to get by). We may be adding jobs, but we are losing people in the work force. Fewer workers means slower growth, less consumer demand, less revenues. It is a vicious downward spiral. Ignoring it will be catastrophic. Coming back out of it will take years.

Since 2000 we have the numbers for the labor force, and unlike the general population which has been growing over the last decade, the number of people “COUNTED” as the workforce has leveled off. See the blue area in the chart below (click to enlarge):

The only reason the labor force took a dive in 2008 (not surprisingly, the year the Democrats took over in DC) was due to the Great Recession caused by the housing market debacle (in turn caused by liberal shenanigans with respect to lending rules). Our population has not declined, just those the government decides to count as the pool of workers. This is where the fiction begins.

If the historic trend of workforce size to population size had remained in place (the red line), we would see almost 18,000,000 more people employed. A far cry from the supposed 200,000 added to the employment roles in December.

Worse yet, there was no typical increase in the seasonal job numbers as one would expect. From October to November the workforce SHRUNK by 315,000 workers! From November to December the workforce added back a paltry 4,000. The January numbers are going to look brutal when the seasonal jobs are lost.

So why would the government compute unemployment rates without taking into account the normal workforce size as a percentage of the population (a number that is very stable during periods of low unemployment – and therefore well known for our economy)?

As Obama and the Dems learned, the government bureaucracy is lethargic and pathetically slow to act. If you think ‘shovel ready jobs’ are a myth, wait until you try to change a buggered statistic in the government. Even though it is horribly inaccurate, it can take decades to fix!

Which is why strong economies are based on the free-wheeling, innovative and nimble free economy – not large and ponderous bureaucracies. Even this simple fix would be made at lightening speed outside government.

If we wanted to measure reality – the reality being felt on the streets of Middle America – we would adjust the workforce to reflect where really is. The number of people available to work is 158,5 million, not the 141 million the Department of Labor is using. When we compute the fraction of people on the unemployment roles out of this larger, more accurate pool, the actual unemployment rate is 11.2%.

So, do the people in DC and in front of the TV cameras (completely insulated from the economic downturn) think this fig leaf is going to make everyone love this administration and ignore the damage done by its incompetence and liberal policies? I don’t think so. These are the same people who missed the 2010 backlash election wave coming.

Denial is not something that is contagious folks. Outside those pretending reality does not exist, is a the 99% of us living the reality. And who will be voting the reality come November.

In the week ending December 24, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 381,000, an increase of 15,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 366,000.

The four week average looks flat for now. But this is only going to get worse as the post Christmas data starts pouring in.  I would be surprised if December does not look pretty good tomorrow, but then when January’s numbers hit in early February we will still be in the Obama-Reid-Pelosi economic doldrums.

What you want to do is read past the first paragraph (something the news media is too intellectually lazy to do):

WEEK ENDING

Dec. 10

Dec. 3

Change

Prior Year1

TOTAL

7,231,514

7,152,129

+79,385

8,846,629

80,000 additional people on unemployment in one week (and this is 12/10/11, not 12/24/11). Think this will rival the entire months jobs gains? Keep an eye on the details folks, the news media just spoon feeds the spinnable numbers.

Finally, what does his Obamaness think will happen if he puts tens of thousands of ground troops out of work??? Does he have any clue about what he is doing or is this all classic liberal-panic flailing?

But today, the most important sentence isn’t a report on something that just happened, but a fresh look at something that’s been happening for the last three years. In particular, it’s this sentence by the Financial Times’ Ed Luce, who writes, “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”

Welcome to the real world Ezra. For your information this has been reported ad naseum on my blog and others FOR MONTHS!:

From December 2011 on November Unemployment:

When you recompute the unemployment rate using the number of employed (140,580,000) out of  the real workforce of 158,500,000, you get a more accurate reflection of the job situation in America.

That actual unemployment rate is 11.3%

From September 2011 on the August unemployment:

The adjusted U3 unemployment for July, based on a nominal workforce size (the red line) was 10.7% – and rising.

From July 2011 on June unemployment:

That red line shows 2.5 million fewer workers in the work force. It also shows that if the work force was at its normal level, we would be at 10.7% unemployment in June – not 9.1%.

From June on July unemployment:

When you recompute the unemployment number (which is those working minus the total workforce pool) the actual, on the ground unemployment is at 10.5%.

From April on March unemployment:

If we recalculate the real unemployment against the nominal labor force (155.9 million verses the current 139.8 million) the real unemployment rate is a staggering 10.3%.

I mean … really? People are just now cluing in inside DC on this???

One thing this recession has taught a lot of us is the fact that some federal statistics simply suck. Take the unemployment rate. People honestly think this is the number of people who want a job and don’t have one. But it is not.

The unemployment rate is computed from the “civilian workforce”  – which is not the total available workforce. I used to think it was until I started plotting where the work force should be given a steady rate of population growth.  Since our population has been on a very stable trend for decades, it is obvious that the total available workforce remains a study fraction of the overall population (subtracting out kids,, retired folks, criminals in jail and those with disabilities that preclude being able to hold a job).

Realizing population trends don’t shift very much over such short periods as a decade, I gathered and plotted the civilian workforce numbers for each month of the year and something startling showed up [click to enlarge]:

The blue area is the size of the civilian workforce for the month of November running from November 2000 to November 2011. Note how this workforce grew in size with the population for most of the last decade. In fact, the ‘labor force participation rate’ fluctuated between 66-67% all the way through until the Great Recession hit in 2008. Since then it has dropped (thanks to impotent liberal stimulus policies) to 64% and has never rebounded.

The problem with the unemployment rate touted in the news is it is based on the current workforce size – not what that size should be under normal economic times given our population size.

The red line I added to the chart above shows where we as a nation would have been in terms of ‘civilian workforce’ numbers if we had not hit the 2008 economic down turn.  Instead of  the current work force in November 2011 of 153,883,000 we should have a workforce of 158,500,000. That is 461,700 viable workers not counted in the November unemployment rate. These people are out there in the population – since our population has not shrunk at all in the last 3 years.

When you recompute the unemployment rate using the number of employed (140,580,000) out of  the real workforce of 158,500,000, you get a more accurate reflection of the job situation in America.

That actual unemployment rate is 11.3%

A couple of points on why this is valid and more accurate than the federal computation.

• The available/interested workforce out of any population is pretty stable. Under low unemployment and rising incomes there is a demand for workers that is not met by the workforce. This is why wages rise, etc – supply and demand. When demand outstrips supply there is competition, and therefore the workforce is at its peak capacity. Therefore, the low unemployment period at the beginning of this century reflects the peak participation rate for our society right now – 66-67%
• The unemployment numbers from the government are from surveys. They have limited accuracy (like any poll does). It is highly doubtful they are good to within 100,000 people, so these kinds of estimates are well within the bounds of the government produced numbers. Whether it is 10.9% or 11.5% does not matter, because it definitely is NOT 8.6%!
• This shrinking of the workforce size is seen in all the months of the year to some degree or other, so it is a well documented and real phenomena.

This is why the rosy numbers mean nothing in the real world. The inability to find a good job, build a career, be upwardly mobile is not there. As long as people are not counted in the workforce size, the government’s unemployment numbers will be drastically underestimating the economic suffering in the nation.

There is a theory about how a level of tolerance can creep into a neighborhood (or even a society) because people turn their backs on their little slice of paradise in America and then create a crime ridden, economically bankrupt mess. It is call The Broken Windows Theory:

The theory states that monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a well-ordered condition may stop further vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crime.

It’s not rocket science. If you maintain your neighborhood (or society) crime will be less and value will go up. If you look the other way, crime will become the norm, people will give up on order and embrace chaos, and value goes down.

While we have all cringed in horror over the Penn State-Sandusky nightmare, one reaction has been consistent – why wasn’t this stopped when uncovered?

Simply because people looked the other way. It is simply another example of The Broken Window Theory. Instead of cleaning up their organization, Penn State let an animal run lose and terrorize little boys. They looked the other way. Now look at their little slice of paradise – it’s destroyed.

So, as a society, what are we doing about our Broken Windows? Let’s see:

In 2010, BrightSource was in deep trouble. It was $1.8 billion in debt and was losing money hand over fist–a $71.6 million loss on a mere $13.5 million in revenue. A company destined to go down the drain, one would think. But no! The Obama administration bailed out BrightSource to the tune of a cool $1.4 billion in loan guarantees.

How could that possibly have happened? Well, start with the fact that the principal investor in BrightSource is VantagePoint Partners. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a Venture Partner in VantagePoint. But BrightSource had an even more valuable contact than that:

Sanjay Wagle…was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. When Obama won the White House, Wagle was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.

So Obama appointed a fundraiser with interests in BrightSource to oversee a $1.4 billion dollar loan guarantee to his investment group – dwarfing the Solyndra mess which has the same illegal and unethical stench to it. Note how the loan is much larger than the losses to date, meaning they will lose 100′s of millions more before this disaster finally crashes down.

This is how the company describes itself as an investment risk (H/T Powerline):

We expect that our net losses and our negative operating cash flows will continue for the foreseeable future, as we increase our development activities and construct solar thermal energy projects. …

Our proprietary technology has a limited history and may perform below expectations when implemented on utility-scale projects.

We use proprietary technology that has not been previously implemented on utility-scale projects of the size and complexity of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, or Ivanpah, and Ivanpah may experience technological problems that neither we nor any of the third-party independent engineers that have reviewed our projects are able to foresee.

In other words, don’t waste a dime on these folks. They have no idea if their ideas will work and so far they have only succeeded in (a) losing 100′s of millions of dollars and (b) robbing the US treasury for capitol.

This is a seriously broken window. It is the political elite raiding the taxes of hard working middle America to line their pockets, jet around the world, buy expensive toys and be completely irresponsible for their results. It is sick.

Average people in this country are struggling to pay for school, healthcare, repairs to the car, a cheap vacation, etc. And these white collar thieves are appointed by the community organizer/head thief to waste the money taxpayers earned but were not allowed to use for themselves. It is pathetic.

If there is no outrage, if we do not fix these broken windows, this generation will be known as the ones who destroyed a great nation with their greed and laziness. It is time to clean out the cesspool in DC. It is time to fix the windows, put the abusers behind bars (so they know there is a severe price to pay for this criminal behavior) and shrink government back down to its bare minimum.

I would rather see a family spend their money on a few expensive and unneeded items than see the corrupt scion of a once great American family waste that same money on dodgy green snake oil. This is what the 2012 election should be about. Dismantling Dept of Energy, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Obamacare and all these other lame ideas that throw away hard earned money that they did not earn. All the stupid ideas proposed by big-government poseurs -who really just want to raid taxpayers because their too lazy or incompetent to create a real solution, a real business, a real service – need to be shut down.

We need bold change in DC, not tinkering on the margins, or the opposing power’s people grabbing at the same treasury for their purposes. We need change.

Harry Reid’s DC arrogance has now morphed into DC moronic:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday said Congress needs to worry about government jobs more than private-sector jobs, and that this is why Senate Democrats are pushing a bill aimed at shoring up teachers and first-responders.

Not sure where he gets his Kool-Aid, but it looks to be strong stuff. The unemployment rate is around 10.5% nationally (once you adjust the workforce numbers to address the population increases since 2000 and bring back into the equation unemployed workers the government stopped counting).  I can tell you most of those unemployed are citizens, not government workers.

So now we have the real ‘us vs them’ battle defined. It’s not 1% vs 99%, nor 53% vs 47%, etc. It’s 16% (government workers) verses 84% (average citizens). We all get to go further into debt with liberal spending madness, and government workers get to keep screwing up and wasting our money.

Gee, why didn’t I think of that! Pay off the government union workers who have oh, so hard!

Reid just tossed the 2012 election to the GOP. You never tell 84% of the electorate its ‘us’ or ‘you’ and expect anything but a clear ‘then you’ response back at the ballot box.

Like I said – moronic.

Update: Timing is everything!

Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.

The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity

So while the average American struggles on $50k a year, the average DC bureaucrat not only grabs almost 30% of their income in payroll and income taxes (see here), that bureaucrat rakes in 2 and half times their salary.

Seems we have a disparity here, a new kind of class warfare.

It looks like not only is the GOP field of Presidential contenders settled, so too is the likely GOP nominee and next POTUS. Herman Cain continues to grow in strength because of what he is not – a cautious career politician. Last night I saw both the liberal media establishment AND the GOP political establishment try and prop up Romney. It will not work.

This cycle it is anyone but Robamaney.

Herman Cain is really turning into a political force. As Rush Limbuagh noted, he is the anti-DC candidate:

Herman Cain doesn’t have a whole lot of baggage. Romney has Romneycare. Rick Perry has immigration as a problem. Herman Cain’s problem is, he’s not a politician. He’s not an establishment Republican.

Perry has flamed out. Romney is too similar to Obama. Gingrich, Bachman, Paul and Santorum are DC pols and Huntsman … He’s just weird.

Cain is the real deal. His 9-9-9 plan has a lot of draw. It does make everyone pay their fair share (a current Obama mantra). It removes all the special interest tax loop holes that irritate the middle class because you have to be filthy rich to exploit them.. It requires everyone to have skin in the game – a fair complaint from the right. It reduces the cost of compliance in terms of taxes (which means a lot of tax professionals will be looking for work – there is always a down side). I would trade all my deductions for a flat rate. The kicker is, the ENTIRE existing tax code has to go.

But more than that – Cain is not cautious and worried about what will pass a fickled Congress. And I predict his election will be so one sided he won’t have to worry about that.

The Democrats are facing their worst nightmare. First and most obvious (and most irrelevant) is there is no race card to play. But that is just part of it. The Democrats have survived on owning most of the African American vote. GOP winners usually only garner at most 12%. Cain could split the African American community right down the middle, finally breaking the strange hold of Democrat preferred victim-hood. Cain represent African American success – being an equal and being a winner too.

If the Democrats lose their hold on that voting block, elections will never be the same. They cannot survive without owning the African American vote.

So in Cain we have another cathartic candidate in terms of race relations, one who is also a successful business man at a time when creating jobs and growing the economy is priority number 1 (which means he knows a helluva lot more about this than the Community Organizers does), and a man with a simple populist plan that would actually work (unlike Obamacare). The best part he is also DC outsider. Where’s the negative?

Note to Cain: You will need a lot of insider help to slay the Bureaucracy (hint, hint) and you need to find folks willing to do that instead of save it. You need people who know how to get pass the spin, waffling, excuse making and use the rules to force a cultural change. It can be done. Some of us do it for a living.

I woke up today realizing voters don’t have to settle for something less than they want (like Romney, Christie or Perry). We have a good option in Cain. So my feeling is, its Herman Time! in 2012.

Update: As if we need anymore evidence, it seems Herman Cain now has a huge lead in Iowa:

Herman Cain has become the first choice of Republican voters in Iowa: he now leads the pack there with 30% to 22% for Mitt Romney, 10% for Ron Paul, 9% for Rick Perry, 8% each for Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, 5% for Rick Santorum, and 1% each for Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson.

Update: Listening to Romney-ite Laura Ingraham this morning I realized how well Cain did. She spent over an hour trying to convince herself (1) she was not behind a single candidate and (b) Cain eclipsed Romney who is now in deep trouble. Ingraham’s struggle to not tip her hand and try to remain unbiased was humorous – and a complete failure. Her listeners seem to be more like me, thankful someone has finally arrived to push Robamaney out of the lead spot and remind the GOP establishment the Libertarian wave from 2010 is still out there and just as strong.

From Rasmussen, we get the ‘anyone but Obama” result which is a death knell:

Election 2012: Generic Republican 47%, Obama 41%

There are few poll indicators that spell doom. This is one of them, where the incumbent is polling below 45%. That is almost guaranteed to result in a big loss at the election booth.

Even worse, when there is clear and firm resistance to a candidate above the 40% mark:

The “anyone but Obama” crowd is getting larger and more strident in its opinions, while the president’s base is growing less and less strongly supportive of how he is doing his job.

…

Forty-three percent of independents — a group the president spent the better part of the last year courting — strongly disapprove of the job he is doing.

…

To that point: 43 percent of self-identified Democrats said they “strongly” approve of the job Obama is doing, while 74 percent of Republicans strongly disapprove.

“Strongly Disapprove” means lost, not coming back. Gallup has had Obama under water with ‘adults’ for weeks now, many times peaking over 50%. When that transitions to ‘likely voters’ it will be clear President Obama’s days are numbered now.

No wonder. Big Government liberalism has failed. Miserably. The Democrats represent that failure. And Obama is the leader of that failure.

I just keep marveling at how much deeper the Democrats and Liberal Left keep digging their hole with the American voters.

First they screw up the mortgage market by lowering standards for loans, that in turn led to mountains of useless loan paper, which then collapsed the financial markets. This caused home values to tank, wiping out the life savings of tens of millions of Americans. A master stroke of incompetence.

Then the Democrats in 2009-2011 (the budget years they controlled) squandered over $5 trillion in NEW debt with their impotent Keynesian economic fantasy about government trickle down stimulus. A massive debt now owed by those same families who have lost all their life savings, many of which who also lost their jobs as the ripples from the massive liberal social-engineering SNAFU that was the mortgage debacle spread out to the rest of the economy.

The end result is seniors having to go back to work, and taking jobs from the young workers entering the work force. Now we have a new generation in crisis as their careers are put on hold by another master stroke of liberal incompetence. When Obamacare finishes destroying our health care system, we will have three master strokes, and the Dems should be out of office.

But wait, there’s more. Not only did the left fail to create or save jobs, they actually have destroyed many. Obama canceled one of America’s most productive innovation engines out there. In fact, the exploration of space has been one of humankind’s most productive engines of innovation and modern comforts. From computers to modern weather warnings to medicine to uncounted other modern marvels, NASA has made our collective lives immensely better since its inception in the 1960′s. I dare the Departments of Energy and Education to even compare.

But now it is gone:

“We will have no American access to, and return from, low Earth orbit and the International Space Station for an unpredictable length of time in the future,” Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, warned lawmakers at a recent hearing.

The end of the space shuttle era has left America’s human spaceflight program in an “embarrassing” state, Armstrong said, arguing that NASA needs a stronger vision for the future and should focus on returning humans to the Moon and to the International Space Station.

With the US space shuttle program now mothballed after its last flight in July, the United States is forced to depend on Russia’s Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts to the orbiting research laboratory until at least 2015.

Obama canceled the Constellation program that aimed to return humans to the Moon by 2020 and called on NASA to instead focus on new, deep-space capabilities to carry people to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars by 2030.

Let’s be clear here. What Obama did was cancel tens of thousands of existing, world premiere engineering jobs  and replace them with paper studies that can be performed by about 20-40 people sitting around day dreaming, since nothing has to be done for  decade or more.

Neil Armstrong is a true American Hero, braving a completely hostile and unknown environment in a time when we our computers had a fraction of the brain power of a dumb cell phone. He is not a President Zero (as in zero jobs created). More lives hurt. And this has been repeated all through government as naive zealots where given a chance to sandbox.

The irony here is incredible. Just look at the left-wing nut jobs protesting (by the dozens) the fact some people succeed (those who work hard and don’t rely on others for handouts). Now the left has become the party of the petulant loser, it is going to fall like  rock in terms of respect and credibility with all those dedicated, hard working and self sufficient Americans. You know – 70% of the population.

Juxtapose left-wing anarchists calling for the FURTHER demise of the American dream and vision with Harry Reid’s insane priorities in the US Senate. Is it all about jobs, like the left-wing protestors try to claim while they march on Wall Street?

Of course not, it’s about using government to confiscate wealth from successful people:

Senate Republicans tried to make Democrats hold a quick vote on President Obama’s jobs-stimulus bill Tuesday, but were blocked by Senate Majority Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is sponsoring Mr. Obama’s bill but who said other matters take priority.

Yeah. lining your cronies pockets with loans the tax payer has to repay when you screw up (in other words, free money) like we see with Solyndra is always going to come before silly ‘ol jobs.

The left is completely coming apart. They are incoherent and a vicious (when you call for anyone holding more than a certain amount of money to be beheaded, you need to seek therapy). And they keep digging in deeper with Main Street America, who are the ones who always foot the bill for crooked and incompetent politicians in DC.

This is not lost on anyone outside the echo chamber of DC.

The concept of being competent (versus incompetent) has been lost on career politicians and bureaucrats. To them competence is optional (or maybe even coincidental). All that matters is power – i.e., how many people do your bidding, how much money are you controlling (note I did not say managing well). In the bloated federal bureaucracy power is all consuming, results mean nothing. Therefore a measure of a person is not their competence (as seen in the quality of their results and measure of success). It is simply how much power they get to mess around with.

Just look at the man-made Global Warming nonsense, for example:

He [Lord Turner] was quite good on the uncertainties in the science, going through the a series of scientific steps emphasising that we knew little about this one, this one was very unclear, there were huge uncertainties in this area and so on. He went on to describe how, based on this uncertain science, he and his colleagues had formulated a global plan for reducing greenhouse gases. This struck me as a little foolish, not to say rather hubristic.

And this is from a warming alarmist! It does not matter how shaky or uncertain the actual data is – all that counts is somehow green messiahs get their hands on as much power as possible.

However, while the concept of competence is all but forgotten in DC, the federal bureaucracy, the UN and all other halls of governing gone mad – it is still the standard measuring stick everywhere else. If you take your car to the shop for repairs, and the repairs fail, you don’t go back for more poor service. If you go to a doctor to get healed and instead become sicker, you don’t continue to go back for more poor treatments. If you buy food and it is rotten and foul, you don’t keep shopping at the rot shop.

No, once a product or service is deemed defective all trust is gone and people no longer look to that brand for anything else. Nothing.

And so, after the liberals in DC failed to fix the economy with their stimulus bill, while Obamacare raises the price of health care many times above wage increases, while government programs continue to fail at all levels, America has decided the government is no longer competent.

Proof 1:

Seventy-seven percent [77%] of people questioned say they trust the federal government only some of the time, and an additional eight percent [8%] volunteer that they never trust the government to do what’s right. [Total 85%]

Proof 2:

President Obama faces head winds from independents, an important voting bloc for re-election in 2012. Many of them think well of him personally [74%], but they are disenchanted. They don’t like his policies [64%], and they see him as inexperienced.

Proof 3:

A majority (57%) of Americans believe the federal government today has too much power.

Half of Americans say there is too much government regulation of business and industry, by one percentage point the highest in Gallup’s history of asking this question, dating to 1993.

There is a sea change in politics crystallizing in the electorate. One in opposition to big-government and government based solutions. It is no wonder that Democrats are now playing with the idea of suspending democracy, because they cannot face the fact their approach to society is being rejected by the masses in ever growing numbers. But that is the way of all failures – they are never intentional, and there are always die hard types who slip into deep denial and never accept their failure.

The party of big government is seriously on the wrong side of history, primarily because they failed miserably on so many fronts I cannot think of a single real, measurable success the left has had in over  decade. The numbers of poor have not been lowered, the number on food stamps has increased, the number unemployed has increased, the number of foreclosures and shuttered business is still rising.

They have increased their fundraising levels, and in 2008 held the most seats of power. But that did nothing for America, and Americans know it.

A ray of hope burst out from DC’s dark echo chamber yesterday as the House GOP put an end to the deficit/debt fiasco by opposing GOP House Leadership on a stop gap spending bill for GFY 2012:

The House stunned Republican leaders Wednesday by rejecting a temporary spending bill that would have funded the government through Nov. 18.

The vote failed, 195-230, after Democrats pulled their support [1] for the bill and Republican leaders were forced to scramble for enough votes entirely within their own ranks. Four dozen conservatives voted against the bill because it left spending levels for 2012 higher than the cap set in the House GOP budget [2].

Emphasis mine.The news media is desperately trying to spin this to be about disaster relief funding – which it has nothing to do with. Right on cue, the media comes out clueless and off point.

That is because this story is peppered with Democrat talking points – as shown by the lead sentence. The Democrats pulled their support – which meant this Continuing Resolution for Continuing Fiscal Madness was being passed by the inept old pols in the House around the freshman class. With the current Congress, consensus means over ruling the Tea Party desires.

Democrats decided to play ‘shutdown chicken‘ [1] over the plan to actually pay for disaster relief by cutting \ someplace else. The Dems want to keep on spending our money without responsibility or limits.

The whole thing backfired as the freshman kept to their promises from the 2010 election and demanded fiscal sanity. Note why the GOP failed to support the bill – because spending was higher than agreed to previously [2]. Not because disaster relief was being paid for through Department of Energy cuts:

Democratic leaders objected to a GOP provision cutting funding from a Department of Energy manufacturing loan program to offset additional money for disaster relief.

So the Democrats wanted even MORE deficit spending in the CR – what a shock. These fools are addicted to  spending beyond our collective means. They have no shame in carelessly putting us all in deeper debt. The GOP is going to come out the champions of fiscal sanity on this one. Anyone demanding a shutdown (like Harry Reid did) is the one playing petulant god.

Boehner comes out of this looking weak, which will have to be confirmed by other reporting not so tied to the DNC as this article clearly is:

Boehner had tried, unsuccessfully, to rally Republicans behind the bill earlier in the day, warning them in a closed-door conference meeting that the level of spending was likely only to increase if their legislation failed.

I don’t know about part of the sotryu this because it seems the deeper the fiscal hole the House allows to be dug the more Libertarian/Tea Party support the GOP will lose. The 2010 election was loud and clear on the point of fiscal madness in DC. Why would Boehner risk his base of support AND sell short his convictions. It’s possible, but seems like a lunatic move to me.

The Debt Ceiling debacle was rightly panned because it was business as usual: massive deficit spending now and silly promises of  better behavior in the mythical future. Same thing with the GFY 2011 budget that covered the last four months. Massive over spending now, piddly spending cuts maybe in the future.

This has to stop, and only the GOP House has any will to make it stop. Boehner cannot give up balancing budgets and cutting back wasteful AND questionable programs. Most of the government is made up of questionable (or dubious, pick your connotation) spending with unclear returns on investment. All of that questionable spending should be on the chopping block as wasteful. We should not spend a dime without clear and unambiguous positive results that warrant the expenditures (no more $5 returns on $1,000,000 spent).

I applaud the House and this vote. It should be THE topic of the week, if not the month. If we are going to go through another damn year without Democrats doing their sworn duty in Congress (i.e., passing real budgets) then we might as well start using CRs to begin cutting.  Because until we do the country will continue to suffer both in the short term and in the long term.

Update: Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has this to say on the matter:

There is a common and completely understandable impulse among much of the base to break out in applause whenever Republicans lay down in front of the tanks in terms of spending. Further, there are obviously some in the progressive base, still smarting from losing the majority in 2010 and the drubbing they took in the debt ceiling fight, who want to see their leaders in the House poke a finger in John Boehner’s eye whenever the opportunity presents itself. For people on both sides, if I could borrow a phrase from Larry David, you might want to curb your enthusiasm in this case.

This continuing resolution is strictly Off Broadway stuff. The real battle is taking place on the big stage of the super committee, and that’s where we’ll find out how serious Congress is about setting the nation’s fiscal house in order.

Sorry, But I disagree. Strongly.

This CR funds the beast for I believe a quarter of the year. If not now, then never. The Debt Commission is a silly fantasy – one Obama has already trumped with his insane proposals of more stimulus spending, more taxes, more of the same.

It is also a good time to send a signal to the 12 fools on the Hill who were instituted to avoid our normal constitutional process. This committee was set up to neuter the 2010 freshman class. It will always be spend or shutdown until 2012.

Look, you have to be able to implement your goals and principles CONSISTENTLY, at every opportunity, for them to take. Or else – as Captain Barbosa famously claimed – those principles and codes are ‘more like guidelines’ (said in a gnarly pirate accent. And therefore meaningless.

It is interesting how the seeds of today’s political outlook were sown back in February 2009. President Obama and the liberal media never once grasped the inherent danger in Obama;s dramatic skill at over promising. He became the messiah of the desperate or stubborn (those who refuse to adjust their world view as humanity seasons and matures). When he promised the waters would recede due to his coming to office, you knew this administration had all the characteristics of a coming disaster.

Back in the very beginning of 2009 the liberals (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) announced to the country they had the magic elixir to solve all our problems. They claimed (like all good snake oil hucksters) that the Keynesian approach of trickle down government would turn the tide against the harsh competition (and its only harsh if you refuse to give it a good hard try) of the free market. Now there would be fairness (in other words lots of hand outs) across the land. As one poor sap claimed, Obama would now pay her mortgage.

Rule of life number 1: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. The more expansive the hype, the more likely the hype is compensating for some serious (and known) short falls. Hype is meant to divert and turn off the inquisitive and cynical thought processes by replacing them with fantasies and dreams. And ‘Ol Obama was a gifted siren when it came to those who thought it unfair they had to work hard, get good grades and operate within reasonable social bounds to earn a good life.

Back in 2009, when the stimulus bill arrived with all the loaded nonsense of impossible promises (as if it were the new 10 Commandments come from on high) I noted the liberal bill had fatal flaws. There is no such thing as a shovel-ready job in government. Any new project takes years to get started, the bloated bureaucracy is so laden with check boxes, committees and paperwork.

Therefore, the Stimulus bill was doomed to never match up to the over reaching rhetoric that surrounded it. Promises, promises, promises. Fairness, good jobs, teachers blissfully teaching kids, a filet Mignon in every kitchen, every night. None of it would come to pass – the government is just too damn slow and incompetent these days.

2.5 years later my predictions all came true. Months up months of awaiting the golden eggs promised by the federal golden goose only produced hurt, bitterness and embarrassment at being duped by a silver tongued snake oil  peddler. The result: Obama now fades into the dustbin of history, another victim of failed left wing, socialist screw ups.

One day, humanity will grow up enough to realize government is the worst, coldest, least caring monopoly humankind ever conceived. Which is why our founding fathers took greater lengths to weaken and divide it than strengthen it. They knew government was the one institution that had the power to corrupt absolutely, given humanity’s bottomless ego of “knowing all”. Our ability to have confidence is also one of our most dangerous failings. Confidence turns to arrogance when it is really a false confidence covering up insecurity.

Look at racists, religious fanatics, sexists and the Nazis with the Jews.  All proclaim a superiority over their hated rivals, fed by a deep insecurity in relation to their rivals. Class warfare from liberals is no different – they create arrogance to cover insecurity between the haves and have nots. Sadly, that means the miscreants and middle America.

But America has long been comfortable in its skin. Our grass roots are deep. Main Street is our heart, not Wall Street or Pennsylvania Ave in DC. As I noted the other day, anarchists and socialists cannot get a hold here because we have the experience of individual freedom and socialism’s bloody failures. Only a few ignoramuses still follow that siren song.

Obama has come out with proposals that now cement his fate through 2012. He has proposed another round of sure-to-fail stimulus. Harry Reid wants to have a hissy fit and shut down government until he gets his way. And Pelosi has been thankfully marched off the political stage so we don’t need to be inflicted any more by her “Baghdad Bob” schtick. The wheels of progress grind slowly on. And America now looks any place but left.

Has America really given up on Obama? Absolutely, if this poll is really the harbinger it seems to be:

Look out President Barack Obama. Even Sarah Palin’s gaining on you.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, with a majority of voters believing he’ll lose to any Republican, a solid plurality saying they’ll definitely vote against him and most potential Republican challengers gaining on him.

…

After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.

Obama now can only plan his exit strategy, there is no winning strategy out there. The Dems need to plan for another long trip into the political minority. Will the left exit maturely and gracefully, setting the stage for an earlier possible return to the main stage? Or will they go in the same petulant manner they governed – setting their sentence in political oblivion to be one of many, many years to come?

So far they have been choosing door number 2 – the petulant path out. I have little expectation they are capable of losing with grace (given the fact they run from legislative responsibilities as their first reaction to looming losing a vote). But America is now looking to a new morning. And a lot of credibility has been burned up on the left, for the hapless news media, for the political pundits, and for big-government more than all the rest. We may finally begin to see positive change.

Update: Hot Air is getting a lot of commentary on this poll. I just don’t think people were ready to stick a fork in Obama, but no one should be surprised the backlash that began in the 2009 elections, flowed through unabated to the 2010 elections, and showed consistent results in the 2011 elections we have seen (WI, NY, NV) should be a glaring set of data points the 2012 is when the backlash will peak – not subside.

Actually, no need. The thing is so screwy it is DOA anyway. Check out this liberal pretzel logic:

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed paying for his jobs plan by eliminating $467 billion in tax breaks for wealthier Americans and corporations, meeting immediate resistance from Republicans in Congress.

…

A limit on itemized deductions and certain exemptions on individuals who earn over $200,000 and families who earn over $250,000, which would raise roughly $400 billion over 10 years.

So, Obama plans to take money from Main Street through higher taxes and by defining millionaires and billionaires as any family making $250K a year (which usually means families at their peak income generating mode preparing kids for college and themselves for retirement – without government handouts as much as possible). What moron thought this one up?

Our economy is stagnating because consumers are not buying goods, homes, etc. In fact they need better paying jobs.

But what does this president do? I pulls even MORE money out of the private sector – both at the consumer point AND the small business point – and decides delayed jobs involving shovels is the answer? I know the saying is we learn everything we need to know in Kindergarten, but really! We saw this government trickle down crap with the Stimulus bill, which only captured investment and spending money and let it wander through the bowels of the bloated federal bureaucracy before it came trickling out years later.

I have a better proposal – pull the cancer of government off the back of the consumers and businesses. Leave more money in the hands of Main Street so our economy can jump start itself. Lower taxes, cut government spending down to the bare minimum and gut all the wasteful regulations and paper work.

This has to be the lamest of lame big government ideas EVAH!

Update: And the American voter KNOWS this is lame:

These undecided voters, who could determine whether Obama wins re-election next year, believe Republicans are more serious about reducing budget deficits and more aligned with them ideologically, according to the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.

…

Half of those surveyed said reducing the deficit or scaling back regulations would be the most effective way to create jobs, while only 16 percent said that increased spending on construction and innovation would be the best approach.

Well, duh. We’ve seen the government innovate, invest and create jobs – and it ain’t pretty.

Remind me again, then: Why are we obsessing over Social Security when it’s universally understood among politicos that Medicare is a much bigger/more immediate problem?

I sense a lot of impotent political wincing going on. But I think everyone should look at this differently.

At least the GOP side is HAVING the needed debate on the solvency of Social Security, and we can decide who is just kicking this ticking time bomb down the road instead of dealing with it. Now is a time to fix Social Security without lots of pain and suffering (what liberal likes to call ‘sacrifice’).

We need political leaders willing and able to take on tough subjects and broken sacred cows. There are a lot of broken sacred cows in our dysfunctional and bankrupt government. None of them alone will right our government and its spending problems. That is the right approach – not the easy approach. If not now, when? Let the debate happen, and let America see people willing to bring change we can rely on.