Why No One Expects a Strong Recovery
One of the strongest factors promoting recovery from our 10 post-World War II recessions was an unshakable conviction that, regardless of the immediate trouble, the American economy is fundamentally strong. Based on this underlying confidence, recessions and recoveries roughly conformed to the principle of the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom, and vice versa. Thus real growth in the four quarters following postwar recessions averaged 6.6% and 4.3% over the following five years. As the chief economist for Barclays, Dean Maki, said in this newspaper on Aug. 19, “You can’t find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery.” That may no longer hold. Since the current recession has lasted a record seven quarters—and has been marked by a near-record average GDP decline of 1.8% per quarter—we should be witnessing the start of a powerful and sustained recovery. Yet forecasts of a 2% recovery in growth are only one-fourth as strong as postwar experience suggests. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at a generational high of 10.2%. [You are gonna want to read this one…ed]
To Create Jobs, Voters Say Cut Taxes and Stop Spending
As the policy debate has unfolded in Washington this year, voters have consistently believed that tax cuts would do more than increased government spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now that the nation’s unemployment rate has reached 10.2%, voters continue to hold that view. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 62% believe tax cuts are a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21% believe that additional stimulus spending is a more effective tool. [The Obama administration and Congress would be well advised to listen to the people who put them into office. Otherwise what happened in Virginia and New Jersey earlier this month will be replicated across the country come election day in 2010…ed]
Obama says it: There’s a chance he won’t run in 2012
In an interview with CNN in China, President Obama opened the possibility to not running for re-election in 2012 — something that no president has done since Lyndon Johnson. Here’s what he said: “You know, if – if I feel like I’ve made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it and, you know, my poll numbers are in the tank and because we’ve gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically, I’m in a tough spot, I’ll – I’ll feel all right about myself,” Obama told CNN’s Ed Henry. “I said to myself very early on, even when I started running for office, I don’t want to be making decisions based on getting re-elected, because I think the challenges that America faces right now are so significant,” the president also said. [Says the guy who can’t get a day’s work done because he is too busy campaigning for 2012…ed]
Angry Congress lashes out at Obama
Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration. Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home. They also underscored the stiff headwinds that the administration faces as it pushes to enact sweeping changes to the financial regulatory system while also trying to create jobs for ordinary Americans. President Obama’s allies in the Congressional Black Caucus, exasperated by the administration’s handling of the economy, unexpectedly blocked one his top priorities, using a legislative maneuver to postpone the approval of financial reform legislation by a key House committee. [The overwhelmingly Democrat Congress was just so thrilled they got this left wing loon of a president back in January. It’s wonderful to see the love affair is quickly unraveling only ten months later…ed]
CNN Poll: Blame for recession shifting from GOP to Democrats
Nearly two years into the recession, opinion about which political party is responsible for the severe economic downturn is shifting, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday morning indicates that 38 percent of the public blames Republicans for the country’s current economic problems. That’s down 15 points from May, when 53 percent blamed the GOP. According to the poll 27 percent now blame the Democrats for the recession, up 6 points from May. Twenty-seven percent now say both parties are responsible for the economic mess. “The bad news for the Democrats is that the number of Americans who hold the GOP exclusively responsible for the recession has been steadily falling by about two to three points per month,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “At that rate, only a handful of voters will blame the economy on the Republicans by the time next year’s midterm elections roll around.” [More outstandingly bad news for the Democrats…ed]
Obama Job Approval Down to 49%
The latest Gallup Daily tracking results show 49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, putting him below the majority approval level for the first time in his presidency. Although the current decline below 50% has symbolic significance, most of the recent decline in support for Obama occurred in July and August. He began July at 60% approval. The ongoing, contentious debate over national healthcare reform has likely served as a drag on his public support, as have continuing economic problems. Americans are also concerned about the Obama administration’s reliance on government spending to solve the nation’s problems and the growing federal budget deficit. [Gallup desperately tries to explain away Obama’s plummeting poll numbers but the fact of the matter is the people in this country have finally opened their eyes and realized just what this guy represents. And they don’t like it…ed]
Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history. “After eight years of delay,” he intoned, “those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice. It is past time to finally act.” Where to begin? The claim that the Bush administration was somehow dilatory sets a new standard for gall, particularly coming from Eric Holder. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out, “The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers (including Holder) to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts.” Those lawyers threw up hundreds of roadblocks. Military detentions and tribunals violated, they claimed, the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Litigating all this has taken years. [The gall of this guy to blame the Bush administration for the delay in trying these terrorists when in fact Mr. Holder and his fellow liberal lawyers were busy REPRESENTING the bad guys all these years!…ed]
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Breitbart to AG Holder: Investigate ACORN or We’ll Release More Tapes Just Before 2010 Election
Earlier tonight Andrew Breitbart, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles discussed the final chapter of the ACORN L.A. saga on “Hannity,” but more interestingly, Breitbart disclosed where the story goes from here. Transcript (below) starts from 3:50 into the clip:Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape. Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes? [More tapes? Released just before the election? This is gonna be good!…ed]
Huffington Argues Glenn Beck Should Be Excluded from Constitutionally Protected Freedom of Speech
Want to know how the left really feels about free speech? Look no further than Huffington Post editor and co-founder Arianna Huffington. Huffington appeared on MSNBC’s Nov. 19 “Countdown” to discuss a report by the Anti-Defamation League that alleges Fox News host Glenn Beck is “the most important mainstream media figure who has repeatedly helped to stoke fires of anti-government anger” and therefore endangering society. “It would be nice to think of Glenn Beck just as a joke, as fodder for this show and the “Daily Show” and others that point out how stupid some of this stuff is,” “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann said. “But this report, you know, suggests something else, this is – fear-monger-in-chief term is frightening.” [Glenn Beck might be a tad eccentric but the truly dangerous people in this country are all the liberal loons like this skank Stassinopoulos (her real name) and the foaming at the mouth fool Keith Olbermann with his basement rated show on the basement rated msnbc. If Stassinopoulos doesn’t like our country and our Constitution she can pack her crap and move the hell back to her native Greece…ed]
San Francisco booksellers would rather lose money than go ‘Rogue’
Despite San Francisco Bay Area bookseller claims that Sarah Palin’s new book “Going Rogue” is “not for thinking people”, the Amazon numbers say otherwise. On a mission to show that Palin’s book is selling much worse than, say, the idea of reading Osama Bin Laden his Miranda rights, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed several local booksellers to find out how well sales of “Going Rogue” were not going: “Our customers are thinking people,” said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. “They’re not into reading drivel.”
“Anything like that we wouldn’t carry,” said clerk Emily Stackhouse at Cover to Cover Books in San Francisco. “We’re a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross.” [Be sure to read the SanFranChron piece linked to in this article. It’s a hoot. Snotty ass closed minded Bay Area liberals are a real piece of work…ed]
Palin fans line up early for book-signing
People started lining up more than 24 hours in advance of Sarah Palin’s book-signing today in Columbus. Returning to the state from whence she was launched into national fame, the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate will sign her new book, Going Rogue, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Borders bookstore, 6670 Sawmill Rd. If the first two days of Palin’s book tour are an indication, thousands will flock to the Columbus store, but many could be turned away, disappointed. Maria DiLeo, a marketing manager for Borders, said that the first 1,000 who show up when the Sawmill Road store opens at 10 a.m. will be assured of getting Palin’s autograph on her book. “We’re giving out 1,000 wristbands to get in line to guarantee they’ll get in the bookstore” for the signing, DiLeo said. “After we go through the 1,000 with wristbands, and if time allows, (Palin) could continue signing, but I can’t guarantee she’ll sign more than 1,000.” [Screw the liberal jerkoffs in San Fransisco, this is how REAL Americans feel about Sarah Palin and her new book…ed]
The Day I Met Sarah Palin…and the Liberal Media
Where on earth do I begin? This all started as me, a young 17 year old American going to see a woman I admire and turned into this crazy event hah I’ll start at the very beginning. [Read the 17 year old Sarah Palin fan’s version of what happened when she was ambushed by msnbc hack Norah O’Donnell while she was attending a book signing. Then leave her a note of support!…ed]
$60 million to stabilize neighborhoods buys five homes
The Sun recently found that the three local governments receiving most of the money sent to the valley to buy, fix and resell foreclosed houses had been able to close deals on only five houses to date even though the program is nearly halfway into its 18-month time frame. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department-funded project is aimed putting brakes on the decline of neighborhoods, and the plan locally had been to buy hundreds of homes. But officials in Clark County, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, which have a total of $60.2 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Program dollars, said the biggest obstacles to moving faster have been ongoing changes in rules and, more recently, the volatility of real estate because of investors swooping in. [This is precisely the kind of nonsense we can expect if the Democrats are able to ram through their disastrous ObamaCare mess. Government involvement in damn near anything does nothing but make it more expensive and more screwed up…ed]
Geithner feels pressure from left, right to resign
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is coming under new pressure from conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats to resign. Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas) this week joined a small group of lawmakers publicly calling for Geithner to step down. Former Republican Rep. Rob Simmons, who is challenging Sen. Chris Dodd (D) for Senate in Connecticut, has made Geithner’s resignation a campaign issue. Geithner was forced to defend himself Thursday at a public hearing on Capitol Hill during which he was pointedly asked by Brady to resign. DeFazio emphasized that there are growing concerns about Geithner among “populist” House Democrats, who have always been cautious about the Treasury secretary. [Mealy mouthed Geithner the tax cheat has been an incompetent disaster from the moment he was nominated. He’s toast and the back of his head will be feeling the underside of Obama’s bus here real soon…ed]
The $100 Million Health Care Vote?
What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform? Here’s a case study. On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.” The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.” I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill. [Dingy Harry Reid just stole 100 million dollars of our money to buy ONE vote for his version of ObamaCare…ed]
Hispanics blame Rahm for immigrant ban
Hispanic lawmakers say an old adversary, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, has his fingerprints all over a push to prohibit illegal immigrants from buying health insurance plans in a new market for people who don’t get insurance through their employers. “A forensic study would show it all leads back to Rahm Emanuel and the White House,” said Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who worked with Emanuel when the president’s top aide was in the House. “This analysis is inaccurate,” said a White House aide who had been shown the comments made by Hispanic lawmakers. [Is this some kind of joke? Surely these anti American Hispanic Caucus clowns know Obama is doing everything he can to ensure all illegals in this country are going to be fast tracked into legal status just as soon as he can then they can go on the public dole and get taxpayer funded healthcare benefits, no problemo…ed]
Married Couples Face Extra Tax in Healthcare Bill
Senate Democrats’ health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more. That’s one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery – some call it “botax” – and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans. “If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don’t have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, who is leading the fight against the bill. The new taxes would be used to fund an expansion of government medical programs and to fund subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy insurance, extending health care coverage to 94 percent of eligible non-elderly Americans. [More good news for the hard working productive American taxpayers…ed]
Lou Dobbs mulls run for White House, Senate
A week after abruptly quitting his longtime job as a CNN television news host and commentator, Lou Dobbs said on Thursday he is considering career options including possible runs for the White House or U.S. Senate. “Right now I feel exhilaration at the wide range of choices before me as to what I do next,” Dobbs, whose outspoken views on immigration and other topics often angered liberals, told Reuters in a telephone interview from New York on Thursday. Dobbs, 64, a veteran CNN anchor who had become one of the most divisive figures in U.S. broadcast journalism, announced last Wednesday he was leaving CNN after spending the better part of 30 years at the 24-hour cable news network. [I think he should run as a Democrat and push his anti illegal immigration platform like a mofo…ed]
Army lacks guidelines to deal with jihadists in ranks
The Army has guidelines on how to deal with racist views and actions within the ranks, but none on how to deal with Islamic jihadism, a former Army vice chief of staff told Congress on Thursday. Retired Army Gen. John M. Keane said this absence of guidance fostered a politically correct reluctance to investigate the man accused in the Fort Hood shootings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. (SNIP) “Clearly we don’t have specific guidelines in dealing with jihadist extremists,” Gen. Keane told the Senate homeland security committee. [Well maybe it’s high time our military created some guidelines on how to deal with the radical muslims in the ranks before any other Americans lose their lives to insidious political correctness…ed]
High-Income Tax May Be Needed for Afghan War Cost, Levin Says
Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for additional troops sent to Afghanistan and that NATO should provide half of the new soldiers. An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000,” could fund more troops, Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are added. That cost, Levin said, should be paid by wealthier taxpayers. [Tax the producers in this country is always the solution for the Democrats. One has to wonder why anyone making a decent living in America would ever vote for these clowns…ed]
California lawmakers, officials face 18% pay cut
California’s Legislature went to state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown recently seeking relief from a future pay cut and on Thursday received an unwelcome surprise: An 18% reduction for lawmakers and other elected state officials can begin next month instead of a year from now. The move backfired after the Legislature protested — the state’s dire financial straits notwithstanding — that a pay cut scheduled to follow next year’s election was illegal. The state’s independent pay board had voted in May to trim salaries for those elected next year and beyond, and lawmakers asked Brown for an opinion. He responded that the panel had the power to cut officeholders’ compensation now, without waiting until after the next election. [Considering these are the idiots most responsible for the fiscal mess in CA, a pay cut sure seems warranted. Perhaps the voters will wake up the next election and give every last one of the bums a permanent 100% pay cut…ed]
Islamic nations want treaty to protect faith symbols
Four years after cartoons of the prophet Muhammad set off violent protests across the Muslim world, Islamic nations are mounting a campaign for an international treaty to protect religious symbols and beliefs from mockery. It would essentially mean a ban on blasphemy that would put them on a collision course with free speech laws in the West, The Associated Press said Thursday in Geneva. Algeria and Pakistan have taken the lead in lobbying to eventually bring the proposal to a vote in the UN General Assembly, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. If ratified in countries that enshrine freedom of expression as a fundamental right, such a treaty would require them to limit free speech if it risks seriously offending religious believers. The process, though, will take years and no showdown is imminent. [Apparently the so called religion of peace, responsible for nearly every terrorist attack around the world for decades not to mention the beheadings of countless people, wants to be able to prevent anyone from speaking out against them with a legally binding treaty enforceable even here in the United States? Nope, I don’t think that’s gonna happen even with Obama as president…ed]
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That) When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:[As if we needed any more proof Al Gore and his climate change nutjobs are nothing but a bunch of fraudsters…ed]
Quote of the day.
Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
-Thomas Sowell