Leftist talking points vs. Reality
Filed under: Barking Moonbats, economy, Obama Economy, Politics
The following has been passed around actively by leftist recently:
Basically, the Republican strategy for the past three years has been this:
1. Do everything humanly possible to prevent the economy from recovering.
2. Wait for 2012.
3. Run a campaign focused on the fact that the economy is lousy.
This post shows a high degree of partisanship, and an appalling low knowledge of how the federal government works and basic economic theory.
First off, for most of the past three years, the congressional Republicans haven’t been in a position to do much of anything. A position they primarily put themselves in. They didn’t control the White House, were the minority in the House of Representatives, and didn’t have enough seats in the Senate to even threaten a filibuster.
For the better part of two of those three years, the democrats ran the show. They set and implement policy, they decided where the money was coming from and how it was going to get spent. For the rest of the three years in question, they still controlled the White House and the Senate, which let them effectively block any changes the House Republicans might want to make.
The democrats, lead by Barack Obama own this economy, i.e. the most lackluster recovery on record. They are the ones who promised unemployment under 6% by now if they got enact their grand Keynesian economic plan, which they did. The results, unemployment at 8.2% (which be over 10% if the labor force participation was at the same level it was when Obama took office) and a real unemployment rate of 14.8% (according to the Dept. of Labor)
Faced with this record, the democrats want to double down of failure and continue the policies that have resulted in high unemployment and economic growth that in a good quarter breaks 2%.
There are a great deal of things you blame the congressional Republicans for. The current lack of significant growth in the economy isn’t one of them. Even Barack Obama has correctly stated that the economy was his issue and if he didn’t have it fixed in three years, he didn’t deserve a second term.
Graph of the Day
Reality vs. Obamanonics
According to our Dear Leader’s Keynesian fantasies, unemployment should be under 6% and falling.
Instead, reality got in the way, and his massive deficit spending has resulted in unemployment at 8.2% and real unemployment over 14%.
This is just one reason he and his allies are desperate to talk about anything besides his record.
Just to make sure you’re getting this, let’s look at another version of this graph.
Reality vs. Obamanonics II
This is the Obama economy.
Senate Democrats still shirking their duty
Filed under: Congress, economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Senate Democrats are poised to continue their impressive streak of budgetary negligence on Wednesday by unanimously rejecting as many as five different budgets, including the one offered by President Obama. Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping that voters will pick up on the disturbing trend.
The Democratic-led Senate has not formally proposed a federal budget resolution in more than three years, and is not expected to offer one Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) have made explicitly clear that they have no intention of doing so before the November election.
Not only have the congressional democrats not proposed any budgets in the past three years, they have voted against every budget proposal brought before Congress, including budgets proposed by the leader of their party, our own Dear Leader, Barack Obama.
Could it be that the congressional democrats don’t want their agenda documented in way that easily accessible by the American people?
The truth behind the unemployment numbers
Arnold Ahlert points out the reality behind the employment numbers over at FrontPage Mag.
When the jobs data were released last week, it was revealed that only 115,000 new jobs were created, well below the 165,000 predicted by the media-anointed economic “experts,” and significantly below the 125,000 jobs-per-month pace required just to keep pace with the number of people entering the work force. Yet in an apparent paradox, the unemployment rate dropped from 8.2 percent to 8.1 percent. Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney explains half of it. “There is something about that 8.1 percent figure you ought to know,” he told a crowd at a town hall-style meeting in Cleveland yesterday. “You might assume that that number came down from 10 percent to 8.1 percent because of all the jobs that were created, and that assumption would be wrong. The reason that percent came down was because of all the people that dropped out of the workforce.”
Read the whole thing.
Quote of the Day
Filed under: American History, economy, History, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
“According to the worst President in American history, “you’re on your own” economics, which apparently extended from the founding of the country until the day Barack Obama took office, didn’t work. Sure, it produced the most technologically advanced nation on the planet, the world’s largest economy, and made us into a super power, but that’s “madness” compared to Obamanomics, which cost us our AAA credit rating, has produced the longest streak of above 8% unemployment since the Great Depression, and is on track to produce 13 trillion dollars of debt over the next 10 years.
Listening to Barack Obama lecture ANYONE else on economics is like getting a lecture from Jimmy Carter on the proper way to execute a hostage rescue.”
Inserting reality into Obama’s spin on Solyndra
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, economy, energy, Obama Economy, Obamaspeak, Our Dear Leader, Politics
“It is true that “Republicans and Democrats” approved a green energy loan guarantee program. But “Republicans and Democrats” did not approve this loan guarantee program. As FactCheck.org reminds us, the program under which Solyndra was handed $500 million in taxpayer money was authorized in the Obama/Reid/Pelosi partisan “stimulus” bill of 2009. Zero House Republicans voted for that law. Also, a previous Solyndra loan application was explicitly rejected by Bush-era actuaries because of its inherent soundness problems. Some of Obama’s bookkeepers continued to warn against its approval, but they were overruled by the White House political team because the president’s allies were determined to make the company the “poster child” of his green vision. That’s also why Obama ignored internal worries and held a big presidential photo-op at Solyndra’s (now-defunct) factory. The list goes on: Obama DOE officials sat in on Solyndra board meetings. One of Solyndra’s top investors, George Kaiser — who just happened to be a major Obama campaign donor — also just happened to make a flurry of White House visits right before the doomed loan was given the thumbs-up. Kaiser and the White House claimed they didn’t discuss Solyndra during those meetings. They lied. We also know that even after Solyndra defaulted on its initial loan, Obama’s Energy Department conveniently restructured the loan terms, assuring that investors like George Kaiser would be first in line to get paid if (when) the company went belly-up. Obama owns this mess, and he knows it. But he’s obfuscating and dissembling to save his own skin.”
— Guy Benson writing at Townhall.com. Read the whole thing.
Can we learn from history?
Filed under: economy, energy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
First, let’s review a post I made back in July 2008:
Oil down, dollar up since Bush rescinded drilling restrictions
Remember the leftist mantra about how “if we started drilling now, it wouldn’t effect prices for 10 years.” Well, they got that wrong too, just like Barak Obama’s predictions about the Troop Surge in Iraq. 100%, flat out wrong again. Yes, there is a pattern here.
Then, lets review the current President’s energy policy of restricting domestic energy production and the results of those polices, i.e. steadily rising gas prices and the dollar losing value.
I’m pretty sure those lefties who called GW Bush “the worst President ever” got it seriously wrong. Our Dear Leader has clearly claimed that title.
Quote of the Day
“While the vandals are on the street corners, the Tea Party conservatives they’re working state houses, the governorships, the mayorships, the Senate, the House. See, they understand, they’ve read the Constitution. If you want to make a difference, don’t go break windows, okay? Break some phony arguments that things like austerity are going to put you in the hole. What put you in the hole is borrowing 38 cents of every dollar you spent. That’s what put you in the hole, pure and simple. Everything else is political spin.”
Roundup Post
Filed under: economy, Media Bias, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
I’m thinking no. It’s a leftist insulting a conservative. No foul in the liberal media’s view.
The BCC reports on the effect the Obama economy is having on Americans.
… Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities – they represent the bleak reality of America’s poverty crisis.
… One of the largest tented camps is in Florida and is now home to around 300 people. Others have sprung up in New Jersey and Portland.
… There are an estimated 5,000 people living in the dozens of camps that have sprung up across America
The largest camp, Pinella’s Hope in central Florida – a region better known for the glamour of Disneyworld – is made up of neat rows of tents spread out across a 13-acre plot.
… The stark reality is that many of them are people who very recently lived comfortable middle-class lives
For them, the economic downturn came too fast and many have been forced to trade their middle-class homes for lives in shelters, motels and at the far extreme, tented encampments.
WHOM DO YOU BELIEVE? HBO OR GALLUP?
Mary Katharine Ham on leftist hypocrisy.
Cindy Sheehan on the democrat’s dishonest use of the anti-war movement for their political gain.
I’m betting that you never heard one peep from the liberal media about her being arrested, twice, protesting outside the White House, after GW Bush left and Barack Hussein Obama moved in.
Three Occupy Oakland protesters arrested for robbery and a hate crime, both felonies
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. — Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States of America
“[T]he politically correct are above the rules of ordinary civility, once they have identified you as an unbeliever in their religion.” — Orson Scott Card
AFFORDABLE” OMAMACARE JUST GOT $111 BILLION MORE EXPENSIVE
Factual Observations about the US Federal Debt
Filed under: economy, Obama Economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Let’s look at this data and what it shows.
• The vaunted “Clinton Surplus” was, in fact, the work of a GOP House that was willing to fight for fiscal sanity (current Ohio Governor John Kasich was one of the architects of the surplus); in addition, two events conspired toturbocharge the economy — in spite of Clinton, not because of him.
• Liberals like to talk about Reagan’s deficits, but they ignore the fact that every budget Reagan ever sent to the Democrat-controlled House was declared “dead on arrival”. Reagan supported a Balanced Budget Amendment, sought to eliminate useless agencies like the Department of Education, and otherwise believed in the U.S. spending within its means.
• Since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, they have jammed through the most fiscally irresponsible spending programs in world history (I won’t use the word “budget”, because they’ve refused to propose a budget for roughly 1,029 days).
In short, Democrats never propose less spending than Republicans — unless we’re talking about defense. And now, after four years of Democrat-controlled spending, the federal government is forced to borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends.