Life

Did you vote for Obama?

In 2008,  would you have voted for Barack Obama if you had known that four years later:

- We would still be in Afghanistan with thousands more dead and maimed.
- The Patriot Act would be extended and expanded.
- The Guantanamo Prison would still be in full swing.
- Housing Prices would be even lower.
- Millions of Americans would have dropped out of the workforce from sheer hopelessness.
-  Americans taking disability payments would be at all time record levels.
- You would have been 75 times more likely to go on food stamps than to find a job.
- Unemployment would continue to rise.
-  A quarter million fewer women would have jobs,  with millions more being underemployed with menial or part time employment.
- The President would maintain his right to have American Citizens killed without due process.
-  The President would only enforce those laws he agrees with and not enforce laws he disagrees with.
- The administration would be extremely secretive invoking executive privilege and performing numerous cover-ups.
- It would have taken us three years to exit Iraq.
- We would have a stated foreign policy of killing people we didn't like in any sovereign country using robotic drones using Hellfire missiles to incinerate them,  their families, and any other people that happened to be nearby.  Further,  we would have exercised this policy to kill an unknown number of people,  including at least one American citizen, in a number of foreign countries.
-  Pensions and retirement funds would be even less funded,  many near dissolution,  due partly to a federal reserve policy of artificially suppressing interest rates,  penalizing retirees and savers.
- The devaluation of the dollar would have continued.
- We would be facing a trillion dollar bubble in student debt.
- We would have six trillion dollars in additional national debt with trillion dollar debts for the foreseeable future.
- The nation would be torn apart by racial and class warfare,  largely instigated by the President's speeches and operatives,  with the President demonizing everyone from business leaders to the Supreme Court.
- That massive foreclosure frauds would follow the massive mortgage frauds of the crash,  but four years later, not a single executive of a big Wall Street bank would have been prosecuted.
- Massive new regulations would bring business to a virtual standstill,  causing a halt to new job creation.

Has Obama helped women?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, close to a quarter million fewer women have jobs than did when Obama took office.   Yet Obama and his campaign just view women as another guaranteed minority voting block,  treating them very much as objects that can be manipulated.   Here's a good parody of a recent Obama ad.

 

 

Has President Obama flip-flopped?

Some good examples,  direct quotes without spin, From the WSJ:

Strassel: A Chronic Case of Obamnesia

The president has left a long trail of flip-flops.

• By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

With 10 days until the election, Barack Obama's latest strategy is to claim that his opponent has developed "stage 3 Romnesia." Mitt Romney, the argument goes, is conveniently forgetting his real agenda, flipping his positions to better appeal to the electorate. Since Mr. Romney's conservative base would surely disagree, this raises the question of whether the president isn't himself suffering from a psychological malady that experts call "projection."

***

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program"—Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, June 2003.

"I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter"—President Obama, August 2009.

***

"Leadership means that the buck stops here. . . . I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit"—Sen. Barack Obama, March 2006.

"It is not acceptable for us not to raise the debt ceiling and to allow the U.S. government to default"—President Obama, July 2011.

***

"I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages"—Obama questionnaire response, 1996, while running for Illinois state Senate.

 

"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage"—Sen. Obama, November 2008, while running for president.

"It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married"—President Obama, May 2012.

***

"We have an idea for the trigger. . . . Sequestration"—Obama Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew in 2011, as reported in Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics."

"First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed"—President Obama, October 2012.

***

"If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election"—Sen. Obama, 2007.

"We've made the decision not to participate in the public financing system for the general election"—Sen. Obama, June 2008.

***

"I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign"—Sen. Obama, June 2008.

"The way Bush has done it over the last eight years is . . . [he] added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back. . . . That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic"—Sen. Obama, July 2008.

"I don't remember what the number was precisely. . . . We don't have to worry about it short term"—President Obama, September 2012, on the debt figure when he took office ($10 trillion) and whether to worry about today's $16 trillion figure.

***

"[Sen. Hillary Clinton believes] that . . . if the government does not force taxpayers to buy health care, that we will penalize them in some fashion. I disagree with that"—Sen. Obama, Jan 2008, opposing the individual mandate for health insurance.

"I'm open to a system where every American bears responsibility for owning health insurance"—President Obama, June 2009, supporting the individual mandate.

***

"Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive"—President Obama, April 2009, in France.

"We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms"—President Obama, April 2009, in Trinidad and Tobago.

"Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing"—Barack Obama, October 2012, on whether he went on a global apology tour.

***

"The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel"—Sen. Obama, September 2008.

"Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years"—President Obama, January 2010.

***

"So if somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them"—Sen. Obama, January 2008, on his plans to financially penalize coal plants.

"Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution"—Sen. Obama, August 2008.

"Here's what I've done since I've been president. We have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years. Natural gas production is the highest it's been in decades. We have seen increases in coal production and coal employment"—President Obama, October 2012.

***

"If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition"—President Obama, 2009.

"We've got a long way to go but . . . we've come too far to turn back now. . . . And that's why I'm running for a second term"—President Obama, October 2012.

What is the fiscal cliff and how to solve it?

Here is a very important CNBC segment with three of the smartest guys in the room,  one Republican and two Democrats.  Anyone who wants to understand what is facing America needs to watch this.

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000121706

What is the Real Unemployment Rate

The above chart shows the number of people who have jobs as a percentage of the population.  It does not take into account underemployment.  That is,  the number of people who have part time jobs or full-time jobs as burger flippers when they have college degrees.  For example,  some 53% of college graduates under age 25 have not been able to find jobs in their professions.   Were you to adjust this chart for those underemployed,  it would look even worse.

So what is the real unemployment rate?  Well,  if only 63.5% of the civilian workforce has jobs,  that would leave 36.5% without jobs.

So where does the 7.8% number come from that is reported in the headlines?   Simple,  the BLS does not count anyone as unemployed who has not actively looked for a job in the past four weeks.  This was a little change to the rules back in the Clinton administration.  It used to be a longer,  more reasonable period.  Although you might wonder why every potential worker who is not working doesn't count as being unemployed,  that isn't how the government gathers statistics.

Also,  the government doesn't count anyone drawing disability payments as being unemployed.   This may be reasonable until you remember that more than five million Americans have joined the disability roles under President Obama .  Between running out of unemployment benefits,  new psychological definitions for disability, the anti-business anti-jobs policies of this administration,  and lenient judges (some disability judges have been found to approve more than 95% of applications),  millions of Americans have moved onto disability.  Many more,  in fact,  than have been able to find jobs since the June 2009 end of the recession.

The end result is more and more Americans are actually losing jobs,  despite a slight uptick in the headline jobs number that is printed across the front page every month.  I know it makes no sense,  but that is what happens when you have a press that is too biased, too lazy,  or too stupid to read and analyze the actual numbers being printed by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Just as a rule of thumb,  we need 150,000 new jobs each month to make up for the growth in the labor force.  That is,  we need 150,000 new jobs created just to break even.

Last Friday,  we had some very strange numbers.  Although fewer than 150,000 new jobs were created the headline unemployment number moved down significantly to 7.8%,  conveniently less than the 8% it's been above since Obama took office.  

The immediate reaction was that these numbers were cooked.  I don't think so (at least not more than usual).  The change was caused by a huge jump in the household survey.  Two thirds of that jump,  however,  was caused by people taking part time jobs for economic reasons.   In other words,  they took a part time job because they couldn't get a full time job.   Not a really great way to cook the books,  although it's true that the news media rarely covers anything but the headline number.   

The only story most news outlets are covering is how getting below 8%, back to the point it was when he took office,  is somehow great for Obama's re-election.  And as shown above,  although this dubious headline number is the same as when Obama took office,  there are millions fewer Americans with actual jobs,  and many of those who have jobs are being paid much less than they were four years ago.  This fact alone shows how meaningless the headline number actually is.

 

The Benghazi Terrorist Attack

The take-away from this video is how fluently and deliberately the President, his Secretary of State, and his administration lied repeatedly to the American people with the full knowledge that it was a lie. Further, they were willing to send armed agents after an American citizen to set him up as a scapegoat for the cameras. As in the Fast and Furious scandal, I'm not sure why the White House engaged in this lie and then cover-up, but it does make everything they say to us suspect.

 

This is the true worth of YouTube. You can see actual video of the lies of your elected officials and their minions. If you suspect a context problem, you can usually find the whole speeches or news interviews. It makes it harder for the liars to deny their lies, although they still do it, usually with the cooperation of their pet news media.

There are Two Paths

Where do they get these marketing people?

My wife kept buying me these boxers with FTL on the waistband.  Now to a science fiction geek,  FTL has only one meaning and I really didn't want underwear labeled Faster Than Light.  She patiently explained to me that FTL stood for Fruit of the Loom,  but then came home with a new brand of boxers.  Apparently it's a Wal-Mart house brand and the waistband now proudly proclaims Faded Glory.

I've found a woman's brand called Sag Harbor,  but you know,  I'm just not that brave.

 

They're rioting in Africa - The Merry Minuet

Written in 1949,  and the lyrics haven't needed changing since.

 

 

Are You Better Off Than When Obama Took Office?

Here is the latest data for employment, food stamps (the SNAP program),  and disability.   

Remember,  Obama took over at the very low of the official recession,  which,  according to the government,  ended a few months later in June of 2009.

Looking at the average recoveries from previous post-war recessions,  the workforce should be up at this point by about eight million jobs.   Instead,  we have lost more than a million jobs.

The increase in food stamps and disability is completely unprecendented.   The decrease in median income for the middle class is also completely unprecendented.

So poverty has increased.  Jobs have decreased.   Fewer women have jobs.  Fewer minorities have jobs.   Yet the media lets Obama go around claiming he has created four million new jobs with very few questioning it.  (In fairness,  CNN and the Washington Post have pointed out that it is not true.)

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.   Are we insane enough to continue with the same policies that have failed us so completely over the past four years?