The Big Myth: The Economic Recovery

Report: The Economy Is Just One Speech Away From Recovery...The Onion

• "Anyone over the age of 14, knows this. If you want to look tall, stand next to a short person." John Crudele, NY Post
• The unemployment rate fell to 7.4% last month. When low information voters reads those headlines today, they might think the economy---regarding employment---is improving. But then there's the rest of the story, the story the administration and democrats don't want you to know.
• Let's put it in perspective. The economy only added 162,000 jobs last month, the lowest month since last March. It gets worse. The reason the unemployment number fell, as it has for some months now, is because people are dropping out of the labor force. In fact, 37,000 dropped out last month. Most of the jobs created last month were in low wage jobs as in retail and restaurants. Those two sectors accounted for approximately 85,000 jobs. None of this should be encouraging.  The fact is we need to create double this number of jobs for many, many months to proclaim the jobs environment is really improving.
• Let's put this in historical perspective. Ronald Reagan created more jobs in one month than Obama has all year. In September of 1983, the Reagan administration created 1.1 million jobs. In fact, in the following 15 months job creation under Reagan ranged from 275,000 per month to 479,000 (Breitbart). That's real job growth.
• Zero Hedge also placed Obama's jobs economy in perspective. Of the 953,000 jobs the Obama administration created, 77% were part-time jobs.
• And let's look at the overall economy. It grew by a "whopping" 1.8% in the first quarter. Many in the presstitute media were spinning that as a "brisk" economy. In fact, most of the growth as been in the 2.4% range. I refer you to Crudele's quote above. If you want to look tall, stand next to a short person. Even Tom Cruise knows that. Most economists will tell you that we need an economic growth rate of at least 3% annualized to get out of this hole.
• How is this economy affecting young people. We've known that 1 in 2 college grads cannot find work or at least work commiserate with their degrees. Pew Research reported this week that a record 21 million young adults are now living with their parents (and many of their parents are not doing well either). In addition to being unable to find a decent paying job, they can't afford to pay rent and their college loans at the same time.

• But with all of this bad news, where is the economy doing well? There appears to be growth in inventories, residential investment and personal consumption expenditures. These are largely due to the Stock Market and the rise in housing prices in addition to the American consumer spending more. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
• The bottom line: don't believe the claims of an improving economy just yet. It has a way to go.
   

Obama's Detachment: The Only Thing Worse Than A Bad President---Is An Absent One

Completely Self Absorbed, Obama Gets Up And Just Talks For An Hour Straight...The Onion

• Permit me to begin with perhaps the lie of the year coming out of Nancy Pelosi's Botox injected mouth when referring to Pres. Obama yesterday: "one of the most practically non-partisan presidents I have seen in the White House." USA TODAY
• The signs that Pres. Obama is disengaged and detached go back several years now. In 2011, Ron Suskind's  reported in his book, Confidence Men,  Pres. Obama was indecisiveness during the health care debate. Suskind said Obama was the same when it came to cabinet meetings on the economy and jobs. Suskind also wrote then, "He {Obama} has vanished into a cloud of endless policy debates and irreconcilable factions...so often divorced from measurable deeds."

• In October of 2011, Michael Goodwin of the NY Post wrote this after hearing countless stories from others in the White House about Obama's disconnect with others: : "President Obama has become a lone wolf. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, political strategist...Everyone else, including members of his cabinet have little face-time with him." (By the way, it puts in perspective why we no little of Pres. Obama's background. Perhaps he's behaved this way all of his life).
• All of this and more reminded me of Peggy Noonan who wrote the Obamas are everywhere but doing nothing. About this same time, I happened to write a piece wondering whether the Obama presidency had jumped the shark (March 4, 2013). That was followed by a statement by Vali Nasr, former special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who reported Pres. Obama as "dithering, controlling and risk aversive." (UK Telegraph).
• And just today, Michael Medved wrote an interesting article that appears to reinforce many of these earlier claims ("Obama Needs A Prime Minister," USA TODAY). He writes of the president, "he {Obama} lacks practical political expertise and an appetite for details."  In the body of Medved's piece he continued with this: "The current incumbent revels in his role as head of state, but it increasingly seems the only aspect of his job he relishes. Obama escapes Washington at every opportunity for worshipful crowds in campaign-style events."

Media Begins Parting The Seas For Hillary Clinton Whose Record Of Incompetence Is Breathtaking

"Hillary Clinton said she finds the administration's refusals to level with the American people troubling, but she finds it somewhat nostalgic."...Leno

• CNN announced plans to do a documentary about Hillary Clinton in 2014. Not to be outdone, NBC also announced plans for a Hillary Clinton miniseries. But it does not end there. Rodham is also in the planning stages according to Deadline Hollywood.
• Last May, I wrote a piece entitled, "Hillary Clinton Is Already Being Cloaked In Bubble Wrap." It was entirely predictable. Like six years ago, Hillary was anointed to become the next president. But she encountered one big problem: a young and attractive black candidate in Barack Obama. The rest is history.
• With Pres. Obama's reign ending in three years, the media---as they did with Obama---has already begun parting the seas for a Hillary presidential run. During the 2008 campaign, one couldn't go to any major bookstore chain or supermarket and not see countless covers on magazines and books of Obama and/or Michelle Obama or both. The same will happen with Hillary. In fact, just last week, USA TODAY ran a piece editorializing that Hillary's age should not be a factor. After all, they pointed out correctly she will be the same age---69---Reagan was when he became president. Last May, she was actually awarded The Warren Christopher Public Service Award. How convenient. Reminiscent of Pres. Obama's Peace Price.

The Arrogance and Lawlessness of the Political Class

"The president's highest priority is to exploit resentment." Jonah Golberg

Note: Since this was posted last July, we now know Obama lied about Obamacare. We also know the political class---largely Democrats---also lied. They knew millions of cancellations would result. They knew it 3 years ago.

• Earlier today, I was thumbing through some hard-copy newspapers and news feeds on line to get that "spark" for another editorial, I came upon Obama going on yet another vacation. As I've written about in the past, presidents---perhaps more than others---deserve a vacation or some "down time." However, with Pres. Obama, it's getting a tad ridiculous coming just weeks after an African trip and vacation that reportedly cost up to $100 million (The White House Dossier reported Obama's vacations cost taxpayers $20 million prior to the African trip. Those included $4 million Hawaii vacation).The Vineyard Gazette is reporting the Obama's are staying at a $7+ million resort with his security detail taking up at least 70 rooms. The paper reports the room rates at the resort range from $225 to $345 (which appears to be a deal compared Al Sharpton's $1000/night rooms).
• This got me to thinking about the arrogance and lawlessness of not only Pres. Obama and his administration but also the political class---this includes BOTH political parties.  We saw this arrogance on display again when the president and Jay Carney, his press spokesperson, referred to the many scandals as "phony."

• We're currently witnessing this type of arrogance from the likes of Anthony Weiner (former Congressman) and Eliot Spitzer (former NYS governor), both disgraced politicians who are running for office again. That's arrogance with a poke into the eyes of every New York voter.
• Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this arrogance and lawlessness was Hillary Clinton's comments regarding Benghazi when she said in her testimony: "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Her comments place the "phony" comments by the administration in more perspective. As I've written many times before, the political class likes to keep flipping Americans the bird.

• Sen. Harry Reid, perhaps one of the most miserable pricks to ever sit in the Senate, held up the federal budget for over three years. That's arrogance.
• Or his counterpart in the House, Nancy Pelosi, who infamously stated, "We have to pass the bill {ObamaCare} so that you can find out what's in it." Arrogance!

• This is a Congress that still has Charlie Rangel as one of its members.
• Last year Pres. Obama made several National Labor Relations Board recess appointments. The administration was warned those appointments were probably unconstitutional. A federal appeals court agreed.  The WH disagreed with the court's ruling.
• In June, Pres. Obama signed an executive order bypassing Congress that allowed over 800,000 illegal immigrants to remain in the country without fear of deportation. While that order might not have been illegal, it was arrogant. In fact, so arrogant, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents (ICE) sued their own agency for not allowing them to fully identify and deport illegal immigrants. And Obama has more plans with regard to amnesty.

• This is also the president who ridiculed the Supreme Court to a national audience during his 2010 State of the Union. Arrogance! 
• This is the same administration that used the IRS to target it's political adversaries. Lawless?
• When it comes to ObamaCare---now law of the land---many legal experts believe even the waivers granted by the administration is an example of lawless behavior. For example, as in ObamaCare, once a law if passed and therefore binding, where does the executive branch gets it power to relieve the certain Americans of their legal obligation to obey it?

• This is the administration and Congress that still has not held anyone accountable for Fast and Furious and Benghazi. That's arrogance of the highest order. And with Fast and Furious, it might also be lawless (after all, people have been killed by those '"lost" guns and at least one of our border agents was murdered by one of those guns). In fact, Eric Holder was held in contempt for his refusal to hand over documents to Congress regarding the Fast and Furious scandal.
• Time's Mark Halperin wrote in 2010---in 2010---the following: "The White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working class voters." It's clearly evident not much has changed in the last three years.

Postscript: Since this was posted, we now know the lies of Obamacare were intentional per: Gruber. In addition, Obama by-passed Congress re: immigration.

Republicans: A Spineless + Feckless Party Of Chumps

"Those are my principles. Well, if you don't like them, I have others." Groucho Marx

• The quote by Groucho Marx summarizes the current state of the Republican Party. This is a Party that lost an election to an incumbent president who had one of the worst records of any American president. On top of that, they spent a billion dollars and still lost. In addition, most polls have shown the American public believes the country was on the wrong track. How do you pull off such a disaster when you're facing such a soft target?
• This is also a Party who appears to enjoy the Democrats flipping them the finger at every turn. That's part of politics but it does not mean you have to take it. Just recently, Pres. Obama nominated Samantha Power to be the U.S. ambassador. This is a person who has a history of being anti-Israel. This is the same person who wrote a piece in The New Republic which said the United States needs to make "as historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States." With this background and more, the likes of John McCain and other progressive Republicans support her nomination. It's behavior like this that leads me to ask myself when is this Party going to give themselves a strong shot of testosterone?
• It's bad enough conservatives have to battle with progressive Democrats. It's worse when they have to battle with progressive Republicans. Both are dangerous to the nation.

• Not long ago, I penned a piece entitled, "Is The Republican Party A Mirage?" I believe it continues to be. With the continued failed domestic and foreign policies of this current administration, it should be on the ropes. Yet, the Republicans always fail to deliver the knockout punch as they did in the last election.
• By the way, I'm also sick an tired of hearing about the Republican victories in 2010. Those victories were not the result of Republicans. They were the result of the Tea Party.

• We've seen time and again that conservative principles can win elections. Ronald Reagan was proof of that. When Republicans don't bend on the Constitution, when they really pursue smaller government, when they make national security a priority, when they support the free-enterprise system with less overbearing regulations, when they pursue lowering taxes, and when they believe in legal immigration; they win elections.
• Perhaps I was right when I wrote not long ago that it's really not about Republicans vs. Democrats or Conservatives vs. Liberals. It's really about the political class vs. the people. If that's the case, we're really in a world of shit.