Reflections From a Murky Pond

Plenty of Americans wonder if Obama has a jobs strategy given that America’s faltering economy and continued grim prospects for employment are dark shadows on Americans’ consciousnesses. They’re afraid that Obama and his handlers have no plan or strategy at all.

From what I can see, these people are wrong; they’re scared for the wrong reason. The boy and his handlers do have a jobs strategy but it is one based upon a war of attrition, misdirection, and legalisms. That’s why Americans should be both afraid and lethally angry.

Obama just plans to wait it out and use “nuanced” mendacity and misdirection to “deal with” the nation’s unemployment problem.

Congrats! You’re No Longer Making Me Look Bad

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday that in April US unemployment fell to 8.1%, which is the lowest it’s been since January 2009. This is something that will help Obama a bit in the polls because his constituency is ignorant and easily led.

If more people were aware of the fact that the drop in unemployment has mainly been due to people leaving the labor force, meaning the BLS had stopped counting them as unemployed, things might be quite different and quite worse for Obama.

In actuality 12.5 million Americans are still unemployed, and according to the BLS a record 88.4 million Americans are officially considered as being “not in the labor force.” At 63.6% the labor-force participation rate – defined as the percentage of the work-age population either working or looking for work – is the lowest since December 1981. Yes, this is the lowest American labor-force participation rate in thirty years!

Not that Obama should be taken too strongly to task for the current real unemployment figures. The government does not meaningfully create jobs. He can only be blamed for fostering a legislative atmosphere that is hostile to business, making it that much harder for those businesses to justify adding staff or expanding domestic operations.

No, what Americans should punish Obama for is his presiding over- and cheering on from his bully pulpit a Congress that added a record setting $5 trillion to America’s national debt in under four years, most of it spent supposedly to create jobs.

That is what Obama and the Liberals in Congress should be punished for. They’re whole “job creating / saving” spending glut is either a $5+ trillion lie or the biggest example of fiscal, legislative, and governmental failure in the history of America.

It’s time for Americans to teach Obama and his cronies what unemployment means. It time that we, the People made it a personal issue to the them and their families.

Tags: 2012 Elections | America | Congress | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Economics | Economy | Employment | Jobs | Liberals | Obama | Politics | Stimulus | Unemployment

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 7:23 am and is filed under 2012 Election, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Attempts to curb America’s federal government’s spending addiction go back to the days of President Reagan. He was the first POTUS to make a considered and concerted effort to starve the beast that was, and is even more today, the gluttonous animal that our government had become.

Sadly for us, it didn’t work – not at all.

This is not to say that President Reagan’s attempt rein in government spending was wrong or misguided. He approached the situation quite correctly.

Well, if you’ve got a kid that’s extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker.

The only problem was that approaching Congress as parent approaches their recalcitrant and spoiled children, while a perfect analogy, has the same flaws as it would with one’s real children. It only works if they can’t go running to their mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles, or the neighbor down the street to get a handout.

While it was already proven in Reagan’s day that it was impossible to curb spending before reducing the government’s revenues – i.e., cutting taxes – the mistake was thinking in terms of Starve The Beast. We weren’t trying to starve a ravening beast, we were trying to starve Wimpy and Wimpy never starved.

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Reagan’s idea was economically and logically sound if America’s government was running on any normal and sensical form of economics. He just didn’t understand or was powerless to change the fact that the government runs on Wimpynomics and that whenever it grows hungry it will cheerfully borrow money for its next snack and stick we, the People with the tab.

Worse even, one of the underlying postulates of Wimpynomics is that, as long as the government can keep raising its debt ceiling and as long as they can coerce people, institutions, and nations to loan them money, Tuesday never comes.

Wimpy never starved but we, the People will in order to pay for our government’s excesses if things don’t change. Tuesday is just around the proverbial corner.

Tags: America | Cartoons | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Deficit | Economics | Economy | Politics | Reagan | Wimpy

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2012 at 9:31 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Obama, having finished with both his 50th birthday party / fundraising gala and it’s unavoidable physical consequences, decided once again to read from his teleprompter for the American people and his Liberals.  In it he tried to brush off Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the US government’s credit rating and to reassure everyone about the basic soundness of the American economy.

The One had spoken! S & P was wrong and everything was really fine. America’s government was entitled to a AAA rating; Warren Buffett even said so.

And the people listened. The Dow plunged a total of approximately 630 points and the NASDAQ lost 80 points by close of trading in the wake of Obama’s predictably arrogant and empty mouthings.

If the boy doesn’t have the honor to suicide or the decency to resign his office, he could, at a bare minimum, keep his jabbering mouth shut about any and all issues of substance.

Tags: America | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Deficit | Dow | Economics | Economy | NASDAQ | Obama | Politics | Spending | Standard and Poor | Wall Street

This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2011 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Standard & Poor’s rating agency has downgraded the US credit rating to AA+ from its top rank of AAA, reflecting concerns over the US federal government’s inability or unwillingness to curb its deficit spending.

This was an expected course of action and S & P, along with Moody’s, Fitch, the IMF, and even Italy, had warned that this would likely happen.

Well, the Obama presidency was supposed to be historic and this is historic.  Friday, August 5, 2011 marked S & P’s first ever downgrade rating for the US Government’s credit since S & P first granted it in 94 years ago in 1917.

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.

— Nikola G Swann, CFA, FRM
Primary Credit Analyst, Standard & Poor

As bad as that sounds, it actually gets worse. Standard & Poor – It’s also a safe bet that Moody’s and Fitch will concur – has, rightly I believe, not only downgraded America’s government’s credit score but predicts at negative outlook indicating the likelihood of an even further worsening credit rating in the near-term future.

The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.

This means that it’s unlikely that any of us alive today will see America’s credit rating restored to AAA and that we’ll almost assuredly live to see it downgraded further to AA and likely see it downgraded even further unless we can force the federal government to live within our means.

How Embarrassing

And it will take force – ballots, bullets, bombs, or some combination thereof – for Americans to correct the federal government’s addiction to raping our nation’s economy. Obama and his coterie of Liberals, while the most profligate of the wastrels, are just the latest downward step in the degeneration of America’s federal government. Hoover, FDR, Carter, and yes Bush Jr., along with their respective Congresses built and expanded the entitlement society and the nation’s deficit.

With so much inertia built up within it and so much bloated weight behind it, there’s no gentle way enact true change upon this system or its proponents before our nation is completely beggared and bankrupt. We, the People are left with only “short lever” means at our disposal – maximum force applied at the point of change. Sadly I suppose, this is inefficient and will be extremely painful, both for Americans and for the Liberals and their minority tenants.

Then again, it’s been Americans’ long-running misapplied compassion, complacency, and stupidity that has allowed them to bring our nation to this point and, “Stupid should be painful.”

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.  When faced with extremity, extremism in the cause of America is no vice; it is a virtue and holy duty.

Tags: 2012 Elections | America | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Economics | Economy | Entitlement Society | Fitch | IMF | Moody's | Obama | Politics | Poverty | Spending | Standard and Poor | Wealth

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 6th, 2011 at 9:10 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The Liberals and Progressives have stepped up their screaming of insults at and about Americans, especially the patriots of the TEA Party, and they’ve stepped up the hand wringing, whining, and moaning at and about Obama.

In their eyes Americans are “terrorists,” “extremists” and “hostage takers” and Obama is “weak,” “indecisive,” and a “turncoat.”

Essentially these domestic enemies hate Americans because Americans stood up for their principles and core values, did as they swore to do despite personal risk, and refused to gracefully capitulate on matters of national importance. Yet at the same time these Liberals and Progressives loath Obama for not doing so.

It’s all too easy to chalk it up to the normal and, by this point, dismissible Liberal hypocrisy. For the Leftists’ rank and file though this might be an erroneous conclusion.

While the people behind them and the politicians working for them are likely being cynically hypocritical, it’s quite possible that the Liberals’ myrmidons actually do have such a cognitive disconnect that they can’t even see the ridiculousness of their juxtaposed positions.

Tags: America | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Deficit | Ethics & Morality | Hypocrisy | Insanity | Leftists | Liberals | Politics | Progressives | Stupidity | Tea Parties

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.