Does Voter Fraud Explain 4 More Years of Obamanation?

take Philly out of Pennsylvania, the Big Apple out of New York, the Motor City out of Michigan, the Windy City out of Illinois, Cleveland out of Ohio, Milwaukee out of Wisconsin, St. Louis out of Missouri, etc., and a lot of blue states would instantly be red. What explains this pronounced and hugely significant partisan divide between urban and nonurban areas?

One obvious explanation for the overwhelming Democratic majorities in big cities is the Curley effect with the corresponding concentration of Democratic constituencies like welfare recipients and unions... The Curley effect has turned once-vibrant cities into economic basket cases . . . _Forbes

Election precincts that are controlled by unions and inner city activist groups are not likely to be open to neutral poll observers, and are more likely to generate curious results . . .

Consider the large number of precincts in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, and other Democratic Party controlled areas including Chicago, which returned vote tallies that are just short of statistically impossible.

Many precincts for Obama returned upward of 99% or greater numbers of votes compared to registered voters. Quite a handy feat. Other districts that had experienced actual population decline showed vote returns that did not reflect this decline in population. Dead voters on the prowl again, voting for Democrats just like in the old corrupt political machine days?

If anybody has been reading the news lately, there has been some gradually disturbing news coming out about voting fraud in the Presidential Election. In critical swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois there are a lot of precincts in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago which reported 100% of their votes cast for Obama. These add up to many 10's of thousands of votes for Obama and 0 for Romney. I repeat, 0 for Romney. I have read a number of articles about this and people knowlegable in Political Science and Statistics are starting to take notice of this.Statistically, even if among 10's of thousands of voters all wanted to vote fo Obama, it would not be possible to receive 100% of the vote because at least a few would make a mistake and vote incorrectly for Romney. Not to mention the fact that a least a few of those 10's of thousands might actually disagree with Obama. These types of election returns are only seen in countries run by dictators. I do not understand why this is not getting more attention. _Comment at NBC Chicago

These are the days of the corrupt Chicago Outfit. A combination of violent union thugs, corrupt politicians, radical inner city activist groups, faux environmnetalist greens, far-leftist zombies, and allied bona fide organised crime groups.

The Chicago alliance represents a "win at all costs" ethic which has no concern for the underlying well being of the society or the citizens living in the society.

The most recent US national elections represented a significant solidifying of the Chicago Outfit's grip on US politics. Expect an already massive dysfunction and corruption to expand.

Obama et Hollande: Twin Freaks of Different Mothers?

There is a freakish resemblance between the national leaders of France and the US. Each is an ideologue, first and foremost. Neither are bright enough to understand how their respective nations could grow more prosperous, nor do they particularly care. Thuggish political mobsters at heart, they are only interested in leeching the wealth and accomplishments of others, to the acclaim of the popular media.

Twin Freaks of Doom

In France, Hollande’s class war approach has been disastrous for the French economy. His tax policies have prompted the start of a mass exodus of wealthy individuals, who are taking their money elsewhere in Europe, including to Britain and Switzerland. In the words of Laurence Parisot, head of the French Employers’ Federation: “Our country is, alas, becoming less and less attractive with every passing month whilst our neighbours are trying to become more and more attractive.”

Unsurprisingly, economic growth has taken a hit, with falling consumer spending and plummeting market confidence. France is slipping back into recession in the final quarter of 2012, with Europe’s second largest economy now projected to miss its deficit target and barely grow at all in 2013.

France’s economic failure is a sharp warning to the United States if it goes down the same path. Ominously for Barack Obama, Hollande’s approval rating has fallen to just 36 percent, making him the most unpopular French president in recent history (at the six month mark). _Twin Freaks of Doom

Obama simply doesn't care. In fact, one of his missions in life since childhood, has been to punish the US and Europe for their "oppression of third world peoples over the past few centuries." Obama's mother drilled that lesson into his head, and the only father-figure Obama knew as a child -- Frank -- made sure the lesson stuck.

France is probably doomed. Hollande has no idea how to pull the country out of the hole he continues to dig for France. Obama is, if anything, less intelligent than Hollande, and driven more by revenge than by ideology or simple thuggish greed -- both of which Obama possesses in abundance.

It will be an interesting few years for both unfortunate countries, France and the US. Try not to be too vulnerable to miscreants of this nature. Large scale damages are a certainty. Doom for their respective countries is not out of the realm of possibility. Take care of yourselves.

Is "The Death of White America Theme" Being Overdone in Regard to the 2012 US Elections?

Probably the best piece so far on "The Death of White America" was published recently in the UK Daily Mail.

For Republicans struggling to understand their defeat at the polls, the most chilling statistic in this week’s presidential election was this: Mitt Romney won the biggest share of the white vote that any Republican White House contender ever has — and he still lost.

In an election battle that was defined as much as anything by race, Mitt Romney won the support of 59 per cent of whites, but just 27 per cent of Latinos, 26 per cent of Asian-Americans and 6 per cent of African-Americans.

Thirty years ago, being unpopular with ethnic minorities would hardly have stopped a white establishment candidate like Romney from trouncing Barack Obama. But back then, whites accounted for almost 90 per cent of voters. Now they make up just 72 per cent of the electorate, and that figure is shrinking by the year. _DailyMail

Much more at the link.

In the future -- if demographic trends continue -- it will be impossible for white candidates to win election in most areas of North America, without large numbers of votes from blacks, hispanics, and other ethnic "minorities." But in 2012, that is not necessarily the case. It may be a bit early in the demographic evolution of the US to proclaim "the death of white America."

Only about 54% of eligible voters actually voted. And of the white voters who did vote, almost 40% voted for Obama -- and against their own economic future. It is one thing to proclaim "the death of white America" when white voters voted in large numbers and for their own future benefit -- and still lost. But that was not the case in 2012, when large numbers of white voters did not vote, or even voted against the futures of themselves and their progeny.

We should also not overlook voter fraud, which played a very large part in the final vote tallies brought in by Democratic Party controlled precincts. If you look at large Democrat controlled cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, etc etc it is clear that more votes were registered than were actually cast in a valid manner.

As we mentioned here before, it is not clear whether fraudulent vote counts were high enough to tip the electoral college totals. But it is more than likely that fraudulent votes tipped the popular vote count in favour of Obama.

There are many reasons that Obama will be able to continue his corrupt and destructive reign over the US government for another 4 years. But it would be best not to draw exaggerated or premature conclusions from the election results.

For the near future, a better use of the time of US conservatives, centrists, and libertarians, would be to toughen up election laws to prevent future election fraud as much as possible.

So a Group of Arse-Heads Get Together and Decide to Put Another Arse-Head in Charge

So how is this year's US election different from earlier elections?

There have been other close elections that illustrate a deeply divided US electorate. But emotions have been higher this year than in most previous elections, with large numbers of black Americans promising to riot or assassinate Romney if the Republican were elected. The element of designed racial division on the part of the Obama campaign made this year's election a more dangerous battleground.

This year, a lot of problems were intentionally and successfully swept under the rug over a period of several months, to avoid getting voters upset with the ruling regime.

The news media were largely responsible for shaping the battlefield, and will have to bear final responsibility -- perhaps on a personal level, in some cases.

The US has been getting in deeper and deeper trouble, the longer that Obama has been in office, and too many arseheads appear determined to stay the course no matter where it leads.

US blacks are the biggest losers -- a fact made exquisitely poignant by the role that they themselves played in putting themselves in this position.

Putin's Russia has to be happy, since anything that weakens the US helps to strengthen Russia's relative position in the world.

China has to be ambivalent, at best. Four more years of Obama may put the US irrevocably on the road to default of its debt -- much of which is held by China.

Europe is another big loser, likewise poignantly so due to Europe's long unrequited love affair with the narcissistic US ruler.

Was the election rigged? That is the wrong question. The question is: How badly was the election rigged? No one will ever know the answer to that, although it is almost certain that Romney actually won the popular vote -- if one could remove all the dead voters, multiple voters, mentally incompetent voters, and general ballot stuffing and vote manipulation.

The electoral college reality will have to remain unknown due to the distributed and modular / cellular nature of the cheating that occurred across the battleground states.

The US is not quite as bad as Cuba or Venezuela. But it is well on the road.

Obama Drives a Stake Through the Hearts of Black Americans

Despite very high expectations from the outset, the Obama presidency has not been kind to African Americans.

The October employment numbers deepened the gloom among African Americans and those (including the Via Meadia team) who believe that the United States as a whole cannot progress as it should unless African Americans are getting ahead too. As a report from Think Progress reminds us, in October, African American unemployment rose almost a full percentage point to 14.3 percent.

...unemployment is only part of the story. America’s Black middle class is facing a crisis of historic proportions. African Americans were among the biggest losers in the housing bubble; well intentioned but ill advised policy changes intended to get more low income families and marginal households into home ownership kicked in just in time to lure African American families into the housing market at the peak of the bubble. The loss of wealth and savings has been nothing short of catastrophic; decades of progress in building net worth for middle class and lower middle class minority families have been wiped out since 2007.

... if President Obama wins reelection, his team will have to come to grips with the devastation the last four years have brought to his most loyal supporters and, one hopes, begin to think seriously and realistically about policy changes that might do some good. _Via Meadia

Black Americans are voting for Obama in droves -- although a few have woken up to the debilitating effects of the Obama vision since the 2008 hysteria. Those few are quietly hoping that Mr. Obama is removed from his Peter Principle Position, so that blacks can begin putting the pieces of their lives back together again.

At least American Blacks can be grateful that Obama has not done to them what he did to the US Libyan ambassador.

The Obama regime is a lesson in designed incompetence via ideology. There is much to be learned from a thorough dissection of the legions of missteps taken by Obama and his crony minions. But a wiser use of time would be to put Obama and his bamboozling shenanigans behind us -- all of us.

Illinois, Obama's Home Base, is a Basket Case

Obama's home town of Chicago is among the murder capitals of the US. It is corrupt from top to bottom, in debt, and in thrall to public unions and organised crime. Government worker unions and their generous pay / pension / benefit packages are helping to drag Chicago down, and the entire state of Illinois with it.

Illinois has the lowest credit rating of the 50 states and has America’s second-biggest public debt per capita, $9,624, including state and local borrowing. Only New York State’s debt is bigger, at $13,840 per capita. But Illinois has not been able to use much of the borrowed money to keep its roads, bridges and schools in good working order, because years of shoddy fiscal practices have taken a heavy toll, the report said.

“Illinois has been doing back flips on a high wire, without a net,” the task force said in the report, which was issued in Chicago.

...Nearly two-thirds of the Illinois state government’s $58 billion in direct debt consists of bonds the government issued to cover retirement payments for workers, including a $10 billion pension obligation bond that broke all previous records in 2003.

Yet despite all that borrowing, Illinois’ public pension system is still in tatters. In fact, its total pension shortfall is conservatively estimated at $85 billion. Recent changes that raised the retirement age for new workers and limited the pensions that future workers can earn have not reduced the existing obligations.

The task force said that further reductions in pension benefits appear inevitable, though legally difficult, because the state has promised more than it can deliver.

...“Retirees may lose their pensions as the funds dwindle, low-income and disabled people may lose their health care as costs escalate, and citizens and businesses seeking a stable environment may face steep and sudden tax increases,” the report said. _NYT

What Obama helped to do to Illinois, he is causing to happen to the US in a more forceful fashion -- using executive orders and the US executive branch of over-bloated regulatory bureaucracies.

Illinois' problems are becoming the entire nations' problems. California and New York are in the same category. Michigan is lining up to join the other three.

4 More Years of Obama Makes Violent Social Turmoil Virtually Inevitable

Grice looks at some examples from history where currency debasement led to a complete breakdown of the social fabric of communities like the Roman Empire, France during the revolutionary period at the end of the 18th century, and Weimar Germany.

In every case, citizens turned on each other as a sharply devalued currency led to a breakdown of trust between members of society.

A perhaps lesser-known incident that Grice brings to light, however, is a period in Britain during the late 16th and early 17th centuries when the country was rocked by witch trials.

 

Société Générale

..."All I see is more of the same . . ."

  _Dylan Grice

Los Angeles 1992

The modern equivalent of witch trials is ethnic, race, and gang riots, such as cropped up in 1992 from Los Angeles to Toronto (mostly Los Angeles).

Reginald Denny's Diversity Celebration

If Obama is defeated in the November US elections, some degree of racial violence is anticipated. But if Obama is re-elected and allowed to complete the job of destroying the glue of social cohesion and trust along with the global reserve currency -- the US dollar -- one should expect much much worse, and over a much wider area.

As Dylan Grice recommends in the linked piece above, it is time to invest in safe havens.

Obama: A Whimsical Destructor You Couldn't Make Up If You Tried

Obama does not live in the same world as everyone else. Obama is constantly inventing his world, every moment of every day. You couldn't invent Obama or Obama's world. No one could, no one but Obama.

"When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history.1 And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90% of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren't paid for,2 as a consequence of tax cuts that weren't paid for,3 a prescription drug plan that was not paid for,4 and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.5 "Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10% of this increase in the deficit,6 and we have actually seen the federal government grow at a slower pace than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower, in fact, substantially lower than the federal government grew under either Ronald Reagan or George Bush.7" ***

Footnote No. 1: Either Mr. Obama inherited the largest deficit in American history or he won the 1944 election, but both can't be true. The biggest annual deficit the modern government has ever run was in 1943, equal to 30.3% of the economy, to mobilize for World War II. The next biggest years were the following two, at 22.7% and 21.5%, to win it. The deficit in fiscal 2008 was a mere 3.2% of GDP. The deficit in fiscal 2009, which began on October 1, 2008 and ran through September 2009, soared to 10.1%, the highest since 1945. Mr. Obama wants to blame all of that on his predecessor, and no doubt the recession that began in December 2007 reduced revenues and increased automatic spending "stabilizers" like jobless insurance. But Mr. Obama conveniently forgets a little event in February 2009 known as the "stimulus" that increased spending by a mere $830 billion above the normal baseline. The recession ended in June 2009, but spending has still kept rising. The President has presided over four years in a row of deficits in excess of $1 trillion, and the spending baseline going forward into his second term is nearly $1.1 trillion more than in fiscal 2007. Federal spending as a share of GDP will average 24.1% over his first term including 2013. Even if you throw out fiscal 2009 and blame that entirely on Mr. Bush, the Obama spending average will be 23.8% of GDP. That compares to a post-WWII average of a little under 20%. Spending under Mr. Bush averaged 20.1% including 2009, and 19.6% if that year is left out.

Footnotes No. 2 through 4: [Obama continues] to claim that the main causes of the current fiscal mess are tax rates established in, er, 2001 and 2003 and the post-9/11 wars on terror. But by 2006 and 2007, those tax rates were producing revenue of 18.2% and 18.5% of GDP, near historic norms. Another quandary for Mr. Obama's apologists is that he has endorsed nearly all of these policies. The 2003 Medicare drug benefit wasn't offset by tax hikes or spending cuts, but Democrats expanded the program as part of ObamaCare. The President also extended all the Bush tax rates in 2010 for two more years in the name of helping the economy, and he now wants to continue them for people earning under $200,000, which is where 71% of their "cost" resides. The Iraq campaign was won and beginning to be wound down when he took office, and he himself surged more troops in Afghanistan.

Footnote No. 5: Mr. Obama keeps dining out on the excuse of the recession, but that ended halfway through his first year. The main deficit problems since 2009 are a permanently higher spending base (see Footnote No. 1) and the slowest economic recovery in modern history. Revenues have remained below 16% of the economy, compared to 18% to 19% in a normal expansion.

The 2008 crisis is long over. The crisis now is Mr. Obama's non-recovery.

Footnote No. 6: Even at face value, Mr. Obama's suggestion that he is "only" responsible for 10% of what the government does is ludicrous. Note that in addition to his stimulus, what he calls "emergency actions" include his new health-care entitlement that will cost taxpayers $200 billion per year when fully implemented and grow annually at 8%, even using low-ball assumptions.

But the larger point concerns executive leadership. Every President "inherits" a government that was built over generations, which he chooses to change, or not to change, to suit his priorities. Mr. Obama chose to see the government he inherited and grow it faster than any President since LBJ.

The pre-eminent political question now is whether to reform the government we have to make it affordable going forward, or to keep growing the government and raise taxes to finance it, if that is even possible. Mr. Obama favors the second option, though he pretends he can merely tax the rich to do it. Nobody who has looked honestly at the numbers believes that—not his own Simpson-Bowles commission and not the Congressional "super committee" he sanctioned but then worked to undermine. At every turn he has demagogued the Romney-Ryan proposals to modernize the entitlement state so it is affordable, and he personally blew up the "grand bargain" House Speaker John Boehner was willing to strike last summer.

Footnote No. 7: Mr. Obama's posture as the tightest skinflint since Eisenhower is a tutorial in how to dissemble with statistics. The growth rate seems low because he's measuring from the end of fiscal 2009, after a one-year spending increase of $535 billion. That is the year of his stimulus and thus spending is growing off a much higher base. The real annual pace of government growth is closer to 5%, and that doesn't count ObamaCare.

*** In another news-making bit with "60 Minutes," which the program decided not to air, Mr. Obama conceded that "Do we see sometimes us going overboard in our campaign, mistakes that are made, areas where there's no doubt that somebody could dispute how we are presenting things, that happens in politics."

Note the passive voice, as if the President's re-election campaign is disembodied from the President. If Mr. Obama's campaign seems dishonest enough that even Mr. Obama is forced to admit it, this is because it's coming from the top. _WSJ

President Obama is more than a bit surreal. He may be the first fractal president, the first complete presidential construct. But as long as he is in the running against anyone outside the "progressive coalition," expect the US news media to cover up his mistakes, to obscure his obvious deceptions and self-deceptions, and to promote him as a gift from the heavens to an undeserving planet and nation.

This level of whimsical dissembling slathered over a reign of blatant destruction and stagnation, will have consequences down the road.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Advice to Obama on Jobs Formation

President Obama has had a disastrous effect on US jobs and household income. If Obama were open to constructive advice, what would you tell him?

Here is one man's list of positive steps Obama might take, if he were serious about the problem:

Measure No. 1: Prove that you are not anti-business. Rebuke your National Labor Relations Board for persecuting Boeing for building a plant in a right-to-work state, place the burden on regulatory agencies to prove that the benefits of new regulations exceed their costs using realistic estimates of benefits, redress for the blackmail of secured Chrysler creditors during theDetroit bailout, and pass free trade agreements that have already been negotiated. Whatever you do, cease and desist talk of “you did not build that.” That insult revealed your true feelings about the business community, more than any other of your public statements.

Measure No. 2: Do everything in your power to reduce energy costs. Lower energy costs create jobs by reducing production costs and improving international competitiveness. Stop stalling and make drilling leases available on government land, call off frivolous environmentalist attacks on new fracking technology, and cease and desist on your plans to regulate coal fired electricity out of business.  Drop ethanol mandates for gasoline.

Measure No. 3: Create conditions that encourage businesses to hire and the unemployed to seek and accept jobs. Do not extend unemployment benefits beyond a generous date certain, lower the minimum wage especially for youths, and stop the rampant approvals by the Social Security Administration and the administrative courts of lifetime disability for minor illnesses, both physical and mental. Withdraw executive orders that overturn the signal achievement of the Clinton Administration, the welfare reform act of 1986.

Measure No. 4: Reduce uncertainty of households and businesses caused by unsustainable deficits and uncertain future tax liabilities. Extend all of the Bush tax cuts  until Congressional  passage of  broad tax reforms that eliminate all tax preferences and lower tax rates, eliminate the unnecessary and duplicative federal programs identified by the Government Accounting Office, bring  the proposals of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission to Congress for serious discussion, include the one hundred trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security in the budget deficit to show the urgency of entitlement reform, and replace  the convoluted and partisan Obama Care bill with bi-partisan health-care reform. Until these fundamental issues are addressed, business will not hire and people will not spend.

Measure No. 5:  Free the housing market from government intervention to work off excess inventories quickly. Government-decreed mortgage modifications, subsidies, and threats against mortgage companies prevent the housing market from finding its bottom from which recovery begins. Announce credible plans for the liquidation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Maeto remove the federal government from the mortgage business, where it does not belong.

Measure No. 6: Cease and desist promoting crony-capitalist government-private partnerships that serve political agendas rather than earning profits and creating jobs. Let private markets, rather than the energy department, allocate capital to companies that make products people wish to buy, rather than to Solyndras, Volts, and other green energy boondoggles. Let regular courts navigate failing companies like GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy proceedings so that they can emerge as competitive companies unbeholden to organized labor or government diktat.

Measure No. 7: Seek and accept the resignations of die-hard Keynesian advisors behind the failed trillion dollar stimulus and who favor more stimulus.  They are out of touch with modern economic analysis’s consensus that temporary fiscal measures are ineffective. Keynesian advisors have made the President look foolish and inept with ludicrous arguments that more expenditures on transfers for food stamps and unemployment benefits create jobs and generate recovery. (I guess we should all go on food stamps to promote recovery).

If Obama had enacted these policies (which would have garnered strong Republican support) a year ago, a strong recovery would be underway, the U. S. economy would be on its way to regaining its competitive edge, and jobs would be expanding. He would be sailing to an easy electoral victory by reaching across the aisles to get things done for the American people.

Instead, with two months until the election, Obama presides over the worst economic recovery in history, despite a catastrophic increase in federal debt under his administration. The unemployment rate is stuck at 8.3 percent, of which 40 percent are long term unemployed. The 13 million unemployed are joined by another 10 million, who are underemployed or have given up looking for a job. The poverty rate is the highest since the mid 1960s, and a half million workers have joined the ranks of the disabled, many as their unemployment benefits expired.

Obama’s enactment of a real jobs program a year ago would have been the equivalent of Bill Clinton’s 1986: “We must end welfare as we know it.” Clinton was a pragmatic politician who knew where the center lay.  Obama does not. He will not budge in his ideology or support of his special interests. His intransigence will likely cost him reelection.

In his stump speeches, Obama asks the crowd: “Do you want to go back to the failed policies of the past?”  Well, his economic policies have failed, and he is not offering any new ideas. In asking for votes, he is promising more of the same “failed policies.”_Paul Roderick Gregory in Forbes

Anyone who has studied the formation of Obama's mindset -- from his earliest memories onward -- will understand that Obama is not open to the advice offered above. He has other plans in mind, which do not allow for any strengthening of the US private sector, vis a vis the government.

Obama's Cronyism Destroys America's Future

Previously published on Al Fin blog

US Incomes Drop More In Obama "Recovery" Than During the Great Recession

Wall Street Journal

American incomes declined more in the three-year expansion that started in June 2009 than during the longest recession since the Great Depression, according an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by Sentier Research LLC.

Median household income fell 4.8 percent on an inflation- adjusted basis since the recession ended in June 2009, more than the 2.6 percent drop during the 18-month contraction, the research firm’s Gordon Green and John Coder wrote in a report today. Household income is 7.2 percent below the December 2007 level, the former Census Bureau economic statisticians wrote.

“Almost every group is worse off than it was three years ago, and some groups had very large declines in income,” Green, who previously directed work on the Census Bureau’s income and poverty statistics program, said in a phone interview today. “We’re in an unprecedented period of economic stagnation.” _SFGate

This may be why more and more US children and adults aspire to become cronies and parasites, rather than doctors, engineers, and architects. More in the video below:

Children these days may be dumbed down, but they are not totally stupid. They understand that in an economy run by Obama and the Chicago mob, being a crony may be their best opportunity to succeed.

Crony Chronicles website growing in relevance

The True Obama Legacy: A Widespread Misery

Unemployment is up in 44 US states.  No Improvement seen nationally in 2012.

Unemployment jumped to 8.3 percent in Alabama from 7.8 percent in June, and climbed to 7.7 percent in Alaska from 7.2 percent, today’s report showed. Nevada, where the rate rose to 12 percent from 11.6 percent, remained the state with the highest level of joblessness in the country.

Rhode Island, at 10.8 percent, was second, followed by California at 10.7 percent.

North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, even as it rose to 3 percent from 2.9 percent the prior month.

Two states, Idaho and Rhode Island, showed a drop in their unemployment rates. Joblessness was unchanged in four states.

Unemployment in New York rose to 9.1 percent, the highest since 1983, and payrolls dropped by 3,700 workers.

The jobless rate has exceeded 8 percent for 42 consecutive months, the longest stretch in the post-World War II era. _Mish

Exactly as predicted by Al Fin back in 2008, the legacy of Obama's policies has been a reduction in opportunity, jobs, and income. It is becoming more difficult in the US to find jobs, to buy a house, and to support a family.

If Americans re-elect this incompetent clown poseur of a president, they will deserve their increasingly desperate future.

Obama Misspoke: It's the Public Sector That's Doing Fine

President Obama recently claimed in the middle of a big press conference, that "the private sector is doing fine." Oddly, Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said exactly the same thing six months ago, when pressing to hire more unionised government workers. But really, just how would those two big-government diehards know whether the private sector was doing well? They are so deep up the government colon they wouldn't know a healthy private sector from an outer space alien invasion.

Obama and [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid have it precisely backward: It’s the public sector that’s doing fine. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for government workers last month was just 4.2 percent (up slightly from 3.9 percent a year ago). Compare that to private-sector industries such as construction (14.2 percent unemployment), leisure and hospitality services (9.7 percent), agriculture (9.5 percent), professional and business services (8.5 percent) and wholesale and retail trade (8.1 percent). As Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute points out, the public-sector unemployment rate “is the lowest of any industry or class of worker, even including the growing energy industry.” If the rest of Americans enjoyed the same unemployment rate as government workers, Obama would be cruising to reelection.

Meanwhile, the private sector continues to struggle under the weight of Obamacare, the spiraling national debt, the $46 billion in annual costs of the new regulations imposed by Obama, and the looming threat of “taxmageddon” — when, come January 2013, the private economy will get hit with hundreds of billions in higher taxes.

The result? In the first quarter of this year, private-sector GDP grew by a meager 2.6 percent. That is certainly better than the pathetic 1.2 percent growth rate last year, but compared to previous recoveries, it is anemic. When Ronald Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, private-sector GDP grew by 6.5 percent — 2 1 / 2 times the current rate. That’s why Reagan was able to declare “It’s Morning in America again” while Obama can’t.

Obama and Reid may think 2.6 percent private-sector GDP growth is “just fine,” but the 23 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or have quit looking for work don’t share their complacency. Unless Obama wants to put them all in government jobs (which he might), the only way to help these Americans find work is to reduce barriers for job creators in the private sector. The election will likely hinge on who Americans better trust to do that.

That is why Obama’s gaffe is so damaging to his prospects for reelection. It feeds a growing public perception — which is being actively cultivated by the Romney campaign — that when it comes to the economy, Obama is out of his depth and hostile to private business. _WaPo Opinion

This mentality of government uber alles -- an amorphous and swelling general dependency upon government for more and more essentials while at the same time as government budgets are being destroyed by out of control government union pensions, pay, benefits, and double dipping -- is killing state and local governments. Of course, if these regional governments could print money -- as Obama's and Reid's central government can -- they might be able to hold out against the taxpayer revolt a little bit longer.

The following video provides a counter-point to this ruinous mentality of government dependency and unlimited government growth. Meet Emily O'Neill, of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (h/t Daniel Mitchell)



Some people believe it will take something on the order of a "civil war" to clean out the nests of vermin, vipers, and vultures out of all the regional governments.

At that point, it will be time to look to the central government. But before the central government can be reformed, Obama and his band of corrupt and merry radicals simply have to go.

Democratic Party Suffers Injury to A Majour Support

The US Democratic Party is largely supported by Government Employee Unions, Trial Lawyers, Big Faux Environmentalist lobbies -- and to a lesser degree by large Wall Street firms, academics, celebrities, and media conglomerates.

Government Employee Unions suffered a grievous injury last week, when voters in Wisconsin and California elected to make it more difficult for the unions to hold taxpayers hostage at the point of a gun.

The voters of Wisconsin know that the Democrat Party is for the most part owned and operated by corrupt public-employee unions that want to suck every last dollar out of their pockets to fund bankrupt pensions and health care plans for themselves and their members.

The voters of Wisconsin have realized that these unions and the politicians who support them are literally stealing from them and endangering the economic future of their children. ...Americans are now choosing self-responsibility and fiscal sanity over the suicidal power grabs of the public-employee unions and their political protectors. Not only will these corrupt public-employee unions continue to take a pounding across the country but come November, Obama will too. _IBD

Voters in San Diego and San Jose sent a similar message to their state and municipal government employee unions.

US states, counties, and municipalities are beginning to suffer, as their budgets are being squeezed by extortionate union contracts. Libraries must be closed, while at the same time important city, county and state workers must be laid off or cannot be hired.

US President Obama has supported the quasi-criminal government unions in their fight against the taxpayers. As taxpayers wake up to what is being done to them by government unions, it is likely that they will eventually wake up to Obama's participation in their economic rape. Whether such an awakening will occur before the election in November depends to a large degree upon the lengths to which the US media will go to protect their favoured politician in the White House.

After Adding $4 Trillion to the US National Debt, Still No Recovery

After over 3 years of desperate borrowing, taxing, spending, and over-regulating, the US Obama administration still has nothing of substance to show, in terms of an economic recovery for average voters and workers. Instead, Obama seems to have taken the workforce back to the age of the Jimmy Carter recession aftermath, in terms of worker participation in the job market.

EM

During the most recent recession, the employment-population ratio fell farther than it had during any other recession in the post-World War II era.

If these were normal economic times, it would have been reasonable to expect a huge surge in hiring by now.

But we have not seen that.

Instead, the employment rate in the United States has been remarkably flat for more than two years.

So Barack Obama should not even begin to say anything at all about a "recovery" until the employment rate at least breaks the 59 percent barrier. _EM

As long as the Obama administration uses "emergency stimulus" funds to pay off political cronies, and conducts an all-out war against the US private sector and energy industries, the dismal news will keep coming.

Mr. Obama's ideology is poorly suited for leading a prosperous economy. His radicalism and deep anti-market sentiment fitted him to the profession of corrupt radical community organiser in the slums of Chicago. But as leader of the world's only superpower, Mr. Obama is a clownish and distracted millstone around the nation's neck.

Obama Fuels Boom in Guns and Ammunition Industry

Buyers in record numbers are flooding into gun stores, retailers say. Ammo, too, is flying off the shelves. The reasons for the spike, last seen in 2009, include fears that a second Obama administration might restrict gun ownership and the popularity of TV shows devoted to doomsday preparation and killing zombies. _ABCNews

ABC News
The boom in gun and ammunition sales actually began in 2008, when it looked as if Obama might win his first presidential election. Since Senator Obama became President-elect Obama, the boom has continued. Now with Americans looking at the dismal prospect of a second Obama administration, the urge to "arm up" is becoming simply irresistable for more and more.

FBI background checks on gun buyers - a key barometer of civilian firearm and ammunition sales - have grown dramatically since 2008. So have federal excise tax collections on guns and ammo, up 45 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to the Treasury Department.

Background checks through the end of February rose 12 percent from last year, according to figures from the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. _Press-Herald

The news media is hesitant to credit Obama with the economic boom in this small segment of the American economy, but most ordinary people understand where the arrow of causation points.

President Obama is single handedly responsible for the ongoing record setting avalanche of gun and ammunition sales all across America. This is because rank and file Americans do not trust the president and his clear and present anti-gun team. _Ted Nugent

Obama has done almost everything he can to destroy the US private sector economy. It was not his fault that the shale oil & gas industries were beginning to boom at the same time he moved into the White House. The rising economic tide for the states rich in shale oil & gas production has helped keep the overall US economy from sinking underwater, but that occurred in spite of Obama's policies.

The boom in gun & ammunition sales, on the other hand, has been an accurate interpretation of Obama's underlying intent, by ordinary Americans. Obama sees strength in the private sector economy as a direct threat to total central control of the country. He likewise sees private sector armaments as a direct threat to total governmental administrative control of citizen activity.

Obama's team tried to use the recent shooting of thug-behaving Trayvon Martin as a cause celebre in the anti-gun crusade. But that mis-cue is slowly collapsing around the US Democratic Party overall, as the evidence increasingly points toward Trayvon himself as the cause of his own death.

Look closely for the Obama team to attempt to generate another incident which might work more effectively toward their ends.

US National Debt Infographic

[Via: Amazing penny facts about the US debt]
View a larger copy of the US debt infographic along with the code to add this infographic to your own website.
Forex Forum via Zero Hedge

It is difficult to imagine the size of the US debt -- which has grown exponentially since the inauguration of US President Obama.

There is no end to trillion dollar deficits as long as the Obama administration runs the executive, and the US Democratic Party runs at least one house of congress.

As long as US government officials cannot conceive of any parts of government which should be abolished or be cut in size, the destructive growth in government debt and public sector strangulation of the private sector will continue.

An ongoing demographic decline toward the Idiocracy is not helping matters. Dumb electorates elect corrupt governments. How could it be any other way?

Obama: Hiding the Unemployed Just to Jack the Numbers

There’s so much hidden unemployment in the labor force that even Friday’s improved jobs numbers failed to decrease the official unemployment rate of 8.3 percent.

In February, the private sector added 233,000 new jobs, but 476,000 non-working people began looking for a job. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) rules, only by seeking work did those individuals officially become unemployed.

That’s because BLS does not count workers as unemployed unless they have actively searched for work in the last four weeks. As a result, millions of non-working people are not counted as unemployed by BLS officials.

The statistical quirk is the flip side of the administration’s effort to minimize the high level of unemployment for the last three years, and it may hinder progressives’ efforts to claim victory on the jobs front in November.

If more non-working people begin searching for jobs, “the economy is going to have to create an average of 246,000 jobs between now and November, just to keep the unemployment rate at eight percent, and so we are not even at that pace yet,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, an economist and the president of the American Action Forum.

If the BLS rules weren’t in place, the current unemployment rate would be somewhere around 11 percent, analysts say. The unemployment number would be as high as 15 percent if part-time workers seeking full-time employment were recognized in the unemployment rolls.

...For some people, “it appears that we are looking at a world where expectations are so low that 8.3 percent unemployment is okay,” Holtz-Eakin told The Daily Caller.

“It shouldn’t be [because] there are millions of Americans out there who would like to get jobs and have those jobs cover their monthly bills... _DC

Obama is hiding millions of unemployed people, just to keep the unemployment rate at a miserable 8.3%. If those unemployed begin to show up suddenly, driving even the artificially minimised official unemployment rate even higher, what will Obama do? Adopt the Auschwitz solution, and hide them away in concentration camps? Or worse?

The real world would be a terrible disappointment to the idealistic Barack Obama, if he were able to see it as it is. He deserves much better, of course. Try not to get in the way of Mr. Obama's vision of what he thinks the world is really like.

Obama's Kiss of Death: How far Down Can the US Go Under Obama?

During his early days in office, President Obama promised to save 4 million jobs and bring the US unemployment rate down to 6% by 2012. Instead, many millions of jobs were lost, and the real US unemployment rate is at least 11%, with an underemployment rate above 20%. Under Obama, how much worse will things get?

The above chart shows the “labor force participation rate.” This statistic represents the share of working-age Americans who are either employed or unemployed but looking for work. It is not a pretty picture. Only 63.7% of working-age Americans are currently in the workforce – the lowest in almost 29 years!

To put it another way, 36.3% of working-age Americans do not have a job and are not even looking.

After 3 years of failure, it’s time to try something that will work. Let’s ramp up energy production. Let’s cut away government red tape that slows down job creation. And let’s design new tax code that is simpler, flatter, and fairer. _Source

Meanwhile, in Egypt and Syria, Obama's kiss of death blessing for the "Arab Spring" is bearing a predictably rotten fruit:

During the halcyon days of the protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Western media outlets were filled with lofty predictions: the end of autocracy in the Middle East, the rise of the Arab twitterati youth, and the emergence of a liberal majority in the Middle East that would wipe away decades of tyranny and oppression. One year later, with repression in Egypt, fighting in Libya, and civil war in Syria, these predictions have been revealed for what they were: wishful thinking marred by an absence of critical thought about the region and its history. The reality is much uglier. _WRM

This is the developing anarchy under the benevolent umbrella of Obama's general good intentions, a la Saul Alinsky.

How far down can the world go under Obama?

The Real US Unemployment Rate Under Obama is 11%

When the recession supposedly officially ended in June, 2009, the labor force participation rate was still 65.7% [Just as when Obama took office in Jan 2009 _ ed.].

In the latest, much celebrated, unemployment report, the labor force participation rate had plummeted to 63.7%, the most rapid decline in U.S. history. That means that under President Obama nearly 5 million Americans have fled the workforce in hopeless despair. _Forbes

In a dishonest government, official statistics can be tweaked to say anything the regime wants them to say. It is fair to say that the current US administration is far to the dishonest side of the spectrum, so we are not particularly surprised to see dishonest and misleading employment statistics coming from this particular administration. We are now forced to wonder if everything we are being told by Washington is a lie.

The trick is that when those 5 million are not counted as in the work force, they are not counted as unemployed either. They may desperately need and want jobs. They may be in poverty, as many undoubtedly are, with America suffering today more people in poverty than in the entire half century the Census Bureau has been counting poverty. But they are not even counted in that 8.3% unemployment rate that Obama and his media cheerleaders were so tirelessly celebrating last week.

If they were counted, the unemployment rate today would be a far more realistic 11%, better reflecting the suffering in the real economy under Obamanomics.

Just last month, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported finding 243,000 new jobs, they also reported in the same release that an additional 1.2 million workers had dropped out of the work force altogether, giving up hope under Obama.

...Some additional facts highlight how misleading the reported unemployment rate, and the political rhetoric around it, can be. One year ago, 99 million Americans were unemployed or otherwise not working, and the unemployment rate was 9.1%. Today, while the reported unemployment rate is 8.3%, over 100 million Americans are unemployed or otherwise not working.

In January, 2009, 11.6 million Americans were unemployed, with 23% of those unemployed for more than 6 months. By January, 2012, 12.8 million were unemployed, with 43% of those out of work more than 6 months.

At the official end of the recession in June, 2009, America was 12.6 million jobs short of full employment. By January, 2012, we were 15.2 million jobs short, falling behind by another 244,000 in that month alone.

The time has come to begin to raise questions about the precipitous decline in the labor force assumed by BLS. Are the career bureaucrats there partial to President Obama, and favorable towards promoting his political chances for reelection? Or has the Obama Administration placed someone in a leadership slot over at the BLS or the unemployment statistics branch that is imposing this assumed sharp decline? Because of the oddness of this record setting decline, coinciding with President Obama’s ascension to office, these questions bear further investigation. _Forbes

This government is rotten to its core, but it is so huge that there is very little that anyone or any group can do about it. Even with the election of a competent and conscientious new president and congress, the dead weight of governmental bureaucracies would prevent meaningful change in the direction of honest and responsible government.

It is a problem that will require a great deal of thought.

Heavy Insider Trading in US Markets Points to Slowdown

...on the theory that corporate insiders — officers, directors and largest shareholders — know more about their firms’ prospects than do the rest of us, it can’t be good news that they are selling at such a heavy pace.

Consider a ratio calculated by Argus Research of the number of shares insiders have sold in the open market to the number that they have bought. Last week, according to the latest issue of Argus’ service, the Vickers Weekly Insider Report, this sell-to-buy ratio stood at 5.77-to-1. And among insiders at companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this ratio was even more lopsided at 8.2-to-1.

Making these recent readings even more worrisome, according to Argus Research, is that they came on markedly stepped-up activity among corporate insiders. This increases our confidence that the ratio accurately reflects prevailing sentiment among a broad cross-section of the insiders.

In fact, Vickers is so alarmed by recent insider trends that this week it is selling big chunks of its two model portfolios and putting the proceeds in cash. After the sales, its “Insider Model Portfolio” will be nearly 30% in cash and its “Risk Model Portfolio” will be more than 60% in cash. _Marketwatch

Watch and see. Equities have never been a particularly good long-term bet since late summer of 2008, when it became highly likely that Barack Obama would be the next US President. The outlook has gone downhill from there.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.