What's really scary is Obama's popularity is more about his personality than his policies. Many of his supporters don't agree with his policies, but they like him - so they support him.
That can be beneficial in diplomatic relations if he could stop bowing and apologizing long enough, but domestic policy requires a POLICY that works. And even some of his supporters don't think his policies work.
If there were a textbook list of actions one could take to weaken a currency, the US (alongside most other developed nations) would be following it to the letter. It has cut interest rates to a whisker above zero; it has engaged in quantitative easing, pumping cash directly into the economy; it has committed to spending trillions of dollars on a fiscal stimulus package designed to pull the country out of recession; it has pledged tacitly to support its stricken banks so that no major institution is allowed to collapse. In any normal circumstances, actions like these would hammer a currency.
...
Still, with every passing week, the conjunction of different warning signals for the US currency seems to evolve and intensify. Recently, the alarm bell ringing most loudly has been the increase in yields on US Treasuries – a sign, some fear, of acute nervousness among institutional investors about the sheer scale of the cash the Obama administration is planning to borrow in coming years. The Federal Reserve's meeting next week is likely to be watched attentively by everyone with a stake in the game, as the central bank indicates whether it is planning to plough more dollars of newly-created cash into the economy.
While most U.S. voters still blame the Bush Administration for the nation’s economic problems, a growing number are inclined to blame President Barack Obama. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of voters now say the country’s economic problems are caused more by the policies Obama has put in place. That’s a 12-point jump from a month ago. Fifty-four percent (54%) still say the country’s economic woes are due to the recession Obama inherited from President Bush. That figure is down eight points from 62% from early June. By a two-to-one margin, voters also have more confidence in themselves than in the president when it comes to the economy. This marks a significant shift from just after Obama took office. Sixty percent (60%) of voters now trust their own economic judgment more than the president’s. In early February, 49% had more trust in themselves while 39% trusted the president more. Now only 30% trust Obama more when it comes to the economic issues facing the nation.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -1. Today is the second straight day the President’s rating has been below zero (see trends). Among those who are politically liberal, 64% Strongly Approve. So do 40% of moderates. However 61% of conservatives Strongly Disapprove (see other recent demographic highlights). The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern
I saw the Hall of the Presidents today, at the Magical Kingdom. It was a special early preview for passholders only. They had the BO audioanimatronic doing the Oath Of Office and talking about a "government of the people".
I saw the Hall of the Presidents today, at the Magical Kingdom. It was a special early preview for passholders only. They had the BO audioanimatronic doing the Oath Of Office and talking about a "government of the people".
Don't most socialist and/or communist states have "people" or "people's" somewhere in their name?
Today's Rasmussen poll has Obama's Approval Index at zero. What's especially significant is that this comes four days after ABC's all-day-culminating-with-a-broadcast-from-the-White House health-care plan telethon and five days after a press conference -- one in which, incidentally, some reporters were (finally!) actually asking challenging questions and reacting to the (il)logic of his answers. Note that, during that time Obama's A.I. never exceeded +2, compared to previous peaks of +10 after the Sotomayor nomination and +9 after his Cairo speech.
In other words, Obama's ability to pump up the numbers via media extravaganzas has hit the point of diminishing returns.
Here's an incident that hasn't been mentioned. Michelle Obama Takes Girls to London for Fish and Chips
Truly change we can believe in --- or as was said during the campaign,
"We are the change we have been waiting for."
Imagine this --- and when do we get totally fed up?
A Boeing 757 and a fleet of armored cars for Michelle’s sight seeing tour! Michelle One
On Sunday, President Obama flew back to the United States on Air Force One. His wife, two daughters and her mother did a bit of shopping in Paris before taking their own Boeing 757 (C-32) over to London to do some sight seeing.
We all remember Obama’s admonishment to corporate CEO’s in February:
“You can’t get corporate jets, you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers dime.”
Apparently that doesn’t apply to his wife.
The London Times opened it’s description of Michelle’s visit this way:
Motorcycle outriders, armoured Chevrolets and bullet-headed men in raincoats criss-crossed London yesterday as Michelle Obama and her daughters spent a second day on an unofficial visit to the capital.
The Times went on to describe that when Michelle and the girls arrived at Westminster Abbey, the building was closed to tourists with people already in told to “wait against the wall.” An American visiting the Abbey said “Right then I knew it was probably someone from our ‘royal family’.”
Michelle’s motorcade shut down the London street above as the First Lady of the World and her children go for Fish and Chips at a pub in Mayfair. The entourage inside the restaurant was 15 people while dozens more wait outside. Include the dozens of Air Force personnel to fly and service the plane, embassy personnel and other staff and we are talking about a serious expenditure of tax payer dollars.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and won’t be able to take their family on a summer holiday. Despite their circumstances they’ll still be expected to fork over the tax dollars to pay for Michelle’s trip.
Obama's Rasmussen Approval Index returns to -2, his previous low, without having risen above +2 in the interim. Note that this rating comes less than a week after two public presidential events: a press conference and the ABC-sponsored promotion (I think that's a fair way to describe it) of the Obama health plan.
Obama's overall rating, however, is 54%, one point over his previous low of 53% and still above the important 50% mark. Nevertheless, could we be nearing the point where Obama can no longer count on staged public events to boost his ratings?
In other words, Obama's ability to pump up the numbers via media extravaganzas has hit the point of diminishing returns.
People have short attention spans, and as much as we love to elevate people to the pedestal, we take an even greater joy in knocking them off and watching them fall.
Obama's spending too much time in "campaign mode", because that's what he's good at. But it's becoming been-there-done-that with him, and as with all re-runs, people get bored quickly.
People have short attention spans, and as much as we love to elevate people to the pedestal, we take an even greater joy in knocking them off and watching them fall.
Obama's spending too much time in "campaign mode", because that's what he's good at. But it's becoming been-there-done-that with him, and as with all re-runs, people get bored quickly.
Watching him fall, and watching the legions of disillusioned zombie followers, will be GREAT fun!
Slowly, methodically, consistently, the reliable Rasmussen Poll has been tracking the most vital numbers of the Obama Presidency. General, soft numbers like "Do you approve of the way the president is handlings his job?" really mean nothing. In times of crisis, most people will answer "yes." This is particularly true when a young articulate president who is splattered over every single magazine in every grocery checkout line with happy photos with his wife and kids, and when every tough question -- both of them -- in his press conferences is simply ignored.
It is not the soft, fluffy feelings about Obama that really matter. It is the intense feelings about him. Obama began his presidency with a lot of very enthusiastic support. About forty-five percent of Americans "strongly approved" of the job he was doing, while an anemic fifteen percent of Americans "strongly disapproved" of the job he was doing. In a couple of months, that gap between the "strongly approve" and "strongly disapprove" closed to a gap of between eight and ten points. The number who strongly approved glided down into the high thirties, while the number who strongly disapproved just about doubled, into the low thirties.
From April to mid-June, Obama seemed to have a fairly comfortable margin between his strong supporters and strong opponents, sometimes closing to a point or less and sometimes widening to about ten points. But the last couple of weeks have not been kind. Several days, the percentage of Americans who strongly disapproved of Obama was actually greater than the percentage of Americans who strongly approved of Obama. As of June 30, the number of strongly disapprove is actually two points greater than the number who strongly approve.
What does this mean? Well, it does not mean that the flighty, rock star popularity of Obama is fading, but it does mean that any deep enthusiasm for him has grown progressively weaker, just as the number of Americans who are deeply worried about him has kept growing. It means -- and the polls show this too -- that more and more Americans are holding Obama accountable for our economy and no longer blame President Bush. It means that action, or inaction, about the riots against the mullahs in Iran will hurt Obama if our position is perceived as causing failure. It means that the far left Kool Aid drinkers who thought that after inauguration day Obama would simply withdraw close Gitmo feel like idiots (mainly, of course, because they look like idiots.)
When your political opponents are more energized and upset than your political allies, that is a very bad sign. In the rapidly approaching 2009 elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the decline and fall of Barack Obama may translate into Democrat losses. If Americans grow tired and impatient with a celebrity president who presides over our troubles and poverty, then the big slam could come in 2010. Republicans who turned out in 1994 were turning out against Clinton. Democrats who stayed home were staying home because Clinton went from inspiring celebrity to just another vote-trading politician in a couple of years.
Republicans do not need a 1994 Tsunami to de-rail Obama. A couple of dozen House seats and a handful of Senate seats will force Obama's last two years in the White House into a Jimmy Carter holding action. The key poll to watch is not the goofy and doctored nonsense of the Leftist press, but the day by day scrupulous polling of Scott Rasmussen. If the slow, and sometimes uneven, trend continues, and by September the percentage of Americans who "strongly disapprove" of Obama is in the low forties, then the American people have gotten wise to this Chicago politician and his demands that Congress pass huge unread (even unwritten) bills as a way to cure our problems.
Paraphrasing a famous Chicago minister (who -- so eloquently! -- preached the Gospel of Love) Obama's Chickens will have come home to roost.
Today, Obama's Approval Index revisits its previous low, first set on June 21, which was also the day of his lowest approval rating, 53%, to which he also returns today. What is new, however, is that Obama, for the first time, registers three negative days in a row - which, under Rasmussen's methodology, actually means three negative three-day averages in a row. It also means, mathematically, that at least one of the three days comprising today's average must be below -2. Tomorrow should be interesting.
In other Rasmussen news, support for Supreme Court Justice wannabe Sonia Sotomayor "has at least temporarily diminished public support for President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee" after being publicly dope-slapped by that very Court. 37% now support the nomination, while 39% oppose, reversing the trend of the poll taken only two weeks ago, when 42% favored the nomination, with 34% opposed.
Republicans currently lead Democrats 41%-30% on the Generic Congressional Ballot. No clear trend here, as both parties remain locked in a range of only three points, with one party or the other leading or both tied on any particular day. One can speculate, however, that the GOP, at least at the congressional level, may be off life support, if, in fact, it was ever on it in the first place.
You can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Richard Baehr adds: 35% now strongly disapprove -- an all time high since he was elected (33% strongly approve).
The President of these United States recently expressed his love for "the Urdu poets," a piece of inspired BS that nobody in their right minds believed for a second. But then the P was narrowcasting to Pakistan, he thought, and Americans weren't supposed to be listening. Yet character is revealed in those little snippets of Obama's mind -- his glorious fantasy life, his everlasting hope that somebody will fall for another piece of schtick, and his essential fraudulence as a human being.
Obama's biggest audience is himself, and no doubt he preened and pranced in his mind's eye when he told the nation of Pakistan about his deep love and understanding of Urdu. Love ya, baby! all those sixty million Pakis were shouting, marveling at our polyglot president. Waddaguy! At least in Obi's fantasy life, that is. Because that Zeppelin-sized ego of his needs to be pumped up a little bit more every single day.
Would you like to ride/
on my beautiful balloon?
Well, yes. For his next showboating performance our P will parade his beautiful ballooning ego in front of Vladimir Putin, whose own hands are dripping with the blood of Chechen Muslims, not to mention those brave (and now dead) Moscow journalists who dared to criticize the new Czar in the media.
When it comes to czars Vladimir Putin is almost the real thing, whipping and murdering the peasants and the boyars -- not those phony styrofoam Red Commissars Obama keeps in the White House, to lord it over Federal cabinet departments. For the privilege of parading his beautiful ego in Moscow, Obama has no doubt paid a steep price: Say, stopping US anti-missile defense construction for Poland and the Czech Republic.
They've got his number, all the political con artists around the world. For a little balloon-pumping flattery Obama will sell out American national security interests -- not to mention those of our allies. Obama's "historic" Epistle to the Muslims, delivered last month at Cairo's Al Azhar University (an international center for Islamist propaganda) was not really intended to make a billion Muslims fall down at his feet. No, the main goal of all those grand gestures is to make Obama feel better about himself. That's the key to his character.
You could call it ego **** .
It's not that the Russians are against missile defense -- they've had those in place around Moscow for generations. No, they're just against American missile defenses, hoping to slow down our fast progress while they rush to catch up. Over in Tehran Ahmadi-Nejad is looking for advanced Russian defense systems any day now, and President Obama is obliging the A'jad tyranny by helping the Russians slow down our defenses against Iran's shiny new ballistic missiles. Putin may kill fundamentalist Muslims in Chechnya, but A'jad is America's sworn enemy, and that's all that counts for Putin, as he tries to rebuild the Evil Empire.
Think of it as Russia's historic inferiority complex shaking hands with Obama's historic Third World inferiority complex. They are really brothers under the skin. They are the Wretched of the Earth, in Obama's 1979 leftie college student's version of world socialism. Reality has nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately Third World dictators always launch their ego balloons by oppressing millions of suffering human beings. Look at Africa if you doubt it. All the post-colonial dictators built huge ego projects, using Western aid money to construct the Aswan Dam even if the miserable peasants have to be driven out of their homes. Look at the Middle East. Saddam Hussein loved those shabby giant wall posters all over Baghdad showing him as Suleiman the Magnificent riding his white horses. Saddam's empire of fascist torture was constructed on the historic Arab inferiority complex. Saddam Hussein, meet Vladimir Putin, meet Barack (Hussein) Obama.
That's Obama's sore spot, his biggest character flaw. It's right out there for the world to see. It explains everything about this administration, and foreshadows its inevitable comeuppance. Meanwhile all the shrewdies in the world, from Putin to A'jad, are getting it. They've seen it before. Been there, done that. All they have to do to seduce the President of the United States is to pump up that beautiful ego balloon a little more, and he will just sag over with abject gratitude. He needs his ego supplies, this guy. He'll do anything to get just a little bit more.
If you're China or Russia or a blood-stained mullah you've seen this flick before. The last Shah of Iran used to call himself "King of Kings," a Biblical phrase that goes back to the Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great. Grandiosity is familiar to all the ancient empires of the world. So is the art of flattering kings. They're pros at this.
It's just Americans who don't get it -- yet.
But they will, they will. The only question is how much the country will be damaged, by the time the voters catch on.
Transparency, Transparency, Transparency. Helen Thomas comment: "Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama". She did travel with Nixon allot so she should know! When someone on Fox called her a bad name after an encounter while Bush was in, the Libs were crying for him to get fired. They were in love with her then! I am sure after this comment the liberal blogs are calling for HER head. Who ever first coined "Hopey Dopey", my hat is off to you.
Transparency, Transparency, Transparency. Helen Thomas comment: "Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama". She did travel with Nixon allot so she should know! When someone on Fox called her a bad name after an encounter while Bush was in, the Libs were crying for him to get fired. They were in love with her then! I am sure after this comment the liberal blogs are calling for HER head.p
Yup, it looks like the media might be sloooooly waking up to the fact that they're being used like a goddamn propaganda ministry. Helen Thomas has been around long enough not only to know bullshit when she smells it, but her encounter just might help wake the rest of the media up.
quote
Who ever first coined "Hopey Dopey", my hat is off to you.
That'd be me. I saw this crap for what is was, people acting dopey, following Obama like f***ing rodents after the Pied Piper.
Bear, I owe you the report on the show I watched on TV while in China on their position on "climate change". I am working on it, I am a slow typer but will get it done before semester's end. All of the work you have put into debunking the GW crap they are pushing is much appreciated.
Bear, I owe you the report on the show I watched on TV while in China on their position on "climate change". I am working on it, I am a slow typer but will get it done before semester's end. All of the work you have put into debunking the GW crap they are pushing is much appreciated.
Here is a little pudding for the proof. Not really interested in argueing any points about this. I figure if you are for government control you are my enemy plain and simple so why argue.
The 'stimulus' promised a jobless peak of 8%; it's now 9.5%
About the best we can say about yesterday's June jobs report is that employment is usually a lagging economic indicator. At least we hope it is, because the loss of 467,000 jobs for the month is one more sign that the economy still hasn't hit bottom despite months of epic fiscal and monetary reflation.
The report is in many ways even uglier than the headline numbers. Average hours worked per week dropped to 33, the lowest level in at least 40 years. This means that millions of full-time workers are being downgraded to part-time, as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water. Because people are working less, wages have fallen by 0.3% this year. Factories are operating at only 65% capacity, while the overall jobless rate hit 9.5%. Throw in discouraged workers who want full-time work, and the labor underutilization rate climbed to 16.5%.
The news is even worse for young people, with nearly one in four teenagers unemployed. Congress has scheduled an increase in the minimum wage later this month, which will price even more of these unskilled youths out of a vital start on the career ladder. One useful policy response would be for Congress to rescind the wage hike to $7.25 an hour (from $6.55) that is scheduled for July 24. But the union economic model that now dominates Washington holds that wages only matter for those who already have jobs. The jobs that are never created don't count.
The goods producing sector -- Americans who make things -- shed 223,000 more jobs last month. Asked about these job losses by the Associated Press yesterday, President Obama said Congress should pass his cap-and-tax on carbon energy because "If we're weatherizing every building and home in America, if we are creating windmills and solar panels and biofuel facilities, that is a huge promising area not only for jobs here in the United States, but also for export growth." But even under the most optimistic scenario, not every hard-hat worker in America can make windmill blades and solar panels. With manufacturing on its back, enacting a new energy tax to drive more jobs offshore is crazy even on Keynesian grounds.
Of course, the economy can't keep falling forever, and most forecasters still see a recovery starting this year. The decline in manufacturing slowed last month and housing sales have picked up -- both positive leading indicators. The plunge in inventories means industrial production and durable goods orders are bound to increase. Consumers are also spending more again, albeit with more caution than if gasoline hadn't increased by $1 a gallon in recent months and if they felt more confident about their job security.
The real question is how strong and sustained any expansion will be. If the "stimulus" were working as advertised, it ought to be very strong. Washington has thrown trillions of dollars at this recession, including that famous $787 billion in more spending that was supposed to yield $1.50 in growth for every $1 spent. This followed the $168 billion or so stimulus that George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi promised in February 2008 would prevent a recession. The jobless rate that month was 4.8%.
Most of this government spending has gone to transfer payments -- Medicaid, jobless benefits and the like -- that do nothing for jobs or growth. The spending that might create jobs -- on roads, say -- is dribbling out with typical government efficiency. Meanwhile, the money for all of this has to come from somewhere, and Democrats are already saying it will require big (unstimulating) tax increases in 2011, and perhaps sooner.
The Administration argues that the recession would be worse without the stimulus, which is impossible to disprove. However, it's worth recalling that Mr. Obama's economists predicted late last year that the stimulus would keep the jobless rate from exceeding 8%. That was a percentage point and a half ago. It's far more likely that the economy would have been better off without the spending, and the higher taxes and debt financing that it implies.
As always, a sustained expansion and job creation must come from private investment and risk-taking. Yet as America's entrepreneurs look at Washington they see uncertainty and higher costs from a $1 trillion health-care bill; higher energy costs from the cap-and-tax bill that just passed the House (see below); new restraints on consumer lending in the financial reform bill; new tariffs and threats of trade protection; limits on compensation and banker baiting; and the possibility of easier unionization, among numerous other Congressional brainstorms.
None of this inspires "animal spirits." The best thing Mr. Obama could do to create jobs would be to declare he's dropping all of this and starting over.
Those who suspect the president is engaged in a bit of dangerous self-delusion and denial about certain unpleasant realities regarding the threats from rogue states won’t be heartened to read that his current non-proliferation fetish stems, at least according to the New York Times, from his college infatuation with the nuclear freeze movement. Apparently, youthful Obama did not focus on the results from Ronald Reagan’s refusal to buy into the fantasies of liberals –namely the fall of the Soviet Empire. That lesson has entirely eluded now-president Obama. Is it any wonder his critics find his posture fraught with peril and entirely out-of-touch with the threats we face?
As the Times reports:
“This is dangerous, wishful thinking,” Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, and Richard Perle, an architect of the Reagan-era nuclear buildup that appalled Mr. Obama as an undergraduate, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. They contend that Mr. Obama is, indeed, a naïf for assuming that “the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be curtailed or abandoned in response to reductions in the American and Russian deterrent forces.”
In the interview, the president described his agenda as the best way to move forward in a turbulent world. “It’s naïve for us to think,” he said, “that we can grow our nuclear stockpiles, the Russians continue to grow their nuclear stockpiles, and our allies grow their nuclear stockpiles, and that in that environment we’re going to be able to pressure countries like Iran and North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons themselves.”
But what is naïve, of course, is to think that Iran and North Korea will be impressed by our disarmament efforts. No consideration is given, just as none was given by the nuclear freeze crowd a generation ago, to the possibility that disarmament will only embolden our adversaries and confuse our allies. But apparently Obama’s worldview has not matured much since his Columbia days:
Mr. Obama’s journalistic voice was edgy with disdain for what he called “the relentless, often silent spread of militarism in the country” amid “the growing threat of war.” The two groups, he wrote, “visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.”
So little has changed. President Obama, like college student Obama, still fails to grasp the moral and political dimensions of the struggle we are involved in, still lacks any appreciation for the nature of totalitarian despots and of the motives compelling them to seek nuclear weapons. He is still fixated on the notion that weakness can resolve international threats. Unfortunately, the consequences for student Obama were not potentially fatal to his country. The reality is different today. As the Times notes:
Critics argue that the North Koreas of the world will simply defy the ban — and that the international community will fail to punish offenders.
“If the implications were not so serious, the discrepancy between Mr. Obama’s plans and real-world conditions would be hilarious,” said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a Reagan-era Pentagon official who directs the Center for Security Policy, a private group in Washington. “There is only one country on earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: Ours.”
And really, what excuse is there for Obama’s ludicrous worldview? Unlike student Obama, President Obama knows how the Cold War ended. And it wasn’t by disarming America.
1. Household personal income (inflation adjusted) rose, but every penny -- and then some -- went into savings or paying down debts. Consumer spending, on which Barack Obama is betting to stimulate the economy, actually fell. None of the stimulus money was sent. None.
2. Meanwhile, to pay for this stimulus spending that didn't stimulate, Obama had to borrow so much money that long-term interest rates have almost doubled since he took office, forcing postponement or abandonment of business expansion and hiring across the board.
What a record!
Here are the details. In April, personal household, inflation-adjusted income rose by $122 billion. Of that increase, one-third -- or $44 billion -- came from the government's stimulus program. But while personal income was rising, household savings (which includes paying down credit-card balances, mortgages, student loans, car loans, etc.) rose by $132 billion -- $10 billion more than the rise in income. So personal consumption dropped 0.1 percent.
The stimulus package was a total and complete failure. As predicted, as happened with Bush's 2008 tax cut, as happened with the Japanese stimulus packages of the '90s, fearful consumers sat on their money and wouldn't spend it. Keynesian economics didn't work. Again.
But the debt sure piled up. The deficit quadrupled and is sending interest rates soaring, as the government elbows aside businesses and consumers at the loan window, all in a desperate effort to borrow enough money to spend enough money to stimulate the economy, which isn't happening.
Keynesian economics doesn't work. The theory for rational expectations has taken its place. Consumers are not idiots. They know that when their paycheck is fatter -- either because of tax cuts or government spending -- that it is not the beginning of Nirvana, but just a short-term, one-shot respite from hard times. They know the difference between standing in front of an electric fan and a windy day.
Barack Obama has fatally undermined our currency, our solvency, our financial stability and -- ultimately -- our economy, all to spend money that has had no economic effect!
Is Obama a failure? Not by his lights. His goal was never to stimulate the economy. His goal was to expand government spending, and he used the recession as an excuse to do so. And, by this standard, he is a raging success. With the stimulus spending, the government proportion of gross domestic product will rise from about 35 percent to about 40 percent, and with health care "reform" it will go soaring into the mid-40s, bringing us to parity with Germany en route to France!
But the results are in: None of Obama's spending is doing anything to help the economy.
Of course, the process of household savings, designed to pay down debt, is very healthy.
Economists call it de-leveraging. By the start of the recession, the debt American households owe had risen from 70 percent of their annual income in 1995 to 140 percent (excluding mortgages). Now it's on its way back down again. And, eventually, that will lead to a real recovery -- if Obama doesn't wreck the currency and bring on mega-inflation before then (but he probably will).
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –5. The number who strongly disapprove inched up another point to the highest level measured to date and the overall Approval Index is at the lowest level yet for Obama (see trends).
In the wake of last week’s disappointing report on job loss, consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level in two months. The Rasmussen Investor Index shows investor confidence falling to the lowest level in three months. The number of investors who say the economy is getting worse jumped from 43% before the jobs report to 51% today.
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.
Overall, 52% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Yesterday and today are the first time that the number of voters who approve of the President’s performance has slipped below the 53% share of the vote he won last November. Forty-eight percent (48%) now disapprove. For other barometers of the President’s performance, see Obama By the Numbers or review recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.
An early look at the 2012 race for the Republican nomination shows Mitt Romney at 25%, Sarah Palin at 24%, and Mike Huckabee at 22%. Forty percent (40%) of GOP voters say that Palin hurt her chances of winning the nomination by resigning as Alaska’s Governor last week. Among all voters, Republicans now have a three-point edge on the Generic Congressional Ballot.
Just 27% of voters nationwide favor passage of a second economic stimulus package. Sixty percent (60%) are opposed. Fifty-four percent (54%) say the average Democrat in Congress is more liberal than they are, while 36% believe the average Republican congressman is more conservative.
How do I know it will be a good week for Obamateurisms? Whenever the President travels abroad, they come fast and furious. Yesterday found Barack Obama in fine form while meeting with an audience comprised mainly of Russian business leaders, clumsily reminding them of a transaction that still rankles the Russians to this day, as Reuters explains:
Referring to the long history of Russia-U.S. trade stretching back more than two centuries, Obama told an audience of business people in Moscow:
“Along the way, you gave us a pretty good deal on Alaska. Thank you.”
Czar Alexander II’s sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million in gold, around 1.9 cents per acre, was regarded by Russians as a national disgrace — particularly once it became clear that the province was rich in oil.
Reuters calls this a “pointed quip,” but unless Obama wanted to deliberately insult Russians, the only point is that Obama has still not figured out what diplomacy means. At its most basic, it means refraining from insulting people. (via Clyde Middleton)
From an article by Brad Heath in USA Today: 'Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.'
Chicago rules. This dynamic is a reflection of the very pay-to-play sort of politics exercised for decades by the Chicago Green Machine. Obama rewards those who support him - as would your everyday alderman; and penalizes, by omission, those who supported McCain (or Republicans).
As he said, when the other guys brings a knife to a fight, he would bring a gun. More likely a 700 billion dollar plus cannon. His administration has control over our taxpayer dollars to direct funds to favored constituencies - the most favored being those who voted for Barack Obama.
The President of all Americans? Not quite true. His campaign funds the US budget.
