14 Weeks

14 Weeks from Republican Governors Association on Vimeo.

Anti-Ground Zero Mosque Ad

From Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism...

Who Do You Believe?

Is Government the problem... or the solution?

The Obama Strategy

A fellow blogger Radaractive was questioning what lies behind Obama's actions in response to the BP oil spill. It soon became apparent from my response, that Obama seems to follow a pattern, which I have dubbed as the Obama Strategy...

Q: So what is it? Is the President stupid and indecisive, or is he simply pursuing a course of action that would dynamically and completely change America into Venezuela North?

A: I believe that there are/were a number of things running through Obama's brain.

1) Find somebody to blame. If something goes wrong, make sure you have someone to blame... and it's never yourself. Economic problems? Blame Bush. War in Afghanistan? Blame Bush. Health care problems? Blame doctors and insurance companies. Big bonuses for financial execs? Blame Wall Street "fat cats".

2) Arouse your base against the perceived "culprit". Give a speech or two vilifying the "bad guy" and get some photo-ops with people cheering and clapping. Never stop campaigning.

3) Shake down the "bad guys" for money. Evil "rich" people? Tax them. Nasty health insurance companies? Impose taxes. Greedy Wall Street "fat cats"? Cut their salaries and get them to return their bonuses. BP? Make them put $20 billion in escrow.

4) Take care of your friends. Stimulus money available? Make sure it goes "overwhelmingly" to blue states and districts that voted for you. GM going bankrupt? Seize money from the bondholders and give it to the union. California wants to cut the pay of SEIU members? Threaten CA to cut off stimulus funds. Oil spill? Don't waive the Jones Act.

5) Punish those who resist you. Tea Party people? Call them racist, right-wing, extremists. Stimulus money available? Make sure as little as possible goes to states and districts that voted for McCain. Need to close some Chrysler dealerships? Make sure they belong to Republicans. Red states along the Gulf of Mexico? Let them eat tarballs.

6) Never let a good crisis go to waste. Economic crisis? Use it to seize banks. Auto companies in trouble? Seize them. Health care costs skyrocketing? Seize 1/6th of the US economy (and the student loan industry while we're at it). BP oil spill? Use it to push "green energy" and "cap-and-tax".

7) Be persistent. Health care stalled? Keep pushing. Polls running against health care? Shove it down their throats. Scott Brown win in MA? Use reconciliation. People still not convinced about "green energy" after the oil spill? Shut down all the oil rigs in the Gulf.

8) Hide your lack of executive experience. Lots of issues to deal with? Appoint czars. Need legislation? Let Pelosi and Reid come up with it. McChrystal asks for 40,000 more troops? Say you need time to "re-evaluate the strategy". Oil spill? Let BP and the Coast Guard handle it. People crying for action? Appoint a commission.

9) Enjoy yourself. Play some golf. Have a few parties. Host some celebrities. Go out on date night at the taxpayers' expense. You've "earned" it.

John Boehner's Questions For Obama

NASA's New Mission

What the heck is this all about? NASA's new mission is to make Muslims feel good about themselves...?

11 Reasons To Vote Democrat

I Fought For You

Happy Independence Day

Stimulus Spending And Job Growth: Update 13

Well, it's that time again. Time to update Obama's stimulus-driven job creation results. Let's look at the latest picture. In June, there was a net loss of 125,000 jobs, but this job loss number was due primarily to the layoff of 225,000 temporary census workers. However, since I did not include the temporary census workers in last month's job increases, I cannot then include them here. Therefore, in the graph below, I have discounted the census job losses and allowed for a net gain of 100,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dropped from 9.7% to 9.5% because about 650,000 people dropped out of the work force.

Barack Obama said his stimulus package would create approximately 4 million "new" jobs over two years. In order to create 4 million jobs in 24 months, the Obama administration would have had to create approximately 166,667 jobs per month to reach his target, assuming linear job growth. That scenario is shown as violet in the following graph.

I developed a curve showing what I thought might be a more "Likely" scenario -- plotted as light blue in the following graph. As you can see from the graph, the actual trend of job losses was somewhat worse than I had predicted -- plotted as yellow and red. However, the trend continues to generally follow the trajectory I had originally envisioned.


I have revised the April and May job figures according to the latest data from the US Dept of Labor. Now, instead of having to create 166,667 new jobs per month to reach his original target of 4 million new jobs, President Obama now needs to create 754,375 jobs per month -- in order to make up for the more than 2 million jobs that were lost since the stimulus bill was signed.

I am sorry to once again report that I was not one of those fortunate 100,000 who found work in June. I should also point out that, in my opinion, the current trend has had little or nothing to do with Obama's Stimulus Package. Rather, it was the result of a natural economic recovery which would have occurred anyway. I would go even further and suggest that the policies of this President and this Congress have only acted to slow down the recovery.