3SOF

Here's The Real Reason Obama Will Lose In 2012

Predicting that Obama will be a one-term president is easy: Americans vote their pocketbooks.

There is nothing remotely ideological or personal in my prediction that President Obama will lose the 2012 election. Both parties are equally out of touch with reality in my view, and both support the same things: a global Empire, an increasingly intrusive Savior State, a shadow banking system which is no longer under the control of State institutions (rather, the banks control the institutions), and various crony-capitalist cartels which fund political campaigns and partner with the Central State's bloated, unaccountable fiefdoms. The only visible difference between the two parties is slight variations in the relative growth rates of the most-favored cartels and fiefdoms.

President Obama seems like a nice guy. Many people said the same thing about George W. Bush. While a likeable personality is a plus in a media-obsessed society, American elections boil down to this: Americans vote their pocketbook, and their pocketbooks will be a lot lighter by November 2012.

President Obama has several key flaws which have doomed his presidency.

1. His leadership style is one of consensus and compromise. This works OK in a caretaker setting in which there are no crises and no demands for bold changes of course. Unfortunately, this era is defined by structural crises, and a leadership based on gaining consensus and compromise is basically a rudderless one in this environment.

2. He does not understand economics or finance, nor is he secure about making decisions on financial topics. As a result he deferred to the "experts," who just happened to be Wall Street cronies and insiders who easily swayed the President with their hobgoblin stories of financial meltdown and ruin if we didn't "save the banking sector from losses."

3. His grasp of history is poor. The same can be said of most presidents, but Obama failed to grasp the historic opportunity to set a new sustainable course for the nation's banking and financial sectors, and thus for its economy. He opted instead to save and protect the corrupt and embezzlement-based banking sector from losses, and he continues to do so with "extend and pretend" policies.

In a similar fashion, he has allowed the National Security State and the Global Empire to expand without any limitations.

4. He has no visible core beliefs beyond a vague sense that the Federal government and its extension, the American Empire, are forces for good. His policies can be boiled down to: support and expand the Savior State and its many fiefdoms, support and expand the Global Empire and National Security State, and allow the banking system and its Power Elites to set the agenda and control the oversight agencies and institutions.


His signature accomplishment, the "Obama-care reform" of the nation's sickcare system, simply extends the power of existing cartels and fiefdoms and delivers an ever-larger slice of the national income to their coffers. In its basic parameters, the "reform" could easily have been supported and passed by socially liberal Republican presidents such as Richard Nixon. There is nothing remotely progressive or radical about "pooling" insurance cartels and wet-paper-bag bureaucratic tests of "the most effective treatments."

These are simply technocratic layers added to a bloated, corrupt, venal and destructive system that already costs twice as much as those of our advanced-economy competitors.

In addition to these flaws, he has made fatal policy errors which doom the economy to implosion by November 2012. All of his administration's policies can be distilled down to these three points:


1. The banking sector is the most important foundation of the economy. The Central State and its proxy, the Federal Reserve, pumped some $14 trillion (by some measures, $23 trillion) in cash, credit, guarantees and backstops into the banking sector and its cloaked twin, the Shadow banking System.

Meanwhile, little to nothing was done for the cash-strapped consumer or citizenry. Why?

2. The "problem" is lack of credit and "confidence." If the State and Fed flood the banking system with credit and "restore confidence" by goosing the stock market, then people will start borrowing and spending again, and everything will be "fixed."

This presumes demand is strong, and all that's needed is credit for people to satisfy their thirst for more goods and services.

Meanwhile, back in reality, people realized they didn't need a third car, fourth TV, 17th "cute blouse," 23rd pair of shoes, etc., and now that their home is worth less than their mortgage (or their remaining equity is minimal), they can't really afford the luxury travel, boats, etc. they enjoyed when they thought their house would keep rising in value forever and tapping that rising equity was painless.

Demand is slack because everyone who could afford more crap already owns more crap than they need or even want. The percentage of the populace who would like more stuff cannot afford more stuff. Their household incomes and wages are declining, and their expenses for essentials are rising.

The Fed's largesse to banks (free money in unlimited quantities) doesn't reach them; all it does is boost assets held by the top 10%.

3. Boosting the assets of this top 10% (or 20% if you include those who have equity of some sort beyond the $2,500 in their IRA) will cause a "wealth effect" that will "trickle down" to the lower 80% as the top 20% buy more Coach handbags, enjoy fine dining at tony upscale restaurants, etc.

Unfortunately, this may help boost Coach's profit margins, but the vast majority of the "trickle-down" consists of low-paying retail clerks and busboys.

In other words, the "wealth effect" is bogus, a charade deployed to defend the pillaging of the economy via financialization and Fed intervention.

4. Pushing the dollar lower in a "beggar thy neighbor" currency war is the best way to boost the U.S. economy. Apparently no one in the President's team looked at financial history to identify the nations which grew rich and powerful by debasing their currency.

In a perverse blowback to this misguided policy, corporate profits earned overseas were certainly goosed, but so were import prices, one of the reasons (along with the Fed's easy-money quantitative easing) for rising costs to consumers.

If you set out to design a policy that impoverished 80% of the citizenry and channeled a larger share of the national income to the top 10%, then this is precisely the set of policies you would pursue.

Nothing important has been fixed; nothing important has even been addressed. The institutions of governance are captured and corraled by the monied Elites to the point that the government has lost control of its own institutions, which now rule as quasi-independent fiefdoms. The citizenry, bought off on the cheap by stale Bread (rapacious student loans, food stamps which offer the veneer of normalcy, extended unemployment benefits so no angry mobs form, etc.) and dazed and distracted by the Media Circus, keep quiet in their complicity, while the Power Elites revel in the freedoms offered by a caretaker Administration.

If President Obama had fought for fundamental structural reforms and lost, he would still have support. Yes, Congress holds the pursestrings, but let's not forget the President appoints his own staff and advisors, and wields great power via Executive Orders. He could have submitted a 5-page Financial Reform Bill and promised to veto anything else. If the Power Elites watered it down, then he could have vetoed it and gone directly to the public. But he did none of these things.

here is a chart of public and private debt over the past decade, from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Notice that all the Administration and Congress have done is boost Federal debt to replace the "missing" private debt (missing because incomes are declining, housing equity has crashed and the consumer overborrowed for a decade).




This is mindless Keynesian policy on auto-pilot. As I have reported before, the Federal Government is borrowing and spending some $6 trillion in a mere four years, almost doubling the nation's debt, and all that's been accomplished is the Power Elites' share of the national income has risen and GDP has flatlined.

The structural dislocations and imbalances remain firmly in place; a financial sector dependent on fraud has been "saved," and an economy sick with an addiction to rampant financialization has been given plenty of smack to keep it from going through a desperately needed withdrawal.

The Keynesians have no answer as to when the economy will "recover" without the Central State borrowing 11% of GDP every year to prop up its various cartels and fiefdoms. They have no answer because they have no understanding of the imbalances, the fraud, the financialization or of the feudal partnership of the State and crony-capitalist cartels.

Obama has lost his "progressive" base, because he's done nothing remotely progressive. He has lost the middle because his Administration has overseen their gradual impoverishment at the hands of Financial Power Elites. He has offered them phony facsimiles of reform slicked down with the tiresome "soaring rhetoric" of a con artist so besotted with his own story that he actually believes the BS himself.

He can count on the public-union vote and a few of the State fiefdoms he's enriched and enlarged at the expense of the common good, but as the addict (the economy) goes downhill, slowly destroyed by the ever-larger doses of smack administered by the Fed and the Central State, then the consent of the governed will be irrevocably lost--not just by President Obama, but by the entire Status Quo.

The President is now a candidate hoping to scoop up a cool $1 billion to blow on another long, greasy media blitz, but I would be surprised if he rakes in much from the commoners and serfs straining to keep the wheels of their household finances turning. He will of course collect big bucks from various crony-cartels and contractors who have benefited from his bogus "reforms" and unstinting support of the banking sector, but his true-believer supporters will be thinned down to a few Elites, die-hard Democratic hacks and the delusional by mid-2012.

His opponents may fare little better unless they are willing to tackle the dominance of crony cartels, government fiefdoms and Financial Power Elites whose fat fingers remain firmly on the throat of the fast-expiring nation.

Jun 2, 2011
1:24 PM Conference Board Sees 8.5% Unemployment in December 2012
Trouble for Obama?


The Conference Board, a nonprofit business research and advocacy group, released a report today predicting that inflation will remain stubbornly high through 2012, which could stymie President Obama's reelection plans, not to mention the overall economy. The board predicts unemployment will fall to 8.5% in December 2012, just half a percentage point below today's number.

"We expect GDP to grow annually at a disappointing rate of about 2.5 percent between the first quarter of 2011 and fourth quarter of 2012. Meanwhile, we expect productivity to grow at an annual rate of 1 percent. As a result, we can expect employment to grow annually at about 1.5 percent, which implies an average growth of about 160,000 to 170,000 jobs per month."

Obama's reelection prospects could hinge on unemployment data, as no president since FDR has been elected with unemployment over 7.2%, the New York Times reported today.

Recent employment data has resulted in widespread pessimism about employment growth, as economists have been scrambling to lower their employment expectations for tomorrow's May data release.

Published: June 1, 2011

Economic Memo
Employment Data May Be the Key to the President's Job...

WASHINGTON — No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.

Seventeen months before the next election, it is increasingly clear that President Obama must defy that trend to keep his job.

Roughly 9 percent of Americans who want to go to work cannot find an employer. Companies are firing fewer people, but hiring remains anemic. And the vast majority of economic forecasters, including the president's own advisers, predict only modest progress by November 2012.

The latest job numbers, due Friday, are expected to provide new cause for concern. Other indicators suggest the pace of growth is flagging. Weak manufacturing data, a gloomy reading on jobs in advance of Friday's report and a drop in auto sales led the markets to their worst close since August, and those declines carried over into Asia Thursday.

But the grim reality of widespread unemployment is drawing little response from Washington. The Federal Reserve says it is all but tapped out. There is even less reason to expect Congressional action. Both Democrats and Republicans see clear steps to create jobs, but they are trying to walk in opposite directions and are making little progress.

Republicans have set the terms of debate by pressing for large cuts in federal spending, which they say will encourage private investment. Democrats have found themselves battling to minimize and postpone such cuts, which they fear will cause new job losses.

House Republicans told the president that they would not support new spending to spur growth during a meeting at the White House on Wednesday.

"The discussion really focused on the philosophical difference on whether Washington should continue to pump money into the economy or should we provide an incentive for entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow," said Eric Cantor, the majority leader. "The president talked about a need for us to continue to quote-unquote invest from Washington's standpoint, and for a lot of us that's code for more Washington spending, something that we can't afford right now."

The White House, its possibilities constrained by the gridlock, has offered no new grand plans. After agreeing to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and reducing the payroll tax last December, the administration has focused on smaller ideas, like streamlining corporate taxation and increasing American exports to Asia and Latin America.

"It's a very tough predicament," said Jared Bernstein, who until April was economic policy adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. "Is there any political appetite for something that would resemble another large Keynesian stimulus? Obviously no. You can say that's what we should do and you'd probably be right, but that's pretty academic."

More than 13.7 million Americans were unable to find work in April; most had been seeking jobs for months. Millions more have stopped trying. Their inability to earn money is a personal catastrophe; studies show that the chance of finding new work slips away with time. It is also a strain on their families, charities and public support programs.

The Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, has the means and the mandate to reduce unemployment by pumping money into the economy.

As financial markets nearly collapsed in 2008, the Fed unleashed a series of unprecedented programs, first to arrest the crisis and then to promote recovery, investing more than $2 trillion. The final installment, a $600 billion bond-buying program, ends in June.

Now, however, the leaders of the central bank say they are reluctant to do more. The Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said in April that more money might not increase growth, but there was a growing risk that it would accelerate inflation.

Congress charged the Fed in 1978 with minimizing unemployment and inflation. Those goals, however, are often in conflict, and the Fed has made clear that inflation is its priority. Fed officials argue in part that maintaining slow, steady inflation forms a basis for enduring economic expansion.

Eric S. Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in a recent interview that the Fed had reached the limits of responsible policy.


"We've done things that are quite unusual. We're using tools that we have less experience with," Mr. Rosengren said. "Most of the criticism has been that we're being too accommodative. That is a concern that we have to put some weight on."

Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group, said that the Fed was being too cautious about inflation and too callous about joblessness.

"We have a massive unemployment problem in this country right now. It is festering. It's not good for our economy. It's not good for our society. And we have the tools to fix it," she said. "We certainly need to be concerned about what happens down the road, but shouldn't we first be concerned about getting the U.S. economy back on track?"

Ten presidents have stood for re-election since Mr. Roosevelt. In four instances the unemployment rate stood above 6 percent on Election Day. Three presidents lost: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. But Ronald Reagan won, despite 7.2 percent unemployment in November 1984, because the rate was falling and voters decided he was fixing the problem.

The Obama administration hopes to tell a similar story.

"We have undertaken some of the biggest policy actions to create jobs that any administration has ever done," said Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, which advises the president on economic policy. Mr. Furman said that the economy was still benefiting from last year's tax cuts, and from the dollop of federal stimulus spending that Democrats pushed through in 2009.

The White House is pursuing a number of smaller initiatives, like persuading China to buy more American goods and services; increasing business confidence in the health of the economy, to spur new investment; and striking a deal with Republicans to overhaul corporate taxation.

It is also pushing to renew federal financing for transportation projects with an important twist: The six-year plan would be front-loaded so that $50 billion would be spent in the first year.

But Christina Romer, who headed the president's Council of Economic Advisers until fall 2010, said in a recent speech at Washington University in St. Louis that no part of the government was addressing unemployment with sufficient urgency or hope.

"Urgency, because unemployment is a tragedy that should not be tolerated a minute longer," she said. "And hope, because prudent and possible policies could make a crucial difference."

Obama: US economy still facing challenges
Against backdrop of sour jobs report, Obama says US economy still facing challenges

Associated Press, On Friday June 3, 2011, 3:32 pm
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) -- Faced with a dismal new jobs report, President Barack Obama said Friday that the economy faces challenges ahead and "bumps on the road to recovery." But at an event to celebrate the resurgence of the auto industry he made no mention of the dour economic news that threatened to obscure his optimistic message.

Obama's visit to a Chrysler plant in politically important Ohio came after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers in May added the fewest jobs in eight months -- a meager 54,000 -- and the unemployment rate inched up to 9.1 percent.

Normally Obama talks about the monthly jobs numbers the day they're released, but he never mentioned them directly Friday -- an omission immediately noted by Republicans who see the economy as Obama's greatest weakness heading into the 2012 campaign.

The president focused instead on the turnaround in the auto industry and how the government has recouped much more money than anticipated from the capital it sunk into Chrysler and General Motors two years ago to save them from collapse.

Recently GM, Chrysler and Ford have been reporting significant increases in sales, although the industry this week reported a falloff in May.

"This industry is back on its feet, repaying its debts, gaining ground," Obama told Chrysler workers. "Because of you we can once again say the best cars in the world are built right here in the U.S. of A."

Republicans were more interested in what the president didn't say. The Republican National Committee wasted no time sending out a press release titled "Noticeable Omission" tweaking Obama for failing to address the jobs numbers.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it would have been "a little technical to be citing specific economic statistics given the rather informal setting," but that the president had the jobs numbers in mind when he spoke of bumps in the road and the headwinds in the economy. Obama hasn't shied in the past from talking about specific numbers in informal settings.

White House officials say the overall employment trend is moving in the right direction compared to the level of job losses that were occurring a couple years ago, seeking to place this month's poor jobs report in the context of a continuing, if sluggish, recovery.

At the Chrysler plant, Obama patted himself on the back for the auto bailout, unpopular and controversial at the time but now proving a better investment for taxpayers than initially anticipated.

To let automakers fail, Obama said "would have been a brutal and irreversible shock to the entire economy and to the future of millions of Americans. So we refused to let that happen."

Both the Bush and Obama administrations spent $80 billion to bail out General Motors and Chrysler and help guide them through bankruptcy. The Obama administration now says it will recoup more than 80 percent of that -- more than expected -- and Obama defended the bailouts as money well spent.

Chrysler last week announced it would be paying off its remaining loans to the U.S. and Canadian governments ahead of schedule. And late Thursday, Treasury announced a deal to sell its remaining stake in Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat. That means that of the $12.5 billion that the Treasury Department used to bail out Chrysler, all but about $1.3 billion will be recouped, Treasury said.

At the Chrysler plant before Obama spoke, Rick Shortridge, 53, of Oregon, Ohio, who has worked 28 years for the automaker, said the outlook has changed dramatically since Chrysler went into bankruptcy two years ago.

"I thought my future was going to be saying `do you want fries with that,' " he said, adding he was grateful Obama had stood with the auto industry.

Before addressing the auto workers Obama made time for some retail politics in this battleground state, stopping at Rudy's Hot Dog, a Toledo institution where the president ordered one of their famous chili dogs with mustard, onion and cheese, insisted on paying himself, and shook hands all around. And after his speech he shook hands with workers getting off their shifts, and dropped by a nearby hardware store to buy gardening gloves for Michelle Obama.

The president ignored a shouted question from a reporter about the jobs numbers.

The auto industry resurgence is one of the few positive notes in an economy that had been growing moderately but has now hit a listless patch. Unemployment had been dropping from a high of 10.1 percent in October of 2009. But it now has experienced back-to-back increases.

The industry is also a major employer in presidential battleground states like Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri, all of them important for Obama's re-election prospects in 2012. The industry recovery gives Obama the opportunity to distinguish himself from Republicans who had criticized the government's intervention

Among them was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who had called for Chrysler and GM to go through bankruptcy without government assistance. Romney on Friday defended his position. "The right process for an enterprise in trouble is not to be given money by the taxpayers in a bailout," he told CBS's "The Early Show."

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Bernanke Wants a Weaker Dollar, Buy the Euro: Fund Manager - Jeff Macke

Axel Merk thinks the U.S. dollar is going lower -- and it's the Fed chief's fault.

Axel Merk, currency expert and president of Merk Investments, thinks the U.S. dollar is going lower -- and it's Ben Bernanke's fault.

The United States has a "Fed that wants a lower dollar" Merk says, offering an opinion that everyone except the Fed accepts as fact. The Fed's goal is to attempt to limit the deleterious impact of the greater than 9% unemployment and the hangover caused by the "Great Recession." In contrast the European Union is looking to strangle the weakness out of the system through austerity. This stereotypically Germanic approach is one of the reasons Merk is an unapologetic euro bull.

"In the Eurozone there's a lot of pain ... precisely because we're not printing and spending money over there," he says. Merk also notes that German exports are booming despite weakness elsewhere. It's a point that leads to the question we've been asking on Breakout for weeks: Why on earth would Germany and other thriving Eurozone nations continue to prop up the "cheaters" (as Merk refers to Greece and other laggards)?

"From Germany's point of view they want to keep Greece," at least in part because Germany has Greek debt in its own banking system. Now Merk goes a bit off the beaten path, saying, "if Greece were to leave at some point, while Greece may fall into anarchy, the rest of the Eurozone would get stronger".


If the pain of austerity is good for the EU, the idea of an entire nation descending into anarchy should make the euro the buy of the century. On the other hand if you're bearish the euro because you believe too much pain is a bad thing, well, that's cool with Merk. The reason he likes the euro "is because everybody hates it."

"Hate" may be a strong term with the euro much closer to all-time highs than all-time lows versus the dollar, but Merk has a point. Or he has enough ideas to catalyze an old-school "U.S. vs. the world" debate. We want to know what you think.

This is one of Obama's idiots that has to go...
That 14.5 trillion dollar debt would look a lot smaller if the dollar lost half its value, as Ben and Barry are trying to do. Americans who spent their lifetimes saving for retirement will suffer as these fools squander the nation's treasure!

More Americans Think Economy Will Never Recover
Friday June 3, 2011

The mixed signals regarding the economy's health are taking a toll.



Americans are growing increasingly doubtful about direction of the US economy, according to the latest survey from business-advisory firm AlixPartners.

In fact, an increasing number, some 61 percent, say they don't expect to return to their respective pre-recession lifestyles until the spring of 2014, if ever.

What's worse, a full 10 percent said they expect they will never return to pre-recession spending.

That's a more pessimistic view than last year, when those surveyed expected that they could be back to pre-recession spending levels by the middle of 2013.

"Americans continue to push their expectations for return to a pre-recession 'normal' further and further into the future-close enough for comfort, but far enough away to seem realistic," said Fred Crawford, CEO of AlixPartners. "But as that happens, more and more it seems normal is actually where we are right now."

The latest employment report, which showed that U.S. employers hired far few workers than expected in May, only serves to reinforce these attitudes.

"It's a vicious cycle," Crawford said. "Americans need to see a significant decrease in unemployment to feel confident in the economic recovery, but companies are waiting to see increased demand for their products and services before they begin hiring and making job-creating capital expenditures."

In the latest survey, some 63 percent of Americans said they feel "not good" or "bad" about the state of the US economy, representing a significant increase from May 2010 when only about 49 percent of those polled felt this gloomy.

The survey also found that Americans overwhelmingly expect to delay by at least 12 months major purchases and expenditures such as spending on new cars, home repairs and vacations.

There have already been signs of this in the latest retail sales reports that came out earlier this week from a handful of major retailers.

Overall, sales at stores open at least a year rose 5.0 percent in May, which is below the 5.4 percent increase that Wall Street expected, according to Thomson Reuters data.

While some analysts used a number of excuses, including high gasoline prices, poor weather, and lackluster merchandise, to explain away the disappointing results, the findings of the survey may suggest that consumers are hunkering down amid the uncertainty.

The view was expressed Thursday by Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, who said that traffic at Target stores slowed in the second half of the month.

"Our guests continue to shop cautiously in light of higher energy costs and inflationary pressures on their household budgets," Steinhafel said, in the company's monthly sales press release.

AlixPartners is by no means the first organization to recognize this growing pessimism.

Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius said the number of consumers who believe they have a chance to bring home more money one year from now is at its lowest level in 25 years, based on his analysis of the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters consumer sentiment poll.

Obama said "spreading the wealth around is good for everyone"-WRONG! Take a look around the world, FREE Markets are good for everyone. Brazil booming! China booming! India booming! And many others that are now embracing Free Market Capitalism that we enjoyed until Obama. And they're all looking at us wondering when we went insane!


BONE HEAD.......

It is quite obvious obama is not qualified to be President !
Good Bye Obama 2012, Nation wide Going Away Party, And I hope the door does hit him in the ass on the way out.
This guy is so far detached from reality it is scary. He always looks like he is drowsy. Like he wishes he was somewhere else(golf). He has got to go. We wont make it through another term. It will take a generation to recover from one term.

Obama is right about one thing...President Reagan never would have tolerated any of this. Reagan, a master politician and communicator, would have cut spending, refused to raise taxes, and gotten the best deal possible WITHOUT scaring the elderly regarding their Social Security income. Reagan had class and morals. President Reagan didn't add 5 trillion dollars to the national debt in his first 3 years in office, so I think Obummer should have to sit there and shut his mouth, and he needs to quit acting like a petulant little child.
Obama has limited cognitive skills and a deep, deep hatred for anyone who he believes is successful or wealthy.

The Imam in Chief is doing his best to weaken and ultimately destroy the USA as a superpower. Running up trillions of dollars in debt is part of his plan of bringing down this country. The Republicans need to stay united in opposition to the first anti-American president.
Well what are you going to do Mr. Affirmative Action Figure in Chief? Draw on your vast experiences as a Senator to convince the public? Nope you're going to whine like a Community Organizer and try to pit people against each other like you've been trained to do by your progressives' buddies.
He is not used to sitting at the adult table. It's just too much for him. Maybe if they let him bring the teleprompter to the table with him, he would be more comfortable.

Its show he's caving...Or they have interrupted his vacation or tee time. What a fool people elected... when your dealing with a child like Obama you have to treat him that way. He doesn't even understand what your talking about anyways. It shows you what a figurehead he really is and if they ever released his grades in college you'd see he was a C- student at best...

This isn't about 'calling your bluff,' this is about calling bullsh*t. It's time to 'eat your peas,' Mr. President. Sit up straight and take this like a man. Your budget was bullsh*t. Your political rhetoric is bullsh*t. This spending is bullsh*t. And now you've stepped in bullsh*t, by threatening to revoke seniors' Social Security "trust fund." How "secure" can it be, when you can revoke it whenever the government busts the budget? How much of a trust fund can it be when you can use it as a political football to advance your left-wing agenda? Is this a game to you? We are talking about human beings here, not pawns on your little chessboard!  

The repubs in the house have to stand their ground. It is totally their show.

McConnell says if we don't make a deal, the republicans will get the blame. BULL!

If we keep postponing the inevitable, the crash will happen on the next guys watch. Let the house of cards fall now.
It will only get worse. Bernanke is already talking about some more stimulus. That means making more dollars, either printing or digitizing them but that will just make things worse in the long run.

STAND YOUR GROUND!!!

Now that the petulant child had his hands slapped, then stormed out of the room , I wonder what destruction awaits us after he learned that not everybody is willing to kiss his ring while kneeling at his feet.....
He probably ran to his room, crawled in Mooshell's lap, fetal position and begged to borrow his balls for a day to show the big kids he's not messin round......   

Two can play this game, Mr. President. But the Republicans have to be willing to take you on!!!

REPUBLICAN STRATEGY TO WIN THE DEBT CEILING DEBATE

The Republican House PASSES A BILL that states - SHOULD THE DEBT CEILING NOT BE RAISED, THE FOLLOWING WILL BE PAID:

1) Interest & Principal on the National Debt; (calm Wall Street & US creditors)
2) Military Forces & Operations both here and abroad; (so Obama can't open us up to attack)
3) Social Security & Disability Checks; (calm the fears of elderly Americans)
4) Veteran Benefits; (for service to this country, they should be a priority)
5) Medicare Claims. (calm the fears of elderly Americans)

Nothing more needs to be added.

This is put the PRESSURE ON OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS AND PROVIDE THE PERFECT DILEMMA!!!!

-If the Senate, in the hands of the Democrats, rejects it, the American people will know where Democrats stand.
-If the Senate passes it, the President can either sign it or veto it. Signing it, his bluff has been called and Obama is now in a weaker position if the negotiations continue. If President Obama rejects it, he, not only kills the Democrat scare tactic that Republicans want to take elderly people's money away, but it will be he & fellow Democrats that are doing this. The American people will know where the Democrats stand.

IF OBAMA VETOES IT, IT WOULD BE POLITICAL SUICIDE. This would be going into 2012 and the election cycle.

The Republicans could force the President's hand, but do they have the will??? The President IS engaged in a game of Political Chicken. It is time to attack, not retreat. WE THE PEOPLE demand that Republicans give us our country back!!!!!!!

President Sarah Palin
Vice President Michele Bachmann
Go for it Ladies...


Sarah Palin tweets a post-press conference slam on President Obama after he provides an update on the debt-ceiling stalemate:

Obama lies, economy dies. He says "default's catastrophic" then opposes deal to avert it. Nonsense. Gold stars to GOP trying to deal w/this.

It's worth noting, as Molly Ball reported last night, that Michele Bachmann, who appeals to much of the same swath of the GOP electorate that Palin does, has been riding the debt stalemate to great political advantage.

We have a President that can not lead a dog on a rope.......

Boehner rewriting debt limit plan as clock ticks
Because this so called President can't do a damn thing but flap his lips ! 

Default fears accompanying Hill stalemate on debt
Default fears abound as lawmakers seem at a loss on how to agree on raising US debt limit

Wednesday July 27, 2011, 8:11 am
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Legislation aimed at keeping the government's bill-paying intact is stuck in neutral, putting Congress, the financial markets and the public on edge less than a week before the deadline for heading off a potentially calamitous default.

House Speaker John Boehner was forced late Tuesday to postpone a floor vote on his plan, which originally had been scheduled for Wednesday, after nonpartisan congressional scorekeepers said the proposal would cut spending less than advertised. He promised to rewrite the measure, but the move means the House can't vote on it until Thursday at the earliest.

Boehner, R-Ohio, needs to do more than pump up the legislation. He needs to shore up his standing with tea party-backed conservatives demanding deeper spending cuts to accompany an almost $1 trillion increase in the government's borrowing cap. Many conservatives already had promised to oppose it.

"We need more drastic cuts," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. "I can't support it in its current form."

"I'm searching for a path toward yes but having a difficult time finding it," said Rep Bill Huizenga, R-Mich.

Unless he can wrestle the situation under control, Boehner risks losing leverage in his dealing with President Barack Obama and Democrats controlling the Senate.

Boehner's plan was not winning converts among some stalwart conservatives. It prompted Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid to declare that the bill was destined to fail in the Senate and it drew a White House veto threat. But it was framing the debate over how to reduce long-term deficits while raising the debt ceiling.

Tuesday's Congressional Budget Office analysis said the GOP measure would cut the deficit by about $850 billion over 10 years, not the $1.2 trillion originally promised. Even more embarrassing was a CBO finding that the measure, which would provide a $900 billion increase in the nation's borrowing cap, would generate just a $1 billion deficit cut over the coming year.

Boehner's plan would couple budget savings gleaned from 10 years of curbs on agency budgets with a two-track plan for increasing the government's borrowing cap by up to $2.7 trillion. The first increase of $900 billion would take effect immediately; the second increase could be awarded only after the recommendations of a special bipartisan congressional panel are enacted into law.

The White House says Boehner's measure would reopen the delicate and crucial debt discussions to unending political pressure during next year's campaigns and risk more uncertainty in the markets.

The White House promised to veto Boehner's measure if it were to reach Obama's desk.

It's unlikely to come to that. Reid, D-Nev., promised the measure would never make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Reid held back on forcing a vote on his competing measure, which he unveiled Monday to poor reviews from Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Reid appears to hope that his measure, which promises $2.7 trillion in spending cuts and would increase the debt limit enough to keep the government afloat past the 2012 elections, could emerge as the last viable option standing and could be modified with input from Republicans.

Those same Republicans blasted Reid's bill for $1 trillion in war-related savings they say are phony. But McConnell is emerging as a key figure in the endgame, and he sounded a conciliatory note in an appearance Tuesday.

"We need to get an outcome. And to get an outcome, a Republican House, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president would have to reach an agreement," McConnell said. "So I'm prepared to accept something less than perfect, because perfect is not achievable."

One area of potential compromise could be how to treat the findings of a bipartisan congressional commission to identify further deficit reductions, especially in major health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Both Reid and Boehner support the idea, though Boehner wants to make a future increase in the debt limit contingent on the proposed additional cuts being enacted into law.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking down to next Tuesday's deadline to continue the government's borrowing powers and avert possible defaults on U.S. loans and obligations, like $23 billion worth of Social Security payments due Aug. 3. The Capitol's telephones were jammed after Obama urged the public to contact their representatives in his Monday night address.

Conservative bloggers and groups like the Club for Growth, which funds primary campaigns against Republicans it deems too squishy in their conservatism, denounced Boehner's bill as too weak. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, closer to the GOP mainstream, urged support.

While Boehner searched for votes, some Americans seemed to edge closer to the notion that the Aug. 2 deadline might pass without a solution. The stock market fell again, although not dramatically. California planned to borrow about $5 billion from private investors as a hedge against a possible federal government default.

The White House spoke with veterans groups about what might happen to their benefits if a deal isn't reached. Obama has said he can't guarantee Social Security checks and payments to veterans and the disabled would go out on schedule.

Freshman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., bristled at the idea that tea party-influenced newcomers are sheep-like ideologues willing to risk default.

"We're not a bunch of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Neanderthals," Gowdy said. "We're interested in answering what we perceive to be the mandate, which is to stop the spending and change the way Washington handles money."

Gowdy said he was leaning against Boehner's proposal.

Debt Deadlock Hurts President Obama's Street Cred...

If the American people reelect this joke, then there are more idiots in this country than i could have ever seen in my wildest dreams!!! He is 

"A God-awful mess that wasn't supposed to get this bad." That's how the Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo! Politics, Jane Sasseen characterizes the on-again, off-again, going nowhere debt talks in Washington.

With only a week to go before the man-made deadline on the self-made crisis expires, she and other beltway observers say they are no closer today than a month ago, but still think a last minute compromise will be reached.

"Nobody knows how they can get out of it because they are so far apart," she says and points to the partisan presentations on national TV by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner as proof.

She, like the rest of us, will sit back and wait and wonder if the elected leaders of this country will actually drive the train over the cliff or not. One thing she is certain about is that "no matter what happens the economy is going to get hit by this."

Sasseen is also keenly interested in the delicate dance that's playing out between the President and his big-money backers on Wall Street. She says "Wall Street supported Obama massively last election and they've shifted back somewhat. It's interesting because Obama is going back trying to fundraise again and they're not so happy with him anymore." But he needs and wants the money.


The great irony there Sasseen says, is that in "the real America there's a perception that he and Geithner and the Treasury are in the pocket of the banks, that they're friendly to the banks, and that hurts him." She says he also hasn't had much success yet answering voter concerns that "you bailed out the banks but not homeowners."

But alas, he'll have plenty of time to address those issues since the 2012 election is still more than 15 months away, whereas the great avoidable train wreck we've come to call "debt ceiling negotiations" is the clear and present danger.

"President Obama has flubbed the debt negotiations by failing to address the problem earlier  , when he had more leverage." Really?  You mean by extending the "Bush" tax cuts, right?    President Obama and the Democrats could have avoided this entire mess by simply doing NOTHING!  The tax cuts should have expired in 2010. Instead, these idiots voted to extend them    and are now crying    that the big bad GOP    will not let them raise taxes  . They had their chance and blew it.
When you got no plan of your own you "suck"       

"The ugly standoff, meanwhile, makes the world's leading democracy look dysfunctional and foolish." News flash, the world's leading democracy IS dysfunctional and foolish. 

Nothing in Washington D.C. is going to change until every incumbent politician    is voted out of office!

Obama, Boehner Continue to Duel on Deficit...

President Barack Obama and House Republican leaders showed no sign of backing off their stances on how to cut the federal deficit as U.S. stocks sank the most since December 2008 on concern the economy will keep slowing.

Obama, making his first public comments since Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5, said yesterday that "common sense and compromise" should lead to a deficit-reduction plan that includes spending cuts and more tax revenue.

"It's not a lack of plans or policies that's the problem here," Obama said at the White House. "It's a lack of political will in Washington."

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor responded with statements saying both sides should be able to find cuts in mandatory spending, such as Social Security and Medicare, to make enough progress on the long-term shortfall.

"Republicans demonstrated this problem can be solved without job-destroying tax hikes," Boehner said.

Both sides sought to reassure global investors while staking out positions for negotiations on the direction of a so- called super committee of lawmakers, which is supposed to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions beyond the more than $900 billion that Republicans and Democrats have already agreed to. The panel was set up under a law that raised the nation's debt ceiling, and if it fails, a trigger mechanism would kick in to slash spending equally in defense and domestic programs.

Stock Futures Rise

Concern about the S&P credit downgrade and the state of the economy helped push U.S. stocks lower yesterday. The S&P 500 Index (SPX) lost 6.7 percent to 1,119.46 at 4 p.m. yesterday in New York, its lowest level since September, as all 500 stocks fell for the first time since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 1996. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 634.76 points as about $2.5 trillion was erased from global equities.

U.S. stock futures rose this morning, as investors waited for the outcome of a Federal Reserve meeting. S&P 500 Index futures added 1.7 percent at 8:44 a.m. in New York. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index traded down 0.1 percent after gaining as much as 1.6 percent. Treasuries fell, with the 10-year note's yield up six basis points to 2.37 percent at 9:02 a.m. in New York.

U.S. Assets

Obama sought to temper public concern about the stock and credit-ratings drop, citing the productivity of U.S. workers, the strength of the country's universities and the nation's history of entrepreneurship and innovation.

"Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America," he said. "No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a AAA country."

Still he said, the S&P action should create "a renewed sense of urgency" for members of both parties to come up with a plan for bringing the government budget under control and shrinking deficits.

Obama vowed to offer his own recommendations in the "coming weeks." He also reiterated his stance that any solution must include "tax reform that will ask those who can afford it to pay their fair share, and modest adjustments to health-care programs like Medicare."

Cantor, of Virginia, said compromising on taxes in return for modest changes in entitlement programs is "a trade we simply cannot afford to make."

'Pressure to Compromise'

As a result of S&P's analysis of the U.S. budget position, Republicans will come under "pressure to compromise on tax increases," Cantor wrote in a memo to House colleagues that was released by his office. "We will be told that there is no other way forward. I respectfully disagree."

While welcoming Obama's promise to lay out specific reforms for entitlement programs, Ohio's Boehner said raising taxes is "simply the wrong approach." Lawmakers must focus on cutting spending, he said.

The deal Obama struck with House Republicans last week cuts $917 billion from spending over the next decade. The super- committee -- the two top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate each will name three members by Aug. 16 -- will try to come up with at least an additional $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Falling Short

In downgrading U.S. debt, S&P said in a statement that the plan "falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics."

S&P's decision was at odds with the other two main ratings services, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. Both affirmed their AAA grades on U.S. debt on Aug. 2, when Obama signed the debt deal.

Obama and the two Republican leaders agreed that the focus of the White House and Congress should be on generating greater economic growth, even as their prescriptions differed.

"The challenges go beyond the stock market," Obama told a crowd of about 140 donors last night at a fundraiser in Washington. "Corporate profits have been up. The credit markets have stabilized but what's absolutely true even before these last couple days in the stock market is that recovery wasn't happening fast enough."

Boehner said the answer is to provide "economic certainty and creating an environment in which businesses can invest and jobs can flourish."

Cantor said House Republican leaders are preparing a package of legislation to be voted on beginning in September that would "reduce or eliminate regulatory barriers to job creation."

Americans "want to see less government -- not more taxes," Cantor said.

Other Ratings Companies

S&P's downgrade decision was at odds with the other two main ratings companies, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. Both affirmed their AAA grades on U.S. debt on Aug. 2, when Obama signed an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling and plan to trim the nation's deficit.

The new rating is the second-highest and puts the U.S. on the same level as Belgium and New Zealand, and above Japan and China. Under S&P's definitions, debt rated AA is barely different from AAA securities and shows that a borrower's ability to "meet its financial commitment on the obligation is very strong."

THANK you OBAMA!!