The BIG LIE!

 

 

 

Well, of course it was! Millions of Americans were skeptical from day one! Barack Obama was swept into the White House in 2008 on an emotional outburst. Little was given to thoughts of practicality and experience. The American people sidestepped common sense and handed power to a man whose antipathy and resentment toward this nation is on display more than ever…

Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?….

“As America thrilled to the inauguration of its 44th President and a new First Lady, the West Wing was filling with a kaleidoscopic army of policy aces, whiz kids, and veteran advisers, all focused on the long haul, no-drama work to which Barack Obama has called them.” – Vanity Fair, March, 2009

“There’ s over 20 percent youth unemployment. We have to create green jobs, do more to provide pay equity – especially for women – and help veterans.” – Labor Secretary Designate Hilda Solis, Vanity Fair, March, 2009

“We are going to take a moon shot on energy independence. The unifying agenda of our nation is energy. Failure is not an option.” – Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, Vanity Fair, March, 2009

And my favorite….

“He’s very centered and calm. The more challenging things become, the more focused he gets.” – David Axelrod, Vanity Fair, March, 2009

It was a joke, a ruse, a scam….THIS is what we’re left with…

GOV’T OBTAINS WIDE AP PHONE RECORDS IN PROBE – Associated Press

TOP IRS OFFICIAL DIDN’T REVEAL TEA PARTY TARGETING – Yahoo! News / Associated Press

OBAMA’S CLAIM HE CALLED BENGHAZI ‘AN ACT OF TERRORISM’ – ‘FOUR PINOCCHIOS’ – The Washington Post

INSURERS PREDICT 100%-400% OBAMACARE RATE EXPLOSION – The Washington Examiner

It’s ALL been a lie…all of it!…Every bit of it…and you fell for it!…

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Lies Ahead

 

 

 

 

With the dereliction of duty absorbing mainstream media these days, it’s important to get the message out there when they absolutely refuse to do their job. I take pride in that task.

We all know how enamored the press is of Obama and how their turning a blind eye to the reality of this dangerous man in the White House is detrimental to the country. The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord offers an unnerving take on the second term of the most divisive, un-American President the nation has entrusted…

FROM ‘KILL ROMNEY’ TO ‘KILL THE CONSTITUTION’

“An Orwellian inaugural address and a backwards march to another failed utopia.

Backwards, march!

Yesterday’s declaration by President Obama, signaling with his inaugural address that he intends to turn America around and march it backwards to the glory days of failed leftism — making of America one gigantic society of beggars — raises the central and obvious point.

It’s the damage, stupid.

So how much damage can the American left do over the next four years?

Really. Seriously.

How much damage can the far-left-wing do with a re-elected Obama presidency?

A lot. When one hears the President of the United States use his inaugural address to favorably cite the most infamous phrase associated with the disastrous Neville Chamberlain — that would be “peace in our time” — there can only be trouble ahead.

The mechanics for this march backwards to failure are already in place.

First and foremost is the Orwellian use of his language. Tyranny is freedom. Collectivism is liberty. “Together” is shorthand for government control.

Second is the renewal of campaign warfare — with a new target.

Remember Kill Romney? You remember this, right? The moment back there in the 2012 campaign when it was said by an Obama strategist that the president’s team, politically speaking, intended “to kill Romney.”

And so they did. Mitt Romney was magically transformed from the reality of solid American citizen and accomplished businessman to murderer and thief. In the political nano-second of a presidential campaign cycle mere months long.

Move over Mitt.

There is a bigger target in left-wing sights now. A much bigger target: The Constitution of the United States.

 

Yet again, the people whose ancestors so hated the Constitution they have repeatedly tried to eliminate or severely restrict the guarantees of liberty it provides, believe their moment has arrived.

These are the political descendants of those who tried to write slavery into the Constitution — the Dred Scott decision, written by the liberal Andrew Jackson appointee, the slave-owning Chief Justice Roger Taney. In which a liberal court declared blacks were not human beings and thus their right to anything other than literal chains simply did not — and never would — exist. Then there was the brainchild of segregation, ruthlessly enforced for decades by a long succession of liberal Democrats at the federal, state, and local level, in which blacks were denied their liberty to vote, eat in restaurants, sit in the front of a bus or even marry outside of their race. Lynching? Democrats made a specialty of this one, refusing repeatedly to outlaw the denial of a basic right to life to black Americans, instead empowering the Ku Klux Klan — the Klan in turn a pillar of support for a big government.

The modern versions of all this? The modern restrictors of liberty and freedom who in the past were slave owners, segregationists, lynchers, and Klansmen — all key components of the Democrats and the progressive movement?

How and who specifically will manage this backwards march?

How specifically will the Constitution be assaulted? And what are the envisioned results?

This time the targets will be the First and Second Amendments… free speech, religious liberty, and the right to bear arms.

And the allies arrayed to strip these?

Can you say the National Education Association? The Sierra Club? Greenpeace? The Communications Workers of America? The NAACP?

Can you say the Obama campaign team turned into the post-election Organizing for America?

Can you say MSNBC? Tom Brokaw, Chris Matthews? How about CBS and Bob Schieffer…and CBS political director John Dickerson? More on the latter in a moment…

 

 

 

Let’s start with the president’s liberal allies.

Over at the Washington Free Beacon Matthew Continetti has put the spotlight on a significant story.

Continetti zeroes in on a little noticed report in the far-left Mother Jones magazine by writer Andy Kroll. What was Kroll’s headline:

Revealed: The Massive New Liberal Plan to Remake American Politics

Have you ever heard of the “Democracy Initiative”? Continetti brings us up to date about the results from two progressive “retreats” held in June and December of last year.

Participants?

the AFL-CIO, the Center for American Progress, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Color of Change, Common Cause, Demos, the Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, Mother Jones (in a “non-editorial” capacity!), National People’s Action, the National Wildlife Federation, People for the American Way, the Piper Fund, Public Campaign, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and Voto Latino…

And these progressives, who, according to the Center for American Freedom have a collective revenue base of $1.69 billion at their disposal, are about what?

A full-fledged assault on the Constitution of the United States.

Oh, they don’t phrase it that way. They aren’t stupid. They will couch their point the way White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer did when making it to the Washington Post (as noted here by the Weekly Standard ). Said Pfeiffer:

“There’s a moment of opportunity now that’s important. What’s frustrating is that we don’t have a political system or an opposition party worthy of the opportunity.”

And what “political system” is so not “worthy” in the view of this senior Obma aide? Why, the American political system based on the Constitution, of course.

Make no mistake: peeling away liberty is what these progressives are all about.

According to Kroll, the first targets will be to “get big money out of politics.” Hey, no irony there. These groups with $1.69 billion at their disposal want to restrict — that is take away…the First Amendment rights of Chevron (for donating to House Republicans), Google (“for its continued membership with the generally pro-Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce”) and ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — for daring to promote conservative legislation in states around the country. To do-in ALEC’s First Amendment rights the Democracy Initiative will use its resources to intimidate the group’s donors into silence — forcing them to give up their First Amendment rights and withdraw their support.

All this on the heels of two important First Amendment battles already held: the decision to force the Catholic Church through Obamacare to relinquish its First Amendment right to not fund abortions and contraceptives. And the concerted attack by the Obama White House and its allies on conservative media and its personalities from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, in the case of the latter —along with Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Pat Buchanan — openly seeking to remove them from the radio or television airwaves.

But that’s only the First Amendment.

Moving on to the Second Amendment the decision is to take away the right to bear arms. The GOP’s Senator Marco Rubio (FL) has said to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly:

“I think that the President — and he doesn’t have the guts to admit it — is not a believer in the Second Amendment, although he states that he is. I didn’t write the Constitution. Neither did you — neither did he. If he doesn’t want it in the Constitution or he wants to reform the Second Amendment, then have the guts to admit that.”

So while the President won’t have, in Rubio’s words, “the guts” to openly state his real goal — there are all those Democrats in Red States to worry about in 2014 — his allies will go about Romneyizing supporters of the Second Amendment.

How will it be done? It will be done in the same fashion the Kill Romney campaign turned Romney from a considerable man of achievement into a murderer and a thief.

Take a look at this TV commercial made by Congressman John Barrow, in which Barrow proclaims his steadfast support for the Second Amendment.

Now take a look at the very same commercial — except this time it has been re-cut and selectively edited by the anti-Constitution group “Stop the Gun Violence” to cast the Congressman as a recipient of “blood money” from the NRA.

The irony? Congressman Barrow, from Georgia — is a Democrat.

No matter. When it comes to the Kill the Constitution campaign, either you get in line — or you get run over.

Which is where the mainstream media comes in. Take a look at this from Breitbart about this outburst from one John Dickerson, the political director for CBS. Dickerson, who used to work at Time with Obama spokesman Jay Carney, took to the cyberpages of the left wing Slate in an article titled — really:

 

Go for the Throat!

Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.

Ranted Dickerson:

The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.…

Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition’s most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.

Nice, yes? This is shorthand that tells you the campaign to destroy the Constitution will have important allies in the liberal media.

One could go and on here with the list of the liberal assaults on the Constitution and the Orwellian fashion in which they are presented. Voter corruption becomes “Voter ID.” Attacks on the free market and capitalism are all about a mythical “fair share” — in which the real game is to protect liberal elites while punishing the hated middle class. The most destructive game in all this, of course, is the blockheaded belief that massive government spending to endless degree will bring a halt to the growth of the national debt.

But why? Why all this?

What is it that drives this determination to reverse 200-plus years of American progress and march the nation backwards ?

Why wreck the Constitution with this vast confection of Orwellian language and straw men, both of which Obama indulges in on a regular basis?

Our friend Mark Levin has captured the core reason: the eternal leftist drive for utopia. As Obama phrased it yesterday, the drive “to complete our journey”.

Or, as Levin phrased it in the title of his last book, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America This is the reason for all this. To quote Levin:

Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology. There are, of course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite fantasies. But there are common themes. The fantasies take the form of grand social plans or experiments, the impracticability and impossibility of which, in small ways and large, lead to the individual’s subjugation.

What we are living through, what the Obama inaugural and the campaign that preceded it was all about, is creating utopia in America.

That is the goal of Barack Obama. That is the goal of his campaign-operatives-turned-agenda-operatives calling themselves “Organizing for Action.” That is the goal of the humorously named “Democracy Initiative” and it’s $1.69 billion pool of special interest money.

And they cannot accomplish this utopia — surprise, surprise — by using the Constitution of the United States. The rights of others — i.e., you — stand in their way. They must be either restricted if not abolished outright.

There is no Orwellian language too far-fetched, no straw man big enough that cannot and will not be pressed into the service of wrecking the Constitution.

CBS’s John Dickerson put it well.

When it comes to the survival of the Constitution of the United States, the American Left is going to “go for the throat.”

If you think the campaign to “Kill Romney” was a political dogfight — you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The best advice for Republicans?

Wake up.”

 

 

 

In an alternate universe…..

 

From a few days ago…David French at Patheos..

 

Top Six Newspaper Headlines if Barack Obama Were Republican

This morning — stunned that our president was raising money in Vegas and prepping for a party with Beyonce while our embassies burn — I asked myself: “What if Barack Obama were a Republican?  How would the media cover these last few days?”  After living through eight years of coverage of the Bush administration, it’s not hard to guess.  Let’s suppose, just for a moment, that theNew York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times covered Obama like they covered Bush.  I present the top six headlines (with opening sentences):

1.  New York Times: “President Attends Vegas Fundraiser as Middle East Protests Rage.”  Top Aides to President Barack Obama struggled to keep track of events in the Middle East and to contain the political fallout from Mr. Obama’s decision to proceed with Las Vegas Fundraiser even while American embassies were under attack across the Middle East . . .”

2. New York Times: “News Analysis: Is There Now a ‘Promise Gap’ in Foreign Policy?”  As Democratic challenger Mitt Romney runs ads in battleground states comparing Mr. Obama’s campaign promises to his economic performance, new ads are set to air contrasting the mass rallies in support of Mr. Obama in his 2008 campaign with the mass riots roiling the Middle East . . .”

3. Washington Post:  ”In Midst of Crisis, President Sends Mixed Messages to Egypt.”  Less than a day after accusing his Democratic rival, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, of “shooting first and aiming later,” the administration was forced to backtrack from the President’s declaration that Egypt was not an ally . . .

4. Washington Post:  ”News Analysis: Ghost of the Carter Campaign Haunts President.”  In 1980 humiliating images of blindfolded American hostages filled TV screens across America, dooming President Carter’s already-struggling presidential campaign.  In 2012, black flags fly over U.S. embassies as the administration appears unable to defend American diplomatic outposts abroad . . .

5. Los Angeles Times:  ”Critics Recall McCarthyism as Department of Justice ID’s Controversial Filmmaker.”  The Department of Justice publicly identified the maker of a controversial film critical of Islam, raising concerns about the filmmakers safety and about the DOJ’s commitment to free speech . . .

6. Los Angeles Times:  ”Hollywood Rages as Department of Justice Targets Amateur Director.”  A coalition of actors, producer, and directors held a blistering press conference outside of Department of Justice offices in Los Angeles, accusing the administration of an ‘unconscionable attack on free speech’ after the DOJ disclosed the identity of the controversial director of “The Innocence of Muslims” . . .

Ahh well, I guess we’ll have to wait until the Romney presidency to watch mainstream journalists actually do their job.

 

“Bad reporting, it would seem, and bad economics, absolutely, from The Washington Post.” – Jim Pethokoukis

 

 

The American Enterprise Institute’s Jim Pethokoukis sets the Washington Post right…for now….

Sorry, Washington Post, Romney didn’t get rich moving U.S. jobs overseas

In what is meant to be a bombshell political story, the Washington Post is attempting to paint Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a private equity boss who got rich by shipping American jobs overseas.

But the WaPo seems more than a little fuzzy about the basics of how international business works — and the difference between outsourcing and offshoring.

Or maybe this was a story just too politically juicy to properly check.

But whatever the reason, WaPo World’s version of Romney’s business career at Bain Capital may not correspond with reality, via a source familiar with Bain’s activities as well as a detailed analysis of the piece.

1. WaPoWorld:

Bain’s foray into outsourcing began in 1993 when the private equity firm took a stake in Corporate Software Inc., or CSI, after helping to finance a $93 million buyout of the firm. CSI, which catered to technology companies like Microsoft, provided a range of services including outsourcing of customer support. Initially, CSI employed U.S. workers to provide these services but by the mid-1990s was setting up call centers outside the

Romney Reality: What CSI actually did was provide U.S. software developers with technical support and sales. Example: It provided domestic outsourcing — which is different than overseas offshoring — for call centers and help desks. As far as its international business goes, CSI was reseller of U.S. software in European markets. In other words, they helped distribute U.S. software around the world.

2. WaPoWorld:

Two years after Bain invested in the firm, CSI merged with another enterprise to form a new company called Stream International Inc. Stream immediately became active in the growing field of overseas calls centers. … By 1997, Stream was running three tech-support call centers in Europe and was part of a call center joint venture in Japan, an SEC filing shows. … Stream continued to expand its overseas call centers. And Bain’s role also grew with time. It ultimately became the majority shareholder in Stream in 1999 several months after Romney left Bain to run the Salt Lake City Olympics. … Bain sold its stake in Stream in 2001, after the company further expanded its call center operations across Europe and Asia.

Romney Reality: Those overseas call centers in the WaPo story were based in Europe and Japan, and serviced international customers of U.S. companies in their local languages.

3. WaPo World:

The corporate merger that created Stream also gave birth to another, related business known as Modus Media Inc., which specialized in helping companies outsource their manufacturing. Modus Media was a subsidiary of Stream that became an independent company in early 1998. Bain was the largest shareholder, SEC filings show. …  In December 1997, it announced it had contracted with Microsoft to produce software and training products at a center in Australia. Modus Media said it was already serving Microsoft from Asian locations in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan and in Europe and the United States. …

Two years later, Modus Media told the SEC it was performing outsource packaging and hardware assembly for IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Computer Corp. The filing disclosed that Modus had operations on four continents, including Asian facilities in Singapore, Taiwan, China and South Korea, and European facilities in Ireland and France, and a center in Australia. …

Romney Reality: Again, what Modus Media did was help companies like Microsoft and IBM sell their products internationally. Products destined for American consumers were manufactured here at home.

4. WaPo World:

One of those was a California bicycle manufacturer called GT Bicycle Inc. that Bain bought in 1993. The growing company relied on Asian labor, according to SEC filings. Two years later, with the company continuing to expand, Bain helped take it public. In 1998, when Bain owned 22 percent of GT’s stock and had three members on the board, the bicycle maker was sold to Schwinn, which had also moved much of its manufacturing offshore as part of a wider trend in the bicycle industry of turning to Chinese labor.

Romney Reality: This WaPo charge is particularly weak. Turns out GT Bicycles had overseas suppliers before Bain invested in the company. The story doesn’t outright suggest Bain moved jobs overseas, but it does lead readers to make that erroneous leap for themselves.

5. WaPo World:

Another Bain investment was electronics manufacturer SMTC Corp. In June 1998, during Romney’s last year at Bain, his private equity firm acquired a Colorado manufacturer that specialized in the assembly of printed circuit boards. That was one of several preliminary steps in 1998 that would culminate in a corporate merger a year later, five months after Romney left Bain. In July 1999, the Colorado firm acquired SMTC Corp., SEC filings show. Bain became the largest shareholder of SMTC and held three seats on its corporate board. Within a year of Bain taking over, SMTC told the SEC it was expanding production in Ireland and Mexico.

Romney Reality: As the story notes, SMTC wasn’t even acquired until months after Romney left Bain Capital. Is Romney running for president or is Bain?

6. WaPo World:

Just as Romney was ending his tenure at Bain, it reached the culmination of negotiations with Hyundai Electronics Industry of South Korea for the $550 million purchase of its U.S. subsidiary, Chippac, which manufactured, tested and packaged computer chips in Asia. The deal was announced a month after Romney left Bain. Reports filed with the SEC in late 1999 showed that Chippac had plants in South Korea and China and was responsible for marketing and supplying the company’s Asian-made computer chips. An overwhelming majority of Chippac’s customers were U.S. firms, including Intel, IBM and Lucent Technologies.

Romney Reality: Stop the presses! Chippac was purchased in March 1999, a month after Romney left Bain Capital. Prior owner was Hyundai, a South Korean company that already had factories in Asia at the time of sale. So buying a company with foreign factories is the same, apparently, as “shipping jobs overseas,” according to the Washington Post.

And that’s it. That’s the big story that’s supposed to derail Romney campaign, I guess. Instead of the headline “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas, ” perhaps the WaPoheadline should have been something different.

Some more accurate options:

– “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that expanded overseas jobs overseas after he left”

– ”Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that had international employees before it bought them”

– “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that created foreign call centers to deal with foreign customers”

And it’s also just bad economics to suggest offshoring is necessarily a job killer.As this study suggests, “Increased globalisation of manufacturing processes does not necessarily imply a hollowing-out of domestic production … Firms that go abroad expand employment at home relative to non-globalizers.”

Bad reporting, it would seem, and bad economics, absolutely, from The Washington Post.

 

 

‘Rome’ burns while Obama and the Democrats fiddle…

 

 

I may be beating my head against a brick wall, but I’m going to keep harping on this stuff until more people pay attention. Of course, that may never happened. That being said, I do love a good “told ya’ so!”

Let’s see where we are this morning….

REPORT: DEBT WOULD GROW UNDER GOP PLANS – The Washington Post

EDITORIAL: REFORM AND CORPORATE TAXES – The New York Times

GOP FEARS RISE OVER 2012 TONE; MESSAGE – The Politico

DID DEMS MAKE CONTRACEPTION A CAMPAIGN ISSUE? – Salon

JON STEWART CAN’T BELIEVE THE REPUBLICANS’ CRAZY PREDICTIONS FOR OBAMA’S SECOND TERM – Gawker

Do you ever get the sense that it’s to the media’s advantage to keep you “ignorant” of the truth?…in the dark?….Regarding that last headline, should Mr. Obama get a second term (which it’s beginning to look more likely that he will) it will give me endless amounts of pleasure to see the snotty guys at Gawker eat those words!…well, you know what I mean…

My point is the media ignores very real, very imperative problems that we face in day to day life in this country. They continue to direct our attention to what they consider important and away from what is real, what is now!

The Economic Collapse blog continues to point out the FACTS of our desperate economic situation. Facts we can’t ignore. Yet, thousands of news outlets would prefer to quote Jon Stewart….giggle at Rick Santorum….focus on Romney’s message problem…or Newt’s days being numbered. In the meantime, Barack Obama continues to lead this country down a path that is literally to a dead end! The Democrats and this President don’t want you to know the truth because if you did, IT WOULD SCARE THE SH*T OUT OF YOU! 

And that wouldn’t work for them, now would it? They would be run out office so fast, it would be an awakening this nation has not seen in decades.

We have to face it. It’s not good…and it will likely get worse, before it gets better. You need to plan accordingly. What’s happening in Greece is NOTHING to what could happen here…

55 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE U.S. ECONOMY IN 2012 – The Economic Collapse

How is the U.S. economy doing in 2012?  Unfortunately, it is not doing nearly as well as the mainstream media would have you believe.  Yes, things have stabilized for the moment but this bubble of false hope will not last for long.  The long-term trends that are ripping our economy and our financial system to shreds continue unabated.  When you step back and look at the broader picture, it is hard to deny that we are in really bad shape and that things are rapidly getting worse.  Later on in this article you will find a list of interesting facts that show the true state of the U.S. economy.  Hopefully many of you will find this list to be a useful tool that you can share with your family and friends.  Each day the foundations of our economy crumble a little bit more, and we need to wake up as many Americans as we can to what is really going on while there is still time.  We have accumulated way too much debt, we consume far more wealth than we produce, millions of our jobs are being shipped overseas, our big cities are decaying, family budgets are being squeezed more than ever, poverty is rampant and we have raised several generations of Americans that expect the government to fix all of their problems.  The U.S. economy is at a crossroads, and the decisions that the American people make in 2012 are going to be incredibly important.

The statistics listed below are presented without much commentary.  They pretty much speak for themselves.

After reading this list, it will be hard for anyone to argue that we are on the right track.

The following are 55 interesting facts about the U.S. economy in 2012….

#1 As you read this, there are more than 6 million mortgages in the United States that are overdue.

#2 In January, U.S. home prices were the lowest that they have been in more than a decade.

#3 In Florida right now, some drivers are paying nearly 6 dollars for a gallon of gas.

#4 On average, you could buy about 10 gallons of gas for an hour of work back in the mid-90s.  Today, the average hour of work will get you less than 6 gallons of gas.

#5 Sadly, 43 percent of all American families spend more than they earn each year.

#6 According to Gallup, the unemployment rate was at 8.3% in mid-January butrose to 9.0% in mid-February.

#7 The percentage of working age Americans that have jobs is not increasing.  The employment to population ratio has stayed very steady (hovering between 58% and 59%) since the beginning of 2010.

#8 If you gathered together all of the workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States into one nation, they would constitute the 68th largest countryin the entire world.

#9 When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million.  Today, that numberis sitting at 5.6 million.

#10 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is hovering close to an all-time record high.

#11 According to Reuters, approximately 23.7 million American workers are either unemployed or underemployed right now.

#12 There are about 88 million working age Americans that are not employed and that are not looking for employment.  That is an all-time record high.

#13 According to CareerBuilder, only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012.

#14 Back in the year 2000, about 20 percent of all jobs in America were manufacturing jobs.  Today, about 5 percent of all jobs in America are manufacturing jobs.

#15 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#16 Amazingly, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since 2001.

#17 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#18 During the Obama administration, worker health insurance costs have risenby 23 percent.

#19 An all-time record 49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all at this point, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.

#20 According to the New York Times, approximately 100 million Americans are either living in poverty or in “the fretful zone just above it”.

#21 In the United States today, corporate profits are at an all-time high.  The percentage of Americans that are living in “extreme poverty” is also at an all-time high according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

#22 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#23 The poorest 50 percent of all Americans now collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#24 The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent since 2007.

#25 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#26 Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million.

#27 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#28 In 1984, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older was10 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.  Today, the median net worth of households led by someone 65 or older is 47 times larger than the median net worth of households led by someone 35 or younger.

#29 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

#30 After adjusting for inflation, U.S. college students are borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago.

#31 According to the Student Loan Debt Clock, total student loan debt in the United States will surpass the 1 trillion dollar mark at some point in 2012.  If you went out right now and starting spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#32 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#33 Incredibly, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#34 The average interest rate on a credit card that is carrying a balance is now up to 13.10 percent.

#35 Of the U.S. households that do have credit card debt, the average amount of credit card debt is an astounding $15,799.

#36 Overall, Americans are carrying a grand total of $798 billion in credit card debt.  If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent a million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent $798 billion by now.

#37 It may be hard to believe, but the truth is that consumer debt in America has increased by a whopping 1700% since 1971.

#38 At this point, about 70 percent of all auto purchases in the United States involve an auto loan.

#39 In the United States today, 45 percent of all auto loans are made to subprime borrowers.

#40 Mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP has more than tripled since 1955.

#41 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#42 To get the same purchasing power that you got out of $20.00 back in 1970 you would have to have more than $116 today.

#43 When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850.  Today an ounce of gold costs more than $1700 an ounce.

#44 The number of Americans that are not paying federal incomes taxes is at an all-time high.

#45 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#46 The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since Barack Obama entered the White House.

#47 During 2012, the U.S. government must roll over nearly 3 trillion dollars of old debt.

#48 The U.S. debt to GDP ratio has now reached 101 percent.

#49 At the moment, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of$15,419,800,222,325.15.

#50 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

#51 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

#52 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#53 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#54 Right now, the U.S. national debt is increasing by about 150 million dollarsevery single hour.

#55 Spending by the federal government accounted for about 2 percent of GDP back in 1800.  It accounted for 23.8 percent in 2011, and according to former U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, it will account for 36.8 percent of GDP by 2040.

Bad news, eh?

But it isn’t just our economy that is decaying.

We are witnessing a tremendous amount of social decay as well.  As I wrote about the other day, America is rapidly decomposing right in front of our eyes.

When the water level of a river drops far enough, it will reveal rocks that have been hidden from view for a very long time.  Well, a similar thing is happening in America right now.  For decades, our debt-fueled prosperity has masked a lot of the social decay that has been going on.

But now that our prosperity is evaporating, a lot of frightening stuff is being revealed.

Unfortunately, another major financial crisis is rapidly approaching and economic conditions in the United States are going to get a lot worse.

So what is our country going to look like when that happens?

That is a very good question.

 

 

And still more….

 

Exposing MSM Tricks on Unemployment and Presidential Polling

The White House and the media were ecstatic about Friday’s BLS unemployment report, which showed the national jobless rate dropping to 8.3 percent, as the US economy added 243,000 jobs.  These should be welcome results for all Americans, CBO’s harrowing 2012 economic projections notwithstanding.  Although the headlines were uniformly positive, reality isn’t quite as cheery.  Leftist Paul Krugman notes that long-term unemployment remains historically persistent, the U-6 “real” unemployment rate still floats above 15 percent, and — most distressingly — the labor force continues to contract.  Zero Hedge documented Friday’s flat-out bad news (emphasis his):

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.

The Heritage Foundation confirms the plunge in labor force participation in this chart, followed by another graph demonstrating that by the Obama administration’s own projections (which were used to sell the stimulus to anxious Americans in 2009), the unemployment rate should be more than two percentage points lower than today’s 8.3 percent:

And the failed-on-its-own-terms “stimulus” data:

Nevertheless, saccharine headlines and “I get better with age!” happy talk from President Obama — matched with a lackluster and increasingly bitter GOP primary — will give the incumbent an approval boost.  Right on cue, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll purports to show Obama hitting the magic 50 percent mark and leading Mitt Romney in head-to-head general election contest.  Celebrate good times, Democrats!  Except…the poll is “worthless,” according to Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey.  Why?

First, this is a poll of general population adults rather than registered or likely voters, so it’s not even a proper polling type for the predictive outcome they claim. More importantly, though, the poll series has dropped its reporting of partisan identification within their samples.  It’s the second time that the poll has not included the D/R/I split in its sample report, and now it looks as though this will be policy from this point forward.  Since this is a poll series that has handed double-digit partisan advantages to Democrats in the past (for instance, this poll from April 2011 where the sample only had 22% Republicans), it’s not enough to just hear “trust us” on sample integrity from the Washington Post or ABC. One cannot determine whether Obama’s improvement in this series is a result of the State of the Union speech, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen suggest, or whether it’s due to shifting the sample to favor Democrats more so than in previous samples.where the sample only had 22% Republicans), it’s not enough to just hear “trust us” on sample integrity from the Washington Post or ABC. One cannot determine whether Obama’s improvement in this series is a result of the State of the Union speech, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen suggest, or whether it’s due to shifting the sample to favor Democrats more so than in previous samples.

Indeed, WaPo/ABC’s numbers have been raked over the coals by conservatives in the past for their ludicrously unbalanced party ID samples.  This pollster has displayed an interesting habit of surveying far more Democrats than Republicans, which — surprise! — produces favorable data for Democrats.  Rather than be held to account for their questionable methods,  WaPo/ABC has simply decided to hide their methodology from the public altogether.  Which reminds me: I’d like to announce the release of a new nationwide poll of likely voters that shows Barack Obama’s approval rating falling to 36 percent.  This IGB* survey reveals that Obama would lose to every possible Republican opponent by at least seven points.  Whom did this pollster question, you ask?  It’s IGB’s policy to adhere to the Washington Post/ABC News precedent and not release that data.  But by all means, please talk about these important findings ad nauseam on television and radio.

All sarcasm aside, this election cycle will have peaks and valleys.  This latest poll will get breathless attention from liberals, while conservatives will point toGallup’s recent swing-state data and other numbers.  Polls are addictive to horse-race watchers (guilty as charged), but they won’t become truly meaningful until late September.  Recall that McCain-Palin raced out to a ten point leadamong likely voters in Gallup on the heels of the 2008 RNC.  The rollercoaster ride continues…

GUY BENSON @ TOWNHALL.COM