John Nolte notes that  the media is frantically backing and filling and trying to remove all record that the Obama administration ever supported the “Occupy” movement:

Two months ago, the White House, Democrats, and the MSM were all sure that the #OccupyWallStreet movement would save them in 2012. With thousands of astro-turfed morons in the streets raging against Wall Street, Obama’s allies hoped to use said morons to create a silver lining in the economic cloud he himself created.

Obama’s goal was pretty simple; create (indirectly, through the unions that’ve been paying the freight for these “protests” all along) a sense that there was a mass movement protesting against the anonymous forces that were keeping the little guy down (but not, of course, the Obama administraiton, which had uncontested control of Congress for two years).

The hope was that by repeating this message incessantly, enough voters could be convinced that Wall Street, and by extension, evil Republicans, were to blame for our chronic unemployment, record deficits, and stillborn economic growth. President Obama who?

 And Obama jumped on the “movement”- his movement – from the beginning:

Now, of course, “Occupy” is rapidly becoming about as popular as Nickelback with voters.  And the AP is dutifully doing damage control for the President they desperately want to keep in office:

And it looks as thought the Associated Press has decided to start the memory-holing with the following:

“Democrats See Minefield in Occupy Protests

NEW YORK (AP) — The Republican Party and the tea party seemed to be a natural political pairing. But what may have seemed like another politically beneficial alliance — Democrats and Occupy Wall Street — hasn’t happened.”

Insert record scratch here.

Sorry AP, but the only reason Democrats see a minefield is because they’re standing in it.

Nolte helpfully exhumes some history that the Dems would rather have disappear – stories of Dems jumping on the Occupy bandwagon:

…House Democrats. And look, the story about House Democrats endorsing Occupy is an AP story!

…Top Democrats.

…Nancy Pelosi.

…A President named Obama, who said of Occupy, “We are on their side.”

…The SEIU.

The association between the Democrats and the “nazi-endorsed rat-infested rape camps” needs to pop up again next October.

I was talking on Twitter with a Democrat activist the other day.

The activist and I were debating what the 2012 election would be about.

I said “unemployment”.  I mean, do you really think people think they’re better off now than they were four years ago?

The activist’s response: “Depends on who people think is at fault. Thinking on that seems to be shifting”.

Well, the media will be doing its best to “shift” that “thinking” for the part of the electorate that doesn’t pay much attention to these things.

But I think the activist was overestimating their own party.  Because I will bank on the prediction that the Democrats’ campaign will key on the folloiwng:

• “Oh, that Hermain Cain!  He’s sure a randy one, isn’t he?  We can’t have a philanderer in the White House!”
• Related: “A president needs to be better at covering their tracks for their transgressions than that!”
• “We can’t have someone in the White House who gets mental blocks on tedious, repetitive questions at game shows debates, can we?  We can not have a President who makes gaffes and who doesn’t shine on TV, oh, no!”
• “Doesn’t Mitt Romney look insincere?”
• “Hey, don’t blame us – bailouts were all lBush’s idea!”

Doug Ross looks at history….

In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. While Great Britain’s maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world’s industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina for the position of the world’s second-most powerful economy.

…and finds some really ugly precedents.

Yes, we can.

Obama’s numbers are in freefall – against generic and real Republicans.

Worse – for him?  He’s falling in the demographics that put him in office.  Even students.

Which must have something to do with his ride to the rescue of all those student loan holders:

In keeping with his new campaign theme of “we can’t wait,” President Obama today will roll out a plan to put more money in the pockets of some of the nation’s 36 million student loan recipients.

Obama has broad latitude in this area – certainly broader than the first two parts of his western campaign trip, underwater mortgages and subsidies for hiring veterans – because one of his early legislative initiatives was to have the federal government take over the student lending business in America.

Students are apparently now “too big to fail”.

Obama argued for the measure in 2009 as a cost-savings initiative, saying that the old system of privately issued, government secured loans reduced the amount of available money for needy students and also prevented the feds from making the system more efficient.

And we all know nobody makes systems efficient like the feds.

Here’s the part that should give you pause (emphasis added)

But Obama is now seeking to use that new power to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won’t approve. The idea is to cap student loan repayment rates at 10 percent of a debtor’s income that goes above the poverty line, and then limiting the life of a loan to 20 years.

And you know what that means?  Money thrown away:

Take this example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.

Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers.

Too bad the founding fathers said nothing about spending without representation…

IHS Global’s economic model – reported by James Pethoukoukis – sounds a dire warning for The One:

“Based on the likely state of the economy in 2012, President Obama faces a steep uphill task to secure reelection. Based upon our forecast for the economy, our election equation projects just a 43.5% share of the two-party vote for the president, i.e., a heavy defeat.”

Pethoukoukis:

It may already be too late for Obama, given the lengthy lag between an economic turnaround and voter economic perception. Then again, maybe the Gray Davis model—use a huge fundraising advantage to squeak out a win—can be effectively employed by Team Obama.

As we saw earlier, you can expect the Dems to pull out their biggest advantage – plutocrats – for all they’re worth.  As it were.

But it’s not just IHS Global. Yale economist Ray Fair has a well-known election forecasting model that uses three economic variables to makes its call: a) growth rate of real per capita GDP in the first three quarters of 2012; b) growth rate of the GDP deflator in the first 15 quarters of the Obama administration, c) number of quarters in the first 15 quarters of the Obama administration in which the growth rate of real per capita GDP is greater than 3.2 percent at an annual rate.

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

On the one hand, Barack Obama is throwing in his lot with a “mass movement” of professional protesters and  bobble-headed self-important “post”-adolescents…

Barack Obama, US president, offered more support for protesters against the global financial system after a weekend of demonstrations in cities around the world,

…more or less like George McGovern did.

On the other hand, he still wants as much of that Wall Street money as he can salvage:

but called on them not to “demonise” those who worked on Wall Street.

So perhaps they’re learning…

Obama jobs plan fails in the GOP-controlled Senate:

The Senate defeated President Barack Obamas job-creation package on Tuesday in a sign that Washington is likely too paralyzed to take major steps to spur hiring before the 2012 elections.

Well,naturally. The Senate is controlled by the GOP.  What else could happen?

UPDATE:  Oh, silly me.  I always mix up the House and Senate.  The Dems control it, right?

(Mitch checks)  Wow.  Sure enough.

Obama had barnstormed around the country to pressure his Republican opponents to back his top legislative priority, but he did not pick up a single Republican vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate.Two Democrats, facing re-election in conservative states, also voted against the measure.

Hm.  So – is Washington “too polarized”, or are Barack Obama’s coattails shrinking again?

Joe Doakes notes that Obama is singing conservatives’ tune:

President Obama slipped and called for a flat tax:

The president welcomed the charge. “I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare,” he told the Rose Garden crowd of 200. “I think it’s just the right thing to do.”

Exactly!  Everyone should pay the same, flat tax!

Cool: I propose 15% flat tax across the board, no exemptions, no deductions, no credits. Employer withholds it so no income tax form to file because there’s never a refund. Lay off half the IRS and taxpayers save trillions in lost productive hours, no longer filling out silly forms.

Almost seems too good to be true to you?  Of course it does:

Of course he didn’t mean that. He meant something different entirely. But hey – you offered it, we’ll take it, thanks.

Pass that bill and make him look stupid vetoing it.

Note to John Kline and Erik Paulsen: wanna get carried back to Washington in January 2013 on the shoulders of twenty million people who’ve had enough?  Take Obama up on his newfound desire for tax fairness, and introduce the flat tax.

Obama is losing ground to every Republican candidate:.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, with a majority of voters believing he’ll lose to any Republican, a solid plurality saying they’ll definitely vote against him and most potential Republican challengers gaining on him.

Even in potential matchups where he leads, Obama in most cases has lost ground to the Republican.

And we do mean any Republican candidate:

The biggest gain came for Palin, the former Alaska governor who hasn’t yet announced whether she’ll jump into the fast-changing race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.

I still firmly believe that Obama will turn this around – indeed, by next year, if the Democrats don’t gain 2-4 seats in the Senate, flip the House back, and win the presidency with a five point margin, they should feel completely humiliated.

But I’m running out of ways to get from here to that end result.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus note that if the Obamessiah weren’t president, they’d be ‘marching on the White House’:

Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

So…why not march?

I mean, all us crackers did it, right?

“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”

In other words, the only reason not to march is…racism

RedSquirrel, writing at the Red Squirrel Report blog, relates what he apparently posted at Stasi.gov.us “AttackWatch.com”.

It’s your informant, ‘Joe’, again. I feel that it’s my duty to blow the whistle on the gang of right-wing miscreants and troublemakers known as The MOB (The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers). I have been working undercover inside that organization, and think that I have their trust.

Two of the MOB bosses, Ed Morrissey and that reprehensible rapscallion, Mitch Berg host The NARN (Northern Alliance Radio Network) on 1280 AM The Patriot. They slander and smear The Messiah regularly, using the public airwaves. I have been monitoring their program for about seven years. Morrissey regularly writes hit pieces for that….that queen of right-wing slime, Michelle Malkin.

A brief point of order;  nobody should feel they’ve “earned the trust” of Ed and I.  We are endlessly devious.  It’s why, for example, we engineered the results of this week’s “Most Valuable Blogger” contest at WCCO – to do for that august competition what Algore, Yassir Arafat and Obama himself did for the “Nobel Peace Prize”. 

But yes – it is a fact we are attacking President Obama, where “attacking” means “exercising our First Amendment rights to dissent while we’re still allowed to”.

Scary!

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

From yesterday’s paper.

Click to see full-size image

Does it seem as if the Left is a little desperate to find something, anything, good to say about the President?

The ones that aren’t giving up on him completely.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Pass This Bill?

Okay, Let’s Do It.  Hey you, Mr. Clerk of the House, what’s the File Number of the President’s jobs bill?  Let’s call it up right now and take a vote.

Huh?  There isn’t a House File number?  Why not?

What do you mean the bill hasn’t been written, yet?  He just called on us to pass it, a dozen times.

The President is going to start writing the jobs bill next week?

Then why in Hell did we have to listen to his speech last night?  Why the hoo-haw about scheduling the speech on the night of the Republican debate, the hysterics about rescheduling it to the night of the Packers game, the wailing about the discourtesy of Republicans not responding to the speech, not even attending, when in the end it turns out the Republicans were right all along – there’s no point in responding, there’s no point in even attending, because there’s NO BILL TO PASS.

This entire episode was empty hot air from an empty suit.  Worse than Carter, which I wouldn’t have believed possible.

Worst.  President.  Ever.

It’s always tempting to run a poll – but a poll with only two options is kinda anticlimactic.

Gibson Musical Instruments Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz via smacked Obama and his speech with a big piece of rosewood:

”He’s a government fan,” he says. “He has a problem with successful businesses. He thinks they’re the problem, that they shouldn’t be quite as successful.”

“He is using the levers of government to not only redistribute, but to penalize,” he adds. “I see a difference between what he said and what he’s doing.”

“We’re under attack,” Juskiewicz says. “It’s pretty interesting to see that one of the points in Obama’s speech was to cut back regulation and promote jobs, when, in fact, he’s done just the opposite…

The splash Obama’s made about “cutting regulation” is, of course, purely potemkin – or as that other Gibson player, John Lennon, once noted…

The Gibson "John Lennon", modeled after one of Lennon's old instruments

…it’s one (cut regulation) for you, nineteen for me.

Gibson Musical Instrument Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz will be at President Obama’s “Jobs” speech tonight, to remind His Excellency and the assembled, adoring media that the Administration’s politicized, idiotic policies – enforcing an arcane Indian law – are going to cost the company millions of dollars, and if followed through will cost the Nashville area 40 skilled, high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Close-up of the new re-issue "Eric Clapton 1960 Les Paul". Hint, Santa.

In solidarity with Gibson, I’ll supply them some free advertising.

Indian Freaking Rosewood, Administration Byatches!

I do endorse Gibson guitars (although, to be fair, most guitar players do – even lifelong Fender guys like me; I finally took the plunge on a Gibson product last year, and yeah, it’s niiiice).

Oooh - Gibson provides jobs all over the world!

Gateway Pundit writes:

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz told reporters today that the federal raid on the popular American guitar maker will cost the company $10,000,000. Juszkiewicz also said that he will attend Obama’s big spending jobs speech tomorrow in Washington DC.

Is that a gorgeous piece of work or what? It sounds even better than it looks. And guess what? Yep - made in the USA. One of those "American Manufacturing Jobs" that lefties are constantly barbering about. Outsource this? Why not outsource guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns to the Pakistani military, while you're at it?

Attorney General Eric Holder said the raid on the Gibson was not political.

And if you believe Holder you are an idiot here’s an excellent Fox News clip summing up the entire story so far.

Remember – the CEO of Martin guitars (sorry – while they make gorgeous guitars, and I also own a Martin product, they get no free ads from me), which builds guitars out of exactly the same Indian-grown, American-finished rosewood as Gibson, which is not illegal under US law and only vaguely-sanctioned under Indian law, is a big Democrat contributor.

A Gibson ES335. A favorite of both jazz musicians and loud rockers who like the ES' excellent feedback characteristics.

Of course, Gibson is just one of many such stories – companies being harried, money being confiscated, jobs being destroyed by our rapacious, power-mad bureaucracy.

Yep, there's parts, too. This is a Gibspon "Soap Bar". I have one sunk into the middle position of my Fender Jazz, wired out of phase with the bridge pickup; when they play together, it sounds more like Mark Knopfler's Strat (think "Sultans of Swing") than Mark Knopfler's Strat does.

I’m working to get Mr. Juskiewicz on the Northern Alliance one of these next few weekends.  Keep your fingers crossed; if you’re a fan of limited government or music, it’ll be a great chat.

Obama’s approval among Hispanics slips under 50%, says Gallup:

Despite launching his presidency with a large majority of Hispanics approving of his job performance, along with most blacks, Obama has seen significant erosion in Hispanics’ support. As a result, while Hispanics’ approval of Obama was at one time 20 points higher than the national average, at this time it is just 7 points higher. Two significant slips in Hispanics’ approval of Obama were seen in 2010, perhaps linked with the president hedging on campaign promises to make immigration reform a priority. However, that decline has continued into 2011 as the nation’s focus has turned more to the economy and federal budget problems.

The fact that illegals are returning to Mexico to find jobs means that there will be fewer Obama voters in Minnesota, at any rate.

The Star/Tribune Editorial Board puts the happiest, rah-rah-local-team-iest face they can on the aftermath of “Operation Fast And Furious”, the “Justice” Department’s infamous “gun-running sting” that morphed into an organized attempt to slander America’s gun owners and gun dealers to undercut the Second Amendment movement – and tried to play the issue against the GOP.

They start out with the facts, more or less…:

The agency’s “Operation Fast and Furious” was supposed to monitor illegal gun sales from small-time gun buyers to large weapons traffickers, but after the sting operation failed an ATF analyst concluded that about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons linked to the operation have not been recovered.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way – and the one that I’m pretty well convinced history will find accurate – was that the program was supposed to create a trail of guns from small American gun dealers to the narcotraficantes, that would allow the Administration to step in in 2012 and declare they were shocked, shocked to see a trail of firearms from Texas to the carterls.  This, of course, would allow them to frame the “bitter gun-clingers” of the Second Amendment movement, in classic Alinsky style, as aiders, abetters and profiteers from Mexico’s anarchy.

The Strib starts with some bipartisan gurglings…

It’s been reassuring to see dogged Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley take a lead role in the congressional investigation. While Jones, who will continue to serve as U.S. attorney in Minnesota, works to straighten out the agency’s internal operations, the American people deserve a thorough review of what went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious.

…which lead to the paper’s real goal; finding some way of tying this fiasco to the GOP and the Right (emphasis added):

[It’s] already clear that the ATF has suffered from being without a permanent director since 2006, when Congress began requiring Senate confirmation of the position.

President Obama nominated Andrew Traver, special agent in charge of ATF’s Chicago field division, in November 2010, but like other candidates he’s been opposed by the too-powerful gun lobby.

And there you have it.  For the “crime” of demanding better accountability in the leadership of the BATFE – a government agency with a decades-long history of colossal, epic, face-palming incompetence and politicization aimed at law-abiding gun owners – the Strib editorial board wants it to share in the responsibility for a bureaucratic cluster-hug designed entirely to slander that same movement.

The BATF doesn’t need Minnesota’s US Attorney to fix it. It needs to be shut down, its staff scattered to the four corners of the country, and have its offices demolished and the land beneath it salted.

The Strib editorial board has less interest in “fixing the BATF” than it has in cutting down Barack Obama’s opponents – or at least limiting damate to their President.

Frank Fleming asks “who’d be a better president – Obama or a sack of hammers?”, and reaches a conclusion…

Overall

Taking all these areas into consideration, it’s pretty easy to see that a sack of hammers would be a much better president than Obama. This isn’t to say that Obama is dumber than a sack of hammers — a ridiculous assertion — it’s just to say that he’s much worse at being a president than one.

…that would surprise nobody that is really paying attention.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, as you’ll never find a sack of hammers with the fire in the belly necessary to both run for president and win. Perhaps that’s a problem in our system of democracy that someone like a sack of hammers, who would be an above average to great president, could never be elected.

Check out the reasoning that led to the conclusion.

Michelle Obama seems to be a bit of a vacation junkie, and we – according to this story from the London Daily Mail, sourced from the Enquirer – are paying for it:

White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.

The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.

‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’

Now, it’s a fact that travelling for the First Family, with all its security, is not going to be cheap under any circumstances. Still – taking separate goverment jets to Martha’s Vineyard? Really?

Of course, Atomizer will perk up at this reference:

The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

I’ll paraphrase him; “there’s no such thing as a vodka martini”. There.  (And I wanna try a “sparking wine”. Just saying).  Don’t say I never did anything for ya, Atom.

And I had to mention this; it’s a photo from Mrs. Obama’s trip earlier this year to Spain:

Can there be anything in the world more awkward than a Secret Service agent trying to look “casual?”  And the guy to the immediate left of Mrs.Obama (her right) – when did Peter Garrett join the White House staff?

“1. Announce to media that I’ll have a “Jobs Plan” when I return from vacation”.

“2. Go on vacation”.

“3. Come up with a jobs plan”.

One of the five second sound bites about Michele Bachmann is her take on her church’s (occasional) commandment that wives be “submissive” to their husbands.

Most non-Christians, and/or more liberal Christians (and I don’t belong to a denomination that preaches it, by the way) for that matter either misunderstand the idea, or know nothing but the distorted idea of “submission” fed to them by people like, well, Bachmann’s critics.

One of the areas where it’s irrelevant is, well, the presidency.  Michael Prell has an answer he’d suggest Bachmann give when she’s asked about the idea of “submission”.

Here’s the conclusion (read the whole thing here):

“Finally, as president, I will not be submissive to union bosses, to billionaire puppetmasters like George Soros, or to militant anti-American leftists who demonize our soldiers and preach ‘God damn America.’ And, unlike President Obama, I will not be submissive to indicted or convicted special interest groups like ACORN, or to Weatherman terrorists, or those who want to see Israel wiped from the map.”

“Instead, as President, I will be submissive to the American People, and to the Constitution, because as President I will honor my oath to serve both the Constitution and the People—unlike the current president of the United States and his minions who demonize patriotic and Constitution-loving Americans as ‘terrorists.’”

Submission is not the issue. It is who, and what, you submit to that matters.

That’s the real issue, and comparison, here; every tin-pot tyrant and banana-republic strongman is Barack Obama’s dominatrix.

…when Barack Obama was going to “restore” America’s “reputation” around the world?

Don’t worry – neither does anyone else:

The United States has apologised for controversial remarks made by a US diplomat who spoke of “dark and dirty” Indians, calling the comments “inappropriate”.

US Vice-Consul Maureen Chao told Indian students on Friday that her “skin became dirty and dark like the Tamilians” after a long train journey, according to Indian media — referring to people from the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

During her speech in the Tamil Nadu capital, Chennai, Chao was quoted as saying: “I was on a 24-hour train trip from Delhi to (the eastern Indian state of) Orissa.

To be fair, I’m not sure that Obama is counting on the Tamil vote…

The question, rather, is “how dumb does Obama think his base actually is?

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. “But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.” Obama listed three events overseas — the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises — which set the economy back.

Leave aside the fact that two out of those three bits of “bad luck” could have been avoided by scrupulously avoiding policies like Obama’s (Obama’s bobbling of Mideast policy, the gundecking of domestic oil drilling which has extended and institutionalized America’s dependence on imported oil, and the running of catastrophic debt levels), perhaps it’s a sign that Obama’s growing up; he’s stopped blaming Bush, and turned to blaming unaccountable, intangible “luck” for his administration’s failure.

The question isn’t so much “is it dumb”.  The question is “why does his base fall for this claptrap?”

…from early childhood, President Obama…

…and you are no Martin Luther King:.

And now that King has his own memorial on the Mall I think that we forget when he was alive there was nobody who was more vilified, nobody who was more controversial, nobody who was more despairing at times.  There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks angry.

Heh.

But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.  But it doesn’t bend on its own.

Yep.  We understand it, and it keeps us going too.

And I’m starting to think it might just bend back in November of 2012.

Let me be clear about this: I believe that Barack Obama will win four more years.  Indeed, I believe the electoral landscape is shaping up such that if he wins with less than 55% of the vote – he’s an incumbent running before a fawning media and a hysterical following, for crying out loud – and the Dems don’t take two seats in the Senate and retake the House completely, they should consider it a crushing loss for the party as a whole.

Still, there are signs all is not well for front-runner and favorite Obama:

U.S. consumer sentiment worsened sharply in early August, falling to the lowest index level since 1980, even though retail sales posted the biggest gains in three months in July, separate reports on Friday showed.

1980?  Why, I remember that.  That was the golden age of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale! The era of stagflation!  The Iranian Hostage Crisis!  13% inflation!

Make no mistake; I think Obama’s going to win, and if he doesn’t win big, it’ll be the same as a loss.  But this would seem to be a bit of a hurdle…