Byron York tells the (national) GOP “Dont’ Fear The Shutdown“.

For starters, it wasn’t the “catastrophe” for the media that the GOP paint it as today:

One, if shutting down the government in 1995 was such a catastrophe, how come the GOP not only kept control of the House in the 1996 elections but remained the majority party in the House for a decade to come? The voter revenge predicted at the time did not happen.

That’s something wonks have a hard time with; probably 90% of voters don’t care about politics until mid-October before elections.

Two, even if the ’95 shutdown hurt the GOP — and there’s no doubt the party suffered wounds inflicted not only by Clinton but also by themselves — today’s voters are in a different mood. “We have fiscal crises at the federal, state, and local level, and voters understand that,” says Bill Paxon, a former Republican lawmaker and veteran of the shutdown. “Back in ’95, we were whistling into the wind — we were trying to preach fiscal discipline when voters were saying, ‘Hey, there’s not a problem.’ “

The 1990s were a cha-cha time when people could afford to be trivial bobbleheads; a time when Arne Carlson could seem like a serious leader, when Minnesotans could elect someone like a Jesse Ventura with a straight face.

Three, Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner have learned from their mistakes. “Our goal is to cut spending and reduce the size of government, not to shut it down,” Boehner said recently — a statement he has repeated many times. Contrast that to ’95, when, Paxon recalls, “We said we wanted to shut down the government, that it was a good thing, that it would get people’s attention, that it would advance our cause.” Now, it’s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats who seem itching for a shutdown.

As far as York’s premise goes, that’s the dangerous one.  This point is all about image – and the media creates – to a great extent – the images.

I said “great” extent:

Fourth, today’s media environment is substantially different. “In ’95 there was no Internet, no bloggers, no Facebook, no Fox News,” says Dick Armey, who was House majority leader during the shutdown. “The discourse of politics today is carried out in a media world that didn’t exist in 1995.” That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be negative coverage of Republicans if a shutdown occurs, just that the overall media picture would be more balanced.

Are blogs and social media enough to affect the perceptions of that 90% that doesn’t pay attention until October of election year?  This past Minnesota gubernatorial race was not encouraging.  The Twin Cities media followed the usual pattern; ignore the skeletons in Mark Dayton’s closet, give breathless coverage to Tom Emmer’s – and enough of it stuck (along with the Dayton-funded “Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s” toxic, sleazy campaign) to buy Dayton 9,000 votes.

Still, York’s point isn’t that things have changed 180 degrees; it is different.

The fifth reason: Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton. “In ’95, Clinton was at the table working hard, sleeves rolled up, everybody knew we were having meetings at the White House and the president was engaged,” says Armey. “This president is seen as disengaged and aloof from the process. Barack Obama is a rank amateur compared to Bill Clinton.”

We’ll see.

Most “Chanting Points Memos” refer to Minnesota issues.

But this is not only an issue for all of us – but it’s one where the Minnesota media and leftyblog clacque have been chanting especially aggressively.

One tweeted “Obama is doing the biggest budget cuts (as percent) since Eisenhower. What do #teabaggers have 2 say?”

I say what I usually say when lefties claim to have done the right thing; it’s just not true

Conn Carroll at Heritage has the story:

Since President Barack Obama was sworn into office total entitlement spending has grown 4%, total discretionary has soared 16%, and the national debt has exploded 43%. Over that same time the United States economy has lost 3.3 million jobs. President Obama cannot be blamed for the most recent recession, but he certainly can be held accountable for the failure of his deficit spending policies in response.

As Krauthammer noted yesterday, the “cuts” are only cuts from the last budget’s “porkulus-inflated spending.   After the cuts, Health and Human Services spending is up 30% or more since their already-inflated Bush-era numbers.  And those numbera are not anomalies in the budget.

Carroll notes that Obama “cut” discretionary spending using three gimmicks:

Redefining Pell grants as mandatory spending. Stripped of this gimmick, discretionary spending jumps by $14 billion in 2012.

Reclassifying $54 billion of surface transportation spending from discretionary spending to mandatory spending.

Spending the peace dividend. The budget proposal includes spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, referred to as “overseas contingency operations,” as discretionary spending and reduces funding for these operations by $38.2 billion in 2012.

If you live in a district with a GOP representative – the 2nd, 3rd, 6th or 8th, and maybe the 7th dependong on which way the wind blows – you might wanna contact them.  Obama’s budget needs to get sent, bleeding, to palookaville.

Oh, sorry. Was that disrespectful what I just typed?

Oprah called on President Obama’s critics on Friday to “show some level of respect.”

“I feel that everybody has a learning curve, and I feel that the reason why I was willing to step out for him was because I believed in his integrity and I believed in his heart,” the influential TV host said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in Chicago.

First of all Oprah honey, you’re a daytime talk show host. The fact that millions of women follow your advice on anything beyond that is beyond me.

And duh, of course there’s a learning curve…a huge learning curve for someone not yet remotely qualified to lead this country or any other entity.

What would you say to the President’s own staff who have reportedly been leaking their disdain for his lack of competency or comprehension of issues abroad and domestic?

Of the negative mood of the country, Oprah added, “I think everybody complaining ought to try it for once.”

Try what? The tapioca pudding?

If your boy doesn’t want the job no more, I’m sure we can find someone who does.

She said the presidency is a position that “holds a sense of authority and governance over us all,” and that “even if you’re not in support of his policies, there needs to be a certain level of respect.”

You mean like the level of deference and respect you and your ilk extended to President Bush?

That’s what I thought.

Yesterday was the centenary of Reagan’s birth.

A sweep through Twitter and the leftblogs saw the usual wave of fact-challenged, context-denuded twaddle the left always rolls out when the topic turns to Reagan; deficits, tax hikes, the debt, the Soviet Union would have fallen anyway, Iran/Contra  (to which the answers are “the deficits paid for themselves, the hikes came to a small fraction of his cuts, hello Tip O’Neill, and nobody’s perfect”, respectively).

But just like during the glory days of the Cold War, when Sovietologists would pore over Soviet television broadcasts and reading Pravda and Izvestiya to find the subtle hints the regime would send via its official media, you can find a lot between the lines of the offical news organs of the American left as well.  In this case, National Public Radio.

Over the weekend, NPR ran a piece on Reagan’s 100th birthday.  The piece largely focused on…Barack Obama’s various mentions and tributes to Reagan, and the comparisons some (on the left) make between Obama and the greatest American president of any of our lifetimes.

Toby Harnden at the Telegraph notes the meme, by way of pointing out the cold water some of us are throwing on it:

Perhaps more surprising is that there is a new claimant to the Reagan throne this year: President Barack Obama. Having once routinely derided Reagan as, in the words of Democratic greybeard Clark Clifford, an “amiable dunce”, the liberal establishment is now seeking to embrace him.

Obama first tried to grab Reagan’s mantle three years ago when he cited the Gipper as a way of taking a shot at the Clintons by saying that the Republican had “changed the trajectory of America” in a way that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had not. Reagan, he added, responded to a feeling that “we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship”.

Harnden correctly points out what NPR wouldn’t; it’s just plain wrong:

Some Republicans fear that Reagan is facing a posthumous political emasculation by Democrats who play down his conservatism and recast him as a squishy conciliator.

There is little doubt that Reagan would have been dryly derisive of Obama’s policies and presidency. “Government is like a baby,” Reagan once quipped. “An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

Obama, by contrast, views government as a kindly nurse and the people as the baby. According to his mindset, the people should submit to those in government who know better and whose role is to make decisions and control the purse strings.

Comparisons between their speaking styles are both superficial (delivery is important – and still not the main point) and wrong (Reagan kept delivering great speeches from the beginning of his administration ’til the end; Obama’s fabled oratorical chops have seemed more rote and canned over time).

Just saying.

Gary Miller – late of the great, lamented Truth Vs. The Machine, from which this blog’s “First Ringer” is a refugee, has switched hos oeuvre to Facebook, a medium whose Ambrose Bierce he very clearly is.

And Gary notes something that had flashed across my mind as I listened to the State of The Union:

…the President’s continued references to Sputnik as a way to inspire young people would be much more effective, if: 1. They still taught kids in publik skouls about Sputnik. 2. The country which launched Sputnik, the Soviet Union, still existed and hadn’t collapsed under the burden of a socialist command economy similar to one which the President hopes to implement here. Other than that, heck of a story.

Heh.

President Obama is in Wisconsin.

Joe Doakes of Como Park is on the case.  He writes:

It just occurred to me that with the President’s trip to Manitowoc, and considering he’s already visited Madison and Milwaukee (and still has time to hit Menomonie), we could be looking at the makings of a historic event in 2012: the first-ever clean sweep of every town in Wisconsin starting with M by a Black President who went on to fail of re-election.

Wouldn’t that be GREAT?

Joe Doakes, St. Paul

Makes perfect sense to me.

I’ll be live-tweeting over at my twitter account.

Mr. D. on the Wellstone Tuscon memorial with the President, and on the left’s newfound love of “civility”:

Civility comes from mutual agreement. It cannot be imposed by one side on the other. And it certainly can’t come until those who were party to the baseless calumnies heaped in recent days step forward and accept their responsibility for it. We can have an honest debate if we have honest debaters.

President Obama gave his allies on the Left a chance to climb down from the untenable place they have chosen to occupy. It is my hope that those allies will see fit to use the opportunity he has provided. If they do, the debate that so many people claim to desire will happen. If not — game on.

For myself?  I’ll sit in the back of the bus, and hide my knive so nobody brings a gun.

Barry is selling it but not everyone is buying his form of plagiarism.

President Barack Obama said U.S. job growth is improving after a government report showed employers added 103,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent in December from 9.8 percent in November.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama today credited steps taken by his administration to reduce taxes and encourage business investment with helping to restore economic confidence and boost hiring.

Really Barry? Steps taken by your administration are responsible for discouraging people from looking for jobs?

A little perspective might be indicated at this juncture, with all due respect, Mr. President:

Although the jobless rate dropped substantially to 9.4% in December from 9.8% a month earlier, the Labor Department said Friday, employers increased payrolls by only 103,000. Economists say that is barely enough to keep up with natural growth in the labor force. Much faster employment and enduring job gains—on the order of 200,000 jobs a month—are needed for lasting improvement.

The decline in the jobless rate, paradoxically, was partly a sign of economic weakness—many people have given up on finding jobs, and thus were not counted as unemployed. Some 8.4 million jobs were shed during the recession, and in 2010 just 1.1 million were added.

Between you and a Congress that was almost gutted of your ilk in November, you’ve spent billions and billions of dollars that we don’t have…sacrificing our nation’s very solvency to create a few hundred thousand jobs when millions and millions have been lost?

Employers in the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast in December, confirming Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s view that it could take “four to five more years” for the labor market to completely mend.

…and that may be just as optimistic and his assertions that the latent, yet unrealized effect of the trillions of “quantitative easing” will be quite manageable down the road.

Payrolls increased 103,000, less than the median projection of 150,000 in a Bloomberg News survey, Labor Department figures showed yesterday in Washington. The jobless rate fell to 9.4 percent, partly reflecting a shrinking workforce as discouraged Americans stopped looking for work. [emphasis mine-JR]

Lest we not forget why those [JR does that thing with your fingers that denotes quote-unquote] “steps” were taken by [again] “his administration.”

Mr. Obama attributed increasingly optimistic economic forecasts in part to the deal he negotiated last month with Republicans to extend Bush-era tax rates for all, along with unemployment benefits, a payroll-tax cut and assorted other tax breaks.

A deal decried by liberals. A deal that was essentially forced upon him. A move that Obama could have made two years ago had he truly been focused on jobs then.

It is a product of the aforementioned “shellacking” (in the President’s words no less) in November coupled with a sashay to the middle to save what little is left in his political capital account.

President Obama may owe former President Bill Clinton a few finder’s fees, considering all the former Clinton aides he’s been bringing into his administration to help him get through the next two years and win a second term.

Maybe my title should be “Back-Peddler in Chief.”

Pat yourself on the butt Mr. President.

Mission Accomplished.

President Obama likes to pretend that he’s delivered on a good chunk of his agenda.

But as Salon notes, it’s just not so:

A few broken promises, like Obama’s pledge to shutter the prison at Guantánamo Bay, are well known. But there are plenty more campaign promises that have disappeared down the memory hole — and that Obama would prefer to stay there. Here is a sampling of five:

Read the whole thing, if you’d be so kind…

…for attorneys and consultants that is.

As for the rest of you, not so much.

Barack Obama just finished a summit with twenty US CEO’s urging them to get off the sidelines, spend their hoards of cash and start hiring.

President Barack Obama pressed 20 corporate chief executives Wednesday to suggest policies that would spur them to “start investing in job creating enterprises.”

Hey Barry, I got an idea for you if they didn’t come up with it: ask congress to repeal what is left of your shitty health care reform bill.

Big employers faced with incorporating the first round of health-care changes next month are grappling with how to comply with the long list of new rules.

Many companies are hiring consultants to help sort though the mountain of new mandates, which include extending dependent coverage to children up to age 26, and may eventually result in covering more employees. Some are also considering changes to their plans—including pushing costs to workers.

Might they have instead invested these resources in job creating enterprises or hiring new employees?

Maybe, just maybe had you focused on jobs instead of ramming socialized health care down America’s throat you wouldn’t be in such a pickle. How’s that national unemployment rate going for you Barry? Are you excited about your chances in 2012?

Today the national unemployment rate hovers near where it began the year, just shy of 10 percent.

It’s funny how liberals do everything they can to short circuit capitalism and then ask the capitalists to clean up their mess.

And in the end, those they claim to serve end up paying the price via lost jobs, wages, or both.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Co-President Barack Obama just can’t get a break.

Between the Media, for whom Barry O. was their precious leg-tingling darling…

Leftist TV talking heads such as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and the Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel have excoriated Obama for what they see as political perfidy.

…and his liberal peeps, his compromise has put him between a political rock and a hard place.

Given their overwrought reaction to President Obama’s tax deal, you’d think Democrats had no reason to compromise with the opposition. Have they already forgotten last month’s election?

Democrats have lashed out at Obama for “compromising ” with the Republicans on a tax bill. But all in all, agreeing to an extension of current tax rates for an extension of jobless benefits seems like a pretty fair deal.

Yet the reaction has been brutal.

After House Democrats voted Thursday to oppose Obama’s tax deal with the GOP, Virginia Democrat James Moran told the Hill: “This is a lack of leadership on the part of Obama. I don’t know where the f*** Obama is on this or anything else. They’re AWOL.”

…and then he has to come home to this at the end of the day:

I don’t think Barry’s having any fun…failing so spectacularly at presidenting.

Merry Christmas (or whatever it is that you celebrate) Mr. Co-President, and a Happy New Year.

As I worked in my office yesterday, over my shoulder the television set to Bloomberg, I heard President Obama step to the press conference podium. Blah blah blah, me me me, etcetera, and then I heard a familiar voice from the eighties and it wasn’t Michael J. Fox or Duran Duran.

With Mr. Obama standing largely silently at his side, Mr. Clinton took over the lectern to lend his backing to the tax compromise the White House reached this week with Republicans.

As the television buzzed in the background, I came to realize that Clinton had been talking for a while and yet went on…and on and on and on. I swung around to look at the screen, and President Obama…was gone! I wondered if Clinton has the nuke codes now too?

And then Mr. Clinton went on, for half an hour, answering questions and holding forth on topics from triangulation to Haiti to the mortgage crisis and the nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

…and cigars? No?

Hey Barry, at least your old teleprompter had an off switch.

Barack Obama is the man who swept America off her feet (and to complete the metaphor, slipped her a mickey and violated her as she lay unconscious). A scant two years later, his political capital is so deeply overdrawn that he needs a loan from Bill Clinton to sell his compromise to his own party.

But after Mr. Clinton began taking questions, the current president politely interjected that Michelle Obama was expecting him at one of the many holiday parties that presidents host during December.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting,” Mr. Obama said.

Best not do that with Bill Clinton in the House. You might find him on your spouse.

This isn’t even news any more…Barack Obama releases a statement lauding the award in absentia of the Nobel Peas Prize to Liu Xiaobo which of course is all about Barack Obama, Narcissist in Chief.

One year ago, I was humbled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — an award that speaks to our highest aspirations, and that has been claimed by giants of history and courageous advocates who have sacrificed for freedom and justice.

What a day that was for all Americans!!! (!!!)

Tell me, do you remember where you were when you heard the news that President Obama won the Nobel Peas Prize?

Mr. Liu Xiaobo is far more deserving of this award than I was.

Infinitely.

I wrote on this earlier this week but Paul Krugman does a great job of beating a dead horse, to make sure he’s dead.

About that [federal workers’] pay freeze: the president likes to talk about “teachable moments.” Well, in this case he seems eager to teach Americans something false.

…freezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. It’s a (literally) cheap trick that only sounds impressive to people who don’t know anything about budget realities.

Ironically, Krugman beats the president about the head and shoulders for a surprising reason:

Anyway, slashing federal spending at a time when the economy is depressed is exactly the wrong thing to do. Just ask Federal Reserve officials, who have lately been more or less pleading for some help in their efforts to promote faster job growth.

Krugman confuses a bloated federal payroll with the kind of federal spending that purportedly, by liberals at least, boosts the economy, requiring a supsension of disbelief that the American people have no tolerance for, the elections being exhibit A.

Krugman goes on to incredulously assert that the extension of the Bush tax cuts is a “break” for the wealthiest versus a tax hike. He ignores the fact that those cuts were very good for the economy and the equally pertinent fact that a tax hike for anyone in this fragile economy is a ridiculous notion to anyone that would benefit by our economy creating more jobs.

But then he goes on to redeem himself by exposing Obama’s dundering miscues:

he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have.

There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

I think they already know that Paul.

Mr. Obama has described himself, at times, as essentially a Blue Dog Democrat

At times? What times?

I almost feel sorry for Barack Obama. He’s traveling the world over, looking for some love, and coming up empty.

America handed him an epic rejection of virtually everything he has “accomplished”  just two years in. Knowing fully well what was coming, he skipped the country on a trade mission, a multi-bazillion-dollar entourage in tow, hoping to bring home a trade agreement…or…something.

President Obama’s hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts on Thursday, putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners.

Does the whole world hate Obama?

After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

OK, maybe not the whole world, just a majority of the largest economies of the world, so technically there are countries out there, theoretically, that don’t think America’s fiscal and monetary policies are being crafted by an administration consisting of a band of arrogant bookworms that have never owned, created or run anything resembling an enterprise.

In two years, the Obama administration has effectively rendered America to the economic equivalence of adolescence, world leaders now treating Obama and his staff like underclassmen.

As if a global scolding wasn’t embarrassing enough for the soon-to-be one-term President, his Treasury Secretary, steeped in academentia, was fending off attacks from back home.

The disputes were not limited to America’s foreign partners. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got into a trans-Pacific argument with one of his former mentors, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, after Mr. Greenspan wrote that the United States was “pursuing a policy of currency weakening.” Mr. Geithner shot back on CNBC that while he had “enormous respect” for Mr. Greenspan, “that’s not an accurate description of either the Fed’s policies or our policies.” He added, “We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or grow the economy.”

Well, if you say so.

…well, at least not again…because the Fed’s current plan to buy $600 Billion of government securities is precisely, explicitly that.

Does Geithner actually believe we are all that stupid or that he’s so much smarter?

Much of the rest of the world seemed to share Mr. Greenspan’s assessment. Moreover, Mr. Obama seemed to be losing the broader debate over austerity. The president has insisted that at a moment of weak private demand, the best way to spur economic growth is to have the government prime the pump with cheap credit and government stimulus programs. He quickly found himself in an argument with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Wait, who? Great Britain? Isn’t Great Britain…like, our Huckleberry? How retarded does the President and his staff have to be to screw up that relationship?

America isn’t subscribing to this administration’s ineptitude and neither is the rest of the world.

Playing a fools game, hoping to win, telling those sweet lies and losing again.

Former President Bush waxes transparently, assessing his own presidential shortcomings:

The former president said he still feels “sick about” the fact no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. His response to Hurricane Katrina could have been quicker, he said, and he should have landed Air Force One two days after the storm instead of viewing the destruction through the plane’s window. And he said he didn’t see the financial meltdown coming.

Why?

Why?!

Why?!!!!

Why…Mr. President, did you have to do this on Oprah?

PS Don’t feel bad Mr. President. Warren Buffet and a the vast majority of the world of finance didn’t see it coming either.

Bush had nothing negative to say about President Barack Obama, whom Winfrey famously supported in 2008.

“I didn’t like it when people criticized me,” Bush said. “And so you’re not going to see me out there chirping away (at Obama). And I want our president to succeed. I love our country.”

George Bush may not have been conservative enough for many of us, but I believe he was honest in his dealings as President and he remains to this day one of the most respectable, reverent and selfless leaders to have ever occupied the White House.

…in stark contrast with The One there now.

I watched some of the Obama press conference in my office today and was not surprised in the least that the President, his ass in hand, could not bring himself to answer some pretty pointed questions on whether “what happened last night” was less an endorsement of the GOP and more a damning of he and his policies.

He gave pause, then looked like he was going to cry. For a second I thought he was going to go all “Moss” and say something like “I will axe the questions.”

Instead he decided not to answer the question and chose to ramble on about the economy and the American people rightfully expecting more progress from their government…blah blah blah.

He just doesn’t get it.

“Some election nights are more fun than others. Some are exhilarating. Some are humbling,” Obama said. “Yesterday’s vote confirmed what I’ve heard from folks all across America. People are frustrated, they’re deeply frustrated with the pace of our economic recovery.”

Some nights are more fun than others? Saywhat? For a man whose sole accomplishment is political in nature, that may be the understatement of a lifetime. Furthermore, I was not aware of the President stooping down to listen to “folks across America.”

Maybe the President, will all due respect (or is that now all done respect), needs a few more days to come to grips with the fact that America has rejected not only his policies on spending, stimulus, health care and his golf handicap, but he himself as a President and a leader – certainly as a folks-listener.

Exhibit A: the outright desertion (the in-bag press read that as “distancing”) of late, if not mutiny, of liberal colleagues that just months before held hands and sang Cumbaya at the signing of a national wealth transfer apparatus called the health care bill. A fatal career move for many a tenured Democrat it turns out.

Exhibit B: what happened last night.

The next two years will be excruciatingly difficult.

…and lonely.

…for him.

I’ll drink to that.

The U of M College Republicans are going to be protesting the President’s pep rally for Lord Fauntelroy at the U of M today.

Via Luke Hellier at MDE, the details:

The College Republicans at the University of Minnesota, along with Students for a Conservative Voice, and other grassroots activists from the metro area will protest President Obama’s visit to the University of Minnesota October 23rd in support of Mark Dayton and the rest of the DFL ticket.

“While we recognize the historic nature of President Obama’s visit to campus as the fourth U.S. President to visit campus, we cannot sit idly by as he promotes an agenda of higher taxes and unrestrained spending that will drive jobs out of our state, and make it more difficult for college graduates to get jobs after graduation,” said Phil Troy, chair of the University of Minnesota College Republicans.

The protest is planned to take place across from the entrance to the University Field House from 12:00 PM until 1:30 PM. After the protest, Troy said participants will make GOTV calls at the 5th Congressional District Victory Office located above Chipotle at 800 Washington Ave SE, and attend a rally and cookout in Minnetonka with gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer and Representative Erik Paulsen.

“College students have a clear choice,” Troy went on to say, “The choice is between lower taxes that encourage job creation, and increasing debt and higher unemployment. College Republicans have been working fervently to elect candidates that will make sure college graduates have a job after graduation, and tomorrow will be no different. Tomorrow is about showing college students that there is an alternative to the lofty rhetoric and broken promises that we heard two years ago.”

It’s when I’m on the air today, so I can’t attend.  It’s a shame…

…but I urge people to call in during the show (651 289 4488 from 1-3PM), or email me photos from the protest at the yahoo email address “feedbackinthedark”.

I’ll post ’em.

When after a year of joking that Obama might be  re-run of the Carter years, suddenly it seemed that that might be the best case?

My joke may have been correct:

The most important fact to take from the September unemployment report released last week is that almost three years after the recession began the economy was still losing jobs! Almost 100,000 (95,000) additional jobs were lost last month from the economy overall. That makes 400,000 jobs lost since May. Moreover, in a regular annual benchmark revision to calibrate unemployment rates for updated data, the BLS reported a further 366,000 jobs lost for March. The total number of Americans unemployed stands at almost 15 million (14.8).

Malaise?  The kids’ve got it!

Based on the long standing history and rhythms of the American economy, we should have had a booming recovery by now. Even more so, since the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Real economic growth in the first 4 quarters of Reagan’s recovery from the deep 1981-82 recession was a whopping 7.7%. Even the recovery under President Ford from the deep 1973-74 recession sported real economic growth of 6.2%.

But under President Obama we are already in another downward spiral, with real growth falling from 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, to 3.7% in the first quarter of this year, to 1.7% in the second quarter.

Moreover, as the brilliant economist John Lott explained for FoxNews.com yesterday, the base unemployment rate has been stuck at least at 9.5% for 14 months now, over three full percentage points higher than the average unemployment rate during the recession. Since Obama became President, the U.S. unemployment rate has increased faster than 25 of 30 other major industrialized countries, as reported by the Economist.

Rumors that Obama is planning a stimulus for junior hockey in time for the next winter Olympics are at this time unconfirmed.

More momentum building among the Dems Mo for extending the Bush tax  cuts:

Momentum built Thursday for extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts after President Obama avoided a veto threat and a key Senate Democrat voiced support for the extension.

War policy. Guantanamo.  Patriot Act . Tax cuts.

Not sure if we have any policy reason to miss Bush yet; it’s like he never left.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that David “The Spam Meister” Plouffe is one of the “geniuses” behind the Obama campaign two years ago.

His tactic this year?  Put the bar down on the ground, walk over it, and spin it as a successful high-jump:

President Obama’s top political guru said Tuesday that he believes 70 House races and 15 Senate races are in play this fall.

White House senior adviser David Plouffe — Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager — said that a bevy of races were in play, from the national to local level.

Next stop: say the GOP should pick up 140 seats; spin a 60 seat pickup as a crushing disappointment.

Reality is this; if the GOP picks up 20 seats in the House, and any in the Senate, the DFL should commit seppuku.

There.

During the campaign, two of the lefty memes that irritated me the most were “Obama’s smart“, and “Obama was an Ivy Leaguer” and, its close cousin, “Obama was a constitutional law professor”.

None of them is especially a qualifier for the office of President.

The “ConLaw professor” is the easiest disposed of; the President will never need to litigate the Constitution; he or she only needs to understand it.  Indeed, all the ideal president really needs to know about the Constitution is how to follow it.  Any good policeman or modestly-bright college graduate knows more than enough about the Constitution to be President.  And the President who thinks they can outfox the Founding Fathers is especially dangerous.

The Ivy Leaguer bit is a little harder – but I think it’s getting to the point where going to an Ivy League school should be a disqualifier for the Presidency; indeed, maybe we should trade the whole “natural-born US citizen” requirement to drop in that restriction.  I dunno.

But the fact is, the very best thing an Ivy League education, in and of itself, says about someone is that between the ages of 14 and 22 or so, that person understood how the paper chase was played well enough to earn spectacular grades and punch all the other Admissions Committee-friendly tickets and earn the scholarships it takes to afford to attend an Ivy.  In vastly more cases, it means that they come from families that both impressed upon the young ‘uns the need to have that upmarket diploma (and its most important fringe benefit, access to the upmarket alumni network), and the means to make it happen.  After about age 23, the best question for an Ivy grad is “what have you done for us lately?; too many wave their diploma around in their mid-thirties like Andy Bernard in The Office and his years at Cornell; they remind me of high school quarterbacks whose lives peaked at the homecoming game their senior year, and never quite got that good again.

And of course, while several great or at least decent presidents have gone to Ivy League schools, our best have been self-educated (Lincoln) or come from obscure midwestern schools (Reagan, who attended Eureka) and have had to earn their way through life on merit, rather than alumni connections.

But the “he’s smart” bit is the one that strikes me, ironically, as the dumbest “qualification”.

Doy.

Betty McCollum notwithstanding, it’s hard for anyone to get anywhere in public life without being “smart” in some sense of the term or another, whether it’s Thomas Jefferson’s world-altering intellect or Lyndon Johnson’s brutal political “street smarts”.

But the least useful, it’d seem, is the bookish, “Lookit me, I’m an Ivy Leaguer and you’re not!”, air of unearned condescension that you get from the overpraised, the overweening, and…

…the President:

To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East). Is he as well read as George W. Bush? As intellectually creative as Bill Clinton? As grounded in history as Harry Truman? Let’s get some perspective here.

It’s a deadly combination — intellectual arrogance and lack of sympatico with the public — that leads him again and again to stumble. And when his shortcomings lead to embarrassment or failure, he strikes out in frustration — at Israel, at the media, and at the American people. The image of himself clashes with the results he achieves and the reaction he inspires. No wonder he’s so prickly. You’d be, too, if everyone your entire life had told you that you were swell but now, when the chips are down and the spotlight is on, you are failing so badly in your job.

That, indeed, may be Obama’s great legacy;  that “The Peter Principle” may soon be called “The Obama Principle”.