Barack Obama in a nutshell

Monty over at Ace of Spades put up his daily Doom post earlier, as he does each and every weekday morning.  It’s well worth checking out for your daily fix of financial/economic misery.

As part of today’s lineup, he writes this sentence which stuck out to me and which succinctly sums up Barack Obama, the man and his career:

 Obama isn’t trying to solve the problem at hand, but he wants to appear to be solving it.

To that I will add that this is all done to further his and his party’s goals of exponentially inflating the size of government.  Plain and simple.

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AG Holder lied to Congress on Fast and Furious

Breaking from CBS News:

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious guns operation as far back as July of 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

 On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” 

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to cross the border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. It’s called letting guns “walk,” and it remained secret to the public until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered last December. Two guns from Fast and Furious were found at the scene. And ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle on the operation.

Corruption abounds in this White House and the media is complicit in trying to hide it all.

UPDATE.  Yeoman’s work by Doug Ross here and Nice Deb here.

USA Today/Gallup poll shows increasing despair over Obama’s economy

No hope here.  But lots of change, and for the worse, in a poll taken last week:

Eight of 10 say the economy is in a recession, and nearly as many say it hasn’t improved over the past year. Even more ominous: Six in 10 predict the economy a year from now will be the same or worse than today, a downturn from the public’s views last year and the year before.

[…]

In the USA TODAY survey, the public’s economic expectations were reversed from where they stood two years ago, soon after economists calculated the recession officially had ended. In September 2009, 65% predicted the economy would be better in a year; 35% said it would be about the same or worse.

Now, 37% say things will be better in a year; 61% say they will be the same or worse.

While a third of the respondents still attribute some of the blame to President Bush, that particular Democrat talking point is fading:

Twenty-four percent say Obama deserves a great deal of the blame, up 10 points since 2009. For the first time since he took office, a majority of Americans — including six in 10 independents — say he deserves a great deal or moderate amount of blame for the nation’s economic woes.

“The blame-it-on-my-predecessor line is of decreasing help to an incumbent,” says political scientist William Mayer of Northeastern University. “It was perfectly fine when he took office, and even reasonable a year or two in, but eventually, increasingly, it becomes Obama’s economy.

I think Obama pushed the blame-it-on-Bush string much too long.  About two years too long.  When you campaign on vague promises of hope and change, as the savior of an economy that was teetering on disaster, there had better be solid improvements in people’s economic well-being, relatively quickly.  Especially after you made it a point to tell everyone that your predecessor’s economic policies failed, with the implication being that yours are so much better.

So much for that.

The Solyndra scandal for dummies

For those who want a brief, succinct explanation of the stench of cronyism, the stench of political corruption that is the story of President Obama and Solyndra, here is a five-panel cartoon. 

First one in the series: 

[h/t: Instapundit]

August NFP report shows net zero growth in jobs, the “great goose-egg economy”

It’s a brutal print:

A dismal labor report Friday showed the economy added zero net workers in August, intensifying pressure on President Obama to unveil a major jobs initiative during his speech to Congress next week.

The Labor Department report showed the unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent. It was the weakest jobs report since September 2010.

Meanwhile:

In a nutshell, this is the great goose egg economy — a big zero, a big nothing — and this better be one hell of a speech next week.  There is a plethora of bad news. You have what is going on in Greece, you have lawsuits potentially coming today or Tuesday against the banks. You have the Fed in a Wall Street Journal article overnight asking Bank of America if they are going to be OK if things get really bad.  There are a lot of confidence issues in the marketplace, the jobs number only made things worse and people wonder about this jobs number and its correlation with Philly Fed.  That is scary.”

Let’s not fret over a trip to Martha’s Vineyard

Along the same line as my post from yesterday regarding conservatives complaining about the President’s trip to Martha’s Vineyard, is this post from Ann Althouse:

[W]hen you look at August 2011 from Spring/Summer/Fall 2012, one more vacation isn’t going to seem like much of anything. The economy will matter, but not what it was in August 2011, what it isnow. Whatever it is, people will hold Obama responsible, so right now, he’s hoping things will be better enough that he’ll have something to claim credit for.

Could he do something right now, in August 2011, that will make the economy better at that future point, something that will be more effective than biking and golfing on Martha’s Vinyard? I don’t think he can, and if he doesn’t think he can, in my book, that’s a point in his favor. Spare me your programs and clever ideas. I like getting some evidence that he knows the limits of government.

Obama’s presidency is about getting reelected, and doing nothing right now fits that agenda just fine.

Exactly.  Here’s hoping that Republicans take note.

The thrill is gone

In total agreement with Jennifer Rubin here:

The chasm between the president’s agenda (and leadership skills) and the problems we face seems to widen with each passing day. The problem is not the Martha’s Vineyard vacation but the two and a half years that preceded it. The policy initiatives and the president himself seem too small for the challenges we face. He resorts to political stunts to fill the time and directs blame to Congress, the Republicans or whatever else he can think of.

People who complain about the vacation are missing the point.   I hear a lot of conservatives complaining about this vacation, as the economy seems to deteriorate with each passing day, and world markets continue to melt, and that the President should be….um, well…I’m not exactly sure what they think he should be doing.   Sure the optics look bad, and I honestly don’t think the President really cares.  And, as the last four years have shown us, anything the Democrats propose to “help” the economy, is bound to be a disaster.

But more importantly, as Rubin notes, when he does come back from vacation, then what?  Democrats, as always, appears to be out of bullets and have nothing to contribute.

[Hat Tip: Instapundit]