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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]
DWS: Ten year incumbent Governor Perry deserves no credit for job creation in Texas
Of course, that distinction belongs to President 39%, who deserves all the credit:
“There is a dramatic contrast with the governor of Texas” when it comes to his record versus the president’s on job creation,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Not the least of which is that it is extremely difficult for him to deserve credit for that job creation when you have rising gas prices that created oil jobs that he had nothing to do with, when you had military spending as a result of two wars that created military jobs that he had nothing to do with, when you have the Recovery Act championed by President Obama that created jobs in Texas that he had nothing to do with.”
[…] “So it is way overblown to suggest that the job creation in Texas is squarely on the shoulders of [Perry’s] policies.”
Democrats, apparently, are born liars. If the Democrat party wants to campaign on the stimulus bill to scream about all of the wonderful jobs they have created, then so be it. Try selling that to the American people for the next 15 months.
Meanwhile here’s Ms. Shultz in Iowa this past weekend, preaching to getting booed by the Democratic faithful:
Oof.
If I was a Democrat, with unemployment over 9%, a historic downgrade of our country’s credit, a stalling economy with little or no growth, I wouldn’t exactly be too confident in my party’s outlook right about now. And having this uninspiring moonbat representing the party wouldn’t be helping matters.
[H/T: Memeorandum]
Don’t believe the White House hype on the July jobs report
The report came out this morning, and while the media and the White House give it the expected fluff, it was actually not so good news:
The economy in July generated 117,000 jobs and the unemployment rate declined from 9.2 percent to 9.1 percent.
This is nice until you remember that the economy needs to create about 150,000 jobs just to keep pace with the growing work force. The decline in the unemployment rate was not due to the new jobs, but to people giving up searching for jobs. They are then not counted as unemployed, since they are not even looking.
Now, July was better than June, and the numbers were better than expected. But overall, we’re in worse shape than we were.
As we’ve seen again and again, it’s not so much that the administration is ambiguous and outright deceptive about these economic reports, it’s that the media is complicit in their deception. Par for the course from the left.
Goldman Sachs lowers earnings expectations for S&P companies
More depressing economic news:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the bank with the highest equities-trading revenue, said its rivals are too enthusiastic about second-quarter earnings prospects for Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies.
Operating profit will total $23.75 a share for the period, or 2.3 percent less than the average Wall Street estimate, said David Kostin, an equity strategist at New York-based Goldman Sachs. He said 2011 and 2012 earnings-per-share forecasts will be reduced by 2 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
[…]
U.S. corporations are set to report the slowest earnings gain since the recession ended as companies from Ford Motor Co. to McDonald’s Corp. struggled with rising oil and commodity prices and a slowdown in consumer confidence that may continue to hamper spending this year.
Who’s talking…