The big issue in the US economy is the massacre of small business. Thats why the household survey shows that 558,000 Americans became unemployed during October, while the establishment survey of payrolls shows a decline of only 190,000 jobs. The establishment data, which are collected from larger businesses, are more reliable; the household survey is based on telephone interviews with randomly-selected households. But the numbers are so large as to make clear that small businesses are shutting down.
With commercial and industrial lending by American banks down 13% since September 2008, and most banks continuing to tighten lending standards in the Feds official poll, this is not surprising. Wal-Mart will make it through a recession; not the tea-cozy shop down the mall corridor, much less the real-estate agency in the half-abandoned exurb. The global speculative grade default rate, as Moodys reported this week, has risen to a post-Great Depression high of 12%. Credit lines for small businesses (including home equity, credit cards, and all the other devices entrepreneurs use to fund themselves) will continue to shrink.
Numerous analysts have made the point that in all previous post-war recoveries, it was small business that led job creation. During the 1980s and 1990s large businesses lost employment and small businesses grew. The fact that job losses at small business are evidently far higher than those at large businesses does not make this look like any recovery at all.
#1
As long as democrats continue to act like legslative asses, the unemployment rate will increase, tax revenues will continue to decline, spending will continue to decline, and the nation will collapse.
Not a Democrat on the planet knows anything at all about economics. The last one was JFK.
#2
newc,
Don't make the mistake of thinking the neo-communists are stupid; they are not. So we should try to understand that they do know what they are doing, and WANT it to go this way.
WASHINGTON -- Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.
In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.
This was all ridiculous from the beginning. 2008 was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.
Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 -- a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus 15 Democratic in 2008 to minus 4 in 2009. A 19-point swing.
What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent; the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.
White House apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney general four years ago the race was a virtual dead heat? Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.
The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African-American president.
November '08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November '09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm -- and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.
#1
He will go down in history as the most ineffective president in our history. His lack of performance, integrity, and transparancy will lock this nation into a republican administration for ten years. In my, always try to find something good mode, he has done all republicans a giant favor.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
11/06/2009 11:28 Comments ||
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#2
The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone.
MessageObama has never had coattails. Its impossible its all about him.
#4
Every generation a politician comes along who completely discredits the left. It's a repeating cycle because left wing thinking continues to appeal to the young, idealistic and hopelessly uninformed.
#5
Obama the Candidate was a creation of the Socia1ist-Media Complex. It's going to a painful and expensive educational experience for Americans and those who rely on us.
Posted by: ed ||
11/06/2009 14:04 Comments ||
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WASHINGTON Barack Obama and the Democrats have come back to earth hard.
Republican wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races Tuesday and recent polling and economic trends reveal a political landscape that has changed dramatically since the president's convincing election victory a year ago.
Democrats on Tuesday did win a New York congressional seat they hadn't held since the 19th century, in large measure because it became a proxy fight between warring factions in the Republican Party.
But independents, the voters who often decide elections, shifted heavily to Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey. That trend, if it holds in 2010, could be very bad news for Democrats trying to hold a 60-40 advantage in the Senate and a 258-177 lead in the House of Representatives.
Anxious independent voters are starting to listen to GOP attacks on government spending and Democratic health reform proposals.
Meanwhile, Republicans' most loyal supporters are stirring at the grassroots level.
"All that intensity that the Democrats had in 2006 and 2008 has transferred over to the Republicans," said political analyst Charlie Cook.
Democrats still have the power of Obama's personal appeal and fundraising abilities. But Democrats are likely losing sleep over these trends:
Obama's job approval, while still above 50% in most polls, has dropped the most among older people, who are more likely to vote in non-presidential elections than younger Americans. A Gallup Poll conducted Oct. 19-25 showed that Obama's approval among Americans 18-29 had fallen only from 66% to 61%, but that he had dropped 12 points among Americans 50-64.
Cook, citing his two children in their late teens and early 20s who were big Obama supporters, said that "their loyalty is to him, not the Democratic Party."
With Obama not on the ballot in 2010, how many of these kinds of supporters will vote?
Americans' personal economic outlook remains grim. In a poll taken for Business Week Nov. 1-3, RT Strategies and YouGov.com found that 37% of Americans believed the economy was getting worse compared with 23% saying it was getting better.
The poll was taken while the government and economists were declaring the end of the recession. Almost four in 10 said they believed if they lost their jobs they would be unable to match their current income, and more than half of the 1,000 poll respondents said they either had no savings or had enough to live on for only a few weeks.
Americans are "still trying to figure out how we are going to live our lives in this new (economic) environment, and it is obviously going to affect politics," said Thomas Riehle, president of RT Strategies.
He said the last time the public was this pessimistic was the late 1970s, "when Jimmy Carter went on television to talk about the great malaise."
USA TODAY-Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who said they believed Obama would heal political divisions in the country a campaign pledge was about half of what it was a year ago. Only 28% said they believed he would be able to do that in a poll taken Oct. 16-19, while 54% had said so last Nov. 7-9, just after Obama was elected.
The president has fallen especially hard on questions about whether he can improve the health care system and control federal spending, two issues that have joined jobs to dominate domestic headlines this year.
Last November, according to USA TODAY-Gallup, 52% said they had confidence that Obama would control federal spending, but only 31% said so in the Oct. 16-19 survey. Over the same period, those who said they believed Obama could improve the health care system dropped from 64 to 46%.
The president also has gotten a more definite ideological label in his first year in office. A year ago, 43% of Americans described Obama as liberal or very liberal. In October, according to USA TODAY-Gallup, 54% did.
Riehle said half of the 1,000 adults he polled earlier this week said they were worse off financially than they were a year ago.
"A year ago we were in the red hot center of the financial collapse," Riehle said, "and this is how it's played out in a year."
President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That's the least that should occur.
Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.
Did the president's team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on -- and the initial words coming out of their president's mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.
It must have been disappointing for many politically aware Democrats, still reeling from the election two days before. The New Jersey gubernatorial vote had already demonstrated that the president and his political team couldn't produce a winning outcome in a state very friendly to Democrats (and where the president won by 15 points one year ago). And now this? Congressional Democrats must wonder if a White House that has burdened them with a too-heavy policy agenda over the last year has a strong enough political operation to help push that agenda through.
If the president's communications apparatus can't inform -- and protect -- their boss during tense moments when the country needs to see a focused commander-in-chief and a compassionate head of state, it has disastrous consequences for that president's party and supporters.
All the president's men (and women) fell down on the job Thursday. And Democrats across the country have real reason to panic.
#1
I saw this live yesterday. It's true - the guy was completely disconnected from all that was going on at Ft Hood, 'cause we all know he doesn't give a rats ass about our service personnel. Stunning. My jaw hit the floor so hard I'm still stepping on teeth.
Hey Obambi, how's that Afghanistan dither going for ya?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
11/06/2009 10:21 Comments ||
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#2
I don't think it's hostility to the military, though he certainly has some of that. It's far simpler than that.
Obama does not know what the hell he is doing.
On anything.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/06/2009 11:12 Comments ||
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#5
The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
I'm so f*&#ing sick of hearing this sort of lame line. I have yet to see evidence of any REAL eloquence from this emptiest of empty suits. Smoove banality: yes, too much - eloquence: not a whiff.
#12
He also managed to turn it around to be all about him, don't forget that.
I want all of you to know that as commander in chief, that there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for and that their safety and security when they are at home is provided for us.
#13
Barry didn't look to ... 'with it' during his TV appearance following the incident. Maybe he had some sort of a connection to the SOB. Something that needs looking into. Just say'n.
This is a compilation of comments I made yesterday evening on the Burg.
From the This Ain't Hell blog, here is Major Hasan's officer record brief. The social security number has been blacked out by someone. I can't vouch for its veracity.
From the officer brief, Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan has this medical training:
1 year as an intern, starting 2003
3 years as a psychiatry resident, starting 2004
2 years as a psychiatry fellow, starting 2007 and ending 7/1/09
Dr. Hasan was a fellow at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress. The CSTS is part of the Uniformed Services University Of The Health Sciences and serves as an academic unit dedicated to treatment and research in traumatic stress disorders with an emphasis on military personnel. I do not know if a 2 year fellowship is a standard fellowship for this program, but in many places a 1 or 2 year fellowship is considered the norm.
From 7/16/09 he's assigned as a staff psychiatrist to Ft. Hood.
According to the State of Virginia Board of Medicine link on Dr. Hasan, last updated 10/13/09, Dr. Hasan is not certified in any specialty, and has no complaints and no judgments against him.
I am not sure why he's not board certified; if he finished his residency in 2007 he would have taken their exam in either '07 or '08. Per the American Board of Psychiatry, he would have to pass both the written and oral exam. Per the ABP listing of new diplomates for 2008 and 2009 (several PDF files), Dr. Hasan is not listed, which means he did not pass the board exam in either of those years. He might have done so in 2007, and the initial diplomate lists for that year are not available on the website.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/06/2009 00:00 ||
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Kill him next week or kill him some time thereafter, but John Allen Muhammad has to die, no matter what his lawyers say.
Muhammad was convicted in Virginia for the murder of Dean Meyers in October of 2002. Meyers' death was part of a four-state, one-city (the District of Columbia) killing spree. Lee Boyd Malvo, who was then in his teens and is now serving a life sentence for the crime, was the triggerman in the murderous rampage that left 10 dead. But Muhammad was the mastermind pulling the strings.
And if we can't execute a guy responsible for 10 murders, then what good is the death penalty?
Opponents of capital punishment would answer with a resounding "none!" of course, and as usual they'd be wrong. One thing the death penalty is certain to do, and that is to keep murderers from killing again. And much as death-penalty opponents don't like to admit it, many murderers on death row aren't there for their first killing, but for at least their second.
Apparently Muhammad decided to get all his killings in with one swoop. His lawyers argued that he wasn't competent to act as his own attorney, which he did during the first two days of his trial.
Muhammad's mouthpieces also claim that the trial judge didn't allow expert testimony that would have shown their client suffered from brain damage incurred from childhood beatings and that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence.
That childhood abuse left Muhammad sane enough to join the U.S. Army, attain the rank of sergeant and serve in the first Gulf war. His attorneys have already asked Virginia Gov.Timothy M. Kaine for clemency, and the Old Dominion state's chief executive might just want to ponder why Muhammad's mental illness didn't manifest itself in the early 1990s, but somehow popped up around 2002.
No, Muhammad is not my ideal case for a murderer who should be strapped to a gurney and given a lethal injection. And no, I don't buy the argument of death-penalty opponents that lethal injection, or any other form or execution, amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment" and thus violates the Eighth Amendment.
Remember when the phrase "cruel and unusual punishment" simply meant "let the punishment fit the crime," and not "murdering varmints have a right to be comfy when they're being put to death"?
There are others who I'd like to see get what we Marylanders call the "Thanos cocktail" before Muhammad. (Murderer John Thanos was the first death-row inmate in our state to die by lethal injection.)
Barry Mills and Tyler Bingham come immediately to mind. They're the leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who were tried for ordering their minions to murder some black inmates. A federal jury had the chance to give both these unrepentant miscreants - who somehow manage to still order murder and mayhem while behind prison walls - but wussed out.
In fact, I'd like to see any gang leader - be he from the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, Nuestra Familia, MS-13, Mexican Mafia, Bloods, Crips - who murders in prison or orders murders while in prison be executed sooner rather than later.
Ditto for those inmates who murder corrections officers. That happened to corrections Officer David McGuinnat the Maryland House of Correction more than three years ago. The two suspects in that case haven't even gone to trial yet. In the meantime, Maryland's governor and legislators have made it all but impossible for either to get the death penalty.
Muhammad was captured in Maryland; unfortunately for him, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft managed to get him shipped out of the "kill our corrections officers with impunity" state and sent to Virginia. He may not be my ideal candidate for execution next week, but with 10 bodies under his belt he'll just have to do until somebody better comes along.
That means, basically, that I don't buy his attorneys' claims about his mental incompetence. That killing spree he organized was too well-planned and too well-executed for Muhammad to be anything but mentally competent. Muhammad is mentally competent, all right.
And if there's any justice in this world, by this time next week, he'll also be dead.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Amateur Hour is correct! My apologies to used car guys, but every used car salesman that I know has more smarts than O and his gang of wannabe smart guys and serial tax cheats. A good used car salesman could size up the Arab & Israeli on the other side of the table and cut a deal.
What's in O's milk at the Whitehouse? How could anyone find as many serial tax cheats, communists, and nuts as the O?
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, announced on Thursday that he would not seek re-election in a presidential vote he has called for in January. While he said that this was not a maneuver, some of his aides have said that his decision is part of a strategy to persuade President Obama to support a full peace plan for an independent Palestinian state.
After approximately 30 years, everything has changed in Iran except the regime. What has happened in Tehran 30 years later? Public repentance has come over the architects of the old era.
Many of the activists of that era abandoned their revolutionary ideologies including highly extremist elements such as the leader of the US embassy takeover in 1979 who became an advocator of reconciliation. A number of political leaders also renounced their revolutionary ideologies such as Hashemi Rafsanjani, faithful disciples of Ayatollah Khomeini such as Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi who served as Prime Minister of Iran during the Khomeini era, as well as dozens of clerics, ministers and ambassadors. They all gave up their revolutionary ideologies and embraced nationalist thought and the concept of the modern Iranian state. But the power game kept hold of the most extremist elements, and we are now watching as another era repeats itself.
Though the repentant figures from the old generation that founded the current regime might not constitute a majority, the overwhelming majority of the new generation of Iranians certainly does not share the same old concept; rather, this majority supports the concept of the state. This is what caused the shock in last June's presidential elections, as most Iranians have nothing to do with the ideology of the revolution. They do not aim to export it and they do not care about how Arabs or Pakistanis live or what the Americans are doing; they only want to change their difficult internal conditions.
This is why we see a change in ideas with regards to the 30th anniversary of the US embassy crisis. The authorities deployed its security forces to prevent protests in front of the embassy out of fear that they would demand changing the Iranian regime itself. These are historic moments that express a strong desire to break free from a legacy that has overburdened the Iranians and worried the world for three consecutive decades; a legacy that has reached such a degree that Ahmedinejad's leadership can no longer ignore it.
Iran's leadership, which wants to impose a solution on the Lebanese, the Palestinians, the Yemenis and others, is now facing the same challenge. There are those who want to impose a policy that differs to its own policy. The only difference is that what is happening internally in Iran developed naturally and evolved from the womb of a local crisis. Despite the regime's attempts to promote the idea that [the crisis] was created at the hands of foreign powers, it has failed to invalidate all the clear signs that this crisis was a local creation. If the Iranian regime had enough confidence in itself then it would have let the day pass as normal. However, the regime was scared and it warned the Iranians against the consequences of protesting, excluding only those who would support the regime on the anniversary of the US embassy takeover. The regime knew beforehand that millions of Iranians would take to the streets raising green flags and protesting against the Iranian government.
Whether or not Iran manages to build its nuclear bomb or succeeds in stationing thousands of Basij troops and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, change is bound to come to the very city that residents managed to change by marching through the streets over 30 years ago. It was the Shah who began the nuclear bomb project, built a mammoth army and openly proclaimed his desire to be the regional policeman and nothing less. But his ambition abroad prevented him from understanding what was going on internally. His nuclear deterrent, his army and his regional ambitions proved to be of no use to him. Now the religious regime in Tehran is committing the same folly. I am not referring here to its nuclear project, but rather to its challenge against the desire of millions of Iranians seeking change.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/06/2009 00:00 ||
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Transcript of an online chat session run by the Washington Post. Both the questions (from Post readers) and the answers are refreshingly intelligent compared to a lot of the MSM. Here's a taste: Rockville, Md.: Dear Mr. Kenniff, As the wife of a former military officer, it strikes me as odd that the shooter, who was a major in the Army, claimed that he was being harassed for his religious beliefs. While some types of harassment and teasing (which could be serious or not) are surely not uncommon among enlisted men and women, it is harder to envision it happening in the officer ranks. Enlisted soldiers would know not to harass an officer and it is difficult to envision this individual being "made fun of" (the term I saw in the newspaper) by other officers. This seems inconsistent with the norms in that professional context. What is your sense of this claim? Thanks.
Thomas Kenniff: I couldn't agree more and that was one of the points I tried to make on Larry King last night, as Dr. Phil droned on about ptsd. This is a person who out ranked 95% of the military, and occupied a position of prestige both in the military and as a civilian. Doctors are treated like gold in the Army. Moreover, he had not even been deployed yet and, no, I don't but the whole "ptsd by proxy" argument that so many people tried to sell on television last night. The facts suggest someone motivated by ideology--just like the Akbar case in 2003.
- - - - - - - - - -
New York: I liked your Dr. Phil comments.
If someone really doesn't want to be deployed, or if they have religious objections, what are their options? Is the military accommodating of such objections?
Thomas Kenniff: My understanding is this guy was commissioned in 2001, any contractual commitment he had to the army would not have gone longer 6 to 8 years, at most. He most likely decided to renew his contract, most likely to avail himself of a big medical enlistment bonus--now he claims he wanted out and didnt want to deploy . . . Go read the rest of it.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/06/2009 15:20 ||
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#1
it strikes me as odd that the shooter, who was a major in the Army, claimed that he was being harassed for his religious beliefs.
I don't buy this story either. Why the hell would this a$$hole have PSTD--vicariously? He hadn't been in a combat zone. B.S. story. PC has just about neutered the country.
#2
While I don't believe ptsd was Hasan's motivation, I do think he could have suffered from it as you say 'vicariously' - facing the grievously wounded day after day has got to be traumatic, and quite possibly more so than the sporadic combat most experience even in theatre.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
WASHINGTON -- Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.
WASHINGTON Barack Obama and the Democrats have come back to earth hard.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, announced on Thursday that he would not seek re-election in a presidential vote he has called for in January. While he said that this was not a maneuver, some of his aides have said that his decision is part of a strategy to persuade President Obama to support a full peace plan for an independent Palestinian state. 
