Why Obama & the Democrats will get crushed on Election Day

So many reasons ...

Let's start w/ jobs (or lack therof) and the Porkulus:

A Shovel-Unready Prez

Obama's Remarkable Confession by Jonah Goldberg

In early 2009, President-elect Obama was asked on "Meet the Press" how quickly he could create jobs. Oh, very fast, he said. He'd consulted with a gaggle of governors, and "all of them have projects that are shovel-ready." When Obama revealed his energy team members, he explained that they were part of his effort to get started on "shovel-ready projects all across the country." When he unveiled his education secretary, he assured everyone that he was going to get started "helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects."

Only now it turns out that the president was shoveling some thing all right when he was talking about shovel-ready jobs -- a whole pile of steaming something.

In the current New York Times Magazine, Obama admits that there's "no such thing as shovel-ready" when it comes to public works. It's not that he was lying when he said all that stuff. It's just that he didn't know what he was talking about. All it took was nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus money and 20-plus months of on-the-job training for him to discover that he was talking nonsense.

If I were president, and I not only staked vast swaths of my credibility but gambled on the prosperity of the country generally on this concept of "shovel-ready jobs," I might be a bit miffed with the staffers who swore that shovel-ready jobs were, like, you know, real.

Yet, if you read Peter Baker's Obama profile, it's clear that Obama isn't mad about that. In fact, he still thinks he got all the policies right. Baker writes that Obama is "supremely sure that he is right," it's just that the president feels he didn't market himself well.

"Given how much stuff was coming at us," Obama explains, "we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right."

This is an old progressive lament: Our product is perfect, we just didn't sell it convincingly to the rubes.

But wait a second. If they spent "much more time trying to get the policy right," how come nobody said, Uh, Mr. President, these "shovel-ready jobs" you keep talking about? They're sort of like good flan -- they don't exist.

Let's not dwell on such things. Besides, Obama has already said that his problems come from "neglecting marketing and PR and public opinion." That, and only that, explains why people think he looks like "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."

The only problem with that: facts. Obama's health-care plan raises taxes on Americans (though Obama says this is not so, they're merely mandatory fees and premiums) and will cost trillions. He wants to raise taxes on "the rich" -- defined so that a cop married to a nurse might well count as rich -- and on small businesses.

Meanwhile, Washington is now spending 23 percent more than it did two years ago. As The Washington Post recently editorialized, Congress' "emergency" bailout to avoid "a teachers crisis" was a fraud to simply transfer billions to the teachers' unions in advance of the midterms.

Then there's the stimulus that paid for all of those "shovel-ready jobs" that Obama now admits never existed. Los Angeles County deployed $111 million in stimulus money to "save" 55 jobs at the cost of $2 million apiece. The White House has spent $192 million on road signs that brag about how the construction delays ahead were paid for by the stimulus.

Meanwhile, unemployment is a full three points higher during Obama's "recovery" than it was during the "worst recession since the Great Depression."

Maybe it's unfair for people to think Obama is just another tax-and-spend Democrat. After all, some tax-and-spend Democrats are actually competent at it.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/shovel_unready_prez_P2fS5riaTml5pqPqvVl8qM#ixzz12aEtHxCn

WHY TEXAS HAS THE JOBS (Rich Lowry)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/why_texas_has_the_jobs_L2QYWqSLd8CotwGD8geZFK

THE DEMS MUG THE DONOR STRATEGY (Michelle Malkin)

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_dems_mug_the_donors_strategy_DAxv7g5rHTE3Qk25A5FipO

The Youth Hurts - even O's own supporters abandon ship

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/4586297

And his crack staff is abandoning ship as well: Look at all the top advisors leaving:

http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-white-house-exits-normal-not-by-a-long-shot/19671391

And then, there's foreign policy:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_blinks_at_beijing_bullying_mSluI5JGuuWyDX1To2EvfO

ObamaCare: Unpopular & Unconstitutional

If ObamaCare's insurance mandate law is ruled unconstitutional, the whole law could collapse.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/suing_obamacare_sLcUy0Ica1vYcuhyKUdoDO#ixzz12aE6VVLv

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703673604575549700366382866.html

The Obama administration has tried to convince Americans that they will like the new health law once they understand its effects. According to a new poll, they understand the law pretty well—and they don't like what they see.

At the end of last month, we asked a sample of 1,000 adults about health reform. The big picture: A majority (55%) believe the new law will cause them to get lower-quality care, pay more in insurance premiums or taxes, or both. Consistent with other surveys, 42% favor repeal, 36% don't, and 22% aren't sure.

Our poll also asked about specific provisions. The mandate that individuals buy insurance or face a tax penalty generated the greatest opposition, with 55% opposed and only 25% in favor. Other aspects of the law received more mixed reviews. The provision requiring employers to offer their employees health insurance or pay a tax penalty had plurality support, with 47% in favor and 36% opposed.

On the surface, these findings might seem to support the administration's view. People are less negative about some of the specifics than they are about the package as a whole. But does this imply that those who understand the law like it better?

To investigate, we asked people about their perceptions of the link between reform, insurance premiums, and wages—in particular, "if employer insurance costs increase as a result of the health reform plan, do you think the take-home pay of employees will decrease or not?" Policy analysts on the left and the right agree that workers bear the costs of insurance through wage offsets; numerous empirical studies have found this to be true. We therefore used people's answer to this question as a proxy for their understanding of the effects of health reform.

Fully 49% answered the question correctly, saying that employee pay would decrease by approximately any additional amount that employers have to spend. Thirty-one percent believe employee pay would decrease but by less than the full amount; 19% believe the extra costs would have no effect on pay.

People who understand the economic consequences of health reform span the political spectrum. Although these respondents were somewhat more likely to identify themselves as Republicans than the overall population (37% versus 28%), fully 25% identified themselves as Democrats (versus 34% in the population), and 29% as independents (versus 28% in the population).

Despite their political views, the well-informed share a strong opposition to the new law. They advocate repeal 56/25; oppose the individual mandate 73/13; and oppose the employer mandate 52/36. Such numbers do not bode well for the administration's claims that to know reform is to like it.

We also asked about three other provisions in the law: the ban on charging more for insurance based on a person's health ("community rating"), the mandate that employers cover "children" up to age 26, and the ban on lifetime limits on benefits. We told people that these provisions would increase insurance costs by $700, $200, and $100 per year, respectively—approximately what health economists and actuaries have estimated as the added cost to an average employer-sponsored family insurance policy.

People who thought they could enjoy these benefits while someone else picked up the tab generally supported them. Those who believed that there is no "free lunch" opposed community rating (by 43% to 32%) and mandated coverage of children to age 26 (by 48% to 32%). However, they supported the new law's ban on lifetime limits on benefits by 43% to 33%. These responses are consistent with a poll we conducted in January 2009, published in Health Affairs, which found widespread political support for a more moderate package of reforms.

As the midterm elections approach, one can expect candidates opposed to the new health reform law to point out how its effects on health costs will translate into people's paychecks. Our poll suggests this message will resonate with voters of all stripes.

Mr. Brady is professor of political science at Stanford University and deputy director of the Hoover Institution. Mr. Kessler is professor of business and law at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Mr. Rivers is professor of political science at Stanford, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and president of YouGov Polimetrix.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704361504575552490899677152.html

ObamaCare in Court

A Florida judge allows the major state lawsuit to proceed to trial.

Even the legal left now grudgingly concedes that the constitutional challenges to ObamaCare aren't frivolous, and an important decision in Florida yesterday shows why. Federal District Judge Roger Vinson refused to throw out the core challenge to the law made by 20 state Attorneys General and other plaintiffs, overruling the arguments by the Obama Justice Department.

The lawsuit's bedrock claim is that ObamaCare's individual mandate that people buy health insurance or else pay a penalty exceeds Congress's authority under the Commerce Clause, while Justice contended that this is nothing out of the ordinary. But as Judge Vinson writes in his 65-page ruling, "this is not even a close call. . . . The power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent."

Congress is attempting to regulate not interstate commerce but economic inactivity by requiring individuals to purchase a private product "based solely on citizenship and on being alive." Judge Vinson ruled that the plaintiffs "have at least stated a plausible claim that the line has been crossed" concerning the outermost bounds of federal power under the Constitution.

He also undertook some useful spadework into the legislative and political history of ObamaCare as to whether the individual mandate counts as a "penalty" or a "tax." Liberals are now arguing that the mandate is permissible under the broader taxing powers for the general welfare, despite vehemently denying this notion before the bill passed—including President Obama's claim on national TV that he "absolutely" rejected the argument that the penalty is a tax.

But Judge Vinson notes that legally there are "clear, important, and well-established differences between the two," and in a meticulous examination of the plain language of the bill itself he finds that it "contains no indication that Congress was exercising its taxing authority or that it meant for the penalty to be regarded as a tax." He pointedly notes that defenders of the law can't now take the "'Alice in Wonderland' tack" of claiming that Congress really meant something else.

The legal upshot is that Justice lawyers will have to defend the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause, and Judge Vinson's ruling seems to indicate that they will need better arguments than they've made so far. And rightly so, given the violence ObamaCare does to the government of limited and enumerated powers as envisioned in Article I. Oral arguments will be heard in December.

ForeclosureGate 2010 -- a crisis in the making

apparently due to rampant fraud ....

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-foreclosure-fraud-is-so-dangerous-to-our-system-of-property-rights-2010-10

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/citigroup-call-implications-foreclosure-crisis-just-tip-iceberg

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Robosigners-Mortgage-apf-382327091.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

NEW YORK (AP) -- In an effort to rush through thousands (how about MILLIONS ??) of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.

In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.

"The mortgage servicers hired people who would never question authority," said Peter Ticktin, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., lawyer who is defending 3,000 homeowners in foreclosure cases. As part of his work, Ticktin gathered 150 depositions from bank employees who say they signed foreclosure affidavits without reviewing the documents or ever laying eyes on them -- earning them the name "robo-signers."

The deposed employees worked for the mortgage service divisions of banks such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, as well as for mortgage servicers like Litton Loan Servicing, a division of Goldman Sachs.

Ticktin said he would make the testimony available to state and federal agencies that are investigating financial institutions for allegations of possible mortgage fraud. This comes on the eve of an expected announcement Wednesday from 40 state attorneys general that they will launch a collective probe into the mortgage industry.

National Insecurity Advisor - O's Lightweight "security" pick

THE DECLINIST'S WIN

O's lightweight security pick

BY: ARTHUR HERMAN

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_declinists_win_Ykz9fNc9A1S4rLvmcMv77H#ixzz126auU0HW

If anyone still doubted that America's foreign policy is in crisis, the appointment Friday of Thomas Donilon to be our new national-security adviser should be final proof.

Set aside the fact that Donilon served as in-house counsel at Fannie Mae, the epicenter of the subprime-mortgage mess and subsequent financial meltdown — something any other administration would see as evidence of less than stellar judgment. Set aside the reports that Defense Secretary Robert Gates had said Donilon's appointment would be a "disaster" or that Donilon fought hard against our military's strategy for winning in Afghanistan — although that seems precisely why Obama now wants him in the White House.

Even set aside the fact that Donilon's mentor is our buffoon-in-chief, Vice President Joe Biden.

The fact that such a lightweight now occupies the single most important job for shaping the future of American power, short of the presidency itself, shows that the administration sees national security as a relatively minor priority compared to, say, currying favor with the Muslim world or running down allies like Britain and Israel.

Some background is in order.

The modern role of national-security adviser was created by and for one man, Henry Kissinger. With the blessing of President Richard Nixon, Kissinger used it to circumvent the Pentagon and State Department on the twin impasses that were undermining America's position in the world, Vietnam and China.

Kissinger had the ruthless will but also the superb vision to make it work, first creating the opening to China, which changed the face of Asia but also ensured the Soviet Union's eventual defeat in the Cold War, and then extricating America from Vietnam after securing South Vietnam's military security (a success that an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, elected in the wake of the Watergate scandal, then undercut and destroyed).

Kissinger crafted a position that requires a person of similar skill and vision and presidential trust. Although even his best successors like Brent Scowcroft and Stephen Hadley never quite measured up to the Kissinger standard, they never forgot that their primary job was to make sure that petty rivalries or small-minded group-think at the Pentagon, State or CIA never be allowed to threaten America's preeminent global position.

In short, the National Security Agency has to be a Gulliver who pulls the president free from the strings and red tape that Lilliputian bureaucrats, ambitious politicians and assorted self-interested policy wonks try to throw over him.

Now, the men from Lilliput have won.

Donilon is the anti-Kissinger, the bureaucrat's bureaucrat. By every account, he measures success by the number of position papers he has read and sees process as important as substance in foreign policy.

He learned this working as chief of staff for the most colorless and ineffectual 20th century secretary of state, Warren Christopher. Formerly No. 2 at State in the Jimmy Carter years, Christopher embodied the Carter mindset of seeing America as an arrogant problem child that needs to be spanked and grounded if the world is to have any peace.

That mindset now rules the Obama White House.

It's why Obama is comfortable with America's steady decline both economically and strategically, why he's pushing for more defense cuts and why he clearly resents having been talked into backing the surge strategy in Afghanistan — a problem he wishes would simply go away.

It's also why he's prepared to hand over deadly challenges like Iran and the War on Terror to a barrage of UN resolutions and Predator drone strikes, while farming out important foreign-policy initiatives to mediocrities like Biden and Sen. John Kerry. Their abject incompetence and incoherence (Biden pushing for partition of Iraq back when the war was going badly, and then denying he ever did; Kerry the former anti-war activist sent to tell the Pakistanis to kill more terrorists or else) only serves to promote Obama's larger agenda of creating a world in which America's interests take a back seat — even as he squanders the power and prestige America has built up since the Reagan years to do it.

Donilon now can facilitate that process. It's a shame. Far better that the position of national-security adviser be left vacant than it pass to the man from Lilliput.

Arthur Herman, author of "Gandhi and Churchill," is an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar.

Dontcha Love These Non-Ideological Pragmatists?

October 8, 2010 6:13 P.M.

By Andy McCarthy

The predictably fawning New York Times profile of Thomas Donilon, tabbed by President Obama to replace Gen. James Jones as national security adviser, takes pains to explain that “Mr. Donilon is known as a pragmatist, not an ideologue[.]” And on what is this supposed reputation based? Scrupulously non-ideological NYT correspondents David Sanger and Helene Cooper helpfully explain:

Mr. Donilon … started not as a foreign policy professional, but as a young political operative for [notoriously pragmatic, non-ideological] President Jimmy Carter, working for Mr. Carter’s chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, and then managing the floor at the [pragmatic, non-ideological] Democratic Convention in 1980. Years later, he served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Warren Christopher [the non-ideologue also known as Mr. Pragmatic] in the Clinton administration. He coached [the rigorously non-ideological, utterly pragmatic] Mr. Obama on foreign policy for his debates during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Okay, okay, the bracketed commentary is mine — I know you were wondering.

Funny, the Times somehow did not find fit to print the observation of sitting Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who may actually be a non-ideological pragmatist — that Donilon would be a “disaster” if appointed national security adviser. According to Bob Woodward’s new book,Obama’s Wars, which has somehow gotten less attention at the Times than Woodward’s Bush-era tomes, Gates described Donilon, as clueless when it comes to the military and was deeply offended by the disrespect the former Fannie Mae lobbyist showed to senior military leadership.

Woodward’s book has been noticed by RNC researchers, who have just put out a Donilon profile of their own. It turns out that General Jones was also not a fan, though Donilon was his principal deputy. Jones echoed criticisms that Donilon lacked critical national security experience and existed in a lawyer’s bunker, his power stemming from his status as a Democratic fixer who has the president’s ear — an ear Donilon routinely fills with “snap judgments” and “absolute declarations” about places he’s never been to, foreign officials he’s never met, and a military with which he has no credibility.

Sounds like he’ll be perfect.

Foreclosures Halted -- massive Mortgage Fraud ? MERS implicated

This has the potential to be an enormous scandal ... it appears that there has been massive nationwide robo signing based on questionable "bank execs" using the same notaries in multiple states (which is probably not legal). And it appears these bank execs representing themselves as VPs of multiple lenders simultaneously may be no more than mail room clerks.

The media is not all over this ... yet ...

Read Zero Hedge on this:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/4closurefraud-exclusive-part-deux-%E2%80%93-president-obama-falls-victim-another-robo-signer

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/mers-commercial-about-break-cmbs-market