The Super Majority

10 Reasons Obama is Falling Investors

A year ago, millions of Americans — investors, taxpayers, consumers, voters — came together uplifted by the “audacity of hope,” inspired by a vision of “change we can believe in,” by “bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world.”

“Yes, we can” was the rallying cheer. You were the game-changer after the Bush-Cheney fiasco. What happened? Today we just don’t see, or expect to see, any real change we can believe in. America is more polarized than under Bush’s GOP, dysfunctional as both parties tragically undermine our great nation.

There are many reasons future historians may rate your presidency average, or even a failure, at least based on the gap between the promise a year ago and the reality today, certainly for investors.

Read the Full Article at CBS Marketwatch

Brown Win Could be Death Knell for Obamacare

A stinging loss Tuesday in Massachusetts has cost President Barack Obama and the Democrats the 60-vote Senate majority they’ve relied on to push a historic health care overhaul to the verge of enactment.

Now what? It’s miles of bad road in any direction.

Democrats splintered on how to salvage the president’s top domestic initiative even before the results were official. Republicans said don’t bother: The election of state senator Scott Brown sent a message that the health care bill should be scrapped.

Read the Full Article at MSNBC

Political Blunders Doom Obama’s White House

If Scott Brown should defeat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election tomorrow, it will be a fitting metaphor for the political trajectory of President Obama’s first year in office. A year ago Democrats were talking about Obama as the next Franklin Roosevelt, and suggesting that they were on the cusp of an enduring majority. Today, they are struggling to hold Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat.

Coakley will rightly get most of the blame should Brown actually pull off what once seemed to be an impossible victory. Yet much of the responsibility will have to rest with Barack Obama, who has guided his party so poorly that it is having trouble making an appeal to voters in Massachusetts.

To put it bluntly, the Obama White House has been politically inept in the last year. It has made serious miscalculations, and today it is paying a price.

Read the Full Article at Real Clear Politics

Democrats Survey Underhanded Methods to Push Through Obamacare

First, Democrats in Massachusetts rammed a bill through the state Legislature after Ted Kennedy’s death allowing the Democratic governor to appoint a caretaker Democrat to fill the seat until a special election could be held — ensuring a 60th vote for President Obama’s healthcare reform. It was assumed that in Massachusetts, with a 3-to-1 Democratic edge in voter registration, a Democrat would win.

But now, given the sudden prospect that Democratic Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley could lose to upstart state Sen. Scott Brown, Democrats in Washington are plotting how to save healthcare.

Read the Full Article at Los Angeles Times

American Public Gets to Foot the Bill for Unions’ Healthcare

Congressional Democrats received another $68 million from unions in 2008, and $21 million more so far this year. And that doesn’t count the value of “in kind” contributions like phone banks, poll volunteers and independent advertising.

Looks like the unions are getting their money’s worth — with a sweetheart deal worth billions.

For most American workers, beginning in 2013, if your health care insurance plan is worth more than $8,900 for an individual and $24,000 for a family, that plan will be hit with a 40% excise tax. While technically the tax falls on the insurer, virtually all economists agree that the cost will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. Moreover, because the threshold for the tax is indexed to ordinary inflation rather than the higher rate of medical inflation, even if your plan doesn’t get hit today, it may well be taxed in the future.

Read the Full Article at the New York Post

Robertson’s Stupidity on Display as he Smites Haiti

Most Americans are not in the smiting business. No matter what our line of work, we’re basically in the live-and-let-live business.

But here on Earth, the smiting business is reserved for that TV evangelist and Haitian earthquake expert, the Rev. Pat Robertson.

The rest of us might get angry at someone or something. But few of us call down the wrath of the heavens upon someone, unless, of course, it’s some football coach who doesn’t make the playoffs.

The smiters are different. They’re angry. Many of them are radical Islamic clerics who call on Allah to destroy the Great Satan for our sins of Americanism, like not keeping our women in burqas and siding with Israel, and for watching those sultry commercials where Padma Lakshmi eats a greasy cheeseburger and so forth

Read the Full Article at Chicago Tribune

Is US Default Inevitable?

So said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein of the financial crisis of 2008. He likened its probability to four hurricanes hitting the East Coast in a single season.

Blankfein was reminded by the chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee, Phil Angelides, that hurricanes are “acts of God.” Financial crises are manmade. Yet Blankfein was backed up by Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, who said, “Somehow, we just missed … that home prices don’t go up forever.”

The Wall Street titans thus conceded they did not foresee the housing bubble ever bursting and they did not consider the possibility of a collapse in value of the sub-prime mortgage securities piled up on their books.

Read the Full Article at Patrick Buchanan

Hey Pelosi, Where are the Jobs?

In August 2003, then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a press statement demanding to know from President Bush, “Where Are the Jobs?” The statement was released in response to the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which, at that time showed that over 400,000 Americans had given up looking for work and had left the labor force. It should be noted that today, every job measurement she cited is worse now than it was in 2003. We must have overlooked her similar question for President Obama.

From Pelosi’s statement:

Washington, D.C. — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ announcement that 470,000 people abandoned their job searches in July and that 3.2 million private sector jobs have been lost since President Bush took office:

Read the Full Article at Big Government