DADvocate

Searching through some old posts on George W. Bush, I came across this post from February 19, 2009 on Obama's popularity and his economic policy. It was a short post that, in its entirety said:

How Long Till Obama's Popularity Plummets?

Obama's approval ratings are still good but falling. Reading the comments to this post by Katie Allison Granju, I wonder how long it will take before Obama is in George W. Bush land.

I didn't see a single comment supportive of Obama and his economic policy. Granju is a liberal blogger at a major newspaper. You'd think some sympathetic liberal would have said something. But, nothing yet. Not a good sign for Barack.

Obama's popularity has plummeted and his economic policies brought on this plummet.

Did I call it, or what? (I'm sure his polls will look better after having appeared on The View though.)

One lesson I see in the parable of the prodigal son is one I'm not sure I've ever heard discussed, at any length at least. Most of us know the story of the long lost son who returns home after having squandered all the money his father had given him and his father had given him up for dead.

The father orders a great celebration. His other son, who had been loyal and worked hard for his father is upset.

The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, "Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!"

"My son," the father said, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

"...and everything I have is yours." The father does not forget his loyal son. Indeed, he remembers him and ultimately saves the greatest reward for him.

As parents, many times I think we focus too much on a child having problems and forget to reward the child who performs well. Especially if that child performs well consistently, we may take them for granted.

I try to follow the path of reinforcing success. I never use a set pattern or a "bribe" system where I tell my kids I'll give them something for making good grades or something. I'll just give them something extra at unexpected times but let them know its a small reward for their good performance. I'm careful to be low key about it. To much praise or pomp and circumstance turns it into an obvious ploy.

Never turn you back on the "loyal" child. Gently remind them that everything you have is theirs, figuratively if not literally.

is growing up. I think she is beautiful. (What do I know? I'm her Dad.)



But, she is still a ham bone.



Tortilla mask.

I do know what it's like to be blessed with wonderful children.

Some don't like Kahlil Gibran On Children. For me, it hits the bulls eye.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

June, 2010 set a record for the most American soldiers being killed in Afghanistan. July surpassed that record.

In a summer of suffering, America's military death toll in Afghanistan is rising, with back-to-back record months for U.S. losses in the grinding conflict. All signs point to more bloodshed in the months ahead, straining the already shaky international support for the war.

Six more Americans were reported killed in fighting in the south — three Thursday and three Friday — pushing the U.S. death toll for July to a record 66 and surpassing June as the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nearly nine-year war.

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After a dip in American deaths last spring following the February capture of the southern town of Marjah, U.S. fatalities have been rising — from 19 in April to 34 in May to 60 in June. Last month's deaths for the entire NATO-led force reached a record 104, including the 60 Americans. This month's coalition death count stands at 89, including the 66 Americans.

In the mean time, Obama appears on The View to boost his ratings with women, played golf and went on vacation. Remember, George W. Bush gave up golf as a symbol of his respect for the families or the war dead. If you read the article, you'll find that he didn't make public his reasons for quitting golf until 5 years after he quit. It was not PR move, but an act of sincerity, something of which Obama appears entirely incapable.

Using a disgusting display of anti-semitism, Democratic Congressman Mike McMahon of New York hopes to win over voters.

Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger to Democrat Mike McMahon's Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.

The file, labeled "Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

"Where is Grimm's money coming from," said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign spokesman. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."

Wow. That tainted Jewish money. We all know that Jews are money grubbers and control the world economy, don't we? Aaaah, those wonderful tolerant liberals.

Pogroms coming soon.

Via Instapundit

Watching "Two and a Half Men" the other day, I saw the best description of couples/marriage counseling ever. It begins "You sit on the couch with your significant other while she snips off your testicles..." Watch and learn.



This message approved by the APA (Alienated Parents Association).

On The View today, Obama referred to blacks in America as "a mongrel people." He then included whites as a mongrel people.

Whoopi Goldberg extended the discussion to ask whether we can see America as progressing beyond labels, which in the news media tends to get reduced to a yes or no question: either we're "post-racial" or we're not. Obama, citing as he often does his own background, said that the answer was complicated—not just for him but for everyone. "We're kind of a mongrel people," he said. "That's true for white America too, but we [African Americans] just know more about it."

While there's a lot of truth to Obama's "mongrel" comment, it's hilarious that he dropped this bomb. Imagine the outrage if any conservative said the same thing, such as Rush Limbaugh.

Sam Youngman at The Hill falls all over himself trying to give context and intent to Obama's words.

The president's remarks were directed at the roots of all Americans. The definition of mongrel as an adjective is defined as "of mixed breed, nature, or origin," according to dictionary.com.

Obama did not appear to be making an inflammatory remark with his statement and the audience appeared to receive it in the light-hearted manner that often accompanies interviews on morning talk shows.

I know nothing about Youngman, but, still, I wonder if a conservative would have gotten this kind of protection from a journalist. Heck, BLACKVOICES didn't feel the need to qualify Obama's statements.

Oh, for the day when we get past all this crap and can just be people.

A couple of days ago my 14 year old daughter posed the question " Why is everybody always depressed?!" on her Facebook status. She says she did it because she was tired of everyone posting a status of how bad a mood they were in, how terrible things were, how many problems they had, etc.

Surprisingly, she received 60 or more comments about this.

One girl stated, "Because teenagers are angsty & pubescent, they can't help themselves. Duh."

My daughter replied, "haha im a teenager and im not depressed."

Girl "Well, your life isn't exactly like everyone else's. lol. :p"

Daughter "hats that mean? haha"

Girl "Um...nvm. lol. xD"

My daughter took that as the girl thought my daughter had a better life than most teenagers. My daughter and I both doubt that. She has her struggles with parents, school, boyfriends, peers, sports and all that.

She just decided she'd be happy and that's it. She doesn't like all the whining and recognizes the difference between a real life problem and a teenage situational problem.

Like Abraham Lincoln said, "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be." The longer I live, the more I believe that statement.

Jesse Jackson goes on a race-baiting rant over the way Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert handled LeBron James leaving for Miami. Obviously, Gilbert handled the situation poorly but Jackson goes way over the top including comparing the situation to the Dred Scott decision and claiming Gilbert views James as a "runaway slave."

You can see some of Jackson's rantings at the 6:40 minute point in this video.



Get beyond race? How can we get beyond race when that's all Jackson and the other race baiters see? The Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already) formed to protest raising taxed and increasing debt. But, the NAACP claims the Tea Party is racist because they oppose some of a black president's policies. The NAACP, Jackson and their ilk want everyone to say "How High?" when they say jump. Any self-respecting person won't cooperate with this.

BTW - Is Jackson getting senile or something? Or, was he always this way? Nothing he says has a rational basis.

Nuff said.

This is cool. Lasers shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles in Navy test.

"The targets came in over the ocean, and it was a good day for lasers, bad day for drones," says Mike Booen of Raytheon in Tucson. Lasers: 4, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's): 0, was the score, and in pretty dramatic fashion too, if you see the video provided by the defense giant.

In a few seconds, six fiber-optic lasers with a combined 32 kilowatts of power fried up the drones in the tests. (A coffee-maker is about a one kilowatt appliance for comparison purposes, according to the Energy Department.) The range distance of the tests lasers is a Navy secret, but Defense Industry Daily in 2007 reported their reach would be three times farther than the 20-millimeter "Gatling" guns now mounted on Navy ships to defend against airborne threats.

Light sabers coming next.

Hat tip to The Virtuous Republic

Following the Shirley Sherrod/NAACP story, I held off on comment to see what was really going on. When I first saw the edited video of her speech, it struck me that she sounded like people I've heard telling their story of "coming to Christ." Early on in their talks they will relate stories of how they made the wrong choices and took the wrong actions. Then they tell of their seeing the light and their conversion. This seemed to be even more of the case with Ms. Sherrod when I saw the video of her lesson learned where she states it's not about race, it's about those who have and those who don't.

Unfortunately for her, Ms. Sherrod couldn't keep her mouth shut and couldn't maintain her "it's not about race" stance. Indeed, she actually thinks it's all about race. Watch the video below and you'll see that



Sherrod claims she's gotten past black versus white. Then she uses the race baiting trump card and accuses Andrew Breitbart of wanting to return to slavery. If Sherrod wasn't stuck in black versus white, she wouldn't resort to a black versus white attack on Breitbart. She then expands it to say that's why Breitbart is "so vicious against a black president." All about black versus white.

Next Sherrod claims that Breitbart must show what he's done to promote unity between the races to prove he's not racist. I'm sure that she would hold herself in judgment as to whether or not what Breitbart may or may not have done is adequate and passes muster. In my book, if you treat all people without regard to race, you've done enough for unity between the races. Simple.

Sherrod then says she won't turn away from pursuing legal action if that's a possibility. I'd like to know what action she could pursue. There was no lie involved in Breitbart's actions. His goal was to point out the reaction of the NAACP crowd to Sherrod's story of helping the white farmer.

Another point is that many make reference to the tragic murder of Sherrod's father and the lack of prosecution of the perpetrator. The assumption is that the killing and lack of prosecution was based on racism. I doubt we'll ever know the full story on this.

I wonder if it matters that blacks murder about three times as many whites each year as whites murder blacks. This means that the rate of blacks murdering whites is much higher than whites murdering blacks. (Which also happens to be true for blacks murdering blacks. Whites make up 79.8%, 65.6% if you don't count Hispanics, of the population and blacks 12.8%) I don't have the desire to figure out the exact probabilities, but there are about 5 times more whites than blacks in the U.S. and blacks kill 3 times more whites than whites kill blacks. I wonder what the NAACP and Shirley Sherrod has to say about this. What has she done to stop this racist attitude amongst blacks that it is OK to kill whites? Show me the money.

Go home, Shirley, and cry in your own beer. You've go a cushy government job that doesn't require a lot of smarts and you make a lot more money that most of us.

Sitting at home by myself about a month ago, I came to a slight realization. My son was out on a date with a black girl. At least she's as black as Obama, white mother and black father. (Unless you want to go down the road of how black the father is, but the girl is as dark skinned or darker than Obama.) My daughter's boyfriend was half Filipino.

My kids appear to have learned from the example I've tried to set, judge people by their qualities, honesty, compassion, generosity, and such. In a way, my work was done. The openness to others of other races is by no means unique to my children. Most of their friends are equally willing to date kids of other races. Virtually every activity is multi-racial, not by design, but because they are friends. My son is a a birthday party for a black friend as I write this post.

Yet, many liberals and blacks keep playing the race card and harping on the past. History is important as it helps guide us into the future, but basing claims of racism on events that happened 40 years ago or more is folly. I only caught the last minute of the clip below on MSNBC. Clarence Page claims Tea Partiers are afraid of change because they're old like him.



I'm a Tea Partier and in the old 55 and over age range Page mentions. I'm not afraid of change. I've worked for change all my life. I'm afraid of a totalitarian government that wants to control every aspect of my life and take away my choices. Race have nothing to do with it.

Page and the others are stuck in the past. They can't get past their own prejudices and view the world through tinted glasses. Maybe the photo will help. I took it right after the two ladies finished hugging the two very black policemen at a Tea Party rally. The police had a very good time at the rally. No problems, every one thanked them for their presence and efforts and lots of hugs from old ladies.



Liberals love to describe conservatives as reactionaries living in the past. But, listen to the words of the libs. They're stuck in the past and deny the present. Mostly because they have nothing to offer for the future.

One of the stranger cases I've come across, a 31 year old woman posed as a boy in order to date girls.

Police said a 31-year-old woman pretended to be a 14-year-old boy so she could have a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl.

Patricia Dye is charged with corruption of a minor and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.

Police said Dye cut her hair and used the alias Matt Abrams to get close to the girl in May, and detectives said she even met the girl's parents as Abrams.

The 4-foot-11, 120-pound woman was arrested after the teen had run away from home for three days and stayed with Dye at least part of that time, he said.

The girl did not know Dye was a woman, police said.

Warren County prosecutor's spokesman Matt Nolan said Dye and the girl had sexual conduct at the girl's home in Springboro. Nolan said Dye has used several aliases and her last known address was a hotel.

Since this first came out, a second girl has come forward with similar claims.

A second teenage victim now says she too believed Patricia Dye, 31, was really a teenage boy after an incredible acting job.

"It infuriates me," said the teen's soon-to-be stepmother, who asked not to be identified. "To me it is very sick."

The woman claimed that for nearly a year, the 16-year-old girl was dating whom she thought was a 14-year-old boy named Matt Abrams.

"They referred to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend," the woman explained.

But "he" was really "she," and a far cry from "Matt's" so-called teen status. "She" was nearly double the victim's age and is 31-year-old Patricia Dye.

The teen's parents called police after seeing Dye's mug shot on the news last week for a similar case. Dye was arrested on one count of corruption of a minor, one count of importuning and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor after luring a 16-year-old Springboro girl.

The two met on MySpace and would chat on Facebook and text message. And before going on dates, "Matt" had to meet her parents.

"He had to come up and meet us before she was allowed to leave," the woman said. "Stood in my living room, shook my fiance's hand, and passed as a boy."

She said her stepdaughter even went to church with Dye's family. Dye's father would drive them from the family's apartment at a Franklin motel.

"The father pretended to be the grandfather and kept referring to his daughter as Matt," the woman said.

Dye's mother is defending her daughter.

"I know my daughter," Dorothy Dye said. "More better than what anybody else does, she's not like that. So why do you think that the police are saying she impersonated a boy? Hey, she always has done that. My God, there's a lot of girls always, uh, always pose, you know as a guy."

Let me repeat Dorothy Dye's last statement, "Hey, she always has done that. My God, there's a lot of girls always, uh, always pose, you know as a guy." Really? That's not common in my world, unless I'm being fooled a lot.

Another chapter in "Psychos and the Parents Who Enable Them."

I wonder if the Obama administration will tout this as good news.

The state says Ohio’s unemployment declined to 10.5 percent in June, from 10.7 percent in May, as fewer people looked for work.

State Department of Job and Family Services spokesman Ben Johnson says it’s possible that some out-of-work Ohioans chose to take a summer break from job searching to spend time with family.

You could shout about the dropping unemployment, but there's more.

The state’s jobless rate is a full percentage point higher than the national rate of 9.5 percent.

Along with unemployment, hiring in Ohio went down slightly in June. Officials say temporary census workers lost work, and that offset moderate job gains in the private sector.

The number of workers unemployed in Ohio in June was 625,000, down from 641,000 in May. The state’s overall employment outside of farms went down by 1,500 last month.

Nothing to shout about here. We still have a long way to go.

During the economic recovery of 2003, Austan Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, wrote a column n the New York Times on how the federal government cooked the books on unemployment and, consequently, didn't show how bad unemployment truly was. Goolsbee fingered Social Security disability as the primary culprit in skewing the figures.

The government reported that annual unemployment during this recession peaked at only around 6 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in 1992 and more than 9 percent in 1982. But the unemployment rate has been low only because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as "not in the labor force."

In other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been a more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan administration, when people serving in the military were reclassified from "not in the labor force" to "employed" in order to reduce the unemployment rate. Nonetheless, the impact has been the same.

Now, Mr. Gooolsbee is a top economic adviser to Obama and we don't much from him about unemployment. What is the true unemployment situation?

Professor Goolsbee is now a top economic advisor to President Obama. Would he admit that the official jobless of 9.5% grossly underestimates the pain of job losses in America and do something to correct the situation?

Findings in recent IBD/TIPP polls suggest that now would be a good time to undertake such a project.

According to Labor Department data, the civilian labor force in June totaled 153.7 million people, 14.6 million (9.5%) of whom were unemployed. But in the latest IBD/TIPP poll conducted last week, 28.6% of respondents said at least one member of their household is unemployed and looking for work. This number for June was 27.8% and for May 28%.

When we project our household job-seekers rate and calculate the share of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work, we get a job-seeker rate of 24.1% for July for a total of 37 million Americans vs. the government's aforementioned 14.6 million.

The difference between our crude job-seeker rate of 24.1% and the Labor Department's jobless rate of 9.5% is night and day. The difference between our job-seekers (37 million) and Labor's unemployed (14.6 million) is a staggering 22.4 million. How does one account for 22 million people? Which is the reality?

You can quibble some over figures but it's obvious that unemployment is much worse than the government is admitting. Indeed, the government continues to cook the books and cover up the sad reality.

The other sad reality is that for the Obama administration it's all about pushing their left wing agenda, not wasting a crisis and, to a lesser degree, getting re-elected. Doing what is best for the country and its citizens is only coincidental. Good luck, America. We'll need it and a lot of determination to get through this boondoggle.

GM, the company we paid billions to bail out, is selling its steering business, Nexteer, to a venture backed by Chinese companies. Recognizing that selling and buying subsidiaries a part of every day business, I still wonder about the wisdom of selling another part of America to the Chinese. Currently, Nexteer's headquarters are located in Michigan but most of its manufacturing is done outside the U.S.

Will the combination of union demands and Chinese ownership soon drive all Nexteer manufacturing out of the U.S.?

Members of UAW Local 699, the union representing hourly workers at Nexteer Automotive, on Thursday voted down a contract that could have cut wages across the board and created about 500 jobs, a union official said.

Had the contract been approved, workers would have sold back the 3.75 percent raises they received on Jan. 3, 2010, for a one time amount of $5,000. The average hourly cuts would have been about $2, while skilled trades employees would have seen cuts of $8 per hour.

New contract negotiations will take place in 2011 when the current contract expires.

No one likes to see a decrease in wages. But, I wonder how the Chinese will handle the contract. Could it be something like, "Sorry, your job has moved to one of the several manufacturing plants we already have in China."? I wonder if we'll be losing jobs instead of creating 500 more. We'll see next year.

The American Psychological Association (APA) is going after the license of a psychologist accused of overseeing torture of a CIA detainee.

If any psychologist who was a member of the APA were found to have committed the acts alleged against Mitchell, "he or she would be expelled from the APA membership," according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. APA spokeswoman Rhea Farberman confirmed its contents.

The letter is the first of its kind in the board's history, Farberman said.

"The allegations put forward in the complaint and those that are on the public record about Dr. Mitchell are simply so serious, and if true, such a gross violation of his professional ethics, that we felt it necessary to act," Farberman said.

Mitchell is a retired Air Force psychologist who participated in the 2002 CIA interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Mitchell is not a member of the American Psychological Association.

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"Obviously, I'm not free to discuss any work I may have done for the CIA," Mitchell told AP. He called the complaint libelous and said it is "riddled throughout with fabricated details, lies, distortions and inaccuracies."

While I'm not a supporter of torture, I have little question regarding the left wing APA's motives. This is the organization that believes they have the right, and power, to practice mind control techniques on you without your consent or knowledge.

Dr. Mitchell is not a member of the APA, so they can't revoke his membership. As a result, they go after his license. Is there any doubt the APA's motives are purely poitical? This is the group that thinks there is something wrong with being male and masculine.

• Endeavors to erode constraining definitions of masculinity which historically have inhibited men’s development, their capacity to form meaningful relationships, and have contributed to the oppression of other people.
• Acknowledges its historical debt to feminist-inspired scholarship on gender, and commits itself to the support of groups such as women, gays, lesbians and people of color that have been uniquely oppressed by the gender/class/race system.

If you are a man, did you know you were historically inhibited from forming meaningful relationships? Did you know you have a historical debt to feminist-inspired scholarship on gender? (Generally, man-hating.)

Has the APA ever gone after the license of psychologists that sexually and others wise, abuse their patients. Has the APA ever gone after psychologists who assisted with electro-convulsive therapy or frontal lobotomies? Can the APA prove that any of the "talking" therapies work?

Other than providing a good format for footnotes, what use is the APA to the world any more. They're nothing more than a left-wing political group determined to control the way you live and think.

One of my son and my favorite places to eat is IHOP. Big meals for big guys at a reasonable price, and the food tastes good too. Now I find out our indulgence probably won't be so affordable in the future. Obamacare will drive up the price of pancakes at IHOP.

George Ebinger of New Jersey, who owns several International House of Pancakes restaurants, says the penalties for not insuring his 140 workers will cost roughly half as much as insuring them. He figures he will have to raise prices and possibly lay off workers to come up with the $220,000 he anticipates the penalties will cost.

White Castle will be forced to increase prices and decrease employees also.

White Castle, which currently provides insurance to all of its full-time workers and picks up 70 to 89 percent of their premium costs, believes it will likely end up paying those penalties. The financial hit will make it hard for the company to maintain its 421 restaurants, let alone create new jobs, says company spokesman Jamie Richardson. White Castle employs more than 10,000 people nationwide, and more than 1,200 in Ohio.

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"The irony is that in the name of expanding health care coverage, the administration is making it harder than ever for unskilled workers to get started in the workforce," Boehner said in a missive on White Castle's plight.

I'm not much for sliders but White Castles decorate Cincinnati.

Let's all hope there's some change before it's too late.

Via REDSTATE.

Up the road about 15 miles from me lies the small town of Bentonville. Bentonville is best known for the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society which has been in continual operation since in March, 1853 and still operates today, primarily as a social club.

Today, I discover that Verna Naylor, oldest postmaster in the country and oldest female postal employee, has been laid to rest.

She was a celebrity for the service she gave to her community and for the service her family had provided the U.S. Postal Service for more than 62 years.

Naylor, who would have turned 95 years old on Aug. 9, died Tuesday.

She is being laid to rest today in the Kirker Cemetery.

Born in Peebles, Ohio in 1915, Naylor gained national recognition in 2007 as the oldest postmaster in the nation and oldest female postal employee in the nation.

She even received calls from the Jay Leno Show about the accomplishment.

"I never really talked to Jay Leno. They congratulated me and asked me if I had ever watched the show. I told them no," Naylor said in a 2007 interview.

She had not intended the reply to be an insult to the show.

"It is just that the show is on very late and I go to bed early. The post office opens at 6:30 a.m., so I am up at 6 a.m.," said Naylor.

God bless Verna Naylor.

If we had more like her paying the costs of Social Security and Medicaid would be easy. I have no plans to "retire" until I'm to weak or sick to move.

P.S. Kirker Cemetery is named after Thomas Kirker, one of the early governors of Ohio. Some of Kirker's ancestors still live in the area. Adams County is the poorest county in Ohio but has some interesting history, holds a large community of Amish and a lot of self-reliant people like Verna Naylor.

Kaili Joy Gray makes the best argument I've ever read why liberal should support the 2nd amendment, aka the right to bear arms.

...this is a rallying cry for the Bill of Rights -- for all of our rights.

Better than anything by the NRA that I've ever read. There's hope for us yet.

On Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal examines why the Gulf "clean up" is so slow. I put "clean up" in quotes because clean up implies the mess is getting smaller. That's not really so. It seems to be spreading faster than it's being cleaned up.

As the government fails to implement such simple and straightforward remedies, one must ask why.

One possibility is sheer incompetence. Many critics of the president are fond of pointing out that he had no administrative or executive experience before taking office. But the government is full of competent people, and the military and Coast Guard can accomplish an assigned mission. In any case, several remedies require nothing more than getting out of the way.

Another possibility is that the administration places a higher priority on interests other than the fate of the Gulf, such as placating organized labor, which vigorously defends the Jones Act.

Finally there is the most pessimistic explanation—that the oil spill may be viewed as an opportunity, the way White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said back in February 2009, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Many administration supporters are opposed to offshore oil drilling and are already employing the spill as a tool for achieving other goals. The websites of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, for example, all feature the oil spill as an argument for forbidding any further offshore drilling or for any use of fossil fuels at all. None mention the Jones Act.

To these organizations and perhaps to some in the administration, the oil spill may be a strategic justification in a larger battle. President Obama has already tried to severely limit drilling in the Gulf, using his Oval Office address on June 16 to demand that we "embrace a clean energy future." In the meantime, how about a cleaner Gulf?

Of course, the left and Dems will claim, as the oil continues to spew and spread, this is just an attempt to discredit Obama and other Dems.

Hat tip Instapundit.

Unemployment by age group, 1982 and 2010. Overall, today is easily worse than the worst of the 1980s recession. But, be sure and thank Obama that we don't have 15% unemployment. (We're so luck to have such a a wonderful and talented man in the White House. And, he plays golf too!!!)

This wonderful article greeted me on my morning visit to CNN.com, Job gloom at all-time high.

More Americans than ever before feel they have no hope of finding a job.

A record 1.21 million people want to work, but said they aren't looking because of the weak labor market, according to federal statistics released Friday. The June figure is up from 793,000 a year ago.

The statistic is yet another sign of how bleak the employment picture is. And these folks, known as "discouraged workers," aren't even counted in the unemployment rate because they haven't looked for work in the past four weeks.

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The labor force, in general, has shrunk over the past two months, contracting by 974,000 people as they lost confidence in their employment prospects. That reverses part of the gain of 1.7 million workers in the first four months of 2010, when a wave of optimism flowed through the nation.

More people may have stopped looking for work because their jobless benefits are expiring, wrote Deutsche Bank economists Joseph LaVorgna and Carl Riccadonna in a note. To collect unemployment benefits, people must be actively seeking work.

As the labor force contracts, the unemployment rate falls. This is one reason why it dropped in June from 9.7% the month before.

"The decline in the unemployment rate is not a reflection of strength, but rather a sign of discouragement among the ranks of the unemployed," the economists said.

Emphasis added.

Got that? Just because unemployment dropped in some of the prior months, it wasn't a good sign but a sign of how bad things are. I know that several of the people laid off from my company about a year ago still haven't been able to find employment. These are college educated, computer literate, intelligent folks. Some of whom retrained for other areas.

More and more unemployed have no hope of finding a job and experts don't see things changing for the better any time soon.

How's that hope and change bullsh*it working out for you now?

Cousin Pat (not really my cousin) at Hurricane Radio rants about the "supertanker designed to suck up 500,000 gallons of oily water a day and separate the oil from the water" that is NOT being put to use cleaning up the Gulf and how the MSM is addresses the issue with its growing stupidity.

Indeed, the stupidity surrounding this disaster boggles the mind. Instapundit points out how many other available resources are being needlessly squandered by government officials and BP. (Isn't all squandering needless?)

The effort to clean up the Gulf has been plagued by a multitude of leadership failures over the 73 days of the crisis, but this week it seemed as though a glimmer of hope had arrived. The Obama administration claimed that it would start accepting help from foreign countries, and BP pledged to get more boats to the Gulf to remove crude oil as fast as possible. The AP reports that those efforts may be a sham — a make-work effort intended to drive numbers but keep boats beached

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Nor are boat captains the only volunteers getting beached by the effort. Over 20,000 people have offered assistance in on-shore cleanup efforts in the region, but only a sixth of those have been put to work.

The cleanup effort has run aground, and it’s a failure of leadership. Small wonder House Democrats blocked its members from traveling to the Gulf to see the situation for themselves and the White House is blocking media access.

Welcome to Chicago style politics at the national level. All the matters is being in power. I don't think Obama cares. As he's reminded us several time, he's the president, he does what he wants.

In the mean time, 7.9 million jobs have been lost, many forever and all Obama can do is say is if not for me, we’d have 15 percent unemployment. WHAT      A      JOKE.

Next he'll be telling us too bad your spouse died from Obama care, at least you're not dead. Yet.

When Obama won the election, I never imagined this level of incompetence and political favors. Now it's hard to imagine it being any worse, but I believe he can do it. He can be worse and he will be. He has shown his potential and it is great.

How's that hope and change bullsh*it working out for you now?

Emerson Power Transmission in Maysville, KY recently announced impending layoffs.

Emerson's statement to the Ledger-Independent:

Power Transmission Solutions, a division of Emerson, today (June 25, 2010) informed employees at its Maysville, Ky., facility of plans for workforce reductions at the Maysville operations over the next two years. This reduction is driven by product moves to other Emerson locations in North America and the need to most efficiently operate for our customers. Based on current business volume, this announcement affects between 100 and 150 hourly employees and a proportionate number of manufacturing salaried employees, whose jobs will be reduced over the next two-to-three years.

The layoffs include an approximate 12% reduction in the Maysville facilities.

According to Baldridges's e-mailed press release, there were 60 Maysville layoffs announced as part of the 200 announced companywide; the layoffs were not temporary.

At the time, Baldridge said the number of employees at the Maysville EPT/Browning facilities totaled 500 after the reductions.

The manufacturing entity has been a Maysville employer since its beginnings as the Ohio Valley Pulley Company in the late 1800s, later becoming Browning Manufacturing, which was sold to Emerson Electric in the 1970s.

Emphasis added.

This may be peanuts to a large city but bodes poorly for a small town being that Emerson is probably the largest employer in the area.

Plus, Homelessness in the area and across Kentucky is on the rise. The numbers may seem small compared to New York, Chicago or such but the entire population of Kentucky (4.3 million) is approximately half that of New York (8.3 million).

Statewide, 6,623 homeless individuals were identified in 2010, compared to the 5,999 identified in 2009.

On top of that, the number of Kentuckians living in sub-standard housing has jumped by 31%.

One of the major findings for the 2010 count, according to the release from the Kentucky Housing Corporation, is that the number of precariously housed -- a term that includes those living doubled or tripled up with family or friends, living in substandard housing conditions or expecting eviction within seven days -- increase by 31 percent.

In 2010, the number of precariously housed was 9,833. That number does not include Jefferson or Fayette counties since those counties do not calculate the number of precariously housed.

Some of the housing I've seen would easily fit into the slums of a third world country. Jefferson (Louisville) and Fayette (Lexington) are the two largest (in population) counties in Kentucky. One wonders what the numbers would be if these two counties were included.

How's that hope and change working out for you?

Have you noticed how Obama has gone from "Yes, we can" to "Yes, I can"?

From bailouts, to health care, to financial reform, to virtually every issue, Obama's way is the only way. He keeps talking about "we" and "the American people" but it's increasingly obvious that it's all about him. No reaching across the aisle, no genuine investigation into working solutions to problems, just his ideologue agenda being pushed at every turn.