A miffed President Obama instructed his aides to quickly come up with another 114 proposals to add to his major jobs speech before Congress.  After hearing that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney rolled out an economic plan with 59 proposals for creating jobs, the President reportedly told aides “Nobody beats me on fresh ideas for creating jobs.  I have twice as many ideas as Romney and I will create twice as many jobs”.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the President thinks about jobs all the time and even spent a few days while on vacation brainstorming with economic advisers on the unemployment problem.   “This is just typical dirty politics by the opposition to detract from the President’s upcoming jobs speech - there is no reason that Romney couldn’t have waited another couple of days” Carney told reporters.

Carney also belittled Romney’s proposals for creating 11.5 million new jobs, saying that his plan relied too much on private industry.  “Everyone knows that the private sector is firing American workers so that they can be replaced with cheap foreign workers - only the Government can create good high paying jobs and Romney just doesn’t understand this” said Carney.

Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that even if Romney’s plan created new jobs, it would just “boost oil company profits…give more tax breaks to large corporations and more tax cuts for the wealthiest.”

When pressed for details on what new ideas Obama would reveal in his jobs speech, Carney said “You are just going to have to wait, but don’t forget, the President is an old hand at creating jobs.  His stimulus programs have created over 4 million jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office.  If not for the President’s creative solutions, the unemployment rate would have been 18%.  That’s something people just don’t think about.”

World financial markets are imploding, unemployment is at depression levels, the economy is slipping into recession and the world banking system is beginning to collapse.  Who in the world would want to tackle this mess instead of going on vacation?

Obama playing golf with wealthy pals in Martha’s Vineyard while the country is spiraling down the drain has provided critics with a big fat target and they are zeroing in.

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan had some harsh words for the poor timing and ironic symbolism of the Presidential vacation.   Obama’s retreat to his summer island while the country falls apart leads Noonan to argue that nothing has worked for Obama and he is basically giving up.

He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He’s got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do. His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust. He thought they’d love him for health care, that it was a down payment on greatness…He thought the stimulus would turn the economy around. It didn’t. He thought there would be a natural bounce-back a year ago, with “Recovery Summer.” There wasn’t. He thought a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball struggle over the debt ceiling would enhance his reputation. The public would see through to the dark heart of Republican hackery and come to recognize the higher wisdom of his approach. That didn’t happen either.

Nothing worked! And nothing’s going to work.

Mr. Obama shouldn’t be faulted for wanting to rest, relax and spend whole days with his family. But the timing of this vacation is incongruent, and so is the location.

On the timing, there’s an air of economic crisis hanging over everything, a sense that other shoes may drop. Actually it’s a sense of something impending, with unemployment high, Europe broke and the Mideast reaching full boil. A politician who wanted to impart a sense of leadership in crisis, who passionately wanted to keep the presidency, and who was prudently anxious about his prospects just might let such a moment change his plans.

Noonan might have added that taking a vacation while the country is falling apart shows a horrific lack of common sense and concern.  I can see the campaign ads already - Obama teeing off while a split screen shows a graph of collapsing financial markets and soaring unemployment.  This vacation could become symbolic of Obama’s entire presidency.

courtesy politco.com

courtesy - apocepoch.blogspot.com

While Obama continues to blame everyone and everything for the country’s economic ruin, people wonder what happened to Obama.   The answer, according to Norman Podhoretz is “absolutely nothing.”

In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause “the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal,” all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the “god” Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.

Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— “What Happened to Obama?”

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) “non-threatening,” all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the ’60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.

I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to “the best interests of the United States” (Thomas Sowell) and is “purposely” out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.

But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president’s attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, “What Happened to Obama?” is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.

Let hapless Obama and a destructive Congress take their vacations without criticism.   Americans will enjoy a well deserved vacation from their imperial rulers.  After spending us into oblivion and passing enough regulations to permanent choke the economy, America needs a break from both Congress and the president.  Give them double their pay if necessary and put them on permanent vacation.  The country, freed of President and Congress, will eventually heal itself.

Crippling debt and deficits have lead the global economy to the precipice.  Finances of world governments since the financial crisis have dramatically deteriorated and confidence in paper money has reached a new low.  Equity markets are crashing while gold (the barometer of trust in paper money) soars.

As we stare into the abyss, President Obama stands ready to address the nation.  His speech is likely to extinguish the last vestiges of confidence in a US economic recovery.

What will he say?

Based on prior speeches, Obama will reach low and use the standard class warfare blame game strategy.  Rather than accepting the warning from S&P that the US is spending itself into bankruptcy, he will shoot the messenger.

Highlights of the speech will feature the following:

• Blame Standard & Poors
• Blame Congress
• Blame China
• Blame Republicans
• Blame (insert name of anyone except Obama)

The trillions of new debt taken on since the 2008 financial crisis have done nothing except push the US closer to insolvency.   The trillions of dollars spent on bailouts, stimulus and support for deadbeat homeowners has simply put another burden on an already weak economy.  Will Obama talk reality and propose constructive programs to put our free enterprise economy back on track?  Or will he simply propose more of the same - tax “millionaires and billionaires”, spend more, borrow more and hope that things get better?

Based on Obama’s disdain for the free enterprise system and businessmen in general, his remarks could easily result in a total vaporization of confidence in the government’s ability to contain the debt crisis.  Obama’s speech could easily turn the contained depression which started in 2008 into an all out economic collapse.

It’s a routine event to be excoriated by your enemies - you laugh it off and consider the source.  When harsh criticism comes from your friends, however, it should be a wake up call to reassess positions.

Barrick Obama’s wake up call came when Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts recently let loose some very harsh criticism on Obama’s job performance and “weird political philosophy”.  Steve Wynn is a giant business presence in Las Vegas and has built and run a large number of casinos including the Wynn, Encore, Golden Nugget and Treasure Island.  Wynn’s business skills and determination have resulted in creating thousands of jobs and wealth.  Wynn knows business and he knows how to create jobs.  He is exactly the type of man who should be consulted for his advice on guiding the country out of depression levels of unemployment.

Unfortunately, the president spends most of his time demonizing wealthy businessmen for a litany of transgressions including not paying enough taxes.  The White House’s disdain for free enterprise has not escaped the notice of the country’s job creators.  In a conference call to investors, Steve Wynn lamented that businesses are being demoralized and paralyzed due to socialistic government policies.

Wynn said  that the “Obama administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I could prove it…I could spend the next three hours giving you examples of all of us in this marketplace that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right, and a President that keeps using that word redistribution.”

Wynn also mentioned that he is a Democrat and a friend of Harry Reid, but “I am telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. Until he is gone, everybody is going to be sitting on [his] thumbs”.

Wynn also said that Obama is “responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and [the need] to do something to businesses that don’t invest, that are holding too much money. You know, we haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody is afraid of the government and there is no need soft-pedaling it. It is the truth. It is the truth.”

And right on cue, Obama today confirmed Wynn’s worst fears.  Although unemployment has been at crisis levels in this country for three years, Obama has ignored the problem other than occasional lip service to the issue.   In an announcement proclaiming a new push for job creation today, the President came up woefully short on ideas.  The “new job initiatives” announced involve extending unemployment benefits and the social security tax cut, proving Wynn’s contention that Obama, as a socialist, does not understand or embrace free enterprise.  More social benefits merely transfers wealth from workers to non workers.  These initiatives would be underwritten with borrowed money, deepening the debt crisis.  Wynn is correct - until Obama is gone from office, the nation’s economic woes are certain to worsen.

It’s time for a change.

Rasmussen Reports, one of the most respected and accurate polling organizations in the country, now provides proof of what many of us have long known - the vast majority of Americans do not believe that the federal government has the consent of the governed.

The notion that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed is a foundational principle of the American experiment.

However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 23% of voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed. Sixty-two percent (62%) say it does not, and 15% are not sure.

In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are “united in the belief that our political system is broken, that politicians are corrupt and that neither major political party has the answers.” He adds that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and the politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”

The book earned positive reviews from Larry Sabato, Pat Caddell, Bill Kristol, Joe Trippi and others. In Search of Self-Governance is available from Rasmussen Reports and at Amazon.com.

The growing disconnect between mainstream America and the ruling political elite has been discussed on this site numerous times and now we have the polling numbers to prove it.  Despite the polls, Washington carries on with business as usual, apparently oblivious to the concerns, beliefs and values of their constituents.  Additional polls reinforce the basic disconnect between mainstream voters and the ruling elite.

Data released yesterday finds that 68% of voters believe the Political Class doesn’t care what most Americans think.

Over the past couple of years, most Americans have opposed many initiatives of the Political Class including the bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Additionally, most voters still favor repeal of the national health care plan and overwhelmingly disagree with the Justice Department’s decision to challenge Arizona’s new immigration law in court.

Fifty-five percent (55%) don’t even think most members of Congress pay all the taxes they owe.

Voters are evenly divided over the notion that a group of people randomly selected from the phone book could do a better job than the current Congress.

One reason for skepticism about the Political Class is that 70% believe Big Government and Big Business are on the same team working together against the rest of us.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Scott Rasmussen, founder of Rasmussen Reports further expounded on the serious rift between the governed and the ruling elite.

“Americans don’t want to be governed from the left or the right,” Scott Rasmussen tells the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conference of 1,500 conservative and moderate legislators. “They want, like the Founding Fathers, to largely govern themselves with Washington in a supporting—but not dominant—role. The tea party movement is today’s updated expression of that sentiment.”

A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents all agree with the mainstream view on Mr. Rasmussen’s three questions. “The major division in this country is no longer between parties but between political elites and the people,” Mr. Rasmussen says. His recent polls show huge gaps between the two groups. While 67% of the political class believes the U.S. is moving in the right direction, a full 84% of mainstream voters believe the nation is moving in the wrong one.

The fact that 67% of the ruling political elite believe we are moving in the right direction despite the totally opposite belief by those they rule over should be a cause of great concern regarding the future political stability of the country.  The ruling elite will continue to enforce their “enlightened view” upon an unwilling populace until they are voted out of office.  Since Democrats and Republicans both seem to be largely woven out of the same cloth, the question of whether any fundamental change will occur remains open.