Most Powerful Moment Of The Night

Flashback

Obama 0-4 for 2008 townhall-debate promises.

Broken Promises

2012: Health Premiums Up $3,000; 2008: Obama Vowed $2,500 Cut.

Yes We Can To No We Can't In Just Four Years

In an interview with Univision yesterday, admitted his failure as a president claiming, "You can't change Washington from the inside."

Romney responds:  "He said he can’t change Washington from inside. He can only change it from outside. Well, we’re going to give him that chance in November. He’s going outside."

Obama At DNC: "I Will Never Turn Medicare Into a Voucher Program"

Next Day:  HHS pilot program to send 2 million poor seniors from medicare into voucher. 

The lifespan of his promises are getting shorter and shorter.

Asking For A Mulligan?

Great Expectations: 2008 Obama Supporter Interviews 2012 Self

Hat tip to Vodkapundit.

So It Begins

Nearly one in ten employers to drop health coverage due to Obamacare.

Hat tip to Common Cents for the link.

Broken Promises: Healthcare Premiums

The Romney Campaign recently released this chart:

  

This needs to become a key talking point for Romney and everyone pushing for Obamacare's repeal.

Flashback: Four Years Ago Today

Then-Senator Barack Obama blasted George W. Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt and spending from the “Bank of China” during Bush’s two terms in office, calling it “unpatriotic.” Obama repeatedly promised during that campaign to cut the deficits in half to slow down the rapid expansion of national debt.

  "The RNC certainly remembers this attack — and they’re featuring it in a new ad this week."

75% of Obamacare Costs Will Fall on the Backs of Those Making Less Than $120,000 a Year.

“It’s a big punch in the stomach to middle class families.”

Flashback:  In 2008, Obama said "Healthcare should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families.”

Unemployment Rate Drops, Despite A Mere 115,000 Jobs Created

So, then why did the unemployment rate drop from last month's rate of 8.2%?  Because 522,000 gave up looking for work, dropping out of the workforce.

That drops the labor force participation rate to its lowest point since 1981. 



Nonetheless, according to Obama, this is "good news."  That seems to suggest the Administrations has lowered its own expectations significantly from two years ago, when Joe Biden was predicting "the U.S. economy would be adding up to 500,000 jobs each month “some time in the next couple of months.”

But What If You Like Your Plan?

The Washington Times reports:

Thanks to Obamacare, more people will find themselves without health insurance. It turns out President Obama’s signature accomplishment was so badly drafted that businesses are likely to find it more cost-effective to pay a government penalty than provide insurance to their employees. As a result, up to 6 million Americans with jobs could either be forced to find more expensive individual plans or go uninsured and pay the individual-mandate fine.

Government Motors

Mickey Kaus asks: 

Why would GM cut R & D, the source of its future growth, in order to show profits in the short run? Is something happening in, say, November, for which the 26%-government-owned entity might want its balance sheet to look artificially rosy? …. P.S.: Latest sales figures show GM’s market share has declined again. Total sales are flat for the year to date, and you’d have to say the GM arrow is pointing down because Toyota is surging back into the market after a series of setbacks (earthquakes, floods, stuck accelerators).  

The very fact that people are now asking these questions reveals the problem with the auto bailout.
Well, that and the fact that we are set to lose $30 billion from it, despite Obama's past assurance that we would make money on the deal.  At least his union friends got paid off.

Hat tip to Vodkapundit.

Broken Promises: Campaigning To Cut Spending

It's so easy to forget, but:

As a candidate, Obama claimed that one cause of the economic crisis was the large deficits the country was running, and he promised that he would fix things by cutting government spending. During the third presidential debate, just over two weeks before the election, Obama promised to rein in the budget deficit.

When debate moderator Bob Schieffer asked Obama what he was going to do about the deficit, Obama promised to cut it: “But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”

Or take Obama’s promise in the second presidential debate: “Actually, I’m cutting more than I’m spending so that it will be a net spending cut.” Obama ran to the right of McCain, who Obama claimed was the candidate who was going to increase spending.

So what did we get? Obama racked up the largest inflation-adjusted increases ever in government spending and the largest deficits (even larger than those the U.S. ran in the worst part of World War II), and it is hard to remember that his constant theme during the presidential debates was “net spending cut.”

Having racked up those deficits (and endangering our national defense), some might question Obama's patriotism.

Stimulus Fail

Veronique de Rugy provides this chart showing what the president warned unemployment would be without the stimulus versus actual unemployment with the stimulus.

Obama's "Budget"

Gay Patriot looks at Obama's proposed joke of a budget and Timothy "TurboTax" Geithner's testimony before the House earlier this week and comes away with three key points:

1. The budget fails to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Medicaid.  As Geithner himself said, “Even if Congress were to enact this budget we would still be left with–in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire–what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.”
2. The administration doesn’t like the Ryan plan, but has no plan of its own to deal with the nation’s long-term debt problem.  Geithner again, “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
3. “President Obama’s FY 2013 budget does increase federal spending, not only above current levels (from $3.796 trillion in FY 2012 to $5.537 trillion in FY 2021, a 46% increase) but also above the levels approved by current law” (i.e., the August 2011 debt deal).  Geithner could not answer with “Yes” or “No” when asked whether  the budget increased federal spending above those levels set by that deal.

Broken Promises: Super PACs

 Obama put his support behind Super PACs earlier this week, after having previously decried them as "a threat to our democracy."  Now, the RightScoop has found a video from 2007 in which "Obama went on and on about the fact that you can't be against these outside groups one day and then for them the next day only when its convenient."  As one commentor observed, it would seem that "YES YOU CAN!" 

Obama Blames the Founding Fathers for His Failures

President Obama no longer places the blame for his failures upon Bush, the Republicans, and the Tea Party alone.  It seems our nation's Founding Fathers are also at fault.  In a recent interview, Obama explained that he has been unable to bring about the hope and change he promised because "It turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes".

I would have thought that a former constitutional law professer would know that the U.S. Presidency is an office with limited powers set within a system of checks and balances before assuming that office.   

Are You "Them!"?

Victor David Hanson:  "This is proving to be a Manichean administration. It sees the world in terms dark and light, of us/them, and then must create the necessary binaries to divide and demonize—so strange given this was the narrative of the Obama campaign against Bush, not so strange given the Chicago origins."