Guy needs to change his club. He keeps hacking at the ball over and over, and yet it's never knocked clear of the sandtrap.

Keep in mind that inherent in the pivot-point talking point is an inherent excuse: the reason the administration hasnÂ’t seen much success in bringing down the unemployment rate, or is perceived to be useless in bringing down the unemployment rate, or hasnÂ’t communicated its message about its efforts, is always a lack of time and focus. I think most of us would argue the problem isnÂ’t really an administrative attention deficit disorder or chronic focus on other issues; the problem is the policies stink.

Too much of the stimulus money got spent on crap. It allowed states to put off fiscal reckoning between runaway expenditures and vastly overestimated tax revenues. Trade deals have collected dust for years while ObamaÂ’s team tries to find ways to placate unions. Fancy regulation-reduction panels are announced while the Federal Register grows thicker and thicker. Obamacare adds a whole new complicating variable into employer health care plans.

“Alright, now we’re really going to pivot to jobs, just you wait and see” sounds like the oft-heard pledges of dieting and exercise and saving money and cleaning out the basement and flossing; the idea that all it’s going to take is a bit more attention to the problem and it’s going to be solved. I don’t doubt that a lot of folks in the White House are worried about the unemployment rate. I just don’t have any faith that they have any real ideas to improve the situation.

I linked this before for another purpose, but Jake Tapper battered Jay Carney with the question: "What is Obama actually, specifically doing to create jobs?"

JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS: I believe the Dow has gone down -- obviously, the day is not over -- but I believe the Dow's gone down now more than during that controversial TARP vote. And analysts are saying that the reason that this is happening is because of uncertainty about the American economy, that we are entering a double-dip recession, or at the very least, a period of real softness and weakness for the U.S. economy. What is the administration doing about that?

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE: Well, the analysis I saw today did not -- was not about the American economy, particularly, in terms of what's happening.

TAPPER: IÂ’m talking about analysis from the last 20 minutes.

CARNEY: But there are obviously -- there are a lot of global issues that affect the global economy and that obviously affect the American economy. We strongly believe, as I've said, that we will continue to grow and we will continue to create jobs, and we need to take the measures necessary to do that.

We have encountered in this calendar year a number of economic headwinds that could not have been foreseen: the tsunami -- earthquake and tsunami in Japan that disrupted global supply chains; the unrest in the Middle East, which has an impact on oil prices; and the situation in Europe. So, you know, obviously that has hurt the economy globally and has slowed growth and job creation, but we believe that growth and job creation will continue.

TAPPER: Well, what is the president doing? We know that he went to a -- -- he went to fundraisers last night. What's he doing today?

CARNEY: Jake, that is --

TAPPER: What is he doing --

CARNEY: The president -- as the president has worked --

TAPPER: We hear him hectoring Congress about all the stuff that needs to be done to help create jobs --

CARNEY: That's right. And Congress --

TAPPER: -- and then he flew off to Chicago. What is he doing today?

CARNEY: The president is having meetings with his senior staff. The president has called on Congress to move quickly on things that have bipartisan support and are in Congress's lap, the trade --

TAPPER: The same stuff he was doing a couple months ago, calling on Congress to pass things.

Of course we know what he was actually doing: the Electric Slide at his star-studded Birthday Extravaganza, as invitee Chris Rock reported on Twitter.

WASHINGTON--President Obama celebrated his 50th birthday Thursday night with a celebrity-filled bash, as entertainer Chris Rock reported on his Twitter feed: "Just left the Presidents birthday party at the White House. Herbie Hancock played, Stevie Wonder sang and yes they did the electric slide. A great night."

...

Obama's party--paid for, the White House said, by the First Couple--was closed press and not on his official schedule. Obama's team was not eager for pictures of the bash, coming as the stock market was plunging and a new jobless report comes out Friday morning.

Eddie Gehman Kohan, who presides over Obama Foodorama, the website of record about entertaining in the Obama White House, put together a detailed report about the five-hour barbeque, based on interviews of people who were there.

Let's check that.

The night was balmy, and when dinner was done, a DJ spun dance tunes--"like at a Bar Mitzvah," said one guest. The twenty tables for ten in the Rose Garden were pushed aside so guests could dance, led by the President and Mrs. Obama.

"'I'm going to challenge you all to dance,' the President said, and everyone did," said the guest.

That's when everyone's shoes came off, and things kicked into high gear with barefoot jammin.' Among other dances, guests did the Electric Slide, which impressed Chris Rock so much he tweeted about it:

"Just left the Presidents birthday party at the White House. Herbie Hancock played, Stevie Wonder sang and yes they did the electric slide. A great night." Rock wrote (sic).

The actual menu did not seem extravagant, so it seems some political control was exerted there.

But the President danced, and danced, and danced, so gaily, as if everything was right in the world.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (116)
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They say this every election cycle. I believe it was Mark Halpernin (IIRC; google fails me) who pronounced in 2004 that the media could not give a "balanced" coverage of the Democratic and Republican positions, because one was obviously true and the other obviously a lie.

John Kerry now picks up that particular ball. Video at the link; here's the transcript:

"And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual."

"It doesn't deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what's real, of who's accountable, of who is not accountable, of who's real, who isn't, who's serious, who isn't?"

This is akin to that cretinous hag Froma Harrop, who is in charge of the "Civility Project" to improve political discourse, asserting that it's okay when she calls her opponents terrorists and Al Qaida bombers that it's not incivil because it's actually true.

The last resort of liberals, confronted with evidence of media bias, is always to smugly claim "The truth has a liberal bias."

Preparing the battlespace, as Instapundit often remarks. The media of course wants to cover the 2012 elections in as biased a fashion as politically effective (push it to the limits without going so far over the line that the public sees it for what it is); every presidential cycle some liberal Democrats step forward to offer some sort of a jackass intellectual defense for doing so, in case the media couldn't think of one themselves.

Of course the Tea Party did not, in the main, seek a default. What they said was that we have a very big disagreement on the size of government, and we are willing to flirt with default unless those who have grown government by 30% in just two years (!!!) agree to the mandate delivered in 2010 to cut the size of government to something more recognizably American.

Either party could have given ground on this issue to avoid a default. Note that all the liberals who whine about the Tea Party's "terrorist" tactics didn't give an inch on this point.

One side was expected to cave, as it always has done before, and when it refused to cave outright, the liberals had a temper tantrum.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (207)
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Suckers! The media is never going to vet Obama. They are however running Rick Perry's transcripts which were apparently leaked to the Huffington Post.

It seems he wasn't such a hot student. (Obviously a HufPo link)

The Huffington Post was passed Perry's transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University by a source in Texas. The future politician did not distinguish himself so much in the classroom. While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so. He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses -- earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics. Perry got a C in gym.

Perry scored poorly on the basics within his animal science major. In fall semester 1970, he received a D in veterinary anatomy, a F in a second course on organic chemistry and a C in animal breeding. He did get an A in world military systems and “Improv. of Learning” -- his only two As while at A&M.

"A&M wasn't exactly Harvard on the Brazos River," recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post. "This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke."

Let me sum up my reaction to this...I don't give a damn. I honestly don't care about Obama's college transcripts and I don't think it would be very fertile ground to attack him. Of course, Obama's transcripts would be of some value simply because he was presented as the cerebral candidate that would use his supernatural intellect to solve America's problem. Let's see how much basis there was for those claims.

Personally, Obama could have been a straight A student who never missed a day of school since kindergarten (I doubt he was anything like that in college) and he'd still be a miserable failure as President. I'll take a D student (hell, a high school drop out) with a track record of creating a business and job friendly political and regulatory environment over the "smartest" leftist any day.

Credit where it's due: Via Dave Weigel who asks, "Cool. Where's Obama's". I'm sure they'll get right on that Dave, right on it.

BTW- I'm sure all the liberals who want to destroy Fox News over the UK hacking scandal at other News Corp properties will demand, DEMAND! an investigation into how these transcripts came to be public and if appropriate see the offender prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:24 AM | Comments (337)
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Make your observations, and/or submissions in time for the next annual coffee-table book.

Observation (fashion): The guys get shirts.
Submission (fashion): The girls get shoes.*

Observation (linguistic): States are boned. Economies are doomed.
Submission (linguistic): Horses are hung. People are hanged.

Other categories include, but are not limited to:

Ordnance
Literary
Spirits
D&D
S-Words

*alexthechick gets stompy boots.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:44 AM | Comments (158)
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Unemployment rate time, Obama style!! How do you add 400K200K people to the population but lose 200K from the labor force? That's Hope working overtime!

Yes, it's the first Friday of the month, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics just released the unemployment rate for July - 9.1%. Not much changed from last month (9.2%) or the month before (9.1%). Here's how that graphs up:

But I'm pretty sure you were already planning to do that.

[Would do a little more data mining, but the BLS historical statistics are down.]

Posted by: Geoff at 05:49 AM | Comments (277)
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If I desired to kill the senator why did I not do it? You all admit that I had him in my power. It was expressly to avoid taking life that used an ordinary cane...*

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:59 AM | Comments (294)
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The Big Mac Index

No matter where you are in the world you're probably not very far from a McDonalds. And since Big Macs are more or less the same in most countries and served in standardized restaurants, the price of a Big Mac is a pretty good indicator of the purchasing power of the local currency relative to the dollar. So in Norway a Big Mac will set you back the equivalent of $8.31 while in Hong Kong they go for just $1.94.

And in fact the local dollar price of a Big Mac correlates pretty well with the per capita GDP of a country. So whenever the 'Big Mac Index' deviates from this line, it's a sign that that a currency is valued more or less than it 'ought to be'. So based on the July BMI the Brazilian real is way over-valued while the US dollar is currently undervalued.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:38 PM | Comments (542)
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I don't necessarily disagree with many of the claims made here, but I do not this pattern.

When Republicans are distrusted by the people, and failing, the media has no problem being very specific: Republicans distrusted, the headlines run.

When liberals are disliked and distrusted -- as in 2010 -- the media refuses to say so. Instead, the generalize the sentiment out from the specific -- "public loses confidence in liberal Democrats" -- to the deliberately general -- "public loses confidence in government" or "public loses confidence in democracy."

Remember, 2010 was marked by anti-incumbent sentiment.

Most conservative Republican incumbents didn't seem to experience that.

But I suppose this is how it looks to liberals, as they believe "democracy" only proves itself worthy of them when it puts them into power, and governments are only legitimate when they control them.

So yet another piece which avoids the elephant in the room by talking about a general air of despair rather than a very specific disapproval of a socialist wannabe terrorist president.*

* According to the Civility Project at the NCEW, this is not incivil, for I deem it to be a fact.

Posted by: Ace at 04:33 PM | Comments (202)
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Wait, wasn't this covered on the blog back on July 12th? Yes, yes it was. But it's aging really well and today of all days, I have my own take on it.

Esquire's Stephen Marche regaled us with an amazing mash note to Pres. Obama
last month. Rarely have we seen someone hoist with their own petard with such ironic power so quickly. I can't parody this - I can't fisk it. It's Self-Parodying! It's Self-Fisking!

So here are the highlights from Marche's "How Can We Not Love Obama?"

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:27 PM | Comments (67)
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Correction: I put this up for like five seconds, thinking that this was "Randall" who does the Honey Badger and other animal vids.

I feel kind of dumb. It's just an imitator (I think). But a good one.

Nope, Still Wrong: Thanks to commenters for putting me straight: It is Randall, but he's working for an organization called Bankrupting America. So, paid.

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Posted by: Ace at 03:44 PM | Comments (74)
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