Seems that way. (h/t – Instapundit)
John Williams, over at Shadow Stats, compiles economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990. Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate. If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president. Most believe the height of the Index along with the Iranian hostage crisis is what caused Carter to lose his re-election bid.
Verrrry interesting. But I still stick to my steak dinner bet with Little Miss Atilla that come Jan 20, 2013 it will be Barack Obama taking the Oath again.
P.S. — Employment rates among African Americans is the worst ever. They told me if I voted for McCain that there’d be discrimination against minorities from The White House — they were right!
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
What with 9% unemployment and inflation skyrocketing in all sectors but the plummeting housing market, the administration knows UBL’s death will be but a footnote in time within 30 days…. That’s why Mr Obama is now out pushing a notion of shared scarcity; pitting the American people against each other….. Contrast that to the Republican belief in working towards a renewed prosperity in America.
Bottomline: Advantage – GOP/2012 .
.
I also don’t think people will put up with $3.00 gallon gas as the new normal when he TALKS about drilling in Alaska:
http://weaselzippers.us/2011/05/14/obama-unveils-his-annual-domestic-oil-drilling-plan-again/
People are tired of Obama talking hot air & his Obamanomics in general.
Unless the Republicans put up a compelling alternative, people will stick with Obama in 2012; the same way they stuck with the equally corrupt and incompetent DeVal Patrick, Harry Reid, and Barbara Boxer.
To Sebastian Shaw…..
All that hooey about Mr Obama upping the ante on Alaska and Gulf of Mexico drilling, yet the media is not reporting how everything will be tied up for years. The president and the EPA are seeing to it, that scores of restrictions and regulations will encumber the prospects of drilling for a long time to come… Excuse the pun, but any notion by Mr Obama of oil prices coming down is just another pipe dream on his part. Gas prices will continue to choke the economy a long as the president keeps on trying to make it a living hell for companies that provide us with the fuel we need to survive. So unless you walk every where you go, it should make a heck of a lot more sense for Mr Obama to hold off on hammering Big Oil right now….. And I’m just scratching the surface here.. What about the effects of higher gasoline prices on the food we eat or the clothing we wear? Screw a windmill that may or may not ever be built 40 years from now. People are going broke today!!!!!!
Bruce,
I fervently pray that you are a lousy gambler.
Pardon the pessimism but I don’t think a super-POTUS (Reagan+FDR+Eisenhower+Truman+TR+Coolidge) could save us now.
The Carter years were but a blip. What we’re seeing now is a perfect storm (I hate that metaphor but it works here) of systemic failures (entitlements that we knew 30 years ago were headed for the shoals; reckless fiscal policy aimed at lining the pockets of bankers and holding interest rates artificially low so that the scale of government borrowing didn’t seem so bad; social policy that has given us a permanent and growing underclass), the loss of our manufacturing base and the transition to an economy that needs fewer people even though we still admit a million-plus immigrants a year (that’s just the legal ones).
Does anyone really think that a prosperous nation is built on Facebook?
Even if Obama weren’t a lying leftist… even if he wanted the US to be a success and even if he were competent… well?
According to NBC’s David Gregory, pointing out how bad the economy is under Obama is racist.
Yeah, there’s a reason GE gets away with paying no taxes.
Had McCain been elected and the economy was still moribund, the Republicans would have been slaughtered back in November and may have been heading to extinction in 2012 as the Liberals in Canada have gone two weeks ago
To be realistic…or pragmatic…the overall “real economy” for the last twelve years has sucked under both Bush-43 and Obama.
I was better-off under Clinton and Gingrich compared to the last decade or more. I drove a better car. I had a better job. I had better clothes and a much better place to live. I had real disposable income for extras and personal goodies that now I’m hesitant to spend-on. Where I used to go to the movies one-a-week, I haven’t been to one for months and I’ve haven’t been out to a gay bar on over a year now…I don’t have a social life anymore, just work. Instead of planning for growth in my personal future, I’m busily striving just to keep the wolf from the door and retrenching-madly to cut-back.
We might not be in another “Great Depression”, but I’m sure depressed…
I’ll bet Obama WONT get re-elected. In fact I’ll bet he’ll lose pretty big.
Meh. I thought surely the American people were way the hell smarter than to fall for the “Hope & Change” porn and plants fainting on cue. I honestly thought the liberals wouldn’t stand for the way Hillary and Ferraro were treated. And I REALLY thought Florida liberals would reject being told where they could burn by the party.
BUT Soros made his decision via the LSM and good liberals bent over and gave it up like Levi-esque little bitches. They’ll do it again unless the novelty of a Token in Chief has run it’s course. They have a new token running the DNC to fawn over now.
Given Obama’s repudiation in the midterm 2010 elections, I think Obama is not over anything for any period of time, despite him trying to play shell games with unemployment & his hype about the recovering economy. Obama is on the defense even though he has the MSM as his doormat. But Obama tries to rewrite reality with his hyperbolic platitudes in teleprompter speeches. I think the 2012 elections will be worse for the Democrats due to inflation & high unemployment.
Unfortunately, I agree with you, Bruce. I think Obama will win a second term.
Glad to see more people becoming aware of ShadowStats!
I’m afraid that’s right. 2010 was impressive for the Tea Party, but it also fired up the Left again to do what they do (spread propaganda, massively obfuscate the issues). It’s not enough that the Democrat is a failure; the Republican must also be exceptionally persuasive and attractive. The American people aren’t what they used to be; many prefer the status quo i.e. Big Government.
For all the propaganda disseminated by the left, you can always count on Americans to vote their pocketbooks, whether it be an uninformed liberal, uninformed moderate(same thing as a liberal), or uninformed conservative. I’m going with American Elephant on this one. The battle remains within the Republican Party between the federalists/conservatives/Tea Party and the progressives/libertarians. The Democrat party is inconsequential and has been since the Loughner incident.
What thinking conservatives aren’t considering when betting on the 2012 elections is the woeful uneducated masses of Americans who are allowed to vote in these important elections.
The same people who voted in Obama and Biden in 2008 will be suplimented by another 4 years of young college graduates who have gone thru the public school system. This is what makes me pessimistic. There are fewer and fewer productive, federal tax paying Americans who don’t have their hands out, expecting OTHERS to pay for child care, food, housing, transportation flood insurance, and health insurance. But everyone is allowed to vote….and now a majority are on the dole.
As long as Pro-Life is the litmus test of the GOP primaries, not fiscal-responsibility, I don’t think the GOP has a prayer in 2012 with the current crop of candidates and potential candidates….even against a wounded Obama. The basic problem is that a candidate that appeals to the moderates in the middle (where elections are won), and a candidate that appeals to the rock-rib social-Right that dominate the primaries, caucuses, and the GOP media are diametrically-opposed.
T
And the sheer stupidity of having pro-life be the issue that determines electability when the economy is in shambles, the infrastructure is crumbling, “real employment” and capital investment are in a nose-dive, and our foreign “allies” are either unreliable or eating our lunch suggests that the GOP has evolved into a political animal that’s too-stupid to live. Kicking the Rockefeller Republicans and the fiscal-moderates under the bus isn’t going to win national elections. It might be a defensible strategy for winning Statehouses and the parochial Houses of Congress…but it’s damning in the Electoral College.
Worse, I don’t see a legitimate national leader in the whole bunch…
So, basically Ted is saying that moderates are so pro-abortion that they will hold economic realism hostage to abortion-on-demand. “You know, I like candidate X’s fiscal policy, but since he supports parental notification and a ban on third trimester abortions, I say ‘Screw the Economy,’ I’m voting for the socialist!”
If so, they get what they deserve.
The basic problem is that a candidate that appeals to the moderates in the middle (where elections are won), and a candidate that appeals to the rock-rib social-Right that dominate the primaries, caucuses, and the GOP media are diametrically-opposed.
Nope, sorry. “Moderates” demanded that Republicans run John McCain in 2008, then went ahead and voted for Obama.
No more running me-too Republicans. Moderates need to decide whether they want to torpedo the country’s finances in order to keep their precious “right” to kill babies. And every time they start to whine about social liberalism, they need to be asked point-blank if butchering the country’s finances is worth their need to kill babies.
The fact that moderates are even still thinking about voting for Obama because they don’t like social conservatives shows you just how brain-dead moderates are. These people do not get WHY there is no more money, there are no more jobs, and that the insane Obama Party is just going to keep spending, taxing, and regulating until it completely destroys private industry in this country.
The fact that you used “Rockefeller Republicans” describes it perfectly — trust fund babies who have no concept of how wealth is actually earned.
The shear fact the “killing babies” is a bigger issue than all the other problems that confront our nation demonstrates how out of touch the social-Right is.
And I didn’t casually use the term “Rockefeller Republicans”, I used the term purposely since just this morning on Morning Joe both Buchanan and Scarborough used it contemptuously to dismiss both Gov. Huckabee and and former Speaker Gingrich as not being “real Republicans” anymore. And similarly many Northeastern Republicans are so dismissed by those south of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Mississippi as not being “real Republicans”.
Yeah, good point. McCain was the Republcan all the moderates and Democrats said they could vote for. Did they? Should we trust them when they promise (pinky swear) to vote for a “moderate” Republican this time?
But it’s OK for “moderates” to make abortion their top priority and reject pro-life candidates they otherwise agree with on fiscal issues. Do I have that right?
Seems like some folks always seem to insist its someone else’s obligation to compromise.
Come next year when the country really is in campaign mode, Obama wants to appear to have moved to the center where he can try and own the issues — So of course he wants to be running against a squishy moderate again, someone akin to John McCain…. Hell, it’s the only way Obama can win, otherwise he’ll come off as the far left liberal he really is.
Put a different way, if the Republican Party were dominated by the likes of Olympia Snowe, Dick Lugar, and John McCain, what would the point of having a Republican Party be anyway?
Obama is vulnerable as hell going into this campaign and both the media and the administration knows that… The president should have gotten at least a 10 point bump in all the polls after UBL’s death, and he didn’t.
So let’s call a spade a “ooooops”, never mind….. Instead just remember this is not gonna be about a “choice” come 2012…. Nope, it’s gonna be a referendum on Obama and his domestic policies. And right now with the way things are in the country, Obama is gonna be a one term president.
I think the real leaders in the Party now are Ryan, Christie, Rubio, Jindal, Nikki Haley,
Hate to say it but Gingrich, Romney Santorum are very 90’s and might be part of the problem.
Polls show it’s about the economy, job creation/unemployment, deficit spending, & inflation:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/16/poll-shows-americans-getting-more-pessimistic-on-economy-want-spending-cuts/
With this narrative, the Democrats & Obama are in deep trouble.
With unemployment at 9% Inflation heating up because the Govt is printing money…it baffles me that Obama isn’t more worried outwardly.He has no plan to deal with either. At this point in Reagans recovery he had a GDP in the sixes and sevens. Obama 1.8% growth.
They rely on the voters being stupid.
Yeah, I think Obama’s End Zone dance after OBL was killed lasted longer than the actual bump.
Maybe that’s the wrong metaphor, usually, it’s the guy who scores who does the touchdown dance; not the sideline coach who approved the play.
Maybe in addition to the economy, the other reason Dear Reader’s bump evaporated so quickly was that he was blatantly taking credit for the actions of other people.
Really? Buchanan and Scarborough were whining about this? Really?
Obama could win in 2012. Well over half of the people (voters) are getting a welfare check of some sort. Are they going to vote Denocratic? I remember my Republican neighbors that were on WPA voted for FDR for his 3rd term. Most of the people (Democrats and Republicans) were very much against a 3rd term but he got their votes.
John @ #31 is right. The treasury checks come from the mail in the same way food comes from the grocery store in the same way the projects people in New Orleans were exasperated about not being taken care of immediately when Katrina hit.
There is no failure worse than the failure of government to deliver welfare in a timely fashion. The government not having money is no excuse when people all around you are driving fine cars and eating in expensive restaurants.
When the demagogue promises to share the wealth, the peasant assumes he is the designated recipient of poverty curing income. Food stamps, housing stamps, heating stamps, transportation stamps, health care stamps, training stamps, etc. are all free passes to what a person needs and come from a caring, wise government.
It is as simple as that. All the talk about affording stuff is bogus. How much does it cost to print stamps and mail them out?
The worm’s-eye-view of a leech is far different from the view of the host which is being leeched upon.
#32 As I read, I kept thinking about that audio Rush has of folks in Detroit, or wherever, standing in line for some welfare or another and all excited to be getting it. When asked where the money was coming from, the reply was “From Obama”.
Sad.
#33 that is why Atlas is very close to shrugging.
And I recall how I felt when I also heard the Detroit recording when
a resisident on the dole said the money came from
OBAMAS STASH. very sad.