Are you better of than you were 4 years ago?

For 30 years this has been the central question of Presidential campaigns. If you are not then there is no compelling reason to re-elect the incumbent. So lets look at this question as it applies today.

Oct. 2007;

Unemployment: 4.7%

Inflation: .03%

GDP Growth: 3.2% annualized

Debt: $9.0T Deficit: $160B

Fed. SPending: $2.66T

Oct. 2011;

Unemployment: 9.1%(12.9% if labor participation rate were equal)

Inflation: 3.77%

GDP Growth: 1.7% annualized

Debt: $15.1T

Deficit: $1645B

Fed. SPending: $3.86T

Clearly there is no economic reason to re elect president Obama. So what HAS he accomplished? 30 months into his administration we have lost 1.9 million jobs. We have given our health care decisions over to the government in a massively unpopular Obamacare program. Our president is passing legislation that failed in Congress by executive fiat, through executive order and bureaucratic regulatory implementation. We are now engaged in THREE military actions instead of two, and have sent troops to a fourth. Iran is on the verge of entering the Nuclear club, our Debt has been downgraded, and may be again.

Please can anyone make an affirmative case FOR Obama's re-election?

The Anti- Achiever

There was a time when we elected a president in the midst of a decade long financial decline. Inflation was choking our economy, and the outgoing president had resigned himself to making speeches about managing America's decline.

This president spoke of Morning in America, and getting government out of the way. Of allowing people to create their own prosperity and reducing inflation, and growing the economy, of winning the cold war, and making America pre-eminent again. He entered office amidst horrible economic numbers, and in 30 months, his policies had taken America from inflation of 11.6% to 4.4%. Prime rate of 21.2% to 8.5%. Unemployment of 10.3% to 5.1%, and an economy growth rate increase from 1.2% to 5.7%. He confronted our enemies, and won the cold war, ending the threat of nuclear war. That man was Ronald Reagan. Love him or hate him, he led, and did so regardless of what his enemies said about him.

Currently we have a president who was elected during another time of fiscal crisis. Instead of a ten year decline, he came into office one year into what should have been a short, sharp recession. Discarding the demonstrated success of Reagan for the decades long malaise of FDR, He began emulating the father of modern inflation. In his first 30 months, his policies took inflation from 0.03% to 3.87% and rising rapidly. They increased unemployment from 7.3% to 9.3%, however at the same time they declined the labor participation rate by 4.2%, meaning that if that rate remained unchanged since 2009, the true unemployment rate today would be 12.6%. His policies have created no revenue, and unlike Reagan, who tax cuts doubled federal income tax revenues in under 4 years, Obama's revenues are flat, as is economic growth. His policies have taken the deficit from 1.17% of GDP to 12.4% of GDP, and our debt has topped 100% of GDP for the first time since WWII. Our president, who campaigned upon lofty rhetoric of hope and changes has sunken to a cheap campaign demagogue, offering no leadership, but decrying his opposition for not falling in line with his wishes. He has gone from uplifting although generic speeches, to childish whining as to why others will not obey him.

History will come to regard this president as the first president of style, but no substance.

Media Hypocrisy is astounding!

For the Media in this country, a Republican presidential candidate must be PERFECT!, A conservative candidate must not be tolerated, and a Democrat candidate must do no more than profess their fillial piety to the altar of Liberalism.

Consider the campaign of GWB, the media harped for 16 days upon a drunk driving charge from 21 years prior while the candidate was in college. They progressed from this to CBS News manufacturing a story using forged documents a month before the election.

Consider Herman Cain, as soon as he begins leading in the polls a media hit piece about an allegation(not charges) of sexual harrassment made 14 years prior against him, without attribution, and the media fawns over it, and builds the story up for days, while the media made a career of ignoring Bill Clinton's serial sexual predations. Dan Rather even going so far as to declare that he would not report on that.

The media places republican candidates through a microscope, while giving the questionable associations of Barack Obama a pass. They attempted to destroy Sarah Pain's family, even postulating that her down's syndrome child might be the result of an incestuous relationship. barack Obama was largely given a pass about his associations with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, et.al. Bill Clinton was staunchly defended throughout the Paula Jones/Lewinsky case by NOW, The very organization whose purpose is to defend women against this type of behavior.

The hypocrisy and media double standards are stunning to behold. How I long for the days when the NEWS consisted of FACTS, and Opinions were left for editorials.