RWC Unfiltered 8-15-2011

• Americans Very Pessimistic About Future
• Iowa Straw Poll’s First Victim and Winners
• Saudi Oil Exports Headed Down
• Al Qaeda Has Infiltrated Critical U. S. Utilities
• Personal Computer’s 31^st Birthday
• Court Says Obama Care Unconstitutional
• Post Office Talks Big Cuts
• Obamacare Half Trillion “Mistake” Disclosed
• Obama Roadshow Takes Bromides to Michigan.
• More Congressional Arrogance and Contempt
• Hollywood Plans To Releaae A Film Just in Time for the 2012 Election Sensationalizing The Killing Of Osama Featuring an Heroic Obama
• North Korea Has 165,000 Terror Troops Directed at South
• Russia Messing With Assad
• Iran Takes Syria’s Side
• Iran Funds Al Qaeda Against US
• Human Sperm From Rat Stem Cells

But after building more than 170 F-22 Raptors and a handful of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, not a single one is available for service. The Air Force currently has zero flyable stealth fighters. None. The best estimate for a Navy version is 2016 and nobody knows when a Marine Corp variant will be available. Now production has been ended due to technical problems.

A McClatchy-Marist poll finds 7 in ten, some 68 percent, believe the worst of the country’s economic conditions are yet to come, while 27 percent say the worst is behind us. Of Republican voters, 75 percent felt the economy is going to get worse, while 71 percent of independent voters felt that way.

Democrats, meanwhile, were pretty gloomy as well, with 57 percent saying the worst was yet to come.

Inexplicably Obama, however, seems to be getting a pass. The poll finds that 59 percent don’t blame Obama for the nation’s economic ills, while 33 percent do, with 8 percent saying they are unsure.

The McClatchy-Marist poll isn’t the only gloomy indicator out there, as consumer sentiment has dropped to a three-decade low. High unemployment, poor wages and bickering over lifting the country’s debt ceiling spooked consumers to depths not seen since Jimmy Carter occupied the White House.

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) Minnesota had the best line in Iowa on Saturday saying Obama is like a manure spreader in a wind storm. As a boy I once decided to spread manure with an ancient horse drawn spreader pulled by a team of recalcitrant draft horses that cared nothing for where I wanted them to go.

The IOWA Straw poll voting is over and Michelle Bachman narrowly won; Ron Paul was  2^nd; and Pawlenty a distant number three causing him to end his campaign. Romney nor Perry competed but, Perry had a strong write-in putting Perry perceptually out front.

 Anyone registered to vote as  a Republican in Iowa could vote provided they or someone else paid a $30 fee that went to the State’s GOP. Many voting permission slips were paid for Republican candidates.

 A straw poll or straw vote is a vote with nonbinding results. The idiom may allude to a straw (thin plant stalk) tossed up to see in what direction the wind blows, in this case, the wind of group opinion Other possible origins include allusion to the insignificance of straw as in “straw man“.

 It seems to be an Americanism from about 1885-1890.

CALIFORNIA tax revenues were $539 million lower than projected in July, raising serious doubts about the projected $4 billion economic recovery windfall the state balanced its budget on two months ago.  If that additional.  revenue does not materialize, drastic cuts to schools, child care and other services  will automatically take effect.

 Saudi Arabia is expected to decrease crude oil exports amid rising domestic demand.

 The Jadwa Investment Research Department has asserted that the Saudi kingdom faced what the consultant termed a “difficult energy future.” Jadwa cited a nearly 25 percent increase in domestic energy consumption combined with low prices offered in the kingdom, as little as three percent of the market rate.

“While we think prices will continue to rise, we do not think they will rise at the rate required to meet the break-even price for the budget,” the report said. “Indeed, a decade-long plateau in oil prices, as the market has previously experienced, would likely lead to a rapid deterioration of the kingdom’s future fiscal position.”

Jadwa stressed that Saudi oil production - now reported at nine million barrels per day - has not risen significantly since 1980. The report did not envision any sustained oil increase over the next decade.

Meanwhile, a leading Gulf energy company has reported a sharp increase in profits in 2011.

Dana Gas, located in the United Arab Emirates, reported a net profit of 124 million dirham [$33.7 million] during the second quarter of 2011. The company, based in Dubai, said this marked a 276 percent increase over the same period in 2010.

 ”This excellent outcome is driven by the 20 percent increase in production from Egypt and the Kurdistan region of Iraq and consequent increase in revenues accompanied by our tight control of costs throughout the organization,” Dana Gas chief executive officer Ahmed Al Arbeed said.

Hydrocarbon sales increased to 627 million dirham [$170.7 million] and gross profits reached 341 million dirham [$92.8 million], an increase of 46 and 90 percent, respectively.

The company also reported a 20 percent production rise in company operations in Egypt and northern Iraq. A day ago an gas pipeline was blow-up where it crossed in Rurkey from Iraq and Kurd militants are being pointed to.

China is developing a space plane that will have strategic military applications intelligence cources say. The gadget is similar to the two hyper conic craft that the USA failed to successful test in recent months. The US program is now unfunded, and many fear China will leap ahead in another strategic area.

 The U.S. intelligence community has determined that Al Qaida was infiltrating American utilities and other critical facilities.

An intelligence report by the Homeland Security Department said that Al Qaida could be planning a major strike on a U.S. critical facility.

The report, issued on July 19, said suspected Al Qaida operatives have sought employment at utilities and were recruiting staffers.

“Violent extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions,” the report, titled “Insider Threat to Utilities,” said. “Outsiders have attempted to solicit utility-sector employees.”

The department said Al Qaida has concluded that utilities could represent the most vulnerable target for a mass-casualty strike in the United States. The report raised the prospect that such an attack would avenge the U.S. assassination of Al Qaida commander Osama bin Laden in May.

“Based on the reliable reporting of previous incidents, we have high confidence in our judgment that insiders and their actions pose a significant threat to the infrastructure and information systems of U.S. facilities,” the report said.

So far, the department, which also issued an intelligence alert, said it did not receive a specific threat of an insurgency attack. The federal agency, however, stressed that it was working with state and local authorities as well as the private sector to bolster security around utilities and criticial facilities.

“We will continue to work closely with our state and local partners, including our partners in the utility sector, to take steps to best protect from potential threats including protecting our nation’s infrastructure,” department spokesman Matt Chandler said. “This includes sharing information as well as best practices.”

The most likely insurgency network for such an attack was identified as Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2010, AQAP was said to have recruited an American Muslim, Shairf Mobley, who had worked at five nuclear power plants.

The report cited an alleged sabotage of a water treatment plant in Arizona in April. A disgruntled employee broke into the control room and tried but failed to conduct a methane gas explosion. The employee was not found to have links with Al Qaida.

“Past events and reporting also provide high confidence in our judgment that insider information on sites, infrastructure, networks, and personnel is valuable to our adversaries and may increase the impact of any attack on the utilities infrastructure,” the report said.

The death of a migrant worker in Louisiana was attributed to the bite of a rabid vampire bat. It was the first death from a vampire bite ever recorded in the U.S.

On August 12, 1981 IBM launched the “Personal Computer.” Revealing it at a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, the 21-pound PC cost $1,565, boasted 16K of memory, and had the ability to connect to a TV set, play games and word process. A 16K processor is far less than that in a musical greeting card.

While IBM wasn’t the first or only company with a personal computer on the market (the Apple II was launched in 1977), it kick-started the home computing revolution. A year later, the personal computer was selected as Time Magazine’s “Man (or rather, Machine) of the Year.”

Fast-forward 30 years and the IBM Personal Computer is a relic from another era, almost unrecognizable in comparison to the slick devices on which we compute today. From those earliest machine beasts to today’s tablets,

Saudi king wanted same tech ‘his friend, President Bush, had on Air Force One’ Saudi Arabia is seeking advanced U.S. technology as part of major aerospace and defense projects. The Sauds bought nuermopus Boeing planes bnut, since Bush relations with the U. S. have cooled  if not frozen over. With the Saudi King accusing Obama of perfidy - deceitfulness; untrustworthiness, deliberate breach of faith or trust; faithlessness; treachery: 

A divided U.S. appeals court in Atlanta ruled Friday that a key provision of Obama Carel is unconstitutional, siding with a group of 26 states that challenged the law.

The 2-1 ruling marks the Obama administration’s biggest defeat to date in the multifront legal battle over his socialized mediine law. The decision directly conflicts with a ruling issued in June by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati that upheld the law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that Congress exceeded its constitutional powers when it required individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.

“This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives,” Judges Joel Dubina and Frank Hull said in a jointly written opinion.

The decision affirmed part of a January ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Florida, who ruled the health-insurance mandate unconstitutional.

The appeals court, however, overturned the portion of Judge Vinson’s decision that voided the entire health-care law. The appeals panel said the unconstitutional insurance mandate could be severed from the rest of the law, with other provisions remaining “legally operative.”

 The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the health law on a 2-1 vote in June. The Supreme Court is widely expected to provide the final word on the law’s constitutionality, possibly as soon as its next term, which begins in October and runs through June 2012.

Many expact the Supreme Court of the United States ( SCOTUS ) to rule Obama Care’s mandate unconstituti0onal and do so on the eve of the 2012 Presidential election further casting a pale over Obama reelection chances whihc are seen as less than 50-50.

200 million of the 1.4 billion people in China live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day.

The abysmally mismanaged U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and wants to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost. Ironic that it wants nothing to do with Obama Care.

The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government. It would also deliver a major blow to the nation’s labor movement.

The money-strapped Postal Service is considering closing 3,653 post office buildings and going back to the old ways.

In a notice informing employees of its proposals - with the headline “Financial crisis calls for significant actions” - the Postal Service said, “We will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit pre-funding costs imposed by Congress.”

During the past four years, the service lost $20 billion, including $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010. Over that period, mail volume dropped by 20 percent.

The USPS plan is described in two draft documents obtained by The Washington Post. A “Workforce Optimization” paper acknowledges its “extraordinary request” to break its labor contracts.

“However, exceptional circumstances require exceptional remedies,” the document says.

“The Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence. . . . If the Postal Service was a private sector business, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality,” the document continues. The current contract sets salary for a run of the mill letter carrier at $100,000 in salary plus generous fringe benefits.

In a white paper on health and retirement benefits, the USPS said it was imperative to rein in health benefit and pension costs, which are a third of its labor expenses.

For health insurance plans, the paper said, the Postal Service wanted to withdraw its 480,000 pensioners and 600,000 active employees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program “and place them in a new, Postal Service administered” program.

Almost identical language is used for the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System.

The USPS said the programs do not meet “the private sector comparability standard,” a statement that could be translated as meaning that government plans are too generous and too costly.

“FEHB may exceed what the private sector does in certain areas,” said Anthony J. Vegliante, USPS chief human resources officer and executive vice president. “It may not meet what the private sector does in other areas. So cost may be above the private sector, while value may be below the private sector.”

Bills that would rein in employee benefits or have workers pay more for the benefits have been introduced in Congress and met with vigorous opposition from federal employee organizations. Intentionally or not, the Postal Service’s proposal provides support for such legislative initiatives.

The proposals are the USPS’s latest money-saving effort in a series of moves, some as recent as a few weeks ago and others stretching over a decade.

Obama had a 52% disapproval rating in Iowa last week a state he won overwhelmingly in 2008.

 The latest cost overrun associated with ObamaCare? A $500 billion “error” associated with insuring the spouses and children of new entitlement recipients. That’s Half a Trillions dollars in additional deficit spending - although it didn’t stem from an “error” so much as it was the result of a deliberate miscalculation.

 As it attempted to calculate ObamaCare’s true fiscal impact, the Congressional Budget Office was explicitly instructed to ignore the cost of covering family members under new eligibility requirements for low-income private sector employees.

 ”The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this (because) they were expressly told to do their modeling on single coverage,” researcher Richard Burkhauser told the Daily Caller this month.

 Documents obtained from the Democratic-controlled Joint Committee on Taxation confirm Burkhauser’s account - and demonstrate the lengths to which Obama supporters went in an effort to hide these costs from the taxpayers.

Obviously this isn’t the first “oversight” associated with this unconstitutional abomination. In March of 2011, Obama’s heath care czarina Kathleen Sebelius was forced to acknowledge under oath that the government double-counted $529 billion in “savings” associated with the implementation of the legislation.

 Numerous other errors and omissions have been uncovered within ObamaCare’s fuzzy math - including a $52 billion raid of Social Security and a $72 billion repayment obligation for a new “long-term care trust fund.”

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates released on the eve of its passage in March 2010, ObamaCare was originally projected to add $109 billion to the federal deficit over 10 years.

We can now add more than $1 trillion to that total (and counting), shredding once and for all Obama’s ridiculous claim that his signature legislation is “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history.”

It’s also critical to remember that all of this deficit spending comes after the imposition of new tax hikes totaling hundreds of billions of dollars - a double whammy for taxpayers.

One in ten households in the U.K. does not have and has not ever had any member employed since at least 1999.  So many of the looters burning and robbing stores and demanding increased welfare have never experienced personal responsibility or accountability in their consciousTo keep things in perspective lives.

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent youngsters  –  London Telegraph

Thursday Obama took his bromide laced lecture tour on the road into a plant in Michigan, and generally failed to convince anyone not already convinced of his self-avowed leading from behind. He chastised Congress but accepted no responsibilty for his own ineptitude in allowing the nation to drift rudderless without effective domestic of foreign policy.

Not even the handpicked audience could be more than tepidly aroused about his platitudes.

An American airstrike has killed the Taliban fighters believed responsible for shooting down a Chinook helicopter,  killing 38 people including 30 American military personnel. The Taliban were tracked until the ten hunkered down and a Marine F-16 blasted them all to smithereens.

Americans’ assessment of Congress has hit a new low, with only 13% saying they approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The 83% disapproval rating is also the worst Gallup has measured in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance. When Americans learn the following things it will go lower:

• FOX News has learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. As far as I know not one other main stream media outlet has mentioned this scandal.
• Members of Congress can retire at full pay after only one two-year term. Congress specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform… in all of its forms.

Those facts and the general disappointment has sparked a move to amend the Constitution. Proposed  28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: “Congress shall make  no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply  equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall  make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that  does not apply equally to the citizens of the United  States.”

59% say get U. S. troops out of Afghanistan

With the economic stats from the administration looking phonier than the spray tans on “Jersey Shore,” the White House is hoping some Hollywood-style image manipulation can boost its sagging poll numbers.

Sony Pictures has announced that the release date for the yet-untitled film about the death of Osama bin Laden will be Oct. 12, 2012, just weeks prior to President Barack Obama’s re-election attempt.

The flick is directed and written by the Oscar-winning duo of “The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal. The fall release also perfectly positions the film for Oscar nominations. After Bigelow tried to phoney-up an anti-America crowd scene the military pulled her access and its cooperation raising severe questions about Whiote Jouse pressure to make Obama look like a hero though he had to be dragged to the decision to kill Osama.

Bigelow and Boal actually had the project in development before bin Laden was killed but reportedly have reworked the script.

The White House will be rooting for the movie to do well at the box office and is said to be granting the filmmakers unprecedented access to information. The always introspective special warfare community to at best non-plused about the movie and less so about the amount of access Obama is insisting on.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times commented, “The White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently - to the surprise of some military officers - at a CIA ceremony celebrating the hero SEALs.”

North Korea’s military has trained more than 165,000 troops tasked with launching various types of terror attacks on South Korea, including 110,000 special forces, according to a group of former North Korean soldiers who defected to Seoul.

An Al Qaida-aligned militia has acquired extended-range rockets and used them in attacks against Israel.

Palestinian sources said the Tawhid fighters were detained in Gaza City two days after Tawhid claimed responsibility for a rocket strike in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat.

The sources said Tawhid and Army of Islam were believed to have received scores of Katyushas amid the flood of weapons that arrived from Libya in the spring and summer of 2011. They said the weapons included short-range missiles, extended-range rockets and mortars stolen from the military warehouses of the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

To keep things in perspective in 1987 the DOW dropped 22% on one October Monday barely staying above 1,000   Monday Moody’s credit rating agency warned it is watching U. S. debt and deficits

Twelve hours after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned Assad he faced a “sad fate” if he failed to introduce reforms, Moscow’s envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin accused the Western alliance of planning a military campaign against Syria to help overthrow the Assad regime “with the long-reaching goal of preparing a beachhead for an attack on Iran.”
In an interview published by Izvestia Friday, Aug. 5, the knowledgeable and high-placed Rogozin added: “This statement means that the planning [of the military campaign] is well underway. It could be a logical conclusion of those military and propaganda operations, which have been carried out by certain Western countries against North Africa.”

Thursday, as the Syrian military crackdown in Hama reached a new level of ferocity with public executions in the town square, the Russian president warned Assad: “We are watching how the situation is developing. It’s changing and our approach is changing as well.”

Moscow sources note that the Rogozin added Yemen to his remarks on NATO: He said he agreed with the opinion that Syria and later Yemen could be NATO’s last steps on the way to launching an attack on Iran.

“The noose around Iran is tightening,” he said. “Military planning against Iran is underway. And we are certainly concerned about an escalation of a large-scale war in this huge region.”
The Russian envoy made a point of citing NATO - never once mentioning the United States in his remarks. However, they were definitely meant to clarify to Washington that Moscow is fully updated on the next American military steps in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

Military sources add: The Libyan campaign taught NATO that without US military strength, alliance members were incapable of defeating even a small army on the scale of Muammar Qaddafi’s six brigades, much less muster the ground, air and sea forces for striking Syria and Iran. The only power with the requisite military strength is the United States, which was therefore the unspoken address of Rogozin’s warning.

Russian diplomats have repeatedly cautioned Tehran that it incurs the danger of American attack on its nuclear facilities. Now Syria has been included. Rogozin remarked that having “learned the Libyan lesson, Russia will continue to oppose a forcible resolution of the situation in Syria.”

There are more than 10,000,000 bricks in the Empire State Building!

 In addition to Russia’s warning Assad, with Iranian support rebuffed an ultimatum from the U. S. and sorta Turkey too. Obama’s dissembly of America’s prestige abroad as well as domestically marked another step backward last weekend.

 As Assad’s tanks and artillery stormed the eastern Syrian town of Deir al-Zour, killing 100 civilians in one day, the US and Turkey Sunday night, Aug. 7 began to turn the screw on President Bashar Assad: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu to press Syria to “return its military to the barracks,” during his visit to Syria Tuesday. 

The Syrian ruler with Iranian backing spurned the toothless ultimatum even before the minister reached Damascus.

 Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland!

Iran was helping to finance Al Qaida attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The community has identified Al Qaida operatives who worked with Iran in recruitment, funding other operations.

“Iran is a critical transit point for funding to support Al Qaida’s activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the Treasury Department said. “This network serves as the core pipeline through which Al Qaida moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia.”

On July 28, the government disclosed the first details of what Treasury said marked cooperation between Al Qaida and Iran to destabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Treasury said Iran was working with a six-member Al Qaida team headed by Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, based in Iran and targeted in the latest round of U.S. sanctions. Other Al Qaida operatives working with Iran were said to be based in Kuwait and Qatar.

The 29-year-old Khalil was said to have been operating in Iran since 2005 and moved money and recruits through the Middle East. Officials said Khalil has used Iran as a waystation for Al Qaida fighters to destabilize Pakistan.

Al Qaida was also said to have stationed a liasion in Kuwait, a major non-NATO ally of Washington. The liasion was identified as Ali Hasan Ali Al Ajmi, a 32-year-old said to have relayed funding from Gulf Cooperation Council states to Al Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan.

“He [Al Ajmi] has also supported Al Qaida by facilitating travel for individuals associated with the group so that they could take part in fighting in Afghanistan,” Treasury said.

Officials said GCC states have been notified of the Al Qaida suspects. But they would not say whether the Al Qaida agents were arrested by Kuwait and Qatar.

“By exposing Iran’s secret deal with Al Qaida allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, we are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism,” Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen said.

A Libyan terrorist funded by Iran is running al Qaeda operations in Pakistan. If, as rumored Iran constructs a nuclear weapon the dynamic changes.

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why.

A team of scientists has reported producing viable sperm using the stem cells of mice in an experiment that researchers hope could one day lead to treating infertile men.

The Kyoto University researchers managed to induce mice stem cells into creating sperm precursors, which were transplanted into infertile male mice. The mice then produced sperm that was successfully used to fertilize eggs in a lab dish.

The offspring were healthy and fertile, according to a paper published online Thursday in the scientific journal Cell.

Can you imagine being fathered by a real rat?

Drinkers in ancient times clinked their cups to ward off evil demons.That lead to the tradition of toasting goodwill and health.

A March 2011 study by the Foundation for Educational Choice (FEC) analyzed the results of all empirical studies that used the best scientific methods to measure how school-choice vouchers affect the academic outcomes of participating students.

The study concluded, “Contrary to the widespread claim that vouchers do not benefit participants and hurt public schools, the empirical evidence consistently shows that vouchers improve outcomes for both participants and public schools.”

 According to the FEC study, nine out of the 10 studies found that vouchers improved student outcome measurements such as test scores in the core subjects and graduation rates.  In addition, by increasing competition between public and private schools, voucher programs forced public school systems to improve.

In fact, every empirical study conducted in states with voucher programs, such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, has found that “voucher programs in those places improved public schools.” 

In May, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels signed into law the most comprehensive expansion of school choice in the nation’s history.  The law creates the largest voucher program in the country that will help 600,000 children from low- and middle-income families attend the public or private school of their choosing.  California is at the other extreme erecting barriers even capping the number of charter schools.

As the FEC study observes, “Only universal vouchers can break the [government-run] education monopoly and produce the dramatic improvements we need.”

 ”it is time for government and its [allied] special-interest obstructionists to get out of the way and let the future in so that parents and their children can exercise their fundamental right to choose the type of education that best meets their individual needs.”

 ”Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote,” Benjamin Franklin

Obama is working hard for the underdog lot apparently trying for victim status.

Polls show Obama can be defeated because “independent” voters are having trouble rallying non-democrats. It’s all about the economy stupid.

Whether he can beg off as the poor baclk guy remains to be seen. Obama is quickly gaining on Jimmy Carter status as an incompetent president.

 Teen unemployment in Washington DC is 50.1% raising the specter of civil unrest, Don’t forget Obama stated “an unemployment check is a job” !