Not the hope and change Obamaites had in mind or maybe it was. You decide.
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Obama on pins and needles?
There are always those who seek to stir up trouble, issue false leaked reports to deter action, i.e. (the one leaked in Annapolis that caused GW to pull back on plans) etc.
I have been reporting for months, Obama's sanction have not deterred Iran as it moves toward processing more low weapon grade material that will give them the ability to make no less than five nuclear devices while also developing the missile capability to deliver them.
Yes, Iranians are experiencing shortages and inflation but the powers that be in Iran are hell bent on their singular mission and Obama's sanctions are not going to stop them so Israel is, once again, left' to bell the cat.' (See 1 and 1a below.)'
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Caroline Glick and The Muslim Brotherhood. (See 2 below.)
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What will be the consequences of Romney's visit? Some thoughts! (See 3 and 3a below.)
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SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED 'FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT'/ENTITLEMENT!
Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment"?
Could not survive without the government returning what I paid it for myself while politicians spent all of it..
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Dick
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1)An ill wind blows between US and Israeli intelligence over attack on Iran
Duel over Iran attack
The acrimony reached a nadir with an unusually detailed Association Press report on July 28 quoting anonymous sources as stating, “The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency’s New East Division,” - the group that oversees spying across he Middle East.
Prime Minister Binyamin’s Office reviled its content, including allegations of Mossad intrusions of US officials’ homes, as “a lying report.”
Prime Minister Binyamin’s Office reviled its content, including allegations of Mossad intrusions of US officials’ homes, as “a lying report.”
This leak had two objectives:
1. To deter US presidential candidate Mitt Romney from using his visit to Israel Sunday and Monday July 29-30 to promise, if elected in November, to review Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence for spying for Israel, which all previous US presidents have refused to do at the CIA's behest. It has been suggested that he may be considering going on record with this pledge to win Jewish votes.
2. To hit back at the Israel watchers dogging the footsteps of CIA agents planted in a widely-flung undercover network for picking up any clues that Israeli preparations for a unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear program are moving into operational phase.
Although American and Israeli officials habitually stress the commonalty of the two government’s decisions on Iran - and top US officials are again turning up in Israel every few days - President Barack Obama still can’t be sure that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak won’t take him off-guard by springing an attack at a date earlier than the one under discussion between them.
Washington sources report October is often mentioned these days in the White House, the Pentagon and top military command as the month to watch. Persian Gulf capitals are also on guard for an October attack although they prefer an American to an Israeli strike.
High-ranking Saudi princes have been telling Western officials on recent visits to the kingdom that they received Washington’s assurance that the Israelis would strike first and the Americans join in later.
Riyadh has tried to persuade the Obama administration that the US must go first and do its utmost to keep the Israelis out of it altogether. The Saudis were told that Washington is doing what it can to hold Israel back but can’t be sure of succeeding.
Obama’s National Security Adviser Tom Donilon discussed Iran and Syria with the Israeli prime minister when he visited Jerusalem on July 14. He did indeed share with him the US contingency plan for an operation against Iran, as reported - except for one salient piece of information: He could not say whether or not the US President had decided to execute it.
The information he received from Netanyahu was that Israel is on the point of a decision to attack Iran but has not yet settled on a date.
July 26, twelve days later, Barak was more outspoken: Israel, he said, faced "tough and crucial decisions" about its security and future. "I am well aware of the difficulties involved in thwarting Iran's attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon. However, it is clear to me without a doubt that dealing with the threat itself will be far more complicated, far more dangerous and far more costly in resources and human life than thwarting it."
This was a broad hint that Israel no longer regarded action for preempting Iran’s nuclear program to be optional. It came in response to the Islamic Republic’s steady advance towards weapons-grade uranium enrichment – up to 30 percent grade in recent months in parallel with nuclear negotiations with the world powers – and its published plans for producing Highly-Enriched Uranium (HEU) usable for propelling ships engines, but also for fueling nuclear bombs.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is the latest high-powered American official due to visit Israel. Wednesday, Aug. 1, he will sit down with Israeli leaders. They will no doubt continue talking about the date of an attack on Iran and try to pull US and Israeli timelines and plans together onto a single, agreed track.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is the latest high-powered American official due to visit Israel. Wednesday, Aug. 1, he will sit down with Israeli leaders. They will no doubt continue talking about the date of an attack on Iran and try to pull US and Israeli timelines and plans together onto a single, agreed track.
But none of the discussions between the two governments has so far tied Israel down to an agreed date or plan of action. Netanyahu is holding tight to the option of a surprise attack – hence the dense network of CIA agents lurking behind every official and military corner in Israel. They are pouncing and reporting on the slightest clue to the IDF switching to operational mode for a strike on Iran.
Western intelligence sources, who don’t recall ever seeing so extensive an undercover CIA presence in Israel, report that Israeli security agencies have gone to extraordinary lengths to counter their access to classified information about IDF activities.
As a result of this duel, US and Israel spy agencies are at daggers drawn, as evinced in the AP report.
1a)Iran talk dominates Romney
By Herb Keinon
Netanyahu, Peres and Mofaz each discusses potential military strike against Iran's nuclear program in meetings with US Republican presidential candidate; Romney set to meet PA's Fayyad.
Talk of Iran's nuclear program--and a potential military strike against it--dominated Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's brief diplomatic visit to Israel on Sunday, though Israeli politicians placed different emphases on the role of a military threat.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Sunday told Romney in a Jerusalem meeting that diplomacy and sanctions leveled against Iran have not worked so far.
"I heard some of your remarks and you said that the greatest danger facing the world is the Ayatollah regime possessing nuclear weapons capability," Netanyahu said. "Mitt, I couldn't agree with you more, and I think it is important to do everything in our power to prevent the ayatollahs from possessing that capability. We have to be honest and say that all the diplomacy and sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota."
Netanyahu said that a "strong and credible military threat coupled with sanctions" was needed to "have a chance to change the situation."
Romney also said he was "honored" to be here on Tisha Be'Av, "to recognize the solemnity of the day and also the suffering of the Jewish people over the centuries and the millennia, and come with recognition of the sacrifices of so many. Unfortunately, the tragedies of wanton killing are not only things of the past, but have darkened our skies in even more recent times."Romney said he wanted to hear Netanyahu's perspective regarding Iran and about "further actions that we can take to dissuade Iran from their nuclear folly."
Following his meeting with Netanyahu, Romney met with President Shimon Peres.
Peres told Romney that Iran is bent on dominating the Middle East, and that he appreciates US efforts to block it by all means.
Iran, Peres said, spreads terror, finances terror, is developing a nuclear weapon "against the wishes of the entire world" and has threatened "to bring an end to Israel."
Praising the US policy of enacting diplomatic measures against the Islamic Republic, Peres emphasized that a military threat was necessary as well "in order to make it serious."
"We trust [the US position] includes a very serious and warm consideration of the security of Israel," Peres added. "It's far from being just an Israeli problem."
Opposition Leader Shaul Mofaz told Romney that non-military options on Iran have not yet run their course, but emphasized that "cooperation between Israel and the United States is more important than ever."
"We have to be ready for all options on Iran, but the time for military operations has not yet come," Mofaz told Romney. "This is a time to tighten the sanctions on the Iranian regime and be ready for any development which we should handle in full coordination."
In an implicit compliment to US President Barack Obama, Mofaz said that the American administration was committed on the issue.
The two also spoke about the need for Israel to mend ties with Turkey, and the importance of returning to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.
Romney canceled his planned meeting with Labor party head Shelly Yechimovich on Sunday.
Labor MK Isaac Herzog, who was meant to participate in the meeting as well, expressed regret at the meetings "surprising last-minute cancellation," saying he suspected the decision was politically motivated.
Earlier, a senior Romney aide said the former Massachusetts governor would back Israel if it were to decide it had to use military force to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
"If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that capability, the governor would respect that decision," Romney's senior national security aide Dan Senor told reporters traveling with the candidate.
The comment made ahead of Romney meetings seemed to differ with US President Barack Obama's attempts to convince Israel to avoid any preemptive attack.
Senor told reporters that Romney believed the threat from Iran was approaching on a path involving two timelines.
The first was Iran's drive - denied by Tehran - to develop a nuclear weapons capability, and the second was having the ability to penetrate Iran's defenses before they were hardened in such a way to protect against a strike, Senor said.
In excerpts of a speech Romney was to deliver on Monday evening, the former Massachusetts governor planned to say that an aggressive approach to Tehran was needed to protect against a threat to the very existence of Israel, the closest US ally in the turbulent Middle East.
"When Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust or speak of wiping this nation off the map, only the naïve - or worse - will dismiss it as an excess of rhetoric," he would say.
"Make no mistake: The ayatollahs in Tehran are testing our moral defenses. They want to know who will object, and who will look the other way."
Romney and Netanyahu will meet again later in the day after the Tisha Be’av fast when he and his wife, Ann, will dine at the Prime Minister’s Residence with Netanyahu and his wife, Sara.
Romney’s visit to Israel – his fourth – is widely considered an effort to woo pro-Israel voters in the US, both Jews and Evangelical Christians, many of whom are discontent with the Middle East policies of President Barack Obama.
Romney is slated to leave for Poland at about noon on Monday.
Before taking off, he is scheduled to host a fund-raiser at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem Monday morning. The event was moved from Sunday evening to Monday morning so as not to conflict with Tisha Be’av. The cost to attend the event, where Romney is expected to appear for 45 minutes, is $50,000 a couple.
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2) The Muslim Brotherhood's American defenders
By Caroline B. Glick
By Wednesday John Brennan, US President Barack Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah's massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last week.
Hopefully it was an instructive meeting for the senior US official, although his Israeli interlocutors were undoubtedly dumbstruck by how difficult it was to communicate with him. Unlike previous US counterterror officials, Brennan does not share Israel's understanding of Middle Eastern terrorism.
Brennan's outlook on this subject was revealed in a speech he gave two years ago in Washington. In that speech Brennan spoke dreamily about Hezbollah. As he put it, "Hezbollah is a very interesting organization." He claimed it had evolved from a "purely terrorist organization" to a militia and then into an organization with members in Lebanon's parliament and serving in Lebanon's cabinet.
Brennan continued, "There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern for us what they're doing. And what we need to do is find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements."
Perhaps in a bid to build up those "moderate elements," in the same address, Brennan referred to Israel's capital city Jerusalem as "al Quds," the name preferred by Hezbollah and its Iranian overlords.
Brennan's amazing characterization of Hezbollah's hostile takeover of the Lebanese government as proof that the terrorist group was moderating was of a piece with the Obama administration's view of Islamic jihadists generally.
If there are "moderate elements," in Hezbollah, from the perspective of the Obama administration, Hezbollah's Sunni jihadist counterpart the Muslim Brotherhood is downright friendly.
On February 10, 2011, Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made this position clear in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper's testimony was given the day before then Egyptian president and longtime US ally Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign from office. Mubarak's coerced resignation owed largely to the Obama administration's decision to end US support for his regime and openly demand his immediate abdication of power. As Israel warned, Mubarak's ouster paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood's ascendance to power in Egypt.
In his testimony Clapper said, "The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular which has eschewed violence and has decried al Qaida as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc."
Watching Clapper's testimony in Israel, the sense across the political spectrum, shared by experts and casual observers alike was that the US had taken leave of its senses.
The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the path of Allah is our highest hope."
How could such a high level US official claim that such an organization is "largely secular"?
Every day Muslim Brotherhood leaders call for the violent annihilation of Israel. And those calls are often combined with calls for jihad against the US. For instance, in a sermon from October 2010, Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Badie called for jihad against the US. As he put it "Resistance [i.e. terrorism] is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it."
Badie then promised his congregants that the death of America was nigh. As he put it, "A nation that does not champion moral and human values cannot lead humanity, and its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had His say, as happened with [powerful] nations in the past. The US is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise..."
Brennan's and Clapper's obliviousness to the essential nature of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are symptoms of the overarching ignorance informing the Obama administration's approach to Middle Eastern realities.
Take for instance the Obama administration's policy confusion over Syria. This week the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration lacks any real knowledge of the nature of the opposition forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian regime. Whereas one senior official told the paper, "We're identifying the key leaders, and there are a lot of them. We are in touch with them and we stay in touch," another official said that is not the case.
As the latter official put it, "The folks that have been identified have been identified through Turkey and Jordan. It's not because of who we know. It's all through liaison."
The fact that the US government is flying blind as Syria spins out of control is rendered all the more egregious when you recognize that this was not inevitable. America's ignorance is self-inflicted.
In the 16 months that have passed since the Syrian civil war broke out, the administration passed up several opportunities to develop its own ties to the opposition and even to shape its agenda. Two examples suffice to make this clear.
First, in October 2011, according to the Beirut-based Arabic news portal al Nashra, Dalia Mogahed, Obama's advisor on Muslim affairs blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. According to al Nashra, Mogahed cancelled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt.
The White House cancelled the meeting days after Rai visited with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. During that meeting Rai angered the French Foreign Ministry when he warned that it would be a disaster for Syria's Christian minority, and for Christians throughout the region if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is overthrown. Rai based this claim on his assessment that Assad would be replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Islamist regime.
And nine months later it is obvious that he was right. With Syria's civil war still raging throughout the country, the world media is rife with reports about Syria's Christians fleeing their towns and villages en masse as Islamists from the Syrian opposition target them with death, extortion and kidnapping.
Then there are the US's peculiar choices regarding the opposition figures it favors. Last August, in a bid to gain familiarity with the Syrian opposition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with opposition representatives at the State Department. Herb London from the Hudson Institute reported at the time that the group Clinton met with was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of the non-Islamist, pro-Western Syrian Democracy Council compose of Syrian Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Druse, Assyrians and non-Islamist Sunnis were not invited to the meeting.
Clinton did reportedly agree to meet with representatives of the council separately. But unlike the press carnival at her meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood members, Clinton refused to publicize her meeting with the non-Islamist opposition leaders. In so acting, she denied these would-be US allies the ability to claim that they enjoyed the support of the US government.
The question is why? Why is the Obama administration shunning potential allies and empowering enemies? Why has the administration gotten it wrong everywhere?
In an attempt to get to the bottom of this, and perhaps to cause the administration to rethink its policies, a group of US lawmakers, members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees led by Rep. Michele Bachmann sent letters to the Inspectors General of the State, Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice Departments as well as to the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In those letters, Bachmann and her colleagues asked the Inspectors General to investigate possible penetration of the US government by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.
In their letters, and in a subsequent explanatory letter to US Rep. Keith Ellison from Rep. Bachmann, the lawmakers made clear that when they spoke of governmental penetration, they were referring to the central role that Muslim groups, identified by the US government in Federal Court as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations play in shaping the Obama administration's perception of and policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied movements in the US and throughout the world.
That these front groups, including the unindicted terror funding co-conspirators, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, (CAIR), and the Islamic Society of North America, (ISNA), play a key role in shaping the Obama administration's agenda is beyond dispute. Senior administration officials including Dalia Mogahed have close ties to these groups. There is an ample body of evidence that suggests that the administration's decision to side with the hostile Muslim Brotherhood against its allies owes to a significant degree to the influence these Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their operatives wield in the Obama administration.
To take just one example, last October the Obama administration agreed to purge training materials used by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies and eliminate all materials that contained references to Islam that US Muslims groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood had claimed were offensive. The administration has also fired counterterrorism trainers and lecturers employed by US security agencies and defense academies that taught their pupils about the doctrines of jihadist Islam. The administration also appointed representatives of Muslim Brotherhood aligned US Muslim groups to oversee the approval of training materials about Islam for US federal agencies.
For their efforts to warn about and perhaps cause the administration to abandon its reliance on Muslim Brotherhood front groups to inform it about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, Bachmann and her colleagues have been denounced as racists and McCarthyites. These attacks have not been carried out only by administration supporters. Republican Senator John McCain denounced Bachmann from the floor of the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio later piled on attacking her for her attempt to convince the administration to reconsider its policies. Those policies again place the most radical members of the US Muslim community in charge of the US government's policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadist movements.
It is clear that the insidious notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate and friendly force has taken hold in US policy circles. And it is apparent that US policymaking in the Middle East is increasingly rooted in this false and dangerous assessment.
In spearheading an initiative to investigate and change this state of affairs, Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues should be congratulated, not condemned. And their courageous efforts to ask the relevant questions about the nature of Muslim Brotherhood influence over US policymakers should be joined, not spurned by their colleagues in Washington, by the media and by all concerned citizens in America and throughout the free world.
----------------------------------------------------------------------3)Romney's Israel Visit Offers Chance to Turn Page
Londoners who have been inconvenienced by preparations for the Summer Olympics had for months joined their famously prickly media in complaining about glitches in the process. But when Romney echoed some of those concerns in an interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams, a visit that was intended to remind voters of his stewardship of the 2002 Winter Games was mired in fallout from his comments.
But the visit to Israel offers Romney a plum opportunity to change the subject.
The U.S. relationship with that key nation, which Romney characterizes as having deteriorated in recent years, is a focal point of his criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy.
The Romney campaign has noted repeatedly that Obama has not visited Israel as president, and a series of photo-ops and meetings with top leaders there on Sunday will offer the Republican candidate a chance to demonstrate a personal connection to the country.
On Sunday morning, he will first meet privately in Jerusalem with the U.S. ambassador before sitting down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he first became acquainted during the 1970s when each man was a young corporate adviser for the Boston Consulting Group.
They will be joined at the meeting by Israeli cabinet members, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and the Iranian nuclear program will undoubtedly be a chief topic of conversation. Romney has repeatedly accused Obama of not doing enough to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
In an interview published Friday with the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, Romney was particularly scathing in his criticism of Obama’s handling of the relationship with Israel.
"I would treat Israel like the friend and ally it is,” he said. “I cannot imagine going to the United Nations, as Obama did, and criticizing Israel in front of the world. I believe that he should have mentioned instead the thousands of rockets that are being fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel.”
Romney is also slated to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. But notably absent from his schedule is a meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. A Romney campaign official said that the candidate had time to meet with only one representative of the Palestinian Authority during this trip.
Romney is not expected to venture outside of Jerusalem during his approximately 36-hour stay, but his visit to the holy city will be jam-packed. His series of brief meetings and grip-and-grin sessions for the cameras continues later on Sunday with Israeli President Shimon Peres, followed by similar events with leaders of the Kadima and Labor parties.
The centerpiece of the former Massachusetts governor’s visit will come on Sunday night when he will deliver a speech in front of the dramatic walls enveloping the Old City of Jerusalem
Romney foreign policy adviser Dan Senor said that the candidate’s remarks will be directed toward “the themes that [Romney] feels are definitional of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” rather than specific policy prescriptions.
"It is much more a speech that is going to be connected to the shared values, the shared interests, the shared history and the shared threats facing American and Israel and what that means for America and America’s role in the world,” Senor said, noting in particular “the prospect of Iran developing a nuclear weapons capability and the impact that would have on Israeli survival.”
Sunday marks the solemn Jewish holiday of Tish a B’av, in which observers fast and mourn. Romney is expected to break the fast after sundown at a meal with Netanyahu.
ABC News and The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Republican super-donor Sheldon Adelson plans to fly to Jerusalem to attend a Monday morning Romney fundraising event at the King David Hotel.
After months of bankrolling a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC during the Republican primary fight, Adelson, a hardliner on Iran who opposes Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians, has become a major Romney donor and has suggested that he could spend upwards of $100 million to help elect him.
Later on Monday, Romney will head to Poland for the third and final stop on his foreign trip.
3a)
3a)
Romney's Remarkable Speech in Jerusalem
by Daniel Pipes
Mitt Romney, the all-but-official Republican presidential candidate, delivered a stem-winder of a speech to the Jerusalem Foundation today, packing emotional support with frank policy statements. The contrast with Obama could hardly be more dramatic. Indeed, one could go through the speech and note the many refutations of Obama. For example, the opening comment that "To step foot into Israel is to step foot into a nation that began with an ancient promise made in this land" directly contrasts with Obama's crabbed statement in Cairo about "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland [being] rooted in a tragic history."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) Right Turn
Pelosi: Republican Jews just want to save on taxes
He can blame George Bush. He can whine that he was handed a terrible economy. (Ronald Reagan inherited worse.) But there’s no spin that will make 1.5 percent growth in GDP anything but dismal. It is not a recovery we are in; this is what we need to recover from — anemic growth, endemically high unemployment and record poverty.
What is the president’s big idea? Raise taxes on small business. What is he campaigning on? Mitt Romney’s tax returns. What’s his major rhetorical thrust? Businessmen shouldn’t claim credit for their success.
You know why the media sycophants want to talk about David Cameron (the man who apologized to North Korea for a mix-up with flags and gave Obama smooches in 2008). You understand David Axelrod wants to flog a blind quote in a British newspaper. You can see why Obama isn’t asked hard questions.
The latest news only points up how irrelevant, if not absurd, is most of the media coverage of the presidential campaign. The frenzy to highlight the trivial would be bad enough in good economic times. In the current basket case of an economy, it is farcical.
Jim Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute has two compelling charts. The first shows that we are in “nominal growth in GDP” territory. In other words, with flat economic growth, inflation and population growth mean we are essentially contracting. The second chart compares theReagan recovery with the Obama non-recovery. He explains:
Earlier this year, the Obama White House predicted the economy would grow 3% in 2012. Today’s GDP report shows that ain’t going to happen. The Commerce Department said the economy grew at an anemic 1.5% annual rate from April through June, after a revised 2.0% in the first quarter. It now seems likely the economy will be lucky to grow at 2% for the entire year. And that’s after growing just 1.8% last year.
Indeed, research from the Federal Reserve finds that that since 1947, when year-over-year real GDP growth falls below 2 percent, recession follows within a year 70% of the time. The U.S. economy remains in the Recession Red Zone.
The new data also show just how weak the Obama recovery has been, expanding at an annual average pace of just 2.2% vs. 5.7% for the Reagan recovery.
In addition, the GDP report shows the Obama administration has continually and wildly overestimated the positive impact of its economic policies, including the $800 billion stimulus plan.
The unemployment numbers will be out a week from today. If they are as grizzly as the GDP report, prepare for a political thunder-clap.
By the way, do you think any of those Democratic senators regret voting to raise taxes this week?
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