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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (51341)	5/7/2012 10:24:25 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Politics: The Preezy of the United Steezy, as Barack Obama lets Jimmy Fallon refer to him, opens his re-election bid to a partially-filled stadium and a letter from his rival asking this year's key question: Where are the jobs? There were no faux Greek columns when the president with the composite girlfriend and taste for canine filets officially began his 57-state campaign Saturday at Ohio State University's 18,300-seat Schottenstein Center that was only partially filled with those wearing faded "hope and change" T-shirts hoping to get their student loans paid off. According to recent stats, only half of OSU graduates can expect to find jobs and like the rest of their brethren will take up residence in their parents' basements between occupy-whatever rallies. The one they were once again waiting for drew some 14,000 people to the arena. Before he spoke, the OSU newspaper, the Lantern, tweeted that ushers were asking people at the rally to move "in order for seats to look full for TV." The glass looked less half-empty later at President Obama's next stop at a rally at the Siegel Center at the University of Virginia in another 2012 battleground state. It seats a more manageable crowd of 8,000. But the message was the same. "If people ask you what the campaign is all about, hope. It's still about change," he told his Virginia audience after nearly four years of work on his golf game. The campaign is about waiting for nothing while an "economy built to last" on electric cars and windmills finally implodes under the weight of his own arrogance. Obama, at a 2008 rally in Florida, had told voters: "The question in this election is not 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' We know the answer to that. The real question is, 'Will this country be better off four years from now?'" Echoing his campaign's lemming-inspired slogan, "Forward," Obama decided to dodge the answer to his 2008 question. "The real question, the question that will actually make a difference in your life, in the lives of your children, is not just about how we're doing today. It's about how we'll be doing tomorrow," Obama said. Obama has made quite a difference in the lives of our children, saddling them with unconscionable debt and a future of joblessness as they drive their Chevy Volts to the unemployment office. Welcoming Obama to Ohio, GOP presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, who parked his campaign bus outside the Ohio event, asked him the "real question" in an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Where are the jobs? "As we enter the fourth year of your term, unemployment is over 8% and has been for your entire term," Romney observed. "Nearly 23 million men and women are unemployed, underemployed or are no longer even looking for work." The unemployment rate measuring the success or failure of those actually looking for work, which was to peak at 8% and then drop with passage of the stimulus, has remained above 8% for 39 months now — an index of misery not seen since the Great Depression. As we've noted, labor force participation rate of 63.9% in April is the lowest since 1981, before the Reagan Recovery — the real tax-cutting deal — would unleash American entrepreneurs and risk-takers. The chart above, on economics and finance blog Zero Hedge, shows a huge upswing in labor participation through the Reagan years. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton (working with a Republican Congress) and George W. Bush kept the numbers up in Reagan territory. Since Obama has taken over, he has wiped out the entirety of the Reagan gains. Romney's question should be a two-parter: Where are the jobs and why does President Obama deserve to keep his?