Johnny has no job. Shame on Grandpa.

I saw James Carville in the airport in Dallas once. I overcame my natural urge to punch him, mostly because he looks kind of fragile - like a Muppet that got put in the dryer by mistake and kind of shrunk and stretched all at the same time. What I did do however, was recall his famous  "It's the economy stupid" comment during the Clinton years.

And it is.

And "the economy" to most people anyways, is highlighted by only 2 things - prices of goods led by gasoline prices - and jobs, with jobs in the lead by a bunch. If you don't have a job, you don't have the ability to bitch about prices, so jobs is Job One. Sorry Ford.

I ran across this chart on PJTV the other day and thought it appropriate to present to my readership.

Since 2008 (I wonder what happened then?) the job losses by age category have been most pronounced for young people - who have take almost 3 times the "hit" of other groups. As Steve Carrell from "The Office" mockingly said to a Princeton graduating class last week - "You are young, and because you are young, you are also wrong." I wonder if any of these new voters have a different opinion of their 2008 vote for Obama now that they are standing on the stage with a $150,000 student loan in one hand and shrinking job prospects in the other.And a degree in the third hand. The real world can be cruel sometimes.

But that isn't the most striking part of the graph. Look at the far right. (Small r!)

The only job growth in the last 4 years is in people over 60 who have had to postpone or abandon their retirement. Kids can't get jobs? Blame granny, because she isn't moving to Sarasota anymore. And remember - there is no more pissed off person than an old pissed off person.

These folks are going to be looking for blood in November. Across the board, young, middle aged and old - folks are going to hold politicians - a la Wisconsin - for their actions.

Is it the economy stupid? Yes, and the economy is jobs. QAnd EVERYONE is hurting.ap

Just ask grandpa.

America is Soft and Lazy. So Says Barry.

President Zero continued his 2012 De-Election campaign in Asia this week by telling attendees at the Asia-Pacific economic summit that America has gotten “lazy” in the past few decades at attracting foreign investment. Thanks Barry, really, thanks very much.

What he should have said, in the light of his administration’s handling of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is that America has become quite adept at BLOCKING foreign investment. 

TransCanada Pipelines wants to invest $7 billion in building a pipeline across the United States to carry oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. If we were merely lazy, we’d have accepted the project and the thousands of new construction jobs long ago. That would be the path of least resistance, not to mention common sense.But we refuse to take the easy way out. The bureaucrats and the environmentalist whacks produce exhaustive studies. The brightest lights in Hollywood mobilize. The White House calculates its political interest. 

How thoughtless of President Obama to underestimate the effort expended in rejecting a foreign investment.

To delay the project for more than three years and then, after giving every indication that it would go through, announce that the ultimate decision will be kicked past the 2012 election takes hard work and frankly a political death wish we have seldom seen the likes of in US politics. Well, except for Carter. And Clinton.

The president’s “lazy” comment is one of a series of remarks carrying an undercurrent of disapproval of the country he is so luckless as to govern. A few weeks ago, he observed that Americans had gotten “a little soft and we didn't have the same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.” 

At a San Francisco fundraiser, he lamented that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.” This from the man that cancelled NASA manned space programs so we have to beg rides from the Russians. 

Obama is prone to the cynical view of the hip socialist, floating above the foibles of the great unwashed masses in America. It never seems to enter his mind that HE might have disappointed us, but he certainly seems to think that we have disappointed him. We’ve been lazy and soft in our practices going back decades, hopeless until the advent of one Barack H. Obama, the would-be Savior President frustrated by the recalcitrant nation of fools he is forced to work with, a Picasso who has been dealt a bad canvas.

The distance between President Obama’s self-image and reality is as big as the Grand Canyon. 

Ambition? 

His heroic stimulus bill funded roadwork to create temporary insta-jobs and subsidized green-energy projects, some of which would have happened anyway. 

Imagination? 

He perpetually wants to send federal money to the states to prop up their existing un-affordable public union and welfare structures. 

Willingness to do the hard things necessary to build? 

His National Labor Relations Board is harrying Boeing for the offense of building state-of-the-art aircraft in a non-unionized South Carolina plant.

It’s within the president’s power to do a few major things to make us more competitive. The president has shown no interest. He apparently prefers waging a blunt-force campaign against a “do-nothing Congress” and carping about what’s wrong with us.

The only thing wrong with all of us that I can see is that we voted for him. We may be lazy, and have gotten soft, but I think this is one mistake that we will soon be rectifying.