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New York Times’ Front Page Lead September 5:
“Clinton Urges Second Term to Let Obama Finish Job”
September 7: The Labor Department reports that the percentage of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one, last month, fell to the lowest level since 1981.
September 7: Intel reports that demand for its chips has declined as customers reduced inventory. The company’s full-year capital spending is now expected to be below even the low end of its previous forecast. The company withdrew all other quarterly and full-year expectations.
President Obama, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, told the crowd, “Our problems can be solved.” Mr. Obama wants to be granted four more years.
The economic headlines above and my exhibits below indicate that America most certainly cannot withstand four more years of Obama leadership.
Under Barack Obama’s leadership, badly needed fixed-capital investment (chart below) has rebounded. If you look hard, you can see the rebound, can’t you? What a cratering during the Obama administration’s sad stay at the helm. I have been advising small business owners for nearly five decades, and never has this sector looked as bad.
The ISM index of manufacturing new orders is a fair gauge of momentum in the manufacturing sector. Presidents Obama and Clinton want four more years to finish the job. Extend the ISI trend for four more years at the current rate of decline, and where do you think the unemployment rate will be?
No indeed, no more time remains on the Obama clock. The Obama goose is cooked and in fact well over cooked. America’s small business owners create the majority of new jobs, and our job creators are very much on strike!
Washington needs a complete makeover. Is the American voter up to the task?
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As you walk up the staircase in my parents’ house, there hangs one of my favorite pictures of my dad wearing a Ronald Reagan hat and smiling. The picture was taken when he was at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit during the Republican National Convention in 1980. I remember how energized my mom and dad were after that trip. They loved Ronald Reagan, and they believed he would “Make America Great Again.”
When I think about Detroit, I think about that picture of my dad at the convention. Growing up a Boston Celtics fan, I think about watching—with my dad—their rivalry with the Detroit Pistons. And after seeing the recently released award-winning movie, Detropia, by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, I feel so sad for Detroit.
When you watch Detropia, you’re reminded of the horrific facts: The official unemployment rate is 30% but local leaders put it at 50%. The population has dropped from 1.85 million in the 1950s to 713,777 in 2010. A $12-billion deficit has led to a power-sharing deal with the state to avoid bankruptcy. Half its streetlights have been shut off. Fifteen bus lines have been cut. The FBI lists Detroit as the nation’s second most dangerous city. (Nearby Flint, Michigan, is first). And on and on and on…
But you get the facts about Detroit from the news. Through the movie Detropia, you see the despair. You see the ruins. And sometimes you need to see it—not to believe it, but to feel it. Detropia makes you feel it.
Detropia makes you feel the despair, the destruction, and the frustration of the people who love their home. Only a powerful movie can evoke the type of sadness I felt after watching Detropia. So why should you go see Detropia and be sad? Because the story playing out in Detroit is the same one being played out in many cities and states.
At its heart, Detropia is a love story. I know the director and producer Heidi Ewing’s family. They love Detroit. Her father was a successful businessman when the Detroit Big Three were known for what they made, not for being bailed out by the government. Heidi knows what it’s like to grow up in a family business.
Detropia is less about what led to the mess in Detroit. Detropia is about what’s left. I’m going to recommend Detropia to my dad and to you because it’s important that you see what Detropia feels like. But don’t just take my word for it:
“…a moving and powerful micro-portrait of a hurting nation…”
-INDIEWIRE
“The defeat of the middle class that has comprised the last decade of Detroit’s history. That painful story and its meaning for the rest of America is the subject of Detropia, an important, heartbreaking, and yet still occasionally hilarious documentary.”
-SLATE
“It’s elegiac, beautiful and quietly devastating.”
-NEW YORK MAGAZINE
“…Detropia succeeds in stoking our concern for a place most Americans have never visited.”
-THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
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This year’s NFL may be all about rushing defense. Of the 12 teams with the highest total yards allowed, 11 gave up over 100 yards on the ground. These dozen teams allowed an average of 141.75 yards rushing. The remaining 20 teams allowed an average of 72.55 yards rushing, and only four of them allowed over 100.
 Of the 12 teams with the greatest number of yards allowed on the ground, 75% lost. Of the 12 teams with the fewest yards allowed on the ground, 83% won. My hometown New England Patriots’ defense—led by nose tackle Vince Wilfork—was a great example of shutting down the run. The Pats allowed only 20 yards on the ground, stuffed the Tennessee Titans’ ground game, and went on to win.
The myth of the NFL becoming a passing league where the ground game means nothing should be put to bed. The first week of the 2012 season gives hope that it will be. Quite a shocker.
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 When the U.S. was preparing for war against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi (remember him?), we wrote, “Neither the U.S. Constitution nor facts on the ground support American military intervention in Libya.”
But the neocons drummed President Obama into implementing a “no-fly zone” over the country. As we have pointed out, “The Obama/Clinton team has flipped a match into a high-octane can of gas that will shortly explode in its face, with unpleasant results for Americans.” Then the U.S., along with its NATO allies, armed and supplied the rebels based in Benghazi with the aim of deposing Gaddafi and replacing him with a friendly regime. The allies succeeded, and Gaddafi is no more.
There were reports early and often of connections between Al Qaeda and the Libyan rebellion. Back In 2011, “Blowback” was certainly not a concept unknown to the mainstream, and the idea of blowback from our Libyan exercise should come as no surprise.
Fast-forward a year and a half: The U.S. ambassador to Libya, along with other members of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, has been killed. Al-Qaeda affiliates, armed in all likelihood with NATO-supplied weapons, stormed the U.S. embassy. The ambassador and his staff fled to a safe house in the city, where Al-Qaeda thugs slaughtered them before U.S. commandos could reach them. This entire attack was planned and disguised as a mock protest. Protesters don’t normally show up with AK-47s and RPGs. But the media is intensely focusing on the movie the protest was allegedly targeting, rather than on the violent actions of the terrorists.
There has been information suggesting for some time that American interests in Libya may be attacked to take revenge for the death of an al Qaeda chief, a native Libyan. According to CBS:
Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said there had been threats that Islamic militants might try to take revenge for the death of al Qaeda’s No. 2 commander Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in June, and he said the U.S. consulate should have been better protected.
Confirming al-Libi’s death for the first time in a video posted online Monday, al Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahri called on Muslims in al-Libi’s native Libya to take revenge for his death.
Perhaps this information was included in one of the intelligence briefings the president has missed during the last week while he was attending fundraisers and getting bear hugs from pizza chefs.
Rather than focusing on the massacre of Americans in a foreign land, the Obama administration has been jabbing Mitt Romney. As National Review points out, “Americans are murdered by Islamists, and sovereign American soil is violated, on the anniversary of September 11, and the first word from the administration to reach the world is an apology.”
When America sticks its nose into the business of other nations, it inevitably asks for retribution. Sometimes, as in the case of Libya, America even arms those seeking retribution. To avoid future foreign entanglements, America would be well served in taking the timeless advice from George Washington in his farewell address: Avoid Foreign Entanglements.
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Do Americans realize that the Fed is creating money out of thin air to fund $40 billion dollars A MONTH in mortgage-backed securities purchases? The Fed tells Americans that inflation is under control. Just look at the CPI says the Fed. Nope, wrong gauge. Look instead at the massive bubble in the stock and bond markets, the cratering $, the price of gold, and the strato prices of high-end New York condos! All out of sight. Inflation can take many forms and, with the worst job market in decades, the CPI is sure not the place to look when gauging inflation.
In my nearly five decades advising America’s small-business owners and conservative savers, today’s environment is the worst I have ever seen—by a long measure. The blame belongs squarely on the Marxist-influenced Obama administration and a complicit Fed. America’s bond rating stands poised for another cut. And President Obama wants four more years to continue his failed program of income redistribution and small-business destruction? I just don’t get it.
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