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The U.S. debt ceiling crisis had an unnecessary negative impact on the economy, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday, while a congressional impasse over aviation could cost the government $1 billion in lost revenues. Obama signed legislation into law on Tuesday that would raise the U.S. debt ceiling and cut spending, averting a default hours before a deadline. "The economy is still weakened, partly because of some things we couldn't control like the Japanese earthquake and the situation in Europe as well as the Arab Spring and its effect on oil prices," Obama told reporters at the White House at...

During the 2008 campaign Barack Obama ran more against lame-duck President Bush than against his Republican opponent, John McCain. The campaign is now long over, and yet President Obama still seems haunted by the ghost of his predecessor. Last week, for example, he was railing at the Bush phantom, whom he blamed for his received economic mess. In the world of Barack Obama everything he inherited was someone else’s fault — unless he believes past policies offer him some advantage and thus are to be claimed as entirely his own. The stock market is sliding. Gas and food prices are...

President Obama is pointing to problems in Japan and Europe as challenges for the U.S. economy, placing some blame on events abroad for a domestic recovery that is showing signs of slowing down. Photo by: Pete Souza Government data released Friday showed employers in May hired the fewest number of workers in eight months and U.S. unemployment rose to 9.1 percent, up from 9.0 percent in April. That bump is a political challenge for the president, whose re-election in 2012 may depend on his ability to convince voters that his economic policies have been successful. Part of his pitch will...

"He has never been rejected in his life, and I think there's something -- I'm not qualified to diagnose him -- but there's something wrong with a guy that is s going to go out of his way to do all these things..." "...he is incredibly arrogant and he really believes that he can talk anybody out of anything."

Last week the president gave a speech on the deficit, rightly trying to convince Americans that it is now beyond unsustainable. Yet his theme was that the Republicans’ attempts to reduce it were cold-hearted, endangering the most vulnerable among us, such as those with Down’s Syndrome, while protecting the proverbial “rich” from commensurate sacrifice. Let us, then, look at Obama, and the context of his speech, as a doctor might a patient. Symptoms of the Illness a) Obama just introduced a $3.5 trillion dollar budget with a $1.6 annual deficit — both record numbers. (If worried about debt, why then...

In his Friday press conference to discuss gas prices, President Obama was rather defensive, straining to counter the notion that his administration has been unfriendly to oil drilling, something most people would like to see a lot more of these days. Where do people get that notion? Perhaps his Interior Department appealing a judge’s ruling that it act on several pending deepwater permits had something to with it. Obama claimed repeatedly that he is not against drilling, then made the following comments:

President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night symbolically kicked off the 2012 Presidential campaign. I tuned in with what psychiatrists call a “third ear”—listening to myself listening, polling my gut for when it alerted me to true or false notes. In my office, it is this “third ear” that allows me to ask questions that get past a person’s more superficial stories, to the heart of that person. In other words, I was paying as much attention to whether I sensed the President believed what he was saying, as to whether I agreed with what he was...

PROVO – Did unreported factors contribute to the demise of Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign? How did the news media cover the 1967-68 presidential campaign of his father, George Romney? Two research projects presented to an audience of more than 100 people at BYU's Mormon Media Studies Symposium recently compared the two Romneys' campaigns. BYU professors John Gee and Louis C. Midgley titled their paper, "Under the Media's Nose: Overlooked Factors Undermining the Presidential Campaign of Mitt Romney.

From President Obama’s press conference, a bit of self-righteous straw-man creation followed by blaming others: Q: How have you changed Washington? THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’ll tell you how we’ve changed Washington. Prior to us getting here, as I indicated before, you had a set of policies that were skewed toward special interests, skewed towards the most powerful, and ordinary families out there were being left behind. And since we’ve gotten here, whether it’s making sure that folks who can’t get health insurance because of preexisting condition can now get health insurance, or children who didn’t have coverage now have coverage;...

<p>While President Obama vacationed in Martha's Vineyard, the Oval Office got a makeover, but one quote on the new carpet is wrongly attributed.</p>

President Obama's administration recently submitted a report to the United Nations on human rights in America. The 29-page report shows the nation badly flawed but fortunate to have a Nobel Prize winner as its leader. The report is billed as "a partial snapshot of the current human rights situation in the United States, including some of the areas where problems persist in our society." Among the nation's shortcomings listed in the report: » Arizona has dared to try to enforce immigration laws that the federal government will not. But don't worry, Obama is suing them. » We incarcerate dangerous terrorists...

In his weekly radio and internet address, President Barack Obama once again lashed out at corporate America, foreign corporations, Wall Street banks, Republicans; virtually anyone who dare speak out against him. Instead of changing course from the failed policies that have pushed unemployment high and economic indicators low, Mr. Obama is seeking to stem the tidal wave of rejection heading his way in November by blunting the impact of his critics.

Eleanor Clift: Obama's Poll Numbers Down Because He Hasn't Blamed Bush Enough By Noel Sheppard Created 07/14/2010 - 11:19 After the release of a number of polls Tuesday showing President Obama's favorability rating plummeting, his minions in the media were out in force trying to blame the slide on something or someone else. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, ever the dutiful shill always at a Democrat's service when the chips are down, took [1] a predictably absurd tack: Obama hasn't blamed George W. Bush enough for all that ails the nation. "Obama hasn’t done as good a job as Reagan of blaming...

Barack Obama seems to have a pattern of using ceremonial or stately events as opportunities to ambush and humiliate people. This behavior is unpresidential and reveals a vindictive streak that makes Richard Nixon look like Mister Rogers. A few examples of Obama's taking pleasure in administering public pain to others: During the State of the Union Address, he chose to direct his ire at the justices of the Supreme Court, located in the front rows. After the Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of the First Amendment regarding political speech, Barack Obama famously chose to dress down the black-clad...

If you want to know what makes President Barack Obama tick, take a look at his explanation for why Israelis have turned against him. During an interview with Israel’s Channel Two, Obama was asked why he thinks Israelis mistrust him. “Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein,” he told the interviewer, “and that creates suspicion. Some of it may have to do with the fact that I have actively reached out to the Muslim community, and I think that sometimes — particularly in the Middle East — there’s the feeling of the friend...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama and congressional Republicans went to war yesterday over extending unemployment benefits for millions of out-of-work Americans. "It's time to stop holding workers laid off in this recession hostage to Washington politics," Obama said. "It's time to do what's right, not for the next election, but for the middle class." Obama's hot rhetoric in the Rose Garden sought to divert voters' anger over the sputtering economy to Senate Republicans, who don't want the government to borrow $34 billion for another extension of benefits. Republicans support extending jobless benefits only if the bill is paid for, which goes...

President Obama on Thursday labeled the recession a result of "a decade of irresponsibility" that he inherited, continuing his strategy of trying to frame this fall's congressional elections as a choice between Bush-era policies and his own. "For the better part of 10 years, folks faced stagnant incomes, skyrocketing health care costs and tuition bills, and declining economic security," Mr. Obama said in a speech at a Kansas City, Mo., electric vehicle plant. "It was in the middle of this crisis that my administration walked through the door." Though unemployment still hovers just below 10 percent, Mr. Obama said his...

WASHINGTON - President Obama suggested Thursday that his Muslim middle name - Hussein - makes a lot of Israelis nervous about his commitment to the Jewish state. When asked by an Israeli interviewer why many Israelis are "anxious about you," and "feel like you don't have a special connection to Israel," Obama said, "Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is 'Hussein,' and that creates suspicion." Obama told Israel's Channel 2 TV that apprehension about his name among Israelis could be eased if they checked the roster of his top aides. "Ironically, I've got a...

U.S. President Barack Obama told Channel 2 News on Wednesday that he believed Israel would not try to surprise the U.S. with a unilateral attack on Iran. In an interview aired Thursday evening, Obama was asked whether he was concerned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to attack Iran without clearing the move with the U.S., to which the president replied "I think the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other, but we try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern."

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