Posted 6:52 PM by steve

When Bush took office, the Dow was at 10,500... when Obama opened the door to running for President, the Dow was at 12,100... when Obama was elected, the Dow was at 9,600... when Obama took office, the Dow was at 7,900... and today, the Dow closed at 7114... A drop of 41% since Obama all but decided to run and a drop of 26% since he was elected. If that ain't a lack of confidence (and remember, the stock market is nothing more and nothing less than a barometer of expectations for the future), I don't what is.

And per this report, half of the people who have lost their jobs during the recession have lost their jobs in the past three months (November, December and January)... which, coincidentally, just happens to match the time since Obama was elected. Obama wins election and pretty much the first thing employers do is start shedding jobs. Wow, not exactly a ringing endorsement of him and his policies, is it?

Reagan famously asked during a debate with Carter "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?". Well, at the rate we're going, who needs to wait four years to answer that question...

Sure hard to imagine that this is the kind of change 66 million people voted for, isn't it? Odd, they get the guy they want in the Oval Office and consumer confidence is near its all-time lows and 73% of Americans are scared about the way things are going right now? Don't they know they're supposed to be all gaga over what Obama is trying to do? Don't they have any confidence in him? Ahh, I think I answered my own question.

I wonder how many of those 66 million would still vote for him knowing that they're running scared and paying a huge financial price for the privilege of having voted for Obama? And I wonder how many would have voted for him if they knew that employers were going to throw 1.8 million people - as many in three months as during the previous 15+ months of the recession - out of work after hearing that Obama had won? Yes, you can argue that the two are not connected, that proximity does not equal causation, and notwithstanding that you would have argued otherwise if there was a GOP President, who wants to resort to having to argue that there would have been even more layoffs had Bush continued in office?

Businessweek has an article lauding Amazon for issuing refunds to people who didn't even buy something from Amazon. Yeah, it's one thing to issue a $50 credit, but if they were really good, Amazon would arrange for the country to return Obama (and get our money and jobs back).

There's a T-shirt that reads "My government is spending $790 Billion and all I got was this lousy t-shirt". Heck, I'd be thrilled if that was all I got instead of the 26% drop in the value of my investments... and a likely further drop in the value of my home.

And yes, go ahead and argue that McCain wouldn't have done any better. But for all you who voted for Obama and cried with joy when he won, comparing him to McCain is just the textbook example of 'the bigotry of soft expectations'.

And for Republicans, who not so long ago were really down, I wonder how many of them are unable to sleep because they're looking forward to November 2, 2010 more than a kid looks forward to Christmas? Stock market down, unemployment up, consumer confidence down, people scared... what more can a minority party ask for? I remember wondering in November 1994 who would have dared thinking that Clinton winning in 1992 - and beating a Bush - would have led to the GOP taking control of Congress just two years later... and as bad as the GOP felt this past November, there's definitely a sense of deja vu in the air...