Obama bus tour spin, Everyone but Obama to blame, Spend more money, The more Obama speaks the worse the markets perform

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed
–if all records told the same tale–then the lie passed into
history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the
Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.”…George Orwell, “1984″

From the LA Times August 18, 2011.

“Obama’s bus tour themes: Washington (not him) really screwed up and we should spend a lot more”

“President Obama did some real good talking the last few days out there in Iowa and Minnesota and Illinois. Well, he did a lot of talking anyway.

He made it sound as if he’s been living in Peosta or Atkinson himself, the way he went on about all the misbehavior going on back there in Washington, D.C., where he has lived since January of 2005 and, since January of 2009, at taxpayer expense in the White House.

The way he described those D.C. political shenanigans, who would want to spend $745 million of someone else’s money to get there? Or $1 billion more to stay there? Or pay $37.1 million of others’ money to 464 aides to help him work there.

Here are a few things said by the Democrat who just spent weeks negotiating spending cuts. See if this sounds like a chastened spender whose credit rating just got downgraded:

When folks tell you that we’ve got a choice between jobs now or dealing with our debt crisis, they’re wrong. They’re wrong. We can’t afford to just do one or the other. We’ve got to do both….

We’ve got over $2 trillion worth of repairs that need to be made around the country, and I know there are some right here in this county and right here in this state. And we’ve got a lot of construction workers that are out of work when the housing bubble went bust, and interest rates are low, and contractors are ready to come in on time, under budget — this is a great time for us to rebuild our roads and our bridges, and locks in the Mississippi, and our seaports and our airports….

I think to myself, you know what, if folks in Washington were carrying out their responsibilities the way you’re carrying out your responsibilities, we’d be just fine. We would be just fine. (Applause.)…

Of course, those folks in Washington including him are not in Washington. Congress is on recess, the same time-off Obama will begin today on another island vacation.”

Read more:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/08/obama-bus-canada.html

Obama’s rhetoric is doing a good job of calming financial market fears.

Stock Indexes

Dow 11,046.60 -363.62 -3.19%
S&P 500 1,149.37 -44.52 -3.73%
Nasdaq 2,411.45 -100.03 -3.98%

From the US Labor Dept. today.

In the week ending August 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 408,000, an increase of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 399,000.