President  Barack Hussein Obama (peace be unto him) went off-script at a pep rally for labor union members in Milwaukee yesterday.

Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time and they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, but it’s true.

 

Not very presidential, huh?

After Scooter listed his self-approved accomplishments, He went on to blame those wascally wepublicans for his horrible economic policies: 

To steal a line from our old friend, Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women that they find so offensive?

Excuse me, Mr. President.  That 9.6 % unemployment number is your responsibility.

When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off, they said “no” to that, too. In fact, the Republican who’s already planning to take over as Speaker of the House dismissed them as “government jobs” that weren’t worth saving. Not worth saving? These are the people who teach our kids. Who keep our streets safe. Who put their lives on the line for our own. I don’t know about you, but I think those jobs are worth saving.

We made sure that bill wouldn’t add to the deficit, either. (We’ve heard that before.)  We paid for it by finally closing a ridiculous tax loophole that actually rewarded corporations for shipping jobs and profits overseas. It let them write off the taxes they pay foreign governments – even when they don’t pay taxes here. How do you like that – middle class families footing tax breaks for corporations that create jobs somewhere else! Even a lot of America’s biggest corporations agreed the loophole should be closed, that it wasn’t fair – but the man with the plan to be Speaker is already aiming to open it up again.

Bottom line is, these guys refuse to give up on the economic philosophy they peddled for most of the last decade. You know that philosophy: you cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; you cut rules for special interests; you cut working folks like you loose to fend for yourselves. They called it the ownership society. What it really boiled down to was: if you couldn’t find a job, or afford college, or got dropped by your insurance company – you’re on your own.

Well, that philosophy didn’t work out so well for working folks. It didn’t work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

I’m not bringing this up to re-litigate the past;  (No, you’re bringing it up to pass the buck.) I’m bringing it up because I don’t want to re-live the past. It would be one thing if Republicans in Washington had new ideas or policies to offer; if they said, you know, we’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ll do things differently this time. But that’s not what they’re doing. When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.

When it comes to just about everything we’ve done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no. Even where we usually agree, they say no. They think it’s better to score political points before an election than actually solve problems. So they said no to help for small businesses. No to middle-class tax cuts. No to unemployment insurance. No to clean energy jobs. No to making college affordable. No to reforming Wall Street. Even as we speak, these guys are saying no to cutting more taxes for small business owners. I mean, come on! Remember when our campaign slogan was “Yes We Can?” These guys are running on “No, We Can’t,” and proud of it. Really inspiring, huh?

Inspiring?  Project much?

I thought this was supposed to be a Presidential Labor Day address on the economy, designed to motivate Americans, not a whiny pity party in front of a hand-picked bunch of labor union sycophants. 

According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, the unemployment rate was at 4.6 percent back in January of 2007, when Democrats took control of the House and Senate. Now, a little over 3 and 1/2 years later, unemployment stands at 9.6 %, over eight million jobs have been lost, and under-employment is higher than its ever been.
 
From 2002-2007, Republican-written budgets grew an average of 6.6 percent on a year-over-year basis.  Because of that,  Americans threw Republicans out on their backsides in November of 2006.

However, the worse was yet to come.  Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took those spending levels from an average of 6.6 percent to 11 percent year-over-year growth. Spending is now so out of control that for the first time in forty years, Congress has refused to put forward a budget for FY2011. So not only were the Democrats driving the car into the ditch, but it also appears that Reid and Pelosi decided to perform a Thelma and Louise imitation and drive the car off a cliff.

The immature display that the petulant president put on yesterday did nothing to endear himself to the American people as a whole and, more specifically, those Democrats who are running for office in the Midterm Elections.  His Labor Day speech did nothing to raise the hopes of Americans, who are struggling to survive the worst economy in decades.  And you had better believe that Democratic candidates will be distancing themselves from this administration and their Congressional leaders at an even faster rate than they have been.

America is looking for a leader and this guy’s still campaigning…for himself.