The Obama economy is starting to sink in, and it is not pretty:

In all fairness, Obama legitimately did "inherit" a panoply of problems. But the Obama stimulus, Obama cap and trade, Obama socialized health care, and all sorts of other Obama plans are not helping. They are impeding recovery and growth, in fact.

Eventually, the excuse, "I inherited this mess" wears thin. Obama is already wearing it thin with Americans. Eventually, some of his allies in the press will begin to feel like abused girlfriends and leave him, as well.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Energy Industry Under Attack.

Democrats are rampaging through Congress and working their hardest to ruin America's oil and gas industry.

API has the scary numbers:

WASHINGTON, June 9, 2009 - U.S. oil and natural gas production would drop significantly if Congress passes legislation to place additional federal regulations on the use of a widely used well-completion technique known as hydraulic fracturing, according to a new study. Jobs could be lost, government revenues would fall and the U.S. would be less energy secure.

If Congress were to place additional federal regulations on top of the state and local regulations that govern the oil and gas industry practice of hydraulic fracturing,the number of new U.S. wells drilled would plummet 20.5 percent over a five-year period, IHS Global Insight’s study, “Measuring the Economics and Energy Impacts of Proposals to Regulate Hydraulic Fracturing,” found. Lower development activity would potentially reduce natural gas production by about 10 percent from 2008 levels by 2014, and leave the United States more reliant on imported sources of natural gas and oil.

“Hydraulic fracturing is a safe, proven, 50-year-old technology that is critical to developing the natural gas used to heat homes, generate electricity, and create basic materials for fertilizers and plastics,” said API President Jack Gerard. “More than one million wells have been completed using this technology. Unnecessary regulation of this practice would only hurt the nation’s energy security and threaten our economy.”

Additional restrictions on use of types of hydraulic fracturing fluids would cause an even more dramatic decrease in production of both natural gas and of oil, the report found. By 2014, gas production could fall 4.4 Tcf or 22 percent, while oil production could slip 400,000 barrels per day or 8 percent.

Elimination of the use of hydraulic fracturing would be catastrophic to the development of American natural gas and oil, with a 79 percent drop in well completions, resulting in a 45 percent reduction in natural gas production and a 17 percent reduction in oil production by 2014, the study found.

The intentions are typically good, but not always. A lot of this is not even just environmentalism. It's spiteful, punitive anti-oil/gas-ism.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Democrats Are Super Liberal & Everyone Knows It.

Americans view Democrats as entirely too liberal:

The worm has turned. Or is turning. The shine is coming off of Obama. Republicans are not exactly surging yet, but people are done with the Democrats.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Carbon Dioxide.

Today's Trivia Tidbit is a blatant rip-off of a post made a couple months back:

Crazy.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Cap & Trade & Construction.

Cap and trade would harm our economy in a big way. It is a ginormous tax:

Why was this even on the agenda? And how in the world did this ever pass the House? We need to move this country back toward fiscal sanity. We also need our Republicans to stand up and speak out on this issue. Offering no comment-- or, worse, voting with the Democrats-- just doesn't cut it.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Cap & Trade & The Chemical Industry.

Cap and trade may create a few "green jobs" over the next few years, but it will destroy a lot of other jobs. Especially over the long-run:

Cap and trade would be an incredibly huge tax on every person in the United States, and it would absolutely wreck many of our industries.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's Polling Implosion.

This drew a video response based on a post I made here in February of 2005.

Thanks for the video response.

In February of 2005, my purely nuts-and-bolts political numbers analysis was entirely accurate. KBH was a juggernaut. Her poll numbers were off the charts. She was beloved by Texans. Note that my 2005 post was not an endorsement, just a bit of amateur punditry. Pretty good amateur punditry, I might add. I mean, look at those cheerleading photos. That's good stuff right there.

Since 2005, things have changed. KBH lost my trust for a variety of reasons (outlined in scattered posts on this blog), while Rick Perry earned it. There was a day in 2006, when I block-walked with Rick Perry and other Republican volunteers, when something just clicked: "this guy just gets it." Thinking back to my encounters over the years with Senator Hutchison, she always struck me as a very nice lady, but also very "overly-handled" and far from a true believer in the conservative movement.

Based on the polling trends in recent months (as seen in the "free fallin'" video), other Texas Republicans are now seeing the same thing I saw. KBH's polling implosion in 2009 is nothing short of spectacular. Her former air of inevitability is officially gone, and for good reason.

Thanks for taking an interest in what I had to say 4 years ago on my blog, though. I believe in the open exchange of ideas, so hopefully this interface will get people discussing even more just how incredibly far KBH has fallen in such a short period of time.

BTW, I tried to post a comment on your YouTube page, but it didn't show up for whatever reason.

Back in January, I signed on with Governor Rick Perry, because he just "gets it" on so many levels. Not only is Perry the clear conservative in the 2010 gubernatorial race in Texas, his likely opponent, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, has increasingly rubbed me the wrong way in recent years with her obscene earmarking, her incessant desire to be liked by the establishment left-wing media, and her penchant for big government programs (such as her prominent support for the expansion of CHIP from a safety net into a new middle class entitlement, her insistence on UI expansion, and-- of course-- her bailout votes).

When I signed on to help out Rick Perry's campaign, the few polls that were out there generally showed KBH far ahead, sometimes by as many as 20 or 25 points.

How accurate those polls were, I don't know. How accurate yesterday's Texas Lyceum poll showing Governor Perry up by 12 points is-- again-- I don't know. But there is a very clear trend over the past few months away from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison:

In public polls, KBH went from 25 points up, to 6 points up, to 4 points down, to 12 points down. Each month, it has just gotten worse for her. A visual of those margins:

Senator Hutchison is just plain out-of-touch with Texas. I think more people would be willing to accept her argument that it's her turn if: a) Texas weren't kicking so much tail right now compared to the rest of the country, and b) KBH weren't so squishy and hard to read on so many issues, including protecting life.

Poll numbers are not everything, though. If you're inclined to contribute some cash to help Governor Perry win in 2010, check out my personal Perry fundraising page.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Welfare States.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton triangulatorially signed GOP welfare reform and declared the "end of welfare as we know it."

Welfare as we know it may be back.

It is on the rise in most of the country:

Welfare rolls, which were slow to rise and actually fell in many states early in the recession, now are climbing across the country for the first time since President Bill Clinton signed legislation pledging "to end welfare as we know it" more than a decade ago.

Twenty-three of the 30 largest states, which account for more than 88% of the nation's total population, see welfare caseloads above year-ago levels, according to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and the National Conference of State Legislatures. As more people run out of unemployment compensation, many are turning to welfare as a stopgap.

The biggest increases are in states with some of the worst jobless rates. Oregon's count was up 27% in May from a year earlier; South Carolina's climbed 23% and California's 10% between March 2009 and March 2008. A few big states that had seen declining welfare caseloads just a few months ago now are seeing increases: New York is up 1.2%, Illinois 3% and Wisconsin 3.9%. Welfare rolls in a few big states, Michigan and New Jersey among them, still are declining.

But not in Texas:

Texas is not a welfare state.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Liberty Not Upheld By Liberalism.

Liberalism, in the classical sense, includes a deep respect for liberty. Today, liberty is under fire from modern liberalism. As I noted in a blog post a few weeks ago, more liberal states are less free than more conservative states, based on the 2004 presidential vote:

Modern-day liberals who seek to portray Republican states as backward and oppressive have it all wrong. Note that this study is based on many criteria:

Libertarians should not vote for Democrats. Republican-leaning states have more liberty-- and not just economic liberty-- than Democrat-dominated states.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: The American People Aren't THAT In Love With Obama.

During the Bush administration, establishment media figures would justify their extremely biased coverage of the Bush administration by saying, "well, look at the polls, we're just reflecting the national mood."

With Obama, the press treatment alternates between rock star tabloid celeb and a sort of fawning infantile goo-gooing that you might get at age two from your favorite aunt. It goes from, "wow, he's so cool and hip! Tony Hawk skated through the White House!" to "oh, look, he took his first step! Aww!"

Personal likeability and popularity only go so far, when it turns out the President's policies are a bipolar back-and-forth that awkwardly transition from far left-wing philosophy to aimless in-over-their-heads incompetence-- and back again.

Polls are beginning to show serious cracks in the Obama is the greatest new thing since sliced bread narrative:

Voters are also remembering why they can't trust Democrats, and I think there are plenty of elected Republicans who have learned their lessons-- conservative voters (we're a big plurality) don't want RINOs and Democrat-lite "moderates," we want real conservatives.

The collective liberal establishment press still treats Obama like we're at that blue star, not the red star. When will their press coverage begin reflecting the national mood? Americans may think Obama's personal story is a neat tale that could only happen in this country, but buyer's remorse has also begun spread in a big way. We don't want higher taxes-- they are already too high as it is. We don't want socialized health care. We don't want cap and trade. We don't want unions running our country. We don't want the kind of bad ideas that have ruined California, Michigan, and Rhode Island to be forced on relatively successful places like Texas.

Just leave us alone on the policy side and stick to your Tony Hawk tweeting sessions and your Us Weekly photo shoots.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Some Cities Are Doing Better Than Others.

Brookings released a study this week showing that although the global recession affects all of us, not all cities are facing the recession alike:

Note that Texas cities are all among the top group. There seems to be a correlation between ideology and relative success or failure. The best cities are not in deep blue territory, they are in places where taxes are lower, regulation is not as onerous, trial lawyers are not running amok, unions are not in charge, and government is relatively limited.

Why are we taking those policies from California and the upper-midwest and forcing them on places that held out with positive growth the longest? It is the definition of insanity.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Charitable Giving.

A neat graph, courtesy of The Patriot Room:

Nobody should feel guilty for not contributing to charitable entities, but it is interesting and discordant that liberals are so interested in compelling people to give up more of their income with the force of law, while generally not taking part in much voluntary giving.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Cap & Trade.

Some interesting numbers on which states have the best business climates right now:

What puts Texas first? It has a pro-business tax climate that ranks third, a low cost of living, a relatively solid economy, and a litigation environment that ranks 10th on our list. Texas also ranks first in the number of Fortune 500 companies located there. We used the Fortune rankings as one measure of attractiveness to large companies and an indication of strong infrastructure.

I don't necessarily agree with 100% of the methodology, and if I were creating a matrix with lots of measurements of business opportunity, I might include several more items, but it is still instructive and interesting. My hunch is that Texas would be in the top 5 in just about any credible measure of economic opportunity and success right now. That wasn't always the case, and Texas' prowess has accelerated notably over the past several years.

Only a left-wing partisan hack or a RINO Senator desperate to run down the state of the state in order to become Governor would say otherwise.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Cap & Trade.

Cap and trade is not just about sticking it to "big oil" or people with sprawling mansions, it will impact every facet of our lives. It will fuel inflation, and harm economic growth.

Food prices will also go through the roof with cap and trade:

• The cost of producing everything from wheat to beef will increase. Indeed, the price deflator for private farm inventories goes up over 20 points by 2035. This increase gets quickly translated into much higher food prices for consumers at the grocery stores.

Cap and trade should really be called "quota and tax." It is a big step toward more government control of our lives and more government intervention in the economy.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Congress Ruining America.