Today, Yahoo posted an article about President Obama's visit to Buffalo NY which can be found here at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts2049#mwpphu-container (until they take the article down so I have posted the article here for reference purposes...)
"I need a freakin' job." That's the message President Obama saw as he arrived in Buffalo, N.Y., this afternoon for an event talking up the administration's success in creating new jobs. He also pitched Congress on approving a $30 billion credit for small-business growth.
Yet critics say Obama has been focusing his recovery efforts too narrowly and hasn't done enough to help people find work. After all, the latest job figures show 9.9 percent of the country still out of work. That inspired a group of unemployed Buffalo residents — who also have a website called INAFJ.org — to appeal to the president in the form of a billboard along the route his motorcade took into town. A photo of the billboard is at the top of this page.
Yet jobs aren't a huge priority for either party heading into the midterm campaigns, as Politics Daily's Jill Lawrence notes. That might be because other issues have taken precedence. A new Gallup poll finds that for the first time in two months, the issue of "jobs" has fallen to No. 2 on the list of issues Americans are most concerned about. The new No. 1 issue: The economy in general. White House officials defend their efforts on jobs, saying the president has been focused as much on creating new jobs as on "saving" current positions.
But here's a sign the job seekers' message to the administration may be getting through: The White House just announced Obama will travel next Tuesday to Youngstown, Ohio — where unemployment hit 15.1 percent last month, the city's highest jobless rate in more than 15 years. The focus of Obama's visit: "jobs and the economy," according to the White House.
And a more direct sign still: Obama press aide Bill Burton was asked about the billboard in today's press gaggle. His reply was, "The President is here to talk about jobs, what his administration has done to create jobs, what we need to do in order to create an environment where small businesses can create jobs. So the answer is, we're on the path to creating more jobs, and we've got a lot more work to do."
If you are a user of Yahoo you are probably aware of all the nutjobs there that post some hideously ignorant and offensive responses to these articles and this one was no different with a lot of posts about how Obama is responsible for the unemployment situation in this country to which I posted the following response which Yahoo declined to post...
Let's see here... when your beloved Bush became President we had the largest surplus in the history of the United States and the rate of unemploment/underemployment was holding steady at 3,9 percent (or approximately 10.5 million people) - by the end of his FIRST term the rate had climbed to 5.2 percent, representing approximately 7.7 MILLION Americans. The manufacturing sector alone lost nearly 3 million jobs in Bush's first term in office. In fact, 20 states lost more than 20 percent of their manufacturing jobs during the fist four year of Bush's reign over this country (those states being Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alaska, Alabama, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,Maine and Rhode Island ( I think I got them all). In fact, only TWO states actually added jobs during that time period - North Dakota and Nevada. Of the remaining states, 8 had a loss of 10- 15 percent of manufacturing jobs (Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa and Kentucky), The remaining states all lost between 15 - 20 percent of manufacturing jobs - all under the watch of President Bush. Interestingly, the 7.7 million OFFICIALLY unemployed represent only 53 percent of US workers - approximately 13.6 million according to The Department of Labor Statistics - who are either unemployed, underemployed or have just plain given up on finding a job. A vast majority of those jobs weren't actually lost though - they were simply sent overseas to countries with less stringent (and sometimes non-existent) protection for workers or the environment. President Bush presided over the worst job growth in over 70 years just in his first term. Bush tore this country down in under 4 years with his poor management "skills" and yet Repukeagains want to lay the blame at Obama's feet. Obama has the unfortunate task of reassembling America and undoing all the messes that Bush left behind. Let me remind you that Bush's approval rate when he left office were the lowest (somewhere in the 30% range) - the lowest approval rating for any second term President since Harry Truman in 1951 and left office as the second most unpopular President in US history with only Richard Nixon ahead of him. So if you want your jobs back maybe you should consider knocking on Bush's door and ask him where your freaking job went (along with the huge surplus that would have kept our country solvent had Bush not felt the need to squander it all on an illegal war against a country that actually had nothing to do with 9/11 and to give handouts to his cronies companies (Enron? Halliburton?). But yea... sure... it's Obama's fault you ignorant bunch of pinheads.
Now, in as an aside to the article and my response I got to thinking about how a group of "unemployed" people were able to come up with the money for a billboard AND a semi-professional video. Obviously they didn't - they had help and I think we all know who is really behind this....
