It's Halftime in America So Let's Re-elect Obama

      Any question of how the GOP sees the recovery was confirmed by the hilarious reaction of the GOP to Clint Eastwood's commerical during the Super Bowl.

      Karl Rove declared he was deeply disappointed and that it shows what happens when the government gets involved with a business.

       The GOP is sure that Eastwood did this as a shill for the Obama administration. Limbaugh thinks Eastwood was an unwitting dupe.

       Eastwood explains that he did not do this for the Obama Administration but for the message of inspiring America about the new jobs, etc.

       Eastwood is indeed, not a Democrat and has been critical of Obama. In the past he has told us he votes Republican. Yet the GOP wants us to believe that they are not trying to tank the economy?

       That the better numbers, the latest in Friday's big beat in the jobs report isn't the worst news in the world for them? If you point to any positives in the US economy that makes you a shill for the administration even if you are a Republican who has never been an Obama fan.

      Here I can't help but think of Krugman's line about facts having a clear Keynesian bias. In this case evidently any positive development in the economy has a clear Obama bias.

       Of course the worst thing you can do in their eyes is praise the auto industry so that Eastwood was talking especially about Detroit is the unkindest cut of all for them. The fact is though that Obama chose to bailout Detroit while the GOP wanted to let it fail.

       Romney wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the very topic.  Now GM has gone back to being world's number one seller of autos.

      Spin it how you will. The GOP certainly ties itself into a pretzel trying to explain this. So now we heard that it sure is terrible that we have had an unemployment rate over 8% since 2008-before Obama was in office.

       Fact is that when the Republicans blame Obama for the 750,000 a monthi we were losing back in the first two months of his term it is wholly misleading and wrong. Yet at this point of the recovery even if you allow this for arguments sake, the unemployment is now lower for Obama than it was before he got in office.

      We always hear that if the unemployment rate is over 7.4% Obama is in trouble as no President since WWII has been re-elected with a rate that high. This ignores that this is the worst downturn since WWII. In the Depression FDR got re-elected a bunch of times with an elevated rate.

      Yet now who knows? We may hit that rate before November after all. It's halftime in American and we have retaken the lead.