Opinions Count, But Facts Are a Better Candidate Evaluation Tool

Liberals from both parties are now claiming moderate center ground.  That typically means that they are socially liberal, but fiscally conservative, hence in the middle, enjoying the best of both worlds come election time.

    In public, however, the moderates pose as statistics-driven management types who have freed themselves from fanatics who cling to religion, values, and tradition.  Perhaps the easiest way to assess candidates  who claim no ideological “bias” is to look at their voting records and other “facts” that are locked-in and can’t be distorted.

     Do facts really matter to those who are emotionally committed to a particular opinion?  Sure, statistics can be distorted to almost make black look the white.  But in “15 Facts That Even Obama’s Biggest Supporters Should Be Able To Admit Are True,” John Hawkins outlines 15 facts about the current administration that both Republicans and Democrats have already agreed upon:

1) Real median household income is down $4300 since Obama took office

2) The percentage of unemployed workers who’ve been out of a job for more than a year is over 30%.

3) The country has had the longest streak of +8% unemployment since the Depression under Obama: 39 months and counting

4) In 2011 under Barack Obama, nearly one out of every seven Americans was on food stamps. That’s a 70 percent increase from 2007.

5) Fifty percent of new college graduates are underemployed or unemployed.

6) U.S. home ownership is at a decade long low. So is the number of Americans who say their home is worth more than they paid for it. Home prices are the lowest they’ve been since 2002.

7) Barack Obama ended NASA’s manned space program.

8) Going into this election cycle, Barack Obama had raised more money from Wall Street than any President in history. He has also raised more money from Wall Street than all of the GOP presidential contenders combined in this election cycle.

9) Under Barack Obama’s leadership, the last time Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats passed a budget was April 9, 2009.

10) Barack Obama’s budget was defeated 414-0 in the House and 99-0 in the Senate.

11) When he was running for President in 2008, Barack Obama pledged not to raise taxes on families making less than 250,000 dollars per year. He broke that promise with the tanning salon tax and with Obamacare, which raises almost 500 billion dollars in new taxes, a significant portion of which would be paid by people making less than 250,000 dollars per year.

 12) When Barack Obama took office, gas was $1.95 per gallon. Today gas is $3.72 per gallon.

13) In February of this year, the federal government had a 229 billion dollar deficit. That was the largest deficit in the history of the United States.

14) America lost its AAA credit rating (which it had held since 1917) on Obama’s watch despite the fact that Timothy Geithner publicly said there was “no risk” of that happening.

15) Barack Obama added more to the debt in just 38 months than George Bush did in two full terms as President.