President Obama's cry for help in a feeble campaign speech to a joint session of Congress probably hurt him politically more than it helped him. It will do nothing for the American economy.

What a disgraceful pander to public sector and construction unions. How empty can a presidential suit look and sound? Now we've see and heard one of the weakest and most self serving speeches a president has ever delivered in an appearance before Congress.

My quick reaction to the GOP debate tonight is that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry didn't hurt or help themsleves. They both turned in smart, slick and flawless performances. Jon Huntsman's defense of Al Gore's global warming alarmism in the name of appealing to gullible Goreans was the biggest fumble of the night. He's toast.

Whether Perry's strong statements that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and needs to be fixed and that education and health care in Texas are performing as they should have added to or substracted from his popularity remains to be seen.

The questions by NBC's Brian Williams and Politico's Harris were pointed and tough. Williams put forth the left wing views of NBC and MSNBC and even argued with some of the candidates, but they didn't back down. 

Gottcha questions didn't get anyone on the stage. 

I think everyone performed very well. That means that I don't think anyone will gain much in the polls as a result of tonight's peformances.

Everyone on the stage was more articulate and wiser than President Obama ever has been, I think.

Gov. Perry gets the first question. Dodges question about education in Texas.

Perry looks and sounds strong.

Williams hits Romney on MA employment record.

Romney hits it out of the ball park.

Asked about Bain, buys companies, strips them and sells them.

Romney hits that one out. We added 10s of thousands of jobs. Experience in succeeding and failing is what gives him experience needed to turn economy around. Good replies. 

Time for Perry rebuttal.

Perry attacks Romney's job record as gov. i Mass.

Romney says wait a second. 

Texas has oil and gas, zero income taxes. Perry didn't create those things. Takes on Perry strongly and with humor.

Perry and Romney in great dust up that makes both look good.

Santorum: I've done things. Sounds as good as Perry and Romney on tax record. Will get Democratic votes.

Cain: Eliminate current tax code. Refers to his plan. His 9, 9, 9% plan. It makes no sense.  Sounds authoritative, if misinformed.

Is China currency manipulator?

Huntsman. Romney doesn't get that what will fix the relationship is fixing our core at home. Now is not the time to enter a trade war. Recalls Reagan trip to China. Offers governors: we were number one job creator.  Attacks Romney on being 47th. He's swinging for the fences. Promotes his foreign experience.

For Bachmann: Wanting less regulation? Which prohibitive to her small business. Bachmann attacks ObamCare. Leading small business owners say its cutting jobs. ObamaCare is killing jobs. 47% of African American kids without jobs. 

For Paul. Absolutist in opposing roles of Fed government. Does this include making cars, medicine and air travel safe? Paul: I don't believe any these fed regs. Need regs of the free market. If need regs, do it at state level. 

Williams argues with Paul over regs: FDA doesn't do a good job. Lobbyists from drug industry has control of writing the regulations. Paul gets applause.

Gingrich: In intro to Fed UP, Gingrich praised Perry. Talks about his career in House. Attacks Obama.

Harris asks question about health care, plays Romney clip: Said what he did in Mass was great opportunity for the rest of the Country. 

Perry says MA shows individual mandate won't work.

Romney: He will put out waiver to ObamaCare for all 50 states. Mass was different from other states. People were cheating and free riding the system. What Obama put in place isnn't going to work and it's massive expensive.

Perry: 25% of Texans don't have insurance. Texans don't want what MA have. Medicaid needs to be block granted back to the states. Get Feds out of our biz when it comes to healthcare. Will deliver better and more cost effective care.

Why so many uninsured? Perry: Asked Feds for flexibility. Feds won't give them. States can do a better job of delivering health care.

Huntsman on mandate: Mandates wrong. Talk about individual responsibility. Utah did better than Rick and we don't have a mandate. Once ObamaCare is repealed what we do now. Utah perfect example. Huntsman is looking good.

Bachmann: ObamaCare took over 1/6th of economy. Need strong, bold leader to overturn ObamaCare, not just executive order. Says need 13 more GOP senators to repeal ObamaCare. False promise.

Gingrich: I'm not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other. Every person understands ObamaCare is a disaster. Lots of applause. Great statement. Gingrich says he will repudiate every effort of media to protect Obama.

Cain: Individual mandate to buy something is not right at state or at Federal level. Pass patient centered care. Allow assn. health plans. He's better informed and briefed than a few weeks ago.

Hits Santorum as Catholic and on the issue on the poor. Santorum hits it back saying he worked for the poor. We changed the welfare system because it was punishing people. Great answer. Not phased by a pointed question.

Williams on wealth gap between whites and blacks. Perry doesn't answer. We need to create a strong economy for all. Create environment that encourages small business owners to invest in new businesses.

Twitter questions:

4 Romney: Can a president do anything about gas prices? Romney we can stop spending outside the country. Good riff on energy policy. We can become energy secure and create jobs. Attacks Obama energy policies.He's strangling America's economy. Let's have real jobs.

Bachmann: If gov pulled back on regs could see another 1.2 million jobs. Good strong answer.

Huntsman: President can't dictate gas prices. Presidential leadership manners. Tells Obama to get in front of the teleprompter and speak from the heart. We need a president that will provide leadershiop. Another good response.

Paul: Getting rid of minimum wage would be good for workers. Turns to health care. Perry supported HillaryCare. Isn't Medicare a mandate? Everything we do is a mandate.

Perry: Supported Reagan in '76 and all along and all his issues and his programs. But in the 1980s we spent too much and taxed too much. It was not all that great. Huge deficits during the 80s.

Perry handles Social Security question. Calls it a Ponzi scheme. A lie.

Karl has been over the top for a long time in someof his remarks. If Cheney or anyone else says SS is sound, that is just a like. We know that,  the American people know that.

Harris: Dems itching to use that language against Republicans. Romney, funding isn't the issue. SS is not a failure for those living on SS. Our nominee can't be committed to abolishing but saving SS. I will make sure that we make it financially secure. It is working for millions of Americans and I will keep it working. Good answer.

Perry: American people expect results. Maybe it's time to have provacative language.

Cain: SS needs fiing. Chilean model. Give younger people a choice and over time eliminate the broken system we have. 

Paul: About Perry's record in pushing for bail out money for illegals. HIV. Paul says Perry much less conservatie than he says. HIV vaccine not good medicine or policy. Not a good process. Executive order. Legislature overwhelming lly repealed. I will not use executive orders to write law.

Bachmann: Parents need to make that decision. That is just plain wrong on her part. Takes that to education. Says parents must control educaton. Wants no Fed gov. in education.

Perry: Facts. There was an opt out. Admits he didn't handle it right. I always will error on side of saving lives.

Santorum: Dept. of Homeland Security. Explains his vote.  Attacks Perry on HIV and parental rights. What about opt in v opt out. 

Romney: Believes in parental rights. Perry would like to do it differentlly. Give him a Mulligan. I think his heart was in right place. People on stage love America. President has to go. He doesn't have a clue on how to get this coiuntry working again.  Slick.

Gingrich: D Homeland Security. There are people want to kill us. Need capacity to respond to attacks.

Paul: Airlines are responsible for their passengers and cargos. TSA monstrosity. Sexual abuse. Airlines could do it. 9/11 setup by gov regs that told airline employes to not resist.

Brian Williams argues for FEMA and federal aid. What happens without FEMA. We should never have had it. Govt. is broke. I worked real hard to make FEMA work. $20 bill year for air conditionin Afghanistan. Bring that home for FEMA.

Cantor says money for FEMA should come out of other spending in govt. Cain Don 't eliminate FEMA.

The federal govt is not good at micromanaging any thing, Cain says.

Huntsman: Need Homeland Security Dept. that really works. Why spend all of this time on the smaller issues?

14 million unemployed. Huntsman, asks people to look how get country back on its feet.  Touts his econ record in UT. 

We've got to get back in the game as a country, Huntsman says.

Williams attacks Perry on education  and his education budgets. Perry: made thoughtful reductions. Texas grad rates up to 84%. Our 4th & 8th graders highest in country. With illegals, unique situation in TX. We will continue to have one of the finest workforces in the coiuntry when CAT, etc.. moving to the state.

Gingrich: On educations. Promotes charter schools. In favor of school choice. public or private. Will never reform bureaucracy. 

Hispanic questioner. On immigration reform.

What would make the border secure. Perry, need boots on ground. Had request for 1,000 and working for 3,000. Need drones. You can secure the border. Then have a discussion about reform.  Attacks Obama comments that safe on the border. 

Romney: We ought to have a fence. Need enough agents to secure. Regulate employers. Sanctuary cities. They have to be stopped. Turn off that magnet. We can't talk about amnesty. Let 7 million who are waitinh to dome in legally.

Gingrich: Reagan signed amnesty with understanding that control border. Outsource to credit card companies so no counterfeiting. Have to find a way to deal with people who've been here 25 years and have kids.

Santorum. Kid of immigrant. Irrelevant. Filibusters. This is not the 1920s, Senator. Promotes people cominghere legally. Can't discuss what to do with people who are here until secure the border.

If a fence, border secure, gas $2, what do with 11 million people here. Bachmann. In Mexico dealing with terrorists. Can't yield our sovereignity to Mexico. Can do that. Hispanic American community wants us to stop giving subsidies for illegals. What do with 11 million depends on the people. Bachmann hits problem out of park.

Cain: secure bofder, promote current path to citizenship, empower states to enforce the laws.

Huntsman: Agrees with other comments. It's a human issue. Has 2 daughters who immigrated legally. Our legal immigration system is broken. 

Paul: Remove incentives---citizenship, free health care, free education. The drug war driven by our drug laws. Fences and troops not the American way. The fence business will be used against us and keep us in.

Just lost a bunch of copy. 

Barack Obama is turning out to the president I thought he would be: Weak, rolled, self-interested, untrusted and wrong for America. The Atlantic's blog summarizes three polls that were released Tuesday.

Mitt Romney introduced his economic reform plan today in USAToday. The 59 points follow:

Colorado is one of the seven "super swing states" that President Obama and his Republican opponent will fight over in next year's presidential election, says Larry J. Sabato.

So we'll see much more of the candidates than most other states between now and November 2012.

In 2010, Ken Buck and Tom Tancredo proved that social issue radicals like Perry can't win Colorado. Three smart, good government Republicans---Walker Stapleton, John Suthers and Scott Gessler, won the other three statewide races. State Treasurer Stapleton, Attorney General Suthers and former Gov. Bill Owens are supporting Romney.  
 
That tells you who the successful politicians think will win in 2012.

Every Friday, Jennifer Rubin, the Right Turn blogger on the Washington Post web site, asks her readers a question. On Sundays, she picks one or two answers posted by commenters on her blog and comments on the thread that she started.

This week's question: "What does [Rick] Perry need to do to maintain his momentum and begin to minimize doubts about his electability?"

This morning she picked two answers. My post about my eight ideas for stimulating consumer spending and hiring was one of the two answers she picked out of a bunch of good comments that followed her question. That thread is here. My slightly edited and expanded version of my comment, which I posted on this blog, is here.

Rubin summarized the answers this way:

I was struck by two important assumptions running through the answers. First, unlike many in the right blogosphere, the readers did not dismiss criticisms of Perry out of hand or characterize them as creations of the liberal media. They want to put Perry through the paces, and they understand there are real concerns about his candidacy. Second, it is apparent that readers are sick of platitudes and one-liners; they want detailed proposals and an explanation as to how the candidate’s background equips him to deal with our current national challenges. If Right Turn readers are representative of the Republican primary electorate, the party is in very good hands. The primary process is a time for not only choosing, but probing and testing.

U.S. House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is promising to work with President Obama to stimulate consumer spending that is needed to create jobs, and he asked for comments on his response to Friday's dismal jobs report. I doubt that President Zero really wants to work with Cantor or the Republicans, because that would cost him the support of the House Progressive Caucus and the Hard Left.

I posted this comment, which I've edited and expanded a bit:

How to stimulate consumption that will cause businesses to hire more people:

Global warming skeptics know that Al Gore's global warming alarmists use bad data, rigged computer models and poor science to convince gullible politicians like George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman that humans play significant roles in warming earth.

Roy Spencer recently published an article that may totally undermine the propaganda spready by Gorean alarmists. So they're attacking his integrity and science with the kind of vicious and sensless posts on his blog that you would expect to find in the comments sections of the NY Times and Washington Post.

LINKS:

Editor in chief of Remote Sensing resigns from fallout over our paper, by Roy W. Spencer.

President Barack Obama is looking very juvenile today after trying to shut down the Republican's long-scheduled joint apperance on Sept. 7. Having been put in his place by Speaker Boehner, the president will give his latest campaign speech before a joint session of Congress next Thursday, Sept. 8.

Obama's an empty suit, even with teleprompters. Unlike Reagan, Clinton and W, he has nothing to say and no understanding or comprehension of economics.  
 
Obama has rejected American values and political customs since he entered politics and voted "present." He's still voting "present" and will attempt to surprise with a "bold" speech next Thursday. 
 
But he doesn't want to offend public sector union bosses, and he's pandering to construction union bosses with his "infrastructure" spending proposals. He continues to work for his favored few in the unions and ignore the needs of 30 million unemployed and under employed. 
 
Look for Obama to give a Clinton-type laundry list of vote-buying proposals aimed at every special interest on K Street. 
 
Boehner comes off as the adult in Washington. He handled Obama's stunt perfectly, leaving the president looking like someone who's running for president of the 6th grade.

Mitt Romney has attacked President Obama's confusion and warned that the country is near profound economoic misery, the Washington Post reports.

What Romney is saying that if he's elected president, he would end the confusion and he would be a hands on Commander in Chief of cutting waste out of defense spending and using the savings to maintain the country's military strength. He also went after Rick Perry as a career politician. Perry is known as a hands-off leader who delegates the job of figuring out how to get things done.

Michele Bachmann's campaign is doing pioneering Google and YouTube targeted advertising in Iowa, Politico reports.

Christians and non Christians are asking whether Rick Perry and Michele Bachman advocate Dominism of America by Christians. It isn't clear whether Dominism will become a hot topic or win or lose votes for Perry or Bachmann in a general election race against President Obama. This year, I'm more concerned about economic than social and religious issues, but if Perry or Bachmann is the GOP candidate, I won't vote for one of them. I'll vote against Obama.

The religious beliefs of presidential candidates or candidates for other offices matter only when voters and their opponents think those candidates are exploiting their religious beliefs in efforts to attract gullible and relgious voters. And when candidates wear their beliefs on their sleeves, they open themselves to questions about whether their preachers or the Constitution would guide them if they were elected.

Separation of church and state is a huge issue for me and for others who fear that candidates religious beliefs represent more than their core values. When imposing one's religious beliefs on non believers is a political candidate's mission, beware.

Former President George W. Bush exploited his born again Christianity in his campaigns for the White House. While that strategy helped him win elections, it cost him respect and legitimacy in the eyes of those Christians and non Christians who believe that America's long tradition of a separation of church and state must be continued. In short, I believe that the Left very effectively used the fear of fanatical Christians to build a cult of Bush hatred, especially during his second term.

Perry and Bachmann are being protrayed as even more radical Christians than Bush. See especially these articles and blogs:

Asking candidates tougher questions about faith, by Bill Keller.

Michele Bachmann recommended book that blamed North for Civil War, praised slavery.

Leap of Faith, the making of a Republican front-runner, by Ryan Lizza.

Why I'll be paying attention to Michele Bachmann's religious beliefs, by Peregrin Wood.

Michele Bachman was inspired by my dad and his his Christian reconstructionist friends—here's why that is terrifying, by Frank Schaeffer.

Michele Bachmann submitting to husband: Submissive question; we have a right to know sacred beliefs, by Jocelyn Anderson.

NYT's Bill Keller questions faith of GOP candidates, compares belief in God to belief in aliens, by Clay Waters.

Rick Perry is no libertarian, by Dana Milbank.

This year it's easier to figure out who I can't support for president than who I want to become president.

As a Small Government Republican on social and economic issues, I can't vote for Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Ron Paul or Jon Huntsman. 
 
Mitt Romney's smart, relatively honest, panders to polls, lacks experience in politics and may not have the needed presidential political talent to win the WH or govern if he does. 
 
Rick Perry plays corrupt Texas politics aggressively, wants state legislators to elect U.S. Senators, believes Christians should rule America and the world and is a Big Intrusive Government Republican on social and economic issues. 
 
Paul Ryan is smart, wonky, inexperienced beyond Congressional politics, clean and yet to show that he is a good retail politician. I think he'd be crazy to run. 
 
Chris Christie says he's not ready to run for president, and I agree. 
 
Warren Buffett wants to tax the rich so that his tax loopholes won't be closed.

LINKS:

Rick Perry and Texas job numbers, by Political Math. (Makes Texas look pretty good despite intro.)

What's the truth aout Rick Perry's Texas Miracle? By Megan McArdle.

Seven ways Rick Perry wants to change the Constitution, by Chris Moody.

Rick Perry's Texas miracle is a big fat lie, by Benzinga.

Rick Perry's gifts: Boots, trips, medical tests, by Kenneth P. Vogel & Lucy McCalmont.

Romney v Romney, by Allysia Finley.

Romney, Perry and the GOP's summer of discontent, by E. J. Dionne, Jr.

Paul Ryan's vulnerabilities, by John McCormack.

Paul Ryan? Yeah, Right, by Ed Kilgore.

What's interesting is that Perry, Bachmann and Romney all are Big Intrusive Government Republicans on both fiscal and social issues. 

Perry has a long record of using state and federal funds to create government jobs and invest in the business startups of his largest campaign contributors. That he's played Texas politics as far as legally possible makes him look like a Chicago Obama Democrat.

Romney is trying to appeal to U.S. Chamber of Commerce government contractors, The Business Roundtable's beneficiaries of government spending and higher taxes and Obama Democrat Warren Buffett who wants higher taxes for the rich instead of tax reforms that would eliminate his lucrative tax loopholes. Ethanol and Mandate Romney endorses Gorean global warming alarmists who want more centralized planning and government spending on not only ethanol but other GE green energy and medical products and services.

Elvis Bachmann is known for a gaffe a day, and today she predicted that as president she would have her centralized Big Government planners cut the cost of gasoline below $2. Of course, that would be after her secretary of Commerce, Mitt Romney, who's known as Mr. Fixit, turned the economy around during Bachmann's first three months in office.

All three of these Big Government Republicans say they would create jobs as president. How they can say this after watching Obama's job-creating efforts actually kill jobs is as baffling as Bernanke's quantitative easings and devaluations of the dollar.