GRIDLOCK

Washington, and by that term I refer to B. H. Obama, was pleased to announce some "good" news today. Still a bit depressed by the results of Tuesday's election results, Obama contended that his efforts on the economy are working as evidenced by the creation of 151,000 new jobs by the private sector during the just past month of October.

Great news but little mention was made of the facts that unemployment remained at an official rate of 9.6% and that this past week 457,000 US citizens made first time unemployment claims.

Several experts on the economy are now projecting that it will take years, as many as a decade, to reestablish an acceptable rate of national unemployment. These estimates were predicted upon a continuation of the Obama economic programs.

Locally, one only has to read the The Courier-Journal to see evidence of the continued decline of the economy. In the Business Watch column of the November 4th edition there were three stories: 1) Papa John's lost $658,000.00 this past quarter; 2) The Courier-Journal laid off 7 more employees in addition to the 44 terminated in July; and 3) Churchill Downs, Inc. lost $689,000.00 last quarter and closed an operational division.

With the national election results still fresh in everyone's mind, a difficult future (the next 2 years) appears to be an unfortunate but accepted fact. Obama is already using the term "gridlock" as a poorly concealed threat. His position is that if the Republicans will be reasonable and compromise then cures to all national and international problems can be reached. His barely hidden sub-message is that all set-backs and even lack of progress in topics from the American economy to health care to international deployment of our military will be the fault of the Republicans. This fault will be because the Republicans refuse to accept even watered down BHO programs.

Conservative Americans must be prepared to "tighten the belt" for a little longer; lobby the Republicans to be firmly opposed to Obama's programs; and prepare for nasty, expensive and derisive political campaigns in 2012.