Finally it's "official." This is now Obama's economy.

News! The recession is over and HAS BEEN for 15 months.

The president has been claiming that he inherited this mess as the Republicans "drove the car into the ditch." Well, Mr. President the Republicans in fact did help to push the car back on the road well more than a year ago - according to a panel of prominent economists who have delivered a verdict that the Great Recession ended in June, 2009.

So, will this news change Mr. Obama's fall strategy of still blaming this country's problems on GW Bush? Absolutely not! His only option is to continue on the "blame Bush for everything" path. To not do that is to admit that he and his policies are now the problem this country is going through with high unemployment and a still sputtering economy.

As a husband of a woman who IS her own business and files a schedule C tax return each year I know the economy has slowed and that her sales of real estate are down the last couple of years. But, the real estate problems right now, TODAY are due to the expiration of the Obama gimme's for first time buyers which ended this summer. Who is going to buy now when IF they could qualify in the spring they would have already purchased a new home? The problem with programs that mortgage the future is that one day the future comes calling.

This announcement from the National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee means one thing: Any new down-turn would mark the beginning of a new recession and not the continuation of the old one.

So, Mr. President - the ball is in your court. Play ball!

Obama Isn't Bill Clinton, That's For Sure.

Remember, "I feel your pain?" Those were the days, folks. No one was better at empathy than our "first black president," Bill Clinton. What we have now is a Par-TAY!

Six vacations in 18 months - yep, great gig if you can get it. Nearly 10 percent unemployment during this "recovery summer" and Joe Biden is practically giddy with the "opportunity to do something great." I sure hope so because we are all dying out here down in the real world, outside of the beltway.

He relentlessly plugs the $5 billion for weatherization as "one of our signature programs," never mentioning, as the Associated Press puts it, that the program "has experienced spending delays, inefficiencies and mismanagement. In Biden's home state of Delaware, the entire program has been suspended since May, and last month federal auditors identified possible fraud." Oops, sorry. Forgot that little detail about how it isn't even working where he lives.

Bill Clinton could look into the camera and you could imagine what he was thinking, and then he would do what he said he would do. You could feel it. Now, when Mr. Obama looks into the camera - you imagine what he is thinking and you can smell it.

Last night as he took the credit for "ending combat in Iraq" his ego wouldn't even allow him to give credit to those who actually DID make the tough decision - to have a "surge." Without Mr. Bush's plan - the one that this president opposed, Iraq wouldn't be in a position today to even visualize American troops withdrawing, much less actually sending some home. "Look at me, ma!" is what I saw last night and almost daily on television from this president.

Where is the empathy now? As the boy who cried wolf was eventually ignored, so is the case here. I see him talking but I don't hear anything. I see neighbors losing jobs, cars, homes and moving out. I see their pain. I don't want change for America - I want what we had in America again.