Is Obama "simply not up to the job?"

Beyond the irony of journalists urging more spin from a politician, the really remarkable fact is that none dare consider the possibility that Obama is simply not up to the job. It is a scary thought, but evidence of consistent failure is overwhelming.

The high point of his presidency came the day he took office. Since then, a majority of Americans has opposed virtually all his major policies and he has prevailed on several only because of large Democratic congressional advantages.

The problems are growing, but he's not. If he were, we'd see green shoots of improvement.

Instead, the White House is going backwards at home and abroad and shows no ability to adjust. Like a cult, it interprets every reversal as proof of its righteousness and of others' malignancy.

What started out as a whiff of rookie incompetence has become a suffocating odor. It's hard to find a single area where Obama's policies are a convincing success.

Friday's poor jobs report, showing only 41,000 private-sector jobs added in May, helped send the stock market into a tailspin. Equally important to the actual number was the expectation it would be as high as 190,000.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden fed the expectation by predicting the report would be a good one. It was -- if you count Census jobs. There were 400,000 of those, or about 90 percent of the total, suggesting Obama and Biden see no difference between a temporary government job and a permanent, private one.

Do Tiger's lapses on the golf course in 2004 and 2008 reflect activity in his other scorecard?

For the unschooled, these two charts may eventually gain the transcendant importance in the economic and sports worlds that the phrase, "the dog that didn't bark," has in murder mysteries. Even the most casual reader will notice that the second chart is composed entirely of phallic symbols.

We will focus here on two obvious dips in the performance and earnings of Tiger Woods, one in 2004 and another in 2008.

What accounts for this? Did Woods' other scorecard register an upsurge in hits during these periods? If so, high voltage libido coincides with subpar golf, and may even have a causal effect.

If, on the other hand, the other scorecard for those periods looks like an Obama admiration chart for 2009, the diagnosis would be quite different: If the swinging takes a vacation, so does the swing.

Golfers, swingers, agents, coaches and psychologists all want to know the answer. The wives will have to speak for themselves.