Obama Rating Spike Par For Course
At times the only thing that surprises me is the incoherent gullibility of many in the conservative and moderate movement. Either that or some liberals that were polled have found some renewed faith in the promised one.
Consider though a couple of stats from the latest poll outside of the 53% approval rating:
- Only 45% approve of his handling of the economy. Some states hit 18% unemployment this week.
- 56% believe the country is on the wrong track.
- 71% believe that we will have to eventually give up on Afghanistan.
And here are two that are off the charts bizarre:
- 40% polled believe Obama is a moderate.
- 11% polled believe Obama is a conservative.
Seriously, who are these people being polled and what cave do they live in that still have telephone service in which to be selected for polling? Bare in mind that 3 years ago 55% considered Obama a liberal and at current after selling out Europe’s missile defense to Russia, spending more money in 2 years than Bush did in 6, pushing through a health care bill, backing FCC regulatory control over the Internet, and attempting to push through a massive global warming based energy policy, only 45% consider him liberal. Explain that one…
So why does Obama suddenly come of as a moderate and receive a bump in approval rating? My personal guess is that he received a slight resurgence in faith from liberals by way of the missile treaty and allowing gays in the military to be more forthright in their *cough* preferences. Additionally, he’s probably re-captured some moderates and confused conservatives via his opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal that came across as pro-business to some. And you’re welcome to disagree with me, but personally I felt that the Tucson memorial speech was simply another ra-ra campaign speech, which would certainly be seen as favorable by some.
In the end, Obama is a brilliant man, and he puts intelligent people around him. Everything he is doing to appear to be having a change of heart and open arms toward conservatives and the Republican Party is fake. And furthermore, it is strategically designed to appear that way. The reasoning is simple:
- It makes him look generally more favorable and increases his poll percentages (which obviously is the reason this is being written).
- If he makes nice then it increases the chance of conservative members of Congress letting down their guard and voting in favor of Obama goals oriented legislation in the future which is a win for his administration.
- He wins (for the most part) in any case. If Reps ignore his gestures of working together and finding middle ground, then he bashes the GOP in the next presidential election for working against him. If Reps work with him, then he uses that to his advantage during the next election and says that the GOP was not really doing anything different.
This is simply par for the course with Obama. Don’t let the rug get pulled out from under you.
WSJ: Liberals Can’t Comprehend Elementary Level Lessons
This article is terrific. I didn’t write it, and I wish I had. You should all read this and promptly pass it around to your liberal friends. Be sure to hover over them and laugh slyly while they read.
My favorite part, and one that was very telling, was the 67% of liberals who believe that more restrictions on housing makes housing more affordable. Talk about everything happening in the world suddenly making sense!
-nick
Still On The Apology Tour
Does President Obama really believe this? I sure hope not…
“In connection with the OSCE, the presidents had a very lengthy discussion of issues of democracy and human rights,” NSC senior director Mike McFaul said on a conference call with reporters Sunday. “Both presidents agreed that you don’t ever reach democracy; you always have to work at it. And in particular, President Obama reminded his Kazakh counterpart that we, too, are working to improve our democracy.”
The Wall Street Journal‘s Jonathan Weisman asked McFaul to clarify.
“You seemed to be suggesting there was some equivalence between their issues of democracy and the United States’ issues, when you said that President Obama assured him that we, too, are working on our democracy,” Weisman said. “Is there equivalence between the problems that President Nazarbayev is confronting and the state of democracy in the United States?”
“Absolutely not … There was no equivalence meant whatsoever,” McFaul said. “[Obama's] taken, I think, rather historic steps to improve our own democracy since coming to office here in the United States.”
I don’t think I have to comment, but I will. First, of course we are still working on our democratic republic- the day we don’t is the day it dies- but to put us in the same sentence as Kazakhstan is absurd and offensive. Secondly, what has Obama done to improve democracy? He has broken the Constitution with his individual insurance mandate; pushed to give fewer rights to workers and the unborn; and has ignored the will of the people in signing his health care reform law. None of these improve democracy, and they certainly do not improve it in America.
The apology tour continues…
Greece-ing the Skids Toward Dependency
On my drive from work, I was listening to a snippet of NPR where they were discussing the current economic apocalypse in Greece that Glenn Beck warned in his CPAC speech would occur here. There have been riots in the streets as the Greek government desperately seeks to find ways of ameliorating their budgetary boondoggle. They are of course frustrated by a plethora of failings and attempted fixes as reported by The Globe and Mail:
Greece will need to cut spending – by 10 per cent of GDP over 10 years – while raising revenue and cracking down on its untaxed black-market economy, which counts for as much as a third of all financial activity in the country. This combination could provoke further unrest, and may foretell similar tensions in Italy and Portugal.
If Greece’s crisis and accompanying political unrest were an isolated case, it might be more manageable, but this week the turmoil seemed to spread across the belly of Europe.
On Tuesday, Spain’s cities were shut down by unionized workers protesting its left-wing government’s plan to raise the retirement age to 67 and cut spending in order to deal with its own serious fiscal situation.
Spain has debt of 54 per cent of GDP and a deficit of more than 11 per cent, plus unemployment levels that approach 20 per cent and a housing-market collapse.
What struck me during the NPR report was their emphasis on the retirement age being raised while benefits are to head in the opposite direction in Greece; and at the same time, the story according to The Globe and Mail is that Greece is going to be taking similar steps.
Riots are occurring in the streets because the government is controlling the retirement benefits of the citizenry. Scary.
I was listening to the February 23rd edition of Mark Levin (I do the free podcast a day later while I run, God bless him for making his show free and available) where he talked about being at the mercy of the government. As these people in Europe see themselves: at the mercy of their government. “Please sir, can I have some more?” Where is the dignity and the honor? I work in a place where I see the day to day sufferings of people who find themselves dependent on a government that only knows of their existence based on a number in a database. Is this what we want? To have to go to the government, to Social Security, to your Congress-persons’ offices, to Medicare, and beg for money to exist?
Tocqueville once lamented about the coming age of rational control. We look at a leviathan to take away the “pain of thinking” and the “agony of living” as Dr. Mansfield once recounted. What needs to be explained to people, is that a dependency on government does nothing of the sort! The people dependent on government might have purged the “pain of thinking” from their lives, but they continue to live in agony as their life is no longer at the will of him or her self or even Providence, but of boards, panels and case workers… How long after Health Care gets passed (should we be so unfortunate) before we are rioting in the streets because we have found ourselves in government bondage?
-rj
Let’s Look At The Real Issues Facing The Country
Peggy Noonan writes a truly fantastic column in today’s Wall Street Journal. Some of the best bits are below:
The American version [[DS: of Britain's Question Time] might not translate so well. The Brits have a certain tradition of elegance in debate, and enjoy insulting each other. American politicians are more conflicted about obvious aggression, not about feeling it but showing it—it might not play well!—and so they tend to go under or over the line. “You lie!” “Yeah? Well you’re blankin’ developmentally challenged!” We will miss Fritz Hollings, the former Democratic senator who once said to then-Sen. John Glenn, in a presidential primary debate, “But what have you done in the world?”
If an American version could take place regularly, outside Congress and on neutral territory, as the gangs say in “West Side Story,” there could be benefits. It would momentarily force members and the president to focus together on what’s actually happening this week, and, more important, it might force members of Congress to be more familiar with the bills they support. They might actually have to know what’s in them and show a grasp of details. This might tend to produce fewer omnibus bills. “You expect me to know and talk about what’s in that? It’s 2,000 pages! Cut it down to 20 and give it a new name.”
Both our political parties continue, even though they know they shouldn’t, even though they’re each composed of individuals many of whom actually know what time it is, even though they know we are in an extraordinary if extended moment, an ongoing calamity connected to our economic future, our nation’s standing in the world, our strength and our safety—even though they know all this, they continue to go through the daily motions, fund raising, vote counting, making ads with demon sheep, blasting out the latest gaffe of the other team. Our political professionals cheapen everything they touch because they are burying themselves in daily urgencies in order to dodge and avoid the big picture.
America doesn’t need to be told that something bad will happen. America needs to be told what is being done, what will be done and what can be done, how together we’ll get through it, what information and attitude to take into the future. They don’t need to be made anxious, they need to be recruited into a common endeavor.
Instead both parties, understandably and yet wickedly, destructively, irresponsibly, use the nation’s safety as another issue on which to protect their political position.
But the tendency of both parties to default to politics when they think about terrorism—”You’re weak,” “No, you’re bellicose,” “You’re avoiding reality to advance some dreamy geopolitical vision,” “You’re exploiting reality to make cheap points”—cannot be heartening to the public.
The biggest historic gain of this administration may turn out to be that Democrats in the White House experienced leadership in the age of terror, came to have responsibility in a struggle that needs and will need our focus. It wasn’t good that half the country thought jihadism was some little Republican obsession.
But both parties should sober up. The day after the next bad thing, we will all come together, because that is what we do. Republicans and Democrats will work together, for a while.
It would be better to do it now. It is their job to do it now.
My uncle, a Chief of Staff on Capitol Hill, and I were talking about the state of political affairs in this country on Monday, and he pointed out how between an increasingly polarized media and an increasingly polarized political situation in Washington, DC, it is hard to work on the major issues. These issues include but are not limited to Social Security, Medicare, health care, energy and national security. Related to this point, Noonan said:
I think sometimes of the suburbs around Washington, which are planted thick with knowledgable veterans of government—old national-security and foreign-policy hands, patriots of both parties who’ve served within government, in and out of the military. How painful it must be for them to watch all this, knowing what they know and understanding that political party, at a time like this, means nothing. There is so much experience to share, and so much wisdom, from both parties. I wish those old hands had more say.
As I said above, this column is truly excellent. That said, Noonan does miss two key points that my libertarian friend Jon O’Neill pointed out. His first point was that the real issue at hand is that our officials are not following the Constitution. Secondly, we let ourselves be satisfied that the same officials who failed us on 9/11 (I would add that government officials also failed us regarding the economic crash in 2008 and America’s fiscal crisis) will take good care of us and our loved ones. To paraphrase Jon, this is folly.
I think Jon has hit the nail on the head- however, Noonan’s points are still very well-taken. Americans tend to ask “what,” which is important. But it is just as important is to ask “why” and “how.” Without these two, knowing the “what” of any situation is very, very limited.
Rahm Emanuel Follows In Obama’s Gaffes
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has followed in President Obama’s footsteps regarding sensitivity towards handicapped Americans. According to The Wall Street Journal:
“F—ing retarded,” Mr. Emanuel scolded the group [of liberal lawmakers], according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.
This happened back in August, but according to Politico Emanuel just apologized to handicapped activist Tim Shriver last week after the Journal reported the incident.
I’m not going to harp on about this- it’s the most minor of incidents. Nevertheless, our public officials and their subordinates should not be making insulting references to handicapped people. It’s not appropriate, no matter what the setting. Emanuel’s apology is exceedingly appropriate, if very belated.
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) Holds The Line
The guy just won’t let up. According to The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Coburn has identified at least 640 programs that can be consolidated in order to allow Congress to stay its hand on lifting the debt ceiling. As WSJ puts it:
One message Massachusetts voters sent last week is concern over runaway federal spending. Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is offering Democrats a chance to show they heard that message.
Coburn is doing exactly what every Republican and Democrat should- making sure Congress does not spend beyond its means. That is one of the messages sent by Massachusetts residents last week, and I am grateful to Coburn for holding true to his responsibilities as a United States senator.
Big Spenders In Congress
Not having worked on Capitol Hill, I won’t comment on the entirety of what is in this article, since I don’t know if some Congressional expenditures are necessary or more efficient than they appear at first glance by an outsider- but I will say that it looks like Members of Congress are continuing to waste our money on unnecessary travel expenses.
Yet another nail in the coffin for the currently elected representatives. This poll doesn’t make things look any better.
