The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of --7 (see trends).
Go look - the graph is very dramatic, indeed.
Voters see cost, not universal coverage, as the biggest health care concern Sixty-seven percent (67%) say that people with chronic conditions such as diabetes should not pay higher health insurance premiums. Half (50%) now oppose creation of a public insurance company to compete with private insurers. Seventy-eight percent (78%) believe that health care reform is likely to lead to middle class tax hikes. Keep it up, Joe and O.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Barry's frustration level appears to be climbing right along with the poll. More Lucky Strikes please.
#2
It's been the truth all along that about 98% of any support for socializing health care has not been about helping "The Children™ " or "The Needy™ " but rather has been about a fantasy by the supporters that they can get all the health care they get now for a lot less money, so that they can have more money to spend on booze, clothes, and entertainment.
That's just how it is, any deniers are just plain liars.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/20/2009 9:05 Comments ||
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#3
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time - Abraham Lincoln
#4
no mo uro, actually, I think they believe they are gonna get all that plus a hospital room that rivals a four-star hotel, complete with valet service and hot, sexy docs/nurses. After all, isn't that what all hospital rooms look like on TV (especially those idiotic daytime dramas they watch in between episodes of Oprah and The View)?
#9
I have 4 extra tickets for the Robbie Knievel (son of Evil Knievel) event at the Ford Center, this weekend in Beaumont, Texas, if anybody wants them. He's going to try to jump 1,000 Obama supporters with a bulldozer.
#10
FINALLY...THE $64,000 QUESTION WAS ASKED!!!!!.....YESTERDAY ON THE "ABC..OBAMA SPECIAL ON HEALTH CARE"......OBAMA WAS ASKED, "MR. PRESIDENT WILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY GIVE UP YOUR CURRENT HEALTH CARE PROGRAM AND JOIN THE NEW "UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM" THAT THE REST OF US WILL BE ON ????.....OBAMA IGNORED THE QUESTION AND DIDN'T ANSWER IT!
A NUMBER OF SENATORS WERE ASKED THE SAME QUESTION AND THEIR RESPONSE WAS...WE WILL THINK ABOUT IT!
IT WAS ALSO ANNOUNCED TODAY ON THE NEWS THAT THE "KENNEDY HEALTH CARE BILL"....HAS WRITTEN INTO IT THAT CONGRESS WILL BE (FROM THIS GREAT HEALTH CARE PLAN)..EXEMPT!
HOW ABOUT THOSE APPLES.....NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR OBAMA OR CONGRESS.....BUT "OK" FOR THE REST OF US?
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said U.S.-led forces must gain ground against insurgents in Afghanistan by next summer to avoid a public perception the war is unwinnable, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday. While noting that the Taliban militants would not be defeated within a year, Gates told the newspaper it was critical that the U.S. military and its allies show they were making progress in the Asian nation. "After the Iraq (war) experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where it is not apparent we are making headway," Gates said in an interview. "The troops are tired. The American people are pretty tired," he said.
The U.S. public's souring attitude toward the war in Iraq, where more than 4,300 U.S. troops have been killed since 2003, cut popular support for former President George W. Bush and is cited by some as a factor for his party's huge losses in the 2008 election.
The vicious behaviour of the press had, of course, nothing to do with it, according to the same some.
The Obama administration has shifted its strategy to make the battle in Afghanistan a higher priority. Washington is sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan in a bid to counter the Taliban, who now control a large swath of territory, and it has named a new commander to lead the NATO-backed effort.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Why should people "back" a long war with no tangible benefits (the chance of Afghanistan, or any other Muslim country, becoming a democracy [or a non-enemy of the West] are slightly less than zilch)?
#5
The One laying more groundwork for his cowardly actions through his puppet, our supposed "Defense" Secretary. I don't see anyone complaining about the Iraq victory. I do see a bunch of folks holding their breath and hoping that AQ ends up having a big resurgence so they'll have something to point at and call failure, though.
#6
Realpolitik suggests there is little reason to stay: no oil - let's go. Methinks the Mexican Army should arrive there for the long term to protect the opium production...that would give them a nice Rockefeller-style vertical monopoly...Los Zetas could put Al Queda in its place muy pronto!
#7
BO, most likely, will be voted out in 2012, unless ACORN begins ramping up its activity by resurrecting the dead and registering people under aliases and donks in Congress give it a pass as they are wont to do.
#8
I think Gates is right. Cripes, I think we should leave Afghanistan tomorrow. It is a hell-hole and is about 1,000 years behind Iraq culturally. There is no way it is going to develop into anything approaching a modern democratic country in my lifetime. Why spend money and lives trying to convert this tribal cesspool into anything. If terror comes from there, turn the place into an ashtray.
The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.
The administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.
The release of the update -- usually scheduled for mid-July -- has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess. The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance. The White House budget director, Peter Orszag, said on Sunday that the administration believes the "chances are high" of getting a health care bill by then. But new analyses showing runaway costs are jeopardizing Senate passage. "Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare," Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. "There are some things that can't be escaped."
The administration earlier this year predicted that unemployment would peak at about 9 percent without a big stimulus package and 8 percent with one. Congress did pass a $787 billion two-year stimulus measure, yet unemployment soared to 9.5 percent in June and appears headed for double digits.
Obama's current forecast anticipates 3.2 percent growth next year, then 4 percent or higher growth from 2011 to 2013. Private forecasts are less optimistic, especially for next year. 3.2, 4%? The Obama administration said that with a straight face?
Any downward revision in growth or revenue projections would mean that budget deficits would be far higher than the administration is now suggesting. Replace with lying.
Setting the stage for bleaker projections, Vice President Joe Biden recently conceded, "We misread how bad the economy was" in January. Obama modified that by suggesting the White House had "incomplete" information. It's OK Joe. We know you are clueless in every way possible.
The new budget update comes as the public and members of Congress are becoming increasingly anxious over Obama's economic policies. Worried about losing the next election and the loss of your spendthrift ways with trillions of other peoples' money?
A Washington Post-ABC News survey released Monday shows approval of Obama's handling of health-care reform slipping below 50 percent for the first time. The poll also found support eroding on how Obama is dealing with other issues that are important to Americans right now -- the economy, unemployment and the swelling budget deficit. The Democratic-controlled Congress is reeling from last week's testimony by the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, that the main health care proposals Congress is considering would not reduce costs -- as Obama has insisted -- but "significantly expand" the federal financial responsibility for health care. That gave ammunition to Republican critics of the bill.
Late last week, Obama vowed anew that "health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade and I mean it." I believe this is the exact moment the TOTUS committed suicide.
The nation's debt -- the total of accumulated annual budget deficits -- now stands at $11.6 trillion. In the scheme of things, that's more important than talking about the "deficit," which only looks at a one-year slice of bookkeeping and totally ignores previous indebtedness that is still outstanding. Even so, the administration has projected that the annual deficit for the current budget year will hit $1.84 trillion, four times the size of last year's deficit of $455 billion. Private forecasters suggest that shortfall may actually top $2 trillion.
If a higher deficit and lower growth numbers are not part of the administration's budget update, that will lead to charges that the White House is manipulating its figures to offer too rosy an outlook -- the same criticism leveled at previous administrations.
No, no, no! Barack Hussein Obama is special!
The midsession review by the White House's Office of Management and Budget will likely reflect weaker numbers. But where is it? White House officials say it is now expected in mid-August. They blame the delay on the fact that this is a transition year between presidencies and note that Obama didn't release his full budget until early May -- instead of the first week in February, when he put out just an outline. Still, the update mainly involves plugging in changes in economic indicators, not revising program-by-program details. And indicators such as unemployment and gross domestic product changes have been public knowledge for some time.
Clearly, the writer believes there is no legitimate excuse for delay.
Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss said part of the problem with the administration's earlier numbers is that "they were just stale," essentially put together by budget number-crunchers at the end of last year, before the sharp drop in the economy. Wyss, like many other economists, says he expects the recession to last at least until September or October. "We're looking for basically a zero second half (of 2009). And then sluggish recovery," he said.
Orszag, making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, insisted the economy at the end of last year, which the White House used for its optimistic budget forecasts, "was weaker at that time than anyone anticipated." He cited a "sense of free fall" not fully recognized at the time. "It's going to take time to work our way out of it," the White House budget director told "Fox News Sunday."
Even as it prepares to put larger deficit and smaller growth figures into its official forecast, the administration is looking for signs of improvement. "If we were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year, we have walked some substantial distance back from the abyss," said Lawrence Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser.
Posted by: ed ||
07/20/2009 08:07 ||
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#1
LBJ had a similar troubles. Kennedy's war then LBJ expanded it. The migrations to the cities went on at this time. Riots, War, migrations were allot of events to deal with. Great society programs,food stamps, medical assistance, and air conditioning got people off the streets. Now the money is running out.The help that was once there is drawn down to the bottom. Unemployment money is running out, all other assistance programs will have funding issues. He is blind to this and his solution will always be to take from others when the pot boils over. He will still have the support of his followers who will take from their neighbors as well. The riots showed me that it doesn't matter what color or religion you are it's
the belief that you have something of value. They will rob from a brother, sister, whoever to make things equal. Tipping point will be food or energy issues. The Dem's will blame everyone else and the the media will go along. The problem this time is they will make it worse with no bottom to this pit they have dug. Why? same voter support. Give me Health care, give me food stamps, give me a home, give me group now controls our elections.
#5
Keep an eye on California and it's major cities. When the free dough and gov't cheese runs out it should get ugly rather quickly. This will be Barry's cue to suspend the US Constitution and initiate gov't resettlement camps and collective schemes. It's the rich farmers and land owners who are at fault! This land must be shared!
#6
Well, cut him some slack. They've been having typo troubles in this admin for a while. I mean, they couldn't even spell "Barack" correctly a week or two ago, right?
I'm sure he meant negative 3.2% for this year, with negative 4% thereafter. I doubt that anyone reading this would disagree with that prediction, right?
#9
Or Socialism always does a lot for the economy. It just doesn't do any good - quite the opposite in fact. As I'm afraid we are going to find out first hand.
True as far as it goes but the real "why" goes a bit deeper. Plato noted that Greek society could not craft a culture, "... by high argument by which all things are seen to be relative."
When relativism (to choose a modern evil) and/or other factors erode the shared culture of a nation the nation cannot long survive since the culture imposes the social mores necessary to an orderly society. With the shared culture absent man's innate nature which is constant across time and space reasserts itself and chaos of the sort you described or a short-lived rule of the mob necessarily result.
#13
AzCat, great response. Shared culture, yes and when GOD is out we have the rule of man. Hence the migrations to the District of Columbia. Each race of man wants power for his or her group at the expense of all others (this is how they view our history). No melting pot no shared culture. Constitution? will be changed to suit their needs why- "Congress can make the law and Congress can change the law". It's a living document after all.
#15
Dale - Quite so. Religion is, I believe, merely another aspect of the shared culture that has bound this nation together. It didn't matter much if one was Jewish, Catholic, Protestant or some other variant but it mattered very much that most of us pretty much, whatever our faith might have been, once shared via those faiths a fundamental set of morals that informed our society. The rapid loss of faith has led to a reversion of man to his more instinctive nature and a corresponding breakdown of social mores and in turn our society. The Enlightenment ideal of a society based purely on reason seems to me to be in the process of failing.
With the U.S. secretaries of energy and commerce in China this week, much of the attention focused on the standoff over emissions reductions or small breakthroughs in clean-tech cooperation.
But yesterday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said something amazing--U.S. consumers should pay for part of Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions. From Reuters:
"It's important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America -- and it's our own consumption activity that's causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
The idea that rich-country consumers should pick up the tab for some of China's industrial emissions has been gaining currency lately--but not from within the Obama administration. The argument is that many of China's factories churn out cheap stuff for the West, not for domestic consumption, so those consumers are actually responsible for the emissions. China, of course, loves the idea.
This could just be another area for trade tensions with China over the environment. The House climate bill includes a provision for mandatory "carbon tariffs" on dirty imports from countries such as China, which might be illegal under international trade law and which have riled up Beijing. President Obama and Senate leaders have frowned on hardline trade measures.
But Secretary Locke's statement could open up a new can of worms--right when China's actions on energy and the environment are proving so crucial to mustering support among wavering senators for the administration's big cap-and-trade bill.
I think it's brilliant. Let Chinese firms invest the money to clean up their manufacturing processes, which currently poison the air, water and soil as well as spew CO2, and build that cost into the items they sell. Then let American consumers look at the higher prices and decide they don't need those things after all. Or that the things are worth the cost of not poisoning Chinese children to acquire.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
And you need to pay for the emmisions from your mouth A-hole. You should pay for your collective stupendous void of brain mass. I say $15 a minute for everyone in washington dc. The new cancer of the earth.
#2
Just a panda hugger performing to please the local audience.
BTW, Chinese have nothing but contempt for those who try to curry favor with them by self-flagellation. Their sneering response is, "get down on the floor where you belong, cur."
#7
We are paying. Wind from China comes here. During WW11 a concern was the Japanese would send bombs attached to balloons to hit our left coast. I believe I remember reading such a story in a Sgt. Rock comic. It was a genuine concern at the time.
#9
During WW11 a concern was the Japanese would send bombs attached to balloons to hit our left coast. I believe I remember reading such a story in a Sgt. Rock comic. It was a genuine concern at the time. Posted by Dale
And it did indeed HAPPEN!
California and the Second World War
The Japanese Balloon Bomb Attack at Hayfork
Hayfork is a small community in northern California about 40 miles west of Redding. On February 1, 1945 a Japanese bombing balloon was spotted by several local residents drifting over the Trinity National Forest area and slowly decending. No one knew what it was, but an alert forest ranger called the military authorities at the Presidio of San Francisco and reported it. Meanwhile the balloon came to rest atop a 60 foot dead fir tree in the forest near a local road. In the next few hours several people gathered in the area to gaze up at the strange object.
Shortly after dark there was a trernendous blast. The balloon's gas bag disappeared in a fireball and the balloon's undercarriage came crashing to the ground. No one was hurt. Forest rangers kept the curious well back from the fallen debris until Army personnel arrived, Upon examination, it was found to be a Japanese bombing balloon with four incendiary bombs and one high explosive bomb still aboard and the bomb releasing mechanism still very much intact. It later proved to be one of the most intact bombing balloons yet to fall into
American hands. As was usual in instances of thissort, the local people were told what it was and were asked to keep secret what they had seen.
First the article says China loves the idea of "rich-country consumers" picking up the tab for their industrial emissions. But then it says the idea of a "carbon tariff" has them all riled up. Well, then, how are we supposed to pay? It doesn't say that. Are we just supposed to pay whether we buy their crap or not? That's the kind of idea that has me all riled up. But I like the idea of a carbon tariff. I like that a lot. Jack it up real high. Make it hurt. If it gets to where it hurts enough we might start finding some American made alternatives on our store shelves.
Something strange -- a large deflated balloon -- dangled from a tree. One of the group grabbed hold and pulled it, setting off a fragmentation bomb, killing everyone except the pastor.
They became the only casualties of a Japanese attack on the U.S. mainland during World War II; their gravestones noting: "Killed by enemy balloon bomb."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the governor should dispatch state troopers to haul state lawmakers back into session. He wants them to approve the bill giving him authority over city schools.
The 2002 law giving Bloomberg control of the nation's largest school system expired last month.
The mayor and the five borough presidents hastily appointed a school board to keep the system running. Back on July 1, the new board picked Schools Chancellor Joel Klein as the "new" chancellor and demanded that Albany pass the mayoral control bill.
Bloomberg has been urging the Legislature to pass mayoral control again before the academic year. Bloomberg has lambasted the lawmakers in the past, calling the "paralysis in Albany a laughingstock from coast to coast."
Senators passed dozens of other bills late Thursday and early Friday but struggled to finish for the summer, not reaching an agreement on mayoral control.
A Paterson administration official says it's not likely a special session will be called before Labor Day.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2009 00:00 ||
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Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Sunday accused Republicans of playing "racial politics" in opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.
Leahy took Senate Republicans to task for touching on Sotomayor's membership in organizations providing legal counsel to Hispanics, likening it to past decades when some African-American nominees were attacked for their membership in the NAACP. "Stop the racial politics," Leahy said during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. The long-serving Vermont Democrat, who's voted on the confirmation of all current members of the Supreme Court, said he hoped "we don't go back" to when some African-American nominees came under fire for their associations with prominent civil rights groups.
Leahy was specifically referencing Republicans' efforts to look into the work Sotomayor had done in her career on behalf of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, an organization which has filed some briefs throughout the years on behalf of abortion rights. "The same arguments were used against Thurgood Marshall and others," Leahy added. "I think it's wrong."
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, took strong exception to that characterization. "There's nothing wrong with asking what her personal views are regarding positions she took as member of an organization," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2009 00:00 ||
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#11
I'm getting in a bad mood reading the news today. $crew that moron Leahy. GOP opposition just might have something to do with her being an incompetent twit. She might as well have a teleprompter because her answers during the hearings were rehearsed pap--what she and fellow donks thought people wanted to hear. The donks are trying to curry favor and obtain the Latino vote. There is abolutely no honesty in Washington anymore.
#12
Civil rights are one thing. Affirmative action is quite another. I'll give 'em civil rights or equal rights, whatever you wanna call it. I won't give 'em my job...or any other job where someone else has better qualifications. They can work their asses off for it like I did or they can stay poor. If they think that makes me racist they can FOAD.
LAHORE: Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) on Saturday directed disconnecting electricity supply to former president Pervez Musharrafs farmhouse after he failed to clear outstanding dues.
PEPCO Managing Director Tahir Basharat said Musharraf, and 34 other residents of Chak Shahzad, had been issued over the misuse of electricity and their failure to pay outstanding electricity bills. He said the order had been issued after Musharraf did not pay the PEPCO dues.
Basharat said between 20 and 26 percent increase in power tariff would become inevitable if the government withdrew the Rs 55 billion subsidy to the power sector. The PEPCO MD said the company owed Rs 90 billion to various oil and gas companies for the fuel used for power generation.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/20/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said U.S.-led forces must gain ground against insurgents in Afghanistan by next summer to avoid a public perception the war is unwinnable, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday. While noting that the Taliban militants would not be defeated within a year, Gates told the newspaper it was critical that the U.S. military and its allies show they were making progress in the Asian nation. "After the Iraq (war) experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where it is not apparent we are making headway," Gates said in an interview. "The troops are tired. The American people are pretty tired," he said.
With the U.S. secretaries of energy and commerce in China this week, much of the attention focused on the standoff over emissions reductions or small breakthroughs in clean-tech cooperation. 
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the governor should dispatch state troopers to haul state lawmakers back into session. He wants them to approve the bill giving him authority over city schools. 
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Sunday accused Republicans of playing "racial politics" in opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.
