gemimail,
From The Marston Chronicles
It is hard to draw any conclusion from the polls other than that President Obama's approval rating is in free fall.
2010 Generic Congressional Vote
Poll |
Date |
Dems |
Reps |
Spread |
|---|
RCP Average |
6/4 - 7/5 |
39.7 |
35.0 |
Democrats +4.7 |
Rasmussen Reports |
6/29 - 7/5 |
38 |
41 |
Republicans +3 |
Quinnipiac |
6/23 - 6/29 |
42 |
34 |
Democrats +8 |
Diageo/Hotline |
6/4 - 6/7 |
39 |
30 |
Democrats +9 |
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?
It is hard to draw any conclusion from these polls other than that President Obama's approval rating is in free fall. The approval spread among Likely Voters has dropped 23 points to an all time low of 3% since the end of January. The RCP average has dropped 26.7 points to 18% in the same time period. It would appear that the President's determination to try to do so much so fast is starting to cut into his popularity and is starting to show up in the generic congressional results. The Diageo/Hotline poll has dropped from a 24% spread for the Democrats at the end of January to 9% now. Since politicians avidly watch these polls, some Democratic Congressman may well begin jumping off the bandwagon.
Perhaps you have noticed that there are wide disparities in these poll results. How can the Presidential approval spread range from as low as 3% to as high as 24%? Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is deliberate on the part of the polling companies. The difference is caused by who is being polled. An "A" after the sample size means that the pollster is asking anyone who is 18 or over who answers the phone the various questions. These least interested people give President Obama an approval rating spread in the low twenties. The "RV" after the sample size tells you that the respondent has to admit that he or she is registered to vote. These people are at least interested enough to register, but now the spread is also in the mid-twenties. Finally we have the "LV" group which is the likely voters which is done by Rasmussen. Notice that the spread is now approaching zero.
Those most interested and most likely to vote have the least support for President Obama. Notice also that only Rasmussen shows the Republicans ahead in the Generic Congressional poll because that is also a likely voter sample. The other factor is the sample size because larger samples have smaller margin of error in the sample selection. So in terms of what the actual people voting are likely to do, look at the "LV" samples.
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Alien Patriot,
crossposted on the Alien Patriot
I'm surprised to say that, but I think that Pres Obama has the best immigration policy that I have seen for years.
Why do people want to come to America? Because they want to live the American Dream. Because they are looking for a better quality of life, the chance to get out of the poor environment that they currently living in or just because they are politically suppressed, have no freedom or speech or are persecuted for some other reason.
So one way is to seal up the borders, try to catch all these guys and spend billions of dollars on building a fence, use expensive surveillance equipment and personnel to execute this task.
The problem is that people will always find a way to get it, will always find a way to smuggle drugs into the country.
But what if there is no incentive to come into the country anymore? What if the alleged country does not seem to give you much more opportunity than your own country.
Many years American presidents tried to increase the standard of living not just in the US, but at the same time also provide financial aid to support other countries to be able to provide better life for its citizens and freedom.
President Bush saw his goal in providing democracy to many countries in this world, be it through money or war.
But Pres Obama is so brilliant, that he understands that there is no way to actually bring up the standards in all these countries. He is more than anybody else for the equality of the world. He is a world citizen.
He is much more creative - He knows that the only way to achieve this goal of reducing illegal immigration is by letting the American economy collapse and the Dollar devalue so much, that nobody wants to come into the country anymore.
The all countries are in the same sh#$ and nobody wants to go somewhere else, because it is just as crappy there. Excellent.
He understands that Germans never wanted to move to Poland or the Czech Republic 10 or 15 years ago. There was just no incentive. Who wants to be worse off than they are now?
Bravo Mr President you truly understand the dynamics of illegal immigration and we are grateful that you will put an end to it!!
The Alien Patriot
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Alien Patriot,
crossposted on The Alien Patriot
Don't we sometimes think, what a guy is doing after he was President of the United States? What's with his ambitions, with his eagerness to rule?
I mean last year I was surprised that we even found somebody who would like to have that job. Barack Obama is not even 50, which means he is still quite young when he will get out of office, which I assume will be after his first administration.
Don't we sometimes think, what a guy is doing after he was President of the United States? What's with his ambitions, with his eagerness to rule?
I mean last year I was surprised that we even found somebody who would like to have that job. Barack Obama is not even 50, which means he is still quite young when he will get out of office, which I assume will be after his first administration.
He is moving with the speed of light to change things around in this country. He does have a bigger vision about the world. He is all in for globalization. He believes in world citizen's rather than Americans, Europeans etc.
Even the UN gets excited about the fact that globalization seems to be possible in many areas in the light of the global meltdown of the economy. UN Climate Change plan would 'reorder' world economy. I agree with Rick in his post, where he says:
The loss of sovereignty represented in that document will never fly in the US Senate no matter how many Democrats are there. Signing off on a "Copenhagen Agreement" that contains such draconian reductions in emissions as 20-40% by 2020 and 90% by 2050 according to a paper by a former British government official will never make it into law. We would have to destroy our economy to do it.
And maybe that is what is necessary for a global community. There are many things we didn't believe are possible just 3 months ago, which Barack Obama has already changed. So why is it inconceivable that he will let the Us economy tank for the greater good.
He would definitely be a contender for a world government role and maybe that is his vision. He seems to be driving strong and determined and I don't believe that his vision necessarily only points to the economic success of the US.
I have always been critical and remain so seeing Barack Obama as a person I cannot trust. A true politician. The reason why I left Europe and found my new home in the US was because of the unique features of the American Constitution.
But now I feel that Barack Obama tries really hard to change America into just another part of Europe. I believe he likes the idea of central world government and everybody should be on their toes and watch every step he is taking and protest this President tries to De-Americanize the US.
TAP
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Critical Thinker,
TaxPayers for CommonSense has put together a fantastic data base on the Omnibus spending bill, the states which receive the most earmarks and the worst government offenders.
From TaxPayers for CommonSense,
Cochran (R-MS.), Wicker (R-MS.), Landrieu (D-LA.), Harkin (D-WI.), Vitter (R-LA.), Bond (R-MO.), Feinstein (D-CA.), Inouye (D-HI.), Shelby (R-AL.), and Grassley (R-IA.)
Six out of the ten worst offenders are Republicans. If you are going to talk the talk, then you are going have to walk the walk. They are HYPOCRITES and there is no getting around it.
Of course, for the Mississippi and Louisiana delegation, there is the argument that Congress has been holding back or releasing Katrina money for assisting homeowners to rebuild. This has left these Senators with little choice but to seek out extra money to help in the effort to rebuild their states. You can decide that one for yourself, to me there is no excuse.
Republican leadership and some constituents are indignant about the Obama's spending and earmarks, his hypocrisy is inconsequential. Anyone who is politically informed should know that he would say one thing and do another, eternally campaigning.
Nevertheless, the GOP is another story, the leadership has chosen to stand under the banner of fiscal conservatism in an effort to reunite the party and to have a chance to stand against the Democrats in 2010. The question is how can you preach a certain standard, talk about Obama's inadequacies, and then not live up to that standard? This equates a recipe for defeat. So, until the GOP cleans up its own house you should get used to hearing Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid.
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gemimail,
From The Marston Chronicles
Catholics in general and Roman Catholics in particular present a study in contrast in politics. Most of them are social liberals in that they are vehement in their support of so-called safety net. They are very sympathetic towards the poor and the downtrodden. Since that category tends to have a high percentage of minorities, they are also very emphatic in their support of civil rights. This makes a lot of such Catholics in America Democrats because they see Republicans as skinflints who are not sympathetic to these groups. Republicans help this view along by short changing funding for challenged individuals in just about every state that they control.
Where Catholics depart from liberal ideology is on the issue of the sanctity of human life. Liberals are somewhat inconsistent on this subject in that they are opposed to the death penalty but generally do not have a problem with exercising the death penalty on not only an unborn fetus but even one that is half born. To put it mildly, Catholics see this inconsistency very plainly. This is one issue which can cause a Catholic to vote Republican. Another one is the issue of gay marriage. Perhaps the Democrats should take another look at what happened with Proposition 8 in California. There is a limit to how much of the far left agenda they can foist off on the American public.
A case can be made that because of the Catholic sympathy for minorities, Obama would not be President without the support of Catholics. In the key marginal states, they voted for a black man over a white one to make clear that America is not a racist country any more. They did this in spite of serious reservations about Obama's position on the sanctity of human life and the known tendency of the Democrat Party to be vehemently pro-choice. So how have the Catholics been rewarded for their support? They have been run over by the bus of the far left wing of the Democrat Party which controls it. You cannot say that President Obama has welshed on his campaign promise regarding this subject because he never made much of a pretense of being sympathetic to the sanctity of human life.
Clearly, President Obama and the Democrat Party have come to the conclusion that they no longer need the support of traditional Catholics. They have not only done everything they can to promote abortion on demand not only in America but abroad as well. They do not seem too concerned about the moral implications of forcing a Catholic to pay taxes to support abortions on demand here and abroad. They do see the moral implications of forcing an anti-war taxpayer to fund the war in Iraq and Afghanistan or maybe that was only the case when Bush was President. They view funding embryonic stem cell research as "sound science" and that "ideology" should not be allowed to interfere with science. The ideology they clearly were referring to certainly includes the Catholic point of view.
We suspect that this callous attitude towards Catholics and this undisguised contempt for their views will come back to haunt the Democrat Party in 2010. The party in power almost always loses seats in the mid-term elections. While Bush made an exception to this rule in 2002, 9/11 had a lot to do with that. Now that the Democrats have managed to find some missing votes in Minnesota for Al Franken, they will have a bullet proof majority in the Senate with the help of Maine's two RINO Senators on a lot of issues. A few more excesses like this of insulting their core supporters should make 2010 an interesting political year.
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Alien Patriot,
The Bill started actually with the words "With respect to the Catholic Church ...." The sleaziest attack so far on the constitution and the first amendment. People need to stand up and check their reps, because there is no limits set by this administration as to what government can do. I'm glad to see the Catholic League reacting.
I can't believe that those loons in CT tried to strip the rights of the Catholic Church. This is not just an attack on the Catholic Church (which I'm not a member of), but actually an attack on all religious groups. The Constitution states that the rights of every American are given to them by God. If the government takes away the right of self governing for religious groups, it actually takes the place of God, by telling people which rights they have. This is not just a violation of the 1st amendment, but the spirit of the constitution as a whole.
And they try to do this silently. Good that they were caught
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gemimail,
From The Marston Chronicles
Many of you have gotten a notice from one of your credit card companies that they are cranking your rates on all new purchases up into the stratosphere. You had a rate of under ten percent and now it is pushing eighteen percent. Capital One just did this in their bid to make things worse. Of course, if your credit card company was also heavy into real estate loans, they have already cranked most of their rates up to around twenty-four percent. If that company was in really big trouble like Washington Mutual was, they made that rate for not only new purchases but outstanding balances as well.
Economic cycles are just what the name implies: the economy can be in an upward cycle or in a downward cycle. Up to a point, each of these cycles are self sustaining. When things are spiraling upwards, everyone jumps on the bandwagon, increasing demand and prices. But eventually, the "too good to be true" syndrome sets in and you start to hear scare stories about unsustainable bubbles. Usually government steps in and promptly makes things worse as it is wont to do. A downward cycle is driven by fear so everyone pulls in their horns and also promptly make things even worse.
A prime example of this is the reaction of the credit card companies as outlined above. Then Chase Bank bought out Washington Mutual so one would expect them to lower the rates down to something reasonable. Guess again friends. Chase has to pay for buying out the ailing Washington Mutual so they cranked the rates to around thirty-three percent. Jesse James had a gun so what is their excuse? What happens when credit card rates are cranked drastically upward like this? People stop making new purchases because they are now paying much more in interest. Fewer purchases means less economic activity, more unemployment and no job creation. It drives the economy into a further tailspin. Way to go, credit card companies. You just did your part to turn this recession into a full blown depression.
So how did we ever get into this mess? Actually it was very simple. Certain folks in Congress demanded that banks make shaky loans on homes to people who simply could not afford the payments. The Federal Reserve lowered the rates to historic lows setting off a housing bubble. That same board then cranks the interest rates back up faster than the economy could absorb it and causes a housing crash. The two things together put the squeeze on the banks. Then the idiots in Congress adopted the mark to market accounting rule which in the face of a housing crash caused perfectly sound banks to appear unsound on paper and setting off a selling wave of mortgage paper.
The banks reacted by simply refusing to loan money to just about everyone for just about any purpose. The sudden drastic curtailing of credit caused the economy to come unglued since no one could get credit to buy anything. Then they added insult to injury by cranking credit card rates plugging the last remaining source of credit. So what did the federal government do about this mess? They loaned a trillion dollars to those same banks who covered their loses with it and still won't loan a dime to anyone. Talk about money down the toilet. Did they ever repeal the mark to market accounting rule which would have made loaning the banks a trillion dollars unecessary? Of course not. These are the same folks who caused the mess in the first place.
So there you have it, my friends. A short history on how to turn a recession into a depression in a few easy steps. Can this still be turned around? That is highly doubtful. The absolute first step is to repeal the mark to market accounting rule. Seen any push for that outside of the financial community? Not happening. The feds will continue to pour another trillion dollars down the rat hole which will do nothing to stem the tide. Batten down your hatches, folks, because it is about to get a whole lot worse.
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