So, Elena Kagan was confirmed to the Supreme Court today, largely on party lines.

You know, I look back on the election, and realize that McCain didn’t even get as many votes as Bush did in 2004. So, there was a sizable number of potential Republican voters who chose not to vote in 2008 because McCain “wasn’t conservative enough” for them.

We have had judges in recent days and weeks overturn the will of Arizona voters and California voters. Presidential elections have consequences. With two vacancies in the Supreme Court in the past two years, which were expected, perhaps those who stayed home in protest should have thought about the consequences of electing Obama would be.

And you can’t blame me, I voted for McCain.

Excuse me, this just makes me so giddy…

Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, got into hot water this week for daring to speak the truth – that the Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives in November. But it could be even worse than that.

Contrary to pretty much every projection until now, Democratic control of the Senate is also starting to coming into question. While Mr Obama’s approval ratings have continued to fall, and now hover at dangerously close to 40 per cent according an ABC-Washington Post poll published on Tuesday, the fate of his former colleagues in the Senate looks even worse.

In the past few days polls have shown Republican challengers taking the lead over previously safe Democratic incumbents, such as Barbara Boxer in California and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. Indeed, given the uniformly negative direction in the numbers, it is now quite possible the Republicans could win the Senate seats formerly held by both President Obama in Illinois, and Joe Biden, vice-president, in Delaware.

Everyday I get a little more excited about November. Many say that it took Jimmy Carter to get this country to elect Ronald Reagan… I think the Obama Mistake of 2008 will usher in a long era of Republican Rule.

While 80 percent of Democrats are still drinking the Obama Kool-Aid,  Independents are seeing the light fast and Obama’s approval from this key voting bloc is not only a problem for him in 2012, but for his party in 2010.

Thirty-eight percent of independents approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, the first time independent approval of Obama has dropped below 40% in a Gallup Daily tracking weekly aggregate. Meanwhile, Obama maintains the support of 81% of Democrats, and his job approval among Republicans remains low, at 12%.

Over the past year, Obama has lost support among all party groups, though the decline has been steeper among independents than among Republicans or Democrats. Today’s 38% approval rating among independents is 18 percentage points lower than the 56% found July 6-12, 2009. During the same period, his support has fallen nine points among Democrats (from 90% to 81%) and eight points among Republicans (from 20% to 12%).

THis is just so encouraging. After the Big Mistake of ‘08 I thought there was no way Obamaphoria would dwindle down enough before 2012, let alone before the 2010 elections. But look at what has happened: Obama’s regime turned out to be as extreme left-wing as we here said he’d be… and he was as incompetent (if not more) than we expected… This is buyer’s remorse at an unprecedented level.

Are there any of our readers here who voted for Obama that actually think he’s still doing a good job?

…might have the power to kill the internet for all of us?

Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet ‘kill switch’ bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.

Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor.

So, what are your thoughts?

Rod Blagojevich’s chief-of-staff testified that he believed Obama “knew of Blagojevich’s plot to win himself a presidential Cabinet post in exchange for appointing Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate.”

John Harris, Blagojevich’s former chief of staff, testified Wednesday in the former governor’s corruption trial that three days after the Nov. 4, 2008, presidential election, the ex-governor told Harris he felt confident Obama knew he wanted to swap perks.

“The president understands that the governor would be willing to make the appointment of Valerie Jarrett as long as he gets what he’s asked for. . . . The governor gets the Cabinet appointment he’s asked for,” Harris said, explaining a recorded call.

With all the bribes and shady deals going on in this administration, I have to say to those who voted for Obama, “We told you so.”

I mean, seriously,  it’s hard to imagine that anyone who thought Obama was the bee’s knees can still possibly think so now. Aside from this story, and other examples of corruption we’ve learned about, the incompetence is just as bad. The government response to the BP oil spill has been a disaster. Obama’s inaction has resulted in unneccessary delays in cleanup and assistance. The McChrystal situation has shown once again how thin skinned Obama is by making a public spectacle of the outspoken General’s resignation/firing, which can only hurt our efforts abroad.

All things things together make me wonder if Obama will even survive politically to November 2012.

Need more proof that Obama has done a piss-poor job handling the oil spill situation? A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that Louisiana voters think Bush did a better job after Katrina.

Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill.

50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.

Overall only 32% of Louisianans approve of how Obama has handled the spill to 62% who disapprove. 34% of those polled say they approved of how Bush dealt with Katrina to 58% who disapproved.

Just goes to show that just because Obama can read off of a TelePrompTer doesn’t mean he knows a damn thing about being an executive. Obama’s incompetence is being seen clearly from both sides of the aisle, and this oil spill response  is pretty much the nail in the coffin of his White House stint.

The “unsinkable” ship is sinking, and sinking fast.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve.

The dynamics of this year’s mid-term elections is really quite interesting.

Some Democrats on the campaign trail have hit upon a winning campaign tactic: Run against President Obama and his agenda — especially the health care overhaul.

Democrat Mark Critz railed against the Obama administration’s health care reforms while campaigning in his western Pennsylvania district — and was easily elected to the House.

In West Virginia, Democratic stalwart Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, who voted against an administration-backed energy bill last year, was defeated in his primary after his challenger accused him of not having enough disdain for the measure that was wildly unpopular in his home district. He also was hammered for supporting health care reform.

Rep. Joe Sestak, in Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary, challenged the White-House-endorsed five-term incumbent, Sen. Arlen Specter, and was rewarded with a cushy eight percentage-point win.

As Obama sees Democrats distancing themselves from him, he’s decided to run against neither incumbent nor candidate. He’s campaigning against Bush.

President Barack Obama is trying to ride the wave of anti-incumbency by taking on an unpopular politician steeped in the partisan ways of Washington.

It doesn’t matter that George W. Bush left office 16 months ago.

The White House’s mid-term election strategy is becoming clear – pit the Democrats of 2010 against the Republicans circa 2006, 2008 and 2009, including Bush.

It’s a lot to ask an angry, finicky electorate to sort out. And even if Obama can rightfully make the case that the economy took a turn for the worse under Bush’s watch, he’s already made it – in 2008 and repeatedly in 2009.

It’s not clear that voters still want to hear it.

My guess is they won’t. Obama can’t spending nearly two years in office and run against his predecessor. The fact that such a strategy is even considered proves the White House believes Obama and the Democrats don’t have much of a record to run on. And, quite frankly, that would be correct. The economy isn’t getting much better. The unemployment rate still flirts with double digits. Obama’s stimulus failed. Terror attacks in this country were foiled, not by our country’s anti-terror methods, but by mere luck and private citizen intervention. The oil spill in the Gulf gets worse with little interest from Obama. The health care bill remains unpopular.

All kind of makes sense now doesn’t it? Obama has nothing to run on, so he might as well run against Bush, a man whose legacy has only improved in the eyes of Americans since he left office.

Obama just seems to hate everything…

US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

Kind of ironic, given that Obama last year was unable to give up his Blackberry.

It must still be a big diversion for him, as he apparently is playing on Blackberry more than he is paying attention to the economy, or national security threats.

Yeah, smart people have been saying this for over a year.

President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law will increase the nation’s health care tab instead of bringing costs down, government economic forecasters concluded Thursday in a sobering assessment of the sweeping legislation.

A report by economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department said the health care remake will achieve Obama’s aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million Americans to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, however, since the report also warned that Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, forcing lawmakers to roll them back.

The mixed verdict for Obama’s signature issue is the first comprehensive look by neutral experts.

In particular, the warnings about Medicare could become a major political liability for Democratic lawmakers in the midterm elections. The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, “possibly jeopardizing access” to care for seniors.

Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!

It took a Carter to give us a Reagan; it took Obama for the nation to wake up to the fact that all-out socialism ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

If it wasn’t for Obama’s ambitious agenda of radical, in-your-face socialist, statist ‘change,’ I think it would have literally been a decade or two before folks would have been awakened; since prior to Obama, a slow incrementalism, steady-as-she-goes march toward socialism was the order of the day. We would have been as sleeping insects on a spider’s web, being slowly yet firmly entangled in the web of socialism until it was too late to crawl out of it.

Obama’s ambitious agenda, while damaging, hasn’t yet taken its full toll, and in my estimation, the leftward list can still be corrected, and the ship can be now be righted before any permanent damage takes hold.

As Nazi Germany most likely would had never been vanquished had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor, I believe that the decades-long onerous march toward socialism and statism will never have been slowed had Obama not been elected.

Rahm Emanuel once quipped that a ‘good crisis’ should never go to waste.

That phrase came as a warning shot across the bow of a complacent, sleepy American electorate. The American people wisely heeded Emanuel’s advice; took note of the impending crisis of their loss of liberties and encroachment of the State, and in the form of Tea Partys, Washington protests, and heretofore unheard-of electoral victories in special elections, have since seized the opportunity to stop the march of socialism dead in its tracks, and are in the process of giving it a swift kick to the rear of the bus for what should be a long time to come.

In this sense, and in this sense only, I believe that we may actually owe Barack Hussein Obama (mm..mm..mm.. pbuh) a debt of gratitude.

Not only has Obama made no plans to visit  Rhode Island, but his FEMA director isn’t visiting either.

Speaking to a Democratic fundraiser in Boston, President Barack Obama corrected himself, acknowledging that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), schedule to be in Orlando, would not be going to flood-ravaged Rhode Island.

“And tomorrow, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and FEMA director — FEMA Deputy Administrator Rich Serino, who is a Boston native, by the way — will be visiting Rhode Island to tour some of the hardest hit areas and make sure that we are doing everything we can,” the president told the crowd at the Democratic National Committee fundraising event in Boston

So, the FEMA director is in sunny Florida, and Obama  is, raising money for his party, I guess Rhode Island isn’t a big priority for him

Picture are indeed worth a thousand words.

President Obama made his first trip as chief executive to Afghanistan over the weekend to, among other things, visit troops close to Kabul. He spoke to them at Bagram Airfield and we had the full text right here.

The White House released this picture by official White House photographer Pete Souza, showing the president shaking hands and grabbing a soldier’s finger, and the troops’ reactions.

The picture below was taken by official White House photographer Eric Draper of another president, George W. Bush, visiting U.S. troops in South Korea and their reactions.

I think anyone serving in the military abroad would appreciate a visit from President Bush more than a visit from Barack Obama. The difference in the reactions is very telling. This is hardly the first time we’ve seen such a difference in reaction… I’ve seen past video showing different troops reactions, and they tell the same story.

My lord, listening to the left screaming about violent threats against Democrat members of Congress or Barack Obama really gets under my skin.

First, let me state that no threats of violence against anyone is condoned here. What I have a problem with is how the left acts like the alleged behaviors being reported on incessantly are somehow unique to conservative activists.

Zowblog has an extensive collection of  pictures of liberals advocating violence against and the death of President George W. Bush. These pictures show a level of extremism that is unimaginable…  How likely is it the same people who made signs calling for Bush to be shot are outraged today at reports of alleged violent threats at pro-Obamacare Democrats?

Also, let’s not forget that House GOP Whip Eric Cantor’s office was actually shot at Wednesday night. Not exactly getting the same degree of media attention is it? The fake story of racial slurs being shouted at the health care rally on Sunday is still getting more play.

Why don’t we all unite in a bipartisan call for civility in public debate?  You know, I’ve been physically attacked because of my politics, I get the seriousness of it all. But the left can’t label anti-Bush protesters calling for his violent death for eight years  ”patriots” and then sing a different tune about alleged threats being made against some Democrats by a select few people.

If you needed another reason to hate Obamacare, Castro’s endorsement ought to do it for you.

It perhaps was not the endorsement President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress were looking for.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform “a miracle” and a major victory for Obama’s presidency, but couldn’t help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago.

“We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of his (Obama’s) government,” Castro wrote in an essay published in state media, adding that it would strengthen the president’s hand against lobbyists and “mercenaries.”

So, Castro and Obama have similar beliefs on what makes good health care… How many of you liberals would voluntarily go to Cuba for health care?

I thought so.

If you thought Obama was all for transparency, you know by now that Obama and transparency don’t mix. If you are still holding out the belief that Obama has ushered in a new era of unprecendented transparency, a new AP analysis should put that to rest.

Federal agencies haven’t lived up to President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government, increasing their use of legal exemptions to keep records secret during his first year in office.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hide records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.

Major agencies cited that exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

Departments used the exemption more even though Obama’s Justice Department told agencies to that disclosing such records was “fully consistent with the purpose of the FOIA,” a law intended to keep government accountable to the public.

It seems to me, and anyone else paying attention, that Obama has not lived up to his end of the bargain. Be it about transparency,  or bipartisanship.  He campaigned on lies. Plain and simple. And for someone who attacked anything and everything about George W. Bush, Obama is only doing a good job making people realize how much better things were when we had a real leader in the White House.

HAT TIP: Riehl World View.

I recently came across a graph being put out by Barack Obama’s Organizing for America, which tries to graphically demostrate the success of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and suggest the under the Bush Administration job losses increased, while under Obama job losses decreased:

Look convincing?  Maybe to people who want to believe what it claims to say, but let’s really look at what’s going on.

These are job loss numbers… No matter how you slice it, these are negative numbers. The graph has some accompanying text that references the same CBO report that I recently proved was a flawed analysis.

Now, one thing to consider is that the cyclical nature of the economy means that  in a recession job losses will start off larger and slow down. The stimulus wouldn’t change that. and clearly, based the graph, the rate of decrease in the job losses hasn’t come any quicker that the rate of increase. Of course, if a double-dip recession occurs, as is feared, Obama’s minions will have a hard time using charts to paint the blame on Bush.

So, with job losses naturally declining, what numbers are more telling to look at? Well, let’s look at a chart of the unemployment rate for the same period of time in the graph above

The above chart, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows an increasing unemployment at the same time the Obama graph shows a decreasing rate of job losses. Of course, the unemployment was supposed to stay below 8 percent and not hit double digits because of the stimulus… but Obama’s graph doesn’t say anything about that.

Another aspect of the Obama chart worth addressing is the misleading nature of the labeling. In other words, by simply saying pre-2009 in Bush and and post-2009 is Obama does not tell the story accurately in any way, shape or form. The facts are that Democrats have controlled Congress since January 2007. When they control legislation and the budget process, to ignore that when talking about the economy is foolish.

So, I thought it be interesting to look at the unemployment numbers from 2005 to 2010, to see the trend and compare it to when power changed in Congress…

Interesting, isn’t it?  The economy appears to be quite stable and with low unemployment before the Democrats took over.  In fact, after the Democrats had power, unemployment slowly started trending upward, only to get worse in 2008. Democrats, once in power, made Republican spending look restrained, and one of their first big pushes was for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which, contrary to their claims, sent unemployment in the wrong direction, and in particular sent the unemployment rate of working age teenagers skyrocketing

So, Obama-bots ought not to read too much into the graph put out by Organizing for America… the millions of people who have lost their jobs under Obama probably aren’t comforted by meaningless statistics that offer no proof of success for legislation that he promised would keep them working.

UPDATE: This is another tellling graph. And be sure to keep this in mind.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Fannie Mae seeks $15.3 billion more in bail out funds.

I don’t know if you are watching the Health Care Reform Summit today…  But, just to show you how much of a sham it is, I’d like to bring up how Obama suggested he cut Republicans “some slack” by allowing  Senator Alexander to apparently go over his allotted time for his opening remarks. Obama said, “Both I and Lamar went a little bit over our original allocated time. I — not wanting to be a hypocrite — wanted to give you some slack.”

Let’s see just how much of a hypocrite Obama is…

Senator Alexander’s opening remarks lasted 13 mins, 10 seconds
Barack Obama’s lasted 14 mins, 36 seconds                        
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lasted 7 mins, 57 seconds
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s  lasted 8 mins, 13 seconds

So Democrats’ opening remarks lasted 30 mins, 46 seconds compared to the GOP’s 13 minutes, 10 seconds. Democrats needed more than double the time to grandstand about a bill that the American people don’t want.

For Lamar Alexander’s remarks, see the extended entry: Read the rest of this entry »

It really does look like the child of the Obama campaign logo and the Islamic flag. In fact, the Obama logo was the first thing I thought of.

+ =

We all expected this explosion of spending under Obama, but could we really have predicted that he’d spend away the future while simultaneously pontificating about fiscal responsibility?

After he signed a law last week authorizing the U.S. Treasury to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion, President Barack Obama delivered a characteristically sanctimonious speech. It was about his deep commitment to frugality.
 
“After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility,” he said. “It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do. Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend.”

To put Obama’s Olympian hypocrisy in perspective, one need only examine the federal budget tables posted on the White House website by Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget.
 
They reveal these startling facts: When calculated by the average annual percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that he will spend during his presidency, Obama is on track to become the biggest-spending president since 1930, the earliest year reported on the OMB’s historical chart of spending as a percentage of GDP. When calculated by the average annual percentage of GDP he will borrow during his presidency, Obama is on track to become the greatest debter president since Franklin Roosevelt.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? How can someone so blatantly say one and do another and get away with it? One has to conclude that either Obama is a pathological liar, or insane.