According to Watts Up With That?, climate data is disappearing.

Nothing like shoving the bad news down the Memory Hole, huh? Of course, if you have to massage your data to make it look like you weren’t conducting a scam all along, it does help if its off line for a while – so, hopefully, people will forget what you said before.

I really didn’t expect it to get this bad:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 24% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18.

That’s a one point improvement from yesterday when Obama’s Approval Index rating fell to the lowest level yet recorded. Prior to the past three days, the Approval Index had never fallen below -15 during Obama’s time in office.

We’re heading towards GW Bush post-Katrina numbers here.

Now, is this a permanent trend? I’m not sure, but it doesn’t seem to be related to just how the economy is going. There hasn’t been any major bad economic news for a couple months now and lots of alleged good news – so what is driving Obama down isn’t “its the economy, stupid”, but something else.

It could be that the bloom is just off the rose – we know what we’ve got for President, and we don’t like it. He’s just been terrible – and the more he travels around and talks about himself, the worse it gets.

It just gets worse and worse:

New details on President Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings have emerged, as an eye-witness has finally broken her silence and says that Jennings was present at Tufts University during the infamous “Fistgate” scandal, and says that he bears personal responsibility for the event.

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit reports that a Massachusetts teacher – who remains anonymous out of concern for herself and her family – told him that she saw Jennings in 2000 at the 10 Year Anniversary Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)/Boston conference at Tufts University.

At that time Jennings was the executive director of GLSEN, an organization which he founded. The event, cosponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, featured a youth workshop on sex, specifically targeting 14-21-year-olds. During that workshop GLSEN presenters taught youth how to perform a dangerous sexual practice known as “fisting” – a practice so obscene that it cannot be described here.

This is just an outrage – first, that anyone like Jennings would ever be considered for a White House position. Second, that as soon as this comes out, he’s not forced to quit.

The man has a sick, twisted agenda of normalizing men having sex with boys – he’s a predator who has dressed himself up as an educator and liberals, naturally, have fallen for it. But rational people now have to take a stand – and Jennings has to go.

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: What’s really sad is the way some on the left actually defend that sicko.

A stunning reversal:

Cook report: Number of “likely” Democratic House seats down to … 218

A bare majority. Actually, there are only 39 seats listed in the “lean Democratic” and “Democratic toss-up” columns, but as Taegan Goddard points out, if you toss in Bart Gordon’s retirement today in a very winnable GOP district you’re down to the magic number. But never mind that. Follow the first link to Cook and skim the column of “likely Democratic” seats, which are considered safe-ish, to see how many come from districts with a Republican-leaning PVI. If you see multiple retirements in that column — and the NRCC thinks you very well might — then suddenly a bunch of seats are in play on top of the 40 that are already shaky.

My prediction remains – a 25 to 30 seat GOP House gain; a 2 to 3 GOP Senate gain. I fully expect us to be in the minority in the next Congress, though with increased numbers giving us better leverage to block the worst aspects of Obama’s liberalism. On the other hand, things are getting rather dicey for the Democrats.

So much for Obama’s pledge that his reform will bring down the deficit – though only idiot liberals ever really believe that…or, did they? Are they lying to themselves as much as they lie to us?

It’s probably just coincidental that bad numbers about President Obama’s much-coveted healthcare legislation came out late last week when few people were paying attention.

This is the absolutely crucial healthcare reform plan that simply had to be drafted, discussed, debated, amended and passed before early August. It’s supposed to cover millions more Americans and reduce the nation’s soaring medical costs.

Turns out, not.

Here’s a little chapter review before semester finals:

Analysts in the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services Department reported Friday that the nation’s $2.5-trillion annual healthcare tab will not shrink at all under the Democrats’ legislative blueprint as being pushed by happy Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader in the Senate.

Instead, they said, the nation’s medical costs will actually grow faster under the new bill than….

…they would if that chatty crowd of Washington spenders did absolutely nothing nada zippo about it. And even if they did pass the existing version for all that money, 24 million Americans would still remain uncovered.

Wasting our time, wasting our money and making things worse, in to the bargain – that is liberalism, always and everywhere.

What comes with even for a moment tolerating anti-Semitism:

A Muslim man attacked a Chabad rabbi Saturday night as he was conducting the annual ceremony to light the public Chanukah menorah in Stefenfaltz Square in the city of Vienna, Austria.

The attacker hurled himself at Rabbi Dov Gruzman, principal of the city’s Jewish school run by the Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidic movement, and began punching him, a local resident told Arutz Sheva.

As the rabbi tried to hold off his attacker, the Muslim suddenly bit his victim, severing part of his finger in the process. The Muslim was caught and arrested by police, and was held for questioning. The rabbi was evacuated to the hospital where doctors rushed to reattach his finger.

It is no longer “never again” in Europe but, “as soon as the Islamists figure they can do it”. The only thing holding Europe back from a new descent in to barbarism is the residual moral strength of the Europe of 50 years ago – a very frail reed, at the moment. The current alignment in Europe is all in favor of another Holocaust as it would be easier, and safer, to kill Jews than to fight off Moslems.

You would have thought that the murder of Pim Fortuyn a few years back would have woke Europe up to its peril – a ultra-hip, gay politician (who dared to have rational ideas about immigration and integration) was murdered because he was ultra-hip, gay (and had rational ideas about immigration and integration). But it had no effect at all – in fact, if anything, the ruling class in Europe became even more determined to grovel to Islamism.

This brute was arrested, but do you think his actions will cause Europeans to think about what sort of civilization they want to live in? I don’t think so.

Rep. Joe Wilson has a petition up demanding that the stimulus funds be audited. I urge everyone to sign it.

Gay Patriot reports on the election in Houston of a conservative lesbian to be mayor:

When the LA Times called Annise Parker, Houston’s Mayor-Elect “conservative,” I thought that maybe this lesbian is a Republican, but, alas, she is not. In the Space City’s mayoral runoff yesterday, she “defeated former City Attorney Gene Locke on an austere platform, convincing voters that her financial bona fides and restrained promises would be best suited in trying financial times.”…

…She wasn’t running as the lesbian candidate for Mayor, but as a prudent manager of the city’s finances who happened to be lesbian. Her victory seems to be emblematic of the changing attitudes toward gays, that if gay and lesbian candidates run for office on issues of concern to voters in their jurisdiction, where their sexuality is incidental to their political philosophy and campaign platform, voters will look past their sexuality and consider the merits of their person and their policy proposals.

With Mayor-Elect Parker’s background in financial management and commitment to sound budgetary policies, it looks like, come January 1, the City of Houston will be in good hands.

Gay Patriot does note that she was opposed by some in the religious right, but I find nothing from the largest groups (Catholic League, Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition, eg) about the election – so, I’ll put down the opposition to her from Christian groups as a minor issue, and it certainly didn’t sway the electorate. The bone of contention for the Christian groups in opposition was a worry that Parker might revive an old battle about domestic partnership benefits. She might, for all I know, but she didn’t campaign on it – and if she’s got any sense at all, she’ll leave that sleeping dog to lie, at least through her first term. Continue reading →

Sorry boys and girls, was out with the step-daughter and son-in-law for dinner this evening and just don’t have the “oomph” to write something good for the AM. Have at it.

A possible subject for discussion is just how thrilled we all are that the Chargers have come back strong and look to take the AFC West, again…only trouble is they’ll probably have to go through Indianapolis to the Super Bowl.

Why is our White House just so entirely political?

On the eve of the first election of the Obama era, the Washington Post ran a long profile Monday of the White House’s “low-profile” political director, Patrick Gaspard. It was an unremarkable story filled with unremarkable tidbits about how the unassuming Gaspard has thrived in a West Wing filled with political heavies–save for one quote from Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina that caught my eye. Explaining what sets Gaspard apart from his White House peers, Messina said, “We are all campaign hacks. Patrick is a movement guy. He really came up through the movement and the grassroots.”

This was meant to be an innocuous bit of inside baseball touting Gaspard’s labor roots and progressive bona fides. But it wound up revealing the Obama White House’s biggest weakness: The president’s top advisers are not just overly political, they are almost totally political. Indeed, this West Wing is stacked with “hacks”–campaign professionals who are acculturated to think, act and win in the hothouse environments of elections, not to govern a bitterly divided country in extremely difficult times.

And so they continue to blame Bush and declare war on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News – its not that they think its the best thing to do, but that its the only thing they know how to do. Past masters at the art of spinning a news cycle, they fail at everything else because campaigning and governing are two very different skill sets – and thus Presidents usually have clearly delineated political and government staffs.

You see, all that campaign rhetoric about bringing us all together was just that – campaign rhetoric. And when the time comes for Obama to become the uniter, these people won’t skip a beat and Obama will suddenly start talking about bridging our differences and working together. Right now, that’s not on the political agenda because it doesn’t fit in with the current need to placate the leftwing base prior to shutting them up in the run-up to 2010.

A horrible government run by people who create and hammer home talking points – that is all we’ve got.