Which means that that 43% aren’t paying attention to what a disaster he is.

In what may be the ultimate job rating, 43 percent of voters say that they would vote to re-elect President Obama if the 2012 election were held today, down from 52 percent six months ago, from April 22-23, 2009.

Obama’s job approval rating comes in at 49 percent this week. That’s down just one percentage point from late September, but it marks a new low approval for the president — and the first time the Fox News poll has measured his approval below 50 percent.

Moreover, the number of Americans saying they would vote to re-elect President Obama has dropped. If the election were held today the poll finds more voters say they would back someone else in the 2012 election than would back the president.

Have at it… It’s nice to see people realizing the guy is incompetent and in way over his head.

But in all seriousness, can we have the election again in November so we can fix the Great Mistake of ’08?

The doom and gloom headline goes:

Arctic Sea Ice Extent is Third Lowest on Record

Wow! Third lowest! Incredible! But, wait…

Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent around September 12… According to scientists affiliated with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), sea ice coverage dropped to 5.10 million square kilometers (1.97 million square miles) at its minimum. The ice cover was 970,000 square kilometers (370,000 square miles) greater than the record low of 2007 and 580,000 square kilometers (220,000 square miles) greater than 2008…

…The four lowest ice extents on record have occurred between 2005 and 2009, with the record minimum reached during a dramatic drop in ice cover in 2007 that was exacerbated by unusual polar winds.

So, the ice cover hit nadir in 2007 and has increased substantially in 2008 and 2009 – and the worst year was partially caused by unusual winds. Anyone sense a trend here? Now, if you go in to the story you’ll see that the claim is that ice cover is 34% lower than it was 30 years ago…but, then again, we were in a warming trend during that time and it does make a bit of sense that ice would recede…meanwhile, for the past decade we’ve been in a cooling trend, and now we see the ice sheet expanding, again. Anyone want to bet me that in 15 years or so it will be back where it was 30 years ago?

Meanwhile, the zealots are still at it, asserting that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years(the article has a picture of people sun bathing in the Arctic…so that you liberals out there can understand)…nice of them to put it out that far, long after a presumptive passing of “cap and trade” and other screwball enviro-fascist bills…

From Bloomberg:

The cost of living in the U.S. rose at a slower pace in September, showing inflation will not be a threat as the economy emerges from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The 0.2 percent gain in the consumer-price index followed a 0.4 percent increase in August, as forecast, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. Excluding food and energy costs, the so-called core index also climbed 0.2 percent, more than anticipated and pushed up by health care and a rebound in auto prices. Rents dropped for the first time in 17 years. (emphasis added)

First time in 17 years. For you liberals out there, I’ll say that slowly: first – time – in – 17 – years.

Still have faith in Obamunism?

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Connie Hair on Human Events reports:

The bill certified for “reconciliation” is the Ways & Means version of H.R. 3200 that was passed out of committee before the August break, and before it was read aloud at town hall meetings across the country and blasted by voters across the country.

It contains all of the horrors previously exposed: federal funding of abortion, coverage for illegal aliens, comparative effectiveness, healthcare rationing, deep cuts to Medicare. Everything the American people overwhelmingly reject.

No amendments were allowed at the hearing and no debate. Rangel told Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the committee, that he would not have preferred to do it this way, but leadership — i.e., Speaker Pelosi — forced his hand.

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. By so obviously thwarting the will of a vast majority of the American people, It would appear to that the democrats are quite willing to relegate themselves into a permanent minority, if it will advance America’s downward spiral into the bowels of their great socialist experiment.

They want it that bad.

The ends, after all, justify the means.

(via KOSMOSNET)

From Reason:

Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.

There is no other way to explain what is going on at the Federal Housing Administration, which provides federal guarantees for home mortgages. Given the collapse in real estate prices, the weak economy, and the epidemic of foreclosures, banks are acting with more caution than before. They now commonly require home buyers to make down payments of 20 percent to qualify for a loan. But the FHA often requires only 3.5 percent.

That’s the equivalent of playing pool with a guy named Snake, and it’s had two predictable effects. The first is that the agency is insuring about four times as many home loans as it did just three years ago. The other is that the number of FHA-approved borrowers who are not repaying their loans is climbing. Since last year, the default rate has jumped by 76 percent.

Read the whole thing.

Andy McCarthy opines on Rush and race:

I’m hunkered down on some projects and just heard about the phony attacks on Rush by the race-hustlers extraordinaire, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I know Rush has big shoulders and he’ll handle it just fine. But everytime one of these stories comes up, which is all too often, I can’t help but think it says a lot more about us than whoever happens to be in the cross-hairs. Why do Sharpton and Jackson have careers? Why aren’t they shown the door for serial racism and dishonesty? Why does anyone give a damn what they say? Why does the press treat them like they matter when they’re a walking, talking parodies?…

…There’s only one way this nonsense ever goes away: When we say “enough!” and tell the race-baiters their time is up. It’s too much of an industry, so it probably won’t happen tomorrow. But the Sixties ideal is crashing and burning before our very eyes, and I think it’ll take a lot of its warped obsessions down with it.

Unfortunately, this stuff won’t go away no matter how much or how often we say, “enough!”. It can go away, however, if we say “budget cuts”. You see, by one means or another, the left is largely funded on the tax payer’s dime – either directly via government grants, or indirectly through tax breaks for donating to leftwing causes.

We actually send taxpayer dollars every year to Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest abortion provider gets taxpayer funds…supposedly to help people, but no matter how you slice it, it frees up funds for Planned Parenthood to then go about putting political pressure on the system to advance abortion. We’re paying for them to fight against the laws we pass to place common sense restrictions on abortion. We also consider it equally worthy to send money to Catholic Charities as to the Environmental Defense Fund – we pay for environmentalists to pressure government to restrict our freedoms and increase our cost of living.

On and on it goes like that – Southern Poverty Law Center, Code Pink, PETA, ACLU Foundation, NPR, etc, etc, etc…all tax exempt and donations are tax deductible…and while all of these groups will claim non-partisanship, does anyone want to say that they ever, even in a million years, advance anything center/right? These groups employ liberals who attack the center and right at every opportunity and who follow the party line rigidly – they might as well all be in one organization, because they all work together to advance the left. And we’re subsidizing them!

So, we need to adjust things – first off, to stop all government grants for leftwing groups, secondly to change the definition of “charity” to actually mean “a group which does charity work”. What do we mean by “charity work”? You know – getting out there and actually providing some physical help to the suffering. Not “advocacy” – advocacy never filled a single belly. If you want to do it, fine: but do it on your own dime. If you really think it important, then you’ll gladly sacrifice yourself to do it.

Once we get back in to power, de-funding the left will have to be a major effort – in fact, its a lot more important, in the long run, than passing things like tax reform, spending curbs, etc. It is the means by which will force the left out of politics – the left has never been popular and was never able to advance seriously in American political life until it got its hand in the taxpayer’s pocket. If we can de-fund the left, we’ll have ensured the dominance of the center/right – which is only natural, as America is a center/right nation. A center/right nation which has, unfortunately, paid leftists to undermine itself.

In addition, getting the liberals out of their well-paid sinecures will force them to get real jobs…and once they experience life in the real world, they’ll start to modify their asinine views.

A long way out, but still good news:

Republican-turned-Democratic Senator Arlen Specter trails potential GOP challenger Pat Toomey by five points in an early look at Pennsylvania’s 2010 Senate race. But another Democrat, Joe Sestak, runs dead-even with the likely Republican candidate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Pennsylvania voters shows 45% would vote for Toomey if the election were held today. Forty percent (40%) would vote for Specter, while six percent (6%) prefer a third option. Nine percent (9%) are undecided.

If Sestak wins the Democratic nomination, however, the race is a toss-up: 38% for Sestak and 37% for Toomey. In August, Sestak trailed Specter by 13 points in the race for the nomination.

The bad news is that Democrats are figuring out that Specter may be a sure-loser…on the other hand, Democrat leaders never give a darn what rank-and-file Democrats want, and so they might muscle Specter through…which would be good news for us. Even if Democrats are smart enough to nominate Sestak, there is still a very good chance we’ll win in PA next year – the Democrat “brand” is becoming more toxic by the day, and with unemployment set to be 10% or higher all through 2010, there’s not much chance Democrats will be able to burnish their image.

It got the DOW to surge above 10,000 for the first time in a year; what was it?

Well…

JPMorgan Chase & Co. posted its highest profit since the subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, relying on a surge in investment-banking revenue to weather higher losses on consumer loans…

…The investment-banking unit generated $1.92 billion in profit during the quarter, or more than half the bank’s total…

..Profit in the corporate and private-equity business was $1.29 billion, compared with a loss of $1.78 billion last year, because of trading gains on investments…

Woohoo!!! What a performance! Everything is going perfect! Except…

…The retail bank posted net income of $7 million, a decline of $57 million from a year earlier, as the bank set aside more money to cover credit losses. Home-equity charge-offs climbed to $1.14 billion from $663 million and are expected to reach about $1.4 billion “over the next several quarters,” the bank said in slides posted on its Web site. Prime-mortgage losses rose to $525 million from $177 million.

Credit cards, a division Dimon has said is unlikely to make money this year or next, lost $700 million, compared with income of $292 million in the third-quarter of last year. The net charge-off rate, excluding some bad loans acquired in the takeover of Washington Mutual, climbed to 9.41 percent, from 8.97 percent in the second quarter and 5 percent in the year- earlier period.

Card Forecast

Dimon said on the conference call with analysts that credit cards may lose $1 billion in the first quarter.

“The capital markets portion of the industry was very strong in the quarter, while there are continued problems in the traditional banking part of the company…(emphasis added)

So, what happened? A large bank played around with stocks and made a huge profit during a big sucker rally … meanwhile, what it normally does for a living was a complete disaster and is expected to get worse. And this means that unless the stock market continues to climb, J P Morgan will be in very deep doo-doo.

Oh, and the good news from China? Exports were only 15% lower than last year…this is considered good because it wasn’t a 21% drop…

What should certainly be a fascinating read, touching off an interesting debate – from the abstract of The Empty Idea of Authority:

The idea of authority is a fabrication. Claims of moral right to be obeyed owe their historic salience to the self-interest of claimants. When Enlightenment scholars demolished the divine right of kings, they should have disabused us of the right, not just of the notions that it came from the divine and belonged to kings. Their effort to salvage the idea of right to rule and to press it into serving as support for their favored governments was understandable but unjustified.

Claims of moral right to be obeyed have their origins in creationist accounts of law and government. This article presents an evolutionary account of law and government. The law of a human community is a self-generating, self-recognizing system of human communications that signals likely action within that community. Law is a signaling system that uniquely serves and symbiotically defines a human community. Autopoiesis, not authority, is the phenomenon that authentically animates law and government…

…Understanding law as an autopoietic signaling system frees us to discard the idea of authority.

And to the dictionary I go for, “autopoietic”: and come up with “no dictionary results”. So, how about “poietic”? Seems that the best I can gather is it means “self-forming”. Ok – I like to use a bit of odd vocabulary, myself, from time to time…but this presses the issue. Anyways…

A few quick thoughts about it:

How can something be self-forming if the only examples we have of it are based on the injunctions of law-givers who have no moral right to be obeyed? It seems to me that the author merely wishes to replace Moses with the author. Its a neat job, if you can get it.

“Creationist accounts” is a nifty way of denigrating the idea of Authority – you know, “those creationists who think that Adam and Eve kept dinosaurs as pets”, in the leftist meme about the very concept of creation. But to denigrate is not to refute. If Moses was making it up to benefit himself or his class, then why do his laws not actually do such a thing? The basics of Mosaic law – the Ten Commandments – are the most succinct expression of well-ordered liberty devised: to put it in rather quick and vulgar terms; don’t murder, don’t lie, hands off other people’s stuff, keep it in your pants, take a day off every week, don’t worship any thing or anyone other than God. If we were all to really follow the Commandments, the world would be a vastly better place and not a single person would be able to get over on any of us. These are not the laws of someone looking out for number one.

From my history books, I understand that the scholars of the so-called “enlightenment” were actually in favor of “enlightened despots”, had no faith in the common people and viewed the folks as mere clay for their social experiments. While those cobweb spinners might have knocked “divine right”, all they were doing was knocking a heretical idea long since denounced by that ultimate exemplar of Authority, the Roman Catholic Church. I’ll leave alone such scholarly pursuits as the September Massacres the last generation of “enlightened” scholars engaged in.

HAT TIP: Instapundit

Many, if not most of you may have heard about the woman of whom I am proud to have as my Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, who is continually under assault for doing what she does best, speaking the truth. As of now, there is a ton of money pouring into her opponent’s coffers from big unions, Moveon.org, George Soros and others. As a result, Congresswoman Bachmann is asking for our help:

“Everyday, it must seem that Washington just isn’t listening to you. In fact, it must seem they’re doing their best to work against your interests. Those of us who call ourselves Republicans, or worse yet conservatives, are denigrated as crazy, nuts, wacko, extreme, racist, fill in your derogatory adjective. They say we’re more interesting in stopping progress than in making reforms. The White House refuses to work with Fox News, saying it is a “wing of the Republican party.” This isn’t conjecture; these are the words of the Communications Director of the White House.

You and I know the truth: We’re not being obstructionists. The problem is that the proposals coming out of Washington – from cap-and-trade to bailout mania to socialized medicine – are simply bad public policy. We don’t believe that government is inherently evil, set out to destroy the hopes and aspirations of its citizens, no matter how some media outlets portray us. We realize that an unchecked government can get too big for its own good. And,we know that right now in Washington, this Administration and this Congress have forgotten the tried and true principle of our founding – that the government works for the people, not the other way around.

They seem intent on plowing forward with their agenda no matter how many town halls you speak at or tea parties you attend.

Look around and you’ll see the warning signs about the plummeting value of our dollar. Overseas, the sharks are circling and calling for a reevaluation of the prominent spot the dollar has long enjoyed. Yet, Washington continues to spend and spend and borrow and spend with no regard to our skyrocketing debt and annual deficits. Something has got to give.”

Republicans have put forth alternatives to every proposal — and our alternatives won’t break the bank. When we’re lucky, they get lip service from the Democrat majority. More often, they don’t even get a debate. And this from a majority that promised to end partisan bickering and bring true transparency to the legislative process!

They have an agenda of their own and they’re on a path to increase spending as well as the size and scope of government on every issue. They’re out to protect their friends — like ACORN — regardless of what it costs you and what it will cost our nation’s future.

Don’t give up! I hear you. And, there are others in Congress who hear you, too. Today, let’s send a message to Washington that they can’t ignore. I promise to keep speaking the truth for all of you, but I need your help to do it. Is it worth just a few minutes of your time and a few dollars to make sure Washington gets the message that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?

Ms. Bachmann is one person in Washington who isn’t afraid to loudly proclaim that our current socialist ’emperor’ has no clothes. If you agree with this, please let Ms. Bachmann know by supporting her with a generous contribution.