Gallup has Obama at a new low, and he’s lost 3-points just in the past week.

Amidst President Obama’s push in July to revamp the nation’s healthcare system, Gallup finds his average job approval rating registering 56% for the seven-day period ending Sunday, down from 59% the previous week. This three percentage point drop is the largest week-to-week decline seen in Obama’s job approval thus far in his presidency, and punctuates a gradual descent from his 66% rating in early May.

The trend is also seen in Rasmussen’s poll:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 28% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12. That’s the lowest rating yet recorded for President Obama (see trends).

It’s nice to see Americans waking up to Obama’s partisanship and lack of leadership. He claimed to be a uniter, but has proven to be more divisive than any of his predecessors.

Just goes to show you that anyone can read off a teleprompter… but some people just aren’t cut out to be president. And Barack Obama has shown that he is really just an Illinois state senator playing a president on TV… and a really bad one at that.

Indeed:

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. – James Madison

Fascinating:

So much for the ongoing secrecy of the nation’s independent central banking system. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public.

Just nine percent (9%) of adults think that’s a bad idea and oppose it. Fifteen percent (15%) aren’t sure.

Over half the members of the House now support a bill giving the Government Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency, the authorization to audit the books of the Federal Reserve Board.

The people just won’t have any more of this behind the scenes money shuffling which always ends up with Joe Average holding the bag. Eventually, no matter what Obama and his liberals do, it’ll be the hard work of average Americans which pulls us out of this mess…and I don’t think anyone wants to pull the cart out of the mud only to find the same, old power elites sitting on top, proposing to lead us, once again, in to the muck.

No more quasi-governmental agencies; no more unclear lines of oversight; no more unconstitutional over-reach. It is time for we, the people, to take charge.

An NRO reader notes the Nixonian secrecy of the Obama Administration:

The real problem, however, is not the president’s place of birth (it is highly unlikely that he was born anywhere but where he claims) but the Nixonian secrecy with which he has chosen to surround himself. Has Obama released his transcripts from Occidental College and Harvard? (we know all about Bush’s mediocre grades at Yale). Has he given permission for his theses and publications to be released? If not, why not? Michelle got into hot water when her thesis was publicized. Maybe Barack learned a lesson from that episode. And why the secrecy about the grades of such a smart guy as Obama? Might they reveal some kind of favoritism along the way?

We do know that there are things Obama tried to hide, such as his association with Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger as well as William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Do his records reveal other questionable associations or statements? Where is the transparency we expect of public officials? Why is Obama getting a pass when other presidents do not?

Secrecy is the mother’s milk of kooks – while the “birther” issue is, as I’ve stated, a non-issue in my book, the fact that Obama simply does not come clean on his past – all of it, from start to finish – just feeds the frenzy of speculation. The American people are tolerant and forgiving, so Obama’s unwillingness to relax and let us get to know him is mystifying. He’s admitted to drug use and it was a huge “big deal” from all of us…what is he hiding about his past and his associations? Its hard to imagine there’s something worse than Wright in there … unless, of course, it is Obama, himself, making Wright-like statements?

What could it be? Speculation will continue, as long as we don’t know.

This is happening so often that its starting to become a clear trend – that America’s broad middle is taking time out of the day to make it voice heard…something confined almost exclusively to the left is now becoming a center/right phenomena:

There are well over 300 people in Fort Collins right now for the counter-protest against ObamaCare…

And about 50 in support.

UPDATE: Trying to get a hard count, and I got to 76 pro-ObamaCare people and 337 in the counter-protest at about 11:50 a.m.

UPDATE 2: This is getting bigger by the minute (on our side of the street, that is). Then again, we’re on three of the four corners of the intersection, as opposed to their lonely outpost.

UPDATE 3 (12:15 PM): It will be interesting to see how this is reported in the press. It’d be hard to spin this as anything other than an embarassment for the “Organizing for America” machine. We’ll see…

UPDATE 4: Is Betsy Markey paying attention? This is a pretty interesting cross-section of the center-right coalition – lots of new faces.

UPDATE 5: I see a lot of cameras. Send photos if you’ve got ’em.

UPDATE 6: Ouch. There’s a pro-ObamaCare sign that says “VA HEALTHCARE FOR ALL”. If that’s your best pitch…

UPDATE 7: Hard count at well over 430 as of 12:30 PM. Not even 150 across the street (they’re spread out to try to fill the corner, so they’re easier to count.)

You can laugh, if you like, liberals – but the TEA Party movement is for real, growing and will become predominant in the 2010 campaign. Those who cross TEA, will be in peril while those who ride this movement – whatever their political party – will come out the winners.

This is the guy who is in charge of looking after America’s banking industry, boys and girls:

A senior House Democrat threatened banks Wednesday that if they don’t volunteer to save more homeowners from foreclosure, Congress will make them.

In a sternly worded statement, Rep. Barney Frank said Congress will revive legislation that would let bankruptcy judges write down a person’s monthly mortgage payment if the number of loan modifications remain low.

Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, also said his committee won’t consider legislation to help banks lend unless there is a “significant increase” in mortgage modifications.

It doesn’t quite work like that. Frank’s plan is actually so dumb that I theorize that it is the plan of the lenders, using Frank as a mouthpiece.

People can do a lot with their home loans – but for those who are upside down, the only rational thing to do is short-sale or let it go in to foreclosure. If someone owes $400,000 on a house currently worth $180,000, what is the point of staying even if the lender is willing to come down massively on the monthly mortgage payment? Does anyone really think the house will go above $400,000 in the next 10 years? Heck, in the next 20 years? The banks love very much to have a loan modified to keep the principle balance at boom market levels…but more and more home owners are starting to understand that there’s no sense at all – and no moral justification – to continue to shovel money in to a financial black hole.

The only leverage a borrower has over his lender is the threat of yet another house to sell in a saturated, depressed market. I’ve heard credible stories that 35,000 foreclosed homes in my area are being kept off the market in order to try to support home prices – do the banks want to add more to that pile? Probably not. But Frank wants more and more people to lose this leverage – or, at least, delay exercising the option until, perhaps, its too late to easily have done with it.

Take one for-instance I found out about recently. If a person is upside on his loan by 50% (let’s say) and approaches his lender to say, “hey, lets make a deal – reduce my principle by 40%. That way I keep my house, and you get more than market value for the home.” Except in the rarest of circumstances, this is not happening. Why? Because the investors – those who hold the note, as opposed to the banks which service the loan – would rather see the house short-sale for only 40% of the loan balance than “re-loan” the home owner 60%. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush – better to have the $150,000 for the short-sale than $200,000 in a loan which may yet default as the economy worsens.

Borrowers of America, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your FICO score! A bit silly, I know, but I’ve said before that we need a national bankruptcy reorganization of our housing market – and if Frank and his corporate, fat cat buddies won’t do it, we might have to take matter in to our own hands. Better a short-sale or even a foreclosure, and the books cleared, than to hang on to the dead hand of the 2005 housing market.

Jennifer Rubin provides a keen insight:

…Every president faces a rough patch or two, but Obama’s may be a bit more troubling than most. A presidency that rests on a cult of personality rather than the power of ideas is particularly vulnerable when the personality proves to be less attractive.

Moreover, Obama has not expended political capital on anything meaningful. He did not, as Ronald Reagan did, suffer a drop in the polls by doing the hard work of wringing inflation from the economy. He didn’t enrage liberals by refusing to retreat from an unpopular war or risk the ire of the conservative base to pass a largely successful Medicare Part D, as did George W. Bush. Obama lost his popularity with only a failed stimulus plan to show for it. He has not worked to sow the seeds of policy initiatives which will bear fruit later on. He has frittered away his high standing on government boondoggles.

It would be a mistake to conclude Obama is permanently hobbled. His large congressional majorities may well deliver some type of health care reform for which he can claim credit. And the economy will eventually rebound. But what has been lost is that “opportunity” which Rahm Emanuel bragged about to use both the recession and Obama’s personal popularity to enact a fundamental shift in our government.

Whether due to political overreach or to sagging employment, the chance to remake America to suit Obama’s liberal vision is quickly slipping from the president’s grasp. And you don’t get opportunities like that very often.

I expect Obama to recover – not because he’s any good, but because liberalism has invested too much in Obama. A full court press of the leftwing propaganda machine will re-burnish Obama. At least a bit, that is.

Obama’s failure – far more than the failure of Carter in the 70’s – would involve liberalism from top to bottom. Liberalism dodged away from Carter – claiming he failed because he wasn’t liberal enough. Well, Obama is as liberal as all but the kookiest of the kook left could desire. If Obama doesn’t work, then liberalism doesn’t work, and there’s an end on it. The story that Hillary’s troops remain campaign ready indicates that at least some DLC-type Democrats are realizing that they might have to run hard and fast away from liberalism in order to preserve the Democrat party, if Obama really comes crashing down.

The majority of the American people were duped in November – fed a steady diet of outright lies about President Bush, the majority wanted a clean break. Well, they got it – but it wasn’t the clean break as advertised. We were supposed to get a center-governing, moderately liberal near-genius who would bring us all together in order to conquer the many problems America has at home and abroad. Hope and change. The trouble is that we got dishonest, uber-liberal neophyte who is busily dividing us from each other, coddling our enemies and insulting our friends as we ignore our real problems to tackle secondary issues like health care, or fairy-tale issues like global warming. People are beginning to realize they’ve been had.

We don’t get “do-overs”. We’re stuck with Obama until at least January 20th, 2013. It will be a very hard lesson – as Mencken once opined, people get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. Consider Obama the political two-by-four to whack us upside the head and hopefully pound some sense in to us. If we learn this lesson, we’ll never have to deal with the likes of Obama, again.

Because there’s nothing to worry about:

The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.

The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command’s Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.

Some one figure out when we’re supposed to start worrying – I don’t want to be the first guy, k?

Just posted so that all and sundry may bring up whatever is on their minds (or, for our liberals, whatever is in their daily talking points).

Because Obama’s already on track to make our enemies love us:

Police arrested 7 men in North Carolina and charged them with terrorist activities that have their roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan and date back to the 1980s, before a few of them were born…

…Boyd and his two sons hail from rural North Carolina and lo these many years, Father Boyd has been plotting against his country, if the charges are true. For 20 years or more, this has been simmering.

It is the homegrown jihad we still have to fear.

I guess some domestic spying is necessary.

Now, with all due respect to Don Surber – the author of the linked article – we don’t need any domestic spying. Clearly, these well-meaning people – who only started on their actions 20 years ago because they knew that eventually we’d elect someone like President Bush – simply haven’t heard about the new, Obama-run America. The backwoods of North Carolina are not exactly fully integrated in to the modern world, so it could be that Boyd, et al just haven’t have a chance to experience that warm, fuzzy feeling all the rest of al Qaeda gets when they see Obama.

Now that the FBI has kindly reached out to them, its certain they will start to read the Washington Post, New York Times and Daily Kos and realize that all their efforts in the backwoods were for naught – the American people, wise as long as they back Obama, have already saved the day. These nice people can now get on with their true ambitions, which probably run to providing low-cost day care to working mothers, or some such.