Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Matt Margolis72 Comments

Yet another indicator that shows things don’t look good for Obama…

It’s February, nine months before a presidential election, and only 22 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going. Voters haven’t been this unhappy with the country since George H.W. Bush’s presidency, when only 21 percent of Americans reported being happy with the country’s direction. And before that, the lowest approval rating was 19 percent during Jimmy Carter’s first term.What do the two presidencies have in common? Neither of them won re-election. And, if the trends holds true, Obama looks to be in an equally precarious situation.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research released its 2012 campaign outlook, and it’s clear Obama’s sitting in the same position George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were in during the February before their election losses—voters don’t feel good about the country.

Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush—presidents who won re-election—all had at least 41 percent of voters optimistic with the state of the union.

Just goes to show you that when you put an incompetent teleprompter reader in the White House eventually people realize that the ability to give a speech doesn’t equal leadership.

Obama Needs a New Slogan

Matt Margolis195 Comments

When you don’t have a record worth running on, apparently coming up with a new campaign slogan isn’t easy.

Advisers say a fresh slogan to replace the winning “Change we can believe in” mantra of 2008, is unlikely to appear before Obama knows who his Republican opponent will be and starts big campaign travel swings, likely in the spring or summer.

His campaign posters now say simply, “Obama 2012.”

But Obama’s surrogates have roadtested some slogans in recent months, including “Winning The Future,” which the White House used to promote its budget, and “Greater Together,” which the campaign has used to brand its youth outreach effort.

A new tagline will have to reflect a new reality.

Obama is no longer a Washington outsider, unemployment is falling but still high, and economic insecurity for many voters is a huge concern that a simple slogan cannot overcome.

Got any slogan suggestions?

Throwing Gasoline on the Fire

Retired Spook39 Comments

Gasoline has jumped to an all-time high in the U.S. for this time of year and on track to hit an all-time record later this spring of $4.25/gallon. That begs the question, will the people who are still employed and spending most, if not all of their payroll tax cut on gas vote to reward Obama with 4 more years?  Will the 14 million unemployed who can’t afford to drive much of anywhere, regardless of the price of gas, vote to give the guy another shot?  How about senior citizens who see the $150 million raid on the social security trust fund and a half trillion dollar cut in Medicare as hastening the day when their benefits will be cut?  Will they take a chance that things will improve during a second Obama term?

There are a lot of interesting dynamics at work right now.  How they play out will likely determine the outcome of November’s election, not just for President, but for House and Senate races as well.  If you’ve made up your mind to vote for Obama, what, if anything, could happen between now and November to make you change your mind?  If you’re undecided, what factors will weigh on your final decision?

Obama’s Re-election Strategy

Retired Spook246 Comments

Is Obama trying to lose the election?  The current disconnect with reality and desire to pander to every far left cause has me wondering if Obama is trying to lose, is he just this clueless, or, as Rush noted recently, is he simply confident that he has bought enough votes to assure his re-election?

The keystone pipeline was a no brainer, and could have boosted consumer confidence to a new level resulting in higher approval numbers for Obama, not to mention bringing unemployment down, creating good paying jobs, and stimulating the local economy of many towns along the way, but Obama chooses to pander instead to environmental extremists.

The recent constitutional over reach with respect to religious liberties was another bone-headed move and not very well thought out, although it appears the move may be the first broadside in an effort to shift the political conversation away from abortion to “the GOP wants to ban contraception”.  I guess we’ll find out in a few months if that’s a viable strategy.

The fact that Obama is talking out of both sides of his mouth with respect to the individual mandate in Obamacare, on one hand calling it a tax, and on the other calling it a fine, depending on the audience, was largely overlooked by the MSM. But then his budget director got caught on camera saying this.  So either the OMB Director committed perjury before Congress or the Solicitor General will be perjuring himself before the Supreme Court.  Either way, it should be interesting.

Obama’s allegiance to AG Holder and turning a blind eye to Fast and Furious, would be a huge controversy were it not for complicity of the MSM. To date, no one has been fired, much less prosecuted.

The recent call for significant nuclear disarmament at a time when the threat level is at a post-Cold War high, and the continued indifference to the action in Egypt, Syria, etc., may pander to the far Left, but the majority of Americans have to see these actions as detrimental to America’s future.

Obama proves once again that he is not a serious president by submitting a budget with a deficit that adds another 1.3 trillion of debt, when it was just 4 years ago while campaigning he called Bush unpatriotic for much smaller deficits. When the GOP finally lands on a nominee, the conversation will be about Obama, and not only can he not defend his record, his own words will be used against him to a point that everyone will finally realize that he is not a serious president.

America is slipping into a malaise of mediocrity under his guidance and if he is reelected, we may have federal school officials checking our kids’ lunch boxes for the proper nutrition ……… Oh wait.

This president has abdicated leadership and is the most partisan president this country has ever had. The only things Obama has improved in the last three years are his bank account and golf game.

Thanks to Cluster for most of the content for this post.//RS

Religious Freedom and the 2012 Election

Matt Margolis125 Comments

Did Obama just hand the Republican Party an issue to galvanize conservatives in 2012 to boot him out of office?

The top Republican in the Congress on Wednesday denounced President Barack Obama’s new rule on contraceptives as an assault on “religious freedom” and vowed to overturn it, as the White House sought to prevent the issue from becoming an election-year liability.

Fanning a political firestorm, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner joined an outcry from religious leaders and social conservatives over a requirement that health insurance plans, including those at Catholic hospitals, charities and universities, offer birth control to women.

Seeking to ease a controversy that has roiled the 2012 presidential race, White House spokesman Jay Carney appeared to leave the door open to compromise. He said Obama was sensitive to religious beliefs on contraception and hoped to find a way to implement the rule that can “allay some of the concerns.”

But Obama, at a meeting with Senate Democrats, reaffirmed his decision and was “not equivocating,” Senator Frank Lautenberg, who attended the closed-door session, told Reuters.

Between things like this and the economy, things continue to look bad for Obama this year.

Ron Paul’s “Insane” Internet Support

Matt Margolis77 Comments

Last week I discovered I’d been quoted in an International Business Times story about Ron Paul’s loyal followers. The article actually quote me from a Wired article a few years old from back when I was running GOPStrawPolls.com.

Anyway, I followed up with the reporter and answered a few questions. The new story came out today.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul is the only 2012 GOP presidential candidate who has not won a primary or caucus while he continues to win each and every online poll by huge margins.

People who design online polls have alleged that Paul’s supporters spam the online polls and vote multiple times to ensure online victory for their candidate. “I would say there was enough evidence of well-coordinated efforts by Ron Paul’s supporters to vote in online polls,” Matt Margolis, who ran the GOP straw polls during the 2008 presidential election, told IB Times

There’s plenty more to the article. Feel free to discuss.

Can I Hear An AMEN?

Leo Pusateri57 Comments

I am a Catholic– A fallen-away Catholic, but a Catholic, to be sure. I believe in the infallible tenets of the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, Transubstantiation, and other Church doctrine; but I could no longer abide the turn for the worse in these past four decades in how the middle-heirarchy of the Church, mainly Bishops (and errant Priests) led the Flock astray, by promoting a godless, unattainable socialist utopia on earth via the “social justice” movement. They would get in bed with anyone to make it happen, including the most pro-abortion President in the history of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. They were more than willing to walk over the corpses of dead babies if it were to achieve their godless, earthly dream–

And then I saw this article, on Red State this morning, and I said AMEN!!! Someone gets it and isn’t afraid to excoriate the Bishops who have led their flock astray–

These are just a few of the paragraphs– I encourage everyone to read the whole enchilada– this NEEDS to be said to save the Catholic Church!

Quote:
Back when there was a New Ledger, I wrote a now long-forgotten piece excoriating the Bishops in this country for complicity in its passage, for not speaking up, for not excommunicating the public officials who actively fight for the abortion license despite the infallible teachings of our Church — and by extension, for enabling a culture of license that enables the Culture of Death. (Piece stolen here; TNL no longer publishes essays.)I stand by every word, and would like to add a few things. Let me start with the most basic one.

You can all, each of you, and I say this after a week of prayerful meditation and with all of the respect I can give, go straight to the darkest pit in the lowest valley of the Ninth Layer of Hell and burn there.

It was easy to sell out the unborn, wasn’t it? To just wish away an infallible teaching that — let’s be honest — has been such a headache since a Catholic Supreme Court Justice helped its mass breaking, and Catholic Democrats abandoned everything else to protect that breach, right? To let others commit a sin that our Church treats as so grave that it incurs the automatic sanction of excommunication? All in return for a goal you’ve shared with your Democrat masters since the 1940s — a chance to drive healthcare costs through the roof with the fig leaf of social caring. All so you could work with the sorts of people who are elected to office by publicly calling you theocrats and misogynists for more-or-less upholding the two-thousand-year-old Tradition of our Church.

Thirty pieces of silver must buy one Hell of a lot more for you than it does for me.

Who among you has stepped forward to say, Whoops! Or, We are infallible on matters of faith expressed through the Tradition or through an ecumenical Council, but we can err on policy, and hoo-boy, did we blow this one. Who among you spoke out last week and said, Attention my flock: I must now inform you that the Democratic Party has proven once and for all that if you vote for a Democrat in this country, you engage in material cooperation with evil. We will now be holding weekly mass Confession to handle the backlog until it clears.

Because that is truth. In 2009 and 2010, nominally faithful Catholics who value all of the policy choices you do — labor unions, forced charity, high rates of taxation, urban ghettoes, and of course, universal “health care” — and who claimed to be ardent defenders of the unborn sold out to a one, sacrificed millions of babies and betrayed the infallible teaching of their faith so they could get one gigantic step closer to the social justice you so crave.

And for that, for that moment when they put aside their baptismal and confirmation vows, repeated every Easter, and their recitation of whatever version of the Nicene Creed you’ve settled on this week, your response was … applause. Silence. Satisfaction. A professed willingness to work with the Administration.

You made all of this possible. For almost my entire life, you have given my fellow Catholics every reason to believe they can freely sin, and hey, no problem, so long as they favor higher taxation and government spending. They can murder the unborn, and I have had all of two homilies, two, in my entire time as a Catholic, which is to say from birth and for the thirty-five years after, in parishes and dioceses across the country, in which a priest has said, If you have had, caused, or aided in obtaining an abortion, and you take communion today, you will go to Hell. You look out into your emptying pews, terrified of the wood you see and the flesh you don’t, through families of one, two, or sometimes amazingly three children, and think, Well, at least they’re still coming, as if you do not understand the connection between these things.

This–the ENTIRE ARTICLE– is what should be read from EVERY pulpit this Sunday!