Dan Cleary

Obama's Approval Rating Plumbs New Depths

The reason for Obama's latest dive in the polls is pretty obvious: He's ducking Bill O'Reilly!

Well, that or maybe the fact that his policies are incoherent disasters.

After a brief resurgence earlier this year, President Obama's poll numbers are back in the dumps. A new Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday finds Obama's approval rating at the lowest point in his presidency, thanks in part to voter angst over the economy and his handling of the situation in Libya.

Just 42 percent of those polled approve of the job Obama is doing, compared to 48 percent who disapprove, according to Quinnipiac. And in a bad sign for his upcoming 2012 re-election campaign, 50 percent of those polled say he doesn't deserve another term in the White House.

Considering that 45.7% of Americans never thought Obama deserved a first term, one has to wonder how Obama even sniffs a second term, amidst $3-$5 gas, high unemployment, a crumbling housing market, a disintegrating Middle East, no FY2010 budget, yada yada yada.

Wild guess: The path to reelection involves the MSM exploring exactly none of the above issues in much substantive detail, while fixating on any two-bit Birther story that comes down the pike.

Cross-posted at JWF.

FLASHBACK, 2007: Fringe Anti-War POTUS Candidate Upbraids His Future Self

Remember how George W. Bush kept us all in the dark about his intentions in Iraq?

Me neither.

Of course, Bush could have allowed C-SPAN into the Situation Room and Obama still would have gotten his panties in a bunch about transparency. Oh well. Now keep in mind this is the same guy who one week ago launched a war kinetic military action against Libya and didn't bother giving Congress a clue until three days later.

The American people? We're penciled in for a debriefing this coming Monday.

Via Breitbart. Cross-posted at JWF.

Dumb: Poll Concludes That Church-Goers More Likely to Be Obese

Good grief.

I have a hypothesis: Democrat politicians are more likely to be tax cheats than the general population. Seems plausible enough on its face. One would think some enterprising research group out there might want to connect the dots on that one. I mean, scientifically.

But no. Instead, we get a steady stream of inane studies like this.

No doubt, you know who is taking copious notes.

The more you go to church, the more likely you are to be fat.

That’s the conclusion from a new study from Northwestern University, which found that young churchgoers who go to services weekly, or more, were much more likely to become obese in their middle-age years than those who rarely, or never, attend.

What’s to blame? One of the authors said a culture of eating, as well as a focus on more obvious vices, could be the culprit.

“Churches pay more attention to obvious vices like smoking or drinking,” Matthew Feinstein, lead author of the research and fourth-year medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, explained to CNN. “Our best guess about why is that…more frequent participation in church is associated with good works and people may be rewarding themselves with large meals that are more caloric in nature than we would like.”

Sounds like Mr. Diligent University Research Student pulled that wild guess out of thin air.

Hey, maybe church-goers like to sneak extra wafers during communion. Who knows? It could be anything! I'm just brainstorming!

“There’s certainly a church culture around eating,” Erik Christensen, a pastor at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Logan Square in Chicago, told CNN.” What I see among congregants in their 20s and 30s is they are very fit and what I see among congregants in their 50s and 60s is disproportionate obesity.”

Of course, the pastor could just as easily be talking about a random sample of humanity there.

And what are we to make of this this beastly heathen? I guess he's just an outlier.

Via The Blaze. Cross-posted at JWF.

Sen. Frank Lout-enberg (D-Natch): Planned Parenthood Opponents "Don't Deserve the Freedoms That Are in the Constitution"

"...but we'll give it to them anyway."

Well, isn't that nice of the Senator?

Say, I thought this bum retired over a decade ago. What happened?

Via RealClearPolitics.

Cross-posted at JWF.

Irony: Daffy Former VPOTUS Very Worried About GOP "Extreme Elements"

Does anyone still take this crackpot seriously - let alone cough up donations to the DCCC in response to his delusional screeds?

Former Vice President Al Gore is asking Democratic activists to send donations to House Democrats' campaign arm as a check on the "extreme elements in control of today’s Republican Party."

"Not since the dark days of the Bush administration have we seen a Republican-controlled Congress that is so intent on pushing their agenda in Washington — protecting tax breaks for oil companies making record profits, attempting to roll back environmental regulations, and not only refusing to pass climate change legislation in any form but refusing to acknowledge that climate change even exists," Gore wrote in a fundraising pitch for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

The former presidential candidate, who lost to George W. Bush in the disputed 2000 election, noted the DCCC was trying to raise $1 million from grassroots activists before the March 31 deadline.

That is scary, actually.

Not Republicans controlling Congress. I'd say 5% unemployment and annual budget deficits below $1 trillion sounds pretty good right about now.

No, what's really scary is that this loon won the popular vote in 2000.

Cross-posted at JWF.

Great News: Dead Voters Trending Republican

You know Barack Obama's reelection is in serious jeopardy when the reliably Democrat 'deceased' demographic is going wobbly on him.

HOUSTON - A Woodlands man has found a way to campaign against President Barack Obama from his grave.

Jim Harrison's life ended Feb. 27 from cancer, but Harrison's political views are alive and well. The last line of Harrison's obituary reads:

"In lieu of flowers, at Jim's request, please make a donation to ANYONE running against Barack Hussein Obama or the American Cancer Society."

"He was an avid Republican and just took that to the grave with him. Just enjoyed it. Kind of a parting shot," said John Rundlof, Harrison’s stepson.

The 68-year old wrote the line himself before he passed on.

"We saw it. We said, ‘Yes Jim. You've got to put it in.’ It was awesome. He's a staunch Republican and everybody, they remember that obituary when they see it," said Ginger Rundlof, Harrison’s widow.

Harrison lived in the Woodlands, but he's making news across the country. It turns out this just might be a trend. We found at least 5 others, across the US, with that same line in their obituaries.

Cross-posted at JWF.

Take Me to the Place (Naive Melody)

This post inspired by Derek Brigham.

I'm not a huge Talking Heads fan, but I liked 'Burning Down the House' and some of their other hits. This may be my favorite song of theirs.

You may recall it from the closing credits of Wall Street.

Un-Funnyman Bill Maher Officially Runs Out of Material, Now Just Taking Vulgar Potshots at Palin

Keith Olbermann's fart jokes suddenly seem classy and even witty by comparison.

The worst part of this is that it sounds like the half-soused rabble in the HBO "Real Time" audience are really lapping up Maher's pathetic act.

Oh, they're not liquored up? Then what's their excuse?

Via Newsbusters. Cross-posted at JWF.

On the Menu: Grilled OMB Nominee

Meet Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Confirmation: Doubtful.

But she at least deserves a golf clap for her reluctant honesty.

SESSIONS: "Look at that chart up there. That's from the President's budget numbers. Is there a single year in which we do not add more to the debt?"

HIGGINBOTTOM: "No."

Via Fox Nation on a tip from Mr. JWF.

Cross-posted at JWF.

Joe Biden (D-olt, White House): Republicans Are Like Rape Apologists, Or Something

On this lovely bipartisan note, I suppose Joe Biden expects House Republicans to actually give a rip about whether Harry Reid or Barack Obama will sign off on their lackluster budget cuts.

What, they do?!

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, compared Republicans in Congress to people who excuse rapists by blaming their victims.

The vice president, known for speaking his mind and at times putting his foot in his mouth, said that Republicans who want to cut spending while at the same time cutting taxes for the wealthy are similar to rape apologists.

In setting up his comparison, the vice president explained to the audience that before the Violence Against Women Act that he championed was passed into law, “there was this attitude in our society of blaming the victim," according to a press pool account of the event.

“When a woman got raped, blame her because she was wearing a skirt too short, she looked the wrong way or she wasn't home in time to make the dinner,” Biden said.

Wasn't home in time to make the dinner?

Huh?

“We've gotten by that,” he said. “But it's amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party – whose philosophy threw us into this God-awful hole we’re in, gave us the tremendous deficit we’ve inherited – that they’re now using, now attempting to use, the very economic condition they have created to blame the victim – whether it’s organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women. It's bizarre. It's bizarre.”



President Obama has tapped Biden to be his lead negotiator with congressional Republicans on the budget.

Good call there, Mr. President. Single best decision you ever made.

h/t: Amanda Carpenter. Cross-posted at JWF.