Free Republic

We've all seen reports that Barack Obama's job approval rating has recently fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll for the first time since the president took office in January. A look inside those numbers -- Gallup publishes a weekly breakdown of its results by demographic groups -- shows that there are a lot of other firsts in the polling: Among age groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama is below 50 percent with every age group of Americans except those between 18 and 29. He's at 48 percent with people in the 30-49 range; 46...

Since the start of his presidency, U.S. President Barack Obama's approval rating has declined more among non-Hispanic whites than among nonwhites, and now, fewer than 4 in 10 whites approve of the job Obama is doing as president. Obama last week fell below 50% approval in Gallup Daily tracking for the first time in his presidency, both in daily three-day rolling averages and in Gallup Daily tracking results aggregated weekly. (snip) Blacks' support for Obama has averaged 93% during his time in office, and has been at or above 90% nearly every week during his presidency. Thus, part of the...

I am preparing a text which I will publish at The Brussels Journal in the not-too-distant future, but I will begin the discussion here first. When I read the various comments at Lawrence Auster’s place and Dennis Mangan’s blog, Takuan Seiyo’s recent piece at TBJ and the latest post by El Inglés at Gates of Vienna, I get the feeling that tensions are building up and that something big is going to happen within the coming generation, probably within the next five to ten years. Since I have been writing about geology lately I will use an analogy from plate...

For the past couple of months I have worried about the risks of a failed presidency. No one should want this, regardless of party affiliation. It is harmful and dangerous to our economy and country. However, it appears obvious to me that the royal regime known as Obama has ended. Seth Leibsohn writing in the National Review summarized it this way: "This is reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter years - the last time the U.S. was seen as weak - unable to move and coax other countries, unable to reassure dependent allies, unable to have the respect of the world...

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China. George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too...

We have a failed presidency that cannot be retrieved. The dream cannot be rebuilt because there was never a foundation to begin with. It was all show and no substance.

President Obama didn't look his age when he took office in January. Ten months later, nobody would mistake him for a kid. There are flecks of gray in the mane, and Obama, who is 48, no longer looks like the kind of guy who glides through life. "Every day, I wake up thinking, 'How can I give those folks who are out of work right now a job? How can I make sure that people who don't have health care get health care? How can I make sure that I'm doing right by those young men and women who are...

Innocent bystanders blog began this...I have merely updated it. If anyone else is more handy at graphics, then feel free to make it better!

Brownsville, TX (The Weekly Vice) - Anthony Carrazco, a 19-year-old Brownsville man was jailed Thursday after he allegedly went door-to door trying to sell marijuana until he knocked on on the door of a cop's house. According to police, Carrazco knocked on the doors of several apartment residents until he reportedly knocked on the wrong person's door. Investigators say Carrazco went up to an officer’s door and tried to sell him three ounces of marijuana. The deputy grabbed his badge and placed Carrazco under arrest. Police reportedly found Carrazco in possession of a 9MM handgun, a scale, and three ounces...

CHIANG MAI, Thailand (Nov. 16) -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday that he had no regrets about his handling of the Iran hostage crisis more than 30 years ago, saying he didn't attack the country as his advisers proposed because thousands of people would have died. Islamic militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and seized its occupants. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. Carter acknowledged that his failure to bring the hostages home — including a botched rescue mission in which eight U.S. servicemen died — led to his election defeat...

The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News. The Office of Management and Budget document shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained "unrealistic data," including "unrealistic job data." One recipient – Talladega County of Alabama – claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved...

There will only ever be one Iron Lady, but confusion between Maggie and a moggy led to the Canadian Government preparing its condolences for the death of Baroness Thatcher. John Baird, the country’s Transport Minister, set the cat among the pigeons by sending a text message to a friend reading: “Thatcher has died.” The message spread quickly among the BlackBerrys of the 1,700 fellow Conservatives gathered in Toronto for a black-tie dinner to honour the country’s military. Soon Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, had received the news that “Lady Thatcher had passed away”. The usual dinner chatter died away...

From where I sit I see many people underestimating President Obama because they cannot get their heads around who and what this man actually is and what he portends. Instead, historical or metaphoric analysis prevails making Obama like “Lincoln” or “Stalin,” like an "angel" or a "devil." Regardless of the comparisons evoked they all fail because Obama is none of these. He is "None of the above." He is not "That what came before." He is all of "What shall come after." Politically and personally, Obama is a genetic sport, a Chimera; a now not-so-mythical being composed of multiple parts...

In the second blockbuster Quinnipiac poll out today, Governor Ted Strickland’s hopes for re-election look dim indeed — but that’s not the main takeaway from the survey. Democrats successfully turned Ohio from red to blue in 2006 and 2008, but the love affair with Barack Obama and the Democrats has come to an end. Obama’s job-approval ratings on issues has dropped precipitately, and as his fortunes fall, so do those of his party (via Jim Geraghty): Ohio voters disapprove 50 – 45 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, down from his 53 – 42 percent approval September...

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups "to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again." "We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times. But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can take to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," he said.

As the most gifted orator of his generation, President Obama finds speechmaking perhaps his most potent political tool. It propelled him to national prominence in 2004 and to the White House in 2008. And whenever he needs to calm economic fears or revive stalled health care legislation, he takes to the lectern. It may be too soon to reach such conclusions. The Democrats who lost last week, after all, had fatal flaws all their own. But the results do suggest that Mr. Obama’s addresses these days may not resonate quite the way they did. Speeches that once set pulses racing...

A day after Tim Pawlenty took a few shots at Olympia Snowe, RNC Chairman Michael Steele came to her defense. Asked on Morning Joe whether there was room for the Maine centrist in the GOP, Steele responded "absolutely." Welcome! Welcome! Because--you know why that's important? Because every footprint of this party is different from region to region, from county to county. I can't win in the northeast with someone who'd be a better candidate suited in the south....So the reality of it is I'm looking to find my candidates where they are. And I want to lift them up because...

Washington (CNN) -- Victories in New Jersey and Virginia Tuesday provided a major shot in the arm for the Republican Party heading into the 2010 elections, but the Democratic losses of these two governorships should not be interpreted as a significant blow to President Obama. While the economy and jobs were the chief concern for voters in both states, 26 percent of New Jersey residents said property taxes was also a major issue, while another 20 percent mentioned corruption, according to CNN exit polling. In a similar CNN survey taken in Virginia, health care was the most important issue for...

We’re seeing a measure of disenchantment with Barack Obama, even among Democrats. Today the Times has a piece about that sentiment in Iowa, the New York Review of Books has a Gary Wills piece that is admiring but suggests that he become a one-term president, and environmentalists have a full-page ad in the NYT today decrying his interior department’s decision to allow a wolf kill. You see the same thing in the poll numbers and hear it in water cooler conversations.

WHO LET THE BLUE DOGS OUT WHO WHO WHO WHO WHO? Virginia went to the Republicans New Jersey used to be Blue But they too have seen the Red light And Obambi don't know what to do WHO LET THE BLUE DOGS OUT? WHO WHO WHO WHO WHO? Now Michael Steele is the Republican Leader He says its not about Obambi But even the Gay Marriage is not passing and the Liberals are not very happy GET BACK PELOSI GET BACK REID GET BACK OBAMA YOU SKINNY OLD MONGREL HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH

Earlier this month, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stirred up a tempest when they announced that they could overcome their political differences and agree on the critical need for a national policy that addresses the threat of climate change and moves the United States toward energy independence. Since the publication of their opinion piece, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation)” in the New York Times, pundits and policy experts alike have declared the Senators’ announcement a “game-changer” and possible tipping point that could lead to the passage of a bipartisan climate change bill — maybe even...

Did you hear?Sarah Palin is a WOMAN! (gasp!!) And she's a REPUBLICAN! (the horror!!) And she's from ALASKA! (what, she's not even American?!) And she chose to have A BABY! (can you believe it?!) And she shops for CLOTHES! (where do we get people like this?!) And she had no knowledge of the "BUSH DOCTRINE"! (she really is stupid!! What's the Bush Doctrine, BTW?--a non-existent doctrine that some dippy reporter pulled out of his butt to prove how unqualified she is--oh, she's not just stupid--she must be retarded!!) And someone says that someone says that they heard someone else quote...

Conservatives are sick and tired of being taken for granted, misrepresented, and talked down to by the same "elite" Republicans in Washington who hopelessly screwed everything up during the Bush years.         Everybody knows exactly whom we're talking about here.  The same snobby, elitist, stuffed shirt, squishy, poll-obsessed Country Club Republicans who went to D.C., forgot who put them there, wasted the incredible opportunity they had to change this country for the better, and are now pointing the finger at everyone except themselves for their mistakes.         Here are five messages for those people:         We're not going back to the Bush years:...

Is the mainstream media's love affair with the Obama administration on shaky ground?

DOVER, DEL. -- Earlier this year President Obama lifted the 18-year ban on media coverage of the return of fallen soldiers to Dover, a ban critics said hid the costs of war from the American people. Thursday morning President Obama -- who is weighing new strategy in Afghanistan -- saw those costs up close.

Officials in New Jersey's largest city are offering cash to get guns off the city's streets. Mayor Cory Booker on Tuesday announced a gun buyback and amnesty program to begin next month. Anyone turning in a gun at one of five city churches will receive $200. The participating churches are Emanuel Christian, First Trinity Baptist, Paradise Baptist, IBC Calvary Baptist and Independent Church of God. The first buyback dates are Nov. 11 and 12 at Emanuel Christian Church. Newark's homicide rate had fallen steeply in recent years but has crept up this year. Since the beginning of the year there...

Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee is deploying his grass-roots activists and raising money for the campaigns of conservative candidates in states that are key to a 2012 presidential run. The effort is run by Huck PAC, the former governor’s political action committee, which has 6,000 members spread across all 50 states, 46 of which have volunteer state coordinators.

Monday, October 26, 2009 Email to a Friend ShareThisAdvertisement The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12 (see trends). Thirty-three percent (33%) say the stimulus package enacted earlier this year has helped the economy.Thirty-one percent (31%) say it hurt. This week’s tracking poll data on the proposed health care reform will be released at 10:30 a.m. Eastern. Premium Members can get an advance look...

The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel headline for Sunday, October 25th screams:  "Swine flu a national emergency." Oh, really. Looks like President Obama has gone ahead and declared that the swine flu outbreak is indeed a national emergency.  And we know that Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel,  has stated in the past that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."   Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius now has more power and authority to bypass federal rules regarding the operations of hospitals and alternative care sites.   And the government has taken another step towards grabbing more power in controlling the population of America because of Obama's...

Reporting from Kennett Square, Pa. - As he is quick to point out, President Obama is presiding over two wars, a sour economy and an epic fight to rework the nation's healthcare system. Now tack on a trio of state and local political races. With an off-year election fast approaching, Obama is stepping up his commitment to Democratic candidates in hopes that an infusion of campaign charisma might pump up turnout. What the party is finding, though, is that the electricity of 2008 is tough to recapture.

(CNN) -- Nearly a year after the presidential election, the excitement of Barack Obama's campaign has faded into the reality of an Obama White House. As observers try to determine what time it is in American politics, they arrive at opposite conclusions. To some, said Tulane University political scientist Thomas Langston, Obama is like Jimmy Carter, and the nation will soon hammer the nails into the coffin of a dying Democratic coalition just as voters, tired of the Carter "malaise" era, handed the White House to Republicans in 1980. To others, Obama has come to usher in a new understanding...

In 1992, Congress intervened in corporate compensation and messed things up. Now it's the White House's turn. BY DAN MACEY Executive pay has emerged, once again, as a major issue in Washington. This week Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced new regulations designed to oversee and limit executive pay at thousands of financial institutions. This is deeply ironic, because today's pay woes are the direct result of prior government intervention.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) stressed Wednesday that both parties needed to work together to rein in the "reckless spending" that has brought federal deficit to its record high. In an op-ed published this morning in the USA Today, Boehner also responded to the editorial board's criticism that his party was without "credible conservative ideas for fixing" the country's burgeoning federal deficit and debt -- an argument, he said, that overlooked the many alternative plans his colleagues have offered to stabilize the economy and address such issues as climate change and healthcare reform. "As I've stated before, Republicans lost...

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a big number that only tells part of the story. The number of banks that have failed so far this year topped 100 on Friday — hitting 106 by the end of the day — the most in nearly two decades. But the trouble in the banking system from bad loans and the recession goes even deeper. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other banks remain open even though they are as weak as many that have been shuttered. Regulators are seizing banks slowly and selectively — partly to avoid inciting panic and partly because buyers for bad...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The banking system today may be in a more precarious position than it was a year ago, the man charged with overseeing a $700 billion bailout program said Wednesday. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general managing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the government's decision to support bank mergers over the past year may have put the U.S. economy more at risk. "These banks that were too big to fail are now bigger," Barofsky said. "Government has sponsored and supported several mergers that made them larger and that guarantee, that implicit...

How many times have you heard Barack Obama talk about "the fierce urgency of now"? The president has used the quote, from Martin Luther King Jr., to call for quick action on the war in Iraq, on global warming, on homelessness, on education -- you name it. Now, Obama and his fellow Democrats are trying to convince the nation of the fiercely urgent need to enact national health care reform this very instant. "We have been waiting for health reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt," Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in September. "We cannot wait any longer....

One of President Obama’s top economic advisers warned on Thursday that the nation’s unemployment is likely to climb above 10 percent by the middle of next year and that job growth will remain anemic through the end of 2010. “Unemployment is likely to remain at its severely elevated level” through the end of next year, predicted Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, at a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Ms. Romer said she agreed with private sector forecasters who expect that the economy will expand at a moderate pace through the end...

So the word was that Democratic leaders worried about the health of Democratic Senate President Pro Tempore Robert C. Byrd, whom they needed as a 60th vote to end any Republican filibuster. On Wednesday, Byrd voted against cloture — meaning he sided with the Republican filibuster. (snip) Byrd could be an ally in stopping Obamacare. He killed Hillarycare 16 years ago. He just may have an inclination to do it again.

Pres. Obama has described Fox News as "operating basically as a talk-radio format" rather than as a "news outlet." When NBC's Savannah Guthrie raised [in a segment of her extended interview of the president aired on Today this morning] the issue of White House attacks on Fox News, PBO first tried to play the statesman, resorting to the old dodge about "the American people" being more interested in jobs and the situation in Afghanistan. But when politely pressed on the issue, PBO didn't hesitate to fustigate Fox. View video here.

Not much Hope but a whole lot of Change. ObamaCare plus stagnant unemployment plus dithering on Afghanistan makes for a magical brew indeed, my friends. In fact, the 9-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup has ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953. One president who was not elected to his first term — Harry Truman — had a 13-point drop between his second and third quarters in office in 1945 and 1946… More generally, Obama’s 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of...

America Now Over 6 Million Jobs Shy of Administration's Projections Wednesday, October 21, 2009 The table below compares the White House's February 2009 projection of the number of jobs that would be created by the 2009 stimulus law (through the end of 2010) with the actual change in state payroll employment through September 2009 (the latest figures available). According to the data, 49 States and the District of Columbia have lost jobs since stimulus was enacted. Only North Dakota has seen net job creation following the February 2009 stimulus. While President Obama claimed the result of his stimulus bill would...

WASHINGTON — The man who watches over the $700 billion in government money given to banks and other institutions to avert a financial collapse said Wednesday he thinks it's too early to say how much will be repaid to the taxpayers. Just as the Obama administration prepares to announce a new TARP-like program for small community banks, Inspector General Neil Barofsky said he believes that "it's unrealistic to think we're going to get all of that money back." The Treasury Department has spent more than $454 billion through TARP programs. Forty-seven recipients have paid back nearly $73 billion. That means...

Attending a DNC fundraiser at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City Tuesday evening, President Obama criticized the “collective amnesia” of the nation about the economic circumstances it faced a year ago, pitched a variety of policy proposals and called for Republicans to support his health care reform push, pointedly saying: “What I don’t have a lot of sympathy for are folks who are just sitting on the sidelines and rooting for failure.” “I don’t mind cleaning up the mess that some other folks made, that’s what I signed up to do, but while I’m mopping the floor, I...

Have you heard the news? President Obama inherited an economic mess from the Bush administration. You say that's hardly news? But it's been the message sounded over and over by the White House. Top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on one of the Sunday news shows, "He walked in the door, we had the worst economy since the Great Depression." In San Francisco, Obama talked of being "busy with our mop." White House heavy hitter Rahm Emanuel used the worst-economy-since-the-Depression line on a public TV news show. You'd think it's October 2008, the final month in the Obama presidential candidacy,...

The New York Times (NYT) newsroom is reeling from today's announcement that the company plans to cut the staff by 100. We spoke with a Times reporter, who told us it was the timing of the layoffs that is hitting everyone the hardest. The layoffs will come at the start of December, meaning a jobless Christmas for lots of reporters. See more reactions from the newsroom > Most of the people at the Times know the paper needs to be slimmed down, but nobody expected it would come in the middle of October. The newsroom is "stunned." When we asked...

Mitch McConnell and his deputies in the Senate Republican leadership are responding very cautiously to Olympia Snowe’s decision to become the first GOP vote for a Democratic health care reform bill. That’s about all they can do. “My job as whip is not to twist her arm but to bring all the information that we can bring to bear on the issue and hope that people vote the way we would like to see them vote,” said McConnell’s No. 2, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Kyl said a heavy-handed approach “doesn’t work.”

Congress Fails to Act as Thousands Collect Their Last Unemployment Checks'We're Dying Out Here' While Congress Stalls By BETSY STARK and SADIE BASS Oct. 9, 2009 The House of Representatives voted on an extension of unemployment benefits 17 days ago, but today the Senate failed to pass a bill of its own. In those two weeks the Senate has failed to act, an estimated 200,000 Americans have lost a lifeline. Many who contacted ABCNews.com said lawmakers are missing the emergency. "I wonder if the senators of this great country ever wake up worrying about how to pay their electric bill...

Comedy relies on surprise. Saturday Night Live has felt painfully dull this season without Sarah Palin to kick around or Tina Fey to do the kicking. Then it surprised the world this weekend. It kicked President Barack Obama. Even more surprising, it got away with it. Only a few months ago major comedians like Jon Stewart and Will Ferrell were lamenting with slack-jawed remorse how resilient Obama has proved to ridicule. How the comics missed the target-rich environments offered up by his predecessors. Even the gifted Fred Armisen, who could pull off an Obama imitation almost good enough to fool...

In the misty past of ten months ago, dissent was patriotic, mass protests were a sign of passionate civic engagement, and the greatest sin any politician could commit was questioning someone’s patriotism. But that was America, B.B.O. (Before Barack Obama). Now dissent is potential incitement, middle American protesters are Swastika-carrying yokels, and disagreeing with a president’s decision to put his hometown above the well-being of troops in Afghanistan demonstrates a “lack of patriotism.� On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,� Ed Schultz blamed Chicago’s first-round rejection, not on Rio or behind-the-scenes maneuvering, but on American conservatives who questioned...

A majority of this country’s electorate voted for the man. Not because of his ideas, not because of his experience, not because of his intellect! No, they voted for him because he promised some vague, never defined “hope and change.” Meanwhile, listening to his speech in Cairo, seeing him bow to the Saudi King, and being embarrassed by his vacuous self serving words at the UN, America is starting to wake up. His work ethic is all but presidential. He found 14 plus hours, in his busy schedule, to fly out to the Olympic Committee and plead Chicago’s (read: Tony...