Rove's Obama Smackdown

In August, the American people who voted on CNN gave Obama a C+. Back in August, though, his approval ratings were significantly higher.

Obama gives himself a higher grade. Just a few weeks ago, in his Oprah-softball interview, he said he'd earned a "solid B+" in his first year as president.

Karl Rove's take? Scathing.

From the Wall Street Journal, Rove's "The President is No B+":

Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening.

Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics—free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin—was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.

Consider Mr. Obama's comment in his interview this past Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" that the Bush administration made a mistake in speaking in "a triumphant sense about war."

This was a slap at every president who rallied the nation in dark moments, including Franklin D. Roosevelt ("With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph"); Woodrow Wilson ("Right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts"); and John F. Kennedy ("Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed . . . will be met by whatever action is needed").

This kind of attack gives Mr. Obama's words a slippery quality. For example, he voted for the bank rescue plan in September 2008 and praised it during the campaign. Yet on Dec. 8 at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Obama called it "flawed" and blamed "the last administration" for launching it "hastily."

Really? Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner designed it. If it was "flawed," why did Mr. Obama later nominate Mr. Bernanke to a second term as Fed chairman and make Mr. Geithner his Treasury secretary?

Mr. Obama also claimed at Brookings that he prevented "a second Great Depression" by confronting the financial crisis "largely without the help" of Republicans. Yet his own Treasury secretary suggests otherwise. In a Dec. 9 letter, Mr. Geithner admitted that since taking office, the Obama administration had "committed about $7 billion to banks, much of which went to small institutions." That compares to $240 billion the Bush administration lent banks. Does Mr. Obama really believe his additional $7 billion forestalled "the potential collapse of our financial system"?

Mr. Obama continued distorting the record in his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday when he blamed bankers for the financial crisis. They "caused the problem," he insisted before complaining, "I haven't seen a lot of shame on their part" and pledging to put "a regulatory system in place that prevents them from putting us in this kind of pickle again."

But as a freshman senator, Mr. Obama supported a threatened 2005 filibuster of a bill regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He doesn't show "a lot of shame" that he and other Fannie and Freddie defenders blocked "a regulatory system" that might have kept America from getting in such a bad pickle in the first place.

The president's rhetorical tricks don't end there. Mr. Obama also claimed his $787 billion stimulus package "helped us [stem] the panic and get the economy growing again." But 1.5 million more people are unemployed than he said there would be if nothing were done.

And as of yesterday, only $244 billion of the stimulus had been spent. Why was $787 billion needed when less than a third of that figure supposedly got the job done?

Mr. Obama also alleged on "60 Minutes" that health-care reform "will actually bring down the deficit" (which people clearly know it will not). He said his reform reduces "costs and premiums for American families and businesses" (though they will be higher than they would otherwise be). And he claimed 30 million more people will get coverage through "an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses" to purchase insurance (though 15 million of them are covered by being dumped into Medicaid and don't get private insurance).

Mr. Obama may actually believe it when he says, "I think that's a pretty darned good outcome" and congratulates himself that he could succeed where "seven presidents have tried . . . [and] seven presidents have failed."

But voters seem to have a different definition of success. And they are tiring of the president's blame shifting and distortions.

Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ. A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.

Ouch!

Tough Talk from the Man

This little clip would be even more amusing if it weren't true.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Flight Delay
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

As I am wont to do, I will again shout from the rooftops: THE BANKS CAN'T LEND BECAUSE OF THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE CRISIS!

And, despite what you may have heard, the banks have not paid back the billions we gave them in bailouts. Not really. Sure, a few have paid back the TARP funds so they can resume paying big bonuses, but that's it.

Check out this lovely red and green Christmas graph. The red, by the way, is the amount still unpaid.


(Click on graph for larger image)
Source: It Takes a Pillage

Yet we're still letting the banks cook the books.

The Hockey Stick Scuttle

Whenever I read about global warming and the leaked emails, invariably mention is made of a "hockey stick." So what's all the hoopla about a hockey stick? What does it have to do with global warming, I wondered.

Most of the articles on global warming and climate-gate make for dense reading. They are not especially illuminating. Yesterday, though, I found an informative article, written in words I could understand.

The graph below, taken from an article in the UK Daily Mail, shows the mysterious hockey stick.

And this excerpt from the article explains that the "hockey stick" graph:

[w]as the chart displayed on the first page of the ‘Summary for Policymakers’ of the 2001 IPCC report - the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph that has been endlessly reproduced in everything from newspapers to primary-school textbooks ever since, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a dizzying, almost vertical rise in the late 20th Century.

There could be no simpler or more dramatic representation of global warming, and if the origin of worldwide concern over climate change could be traced to a single image, it would be the hockey stick.

Gabriel Fahrenheit did not invent the mercury thermometer until 1724, so scientists who want to reconstruct earlier climate history have to use ‘proxy data’ - measurements derived from records such as ice cores, tree-rings and growing season dates.

However, different proxies give very different results.

For example, some suggest that the ‘medieval warm period’, the 350-year era that started around 1000, when red wine grapes flourished in southern England and the Vikings tilled now-frozen farms in Greenland, was considerably warmer than even 1998.

Of course, this is inconvenient to climate change believers because there were no cars or factories pumping out greenhouse gases in 1000AD - yet the Earth still warmed.

Some tree-ring data eliminates the medieval warmth altogether, while others reflect it. In September 1999, Jones’s IPCC colleague Michael Mann of Penn State University in America - who is now also the subject of an official investigation --was working with Jones on the hockey stick. As they debated which data to use, they discussed a long tree-ring analysis carried out by Keith Briffa.

Briffa knew exactly why they wanted it, writing in an email on September 22: ‘I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more”.’ But his conscience was troubled. ‘In reality the situation is not quite so simple - I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.’

* * *

* * *

Finally, Briffa changed the way he computed his data and submitted a revised version. This brought his work into line for earlier centuries, and ‘cooled’ them significantly. But alas, it created another, potentially even more serious, problem.

According to his tree rings, the period since 1960 had not seen a steep rise in temperature, as actual temperature readings showed - but a large and steady decline, so calling into question the accuracy of the earlier data derived from tree rings.

This is the context in which, seven weeks later, Jones presented his ‘trick’ - as simple as it was deceptive.

All he had to do was cut off Briffa’s inconvenient data at the point where the decline started, in 1961, and replace it with actual temperature readings, which showed an increase.

On the hockey stick graph, his line is abruptly terminated - but the end of the line is obscured by the other lines.

‘Any scientist ought to know that you just can’t mix and match proxy and actual data,’ said Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

‘They’re apples and oranges. Yet that’s exactly what he did.’

Click here for the full article.

Government Health Care Will Be Grand!

Grand as in ten grand, ten thousand grand dollars.

Read this post from Ann Althouse's blog, copied below, in full:

"Want to take advantage of the proposed buy-in to the federal health care plan? Got $9,900?

But you think you're getting a government subsidy? Oh, but you are. The buy-in will cost $20,000 — according to a CBO estimate — and — assuming you make only $54,000, on which you are attempting to raise a family of 4 — you will get a government subsidy of $10,100.

Or are you over 55 and thinking you'll get to buy into Medicare? That's estimated to cost $7,600 a year per person — $15,200 for a couple. No subsidies until 2014.

Do people who support what the Democrats are trying to do really understand how much money they will be required to come up with to comply?

PLUS: Here comes the VAT!"

Speaking of grand, did you know that since the recession began, the number of federal employees making $100,000+ has increased by an eye-popping FORTY-SIX PERCENT?

Hoo-boy. Bad Timing!

The January issue of Golf Digest: 10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger.


Oh dear. I'm afraid to read them.

Falling, falling, falling, falling . . .

There are some annoying TV commercials running right now, like the one from Brinks Home Security.



Mother and daughter are shown frolicking in the backyard in broad daylight while the evil bad guy watches them through the fence.

They go inside their beautiful house in their beautiful neighborhood to have lunch. Immediately the mom turns on the burglar alarm.

Sheesh! How paranoid is she?

Within seconds, the bad guy breaks the door down and the alarm starts shrieking. Simultaneously, the Brinks people call -- before the murderer can even cross the threshold.

In a calm, authoritative voice, the Brinks man slowly says, "Hello, mam? This is Mark from Brinks Home Security. Are you alright?"

I'd be like, "Shut up, whoever you are. Get police over here, now!"

Then there's the agonized wailing we hear at the end of the Cadillac commercials. "Falling, falling, falling, falling!"



Given that Tiger Woods endorses Buick and drives a Cadillac Escalade, GM might want to pull these prescient ads infused with suicidal angst.

Right now, they're a bit too on the money.

Thanksgiving's Full Moon

Things have been mighty busy around here. And a little sad.

There's talk that Chicago might survive without its O, but I'm skeptical.

And 47-year-old Demi Moore showed up on the cover of W looking like this:

Image credit: Huffington Post

(Or did she?)

I tried to remedy things with Gretchen's decadent mashed potatoes recipe, loaded with butter and grated white cheddar cheese. But alas, I skimped on the sage.

Senior moment begat senior moment as I began weighing my options for the new year: start a cupcake business or audition for the Real Housewives of Muskogee?

What better way to settle this debate, I thought, than crash the White House State Dinner? The Prez could give me tips on cupcakes and being on reality TV.

Image credit: Samantha Appleton/White House

Things were really coming together.

The Secret Service turned our car away initially, but I was undeterred. My determination unmatched by any crasher in recent history, I hopped out of the car, waved to Brian Williams, and brazenly blended into a line of black-tie pedestrians.

Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

My sari dazzled even the coldest of those uniformed SS men. Girl friends, I was in!

Exhausted from a night of hobnobbing with Obama and that crazy pit-bull Rahm, I hopped into my trusty Escalade to take a drive, to clear my head. Except it was 2:25 AM.


BAM! Damn! I hit a fire hydrant, followed by the neighbor's tree.

And ever since, the troopers have been knocking. But I'm not talking. No way.