With yet another poll showing Obama’s approval rating plummeting (with the Democrat enjoying even worse numbers on health care), it’s clear that whatever coalition his campaign built in last fall’s campaign is crumbling.  As blogger JSF put it:

The coalition that President Obama built was on the backs of anti-war activists, Moderate Republicans (or in the words of RS McCain, “The Republicans Who matter”), Conservative Democrats, Liberal Democrats, Independents, Gay voters and Women activist voters.

Within one year, that is broken.

He offers an interesting theory the demise of that coalition which merits your consideration. And now let me offer my own, paraphrasing James Carville (and borrowing the title of one an earlier post), it’s the government spending, Stupid.  Obama constructed his fall coalition by pasting together two discordant groups, his left-wing base which wanted bigger government together with Independent voters and disgruntled Republicans, upset at Bush’s spending spree.

That was not a match made in heaven.

When Obama promised a “net spending cut” and to match a funding increase for one program with a cut in another, Americans tired of Republican rule believed him.  We here in the good ol’ USA tend to lend credence to the new guy.   And last fall, Barack Obama was the new guy, with a winning smile, a reassuring manner and a public unfamiliar with his (liberal) record.  No wonder he had to rush to run for the White House before people saw through his “new kind of politics” shtick he developed in the wake of his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention.

Recall that he fought the election of 2008 not on the battlefield of ideas, but in the marketplace of images.  His calm demeanor stood in stark contrast to his Republican rival’s erratic behavior.  His promise of change offered hope to a public upset at stories about Republican corruption and cronyism. (more…)

. . .  a non-conservative media outlet features story on Al Gore’s global warming dishonesty.   Earlier in the day, AOL featured this story,
Al Gore Gets It Wrong at Copenhagen Talks.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Sonicfrog alerts us to something he wrote on his blog:

Someone in the press…. challenging Al Gore on facts???? WOW! Now THAT’S real Climate Change!

Sometimes, it’s a good thing that the junior Senator from the Golden State is such a legislative incompetent.  Given her far left ideology, were Barbara Boxer better able to master Senate procedure and the fine points of promoting legislation, she might have done more damage than she has done these past seventeen years.   The damage she has done has largely been ther votes for an ever-larger federal government and ever greater government spending.

As a result, roughly one in eight Californians are currently out of work, a rate 33% higher than when she was first elected to the United States Senate, or 25% higher than when she took office.

Now, instead of supporting legislation which would lower the regulatory burden on the small businesses which (as even the president has acknowledged) create the bulk of new jobs, Mrs. Boxer, claiming that “pressing Senate business” prevented her from traveling to Copenhagen ”delivered the speech she was planning to give in Denmark“, “America Is Acting on Global Warming,” in the hearing room of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (which she chairs).

And boy was it a doozy.

While evidence is being brought to light with each passing day (sometimes it seems each hour) questioning the data which have been used to define Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), Ma’am behaves as if nothing has changed.  Not just that, she’s trying to take credit for work she hasn’t done, as if her cap and trade is a done deal.  Hate to break it to you, Ma’am, but it ain’t close to being done, unless you count being done as being finished, doomed to fail.  And many Democrats grouse that Ma’am’s manner has helped prevent passage of this job-killing legislation she introduced: (more…)

As the folks at Hillbuzz are learning, so entrenched is the hatred some people feel for Sarah Palin that they simply can’t reason with anyone who has a kind word to say for that charismatic Republican and accomplished reformer.   They’re not content just to disagree with her policies, they must needs define her as a horrible, no good, very bad woman.  She’s not just wrong on the issues, she’s been a failure as a politician and is dishonest and unkind to boot.   Plus she wears army boots!

Why can’t some on the left just agree to disagree?  There are indeed many who do.  (I’m fortunate to count a good number of these fine fellows (and gals) as friends.)  But, yet whenever anyone raises his (or her) voice in dissent, some on the left are quick to pounce, demonizing that person, often in the most vicious terms.

Considering the treatment Joe Lieberman has received from the leftosphere, Darleen Click asks and observes

So what is the Left to do with people who are obviously unenlightened and have the audacity to disagree? They can’t be mistaken, so they must be evil or stupid.

Can’t they just be smart people who have reached different conclusions on certain issues?  Why must some define their ideological adversaries (and even their occasional allies) as evil and dumb?

Obama: Senate on precipice of passing health care:

President Barack Obama met privately with Senate Democrats on Tuesday and then declared they were “on the precipice” of enacting health care legislation that has eluded administrations and lawmakers for decades.

Yeah, they’re on a precipice all right, Mr. President.  And should they pass it, a lot of them will be falling off and into political oblivion.  If you don’t believe me, just look at the polls: only one poll has support for a health care overhaul over 40%.

Also take a gander the President’s approval on Health Care, not quite falling off a precipice, more like sliding down the banister:

Just wait until this monstrosity passes, should it pass.

The more Democrats promote the various incarnations of their plan(s), the more people oppose them.

*Apologies for changing the title when a better one came to mind.

A long time ago, when I was new to the incredible intolerance of the gay left, it used to bother me when gay lefties who, initially eager to go out with me, would find their attraction turn to aversion when they learned my political affiliation.   But, as time passed, I began to see the benefits to an early (political) coming out.  You see, it gives us gay Republicans a great way to measure the character of our potential partners.

If they reject us because we’re Republicans, then we know that when choosing a mate (or just a date), they prefer social conformism to individual merit.  Judge us by outside qualities they do.  If they believe partisan differences mean romantic incompatibility, what other qualities might cause them trouble in the relationship?  By learning of their intolerance early on, we’re spared trouble down the line.

Well, the good folks at HillBuzz are just now learning this about their left-wing peers, something long familiar to us gay righties.  By openly professing their admiration for the accomplished former Governor of Alaska, they’re finding out just how intolerant their more doctrinaire left-wing peers truly are.

This past weekend, Hillbuzz reports that a fetching Ozzie took an interest in one of their friends and fellow Palin supporter.  But, as soon as he made mention of that Alaska reformer, well that interest was off.  They quickly learned that,  ”If you talk smack about Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, there’s not relationship potential between you and any of us here, sorry“: (more…)

In two interviews in recent days, the President has passed up opportunities to show that he is truly a humble man and that new kind of politicians he once promised to be. When Oprah “Winfrey asked what grade he would give himself,” he replied, “A good solid B plus”.  A savvier politician would have said something like, “Well, I’d like to think I’m doing a good job, but believe it’s for American people to grade me,” perhaps adding with a smile, “How do you think I’m doing?”  It’s a question he should have punted.  And he would have looked good for the punt.

By a similar token, he should have toned down his rhetoric in an interview with Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes.  It’s just not presidential to call your own constituents “fat cat bankers“.  Seems he still styles himself a left-wing activist throwing stones at the establishment.  Isn’t such stone throwing part of that pattern in Washington that a certain ostensibly idealistic politician was once trying to break, you know, that pattern “where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.”

Instead this Democrats faults those “fat cats” for not playing by his rules:

After stating that the financial crisis was “caused in part by completely irresponsible actions on Wall Street,” Mr. Obama suggested that some banks paid TARP bailout money back to the government specifically to free themselves from government-mandated constraints on executive compensation.

“I think in some cases that was a motivation,” said Mr. Obama. “Which I think tells me that the people on Wall Street still don’t get it. They don’t get it. They’re still puzzled, why is it that people are mad at the banks?”

So, according to Mr. Obama, it’s a problem when Wall Street firms put their fiscal house in order to can repay the federal government?  Doesn’t he realize their repayment helps bring down the deficit, something about which I thought he was so concerned?

But because of Mr. Obama keeps it up with his free-spending ways, people aren’t just mad at the banks, they’re also mad at the federal government.

The president could defuse a lot of that anger if he shwed a little humility and stopped slamming Wall Street execs who are trying to go it alone without federal bailout money.

Imagine, if you will, that just over eight year ago, then-President George W. Bush nominated a guy named Keith Jenkins to serve as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Curriculum at the Department of Education. (Yes, Tim and Tano, I realize there’s no such position.)  This fellow Jenkins, having taught in public schools, had become increasingly upset about that students were no longer being taught the values of Western Civilization.

So, with funding from some social conservative organizations, including churches and Orthodox synagogues, he sets up the Judeo-Christian Values Network (JCVN) to find ways of promoting these values in public school curricula without violating the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.  Soon after his appointment, left-wingers in a then-fledgling medium start uncovering information and posting about his past.  As a teacher, he had directed a confused Hindu student, the only Indian in his class, to an evangelical ministry.

At a 1992 JCVN conference on school curricula, a speaker had encouraged students to visit the church of that very ministry.  When word leaked out that JCVN was promoting religion, he fired that speaker and claimed he was unaware of the woman’s agenda.  Four years later, a local paper reported that facilitators at the conference were passing out a guide to Christian doctrine along with a list of churches that practiced a certain biblical form of Christianity.

You can bet that under that series of circumstances someone in the MSM would undertake an investigation.

When a reader e-mailed me the latest information about Kevin Jennings and GLSEN to come to light, I wondered why the MSM is so disinterested in a similar story.  Do they fear that if they even touched this topic, they’d be branded as anti-gay?  (As if it’s anti-gay to wonder why someone would teach about certain sexual fetishes at a conference for schoolchildren.)

Now, this latest information is a bit problematic.   A teacher has come forward claiming that “that there is ‘no way’ that [Jennings] did not know about the pornographic and sexually explicit material that was presented and discussed at the conference.“  (He has claimed he did not know such information was promoted at the conference.)  Problem is is that this woman remains anonymous, so we are unable to confirm her report. (more…)