Obama's Slo-Mo Train Wreck

Photo Credit, Associated Press; Hat Tip, Christopher Oakley

Two important notes:

1. These numbers come from two of the most important members of Obama's Media Support Team, i.e., CBS and the New York Times.

2. This poll included all adults, including adults who are unlikely to vote. Polls that include adults who are not expected to vote tend to skew favorably for Democrats.

With those caveats, Obama's bad news is probably even worse than it would appear at first glance:

"Obama’s approval rating has slipped to 43% - his lowest so far - while his disapproval rating has reached an all-time high in this poll of 50%..."

The hope came early, finally comes the change. Even apart from his job performance, Americans don't like Obama anymore:

"And for the first time, more Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Barack Obama than a favorable one..."

The unfavorable opinion has surged to its current high from only 34% in January.

Discussion: Memeorandum

x-posted

UPDATE: Some train wrecks are fun to watch!

Those Tea Party Nut-Jobs Won't Shut Up!

When I was thinking last night about what I might post today, I decided to make a prediction for the new year. I wanted to talk about the inevitable waves of Tea Party antipathy that would come crashing down when it finally becomes obvious that the Tea Partiers are serious about holding the newly elected Republicans accountable.

Okay, I know ― easy prediction...

But I thought the emm-ess-emm would at least wait until after the new congress was sworn in to begin forcefully pushing the "Please ignore crazy Uncle TeaBag" meme.

I have to say the New York Times is totally awesome. They never take a moment to rest from their relentless crusade. The new waves are cresting already.

Complete with a carefully selected picture that makes leading Tea Party activists look like they're suffering from some kind of psychoneurological disorder, the Times is ahead of schedule in their campaign to marginalize the post-election Tea Party movement.

While grudgingly pointing to some early Tea Party victories, the Times celebrated the orgy of lame duck legislation that flouted the results of the November elections. One of the New York Times' statist handmaidens summarizes the prog perspective:

...the people in the grassroots are failing to recognize that they are walking into the 112th Congress with unrealistic expectations and a complete misunderstanding of how things work in Washington. With a Democratic Senate and President, the ability of Republicans in the House simply aren’t going to be able to get their agenda enacted into law in a “pure” form. Either they’ll have to compromise, or they won’t get anything done at all.

"Nothing" sounds pretty darn good to me. Judge Gideon Tucker's famous quote, "No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session,” still echoes through the halls of Congress.

The leftoid continues:

If the Tea Party movement is going to have any impact on American politics in the years to come, it’s going to have to grow up and learn that sometimes you have to take a 50% victory and all (sic) it a day.

Gee, golly!

Good points. Especially the one about 50% victory! In response, I'll quote a wise latina:

It’s a good thing nobody paid attention to the original Tea Party of 1773. God, those idiots needed to grow up! They thought you could run a country without a monarchy or any other soul-crushing status regime. They were totally unwilling to compromise. They were all “Live free or die!” and “Don’t tread on me!” What a bunch of politically naive rubes…

Modern American Tea Partiers so need to accept reality. We can’t expect a future in which our children continue living with all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Five out of ten would be a pretty good deal. Get real already…

Unalienable rights? Surely you jest.

The tea partiers also need to deal with the fact that sooner or later, America will go the way of Greece. Bankruptcy is an inevitability. So if we’re going to go bankrupt anyway, why not go down with a few nice goodies like interminable unemployment benefits?

Fiscal responsibility? What a absurd, juvenile idea. Those Tea Party racists can kiss my hairy yellow butt.

Discussion: Memeorandum

X-posted

PS: There's no such thing as a "50% victory" when the man in the White House thinks that you're his enemy. It's all or nothing, baby! You can thank Obama for that.

PPS: WE WON

Liberal Hypocrisy & The Specter of Shadowy "Outside" Groups

The New York Times has issued an alert: Shadowy "outside" pro-Republican groups are crushing poor Democrats with dirty, anonymous money. The vast right-wing conspiracy strikes again!

In their paranoid little piece, the Times refers to "outside groups" nine times. I wonder what they find so repugnant about the flow of money and power across congressional lines?

Liberals and so-called moderates in Washington cheerfully impose their will on the rest of the country without regard for the constraints of the Constitution. They treat the Bill of Rights as a quaint list of mere suggestions (particularly the 10th Amendment, which seems to be viewed as an embarrassing anachronism by most of the self-appointed elitists who run the imperial federal government in D.C.)

Power mongers in Washington have taken it upon themselves to regulate every detail of American life. From what you eat, to how you get your health care, to how you illuminate your home, Congress and POTUS have a plan.

About a year ago, CNS news asked Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the limits of her power:

CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”

Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”

Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”

“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”

So malignant statist busybodies like Pete Stark (D-CA) have concluded as recently as this summer that "The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country."

Pete and Nancy have made it clear that they're quite comfortable with the idea of exerting their influence on people outside of their own congressional districts, but I don't remember the New York Times fretting much about that.

Along the same lines, liberal Republicans like Olympia Snowe are greatly inconvenienced by conservatives who inisist on meddling with her right to meddle:

What works in South Carolina and Delaware may not work in Maine. We all have different views. We're independent," Snowe responded, "I can't go back to the people of my state and say, excuse me, I have to be one hundred percent ideologically pure because someone has dictated that from another state. It just wouldn't wash," she said.

The irony of this attitude is hilarious.

Statists don't want you interfering with their lives or their machinations, e.g., if you reach across state lines to crush one of their statist cronies, they and their friends in the Democrat-Dominated Dinosaur media are quick to complain:

“As you know, they have been dumping tens of millions of dollars of secret money into these campaigns,” Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview. “I would say the outside groups have shuffled the deck in a number of these races.”

Sounds scary, right?

As the New York Times agonizes over the voluntary transfer of money across congressional lines, I laugh at the hypocrisy.

Those Invisible Tea Party Racists

Having failed to manufacture any convincing evidence of Tea Party racism, the paranoid left is holding the Tea Party to account for racism that cannot even be seen or detected by ordinary modes of sensory perception.

When they first set out to smear the Tea Party with charges of racism, the left-wing media apparently had no idea how difficult a task it would be. It probably would be easier to find a socialist Tea Partier than it would be to find a racist one. Racist yahoos are entirely unwelcome at Tea Party gatherings.

This comes as no surprise to those who have actually participated in Tea Party activities. The Tea Party is focused not on inflammatory social issues, but on the desire for small government, big liberty and economic opportunity for everyone who cares to seize it.

Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, co-founders of Tea Party Patriots explain, via Politico:

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be proud of this movement. He dreamed of a colorblind society. The tea party is a truly post-racial movement. Based strictly around the three simple principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free market capitalism, the movement is uninterested and uninvolved in the politics of race.

But leftists, well-versed in Alinsky's juvenile tactics, don't allow the truth to interfere with their goals. This week, ThinkProgress.org, a well-funded left-wing outfit, produced a fraudulent video featuring the antics of Tea Party infiltrators and crashers, and attributed that bad behavior to the very Tea Partiers who were chasing the miscreants away.

Conservative bloggers and writers have been fighting back, aggressively attacking ThinkProgress.org for their shameless defamation of the Tea Parties. Bob Owens exposes the deception in great detail.

Predictably, the Democrat-dominated dinosaur media is rushing in to defend leftist smears. With a token link to RightKlik, the New York Times dismisses* proof of left-wing anti-Tea Party fraud by giving, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a bed-wetting Journolist Alumnus, the final word:

While much of the debate has centered around whether alleged examples of blatant racism at Tea Party events are factual or fraudulent, the Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates feels that the most invidious racism is the sort that you can’t even see:

"I think it’s worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it’s flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping–positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman..."

[emphasis added]

You'll notice the writer provides no evidence to support his assertion; the tired, unproven narrative is submitted as uncontested fact.

Proof? They don't need no stinkin' proof! The Gray Lady and her sister harpies of the left-wing anti-enlightenment machine are entitled to their own facts. Since evidence of tea party racism can't be found anywhere the leftists look, they have no choice but to put words in Tea Partiers' mouths.

There are 49 million Tea Party activists in this country, and by the leftist assesment, every single one of them is guilty of racism until proven innocent.

Update: A sensitive lefty brings my attention to video evidence that proves that the "Tea Party projects intolerance." You be the judge.

Proof of Tea Party racism is in the liberal imagination!

More

Sarah in Italy dissects the ThinkProgress.org video down to the molecular level

On being labeled as "racist"

The Tea Party projects intolerance: A Black Tea Partier tells funny jokes

*As a conservative, you know you've won the argument when the New York Times (All the news that's fit to invent) declares it moot.

WWBHOD?

While Newsweek thinks Obama is god, the New York Times thinks he is Jesus. Or some kind of Messiah, anyway. At least that's what I gather from this highly religulous picture they posted on their website. The symbolism is unmistakable, and I love these comments from Cheryl Prater:

Silly, silly...that’s not a Christian cross, it’s the international sign for hospitals. And that’s not a halo, it’s the sun. And that’s not the kingdom of God in the distance, it’s the White House. And that not the Messiah, it’s the…oh wait, yeah it is.

Erick Erickerson was one of the first to ask, "Is this photoshopping the New York Times' way of endorsing the idea that Obama is now god?"

Close, but no. He's Jesus.

By reviewing the central attributes of the photograph, Doug Ross explains:

• Obama, in what has become a tradition for the media, is deified with lighting that resembles a halo (ever recall the use of similar lighting for George W. Bush?)
• Deification is further emphasized through the use of a cross watermark, courtesy of a mosaic filter.
• The focus, however, is on Obama's single upraised finger, the digit pointing towards the heavens, as if to say "I am the one that can save us, as it was foretold by the ancients." Or something.
• The White House, a tiny, nearly transparent reflection, is located below the President; it seemingly says that the man is bigger than the office. He is more real. He is more important. He is the One.

There's always a doubting Thomas:

Of course, in real life, Barack Obama appears to be little more than a cigarette-puffing Chicago pol, trained in the Alinsky school, whose doctor recently requested that he cut down on his drinking.

Key word: "appears." Appearances can be deceiving.

What was the New York Times trying to accomplish with this picture? The photoshopped image accompanies a NYT article that begs us to help the Democrats save souls lives Obama's presidency by supporting Obama's health care reform health insurance regulation bill:

The Times' concern, laughably, is for the Obama legacy, not the hundreds of millions of citizens whose very lives will be impacted by a Rube Goldberg-esque, certain-to-fail, country-bankrupting, Soviet central-planner's *** dream.

Paging all Coffee Party patriots...STAT!

Some suspect that the religious conceptualizations were unintentional, but the image was created by Nola Lopez, a high profile illustrator who specializes in conceptual illustrations. Here's a blurb from the bio on her website:

After working as a designer/illustrator, a window dresser and photographer's stylist, she decided to pursue photography as a career. She describes her work as conceptual still life and collage and works with a diverse group of clients including Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, In Style, W, Fortune, Random House, A&M Records, Citibank, Merrill Lynch and Visa among others.

[emphasis added]

You don't have a list clients like that if you don't know what you're doing or if you don't understand how to carefully manipulate powerful symbolism. Unintentional? I think not.

Hat tip: iOwnTheWorld