Good news from Rasmussen:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index for Sunday shows that 36% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing as President. Twenty-five percent (25%) Strongly Disapprove to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +11.
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. One week ago today, 44% Strongly Approved and 23% Strongly Disapproved to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +21. In the first set of interviews conducted after inauguration day, 45% Strongly Approved of his performance while 16% Strongly Disapproved for a Presidential Approval Index rating of +29.
Overall, 59% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far while 39% disapprove. Today’s results mark the first time that Obama’s overall rating has fallen below 60% as either President-elect or President.
Obama's ratings will continue to drop. It won't be surprising to see his approval rating drop well below 50%. We're headed for tough times in America, and no spineless political amateur can reasonably expect to lead this country back to peace and prosperity.
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Daily Presidential Approval Index
Milton Friedman, telling it like it is...old school:
h/t: wizbangblog
18 comments:
I saw this the other day as well, it appears gravity is pulling Obama back down to Earth. His whining like a punk to House Democrats on Friday will be remembered as the real Obama. Irresponsible and desperate to avoid blame.
I think it's obvious it's amatuer hour in D.C. God forbid something happen to him, the next two are even denser.
You said:
to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +11.
I'm not sure how much weight I'd give to that. According to the same Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index, Bush left office with a -30 rating.
source.
Add to that bit of info that some segment of the Rabid Right began looking for things to hate about Obama before he was even in office and that they were going to rate him negatively even if Jesus showed up and gave him a big high five, and a +11 is not a bad place to be.
To be sure, Bush left things in such a mess that Obama's going to have to lead us in making some tough choices and figuring out what to do with this mess. Obama's HUGE popularity will doubtless take a dip. Add to that, that Obama appears to be genuinely striving for a different tone, a more bipartisan spirit in gov't, and THAT is going to cost him some popularity points with some of us on the so-called Left, too.
But running the country is not a popularity contest. It's about leadership.
Now at some point, one's leadership can be so awful and support drop so low as to cause the nation to question whether he/she has our vote of confidence (see Bush's last few years) and they may become a de facto lame duck. But Obama is nowhere near that point now.
I'm sure those who are less than reasonable will keep hoping for Obama's failure, but that's just the wishful thinking of a small minority at this point.
Let's pray for our president and country in these difficult times.
Say it ain't so!
On a side note, we were forbidden to suggest to pray for President Bush and the hard times on our nation as a result of 9-11, but now the Left wishes to praY?
Who are they hoping we pray to? A god that suggests that partial birth abortions are fine? Or a god that will be fine with a daughter having an abortion when she makes a mistake(you know another life?)
How about we pray to a god that suggests that we concede our values and morals to nations that wish to eradicate God's chosen people off the map?
I will pray for God to forgive us as a nation. I will pray to God to forgive me as I have been an adult for 20 plus years and the stain of abortion is on my hands too...as I am a citizen of this nation and have not done enough.
I will pray to God that we Americans do not get the justice that we deserve as we are ruled by anything but the Creator.
On a rambling note, I find it hard to understand how the Left desires that we pray when they have removed God from EVERYWHERE. In fact even His Word is considered hate speech, yet when times are tough Who do even the atheist(or those who have removed Him) call upon? You guessed it GOD(kind of like a foxhole in WWII- no atheist could be found)
Humble Wife combatively said:
On a side note, we were forbidden to suggest to pray for President Bush and the hard times on our nation as a result of 9-11, but now the Left wishes to praY?
sigh.
1. Who "forbid" you to pray for Bush?
2. The "Left," like the "Right" is not a monolith. There are many of us who are faithful Christians (Jews, Muslims, etc) on the Left, as well as reasonable and decent non-theists of all sorts. No one has forbade any prayers. It hasn't happened in the real world.
I'd suggest again that if the more conservative types would like to be more mainstream (ie, not be isolated and marginalized as "fringe nutsos"), they'll want to stop talking as if there were an Us Vs Them game going on.
We are all fellow citizens, fellow church members, fellow neighbors, fellow family members who wish for a decent, responsible, safe society and world and are striving to that end. To be sure, just as there are more extreme Right-ish sort of people who are rather racist, fascist, ugly and nutty, there are some on the Left who are actually socialist, hateful, anti-religion, etc. But in both cases, the extremes are a small minority.
If the Left wishes to have conversations with the Right, they need to not treat them as if they ALL were Fred Phelps or KKK members and if the Right wishes to have conversations with the Left, similarly, they'll want to stop acting as if we were some caricature of what a Left Boogeyman is in their worst dreams.
Get back to me when he sinks to 22 percent..
Get my point?
2CW: Apparently style trumps substance during campaigns, we will see if it gets him trough (and us) trough the next 4 years.
RV: Of course conservatives are disappointed with Obama, but now the extreme left is getting upset. As inflation and unemployment continue to rise, he will lose hordes of moderates.
CB: Yes Biden is a ludicrous lump.
DT: Very interesting to think how Jesus might interact with Obama.
HW: It seems that the left only invokes God, Country, Mom and Apple Pie only when it is convenient.
DT: People of faith may be target of 'stimulus' package:
http://tinyurl.com/byevrx
So much for tolerance...so much for high fives from Jesus.
Napqueen: If a Democratic Congress can see approval ratings around 9%, their buddy in the White House can drop to 22%
DaBlade: I, like you, have a hard time understanding how people who call themselves Christian can actively support so many things that are un-Christian.
RK, regarding the link to the ACLJ story, it said:
"One, if the university itself is a religiously based or faith-based institution, it does not qualify. And if the facility that is being renovated allows religious worship to take place, it also does not qualify."
As a Christian, I don't want the gov't funding Christian activity. As we've seen, too often, gov't money comes with strings attached. The Baptist and Anabaptist faith tradition from which I spring is aghast at the notion of religious groups being funded by US taxpayers. That's not even a liberal/conservative thing in my faith tradition* - BOTH sides of that coin would be/are strongly opposed to such use of gov't money.
(*With the caveat that modern Southern Baptists sometimes may have a slightly different opinion, since they're too often more comfortable getting in bed with gov't.)
DaBlade said:
As for Christian liberals, the two terms are mutually exclusive IMO. Abortion is anathema to a loving God, and collectivism invites misery. You sound like a bright guy, but are you intellectually honest?
And you are welcome to your opinion. In reality, though, there are hundreds of thousands(?, millions? tens of millions?) of folk who have been saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus who may at times come down on the more "liberal" side of matters, just as there are Christians who come down on the more "conservative" side of things. We are saved by God's Grace, NOT by a political position.
Christians of good faith (and, beyond that, Americans of all stripes and faith traditions and/or with NO faith tradition) can honestly desire the good, right and holy and come to different conclusions on different political topics. We are not a perfect people and we all make mistakes.
For my part, as a Christian for over 35 years (a deacon, a sunday school teacher, a husband, a father and all around okay fella) and one who is very well-versed in the what the Bible has to say, I have a hard time understanding how some Christians can disagree with me on topics like war, torture, peacemaking, economic issues, living simply, gay marriage, etc, etc, etc. I think the Bible is quite clear on these points.
And yet, I KNOW that people do disagree with me. And I with them. That's no cause for me to think they're not a Christian, though, because I know that being saved by God's grace does not mean we will always agree on how best to, for instance, love our enemies, to "sell your possessions and give to the poor," to live holy lives in our daily walk with God.
Thus is the reality of life on earth. Unfortunately, being human means sometimes that DaBlade is wrong. And sometimes Dan is.
And they can both be wrong and intellectually honest at the same time, if you can believe that.
It is what it is.
DaBlade also said:
the problem is, the "socialist, hateful, anti-religion" leftwing is IN CHARGE of the democrat party.
I don't find that to be true at all. For my part, I find the Dems in charge to be far to the Right of me on many issues and I'm not a socialist.
Additionally, I don't find the Dems in office to be any more hateful or anti-religion than the Republicans in office. Sometimes, I'm disappointed by the Dems (see the Bill Clinton administration) sometimes, I'm disappointed by the GOP (see Reagan/Bush/Bush).
Generally speaking, I find the GOP to be too far from representing my values (which tend to be more Green Party) to ever consider voting for them, and so I tend to vote Dem, but I do so knowing that they are all flawed human representatives, just like the GOP are flawed representatives. It's just that for my tastes, the GOP tends to be far, far more flawed.
"One, if the university itself is a religiously based or faith-based institution, it does not qualify. And if the facility that is being renovated allows religious worship to take place, it also does not qualify."
...
"funds may not be used for modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities...in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission."
...
Question: How much is a "substantial portion"?
Answer: That is for the government to decide. If you disagree with their conclusions, the government will trump you.
Question: Who will decide what a "religious mission" is?
Answer: Government.
This would allow secular groups, or even anti-religious groups or anti-Christian groups to receive funds, but deny those funds to other groups on the basis of some arbitrarily defined religious litmus test. It is unfair to single out religious groups in this way.
Is this what our founding fathers and mothers worked so hard to establish?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
To give a religious group special recognition is unconstitutional. It is also unconstitutional to stand in the way of free exercise of religion.
...
These are the problems that arise when government intrudes. The government chooses winners and losers on the basis of political consideration.
Some people think that atheism is a religion of sorts, or that environmentalism is a form of pantheism. But those are views that are espoused only by the rightwing fringe, right? Will environmentalists and atheists be denied their share of the $timulus? Of course not, these groups are held in high esteem by our bureaucratic overlords.
"As a Christian, I don't want the gov't funding Christian activity."
This isn't a question of what YOU want. It is a question of what is constitutional and what is unconstitional...what is discriminatory and what is not discriminatory...what is arbitrary and what is not arbitrary...what is fair and what is unfair.
As a CONSERVATIVE I don't want my tax dollars being used for LIBERAL activity. But what I WANT doesn't really matter does it?
I believe that the laws are fairly clear that gov't dollars can't be used to promote religion.
You seriously want gov't dollars to go to help pay for religious activity?? That's not any kind of conservatism that I am familiar with.
If you don't mind my asking, what faith tradition do you associate with most closely?
The First Amendment, which said Congress shall make no law ``respecting an establishment of religion," set the nation on a path toward ending the use of tax dollars for churches -- with Massachusetts becoming the last state to cut official ties to a church, ending its affiliation with Congregationalists in 1833.
Over the next century and a half, the Supreme Court gave progressively greater force to the prohibition on establishing a state religion, viewing most forms of government funding of churches with skepticism.
Boston Globe
When I was growing up in a housing project on welfare, I clearly recall the smarmy attitude of the caseworkers, the condescension of the child psych reviewers who often checked on kids in the projects as if our parents were suspect a priori and we were too stupid to take care of ourselves.
I remember the way they approached everything with a pre-defined outcome in mind such as convincing you that you weren't ready to be self-sufficient and then argued you into submission, relentlessly, until you gave in just to make them shut up. The more you argued back and the better, the angrier they got until they raged about their degrees and how they knew better than you. Even though they'd already read your file and that annoying part about your 167 IQ.
THAT is who Obama reminds me of. A community welfare case worker on the taxpayer dime, ensuring his own employment by arrogantly arguing everyone into submission, just to make him shut up and leave them alone, not to be deterred until they get their way.
Such petty people are not worthy of their jobs of course. So what does that say about Obama?
I don't care if he served in Harvard. Hitler ran the entirety of Germany. So what? His arrogance, his childishness, his utter incompetence at intellectual will to stay a chosen course and do so with any eloquence that wasn't scripted and controlled... it fairly screams of those same petty people who made my family miserable when we were tied to the state.
I am so glad I voted for him. He's turning out to be a better example of the failure of liberalism than I'd ever hoped. His regime will make Clinton look like Reagan.
I am sorry friends, but sharing such a boob with the world is too great a thing to pass up but you should not be worried. If you have faith in nothing else, not even G-d, at least have more in yourself than this twit and his cohorts would have you believing. Trust me on this. All you need is faith in the human spirit and will to act on it, and not even this welfare case worker can take that from you.
Dan Traube: "I believe that the laws are fairly clear that gov't dollars can't be used to promote religion."
Ah, but what is religion? Religion does not have anything to do with G-d or gods. It is solely a framework for symbolic simplification and arrangement and sharing of faith. And what is faith, but a belief freely chosen irrespective of external justification, and where humans are concerned most often beliefs that not only cannot be proven but would be disproven by any attempt to prove them automatically?
From an absolute perspective, liberalism is most definitely a religion and we fund it to our detriment anyhow.
If the ultimate expression of peaceful sharing reciprocity for the Judeo-Christians is the idea of teaching a man to fish and feeding him for a life time, liberalism's idea of it is that if you build a man a fire you keep him warm but for one night, but if you set a man on fire, you keep him warm for the rest of his life.
liberalism's idea of it is that if you build a man a fire you keep him warm but for one night, but if you set a man on fire, you keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Funny, as a joke. Not much use, though, as actual conversation.
SP said:
liberalism is most definitely a religion and we fund it to our detriment anyhow.
It would seem that, by your loose definition, EVERYthing would be a religion: conservatism, capitalism, socialism, etc, etc, etc. And one can certainly make the case.
Still, I think reasonable citizens can agree and have agreed that we don't want the state to fund religious proselytizing. Are you saying you would like to see the state to fund churches??
Again, I'm speaking from the point of view of traditional Baptist/anabaptist and (I believe) most evangelicals and many other religions: We DON'T want the state involved in funding religion. We believe that to do so would destroy the church's credibility (more than we've managed to destroy it ourselves) and accountability.
SP: "..if you set a man on fire, you keep him warm for the rest of his life."
Great quote!
DT: "You seriously want gov't dollars to go to help pay for religious activity??"
Absolutely not. If I haven't already made it abundantly clear that I fully support the First Amendment, let me do so now. However, the First Amendment should not be distorted to specifically exclude religious groups from using government funded buildings when no other group will be excluded.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or PROHIBITING the free exercise thereof..."
Again, we wouldn't be having problems sorting out these kinds of issues if the Federal Government would stick to its constitutionally delineated responsibilities. The Federal Government should only be building structures and funding projects that are for official government use. The Federal Government shouldn't be building student recreation centers, housing projects, and anything else it can think of to buy votes.
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