Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s down a point from yesterday and the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama. Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove. See recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.
The Reno Gazette-Journal has a sit-down with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.), who addresses the Ted Kennedy question in, um, an interesting way.Q: How will U.S. Sen. (Edward) Kennedy’s death affect things?
A: I think it’s going to help us. He hasn’t been around for some time. We’re going to have a new chairman of that committee, it’ll be, I don’t know for sure, but I thinkSen. (Chris) Dodd, (D-Conn.). He has a right to take it. Either him or (U.S. Sen. Tom) Harkin, (D-Iowa), whichever one wants it can have it. I think he (Kennedy) will be a help. He’s an inspiration for us. That was the issue of his life and he didn’t get it done.
Nothing in here is particularly new — Kennedy will help the cause, Dodd gets to carry the banner, Kennedy’s work remains undone. But the straight-shooting Reid does have a gift for saying non-controversial things in the most controversial way possible.
The nation’s largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters.
The AFL-CIO, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful allies, would like to assess a small tax — about a tenth of a percent — on every stock transaction.
The healthcare debacle is sinking the SS Obama, and there definitely some voter’s remorse going on out there. There’s only so much that the voters will take, and the limit is rapidly being exceeded.
I have to wonder what crisis the BHO administration will create.
As I see it, the only way for BHO to recover on his approval ratings is via a crisis which will unite America again.
I also note that BHO will be trying the tactic of indoctrinating school children, specifically, during a Presidential speech on September 8.
Eric Holder, Mr Useful Tool himself, has created the CIA prosecution followup as a strategy to DIVERT America from the failure of Our Hero’s ObamaKare.
As I wrote on August 20th, ObamaKare — or Cap & Tax — getting at least one HUGE new bill through — it’s for ALL the marbles. If Obama can’t ram one of these massive bills through ASAP, the rest of his term is toast. He’s done.
He HAS to continue the ram, and Conservatives and moderates and clear-thinking people HAVE to oppose his ramdown — ANY of his ramdowns.
BZ
Leave it to the demoncraps, they never did meet a tax they didn’t like. Taxes on soda and stocks to compliment the taxes on my cigs and beer, just what I needed to hear. That’s sure to get my vote next year—for the other side!
HUH?………..
“I want No part of Obama’s Socialized Medicine!” “I want my country back!” ……”and he’d better keep his hands of my Medicare Too!” A Typical Conservative.
As far as Obama ramming down a health care bill: well, he actually hasn’t been “ramming” anything, has he? One of the big complaints about the whole process is the LACK of presidential leadership; it’s as if he simply turned the whole thing over to Congress, with no fewer than 5 competing bills now wandering around. Not ONE of which will lower health-care costs, address tort reform, or improve the quality of health care for Americans.
If Obama had provided leadership during the first post-inaugural glow, we might have had meaningful health-care reform by now. As it stands, some emaciated bill will probably pass, and EVERYONE will take it in the ass.
Oh. Except Senators. They’ll still have exceptional health care coverage.
Gotta wonder about somebody who is backed up by a bunch of like-minded persons; all of whom were ostensibly selected to “represent” a group of people, none of whom are listened to except the most strident.
Translation for anonymoose: The DemocRATs have an agenda, and will only listen to those who agree with them in order to get that agenda implemented.
As far as Medicaid and Medicare, neither one is constitutional. Health care reform needs to start in the courtroom – with Tort Law reform, not with restrictions and panels deciding who gets what care. If the doctors could provide care without fear from lawsuit happy idiots, then the cost of health care would be low enough that insurance would, in many cases, not be needed, and when it is needed it would still be very affordable for even the least wealthy among us.
If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.
You have to understand that I’m for anything, yes I mean anything that pisses off or runs out of town the Religous Right and their Born-Again Conservative Cock-Suckers.
….and believe it or not, I’m far more Conservative than Liberal. I just can’t stand these freaks.
Please God, protect me and my country from your followers.
It seems that God is answering my prayers, does it not?
The unions are an extortion racket that works for the Donks. That’s all they are. Rich democrats are immune to their complaints.
Obama did provide ‘leadership’ for this mess: his townhall ‘forums’, his trying to frame the issue at least three different ways (fairness, cost control, cost savings) and then complaining about how there really weren’t ‘death panels’ or benefits for illegals.
He has said a lot and been the ‘leader’ on this.
He has failed at it.
“Oh. Except Senators. They’ll still have exceptional health care coverage.”
Oh how right you are on that one.
BZ
Cary said: “The DemocRATs have an agenda, and will only listen to those who agree with them in order to get that agenda implemented.”
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like the previous administration! Power corrupts, whether Democrat or Republican. Don’t blame me: I voted for Ron Paul.
I respectfully disagree with A. Jacksonian. Obama might have talked about measures he thought were effective, but that’s not the same as true leadership, which would have been TELLING Congress what he thought a final bill should look like. He left it up to them…which is why there is – hilariously – 5 different versions of a bill, not one of which will benefit ANYONE except Big Pharma and the insurance companies.
Considering that Obama, himself, has talked to Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and the other ‘major’ players, anyone bringing that up as a problem for the Congressional Bill ought to be worried about anything that comes from the President.
In fact the President has let Congress write the ‘stimulus’, ‘cash 4 clunkers’ and now the health care bill. The man has not demonstrated leadership nor even the ability to put a coherent bill together… or ANY bill together to date. For the things he has been a cheerleader on, they have tanked, one and all. That is ‘leadership’ of a sort: negative leadership with no one beyond the Beltway following. Every time the President has gotten up to speak about a topic, be it Guantanamo, Afghanistan, health care, banking, the auto companies… those topics start to turn negative. In each instance he has lost public support via ‘leadership’.
To deny that he has pushed and supported these topics openly, in his role as President, is to ignore that he has done so. You may not like the effect of that leadership, what impact it has had, nor the way public opinion has turned on these topics, but there is no denying that he has pushed and supported them. His strong negatives are now in Clinton territory, second term for Bill and thereafter for Hillary, and neither have been able to shake those general public negatives for years. President Obama does not have the political skill, acumen, nor supporters to turn those around for him: Chicago Politics is not US politics, and those in flyover country are none too fond of that form of politics.
The best thing he could do, seriously, is to stop pushing his agenda and spend about 6 months in real town halls listening to people outside of the big cities, and tell his backers to stop scripting them, screening them and protecting him from criticism. Don’t go to Martha’s Vineyard, go to Peoria, IL, or Rochester, NY or Abilene, TX. By putting his agenda on hold, listening and interacting with people outside of his limited intellectual clique, he will begin to gain experience in GOVERNING which has a leadership part but also requires the ability to govern, to take responsibility and to chart a path that really does not PO a good part of the Nation. FDR realized that when WWII started and plotted the slow course to having folks see the way the Allies were going down, and started support of them. Clinton jawboned his way to welfare reform and got one of the most lauditory pieces of legislation in his entire term by doing just that. That is not only governing, but leading where the people want to go and are ready to go. When you lead elsewhere you can find yourself walking a plank, alone.