From Rasmussen today:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove.

From Rasmussen Jan 09:

In the final full month of his Presidency, just 13% of American adults said they Strongly Approved of the way that George W. Bush performed his job as president. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapproved.

Wow.

And the what about the 10%pt difference in the “Strongly Approve” category?

African Americans represent 12% in Rasmussen’s “likely voter” polls. Three weeks ago Rasmussen noted “Seventy-four percent (74%) of African-Americans Strongly Approve…” 74% of 12% is 9%pts.

From the NYT, 9/11/03:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

”There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,” Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan.

Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies….

…”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”…

In the last few weeks stark differences have emerged between Dems and the GOP on energy policy. With gasoline >$4/gal politicians on all sides feel compelled to say/do something. A recap of what each side is offering:

Democrats:

Sue OPEC 

On May 22nd the House passed the “Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act of 2008.” The act does three things: 1) amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (written in 1890)  “…to make oil producing and export cartels illegal…”; 2) Creates a Petroleum Industry Antitrust Task Force inside the DOJ to study cartels; 3) Orders a GAO study on the effects of mergers in the petroleum industry. The bill was co-sponsored by 20 Dems, with Dems voting for the bill by a margin of 219 to 2. Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the cartel’s members have not yet responded to what efforts they will make to ensure their own national activities comply with this new US law.

“Windfall Tax” on US Oil Producers

Obama has called for a reprise of Carter’s “windfall taxes” on domestic oil producers. (Even the NYT editorial board eventually agreed that Carter’s version was a bad idea, although it took them almost a decade to figure it out.) The idea is that somehow the folks who produce oil for us will do a better job if we penalize them, or something.

“Compel” US Oil Producers to Produce More

On June 12 eighteen Dem Congressmen introduced the “Responsible Ownership of Public Lands Act.” The co-sponsors suggest oil companies leasing public lands might be secretly under-producing, a situation that they will remedy by imposing new fees on any acre leased that has not been drilled within one year. Never mind that it usually takes several years to determine whether newly leased land is worth drilling. After paying for the lease (usually 10 years) and the cost of exploration, the majority of these lands are returned to the government un-drilled. Not good enough for the Dems.

Increase Regulation of Energy Capital Markets

Just this weekend Obama outlined legislation directing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to “investigate proposals” for increasing regulation over the way oil futures are trades. New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine added, “I think everyone believes there’s too much speculation in the oil markets. A lot of the price of oil, I think, people put at the doorstep of speculators bidding up and holding supplies off the market.” Corzine thus neatly justifies this attempted power-grab by his estimate of what “people” think - note Corzine (a former bond trader and Goldman Sachs CEO) never says what he actually believes.

“Nationalize” US Refineries

Video of Maurice Hinchey (D-NY): “We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”

“Socialize” Domestic Oil Companies

Video of Maxine Waters (D-CA) tells the President of Shell Oil she wants to “socialize” his company.

Republicans:

Increase Production 

In his radio address on June 21 Bush made 4 proposals: 1) Drill ANWR; 2) Lift the 25 year ban on drilling on the outer continental shelf (OCS); 3) Lift the ban on exploiting shale oil reserves in the American West; 4) Increase refining capacity by allowing new refineries to be built in the US for the first time in 30 years.

On the second point its worth noting that Brazil has recently announced two massive oil discoveries on its own OCS, possibly turning that country into one of the largest oil exporters within the next 10 years. Its also worth noting that Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and even China (in Cuban waters less that 100 miles from Florida) are all already exploring the North American OCS.

Although McCain is still only “considering” ANWR, he largely agrees with everything Bush proposes. The American people apparently do too - according to Rasmussen only 18% of Americans oppose OCS drilling (including only 37% of self identified “liberals”). McCain is also calling for the construction of 45 new commercial nuclear reactors. The last commercial nuclear reactor in the US to come online started construction in 1973.

The GOP proposals are straightforward. They acknowledge the reality of increased oil demand from emerging economies like China and India. The solution is removing regulatory obsticles that make the US the only major oil producer in the world where new production is effectively illegal.

Some Dem proposals are laughably stupid (i.e. declare OPEC illegal so we can sue them). The rest seek to turn public concern about oil prices into yet another opportunity to expand regulation, expand government power, and grind down and demonize the private economy.

Mark Steyn:

…President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president’s speech was really about him, and he didn’t care for it. He didn’t put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: “That’s enough. That’s a show of disrespect to me.” And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee’s weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush’s outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies. Here’s what the president said:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they’re talking about me. Actually, he wasn’t – or, to be more precise, he wasn’t talking only about you…

The media is definitely running with the DNC storyline here. I saw a CNN segment last night that started with something like, “Obama hits back over Bush attack,” then proceeded directly to two talking-heads discussing the implications - they neither quoted nor showed any of the actual Bush speech. On The News Hour last night Mark Shields said Bush had, “given the Democrats a big gift,” by allegedly lashing out at Obama.

Where have these people been for the last 6.5 years. Anti-appeasement has arguably been the cornerstone of everything Bush has done on the international scene since 9/11. Now he makes a speech in front of a community of people who have suffered perhaps more than any other due to appeasement in the 20th century, yet suddenly his mild and obvious comments are an attach on Obama.

This is going to be an interesting country if Obama wins. Any political disputes with the Great Leader will denounced as inappropriate personal attacks.

From PL:

(On Friday), the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new jobs figures – 110,000 jobs created in September. September 2007 is the 49th consecutive month of job growth, setting a new record for the longest uninterrupted expansion of the U.S. labor market. Significant upward revisions to employment in July and August mean employment growth has averaged 97,000 per month over the last three months. Since August 2003, our economy has created more than 8.1 million jobs, and the unemployment rate remains low at 4.7 percent.

Real after-tax per capita personal income has increased by over 12.5 percent – an average of over $3,750 per person – since President Bush took office. More than 30 percent of the Nation’s net worth has been added since the President’s 2003 tax cuts.

Real wages have grown 2.2 percent over the 12 months that ended in August. This is much higher than the average growth rate during the 1990s, and it means an extra $1,266 in the past year for a family with two average wage earners.

Real GDP grew at a strong 3.8 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 2007. The economy has now experienced nearly six years of uninterrupted growth, averaging 2.7 percent a year since the turnaround in 2001.

If Congress lets Bush’s tax cuts expire, it would increase taxes by more than $1,800, on the average, for a family of four making $60,000 dollars a year. Small business owners would see their taxes go up by almost $4,000, and families with children would pay an additional $500 per child.

From NRO:

Six years on, most Americans are now pretty certain what they’ll wake up to in the morning: There’ll be a thwarted terrorist plot somewhere or other — last week, it was Germany. Occasionally, one will succeed somewhere or other, on the far horizon — in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London. But not many folks expect to switch on the TV this Tuesday morning, as they did that Tuesday morning, and see smoke billowing from Atlanta or Phoenix or Seattle. During the IRA’s 30-year campaign, the British grew accustomed (perhaps too easily accustomed) to waking up to the news either of some prominent person’s assassination or that a couple of gran’mas and some schoolkids had been blown apart in a shopping centre. It was a terrorist war in which terrorism was almost routine. But, in the six years since President Bush declared that America was in a “war on terror,” there has been in America no terrorism.

In theory, the administration ought to derive a political benefit from this: The president has “kept America safe.” But, in practice, the placidity of the domestic front diminishes the chosen rationale of the conflict: If a “war on terror” has no terror, who says there’s a war at all? That’s the argument of the Left — that it’s all a racket cooked up by the Bushitlerburton fascists to impose on America a permanent national-security state in which, for dark sinister reasons of his own, Dick Cheney is free to monitor your out-of-state phone calls all day long. Judging from the blithe expressions of commuters doing the shoeless shuffle through the security line at LAX and O’Hare, most Americans seem relatively content with a permanent national-security state. It’s a curious paradox: airports on permanent Orange Alert, and a citizenry on permanent …well, I’m not sure there’s a homeland-security color code for “Gaily Insouciant,” but, if there is, it’s probably a bland limpid pastel of some kind. Of course, if tomorrow there’s a big smoking hole where the Empire State Building used to be, we’ll be back to: “The president should have known! This proves the failure of his policies over the last six years! We need another all-star Commission filled with retired grandees!”

And that would be the relatively sane reaction. Have you seen that bumper sticker “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB”? If you haven’t, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime which thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn’t quietly offed some of these dissident professors — or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract. Fearlessly, Robert Fisk of Britain’s Independent, the alleged dean of Middle East correspondents, has now crossed over to the truther side and written a piece headlined, “Even I Question The ‘Truth’ About 9/11.” According to a poll in May, 35-percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq.

Apparently, 39-percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance — or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I’m confident half of them will have joined Rosie O’Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses. If Iraq is another Vietnam, 9/11 is another Kennedy assassination. Were Bali, Madrid, and London also inside jobs by the Bush Gang? If so, it’s no wonder federal spending’s out of control.

And what of those for whom the events of six years ago were more than just conspiracy fodder? Last week the New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos, and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who “allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.” And they mean everybody — American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms — everybody, that is, except the guys who did it…

Good article - hard to excerpt. Read the whole thing.

That “39-percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn’t know in advance” refers to a Rasmussen poll we wrote about back in May. Specifically, Rasmussen found that 35% of self-identified Dems believe “George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance,” 39% believe he didn’t, and 26% didn’t know.

As we wrote at the time, we’re always skeptical of polls (small sample sizes, leading questions) and this one, though fascinating, was no exception. But last week Zogby published a poll that seems to reinforce the finding that a significant portion of Dems really do believe the government played an active part in some 911 conspiracy.

According to Zogby 31% of Americans believe either:

(C)ertain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic motives (26.4%)

(C)ertain US government elements actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks (4.6%)

As always, the crosstabs reveal interesting details. The loons are concentrated among the young, uneducated, minorities, and, of course, liberal Democrats. Here’s the breakdown of the groups most likely to believe the government either deliberately allowed or actively planned the 911 attacks:

I always like the Walmart question, which now appears in most thorough polls. It separates urban poor from rural poor on the one hand, and incurious snobs from normal people on the other. Urban poor and pretentious idiots - the core of the DNC.

We’ll close with something we wrote in July:

I’d like this question to be asked in a debate among aspiring DNC Presidential nominees. “Yes or no, can you say with 100% certainty that President Bush had no prior specific knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

Any candidate answering “no” will alienate the majority of Dems who are reasonable people. A “yes” answer will loose that 1/3 base of the party - those hard core lunatics who vote Dem only because that party is best at pandering to them. They will simply go and vote Green or Communist or somesuch.

This question would be the equivalent of the Abortion Question for GOP candidates -a difficult issue on which there is no easy consensus even among regular GOP voters. Its also one the media forces GOP politicians to discuss in almost every Q&A (I think Rudy was asked about it 4 times in the last debate). Would if the media forced Dems to confront similarly divisive issues with such regular frequency.

Very classy. A Nobel Peace Prize winner says she wants to kill our President at a conferene in Dallas. She later apologized, after she’d enjoyed a standing ovation.

“Right now, I could kill George Bush,” she said. “No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.”

This was at some BS event called the International Women’s Peace Conference. Sounds like a hive of illiberal collectivists, easily entertained by a call to kill an elected official who won more votes than anyone in the history of the planet.

As an aside, she said almost exactly the same thing in a speech to Australian school children one year ago.

“Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

A few comments on the Libby commutation.

First, the entire trial was a farce. Christopher Hitchens provides the best summary of relevant facts:

* Mr. Libby was not charged with breaking the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
* Nobody was ever charged with breaking that law, designed to shield the names of covert agents. Indeed, the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, determined that the law had not been broken in the first place.
* The identity of the person who disclosed the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak—his name is Richard Armitage, incidentally—was known to those investigating the non-illegal leak before the full-dress inquiry began to grind its way through the system, incidentally imprisoning one reporter and consuming thousands of man hours of government time (and in time of war, at that).
* In the other two “counts” in the case, both involving conversations with reporters (Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time), Judge Reggie Walton threw out the Miller count while the jury found for Libby on the Cooper count.
* The call to Russert was not about Plame in any case; it was a complaint from the vice president’s office about Chris Matthews, who was felt by some to have been overstressing the Jewish names associated with the removal of Saddam Hussein. Russert was called in his capacity as bureau chief; any chitchat about Wilson and Plame was secondary.
* The call was made after Robert Novak had put his fateful column (generated by Richard Armitage) on the wire, and after he had mentioned Plame’s identity to Karl Rove.

Second, the judge, Reggie Williams, was vindictive and unprofessional. When 12 law professors, including liberal Alan Dershowitz, wrote an amicus brief on Libby’s behalf Judge Williams responded with snark and sarcasm.

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

BUT, even if the trial was a farce and the judge biased, a jury did find Libby guilty. However unfortunate the circumstances, just because he is a civil servant doesn’t mean he should be let off the hook. I hasten to add that the same standard should be applied to all public officials who find themselves in front of a jury. Rest assured, Hillary, Bill, Sandy Berger, Rob Rubin, and a host of others would easily be found guilty of lying under oath by Judge Williams and the Libby Jury.

Thus, I’m glad Bush did not pardon Libby. He will still have to go through the appeal process to clear his record and avoid the $250K fine. But prison time here was excessive.

Last month an oped in the Washington Post argued for exactly this outcome.

Today the National Review generally agrees.

The WSJ disagrees, saying Bush should have issued a full pardon.

If nothing else, let this serve as yet another lesson to the Bush administration about talking to the press. Partisan operatives like Tim Russert will gladly disregard any promises of “off the record” conversations if there’s any opportunity to nail an administration official.

As an aside, look for commentators to flip out in this weekend’s papers and on the talkshows about what they are sure to characterize as Bush’s ongoing efforts to undermine the rule of law. For some sense of balance the list of Clinton pardons is worth reviewing. Fourty nine pardons involved cocaine.

From today’s WSJ:

The Kyoto cheerleaders at the United Nations and the European Union are realizing their government-run experiment in climate control is a mess, one that’s incidentally failed to reduce carbon emissions. They’ve also understood that if they want the biggest players on board–the U.S., China, India–they need an approach that balances economic growth with feel-good environmentalism. Yesterday’s G-8 agreement acknowledged those realities and tolled Kyoto’s death knell. Mr. Bush, 1; sanctimonious greens, 0…

…Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3 percentage points over 1995 to 2000. Only two countries are on track to meet targets. There’s rampant cheating, and endless stories of how select players are self-enriching off the government “market” in C02 credits. Meanwhile, in the U.S., under the president’s oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were eight percentage points lower than in the prior period…

Via CQ

I usually don’t care much for opinion polls - small sample sizes, loaded questions - and what kind of weirdos are sitting at home in the middle of the day answering a list of questions from a cold calling stranger anyway?

But this Rasmussen poll seemed worthy of note. The headline, 22% Believe Bush Knew About 9/11 Attacks in Advance, is striking enough, but some of detail is truely amazing.

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know.

So almost half of Dems with an opinion think GWB knew about 911 in advance, which basically means they think he is a complete fraud and our government has perpetrated an enormous hoax for the last 5.5 years. This is the same party that carps on about Bush not being prepared enough or responding quickly enough on 911.

Republicans obviously reject this notion by a wide margin. As for the “independents”:

Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.

Sounds to me like a large portion of the DNC base’s brains are so conspiracy addled, so hate filled, that they have lost touch with basic reality. Congrats to Howard Dean - mission accomplished.

I wish these Rasmussen, Peter Hart, Gallup, and other pollsters would ask more discriminating questions so we could know more about the respondents. Some questions I’d like to see in the crosstabs:

Q: Is the US in an economic recession?

Q: Did the Federal Government spent more than $0.01 during the Clinton Administration on fetal stem cell research?

Q: Do you believe that every news story is just another example of how GWB is mean stupid and evil?

Q: Do you believe GWB planned 911 to avenge his father and steal Iraq’s oil for Haliburton, and something about Enron, and he made up Osama Bin Laden who he can’t catch anyway, and he probably has OBL in some illegal Ashcroft torture prison, because GWB is too stupid and an evil genius, and some Jews somewhere are behind it all?

I’d bet more than half of Dems would answer ‘yes’ to the first two questions. I’d seriously bet 1/5 would agree with the last.

Reminds me of the recent Gallup poll that found 70% of muslims called 911 “completely justified” while only 25% believe 911 was carried out by muslims.