A New Home
This is the new home for my blog posts. Over the next month or so, I will be importing entries from my old, private blog. If you see any entry dated before today, it is the imported entry.
Enjoy!
In the spirit of Schadenfreude: we told you so
The demographics of his decline portend more bad news for Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress. Only the youngest voters support him on fiscal policy, and only barely, 52%-46%. Every other age demographic above 30 years of age has majorities now showing disapproval. Independents have begun to run away in massive numbers; they now oppose him 75%-23%, a huge break away from Obama and a sign that his supposed moderate stances have been exposed as shams. Every income level except the lowest also has majorities disapproving of his handling of the economy. Voters outside the “political class” oppose Obama 65%-33%.
I don't want to be seen as gloating, but well, all the conservatives and libertarians told you so.
On the few issues that libertarians and liberals could agree on (human rights and reduced role of U.S. military overseas), Obama was not going to be the president he promised to be as a candidate in 2007 or even early 2008, based on his many, many reversals of his earlier positions: diehard liberals called him "prudent", "wise", "able to adapt to changing situations", instead of calling him "backbone-less", "unprincipled", as they should have, as every one of those reversals had political expediency behind it, not a fundamental change in the information available to him or anyone. And by the way, those who had been claiming that Obama's reversal on FISA wiretapping bill was so that he could get elected and revoke those new powers with the authority of the U.S. president ... well, has he done that yet? I don't follow everything he does like Obama fans (i.e. the media), so I may have missed that.
On the issues that libertarians (the true libertarians, not the "social libertarians", which is just a sugar-coated version of socialists) and conservatives care about, the role of the government in economy, Obama was, from the start, going to be a disaster. It was very clear that he wanted to "spread the wealth", and much of that was going to involve raising the tax during a recession—the so-called "War on Wealth". I thought Bush proved that the best way to stimulate the economy during a downturn was to cut the tax, as he had done when the dot-com bubble burst. Whether this exacerbated the housing bubble in the long term is a debatable issue, but deficit spending is not a tenable position in the long term either, so it's not like Obama's policy looks any better in the long term—it just makes the short-term prospects a lot worse.
Well, at least he's keeping all the good generals and defense secretaries from before his time, but frankly, I doubt having a commander-in-chief who so obviously hates the military is good for morale—and his utterly contradictory reaction to Iran (where democratic process seems to have been subverted) and Honduras (where constitutional democracy was saved albeit by illegal means) situation, well, vindicates McCain's hammering of Obama on foreign policy—not that McCain's position is much better from my point of view; I think we should stay out of both situations. Neither crises can be improved by U.S. involvement, and although the Honduras situation is definitely closer to home, U.S. has no stake in either affairs—at least not significant enough to be a casus belli, and frankly, if we can't follow through what we are saying with a declaration of war, we shouldn't condemn nor judge, as a nation.
It's good that, as a nation, we are seeing all of this finally, albeit about a year or so too late. And it's good to see that there is a limit to how much of the liberal president's failings the liberal media can shield the public from—liberals (like Mr. Colbert) can claim it as much as they want, but they haven't yet the power to affect the reality by their sheer willpower.
Well, as a believer in capitalism and market economy, I do think the fundamentals of our economy is strong. We haven't lost nothing important in this recession. GM and Chrysler were dying anyway. Giants in the "knowledge business" (which is, for better or worse, what we do now these days) like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Google are still standing strong. I do think we will recover from this recession—it's only a matter of when, and I just hope that Obama doesn't get to screw it up like FDR did, postponing the coming recovery some decades of years.
Why you shouldn't trust the lying liberal media
Cheney, whose popularity ratings are barely out of the single digits, added that Powell cast his lot with the Dems when he backed President Obama.
"I just noted he endorsed the Democratic candidate for President this time, Barack Obama," Cheney said. "I assumed that that is some indication of his loyalty and his interest."
Let's see. "Barely out of the single digits"? I couldn't believe that. Even when Cheney and Bush were in office, their approval was hovering around 20, 30%, and their favorability has only improved since they retired.
And in fact, in a general poll, I would say that it's near impossible for a public official's (who's not in a deep scandal) rating to fall below 10%, since, given any controversial figure, there is a core of followers who support them regardless of what lies they are told by the media. That's how they were elected in the first place. (And I think the same would hold when Obama's policies fail—unless he follows his governor Blagojevich.)
So, I looked it up. I don't see any single digits (or anything close to it) unless you decide to count only "very positive" or "excellent" responses, and re-defining that as "popularity rating" is flat out dishonest. But then, dishonesty is nothing new to the liberal media. In fact, if they tell you something and your gut doesn't tell you that it's definitely true, chances are, it's probably false—or at best, a gross exaggeration.