Bloodthirsty Liberal

How low can he go?

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 27% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14 (see trends).

Today’s results match the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President and it’s the third straight day at -14. Prior to these three days, Obama’s ratings had fallen to -14 on only one day since taking office.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates are also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.

Pelosi can go lower:

Congressional leaders don’t fare so well. Most voters have an unfavorable opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 47% say the same about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Republican leaders have lower unfavorable ratings because they are not as well known.

Let’s all pitch in and buy Obama some scuba gear for Christmas.

- Aggie

Wow

California has the second highest tax rate in the nation, next to NY, making them the poster child for why high taxes and liberal programs fail.

Angry students at the Davis, California, branch of the University of California refused to vacate the school’s administration building Thursday evening in a show of defiance and protest over a 32-percent undergraduate tuition hike instituted by the California Board of Regents earlier in the day.

About 50 students remained in the building, which was supposed to close by 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET), UC Davis spokeswoman Claudia Morain told CNN. At one point, as many as 150 students were at the building protesting the tuition increase, she said. She said she hopes campus police can resolve the issue without the need to make arrests.

CNN affiliate KCRA captured footage of students outside the building shouting, “Who’s university? Our university!”

Nearly 400 miles south and hours earlier, hundreds of students marched and chanted against the increase while outside the UCLA building in Los Angeles where regents met to vote on the hike.

Protesting students and others say the increased tuition will hurt working and middle-class students who benefit from state-funded education. But officials argue that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending are necessary because of a persistent budget crisis that has forced reductions across California’s state government.

“We’re fired up. Can’t take it no more,” students chanted as they marched and waved signs at UCLA. “Education only for the rich,” one sign read. [They seem to need remedial English. - Aggie]

After the vote, students rushed to the parking decks to stage a sit-in to block regents’ vehicles from leaving. Campus police and California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear stood nearby.

As one regent member walked out, students surrounded his path shouted, “Shame on you, shame on you.”

If you go to the link and watch the video, the numbers don’t seem to add up. Perhaps the journalists have it wrong? In any case, the students are very upset. They want a low cost or free tuition but the state is falling apart. Interestingly, the students interviewed were either first or second generation Americans.

On the one hand, the citizens of California wanted to provide free or low cost in-state tuition. On the other hand, they also wanted to provide a myriad of other programs, and jacked up taxes into the stratosphere to do so. They have created perks that residents of other states can only dream of. For example, if you purchase a home in the Golden State, your taxes are tied to the value of the home at the time of purchase. This is a great deal for the elderly, but it means that the state can’t collect as much on real estate taxes as most homes are worth. If you two people live in identical, side-by-side homes, one purchased in 1985, the other in 2007, the tax bills are radically different. This is a perk for some people, but others pay disproportionately. What’s a middle-class tax payer to do?

Dumb political decisions have consequences. It doesn’t matter if the decisions were voted in primarily by Democrats or Republicans, they play out over the years. California decided to control the growth of real estate taxes, and it contributed to the school crisis, although there are other factors at play. Now they have the entertaining sit-ins and student rallies. Buy some popcorn and enjoy.

- Aggie

Poor US

Charles Krauthammer tries to explain reality to the Obama White House regarding terrorism. The government is almost biblical in its failure to bring honesty to the situation. Let’s cover the basics.

Propaganda:

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the “propaganda of the deed.” And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 — not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: “9/11, The Director’s Cut,” narration by KSM.

Hypocrisy:

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover, everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.

Reckless:

Apart from the fact that any such trial will be a security nightmare and a terror threat to New York — what better propaganda-by-deed than blowing up the entire courtroom, making KSM a martyr and making the judge, jury and spectators into fresh victims? — it will endanger U.S. security. Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.

That’s precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of two hundred unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden. “Within ten days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum,” wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.”

Unethical:

Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

Bearing False Witness:

…Holder tried to make the case that he chose a civilian New York trial as a more likely venue for securing a conviction. An absurdity: By the time Obama came to office, KSM was ready to go before a military commission, plead guilty and be executed. It’s Obama who blocked a process that would have yielded the swiftest and most certain justice.

Indeed, the perfect justice. Whenever a jihadist volunteers for martyrdom, we should grant his wish. Instead, this one, the most murderous and unrepentant of all, gets to dance and declaim at the scene of his crime.

Holder himself told The Washington Post that the coming New York trial will be “the trial of the century.” The last such was the trial of O.J. Simpson.

As every young student eventually discovers, failure to study and learn from past mistakes leads to more failure. This is the most arrogant administration of my lifetime. They seem to have a flat learning curve. They are obsessed with world opinion, with “what will the neighbors think?” I wonder if Mr. Holder asked himself this question: What will world opinion be if KSM is acquitted but remains in US custody? Imagine the headlines in Europe!

- Aggie

Ann Bayevsky of UN Watch thrown out; UN lies about it to media

What a weird, weird organization.

The United Nations detained an outspoken critic and booted her from its New York headquarters in what the woman, a human rights watchdog, is calling an effort to silence her opposition to the world body.

Anne Bayefsky claims that as retaliation for giving a two-minute impromptu speech defending Israel, her 25-year career of monitoring the U.N. is now in jeopardy — likely to be placed in the hands of a committee chaired by the genocidal regime in Sudan.

Bayefsky gets special access to U.N. meetings in her capacity as the director of a non-governmental organization, the Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust at New York’s Touro College.

But the longtime U.N. observer has found herself in what she calls a “Kafkaesque” gray zone, where the U.N. confiscated her credentials, then denied to reporters that her access had been blocked.

“This is no accident,” she told FoxNews.com, arguing that she is being denied access to vital meetings concerning her prime focus: defending Israel. “This is keeping [the U.N.’s] major critic absent during the heart of the year.”

Following a vote Nov. 5 at the U.N. General Assembly, a microphone was set up outside the UNGA chamber for delegates to tout their endorsement of the controversial Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes during its invasion of Gaza last winter.

Without an invitation, Bayefsky approached the empty podium to offer what she thought would be a counter-balance to speeches from the Libyan president of the UNGA and the Palestinian observer, who both supported the resolution.

“I didn’t expect that there would be a problem at all,” said Bayefsky, who noted that she and other NGOs have spoken there in the past without incident. (Archived U.N. video shows an official from the NGO Human Rights Watch speaking in praise of the U.N. at the same podium in May 2007.)

Bayefsky blasted the Goldstone Report and called the U.N. a “laughingstock” for singling out Israel and ignoring human rights violations committed by the terrorist organization Hamas against Israeli and Palestinian civilians during the three-week campaign in December and January.

“This is a resolution that purports to be evenhanded; it is anything but,” she said of the document approved by the UNGA. “It is a travesty — it calls for accountability, and in fact what we see instead is impunity for the Palestinian side.”

Soon after she finished speaking, Bayefsky was swarmed by four U.N. security guards, who brought her to their security office, confiscated her NGO pass and kicked her out of the building, she said.

But the U.N. told reporters a different story at a press conference Tuesday — claiming that there has been no change in status for Bayefsky, even as she continues to sit in limbo.

“The credentials of her organization are not changed at this stage,” said Farhan Haq, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “It’s possible in the future that there could be a review, but at this stage there’s been no removal of credentials from that NGO or from Ms. Bayefsky.”

U.N. security officials became angered with Bayefsky after they realized she had brought an assistant to the U.N. proceedings without getting him a personal pass — a breach of protocol that led to a full-fledged investigation by the security office.

But Bayefsky says that the content of her speech is what rubbed U.N. officials the wrong way. She says supporters of the Goldstone report “are going to do everything in their power to silence anyone who gets in their way.”

Following her speech, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, was informed that a pro-Israel NGO had spoken after him, and reportedly asked a member of the press, “Did we capture them?”

Later, as she pleaded her case before being forcibly removed from the General Assembly building, a security official told Bayefsky that “the Palestinian ambassador is very upset at the statement you made,” she told FoxNews.com.

U.N. officials denied that politics had anything to do with their handling of Bayefsky, and said it was purely an issue of protocol.

“She came to the microphone unannounced, unauthorized and unwarranted. It’s so simple,” said Jean-Victor Nkolo, a spokesman for the president of the General Assembly. “It’s nothing personal against Ms. Bayefsky at all. But it’s just that this cannot be allowed.”

Though her speech was broadcast live online, the footage was removed from the main proceedings made available by the U.N. on its Web site. Video of Bayefsky’s two-minute talk, which first streamed live, has been posted online on YouTube.

I deeply resent my tax dollars going to fund that wacko organization.

- Aggie

He’s losing his popularity or they wouldn’t be reporting this

As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to-the U-3 rate-which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for March, the highest it has been since June 1983.

The difference is that what is traditionally referred to as the “unemployment rate” only measures those out of work who are still looking for jobs. Discouraged workers who have quit trying to find a job, as well as those working part-time but looking for full-time work or who are otherwise underemployed, count in the U-6 rate.

With such a large portion of Americans experiencing employment struggles, economists worry that an extended period of slow or flat growth lies ahead.

“To me there’s no easy solution here,” says Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors. “Unless you create another bubble in which the economy can create jobs, then you’re not going to have growth. That’s the sad truth.”

Pento warns that forecasts of a double-dip (”W”) or a straight up (”V”) recovery both could be too optimistic given the jobs situation.

Instead, he believes the economy could flatline (or “L”) for an extended period as small businesses struggle to grow and consequently rehire the workers that have been furloughed as the U-3 unemployment rate has doubled since March 2008.

Hey! I know what we can do! Let’s raise taxes on businesses! Let’s particularly go after small businesses. I’m sure that will help.

Elections have consequences kidz. When you all lined up to vote for the Messiah, you were voting to make your future career, whatever it is you dreamt about as you slogged through college, a non-starter. Unless you dreamt of working for ACORN, that is.

- Aggie

How come global warming went away?

There’s a general rule of life, the KISS rule: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Liberals never follow it. So, to them the fact that the earth is refusing to comply with their demented notion of global-warming-climate-change! means that the earth is wrong. Because the default position is that they are right. Always. If you disagree, you’re stupid, Stupid.

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Reached a Plateau

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

Bummer. I love a good catastrophe. I love pouring money down the toilet to avert a most excellent catastrophe. What will happen if the public decides that global warming is nonsense?

- Aggie

He preaches violence in American English

In nearly a dozen recent terrorism cases in the United States, Britain and Canada, investigators discovered the suspects had something in common: a devotion to the message of Anwar al-Awlaki, an eloquent Muslim cleric who has turned the Web into a tool for extremist indoctrination.

Mr. Awlaki, 38, the son of a former agriculture minister and university president in Yemen, has never been accused of planting explosives himself. But experts on terrorism believe his persuasive endorsement of violence as a religious duty, in colloquial, American-accented English, has helped push a series of Western Muslims into terrorism.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., on Nov. 5, is only the latest suspect accused of perpetrating or plotting violence to be linked to the cleric.

In 2006, for example, a group of Canadian Muslims listened to Mr. Awlaki’s sermons on a laptop a few months before they were charged with plotting attacks in Ontario to have included bombings, shootings, storming the Parliament Building and beheading the Canadian prime minister.

There are days when I wake up and feel like I’m still dreaming. Isn’t the modern world surreal?

In 2007, one of six men later convicted of plotting to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey was picked up on a surveillance tape raving about Mr. Awlaki’s audio clips. “You gotta hear this lecture,” said the plotter, Shain Duka. Mr. Duka called the cleric’s interpretation of Muslim duties “the truth, no holds barred, straight how it is!”

Go to the link and read up. We in the United States are relatively fortunate, because we have so few of these bozos. But in Europe, in England, they are common and they are a bigger problem. And, as every terrorist knows, they only have to be successful once. Our FBI can make arrests and interrupt plots, and we are safe for the moment. But sooner or later they fail, as we saw in the Fort Hood case, and the bad guys win.

- Aggie

Court finds Army Corp of Engineers responsible for Katrina

The Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a shipping channel linking New Orleans, Louisiana, to the Gulf of Mexico led to catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina, a federal court ruled Wednesday.

“It is the court’s opinion that the negligence of the Corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MRGO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia and short-sightedness,” U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. wrote in his lengthy ruling, referring to the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet canal.

“For over 40 years, the Corps was aware that the Reach II levee protecting Chalmette and the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be compromised by the continued deterioration of the MRGO … The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so. Clearly, the expression ‘talk is cheap’ applies here.”

Forty years! Why that includes the presidencies of Clinton, Bush I, Carter, Ford, Regan, Nixon… No. This cannot be right. George W. Bush was responsible for Katrina. Just ask any democrat.

- Aggie

The magic doesn’t translate

One blogger even pined for the tough line taken by former President George W. Bush.

“Like a star rushing from one show to another, Obama has come and gone, without stirring the slightest ripples,” blogger Zhao Dezhu wrote in an online post.

Zhao, who writes a popular blog and twitters under the name Hecaitou, said the visit made him miss Bush who “couldn’t speak with flowery language and even made grammatical mistakes but spoke as plainly as an American farmer.”

Obama, by contrast, speaks “with sweet but empty words.”

The rest of the world is catching on. When will we?

- Aggie

I am struck by the fact that there are no oncologists and no radiologists on this government advisory panel, but there is a nurse. Deciding that women do not need mammograms beginning at age 40. Despite the fact that they have been shown to save lives.

- Aggie