"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
Professor William Jacobson takes a closer look at the latest poll numbers. What’s shocking is that, according to the WaPo/ABC poll, 20 percent “strongly approve” of Obama’s handling of the economy. Which means that the editors need to fix headline on the article:
Study finds 1 out of 5 Americans
exhibit brain-damage symptoms
The owner of XY Magazine and its associated website – which catered for young homosexual boys – filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
XY’s creditors have applied for the firm’s one remaining valuable asset: its database of one million users.
Talk about your “toxic assets” . . .
The failure of Obamanomics becomes obvious:
A pair of new polls find that with less than four months until the midterm elections, Americans’ confidence in President Obama’s handling of the economy continues to crater.
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that just 43 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, with 54 percent disapproving. . . .
These results are further confirmed by a CBS News poll, with 40 percent saying they had confidence in Obama, and 54 percent saying they did not.
Nancy Pelosi thinks unemployment checks create jobs, but the real job-creators know better:
Confidence among U.S. small businesses fell in June to the lowest level in three months as projections for profits, sales and economic conditions weakened, a private survey found.
The National Federation of Independent Business’s optimism index decreased to 89 from May’s 92.2 reading that was the highest since September 2008, the Washington-based group said today. Seven of the index’s 10 components dropped, led by a decline in the economic outlook six months from now. . . .
The report shows employment stalled last month while executives planned to trim investment and inventories as they waited for demand to strengthen.
“Headwinds for the economy are still strong, making forward progress difficult to make and to hold,” William Dunkelberg, the group’s chief economist, said in a statement. “The small business sector is not on a positive trajectory and with this half of the private sector missing in action, the poor growth performance is no surprise.”
The FDIC closed another four banks Friday — bringing the year-to-date total to 90 — and, while the stock market is currently riding a week of gains, major investors say long-term prospects are worsening:
Investors have turned bearish in their outlook for the global economy and corporate earnings, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch Survey of Fund Managers for July.
The survey shows a net 12 percent of respondents predicting the global economy will deteriorate in the coming 12 months, the first negative forecast since February 2009. . . . .
“July’s survey echoes the sentiment that investors expressed during the recession in early 2009,” said Gary Baker, head of European Equities strategy at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.
It Won’t Work. It Still Won’t Work. It’s Still Not Working.
UPDATE: From the comments: “George Steinbrenner dies and the markets go up about 170 points. Coincidence? I think not.”
California’s white population has declined since 2000 at an unprecedented rate, hastening the day when Hispanics will be the state’s largest population group, according to newly released state figures. . . .
By 2008, whites made up 40 percent of Californians, down from 47 percent at the turn of the century. . . .
Hans Johnson, a demographer at the Public Policy Institute of California, said white women in recent decades have tended to pursue higher-education degrees and stay in the workplace, leading them to have fewer children. The white population is now “below the replacement” level, Johnson said. “They’re simply not replacing themselves.”
Guest commentary by King Samir Shabazz:
“You’re gonna have to kill some crackers! You’re gonna have to kill some of their babies!”
Or just chill out and wait for the crackers to kill their own babies.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoken when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.
“That was not his task and that’s not the task of NASA,” Gibbs said.
Bolden either (a) accepts this public repudiation or (b) resigns.
Hey, since Bolden is a close personal friend of Smitty, maybe he could have a post-NASA career in blogging as our “space correspondent”!
by Smitty
Hotline On Call reports
The Senate Judiciary Committee will not vote Tuesday on the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, GOP aides said today.
GOP senators will use the ability of any committee member under the panel’s rules to put off a vote for one week, several aides said. They said committee GOPers want more time to review the nomination. Kagan returned written answers to questions for the record submitted by senators on Friday. “The committee will need time to review her responses” said a GOP staffer.
More on the scheduling implications at the link.
Elaine Donnelly at Big Peace fell short of endorsing Elena Kagan. Well short. Donnelly hammers Kagan’s testimony on the Witt case:
[Kagan’s] incoherent statement misrepresented the law and provided even more evidence that she has no professional interest in defending the military against legal attacks from civilian homosexual activists that she personally welcomed to Harvard Law School seminars several times.
After revisiting the testimony about Harvard recruiters, Donnelly concludes:
Members of the Senate need to take Kagan’s thin but instructive record seriously, and refuse to confirm her nomination to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Over at The Enterprise Blog, Douglas Smith (no relation) picks up the 2nd Amendment and pistol-whips the Kagan nomination:
The McDonald decision also underscores the importance of each nomination to the Supreme Court, and in particular the pending nomination of Elena Kagan. Already, many have raised questions regarding Kagan’s commitment to Second Amendment rights, citing her role in promoting gun control during her time in the Clinton White House and a memo she wrote as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall in which she stated that she was “not sympathetic” to a litigant’s claim that the District of Columbia had violated his right to bear arms.
The whole Second Amendment argument is a joke. The right to bear arms was as blatantly obvious to even the most casual citizen in 1783 as the use of English to compose the Constitution. The Second Amendment exists to ensure that the newly-minted Federal government couldn’t round up the weapons and engage in Chicago-style tyranny. Any navel-gazing nitwit trying to build castles in the air and say otherwise deserves to be ignored at best, and these Progressive justices shame themselves to say otherwise.
Finally, Senator Orrin Hatch, at NRO, reviews the abortion concern:
Ms. Kagan played a central role in developing and advancing the Clinton administration’s extreme position on abortion, including the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. In a 1996 legislative-strategy memo, she labeled a “disaster” a proposed statement by a key medical group that there exist “no circumstances” in which partial-birth abortion is the only option. She drafted, and persuaded the group to adopt, language with a much more positive political spin. At her hearing, she offered the Judiciary Committee the implausible claim that she was merely trying to ensure that the medical group accurately expressed its own medical opinion.
In a 1997 legislative-strategy memo after President Clinton vetoed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, Ms. Kagan urged him to support substitutes offered by Democratic senators. This tactic was intended to siphon votes away from a veto override, and, because the substitutes would not pass, leave partial-birth abortion unlimited. She made this political recommendation, however, even though the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the substitutes were unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. It appears that her personal or political views trumped her legal views.
So, irrespective of the kindly, engaging person Elena Kagan no doubt is in person, she’s as fit for the SCOTUS as, say, me. Her nomination represents an un-serious decision on the part of this Administration, and merits as much support as any of the idiotic, detrimental legislation currently moving through the Congressional digestive tract.
The extremism and wrongheadedness of this Administration should be met with a standing filibuster until next January.
But mainly Al-Qaeda terrorism:
Among the at least 64 people killed in the two devastating blasts that tore through outdoor gatherings in Uganda where hundreds of soccer fans were in the midst of watching the World Cup final was 25-year-old American Nate Henn. . . .
The selection of targets in the Ugandan capital of Kampala — a restaurant and a sports field where people were watching the game on large-screen TVs — ensured the bombs struck a broad mix of Ugandans and foreigners, including Americans. . . .
Al Shabaab, a fundamental Islamist group based in Somalia, today claimed responsibility for the attacks.
“We will carry out attacks against our enemy wherever they are,” Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage speaking from Mogadishu told The Associated Press.
“No one will deter us from performing our Islamic duty.”
So, with dozens of Africans and at least one American killed by terrorists in Kampala, guess who the NAACP decides to denounce?
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will propose a resolution this week condemning Islamic extremism racism within al-Qaeda the tea party movement.
The resolution, scheduled for a vote as early as Tuesday by delegates attending the annual NAACP convention in Kansas City, calls upon “all people of good will to repudiate the murderous terrorism racism of al-Qaeda the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.” . . .
“I think a lot of people are not taking Islamic terrorism the tea party movement seriously, and we need to take it seriously,” said Anita Russell, head of the Kansas City chapter of the NAACP.
No matter what the problem, the NAACP’s solution is “blame whitey.”
Thanks to Bob Owens for this update on Crystal Mangum:
A Durham woman who falsely accused three Duke University athletes of rape four years ago will be in court Monday on a separate case in which she faces multiple charges, including attempted first-degree murder. . . .
Police said she assaulted her boyfriend, Milton Walker, set his clothes on fire in a bathtub and threatened to stab him.
University faculty to scream “raaaaacism” in 3, 2, 1 . . .