Ooooh, aren’t we all scared!
Per Ann Althouse:
Why not just get tough? And we’ll be the judge of whether you’re tough.
Personally, I’d rather you show me you’re going to get tough on our enemies… and not just that you’re gearing up to go ballistic on Sarah Palin.
Isn’t it great about how Barack is bringing us all back together.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden said yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
Biden’s comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
From The Guardian
The MSM are full of all sorts of supposed scandals and discontent among the people of Alaska regarding their governor, Sara Palin.
Let’s look at a more objective measure (all data from Job Approval Ratings, compiled by The University of Rochester, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & George Washington University):
Here are Palin’s Approval/Disapproval stats:
| Positive Percentage | Negative Percentage | Date of Survey |
| 83 | 7 | 4/4/2007 |
| 81 | 5 | 6/14/2007 |
| 82 | 6 | 9/17/2007 |
| 83 | 11 | 10/19/2007 |
| 81 | 9 | 11/9/2007 |
| 85 | 12 | 3/10/2008 |
| 86 | 9 | 5/6/2008 |
| 82 | 10 | 5/6/2008 |
.
What about Obama’s ratings as a US Senator? (remember, he’s been a celebrity since his 2004 convention speech and his status as the only African-American senator)
| Positive Percentage | Negative Percentage | Date of Survey |
| 67 | 22 | 5/6/2005 |
| 72 | 21 | 6/10/2005 |
| 71 | 20 | 8/12/2005 |
| 72 | 10 | 10/5/2005 |
| 73 | 21 | 10/14/2005 |
| 69 | 23 | 12/9/2005 |
| 72 | 20 | 1/13/2006 |
| 71 | 23 | 2/10/2006 |
| 65 | 28 | 3/6/2006 |
| 70 | 25 | 3/10/2006 |
| 70 | 23 | 4/7/2006 |
| 70 | 25 | 5/12/2006 |
| 71 | 25 | 6/9/2006 |
| 72 | 22 | 7/14/2006 |
| 73 | 24 | 8/11/2006 |
| 69 | 25 | 9/14/2006 |
| 72 | 23 | 10/12/2006 |
| 71 | 22 | 11/8/2006 |
| 73 | 17 | 5/15/2007 |
.
For comparison purposes, let’s look at the job approval ratings for John Warner, a highly-popular Virginia Democrat governor.
| Positive Percentage | Negative Percentage | Date of Survey |
| 60 | 40 | 7/8/2002 |
| 56 | 44 | 20/8/2002 |
| 74 | 24 | 7/19/2005 |
| 55 | 31 | 5/6/2005 |
| 58 | 32 | 6/10/2005 |
| 63 | 25 | 7/8/2005 |
| 63 | 28 | 8/12/2005 |
| 76 | 22 | 9/6/2005 |
| 66 | 26 | 9/16/2005 |
| 64 | 29 | 10/14/2005 |
| 67 | 27 | 11/11/2005 |
| 66 | 26 | 12/9/2005 |
| 72 | 22 | 1/13/2006 |
.
The numbers speak for themselves, but let’s hit the highlights:
So, according to the residents of their states, who was doing the best job as an elected public servant? Sara Palin is the champ.
Good American Thinker article by James Lewis.
Quotes:
As the fringe likes to say, “It’s only justice.” Think about that word “justice” and try filling in “revenge.” “Social justice” means the revenge of the poor against the rich, of the radical women against the men who’ve stood them up and hurt their feelings all their lives, and the revenge of black people finally doin’ down the whites — as Jeremiah Wright makes so abundantly clear.
“Social justice” is the revenge of the psychologically oppressed against people who look happier and more satisfied with their lives.
The Left is entitled to power, because in their own eyes they have Truth and Morality on their side. They are Mahatma Gandhi, they are Dr. King, they are the vanguard of the marching proletariat. It’s not just Big O who has the incomprehensible egomania. His inner circle and vast numbers of his supporters do, too. Entitlement, grandiosity, narcissism: In psychiatric thinking they all suffer from secret feelings of inferiority, narcissistic wounds to their self-esteem. Every time they lose, those nagging feelings come up again. So they are always overcompensating, trying to bully reality into the shape they need.
Senator O’s campaign started with an attack on Sarah Palin, but caught itself fast and backed off. Attacking the lady without careful planning would have been disastrous. Instead, unattributed rumors are circulating in the Leftosphere: Palin’s Down Syndrome baby wasn’t really hers, there is secret corruption in her past, and more. These wild, vicious slanders are trotted out mainly to satisfy the emotional needs of their authors. The nasty, vicious quality is a signal of irrational, narcissistic rage.
The Obama has spent two years trying to keep a woman from becoming president and now he’s spending two months trying to keep a woman from becoming vice-president.
Alan Blinder has an article in the New York Times that discusses a book entitled Unequal Democracy: the Political Economy of the New Gilded Age by Larry M. Bartels, a political science professor from Princeton. We have a photograph of Professor Bartels above.
The first principle theme of Bartels’ book, as elucidated by Blinder is that “the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.” This is from 1947-2005.
The second theme is that income inequality, the liberals’ latest bugaboo, grows under Republican presidents and shrinks under Democratic presidents.
Blinder ties these two supposed findings together to demonstrate that a vote for Obama is a vote for greater growth and less inequality and who wouldn’t want that. Statistics prove this truth. He does deign to admit,
Such a large historical gap in economic performance between the two parties is rather surprising, because presidents have limited leverage over the nation’s economy. Most economists will tell you that Federal Reserve policy and oil prices, to name just two influences, are far more powerful than fiscal policy. Furthermore, as those mutual fund prospectuses constantly warn us, past results are no guarantee of future performance.
Organizer in Chief - an excellent article on Obama’s background in community organizing and how that connects with his view of large government programs and the “meanness” of the United States. This is also a description of one of the many ways that Lyndon Johnson screwed up this country.
Here’s a key quote:
Obama’s nomination will be celebrated as a first for African-Americans. But the racial symbolism may obscure the importance of his presidential run to the tens of thousands of government-funded community groups that stand to benefit from an Obama agenda that’s right out of the 1960s. His presidential platform touts programs that would refuel the nonprofit sector, ranging from a commitment to boost money for federal relics like the ineffective and wasteful Community Development Block Grant program (see “America’s Worst Urban Program,” Spring 2005) to a plan for providing “a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities . . . from birth to college” to a series of “Promise Neighborhoods.”
A lovely piece by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review today.
The winds at the Democrats’ backs are hurricane-force gales, and yet there’s Obama holding steady, like a young Dan Rather in his schoolgirl rain slicker, immobile and unmovable.
Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you’ll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: “People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I’m Here To Help.”
Perhaps therein lies the answer to this supposed mystery. Indeed, perhaps there’s no mystery at all, and Obama’s problems are the same problems Democrats always have at the presidential level: He’s an elitist.
Exatimente.
“Let us not forget that Marxism, as the one great political force of our twentieth century, made its appearance with the claim to be bringing a new world of freedom and of free people. This very promise of knowing the scientifically guaranteed way to freedom, and of creating the new world, drew to it many of the boldest spirits of our age; ultimately it even appeared as the force through which the Christian teaching of redemption could be transformed into a realistic practical means for liberation - as the force that could bring the Kingdom of God as the true kingdom of men. The collapse of realist socialism in the East European states has not quite laid aside all such hopes, and here and there they still subsist, silently awaiting some new form.”
— Pope Benedict XVI; Truth and Tolerance; p. 233; (emphasis added)
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.
— Pope Benedict XVI; Truth and Tolerance; p. 116
So what’s a community organizer? Obama is very proud of his former job and a lot of people undoubtedly think of someone helping people to fill out welfare forms or handing out soup.
The Windy Citizen, who has worked as a community organizer, has the real story:
Since 2002, I have worked with several Chicago-based community organizers and even done some organizing myself. My experience has taught me to view Barack Obama, Chicago’s most famous community organizer, in a different light than you will likely encounter from most political commentators.
Community organizing is old-fashioned, bare-knuckle politics for the little guy.
