Archive for October, 2009
Poll: President Obama Taking The Country Down The Wrong Track
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009A majority of people believe that the country is on the wrong track according to this Wall Street Journal poll via Politics Daily:
Fifty-two percent say the country is on the wrong track compared to 36 percent who say it is headed in the right direction with 9 percent saying conditions are mixed and 3 percent undecided. While there have been pluralities saying the U.S. is on the wrong track in four of the previous five WSJ/NBC polls during Obama’s presidency, this is the first time the number broke 50 percent. The one month where that was not true was April when 43 percent said things were on the right track and an equal number said they were going in the opposite direction.
And now for Congress and the GOP:
Sixty-five percent disapprove of the job Congress is doing compared to 24 percent who approve with 11 percent undecided. Fifty-six percent have a very or somewhat positive view of Obama (this is a different metric than job approval) while 33 percent are in the negative camp. Americans see the Democratic Party positively by a 42 percent to 36 percent margin with 20 percent declaring themselves neutral, while the Republican Party is regarded negatively by 46 percent to 25 percent with 27 percent being neutral. Fourteen percent see the Democrats “very positively” while only 6 say the same about the GOP.
What I see in all this is a country absolutely exasperated at the political class. They had hope and hope is currently failing them. The economy stinks. The Republicans are not acting very Republican. Where does a voter turn to get satisfaction?
This poll also shows me that the country likes Barack Obama personally–they just don’t like the policies all that much.
And reports like this from USA Today about job creation just seem like fanciful thinking. It’s all funny-money. Basically, it looks like stimulus funds spared state governments from having to make cuts. That means there will still be hell to pay–someone has to generate revenue to pay for government employees. Private sector job creation is nil. So, a year from now, state budgets will, once again have to beg the federal government for money and the fed won’t have it because the federal tax revenue continues to decline.
Nancy Pelosi speaks of another stimulus. This will again delay the inevitable and provoke inflation. The 70s were ugly. It looks like 2010 will be ugly, too.
Sarah Palin’s Qualification…
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009CNN conducts a poll about Sarah Palin and 70% view her as unqualified to be president. But the more important part of the poll comes after that:
The poll indicates that about half of the country, 51 percent, has an unfavorable view of Palin, with 42 percent seeing her in a positive light. Nearly two-thirds of those questioned say Palin’s not a typical politician, and feel she’s a good role model for women. Fifty-six percent add that Palin cares about people, and a similar amount think she’s honest and trustworthy. But the survey indicates Americans are split over whether Palin shares their values, agrees with them on the issues, or if she’s a strong leader.
“Sarah Palin has one advantage that many past Republican candidates have not shared – Americans think she cares about people like them,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “But her biggest Achilles heel is the number who think she is not qualified to be President. Those numbers are similar to what Dan Quayle got in 1993, when only 23 percent thought he was ready for the White House.”
Give Obama’s policies some more time, and the only thing that voters will care about is that there is a candidate who actually seems concerned about them. Right now, all parties are very disconnected from the electorate.
Sarah Palin can learn, grow, speak, hone her message and demonstrate qualifications over time. The other candidates have a much tougher time with demonstrating that they care for the people. It might take getting personality transplants–which is what would be required to change the public perception.
UPDATE: More on her “high risk, high reward” strategy here.
Health Care Big Lies & More Big Lies & For A Refresher, Reagan
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009What they said would happen:
What actually happened:
Why we love Reagan:
Ronald Reagan speech on role of government and citizens:
I think we’re for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we’re against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world’s population. I think we’re against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
I think we’re for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we’re against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We’re helping 107. We’ve spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.
There is more at the link.
AIP Column: Democrat Decay
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009What happens when Democrats run things unchecked? Detroit, Michigan:
Urban decay might as well be called Democrat decay. Democrats rule every major city in America and the more power the Democrats have in the city, the more likely the city will be a complete mess.
Enter Detroit, Michigan.
Detroit might be the second worst example of unchecked Democrat policies in the United States today and that’s saying something. The first would be New Orleans. Close behind would be Philadelphia and Chicago. Remember New York City before Rudy Giuliani? No? That’s because the city was too dangerous to visit before the Republican mayor cleaned house.
Economic chaos precedes sociological anarchy and that’s where Detroit finds itself. For years, Michigan rolled along fat on car manufacturers tax gouging. Communities sprung up like neat little lines of boxes all around the cities. There were indulgent public school programs (my own high school had a beautiful, full-service planetarium thanks to the local Oldsmobile plant).
Taxes continued to increase as more public services were offered. Then, a confluence of events turned Michigan on its head and the state has yet to find its footing. Union demands outstripped the companies’ ability to increase production adequately to continue increased profits. The car companies grew top-heavy with layers of innovation-killing management. Good ideas would get stifled in layers of play-it-safe-bean-counting management. The states and cities weren’t and continue to be undiversified economically. The equivalent of a seaside fishing town, Michigan got swept along whatever the economic weather. And when sales dropped, tax revenue dropped. And when income fell far enough, jobs were lost but not until after years on furloughs (being paid to do nothing) and lay-offs which drained profits from struggling companies.
And what did Detroit and the state of Michigan do? Raise taxes, of course! Loathe to cut companies or their employees slack, the government continued to hike taxes on those working to help those without a job. In Detroit these days, that’s nearly 25% of the working population. Can you fathom that number? One in four people languishing while Democrats fiddle.
Please read the whole thing.
Podcast: Matt Lewis Discusses Intellectualism In The Conservative Movement
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Matt Lewis of Townhall and AOL’s Politics Daily talks with me about intellectualism in the conservative movement. We discuss the legacy of William F. Buckley and modern thinkers. We talk about Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and more of the minds and no-minds on the right. Is intellectualism dead on the right? Listen and find out.
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
Donate To The Marines
Monday, October 26th, 2009Hey Guys! I don’t ask for money from you all, but today, I’m askin’. The first line to defend our freedom, the Marines, need money for hands-free computers so they can stay connected to the world. Please help me help them!
Productivity & Social Media
Monday, October 26th, 2009Another stupid study about wasted work time and spilling company secrets from the Telegraph:
More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.
One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.
Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.
Oh bah. Twitter and Facebook are social. Like the coffee station at work is social. Like the water cooler is social. Like the printer is social. They are gathering places for where people already talk. And everyone talks at work.
The concern with social media isn’t the time, it’s the ability to spread a message. Where office conversations can be like the game Telephone–one message to one person, one by one, and by the end, it’s distorted–social media can multiply a message exponentially. I tell my 10,000 “friends” on Twitter and they tell thousands more of their friends.
Even with this, though, there is a feedback loop. Often, when a message is spread via Social Media, a link goes with the “gossip”. A person who lies, distorts and spreads disinformation can achieve social pariah status pretty quickly. [Exception: Andrew Sullivan] Not so, in an office. The office gossip can be annoying, but most people deal with him or her because the information can be useful and powerful. And even still, these dynamics play out online and offline.
People are people. Work gets mental interruptions almost all of the time. That people take a few minutes for Twitter or Facebook is just another version of the same. Listen, the day that social media loving workers take as much time as those who take smoking breaks, there can be a conversation. In the meantime, bashing social media is just the latest way for bosses to obsess about their worker production.
P.S. There’s a recession. Most people are working very hard to keep their job. The bigger concern these days, I’m guessing, is burnout, not lost productivity. If anything, there isn’t enough play and too much work at work.
H/T TechCrunch
I’m A Marine
Monday, October 26th, 2009Yes I am. Can you be a Marine? Yes you can! Read on…. This is from Cassandra of Villainous Company.
Who does America call when something absolutely, positively must be destroyed overnight?
U.S. Marine Rat
That’s right… America’s 911 Force: the Few. The Loud. The Marine team!
We’re still looking for a few good blogs to help us raise money for Project Valour IT. The competition starts Monday, October 26th and though the Marines are the smallest service, we’re planning to chew through the competition. But to do that, we need your help.
Project Valour IT provides laptops with voice activated software to wounded soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen at Walter Reed and Bethesda. Typically these young men and women spend up to two years recovering and undergoing physical therapy. Their courage, determination, and unfailing esprit de corps are truly inspiring. Most of us, facing the loss of our eyesight, an arm or a leg and repeated surgeries would just crumble up into a ball. Not these guys. They’re warriors:
He knows they’re going to stare. They always stare.
As soon as Pat Murray steps in the elevator, they’ll notice his prosthetic leg and maybe accurately surmise that, yes, he is an Iraq war veteran, and, yes, he got blown up. Then the sadness will sink in, the pity, and they’ll give him that look, which he can sense even if he doesn’t see, and it will be an uncomfortable few floors up.
So as Murray approaches the elevator and the woman thrusts her hand between the closing doors for him, he says, “Careful, you can lose a limb that way.”
“Oooh,” the woman says, noticing Murray’s metal leg. She’s obviously shocked, unsure of what to say or how to act. Murray flashes a smile, lets loose an “it’s okay” chuckle, and suddenly the ride up isn’t nearly so awkward after all.
It’s that type of humor — spontaneous (he once asked his doctor when his leg would grow back), cunning (he tells children who ask about his “robot” leg that he didn’t eat his vegetables) and, at times, gruesome (there are stump jokes that can’t be printed here) — that helped him come to terms with the fact that his right leg is no more.
It was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that Murray, who was a corporal in the Marine Corps, not only learned to walk again, but to laugh. Although doctors and therapists can patch up the physical wounds of war, it is often the humor — soldier to soldier, Marine to Marine, patient to patient — that in the space of a punch line can heal as well as the best medicine.
It’s not unusual for these young men and women to take up bungee jumping, skydiving, or participate in marathons or other extreme sports even after losing a limb. But that long period where they’re confined to their hospital beds can be the worst of all. Project Valour IT provides them with a way to escape the confines of their rooms and keep in touch with buddies, friends and family members. For many wounded vets, it’s a tangible reminder that they’re still part of the world outside Bethesda or Walter Reed: that there is life after being wounded.
Valour IT is one of my favorite military charities. I’ve supported it every year and led the Marine Team to raise over $51,000 in 2006. My co-captain Carrie and I are planning two weeks of fun, jokes, Marine history, culture, heroes and more. Carrie’s son is headed over to Afghanistan and my husband is already over there, so we both have good reason to support the great work Valour IT is doing.
Valour IT is a cause you can support with confidence that your donation will be well spent. Every dollar raised goes directly to wounded vets at the following military medical centers as well as VA treatment centers nationwide:
* Balboa Naval Hospital
* Brooke Army Medical Center
* Madigan Regional Medical Center
* National Naval Medical Center (Bethesda Naval Hospital)
* Naval Hospital, Camp Pendleton
* Robert E. Bush Naval Hospital (29 Palms)
* Walter Reed Army Medical Center
So now you have the mission. What we need now is a strong team. Please sign up for the Marine team, and tell all your friends. You can join here and see the great blogs who’ve already proudly donned the title, “Marine team”.
But most of all, remember — we’re planning to have fun. Because although they’re all business, no one rocks the house like the United States Marine Corps:
Why There Are Fewer Women Bloggers
Monday, October 26th, 2009At Western CPAC there were a row of blogging men with two notable exceptions: Rachel Alexander of Intellectual Conservative and me. Proportionally in political blogging and in blogging generally, there just aren’t as many women bloggers. David Griner of The Social Path asks why:
If you spend any time looking at social media demographics, there’s one stat you see over and over: women dominate the space. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter — all are more popular with women than men.
So it was a bit jarring this week to see that 67% of bloggers are male, according to the newest installment of the Technorati State of the Blogosphere report.
Admittedly, this isn’t a new stat. In least year’s report, Technorati’s survey put the male blogger ratio at 66%. But compared to the other mainstream social media activities, it seems bizarrely guy-heavy.
In the post, he asks women bloggers he knows for their answers. Here’s my answer:
The Internet still feels like the Wild West. There are some safe homesteads–social media, for example. Consider: On Facebook, a woman can decide who she wants to connect with and who she wants to keep out. On Twitter, a woman who feels wrongly attacked can block the attacker. (Meghan McCain, the mad blocker, comes to mind. She takes even mild criticism as a block-worthy offense.)
When it comes the arena of ideas, the women who blog are not typical women. Over and over, the women who blog are tougher. Like the shotgun wielding Western expansionists of yore, women bloggers take shots and can shoot back.
Women bloggers are often sexualized and insulted. One famous incident with Kathy Sierra involved photoshop and personal information. Kathy quit, something I urged her not to do. She is now, though, on Twitter and I believe she blogs anonymously to spare herself the insulting misery. Michelle Malkin, Amanda Carpenter, and just about every conservative woman blogger, including me, has endured horrible personal, violent and sexual insults–very often from “enlightened” male liberal commenters and bloggers.
Most women simply do not want to put up with this garbage. They feel threatened and they worry about their safety and the safety of their children. Michelle Malkin had to actually move after her personal information was plastered on the web. She is a mother. She has children. There are nutjobs out there and in this business, there is a very real risk to personal safety. It’s something guys just don’t have to deal with as much.
In addition, women often don’t like the intellectual jousting. Part of it is gender wiring. Men see verbal sparring as a testosterone-fueled challenge. Women see degraded communication and hostility. When they put an idea out there, it seems aggressive when someone rips the point of view to shreds. And, it is aggressive.
It might not be politically correct to say so, but women and men have gender generalities that make certain behavior more typical–including online behavior. I’m not sure what will change this. And I don’t know if these gender trends would be good to change. For example, if men become more cooperative and women become more dominant, the playing field may be evened in discourse but some of the particularities inherent in gender would be lost. Is that a good thing? That’s a bigger question and not the one being asked here, but I think it’s a worthwhile one to consider.
The women who do blog tend to stick out. Here’s the thing, when I was at Western CPAC with the guys, I didn’t feel out of place or less worthy. They didn’t treat me disrespectfully or condescend. I was a peer in all respects. The thing is, I like the rough and tumble world of political blogging–even if I do get harassed and abused rhetorically from time to time. Goes with the territory. If you can’t take the heat and all that…. Most women have enough heat in the rest of their lives, they figure they don’t need to invite by putting ideas out there via a blog.
What Is Sarah Palin Up To?
Friday, October 23rd, 2009In my editorial at Pajamas Media today, I talk about Sarah Palin’s decision to endorse the conservative, rather than the Republican candidate and what it all means:
With her decision to endorse Doug Hoffman, the conservative (not Republican) candidate, Sarah
Palin sends the Republican Party a very clear message. She will be using her considerable fundraising ability to fund candidates who ideologically match what it used to mean to be a Republican. Since the Republican Party, from its toes to its nose, has difficulty identifying candidates with those credentials, she’ll help them do it.
The Republican Party has a choice. They can continue to antagonize those who vote them into office or they can start paying attention. They mistakenly buy the D.C. bubble philosophy that moderation is the way to find good candidates. What they’re seeing is a base willing to lose if the Republican Party doesn’t change its ways.
I also talk about identity politics and how it is blowing up for the Republican party. The love the party has for Sarah Palin has less to do with her beauty or gender than her beliefs and ideology. So the Republican party, while looking for women candidates needs to remember what’s most important: the beliefs. The base is sick of people who pay lip service to ideas like small government and fiscal responsibility and then turn around and govern like drunk liberals spending other peoples’ money.
