Archive for March 5th, 2009
March 5th, 2009
 
 The latest Fox News poll shows approval of President Obama’s performance in office at 63 percent, up three points from two weeks ago.
 The survey also shows that two-thirds of Americans support Obama’s plan to raise taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year while lowering them for most other families.
 On an especially fascinating question — are Obama’s economic policies preferable right now to those pursued by Ronald Reagan when he was president? — Obama’s course was preferred over Reagan’s by a 49-40 margin. But then, it’s only fair to note that younger respondents probably know little of Reagan’s presidency, which ended 20 years ago.
 I found it amusing that the Fox News Web site framed its STORY on the poll (which was conducted by an independent firm) with a slightly negative headline — a reflection, I take it, of the network’s conservative bias.
 In the final analysis, however, there’s nothing Fox can do to change the fact that even the poll it commissioned shows the president to be popular.
 UPDATE: A new Hotline/Diageo poll PUTS Obama’s approval rating at 67 percent.
March 5th, 2009
 
 Those darned American people!
 Haven’t they heard the Republican talking points?
 How could THIS STUFF be true?
 UPDATE: U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, a Tennessee Republican, SAID today that health care is “a privilege,” not a right.
 Wamp and his family receive first-class health care coverage at taxpayers’ expense.
March 5th, 2009
And here’s a STORY on the so-called near miss.
March 5th, 2009
 
 I hadn’t really noticed this trend until Paul Krugman TOUCHED UPON IT in passing on his blog:
 Conservatives don’t seem as likely anymore to consider the “liberal” label a self-evident condemnation of people whose political views are anywhere to the left of, say, Genghis Khan.
 Perhaps this gradual change is due, as Krugman suggests, to the fact that liberals are now running the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, having been elected by wide margins to clean up the mess left from eight years of Republican rule.
 Oh, sure, the “liberal” label has not fully regained its popularity of old among the American populace, but that’s simply a matter of fashion lagging behind reality. After several decades of right-wingers successfully demonizing the L-word — so much so that lots of Democrats took to calling themselves “progressives” —  some folks are still reluctant to admit that they’re liberals, no matter that they’re voting mostly for libs and supporting mostly lib policies.
 The new term of disparagement among conservatives is “socialist,” even if it’s usually a misnomer and is recklessly bandied about by people who have no valid sense of the word’s historical and practical meaning. (I addressed this issue HERE just yesterday.)
 Anyway, we liberals still have the same term of disparagement for our political adversaries that we’ve been using for years. We call them “Republicans,” a brand widely held in disfavor these days. (The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll SHOWS that only 26 percent of Americans view the GOP positively.)
ADDENDUM: THIS PIECE is five days old, but it came to my attention just today. It relates to the subject at hand.
March 5th, 2009
 
 Last night’s edition of “The Daily Show” began with nine minutes of Jon Stewart delivering a hilariously devastating indictment of the so-called business experts at CNBC, including pseudo-populist Rick Santelli and crackpot Jim Cramer.
 It was a classic.
 Check it out HERE. (It takes a few seconds for the video to crank up, and then you have to sit through a brief commercial, but it’s well worth the wait.)
