The American Spectator

President Obama's Poll Ratings Underwater

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 8:20AM

The latest Marist Poll has bad news for the president.  Reports the New York Daily News:

President Obama's job approval rating has taken another dive, putting him underwater for the first time in the latest Marist poll.

Just 44% of the country approve of the work Obama is doing, while 47% don't like what they see.

The tough reviews come as Americans still find the commander in chief likable, with 50% rating him favorably, and 44% viewing him negatively.

And they still blame former President George W. Bush for the dismal economy.

Only 29% of voters say the poor economy is Obama's fault; 62% agree that Bush left the problem on Obama's desk.

"With this part of voters' mind-set, it's no wonder the White House would like to make 2010 a choice between President Obama and past GOP policies," said Lee Miringoff, director of The Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Still, people think Obama's policies are not change they can believe in.

Forty-seven percent of voters say Obama has not lived up to their expectations, with just 42% saying he has.

A narrow plurality - 38% - think Obama's change has been bad, and 37% think it's been good.

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Islamic Censorship in Europe

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 7:48AM

Free speech in Europe is dying.  On January 20 the Netherlands, once thought to be a tolerant, liberal country, opened criminal proceedings against Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party.  He is accused of religious hate speech for his film Fitna, which pointed out the obvious, that Islam ain't the most tolerant of religions, as well as statements made in support of proposals to limit Muslim immigration and ban the Quran just as the Netherlands bans Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Paul Marshall of the Hudson Institute worries:

The American media's silence about the Geert Wilders trial is puzzling - the trial is explosive, much more so than most of America's perennial "trials of the century." Wilders, leader of the Freedom party, is arguably the Netherlands's most popular politician, but for years he has had to live in safe houses, including on military bases. He now faces the possibility of imprisonment on charges of "group insult" and "incitement to hatred," as defined by articles 137 (c) and (d) of the Dutch penal code, for his public speeches and op-eds criticizing Islam.

Apart from its direct and immediate threat to free speech, the trial exposes the growth of political violence and repression in the Netherlands, long lauded as the most tolerant country in Europe, if not the world. Thirty years ago, I interviewed then-prime minister Dries van Agt simply by strolling into his unguarded parliamentary office and asking his secretary if he could spare me a couple of minutes. Now it is a country where politicians and artists are targeted by vigilantes and the state.

In 2002, popular Dutch politician and gay activist Pim Fortuyn was murdered by an environmentalist who took offense at Fortuyn's criticism of Islam. In 2004, one of the country's leading documentarians, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered, and almost beheaded, on the streets of Amsterdam in retaliation for a film he made about Islam (Submission). In 2006, a gathering of scholars and commentators critical of Islam and Islamism led the Dutch security service to invoke an alert level just short of "national emergency." In 2008, the prospective release of Wilders's film Fitna led to special sessions of the Dutch cabinet. The country's best-known member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for many years had to live in hiding, and even briefly fled the country. This is the situation in the heart of liberal Europe.

The worst religious persecutors abroad are Islamic states--think Saudi Arabia, for instance.  Persecuting Islamic states like Pakistan are leading the campaign against the "defamation" of religion through the United Nations.  And even more ominously, as evidenced by the Wilders case, intolerant Islamic extremists are turning European governments into their de facto agents. 

One does not have to agree with every proposal and statement made by Wilders to recognize the danger posed by his prosecution.  Americans have to remain on alert to ensure that this sort of outrageous political correctness is not allowed to curb free speech in America, including the right to criticize Islam and Islamic extremists.

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Sacre Bleu: French Loses Ground!

Posted by Doug Bandow on 2.9.10 @ 4:25AM

Will the indignity never end?  The new European Union foreign minister, a Brit, speaks French badly!  Ever more countries are inclined to drop the language from diplomatic discourse!  It is time for action!

Reports the Financial Times:

Senior French officials are mounting a rearguard action to defend the use of French at the UN and other international institutions as a language of diplomacy, in the face of the inexorable rise of English.

Paris has renewed its efforts to secure the future of French in international circles, partly prompted by the appointment of Britain's Lady Ashton to head the European Union's foreign policy in November.

Her faltering French, once unthinkable in a senior EU official, has been seized upon by the French media, reflecting concerns in Paris that the diplomatic machinery she is building will be Anglophone.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former prime minister who is President Nicolas Sarkozy's special envoy to promote French, was in New York at the end of last week to insist that its status as one of the two working languages at the UN must be respected.

The French démarche is the latest attempt to halt the rising tide of English as the dominant medium of diplomatic discourse. Mr Raffarin told journalists at a French-only briefing at his country's New York mission: "President Sarkozy has asked me to approach international organisations to ensure the presence of French and to express, positively but firmly, a certain intransigeance francophone that the rules must be respected,"

Tragic, isn't it.  The rest of the world just doesn't understand the grandeur, the sheer majesty, of the French language.  But Paris came up with the answer:  A bureaucrat must be dispatched to the UN!

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They're Getting One Thing Right

Posted by Nicole Russell on 2.8.10 @ 8:40PM

As much as I'm loathe to admit (Minnesota) Star Tribune reporters are right about anything, the Strib's reporter in D.C., Kevin Diaz, does get one thing right about what locals are calling snowpocalypse. And what we Minnesota natives call winter. In a blog post on the Strib's "Hot Dish Politics," he describes the differences between this snowfall and the great snowfall of 1991 in Minnesota.

The Washington area, once slammed by John F. Kennedy for its “southern efficiency and northern hospitality,” is basically clueless about snow.

(Point 2, subparagraph 1: The nation’s capital is a veritable Tower of Babel of driving styles, with a lot of folks at the wheel who, let’s just say, don’t know a lot about winter driving technique in the First World; Point 2, subparagraph 2: There’s no Minnesota Nice ethic here that gives any reassurance that once you dig your car out on the street you’ll ever get to park there again).

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John Murtha and Abscam

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 4:48PM

Here is Dave Holman's scoop for The American Spectator in the fall of 2006. Don't expect this to make it into many obituaries.

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How Murtha's Death Could Make It Harder to Pass a Health Care Bill

Posted by Philip Klein on 2.8.10 @ 3:55PM

As the Capitol reacts to the death of Jack Murtha and remembers his legacy, it's worth pointing out that the news will make it even harder for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to secure the 218 votes needed to pass health care legislation.

Back in November, the House passed its health care bill by a narrow 220 to 215 margin, with 39 Democrats voting against it. Since then, the one Republican who voted for it -- Joseph Cao -- has indicated that he would not support the bill a second time around given the weaker language on abortion in the Senate version. In addition, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler already retired prematurely. Factor in Murtha's death today, and Pelosi is down to 217 votes. This doesn't even take into account the pro-life Democrats led by Bart Stupak who are prepared to vote "no." While there's been talk that Pelosi had some votes in reserve the first time around, the point is that those members felt they needed to vote against the bill -- and the political environment has deteriorated substantially for Democrats since then. 

With Murtha's death, the Cook Political Report has now moved his Pennsylvania district to the "toss up" category. If Republicans can field a good candidate and gain the seat, it would further reinforce the fears among Democrats in swing districts and make them less likely to jump on board with Pelosi. Chris Cillizza suggests the most likely date for the special election would be May 18. The special election to replace Wexler is scheduled for April 13, and is expected to go Democrat.

UPDATE: Another complicating factor is Rep. Neil Abercrombie. The Hawaii Democrat announced early last month that he would resign Feb. 28 run for governor. However, in his statement announcing his resignation, he said that he had ensured Pelosi that he’d be around to continue supporting the health care bill. Back when he made that statement, Scott Brown hadn’t won yet, and thus the end of this month seemed like plenty of time to finalize the health care bill. Now that the timeline has been pushed back, perhaps he’d postpone the effective date of his resignation if Pelosi still needed his vote.

UPDATE II: An earlier version of this post suggested that Democrats would be unable to pass the bill with 217 votes, but as a reader points out there's still the theoretical chance of passing it 217-216. So I changed the wording.

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BREAKING: John Murtha Has Died

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 3:19PM

Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a leading House Democrat, has died. A special election will have to be held in his district no later than 60 days after the seat is officially declared vacant. Murtha's district went for John McCain in 2008 and only narrowly for John Kerry in 2004, making it a possible Republican pickup opportunity.

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Democrats Trying to Say Good-Bayh to Coats

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 3:12PM

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza wonders if the Democrats are trying to dissuade Dan Coats from challenging Sen. Evan Bayh in Indiana. Cillizza details the Democratic assault on the new candidate:

First came a detailed dossier from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee running through the clients Coats represents as a federal lobbyist -- including PhRMA and Goldman Sachs.

Then the DSCC released a video from 2008 in which Coats tells a Republican audience he and his wife are planning to move to North Carolina -- not Indiana -- when he retires. (Coats currently lives in the D.C. area.)

And, finally, there was today's report that Coats had lobbied for a number of foreign governments including Yemen.

Why might any of this make Coats reconsider his candidacy? Cillizza continues:

First, Coats hasn't been involved in a competitive political campaign since the early 1990s -- a time when things like You Tube weren't even a glint in their creators' collective eyes. By hammering Coats before he even becomes a candidate, national Democrats want to make sure the former Senator understands what he is in for over the course of the next nine months (or so) and how much the media environment -- when it comes to politics -- has changed.

Second, assuming Coats is committed to run no matter what Democrats throw at him, the goal of the string of negative stories is to change the narrative from "Bayh draws a serious challenge in Coats" to "Coats, former lobbyist, returns home to Indiana to run."

Sounds like a lot of effort to go through to protect what had been thought to be a safe Democratic seat. Of course, I've argued that the seat isn't necessarily safe even if Bayh has to face John Hostettler instead.

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Tim Tebow and Leftist Reactionaries

Posted by David N. Bass on 2.8.10 @ 3:05PM

I’m forced to ponder whether Focus on the Family engineered what turned out to be the tepid Tim Tebow ad to make pro-choicers look foolish. If they did, they scored. Big time.

After weeks of issuing press releases, doing the cable news circuit, blogging, and generally having collective conniptions, feminists look pretty foolish for getting their — um — undergarments in a knot over the commercial.

The ad wasn’t that big a deal. It didn’t contain any buzzwords — not “abortion,” not even “life” — and it’s made social lefties look like rabid reactionaries. Case in point: Jehmu Greene, president of the Women’s Media Center, said two weeks ago on the Bill O’Reilly show that the ad was trying to take away choice “from all American women.”

That was pre-mature considering no one except CBS producers saw the ad or the script for the ad until it aired last night. In retrospect, it was pretty stupid of pro-choicers to go to the mat when they weren’t sure what the final message would be. Now, they're paying for it.

Utterly embarrassed, but wholly undeterred, pro-choicers are now moving onto attack strategy 2.0: accuse the ad of encouraging domestic violence against women. Puleeze.

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Obama Order Locking Out Non-Union Construction Companies Marks One Year Anniversary

Posted by Kevin Mooney on 2.8.10 @ 2:33PM

One year ago this past Saturday President Obama signed an executive order that reshapes the bidding process for federal construction projects in a manner that is heavily weighted in favor of  unionized companies.

This was done as a sop to labor bosses who have thus far failed to win passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), despite large Democratic majorities in both congressional chambers. Free market groups have vigorously opposed the card check and binding arbitration components of the bill, which they argue would further burden business in a challenging economic climate.

The executive order signed on Feb. 6, 2009 calls for project labor agreements (PLAs) to be used when the cost to the federal government exceeds $25 million. PLA's are set up as multi-employer, multi-union, pre-existing agreements designed to harmonize labor relations between construction trade unions and contractors.

Nationwide about 16 percent of the nation's private construction workforce is unionized. This means PLAs could be used to discriminate against the more than eight of out of 10 construction workers who are not part of a union, as some critics have observed.

In his analysis of the order, Maurice Baskin, the legal counsel for Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), wrote: Continue reading…

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Audi La-La

Posted by Wlady Pleszczynski on 2.8.10 @ 1:30PM

Among the many moronic ads last night there were a few funny ones. Naturally, the NYTimes' critic found none of them amusing; even the Washington Post 's over the hill Tom Shales wasn't that humor deprived. He even mentioned the Tebow ad, something the NYTimes critic passed over. To the latter's credit, he did find time to diss the single most disturbed add of all, Audi's, which he described thus:

Officious “green police” punish citizens who are not sufficiently eco-conscious, but an owner of an Audi A3 TDI with clean-diesel technology drives away scot-free. This misguided spot put the "mental" in "environmental."

You can watch it here. I'm still scratching my head as to why Audi would hype its green car in manner only Al Gore and Henry Waxman would appreciate. Perhaps it was inspired by the movie version of A Clockwork Orange.

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Peyton Manning's Super Bowl

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 2.8.10 @ 1:13PM

As a Patriots fan, I couldn't have asked for a better Super Bowl than last night's: well played, close, hard-hitting, and ending with the perennially overrated Peyton Manning throwing a deliciously inexcusable pick six.

I was overjoyed with the return of the Manning Face because, unlike Phil, I didn't think before the game that Manning belonged anywhere near the discussion about best quarterbacks ever. I think it's pretty obvious that he isn't even the best quarterback in the league today, and I was glad to see my beliefs reinforced.

Look at Manning's line from the game:

And compare to Tom Brady's line from a similar game, his Patriots' 2007 upset at the hands of the New York Giants:

Those box scores are fairly similar, except that Manning threw for more yards and also had a terrible, game-losing pick six.

But QB lines only tell half the story. QBs have to play with teammates and against defenses. Famously, in the 2007 Super Bowl Brady was sacked five times, was knocked down many more, and faced constant pressure from Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck, and Michael Strahan -- all great pass rushers having the best game of their lives. Last night, conversely, Manning was not sacked once, and only knocked down three times, none of them hard. I can't remember the last time I watched a football game where the QB wasn't sacked at least once.

So if you want to talk about the best QB ever or the best QB playing, let's start with those two games. Biggest stage possible, both QB's trying to cement their reputations, both losing against underdogs. Brady faced incredibly tough pressure and managed to engineer a late game drive. Manning faced no pressure at all and choked.

Now consider that Brady already had all the single-season passing records, not to mention three Super Bowl rings.

I think that Phil accidentally led into a larger point about comparing QBs when he wrote "But as far as I'm concerned, if I was going into the big game and could choose one quarterback, I'd still choose Joe Montana in his prime over Manning in a heart beat."

Having made the point that Manning's success is attributable in large part to his offensive line's success against the opposing team's pass rushers (which I would argue has been the case over Manning's whole career), I think it's easy to extend that argument to Joe Montana's success.

Montana is actually the example Michael Lewis used in his book The Blind Side to make a point that I'm amazed has not had a bigger impact on football. Lewis really was trying to do for football what he did for baseball with Moneyball -- inject some stats into the prevailing folklore-style modes of analysis. Instead, the book turned out to be interpreted as an inspiration story and tailor-made Hollywood plot.

Joe Montana obviously was a great QB in both the NFL and college (and bear in mind that while I'm biased against Manning, as a Notre Dame fan I'm biased for Montana). Is it a coincidence, though, that his replacement for the 49ers, Steve Young, was also wildly successful immediately upon succeeding Montana, and is now considered another of the all-time greats?

In The Blind Side, Lewis makes a convincing case that lightning didn't strike the '80s 49ers twice. Instead, much of both Montana's and Young's success can be explained by the excellent offensive lines that both played behind, and the implementation of the West Coast offense. Lewis presents the evidence that the most important indicator of a QB's success -- which Bill Walsh understood at some level -- was the time between the snap and when a rusher got to the QB. All of the other factors, like the many nebulous virtues assumed of successful QBs, are distant seconds.

Bottom line: don't ask me to be amazed at a QB like Manning who puts up amazing numbers behind great O-lines. Brady did much more with significantly inferior O-lines. What I am amazed at is Manning's refound ability to squander his advantages in big games.

UPDATE:

I see that Jim, a fellow Pats fan, has managed to write a much less partisan judgment of Manning's relative status. His point is that Drew Brees deserves to be in the discussion of best QB in the NFL right now. I agree. He had the best season by far, in my book. And the ring has to count for something.

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Drew Brees, Elite Quarterback

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 12:41PM

Peyton Manning is a future Hall of Fame quarterback and deservedly so. Nothing that happened last night will change that. He played a nearly flawless game with most of the mistakes, particularly dropped passes, being made by the supporting cast around him. It just so happens that Manning, a quarterback known for his judgment and poise, committed the single most costly error with an interception that was the dagger for the Indianapolis Colts. The only bearing this will have is on his competition with Tom Brady -- in reality, it is premature to crown either of them while they are both still playing at a high level.

But Drew Brees isn't mentioned in the company of Brady and Manning often enough, probably less frequently than his successor in San Diego, Philip Rivers. Instead Brees has quietly racked up an impressive set of stats, including four consecutive seasons of passing for well over 4,000 yards. In 2008, he passed for 5,069 (!) yards. This past season, Brees completed 70.6 percent of his passes and threw 34 touchdowns to 11 interceptions.

Last night, Drew Brees reminded everyone that he deserves to be included in the list of elite quarterbacks currently playing in the NFL -- and somewhere closer to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning than Tony Romo or Donovan McNabb. Brees may have even made the case for being the subject of some Hall of Fame talk in his own right.

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Did Sarah Palin Kill the Tea Party Movement?

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 2.8.10 @ 12:05PM

A.C. Kleinheider says she did, by turning it into a partisan appendage of the GOP:

Sarah Palin didn't give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan Republican address. It was a purely political speech designed to position her for a presidential run in 2012 or 2016. Period. She wasn't there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did.

The movement, that came to be officially recognized almost a year ago but whose roots go back further than that, has been snuffed out and replaced in the public mind. The movement that began as a people's movement of angry independent, libertarians and conservatives will now be thought as the movement of people like Palin, Dick Armey, Judson Phillips, Mark Skoda, etc. Essentially, a wholly owned subsidiary of the "Official Conservative Movement" and the Republican Party.

My own view is that the relationship between tea party activists, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement is more complicated than this and I spell this out in the forthcoming issue of the print magazine. But in order to be successful, I think the tea party movement has to walk the fine line between eschewing political nihlism (acting as if partisan politics doesn't matter at all) and unquestioning loyalty to Republicans. It's a harder balance to maintain than it initially sounds.

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Super Saints and Manning's Legacy

Posted by Philip Klein on 2.8.10 @ 11:49AM

As a Jets fan, I didn't have a dog in the fight during yesterday's Super Bowl, but I was happy to see the Saints win. While they got off to a slow start, going for it on fourth and goal at the end of the second quarter, then making a defensive hold and coming back with a field goal anyway was a key momentum shift heading into the half. And of course, the decision to try the onside kick to start the second half will go down as one of the gutsiest calls in the history of the Super Bowl. So ultimately, I was glad to see the Saints get rewarded for letting it all hang out, and playing the game to win.

For Peyton Manning, meanwhile, another disappointment. Going into last night's game, I thought if Manning won, you could begin to make a case for him as being in a class by himself as the greatest quarterback who ever played. Manning is always dominant during the regular season, but yesterday was yet another example of him coming up short in the post-season. No doubt, he'll deservedly go down as one of the all-time greats, and unlike Dan Marino, at least he did get his one ring. Also, he's still got at least several more years left in him (he turns 34 next month). But as far as I'm concerned, if I was going into the big game and could choose one quarterback, I'd still choose Joe Montana in his prime over Manning in a heart beat.

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