Roger Kimball Asks: “Has America ‘Gone Soft’ ” as Barack Hussein Obama claims?

HAS AMERICA GONE SOFT?

“Or is it only the welfare-industrial complex that runs greater and greater segments of American society?

Yes, our Spender-in-Chief, B. “Tax-the-Rich” Obama said in an interview that “this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track.”

Two points: When, Barack, did you start thinking — or, more to the point, start saying — that America was “a great, great country”? It wasn’t so long ago that you were jetting around the world apologizing for America. What changed your mind? Could it be that your handlers have let you in on the fact that bad-mouthing the country is not a good re-election strategy?

They’re right about that, you know, but my chief point is the second: Who told you that America had lost its competitive edge “over the last couple of decades”? Whoever it was, you should sack him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Like Koko in the Mikado, I have a little list, and I offer it to you, Barack, free and for nothing, without tax or levy:

Google. Yahoo. Facebook. Microsoft. Intel. Apple. Cisco. Adobe. Oracle. Wikipedia. YouTube. Twitter. Sun. Amazon. eBay.

What do these world-bestriding colossi have in common? One thing is, they’re American companies. What other country can field a tenth as many innovative tech companies? None.

No, there is nothing flaccid about American business. There’s plenty of keenness on its “competitive edge.” It’s far and away the most productive and innovative economic machine in the world.

What’s “gone soft” and lost its “competitive edge” is American government, which can’t see a pile of money it doesn’t wish to expropriate in order to feed its “spread-the-wealth-around” socialist appetite and which sees government as the adversary rather than the enabler of business. That’s the rotten softness we have to worry about.

So please, Barack, don’t tell us that America has “gone soft” or “lost its competitive edge” when it’s you and your policies that are as soft and edgeless as a freshly shucked oyster. Once again, you have demonstrated beyond cavil that you have no idea what you are talking about. If you and your army of tax-hungry, regulation-spewing bureaucrats would just get out of the way, you’d see in a matter of months what the most innovative and productive economy in the world could do with respect to jobs here at home. But job creation is yet another thing you haven’t a clue about.

Cato the Elder used to end his speeches with the exhortation “Carthago delenda est,” “Carthage must be destroyed.” A friend suggested a fitting imperative for our times: OMG, “Obama must go.” I like it and plan on using it myself. I encourage others to follow suit.

OMG!”     by Roger Kimball    at Pajamas Media

While the Mindless Left Objects, It Is Time to Applaud Mr. Obama: Al-Awlaki Droned!

MSNBC Asks:     Can U.S. legally kill a citizen overseas without due process?

MSN Reports:    Al-Awlaki Is Droned…..Killed!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39788177?launch=44730348&PG=MSVROM&BTS=MSVNMB&height=429&width=600Sources to NBC News are reporting Samir Khan, editor of Inspire Magazine, is another American citizen that was killed in the air strike in Yemen, along with Anwar al-Awlaki. NBC’s Bob Windrem reports. 

By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent

Is it legal for the federal government to kill a U.S. citizen overseas, someone who has never been charged or convicted of a crime?  Civil liberties groups are condemning the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, but many legal scholars say it is justified.

No U.S. court has ever weighed in on the question, because judges consider these sorts of issues exclusively matters for the president. 

Anwar al-Awlaki’s father, Nasser, with the help of the ACLU, sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta a year ago, when it became clear that the U.S. was targeting  the younger al-Awlaki.  But U.S. District Judge John Bates threw the case out, ruling that federal courts were in no position to evaluate whether someone was a terrorist whose activities threatened national security and against whom the use of deadly force could be justified.

“This court recognizes the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion — that there are circumstances in which the executive’s unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is ‘constitutionally committed to the political branches’ and judicially unreviewable,” Bates said, quoting an earlier decision on a similar issue.

The ACLU lawyer who handled the case, Jameel Jaffer, said Friday that the U.S. program that targeted al-Awlaki was a violation of both U.S. and international law.

“The government’s authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the president, any president, with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country,” Jaffer said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39788177?launch=44731809&PG=MSVROM&BTS=MSVNMB&height=429&width=600President Obama says the killing of radical, American-born cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen is a “major blow to al-Qaida’s most active operational affiliate.” 

If Not Christie……Why Not Marco Rubio to Beat Marxist Obama?

from HotAir

Limbaugh: Why aren’t they begging Rubio to run?

 

 by Tina Korbe

“While Michael Reagan and Newt Gingrich plead with Republicans to cut each other some slack, Rush Limbaugh is in a camp with Michele Bachmann and others who believe the GOP doesn’t have to settle for a less-than-completely-conservative candidate in 2012. On his program yesterday, the radio talker reiterated that position — and cited the Republican establishment’s lack of demands for a Marco Rubio candidacy as evidence that Republican operatives are more concerned with electability than conservatism at a time when it should be the other way around:

Let me ask you, why do you think they’re not begging Rubio to run?  Rubio has been just as adamant as Christie that he doesn’t want to run.  In a contest of conservatism, Rubio wins versus Christie.  So why are they not asking Rubio to run? …

Part of it is, I think, that they genuinely believe that whoever the other nominees are can’t win.  That’s another thing that frosts me.  I think Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd could beat Obama in this election coming up because I think this is going to largely be about Obama.  It’s going to be a referendum on his outright destruction of the wealth-creating genius of this country.  I think Elmer Fudd could win, but I’m more concerned than that.  I don’t want to just get rid of Obama, I want to take advantage of the opportunity we have to finally get a genuine, full-fledged, unapologetic conservative because this is going to be a major task … rolling this stuff back.  It’s going to take more than one election, and it’s going to take somebody fearless.  And we’re not going to roll this stuff back having compromise and bipartisanship as our primary objectives. …

But Rubio, Rubio would win in a walkover.  He’s conservative.  He’s articulate.  He’s great-looking.  He’s Hispanic and sounds very smart.  How can he possibly lose?  If this were the Democrat Party, the party father would probably tell Obama to step aside and let Rubio run, if Rubio were a Democrat.  There are more Hispanic voters now than there are blacks, and Rubio’s got more experience than Obama had when he decided to run.  I don’t know how many times Rubio has voted “present” versus Obama. …

Anyway, look, the reason why they’re not pushing Rubio… I’m going to answer my own question. That’s what I do. I ask myself the best questions I’m ever asked and, therefore, I give the best answers. They’re not pushing Rubio because while they praise him, they don’t think he has had enough experience yet.

And Rubio is — sorry to say this, folks — another example of the RINOs being wrong.

Is it too soon for Rubio to run? As Rush points out, Rubio has more experience than Obama did. Detractors of candidates like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain repeatedly cite Obama’s inexperience as a reason to not select as the GOP nominee anyone without a meaningful legislative or executive political record. But isn’t that pinning the blame on the wrong part of Obama’s persona? Does the country feel burned for electing a glib, inexperienced senator — or does the country feel burned for electing a professorial progressive? I think it’s the latter — and Rubio, while inexperienced and eloquent, is neither professorial nor progressive. He’s a compelling, relatable, hard-working conservative. He’s someone I actually want to be the president — not just someone I’d rather have as president than Obama. And he’s not someone I want to waste on the vice presidential position, all conventional wisdom right now to the contrary.

It’s clear we can’t afford another four years of Obama. But can we afford four or eight years of a Republican president who might hold the line on government spending but won’t aggressively reverse the problematic progressive gains of the past four years? Four or eight years of that until Rubio is “seasoned” enough to be the president?

Maybe. Rush hasn’t quite convinced me. I want a conservative candidate in 2012 — but I want the best possible Rubio if and when he does become president someday down the line. And, for that, I think a few more years won’t hurt. Reagan’s age was surely an asset in the presidency, enabling him to keep in perspective what might panic younger politicians. It doesn’t have anything to do with political experience; it has to do with life experience and the wisdom that comes with it. Rush has gotten better and better and better over time — and so will Rubio. If even Elmer Fudd could win in 2012, let’s not encourage Rubio to waste his talents on a throwaway election (or in a throwaway position like the vice presidency). Let’s wait for him to run when he’s ready. That time, whenever it is, will be the Age of Rubio.”

 

Tags: Marco Rubio, rush limbaugh

Mark Steyn Can’t Shake Princeton

From SteynOnline:

Letter of the Week
THE FACE OF THE PRINCETON TIGER

“Put this in the “nothing to see here” column, Mark:

Unwilling to take a hint, the Princeton Alumni Association keeps tracking me down and sending me its monthly journal, even though I have moved seven times since graduation without ever providing a forwarding address. In the September 2011 issue, I see that “10 alumni and faculty members with different perspectives” each write about “the most important lesson to be learned from Sept 11 and its aftermath.” These “different perspectives” run seven single-spaced pages. You will be shocked— shocked!— to learn that the “different perspectives” are exactly the same in one particular; namely, that none of them manages to mention “Islam” or “Muslim.”

I would expect nothing different from the usual collection of political and cultural pinheads at my alma mater, but here is the real shame: the writers include an Army colonel, a corporate CEO, and the current chairman of our government’s National Intelligence Council. I suspect these men know all too well that it would risk career suicide to raise the issue of Muslims Behaving Badly in the Name of Allah, no matter how delicately stated.

We’re well past the point where it’s just the pinheads who are the problem. We are in the more dangerous phase where sensible people are afraid to speak if they hold any position of authority.”

Comment:   The American Left has  Michael Moore as its most revered activist in the political entertainment world.   Conservatives have Mark Steyn.    They are the perfect embodiment of the political movements of our day.  

One is rich in  fat, is ugly, dumpy and malodorous and bravely reveals his lies.      The other is Mark Steyn, a real American.

Obama Ohio Crowd Blocks Voter Reform Legislation

Obama Supporters Score Early Victory in Ohio

from Political Punch

“Supporters of President Obama in Ohio, a key battleground state, have scored what is seen as a significant victory for maximizing Democratic voter turnout ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Obama campaign volunteers and a coalition of Democratic-aligned advocacy organizations gathered more than 318,000 signatures to effectively block new Republican-sponsored voting restrictions from taking effect through the next year, the groups announced today.

“It’s a victory for organizing,” said Brian Rothenberg, who led the fight against the new rules.

A law signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich in July would have shortened by two weeks the early voting period by mail and in-person, eliminated early voting in the three days before the election, and ceased automatic mailing of absentee ballots to all registered voters in the state’s largest counties, among other measures.

Those changes to voting rules will now be put directly before Ohioans in a ballot measure, assuming at least 231,000 petitions are first certified by the secretary of state. The deadline for the signatures was Friday.

“A lot of the people who supported President Obama in 2007 and 2008 understand that the more open and accessible our democracy is the more they can participate in it,” said Obama for America state director Greg Schultz, explaining why the organization got involved in the petition campaign.

“If you look at the history in Ohio, when voting opportunities are expanded, Democrats win,” he said.

In 2008, some 1.4 million Ohioans – or 30% of the total number of voters – cast ballots before Election Day, according to the United States Election Project at George Mason University.  Democrats and Obama are widely seen as benefiting most from that extended early voting period.

“Instead of one Election Day, there’s 35 election days,” said Seth Bringman, communications director of the Ohio Democratic Party, in an interview earlier this month.  “The Obama campaign took advantage of that in 2008, and went into Election Day with a wide lead because of the early vote margin that had been acquired prior.”

In fighting to preserve the election law changes, Republicans have called the early voting process too long, too costly for budget-strapped counties and too prone to fraud and abuse.  And today they cried foul over what they called a politically motivated effort.

“Where Ohioans are fighting for a chance to ensure fairness at the voting polls, the Obama reelection machine sees an opportunity to suppress Republican votes — plain and simple,” said Ohio Republican Party spokesman Chris Maloney.

“Political partisanship and reelection prospects should not play a role in ensuring that each and every Ohioan, regardless of where they live, receives a fair and equal opportunity to vote.”

Ohio, which Obama carried with 51 percent of the vote in 2008, is considered a must-win in his bid for a second term. No president since John F. Kennedy in 1960 has won the White House without winning Ohio.

A Quinnipiac University poll released today shows 53 percent of Ohio voters disapprove of the president, while 51 percent say he does not deserve a second term — signs the state will likely remain a hotly contested battleground for Obama next fall.”

Could America Be So Lucky?……Wise?

Krauthammer Warns Obama Will Suffer Landslide Electio

It’s a significant disparity if you compare excitement and enthusiasm that Democrats had for Obama in 2008, where he was near messianic, to now where he actually has a record and he’s rather mortal. There will be none of that enthusiasm again, it’s almost impossible. It had a lot to do in 2008 with the fact that he was almost entirely unknown and was extremely eloquent and was lightning in a bottle. That is never going to happen again. He’s got a record now and it’s a bad one. So there is no way that you can ever get near that.

But I think even worse for Obama than the decline in the intensity of support among Democrats–because after all, where they are going to go–on election day they’ll be out there for him–is the number on independents. The number on independents is staggeringly bad. 31% approval of independents.

Obama won the election of 2008 on the basis of independents, and the first hint of trouble came in the off-year elections at end of 2009 in Virginia and New Jersey, where independents in states that had gone Obama went 2-1 against Obama. Then in the Senate race for the so-called Kennedy seat in January of 2010 the independents went 3 to 1 against Democrats. And I think if Obama cannot rise from the 31% approval he has among independents he is going to suffer a landslide.

Check out the video below:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/09/29/krauthammer_warns_obama_will_suffer_landslide_election.html

Smoking and the Ethnic Health Advantage

The Ethnic Health Advantage

For decades, scholars and public health officials have known that people with greater income or formal education tend to live longer and enjoy better health than their counterparts who have less money or schooling.  However, two demographic groups prevalent in the United States take exception to this rule: the immigrant and Hispanic populations.  Though many theories have been proposed to explain the increased life expectancy of members of these groups (in 2006, for example, life expectancy at birth in the United States was 2.5 years higher for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites), a new study proposes that the true culprit is an old, well-known factor: smoking, says Scientific American.

The results from a study focusing on tobacco use are significant:

• In 2009, only 9 percent of Hispanic women were current smokers, compared with 21 percent of non-Hispanic white women; 18 percent of Hispanic men smoked, compared with 25 percent of non-Hispanic white men.
• In 2000, smoking explained more than 75 percent of the difference in life expectancy at age 50 between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white men and roughly 75 percent among women.
• It also accounted for more than 50 percent of the difference in life expectancy at age 50 between foreign- and native-born men and more than 70 percent of the difference among women.

The researchers who organized and performed this study are quick to emphasize that they avoided many potential traps in conducting these studies.  They accounted for the tendency amongst the foreign-born population to return to their country of origin when they become fatally ill.  Also, while some researchers have linked smoking habits to a multitude of diseases and conditions (some of them fatal), the administrators of this study held lung cancer as a necessary condition to classify a death as smoking-related.

While the researchers in this case predict that this life expectancy differential will erode with time (as Americans gradually smoke less and populations in developing nations smoke more), the results of this study are nonetheless substantial in explaining current trends in mortality.

Source: Laura Blue, “The Ethnic Health Advantage,” Scientific American, September 30, 2011.

For text:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-ethnic-health-advantage

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16

(from the National Center for Policy Analysis)

 

Know More about Herman Cain “a mentally healthy human being”

THIS IS HERMAN CAIN

by Roger L. Simon   at Pajamas Media

“The secret of Herman Cain is that he seems — at least to me — genuinely to be a mentally healthy human being.

This is no small thing, particularly in the world of politics — even more so presidential politics, where large dollops of nearly clinical narcissism are necessary to propel the ambition needed to run for this most powerful of offices.

As most of us know by now, Cain leavens his narcissism with generous jolts of humor — much of it self-deprecating — that make him, at this moment anyway, the most engaging figure on the political scene.

But beneath the humor is the more serious tale of a self-made man who has pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps — a “po’” boy (not a poor boy), as he describes himself in his soon-to-be released (Oct. 4) autobiography/campaign manifesto, This Is Herman Cain: My Journey to the White House.

Cain also describes himself in the book as a “CEO of Self,” at once making fun of his well-known CEO status with Godfather’s Pizza while emphasizing his own determined self-actualization. Cain is a guy who from the beginning of his life aimed to improve himself and succeeded.

A “CEO of Self” is a man who knows what his real goals are and does not let life’s inevitable vicissitudes, large and small, fair and unfair, public and private, racial and otherwise, deter him. He makes that very clear as he explains his way of dealing with discrimination during his youth: “I chose as CEO of Self to remove the barriers rather than to allow the barriers to remove me.”

He just kept on trucking. When unable to get a haircut because the barber would not cut the hair of black people, he bought himself a pair of clippers and cut his own hair. He does so to this day. (Take that, John Edwards!)

This is the same man who put himself through Morehouse College majoring in math, got a masters in computer science from Purdue (while improving academically), plotted rocket guidance for the Navy, started in business at Coca-Cola, then went on to turn around the fortunes of Philadelphia’s Burger King franchise, take over the aforementioned Godfather’s Pizza chain, become the head of the National Restaurant Association, be appointed to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and host a radio show into the bargain. And, of course, he defeated the Big C.

The only thing this man seems to have failed at is politics. He lost an earlier run for the Senate from his home state of Georgia.

This doesn’t necessarily disqualify him from the presidency, nor does it truly disqualify him that he has had absolutely no elected experience. That may even be an advantage, as Cain has puckishly pointed out on several occasions.

But we certainly do have a right to wonder what he would really be like as president. Cain seems to realize this because he provides us with a preview in his new book. The title of chapter 12 is “The Cain Administration: The First Ninety Days.” The following passage caught my eye:

As in every executive position I’ve ever undertaken, I will determine the parameters of my activities. And while I respect those who have served before me, I will not follow in their footsteps. I will create new footsteps.

I will reduce the number of protocol-oriented events that presidents are seemingly required to attend. At a time of deepening national crisis, I simply cannot afford to allocate valuable time to things that do not advance solutions to this nation’s problems. That’s why I have decided to sharply decrease the number of inaugural night balls. Instead, Mrs. Cain and I will host a series of celebratory occasions, and they will be spread out during my first months in office.

My guest lists for state dinners and other important occasions will be light on A list celebrities and heavy on normal Americans who work each day to restore our nation to greatness. And unlike the practice of certain previous administrations, there will be no “paying” guests staying in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Once each month I plan to invite small groups of average citizens to join me for dinner and conversation. As someone who will have to spend most of my working hours in Washington, these events will make it possible for me to take the nation’s pulse on the pressing issues, as well as to stay connected to the people.

Sounds as if there won’t be a lot of golf.

This Is Herman Cain also includes an appendix spelling out the candidate’s stands on the issues. Its final section — My Candidacy, Against the Odds — contains the following in bold face:

1. I don’t claim to know everything:
2. I don’t pander to groups;
3. I am terrible at political correctness.

Not bad for starters.”

Krauthammer on Obama’s Drive to Punish America

Return of the Real Obama

By Charles Krauthammer (Archive) · Friday, September 23, 2011

WASHINGTON — In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

A most revealing window into our president’s political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one — not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.

Now that he’s president, Obama has actually gone and done it. He’s just proposed a $1.5 trillion tsunami of tax hikes featuring a “Buffett rule” that, although as yet deliberately still fuzzy, clearly includes raising capital gains taxes.

He also insists again upon raising marginal rates on “millionaire” couples making $250,000 or more. But roughly half the income of small businesses (i.e., those filing individual returns) would be hit by this tax increase. Therefore, if we are to believe Obama’s own logic that his proposed business taxcredits would increase hiring, then surely this tax hike will reduce small-business hiring.

But what are jobs when fairness is at stake? Fairness trumps growth. Fairness trumps revenue. Fairness trumps economic logic.

Obama himself has said that “you don’t raise taxes in a recession.” Why then would he risk economic damage when facing re-election? Because these proposals have no chance of being enacted, many of them having been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Congress of Obama’s first two years in office.

Moreover, this is not an economic, or jobs, or debt-reduction plan in the first place. This is a campaign manifesto. This is anti-millionaire populism as premise for his re-election. And as such, it is already working.

Obama’s Democratic base is electrified. On the left, the new message is playing to rave reviews. It has rekindled the enthusiasm of his core constituency — the MoveOn, Hollywood liberal, Upper West Side precincts best described years ago by John Updike: “Like most of her neighborhood, she was a fighting liberal, fighting to have her money taken from her.”

Added Updike: “For all her exertions, it never was.” But now with Obama — it will! Turns out, Obama really was the one they had been waiting for.

That is: the new Obama, today’s soak-the-rich, veto-threatening, self-proclaimed class warrior. Except that the new Obama is really the old Obama — the one who, upon entering office in the middle of a deep economic crisis, and determined not to allow “a serious crisis to go to waste” (to quote his then chief of staff), exploited the (presumed) malleability of a demoralized and therefore passive citizenry to enact the largest Keynesian stimulus in recorded history, followed by the quasi-nationalization of one-sixth of the economy that is health care.

Considering the political cost — massive electoral rebuke by an infuriated 2010 electorate — these are the works of a conviction politician, one deeply committed to his own social-democratic vision.

That politician now returns. Obama’s new populism surely is a calculation that his halfhearted feints to the center after the midterm “shellacking” were not only unconvincing but would do him no good anyway with a stagnant economy, 9 percent unemployment and a staggering $4 trillion of new debt.

But this is more than a political calculation. It is more than just a pander to his base. It is a pander to himself: Obama is a member of his base. He believes this stuff. It is an easy and comfortable political shift for him, because it’s a shift from a phony centrism back to his social-democratic core, from positioning to authenticity.

The authentic Obama is a leveler, a committed social democrat, a staunch believer in the redistributionist state, a tribune, above all, of “fairness” — understood as government-imposed and government-enforced equality.

That’s why “soak the rich” is not just a campaign slogan to rally the base. It’s a mission, a vocation. It’s why for all its gratuitous cynicism and demagoguery, Obama’s populist Rose Garden lecture on Monday was delivered with such obvious — and unusual — conviction.

He’s returned to the authenticity of his radical April 2009 “New Foundation” address (at Georgetown University) that openly proclaimed his intent to fundamentally transform America.

Good. There’s something to be said for authenticity. A choice not an echo, said Barry Goldwater. The country will soon choose, although not soon enough.

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/charles-krauthammer/2011/09/23/return-of-the-real-obama/

 

Mark Waldeland sent in the above article.

Democrat Senate Cannot Pass Obama’s Jobs Bill He is Selling while Campaigning

Dick Durbin:

We, er, don’t have the votes in the Senate

to pass Obama’s jobs bill

 

posted  by Allahpundit  at HotAir

Note well: It’s not because of a GOP filibuster either.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that, at the moment, Democrats don’t have the votes to pass President Obama’s jobs bill, but Durbin added that that would change.

“Not at the moment, I don’t think we do but, uh, we can work on it,” Durbin said according to Chicago radio station WLS…

“The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies, “Durbin said. “There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.”

Is this news? We knew on Sept. 14 that Democrats were leery of the bill when Reid insisted that they had other business to handle before taking it up. Two days later, we found out that Senate Democrats spent an hour and a half griping about the bill to White House aides in a meeting. Five Democrats — Begich, Webb, Landrieu, Mikulski, and Casey — were specifically named as opponents. Three days after that, Durbin told CNN not to expect any action on it until October at the earliest, a prediction that’ll end up being proved right. To the extent that his latest comments are “news,” it’s for two reasons. One: Despite having had two weeks to convince his own party’s congressional caucus to rally behind him on this extremely prominent measure, Obama’s still up shinola creek. That’s what happens when your job approval trend lines look like this. Two: We all realize, I hope, that the bill is chiefly a political ploy designed to show The One being proactive on the seminal electoral issue of the day. He expects Republicans to block it, at which point he’ll turn around and blame our endless economic malaise on the GOP. That’s perfectly straightforward — except that he forgot to craft the bill to make sure that it would attract the support of Democrats at least, which is essential if he wants to frame opposition to it as blind wingnut partisanship. I’m as confused as Dave in Texas is about that. If you want to isolate Republican obstructionism as America’s big problem, you should probably first double-check with your own guys to make sure they’re not being obstructionist too, huh?

Brand new from Fox News tonight: A clear majority of voters (52/38) say that if Obama were CEO of a company, he’d have been fired by now. I can’t imagine why.