And see WFAA-TV Dallas-Ft. Worth, "News 8 goes one-on-one with President Obama," (via Memeorandum).
Deepening economic pessimism has pushed down President Obama’s approval rating to a near record low, but he holds an early advantage over prospective 2012 rivals in part because of widespread dissatisfaction with Republican candidates, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.Well, it turns out Sarah Palin launched a new website yesterday, which stoked speculation that she's going to formally announce her candidacy. I hope so. She'll fire up the GOP. Game on.
In the survey, 47 percent approve of the job Obama is doing, down seven points since January. Half of all Americans disapprove of his job performance, with 37 percent saying they “strongly disapprove,” nearly matching the worst level of his presidency.
Driving the downward movement in Obama’s standing are renewed concerns about the economy and fresh worry about rising prices, particularly for gasoline. Despite signs of economic growth, 44 percent of Americans see the economy as getting worse, the highest percentage to say so in more than two years.
The toll on Obama is direct: 57 percent disapprove of the job the president is doing dealing with the economy, tying his highest negative rating when it comes to the issue. And the president is doing a bit worse among politically important independents.
If Obama is running into headwinds, however, his potential Republican opponents face serious problems, as well. Less than half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they are satisfied with the field of GOP candidates.
That field is still taking shape, but the sentiment is a big falloff from four years ago, when nearly two-thirds of Republicans were satisfied with their options.
As the summer travel season approaches, airline industry experts predict that soaring fuel prices and a sharp pickup in passenger demand will push airfares up 15% over a year earlier — to levels not seen since before the economic downturn.And at the video, L.A.'s food truck business is getting hammered?
Fare hikes have already begun, with six of the nation's largest airlines each raising rates at least five times since Jan. 1 for nearly all routes.
By the time the peak summer travel season rolls, travel industry experts predict, domestic airfares may reach an average of nearly $390, up from a low of $302 two years ago.
"We are definitely getting higher and higher and higher fares," said Tom Parsons, who runs the popular website BestFares.com. "They've been going up once or twice a month, a nickel here and a dime there."
The principle of man’s individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social system—as a limitation on the power of the state, as man’s protection against the brute force of the collective, as the subordination of might to right. The United States was the first moral society in history.More at the link.
All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that a right is the property of an individual, that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self- sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
WASHINGTON — An inquiry by the Defense Department inspector general into a magazine profile that resulted in the abrupt, forced retirement of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has found no proof of wrongdoing by the general, his military aides and his civilian advisers.More at the link above.
Pentagon investigators said they were unable to confirm the events as reported in the June 2010 article in Rolling Stone, and found the evidence “insufficient” to demonstrate a violation of Defense Department standards.
The inspector general’s report, released Monday, also challenged the accuracy of the profile of General McChrystal, who was the top commander in Afghanistan. The article, with the headline “The Runaway General,” quoted people identified as senior aides to the general making disparaging statements about members of President Obama’s national security team.
The profile prompted a furious debate about whether the commander’s staff had used insubordinate language, and about the professionalism of General McChrystal’s team. He was recalled by the president, accepted responsibility for his staff’s actions and resigned.
One aide was quoted referring to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. using the phrase “bite me.” Gen. James L. Jones, then the national security adviser, was labeled a “clown” by one aide, according to the article, and General McChrystal was described as reacting with disdain to an e-mail from Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who died in December.
The article did not directly quote the general as saying anything overtly insubordinate.
More than anything else, according to those who’ve spoken to him, he doesn’t want to be seen as the butt of this particular joke.
“He gets mad that people aren’t taking him seriously,“ said a Republican who’s spoken with him.
Still, while he is “serious” from the organizational point of view and appears very likely to emerge as a formal candidate for office, he will struggle hard to be taken seriously as a potential Republican nominee. Trump may not be in on the joke — he rarely jokes about himself — but he has been a punch line as long as he’s been a public figure. He’s still more of a sideshow than anything else, most Republican insiders are convinced, and his respectable showings in largely meaningless early polls reflect little more than his widespread notoriety.
Also at Joshua Pundit, "Fogel Family's 'Palestinian' Murderers And Their Accomplices Arrested," and Uncoverage, "Two Palestinian Teenagers Arrested for Murders of Israeli Family of Five."
And see John Hayward, at Human Events, "West Bank Killers Captured":
The murder of the Fogel family was an invisible atrocity, reported in very muted tones by the global media despite (or, more accurately, because of) its lurid savagery. Udi and Ruth Fogel were a young couple with sons Yoav and Elad, aged 11 and 4, plus a three-month-old baby daughter named Hadas. They were “settlers,” which means “people who live in parts of Israel where terrorists say Jews are forbidden to live.” The family was slaughtered with guns and knives. Their 12-year-old daughter Tamar was away from the house on the night of the massacre ...Today is the beginning of Passover, when Jews remember the night when the Angel of Death walked the streets of Egypt, passing over Jewish homes, which had been marked with the blood of lambs. The Angel of Death has been making up for lost time with the Jews ever since. These days, the blood of lambs flows from the open veins of children. The “civilized” world finds many excuses to ignore their murders, and grows colder in the process.
... it's a monumental piece of crap.Left-wing propaganda? Perhaps. But when The Atlantic's Megan McArdle threw in the towel, herself a connoisseur of the free market, that sure seemed like a little much.
The best word to describe Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is … surprising. It’s surprisingly well-paced, surprisingly intelligent, surprisingly well-acted, and surprisingly entertaining. Perhaps most surprising of all, it has me thinking about re-reading the novel again. I would highly recommend it to friends and their families.And he adds in an update:
I deliberately avoided reading reviews of the film until after I saw it first...I'm not that disciplined, alas, but RTWT. And see also the outstanding piece by Vin Suprynowicz at the Las Vegas Review Journal. I'd quote it, but considering the Review Journal's a Righthaven partner, folks can just read it at the link.
One thing I worried about was how well the filmmakers would be able to place the setting in present times, 2016, amid a crisis of severe economic dislocation (like we're having under the Obamacrats in D.C. and across the nation). After seeing the opening scenes, and thinking about it a bit more, the scenario of disappearing industrialists seems entirely accurate. Indeed, as I've been reporting here of late, in California we've got the same kind of wrecked economy that Ayn Rand inveighed against. The Los Angeles Times was touting the expansion of the tech sector in February --- 100,000 new jobs were created --- while burying the lede on lingering massive unemployment in the state. But then the March job numbers --- unemployment edged back up to 12.1 percent --- forced the paper to be more honest. And then this weekend the Orange County Register published a devastating piece on the exodus of 69 businesses from the state for the first quarter of 2011. Reading the top ten list of reasons for businesses bailing is a jaw-dropping experience, but one that I'm getting used to. Between Sacramento and Washington, California can't get a break. Indeed, state officials have taken a fact-finding trip to Texas in hopes of stemming the flow of jobs to the Longhorn State and elsewhere.
Let's hope it gets better. For the past two years, the old Sunset Ford dealership in Westminster has been vacant, a symbol of the depression-like marketplace that hammered key sections of the local economy. For more than 40 years Sunset Ford did business at the intersection of the 22 and 405 Freeways, and so it was a shock to see that enterprise close its doors in 2009. And despite the Obama administration's economic stimulus, the location remains idle, like a ghost town:
As I was returning home, I saw this fellow with his homeless sign at the Jamboree offramp at Interstate 5. Notice the sign asks not for handouts, but for help finding ANY work.
This was a couple of weeks ago, and later that afternoon I went shopping at the District in Tustin. Borders is closing its location there, one of the 200 stores nationwide going belly up:
They were unloading everything:
But copies of David Remnick's recent book on the Radical-in-Chief weren't moving so well, and that's at 60 percent off:
And checking over at Jamboree and Main Street in Irvine, this copying business, MyPrint, consolidated with an equity firm and closed this location. The local printing market is pretty messed up:
I'm seeing some assertions about this on blogs and in YouTube videos, and it's wrong if not unfair and deceptive ...Ann says that protesters yesterday were just successful in drowning out everything, and no doubt, especially with hate-addled progressives equipped with vuvuzelas: Ann wants to be fair, and it helps of course to have been there. That said, Gateway Pundit has this: "TrumkaObama Thugs Scream, Curse, Beat Drums, Blow Whistles & Make Obscene Gestures During Palin’s Wisconsin Speech" (via Memeorandum).
Meade and I have observed some of the most raucous rallies at the Capitol over the last 2 months, and the national anthem was sung many times, by the protesters themselves, and we witnessed respect for the anthem. In fact, you could go into the rotunda and start singing the anthem and people would go silent and even sing along with real feeling. They might have resented having to switch to solemnity when they were into raucousness, but they knew very well that they had to at least look like they respected the anthem.
The Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce is a propaganda outlet for the Cuban Revolution? Hey, way to train America’s next generation of diplomats! No doubt students get target practice as well, so they’ll be prepared to put the bullet in the next generation of counter-revolutionaries — just like Che!!RELATED: Some alternative readings for Farley's next "counter-insurgency" seminar. See Adam Hassner, "Why The 50th Anniversary of The Bay of Pigs Should Matter To All Who Cherish Freedom." And Babalú Blog, "April 17, 1961."
Whooo heee!!!!
CONCORD, N.H. — In the brewing battle for New Hampshire, the tea party is emerging as a wild card for Republican presidential hopefuls who want the movement's energy but must also appeal to the state's crucial independent voters.Interesting piece. There's more at the link.
The nominal GOP front-runner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, appears to be hedging his bets on the tea party. He was a no-show at a tax-day, tea-party rally at the state Capitol here Friday, choosing instead to talk taxes in Florida.
By contrast, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, whose low-key demeanor and blue-state roots were once considered his strong suit, fired up the faithful at the rally. In a rousing speech, he hit at what he called "the triangle of greed" that feeds off ordinary Americans: Big Government, Big Unions and Big Bailout Businesses.
"Let's send them this message: Don't tread on me," he told about 500 tea partiers, many carrying a yellow flag bearing that same phrase.
Independent voters, however, have been fickle in the Granite State, and it is not clear how they will respond to that kind of rallying cry.
And see The Last Tradition, "GOP prez hopeful Herman Cain Gives Rousing Speech at Tax-Day Rally: We Need Some ‘Altering & Abolishing’."
And a shout out for The Other McCain, since I've missed linking over lately.
Andrew Breitbart confronts an angry union mob in Wisconsin," Says Instapundit, quoting Breitbart, who goes on about how ugly the "mob" was today at the Capitol:Speaking of animalistic, here's VOM. Looks like it's filmed in Huntington Beach, but as it's 1976, who the heck knows?[T]he defeats that the union’s leadership have suffered in that time have plunged these losers into an even more animalistic state of frenzy. Still stinging from last week’s election reaffirmation of Gov. Scott Walker’s policy of requiring public sector unions to face some of the economic realities that the rest of us have to deal with, the counter protesters both homegrown and bussed in them were louder, ruder and more desperate than ever....Whoa!
And don't miss Bob Belvedere's fabulous Rule 5 entry from earlier this week: "Rule 5 News: 15 April 2011 A.D."
Here's the link-around:
Anyway, here's some link around action: Amusing Bunni's Musings, Astute Bloggers, Bob Belvedere, CSPT, Dan Collins, Eye of Polyphemus, Gator Doug, Irish Cicero, Left Coast Rebel, Mind-Numbed Robot, Legal Insurrection, Lonely Conservative, PA Pundits International, PACNW Righty, Pirate's Cove, Proof Positive, Saberpoint, Snooper, WyBlog, The Western Experience, and Zion's Trumpet.
Plus, top it off with with American Perspective, Maggie's Notebook and Zilla of the Resistance.
Let me know if I need to add your blog to the roundup.
Will she run? Even many of those close to Team Palin have no idea. Palin herself may not have made a decision and may not feel she needs to until the autumn. But as it stands, she arguably represents the purest expression out there of Tea Party passion and free-market populist rejection of Washington’s bipartisan crony capitalism. If she ran, her high-wattage appearance in Madison shows just how dangerous her candidacy would be to a field of solid but stolid opponents.RTWT at the link.
