Bush Approval Reaches Historic Low at 28%

President Bush's job approval rating has sunk to 28 percent, the lowest rating of his administration and one of the lowest in American history according to Gallup. Only Nixon and Truman registered lower approval ratings than Bush. Just 66 percent of Republicans, 24 percent of Independents and 6 percent of Democrats support the President.

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http://www.ourrepublicblog.com/2008/04/bush-approval-reaches-new-low-at-28.html

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Some expect that Obama, to be different, must
also be magic.

I normally have great respect for the opinions of Steve Clemons, but he’s quite a bit off the mark here. Obama can’t transcend political reality to the point of campaign suicide. He’s already demonstrated a willingness to go further than any politician in at least three decades. So it’s silly to require that he put [...]

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http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/04/11/some-expect-that-obama-to-be-d
ifferent-must-also-be-magic/

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Taking a minute - literally - to raise money for
Obama

Is it possible to raise a million dollars in 60 seconds?

According to Business Week, Manahattan-based photographer Scott Cohen created AnObamaMinute.com and hopes to have 10,000 people giving $100 each at exactly 1pm EST on April 21st - the day before the Pennsylvania primary. The website says:

1) You register now to donate $100 at 1 pm on April 21st.
2) We will send you email updates as we get closer to the event.
3) On April 21st, we will send you an email with a direct link to the "An Obama Minute" page on the Barack Obama campaign website. You will be making your donation directly to the campaign at 1PM EST.

They're also reaching out on Facebook and LinkedIn. It looks like the effort got a little positive attention earlier in the week over at kos, but New York Magazine's got a different slant on the stunt:

But while it would be an impressive show of grassroots force, you have to wonder whether the working-class, blue-collar voter ? which we understand from story after story is every person in Pennsylvania ? won?t simply be turned off by the Obama campaign?s fund-raising muscle-flexing. It?s not really inspiring to be reminded that Obama can raise more in one minute with his legs resting atop his desk than you?ll earn in 30 years at the steel mill. And it might be the only thing that makes the $109 million Clintons look poor.

I don't see how you can discourage creative fundraising for fear you might alienate the less tech-savvy. And even though a million isn't what it used to be in this bazillion dollar election, I'm all for reinforcing - once again - the power of online collaboration.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/268341158/taking-minute-literally-t
o-raise-money.html

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Open Thread

bumped -- jOut for the evening to celebrate the end of my day job. Chit chat away amongst yourselves. Oh and thanks to everyone who made a point of saying hi at the event last night. It was great to meet up with some readers. And thanks, of course, to[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/268030165/27828

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Clinton and Obama did well, but McCain on
"American Idol": embarrassing

It's Chad. I know it's American Idol. But if you didn't watch it, we'll give you the highlights (and lowlights) here.

It was a short simple speech: each candidate had 30 seconds to ask Americans to give to needy children. It was all part of "Idol Gives Back" as part of FOX's "American Idol." Could they do it simply without making it out to be a political stump speech?

Well, you can watch for yourself here.

Bookmark/Search this post with: buzzflash | delicious | digg | technorati Technorati Tags: Be-Elected Chad Rubel 2008 race Barack Obama Hillary Clinton John McCain American Idol Idol gives back

read more

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http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/election08/135

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MEDIA WILL DEFEND McCAIN AGAINST FLIP FLOPPER
CHARGES BECAUSE THEY WERE THE ULTIMATE VICTIMS & THEY LOOK LIKE IDIOTS FOR FALLING FOR HIS SIREN SONG

1932 feels like only yesterday around the McCain campaign
On the way to Dulles Airport yesterday, I stopped by a press conference Howard Dean had at the DNC. There was some analysis of polling data by a couple of Clinton and Obama pollsters. There were plenty of interesting bits but what caught my attention most strongly was the wide chasm between what the public feels about McCain-- basically, "who the hell is this guy who wants to embody a third Bush term?"-- and the attitude from the Washington-based Insider media which can be best summed up in a phrase the Ramones appropriated from Tod Browning's 1932 classic film Freaks:

Gabba, gabba,
We accept you, we accept you,
One of us, one of us.

I was astounded when an angry young lady in the audience started defending McCain's record. I asked someone if they always let McCain staffers into DNC press conferences. He said he thought she might be a journalist or an apprentice or something like that. It turned out to be GOP propagandist Jill Zuckman who writes for the Tribune and she took the opportunity to defend her hero and castigate Howard Dean in yesterday's "Swamp."

One glaring manifestation of the manufactured hero worship with which the press envelopes McCain that sharply contrasts with public perceptions, regards his status as a so-called "straight talking maverick." Co-opted hacks like MSNBC's Chris Matthews and David Broder of the Washington Post are incapable of seeing anything McCain says or does without the frame that McCain's slick p.r. machine-- of which they themselves are an integral component-- has developed for them in the last decade. The public, on the other hand, sees him as a typical "wishy washy," flip-flopping politician who will say anything to achieve his obsessive lust for power.

In yesterday's Time Michael Scherer brought up what is on everyone's mind-- or at least on everyone's who has an open mind: that McCain is, after all, a craven flip flopper. In their book, Free Ride, David Brock and Paul Waldman explore McCain's flip flops in greater depth, mega flip flops that have seen him go from denouncing Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" to prostrating himself before them and taking positions to the right of Bush to please them as he sought their-- and other divisive religionist extremists'-- support.

But that was only one of dozens and dozens of flip flops that an attentive media would normally use to help paint a well rounded picture of McCain instead of... well instead of the one on the right. One that I had forgotten all about was how he had flip flopped on the Confederate flag. In 2000 Bob Schieffer asked McCain about his views on the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina state Capitol. He started out expressing what most Americans would say: "The Confederate flag is offensive in many, many ways, as we all know. It's a symbol of racism and slavery." But he didn't leave it there. Regardless of what Chris Matthews and David Broder and the DC press corps tells us, it isn't in John McCain's character to take strong and unpopular stands and stick with them-- and in South Carolina, where he needed votes desperately, this was assuredly not a popular stand. What happened next is instructive as to the real nature of John McCain, even if the media has glossed over it.

However, just days later, McCain gave the answer that many South Carolina conservatives wanted to hear: "Personally I see the flag as a symbol of heritage." McCain said that the decision over whether the flag should fly over the state's capitol should be left to South Carolina's voters, a position no different from George W. Bush's-- and one universally seen as a way of dodging the issue.

After the primaries, when the need to curry favor with conservatives had passed, McCain sang a different tune again [this one aimed at his real base: the DC media ass-lickers]. Angling himself back toward the center, he admitted that he had pandered and that his statements on leaving the issue of the flag up to the voters had been motivated by politics rather than principle, even calling it "an act of political cowardice."

His pals in the media were thrilled and showered him with accolades for this display of "political courage." They always do.

McCain, along with his BBF Joe Lieberman, was the Senate's biggest cheerleader for Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq. He never stopped talking it up and he was getting his talking points straight from Rove's little shoppe of horrors. He claimed Saddam was building nuclear weapons and that Americans were endangered from his weapons of mass destruction, blatant lies. In September, 2002 he was all about helping Bush and Cheney bamboozle the American public into supporting the war with statements about the dangers of Saddam-- not unlike Hitler's warnings to Germans in the late 30s about the dangers to Germany from Poland, and by running around telling anyone who would listen that he was certain "that the success will be fairly easy... We will win this conflict. We will win it easily."

Just one week before the invasion, [one of McCain's most consistent fluffers,] Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball "Do you believe that the people in Iraq or at least a large number of them will treat us as liberators?" McCain replied, Absolutely. Absolutely." Yet four years later when the war had become seemingly intractable, McCain rewrote his own history and that of the Congress. "When I voted to support the war, I knew it was probably going to be long and hard and tough," McCain said, "and those that voted for it and thought that somehow it was going to be some kind of an easy task, then I'm sorry they were mistaken. Maybe they didn't know what they were voting for."

Yeah, maybe they were misled by Mr. Straight Talker and his media fluffers.

Back to Scherer and his question in Time if his hero, McCain, has-- once again-- been in full flip-flop mode on torture. Scherer starts off regurgitating all the hackneyed media tropes about McCain, particularly "straight talking maverick," and "unique moral authority" because of his own painful experience in the 1960s when he was tortured in Vietnam.

[T]here is nothing the Democrats would like to do more than portray McCain as a rank hypocrite, someone who has sidled up to George W. Bush and flip-flopped on torture, all for political gain-- which is exactly what Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean claimed in March. "It is shameful that George Bush and John McCain lack the courage to ban torture," Dean said in a statement. "And it is reprehensible that McCain changed his position on torture just to win an election."

Dean's statement, distributed in a press release, was a political attack meant to raise questions among independent voters. And as with most political attacks, it turned a grain of truth into a misleading landslide of overheated accusation. A review of the record shows that McCain has neither changed his position on torture nor taken sides with President Bush on the substance of the issue. But at a time when new details are emerging of the Administration's intimate involvement with formulating specific detainee interrogation practices, the Arizona Senator does now find himself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with President Bush on a key election-year vote about those very same controversial policies.

Scherer pulls his head out of McCain's butt long enough to dismiss Dean's claims and reassure himself and his clique in the media that McCain is still their boy, pure and vestal and, at worst, a victim of the hated Bush.

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/04/media-will-defend-mccain-against-flip
.html

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Sacred Steel: Oh, give me the beat boys and free
my soul

Sometimes wonderful guitar players aren’t merely underappreciated, they’re largely unknown. Here’s one small attempt to correct that.Mention ’steel guitar’ and most people think syrupy country music. More hip listeners will know that steel guitar, in country and elsewhere, is practiced by some bad-ass players, and the instrument can do far more than accompany [...]

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http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/04/11/sacred-steel-oh-give-me-the-be
at-boys-and-free-my-soul/

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BREAKING: Roberts downgraded by CQPolitics

We've been hammering on Pat Roberts lackluster polling data (see here and here) and his inability/unwillingness to protect American jobs (see here, here, here, here, here and here) and people are finally starting to realize that this race is going to be one worth watching. In a story released today by CQ Politics, the Roberts vs. Slattery/Jones race was downgraded (or upgraded, depending on your perspective) from "Safe Republican" to "Republican Favored."

The story had some interesting quotes from Kansas politicos, and even a GOP employee.

The GOP of course brought out their tired line about Slattery having worked in Washington, D.C. after getting caught up in the Republican Tidal Wave of 1994 and losing his gubernatorial election to Bill Graves.

?He abandoned the state 14 years ago for Washington?s special interests,? charged Corrie Kangas, political director at the Kansas Republican Party. ?He?s a poster child for everything gone wrong in Washington.? She added her opinion that Roberts ?has a strong record of achievements standing up for Kansans.?

Once you get over the initial shock of realizing the someone besides Christian Morgan works for the KS GOP, you can see the stupidity of this statement. Pat Roberts left Kansas in 1962 and has never looked back.

Pat Roberts is a Kansan like Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) is a Kansan.

Hell, Barack Obama's Kansas roots are practically deeper than Pat Roberts'.

But more than just having lived in Washington for the past, oh, four decades, Roberts is a lap-dog for the Bush Administration and presided over the Senate "intelligence" Committee during some of the worst atrocities committed by the United States since...ok, just since Ronald Reagan, but still.

?He?s been carrying the Bush administration?s water for seven years now,? Mike Gaughan, the executive director of the Kansas Democrats, said of Roberts. ?He turned his back on middle-class Kansans. Kansans are tired of politicians who pledge allegiance to the Bush party. They?re looking for a uniting candidate.?

Finally, the piece highlights the most recent abysmal failure of Roberts' tenure in

Some observers also think Democrats may be able raise an issue about Roberts? effectiveness in the wake of the awarding of a $40 billion contract for refueling tanker planes to a European company instead of Boeing Corporation. Boeing has factories that are major employers in Wichita, the largest city in Kansas.

?The tanker deal was a shocker, with Wichita so tied into aviation,? said Bob Beatty, an associate professor of political science at Washburn University in the state capital of Topeka. ?There could be a lot of ads on this issue, not from Slattery but probably from issue groups. Especially in the Wichita area, they could come in and hammer hard and negative.?

But even that prospect left Beatty sanguine about Slattery?s chances for an upset of Roberts. ?Certainly, the Republican is favored at this point. A lot of things have to happen for Slattery,? Beatty said.

It's time for a Senator who has the guts to stand up to the likes of John McCain when they want to ship Kansas jobs to France, and not do what George W. Bush tells them to.

Read The Full Article:
http://leftbrainkansas.blogspot.com/2008/04/breaking-roberts-downgraded-by.html

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Friday Morning Open Thread

I'm jetlagging, Joe is sleeping in. What a messed up world. I suspect Joe will have more to add when he gets up.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/268325629/friday-morning-open-threa
d.html

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