If this is true, we really are dumber than bricks

WASHINGTON — The success of President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda — from health care and climate change to education — could depend on how quickly he recovers from the sharp drop in support among white voters after criticizing a white policeman's arrest of a black Harvard scholar.

Obama's widely publicized effort to defuse the first racial flare-up of his young presidency by inviting the protagonists to the White House last week for beers and conversation ended well by most accounts, even though there were no apologies.

Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. Joseph Crowley and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. agreed to disagree about the July 16 confrontation at Gates' home and pledged to meet again.

Obama's impromptu comments about the incident could become a defining moment. Nearly immediately after Obama's remark that police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates, his approval rating plummeted among whites, dropping over two days from 53 percent to 46 percent in a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

If Obama is to have success with the policy changes he wants, he can't afford to shed white support. Not to mention the disaster that losing the affections of many in the blue-collar, Reagan Democrat constituency would spell for any re-election campaign.

Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, said he was stunned at how poorly Obama, normally so controlled, handled what Jacobs called "the first major personal debacle for the president."

"This thing was just hung around his neck and he couldn't get rid of it," Jacobs said. "I think he presumed too much. He really started to believe his own press releases on post-racial America."

OK: even if I have a lot of unresolved issues with the Gates controversy, I would agree that as a politician and a President, Barack Obama shoved his foot squarely into his mouth with the stupidly comment.

And OK: I don't at all like the direction of health care, or civil liberties, or foreign policy, or deficit spending, or a lot else under this administration.

And even OK: I will grant you that this is President Obama's first really serious media gaffe.

But if that's how we, as American citizens, then make our decisions on issues like health care, or civil liberties, or the war in Afghanistan, we really are truly f**ked.

PS: please spare me the idea that this moment suddenly revealed Obama's true character or socialist nature or racial agenda to a large number of Americans. That would simply be arguing that we're all incredibly stupid from the other direction.

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

Search This Blog