Friday Mashup (7/16/10)

I give you the following from Peggy Noonan at the Murdoch Street Journal (here)…

We start with the president's dreadful numbers. People in politics in America are too impressed by polls, of course, and talk about them too much. In this we're like a neurotic patient who constantly, compulsively takes his own temperature. We are political hypochondriacs. But polls offer the only hard quick data there is, and when the temperature-taking consistently shows a worsening condition—the fever is not breaking but rising—you have to admit a sickness. And so the polls, the most striking of which this week was CBS's, which says only 13% of Americans feel President Obama's economic plans have helped them...

Alas, I am unable to bring you more, because in order to read all of the drivel from “Nooners” here, you must subscribe to the Journal.

…

(“subscribe to the Journal”…heh heh heh – teh funny!!!)

Presumably, this story from CBS tells us of the latest poll conducted on Obama and the economy that Noonan refers to, which tells us the following…

Mr. Obama's approval rating on the economy has tumbled five percentage points from last month, according to a new CBS News poll, with just 40 percent of those polled expressing full confidence in his actions.

More than half of those questioned (54 percent) said they disapproved of Mr. Obama's handling of the economy. Last month, 45 percent approved. The drop in approval has been seen mostly among independents, just 35 percent of whom now say they approve.

And by the way, there is nothing to indicate in the CBS story that “only 13 percent of Americans feel that President Obama’s economic plans have helped them” (I know those aren't exactly ringing numbers in the poll, but they aren't as bad as Noonan says they are either). However, based on this, Noonan has a problem with reading poll data anyway.

Also, I should note that the title of Noonan’s opinion piece today is “Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness,” and since I can’t read the rest of it except the opening paragraph, I’m going to guess that this is a plea for those oh-so-rude-and-unkempt liberal bloggers, along with those zany teabaggers and right-wing “values voters” (and of course, as everyone in our corporate media knows, both sides are exactly equivalent in their venomous wrongheadedness…uh huh) to pipe down and let the “adults” rule our discourse without such inconvenient interruptions from the rabble.

Which is funny, because, as Eric Boehlert tells us here…

…did civility-obsessed Noonan dedicate one column this year to denouncing the name-calling sewer that Fox News has become? Did she ever call out Rush Limbaugh for the incessant hate that anchors his show? Did Noonan ever take issue with AM talker Michael Savage for the way he rallies his listeners around the idea that Obama is "raping America" with Nazi-like policies? Did she demand that Glenn Beck retract his claims that Obama is a racist, communist, fascist, and socialist?

Not that I ever saw she didn't.

In fact, last summer when the GOP mini-mobs were storming public forums, marching around with Swastika signs, brandishing loaded weapons, and hanging politicians in effigy, Noonan played dumb. Noonan whitewashed the unprecedented embrace of violent rhetoric and announced the mini-mob members were simply "concerned" citizens. That the mayhem was just "democracy’s great barbaric yawp."

And yet by year's end, the previously silent Noonan is bemoaning how liberals have acted poorly in public this year. Gimme a break Peggy. If you don't have the courage to take issue with your political pals in the face of their, at times, barbaric behavior, than you have no standing to lecture the left.

Yep, that about says it, all right.

Also, does anyone remember how Repug Louisiana governor Bobby (“Don’t Call Me Piyush” Jindal) had the bright idea of constructing berms to try and absorb/deflect the dispersing oil from the BP disaster (here), a talking point that, unfortunately, was echoed by Obama in his speech on the subject of the spill?

Well, based on this, it doesn’t appear to be working (drat those pesky scientists and their…science).

And for the record, here are other ways that Jindal has screwed up the spill response (though I am by no means trying to argue that the Obama people have handled this perfectly either).

And finally, as much as part of me wants to get through a week without having to face the dreck of former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm, alas, I came across this item anyway (he’s complaining about the cost of signs advertising stimulus projects)…

ABC News got a clever idea and started checking on how much was being spent on signs advertising money being spent to stimulate the economy. ABC's Gregory Simmons and Jonathan Karl found about $20 million -- as in, $20,000,000 -- has gone so far for signs advertising spending.

Illinois alone has spent $650,000 on stationary stimulus signs; Pennsylvania, another state with a fellow Democrat as chief executive like President Obama, spent $157,000. Virginia, which has a Republican governor, allows no such signage.

Well, I know I’m just a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, but I don’t have a problem with the cost of signs telling me about a project funded with the “stim.” And of course, if the “worthy opposition” weren’t so busy decrying the stimulus but taking credit for the jobs generated by it anyway (here, more or less), maybe the signs would be a little less necessary.

And besides, I strongly suspect Obama and company got the idea from the Great Depression signage for the National Recovery Act above (wonder if FDR had to deal with niggling conservative pundits and politicians worried about the relative cost of the signage – he probably did, I guess).

And as long as we’re talking about Obama on spending, did you know that his predecessor increased government spending at its highest rate in 30 years (here)? Or that Obama managed to win more spending cuts than Bush (here)?

Of course, Heaven forbid that Malcolm would point that out, or else the following would result (speaking of signs)...