Mr. Obama's job approval ratings have been hovering around 50 percent. His health care reform proposal has garnered mixed reviews. Mr. Warner, on the other hand, is Virginia's most popular former governor in recent times, according to a poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Polling, based in Raleigh, N.C. …

Mr. Deeds clearly sees the need to put a little distance between himself and the president.

During the debate last month, when asked whether he identified himself as an Obama Democrat, Mr. Deeds instead insisted he was a "Creigh Deeds Democrat."

† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: Having done some historical research at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Politics Daily columnist Lou Cannon finds that Nobel Laureate and President Barack Hussein Obama is not on the receiving end of “slurs and slanders of unprecedented magnitude … sometimes ... attributed to racism.” For instance, in 1864, Abraham Lincoln was called "the gorilla tyrant who has usurped the Presidential chair." He also adds that “and the rise of talk radio, 24-7 cable news, and an Internet” is in keeping with the American tradition of “verbal savaging even the best of our presidents”, which began during the Washington administration. For instance:

A young physician refers to the president of the United States as "the crackpot in Washington who is ruining the country." A businessman decries his "socialistic tendencies," another denounces him as a "despot." A banker claims the president is wrecking the banking system. The Republican Party proclaims National Debt Week and reminds Americans that deficit spending is passing a mountain of debt onto future generations. It is, one prominent Republican maintains, "the crime of the century."

The target of these overheated condemnations is not President Barack Obama. Rather, these were routine comments about President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935-1938 during the heart of the New Deal. 

The next time a presidential candidate promises to “change the tone in Washington,” remember Cannon’s history lesson.

† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who did not win the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize), explained why his government slapped an extraordinarily punitive $3.2 billion in fines and penalties on Dogan Yayin Holding AS, the country’s largest owner of TV stations and newspapers:

The tax case … has drawn concern at home and abroad. Days after a $2.5 billion fine was announced last month, the European Commission in Brussels expressed "serious concerns" over the implications for press freedom in Turkey and said it would include the incident in its report later this month on progress in Turkey's talks to join the European Union. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also has expressed concern.

"The issue here is of a routine tax examination," Mr. Erdogan said. "In the U.S., too, there are people who have had problems with evading taxes. Al Capone comes to mind. He was very rich but then he spent the rest of his life in jail. ... Nobody raised a voice when those events happened."

"There are no legal grounds for these tax [demands], they are baseless," said a senior executive at the Dogan group, who asked not to be named. He said the Dogan group had been singled for attention out [sic] after the media group published stories alleging corruption in fundraising for the ruling party. He said 30 tax inspectors had been at the group's offices for a year since, combing through its books.

As Erdogan is an Armenian Genocide denier who has accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinians, he should be a shoo-in for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize - unless the Nobel Committee decides to award it to Obama every year for the rest of his natural life. Hey, it could happen!

† Exec Fakes Cancer To Get Out Of Lawsuit: After pleading guilty to an obstruction of justice charge in March, Howard Richman, 57, a former vice president at Cambridge, MA-based biotech company Biopure Corp, was sentenced to three years in prison for pretending he had terminal cancer to evade a federal lawsuit filed by securities regulators, reports The Associated Press: “The SEC complaint accused Biopure, Richman and three other executives of misleading investors about the prospects of winning approval for a synthetic blood product.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race): Having closed down “Tempo,” the monthly in-paper insert she edited, The New York Post has fired associate editor Sandra Guzman. Although several Post employees acknowledge that the paper has a “revenue problem” and “hasn’t [made money] for a while” some of her former colleagues think that she could have been kept on in another position had she not raised a stink over that infamous Sean Delonas chimpanzee cartoon, reports The Huffington Post:

Guzman was the most high-profile Post employee to publicly speak out against a cartoon that likened the author of the stimulus bill (whom nearly everyone associated with President Barack Obama) with a rabid primate (emphasis, The Stiletto). …

"I think ever since then, she has been on their sh*t list and they were trying to look for a reason to get rid of her," said a Post employee who was granted anonymity in exchange for speaking freely. …

Post employees said that Guzman's firing also raised questions about minority representation in top management. Guzman had been, until Tuesday, the only woman of color on the paper's management staff.

BTW, that “nearly everyone” did not include The Stiletto, who immediately associated the cartoon with the “the infinite monkey theorem” - plus, Obama could not possibly be associated with being the author of the bill since it was Nancy Pelosi's handiwork. Ironically – or perhaps causally (last item) – Guzman was fired soon after Murdoch met with  “leaders from a variety of ethnic communities” to discuss increasing diversity at The Post and other companies he owns.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, For The Good Of The Children?): After a 2007 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that Seattle cannot assign students to public schools based on race, the city is returning to “a neighborhood-based assignment system that will guarantee students a spot at a school close to home,” reports The Seattle Times:

Over the past decades, the district has had a variety of assignment plans with differing goals - from forced busing in the late 1970s meant to racially integrate schools to the current plan, which allows students to apply to any school but doesn't guarantee them a spot at any particular one.

That's about to end. Students will be assigned to schools based on their address with some options - but no guarantee - of going elsewhere. The plan will be phased in over the next several years, starting this fall with students entering kindergarten and grades six and nine. Other students will stay where they are. …

The goal of the new assignment plan is to create a simpler and more predictable system that also will save money by reducing the number of school buses crisscrossing the city.

It's also a plan in which racial diversity is not among the top goals. While officials say it's still important for schools to have a racial mix of students, that factor ranks lower than the goal of providing a high quality school in every neighborhood.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe): When Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio applied for a renewal to participate in the Department of Homeland Security’s 287(g) program that empowers local law enforcement to arrest illegal aliens and perform immigration checks at jails, he was told that he and his deputies no longer had authority to make field arrests, reports The New York Times:

Homeland Security officials declined to comment, saying they are still reviewing their agreement with the sheriff’s department and the other 65 agencies that participate in a program that allows local and state officers to make immigration arrests. …

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, with some 160 federally trained deputies, is the largest in the program and the most closely scrutinized by people on all sides of the immigration debate. …

In March, the Justice Department’s civil rights division announced that it was investigating the department, but Mr. Arpaio has conducted sweeps since then and he predicted that he would be exonerated.

The Maricopa agreement was also being watched to see if Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a Democrat and the former governor of Arizona, would take the opportunity to rein in Mr. Arpaio, a Republican and one of the state’s most popular figures. Although they did not often clash publicly, their political supporters often lashed out at one another. …

Andrew Thomas, the county attorney, appeared with Mr. Arpaio to voice his support and condemn the “setback in the fight against illegal immigration.” Mr. Thomas said, “The fight goes on.”

He and Mr. Arpaio suggested that deputies could use the state anti-human smuggling law to make stops and refer suspected illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though it was not clear whether the agency would take them.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Dan-o Lawsuit Bizzaro): As expected, on the heels of the appellate division of the NY Supreme Court dismissing Dan Rather’s $70 million suit against former employer CBS in its entirety, NY Supreme Court judge Ira Gammerman granted the defense’s motion to dismiss a second suit the anchor filed against CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward that made similar claims.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): Meleanie Hain, who caused an uproar in the town of Lebanon, PA, when she openly carried a gun for which she had a permit to her 5-year-old daughter's soccer game in a park on Sept. 11, 2008, has been shot dead along with her husband in what appeared to be a murder-suicide, reports The Associated Press. The couple was said to be having marital problems. Their three children were home at the time of the tragedy but were unhurt and are now with relatives.