THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† The Uniter: Part III: A new Gallup survey on President Barack Hussein Obama's job approval ratings finds that he was more polarizing during his second year in office than during his first:
An average of 81% of Democrats and 13% of Republicans approved of the job Obama was doing as president during his second year. That 68-point gap in party ratings is up from 65 points in his first year and is easily the most polarized second year for a president since Dwight Eisenhower. …
The growing polarization is made clear by the fact that each of the last eight years - spanning the final six years of George W. Bush's administration and the first two of Obama's - have ranked in the 10 most polarized years in presidential approval ratings since 1953.
Obama has made efforts of late to work with congressional Republicans, such as on the deal to extend the Bush-era income tax cuts. These efforts may have helped fuel a rise in his approval ratings, from 44% in mid-November to 50% in the most recent weekly average. But the rise in Obama's public support has not necessarily meant a reduction in the polarization of views about him, as there continues to be a nearly 70-point gap between Democratic and Republican approval ratings of the president.
† Multiculturalism: Jihad By Other Means: Immigrants from Muslim countries have “unfortunately” imported female genital mutilation to Western countries in says William Lacy Swing, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). European Parliament estimates of put the number of circumcised women living in Europe as high as 500,000, reports Agence France-Presse.
† Has Obama Been Humbled?: No, he has not, according to Repub and Dem political strategists interviewed by New York magazine’s John Heilemann for his post-mortem of the mid-term elections:
For Obama, retooling on this scale does not come naturally or happily. Among the hallmarks of his political career has been constancy: a tight and basically static cadre of close advisers and a stubborn resistance to calls for midcourse corrections. ...
Few perceptions were more widely shared or loudly voiced around Washington than that the Obamans were huffing their own fumes. “You know the cliché about our strengths being our weaknesses? It’s true for them as well,” says a top political strategist in a previous White House. “I think they felt like if they had listened to conventional wisdom in 2007, they never would have run. When they hear criticism, they say, ‘Been there, done that, we’re gonna stay the course.’ There’s almost a Zen-like quality about how they’ve been in their own universe and their own bubble.” ...
“What you had was really three or four people running the entire government,” says the former White House strategist. “I thought they put a pretty good Cabinet together, but most of those guys might as well be in the witness-protection program.”
A funny line, no doubt, but an overstatement, surely? Well, maybe not. “I happen to know most of the Cabinet pretty well, and I get together with them individually for lunch,” says one of the most respected Democratic bigwigs in Washington. “I’ve had half a dozen Cabinet members say that in the first two years, they never had one call - not one call - from the president.”
Gee, “stubborn resistance to calls for midcourse corrections” and “in their own universe and their own bubble” sound like descriptions of W and his West Wing. Which proves two things: That Obama – Not McCain - Will Be Bush III and Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!
† Affirmative Action Is Antithetical To A True Meritocracy: Our Ivy-educated first lady, who is so intelligent that she recently wore her sweater backwards, shows off her "smarts" again. The residents of Charlotte, NC are perplexed over first lady Michelle Obama’s explanation that their city was chosen to host the 2012 Democrat convention because of its Southern charm, hospitality, diversity, "And of course, great barbecue," reports Politico:
That was news to residents, who know that North Carolina's best barbecue lies farther afield. "We appreciate the compliments, and they're all spot-on until that last one," the editorial board of the Charlotte Observer newspaper wrote in a blog post titled, "Charlotte = great barbecue? Who knew?"
"Everybody knows to get the best stuff, you gotta drive north to Lexington," the board added.
A local Associated Press reporter quoted a barbecue expert, retired University of North Carolina professor John Shelton Reed, who said that Charlotte for barbecue was "like Minneapolis for gumbo."
A FOX News blog post also pointed out that there’s no place for barbecue on MO’s healthy eating menu. But as is often the case, libs have no problems foisting their idea of virtue on the rest of us while engaging in the very vices they decry behind closed doors, so Charlotte mayor Anthony Foxx assures Mo that, "If barbecue is what the First Lady wants, she will have all the barbecue she needs. We'll make sure of it."
† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Is Hasan A Crazy Terrorist, Or A Terrorist Crazy?): The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has concluded its investigation into the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed and 32 others were wounded, and issued a report finding that the Army failed to act on evidence "in plain sight" that (alleged) shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had become jihadist and was in communication with radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, reports The Washington Times:
The committee's report says that though the FBI and the Defense Department did not have specific information concerning the time, place or nature of the attack, "they collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it.
"Our investigation found specific and systemic failures in the government's handling of the Hasan case and raises additional concerns about what may be broader systemic issues," the report says. "DOD possessed compelling evidence that Hasan embraced views so extreme that it should have disciplined him or discharged him from the military, but DOD failed to take action against him."
The report says evidence of Mr. Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism was on "full display to his superiors and colleagues during his military medical training" and that an instructor and a colleague each referred to him as a "ticking time bomb." Not only was no action taken to discipline or discharge him, the report says, but also his officer evaluation reports sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism. …
The committee's 89-page report says there was evidence the Hasan case needed a "more comprehensive and coordinated approach to counterradicalization and homegrown terrorism across all agencies, including federal, state and local entities, which are critical to keeping our country safe."
The Senate report also concluded that “[m]ilitary supervisors … had the authority to discipline or discharge Hasan” but “the Defense Department did not inform or train commanders about how to recognize someone radicalized to Islamic extremism or how to distinguish that from the peaceful practice of Islam,” reports The Associated Press:
The Senate report also recommends that the Defense Department ensure that personnel evaluations are accurate, particularly in regard to Islamist extremist behavior. And it says statements by Hasan expressing support for Osama bin Laden and charging that the U.S. was at war with Islam indicated his sympathy for extremists could have been sufficient grounds to discipline or discharge him.
Hasan's psychiatry supervisors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had expressed concerns in May 2007 about what they described as Hasan's "pattern of poor judgment and lack of professionalism."
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