OBAMA APPROVAL INDEX - AN UPDATE

The following data is taken from the Rasmussen Obama approval index data from January 21 through August 31 - roughly 7 months of data. The trend lines are second-order polynomial fits, extrapolated 90 days into the future.

The first chart is the approval index, the percentage of respondents strongly approving of President Obama less the percentage of respondents strongly disapproving. The index on August 31 was -11 (30% strongly approving; 41% strongly disapproving).


The second chart contains the sample data; green is strongly approving; red is strongly disapproving; black contains the “uncommitted” - those who approve or disapprove, but not strongly. As above, the trend lines are second-order polynomial fits projected 90 days into the future.

Of interest are the green and black trend lines. Strong approvals show signs of leveling out, indicating a hardening of opinion, which in turn suggests that Obama’s base may be on the order of 25% of the polled population. More interesting is the black curve representing the uncommitted, which is both decreasing and accelerating downward from my last update on August 19.


The third chart is a summary chart; total approvals and total disapprovals plotted together. The disapprovals still show a linearly increasing trend; disapprovals are accelerating downward as the uncommitteds are increasingly moving toward disapproval.


The data suggests to me that the anti-Obama sentiment is about more than healthcare, or energy policy, or tax policy. or federal spending. It may have started with with concern over stimulus spending, and certainly health care is an issue; but I believe what we’re seeing is a general revolt against big(ger) government and, further, that the revolt may have sufficient momentum to be unstoppable.

At least, I hope so.

KENNEDY DIES; NO ONE NOTICES

I was in Texas when Senator Kennedy died, not returning home until the day before his funeral. One thing I noticed in the Texas newspaper was the relative lack of coverage. In the (Austin) American-Statesman, a very liberal newspaper, Kennedy's death was front page, but just barely above the fold.

Returning home, when I finally had time to skim the saved Washington DC newspapers last night, I noticed that on the day following Kennedy's death, the Washington Post (the liberal newspaper) had the death on the front page, above the fold, with a shared headline to other news. The Washington Times (the conservative newspaper) devoted the entire front page to Kennedy's death, with a larger than usual headline.

Huh. Two decidedly liberal newspapers downplay the Senator's death; the decidedly conservative newspaper gives a full front page to coverage. Maybe it’s just me, but my personal little conspiracy-laden snark department is wondering if it were all the direction of “The Won,” fearing a loss of worship.

BREAKING NEWS

Pot calls kettle black. “Van Jones, the Obama administration's ‘green jobs’ adviser, told a group of listeners earlier in the year that the reason Republicans are stonewalling the president is because they're ‘assholes.’”



As the saying goes, “It takes one to know one.”

SHAKEN BY ABSENCE OF GOP SUPPORT

“Embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford acknowledged Tuesday that he has been shaken by the failure of a single fellow Republican to back him in his fight to save his job, but vowed to fight on .... The governor [is] trying to survive a scandal involving a widely publicized extramarital affair ... [and] a new ethics probe over his travel and personal expenses.”

Uh, Governor, unlike Democrats, you don’t get a “hypocrisy pass” just because you’re a Republican.

CARBON CALCULATOR

With all the emphasis on “global warming,” here’s a carbon calculator that allows you to check your energy consumption and compare it – on a per capita basis – to the rest of the US (and the world).

It’s somewhat involved. You’ll need

Household information (# occupants and house or apartment)
Annual electricity consumption in kilowatt-hours (kWh)
An estimate of electricity generated by coal/natural gas/oil (doesn’t need to sum to 100%; hydroelectric, solar, etc. don't generate CO2)
Home heating with natural gas or oil (in therms; tricky to calculate)
Fuel efficiency and annual mileage for each car in the household
Air travel (short/medium/long/international; business or economy class)

Once your emissions are calculated, you can link to a page giving national averages.

One note: the per-capita numbers in the linked page is in thousand metric tons/1000 people, so divide your calculated number by 1000 to convert from kilograms to metric tonnes, and divide again by the number of people in the household to get the appropriate per-person estimate [the US average is 19.4839 tons/person].

My usage appears to be just a bit below average for the US: 18.050 tons/person.

NOT DEAD, JUST BLIND

From the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web”: Not a Doctor, but I Play One on the Wires (4th item).

The Associated Press, seeking to defend Canada's government monopoly on health insurance, attempts to debunk the TV ad spotlighting a ... Canadian woman, Shona Holmes, who spoke of suffering from a brain tumor and declared she would "be dead" had she relied on her [Canadian healthcare].

According to the Mayo Clinic, which operated on her, Holmes's life wasn't in much danger ... just her vision.

So Holmes probably could have survived the Canadian wait and been none the worse for wear--well, except for the minor inconvenience of being blind! America's health-care system saved a Canadian woman's vision. A Canadian-style system south of the border could turn all of North America into the land of the blind.

Hmm. Don’t I recall something about “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king?”

Why does that phrase strike me as a metaphor for Obamacare?