Birthday Today - Gene Kelly

It's Gene Kelly's  birthday today -- he would be 99.   Was Fred Astaire a better dancer?   Maybe.   But Kelly put on film the greatest dance sequences the movies have ever seen in Singing in the Rain and An American in Paris.   Here's the best of them, from the latter, with Gershwin's original music replacing the re-arranged and re-orchestrated version from the movie:

Where Are Obama's Handlers?

Aren't they smart enough to have someone monitoring right-wing blogs like this one to see if any new memes are developing about the President?   For instance, Drudge has been hammering Obama for a week with photographs of him looking like a doofus riding his bicycle on vacation wearing a helmet, juxatposed with news about the economy imploding.   Maybe he thinks the nanny-state liberal suburban moms will think he's wonderfully responsible and setting a good example, but the average white male voter thinks that this makes him look like... well, like a pussy.   And most of the women I know are worried like hell over the economy and would just as soon see him back to work.  

Sheesh!  

Remind you of anyone?

Preference Cascade Update

Rasmussen today has Obama's approval index at -26, which is the lowest it's ever been, with only 19% giving him strong approval, and a whopping 45% registering strong disapproval.

Since May, in the aftermath of the killing of bin Laden, Obama's approval index monthly averages are as follows:

August - -20.4%
July -      -17.0%
June -     -14.6%
May -     - 10.3%

Preference cascade.... catch the wave!

***

Gallup is showing the preference cascade too... look at the end of this graph, and the new separation between approval and disapproval (now 38-54):

Girl of the Day - Patricia Neal

Today's Girl of the Day, Patricia Neal, was one of the more prominent Pro-Life actresses in Hollywood, after returning to Catholicism as an adult.   As told in this article, her return to her faith occurred after years of regret stemming from an abortion she had when she was 21 and a young actress.  (The father, the actor Gary Cooper, was married and had a daughter and urged Neal to abort the child.  Later, the daughter forgave Neal and helped her rediscover faith, but only after chastising her that the baby she had aborted would have been her only sibling.   A sad story.)

Neal was married for years to Roald Dahl, the children's book author, and famously recovered from a stroke to return to acting.   For my money her best roles were as tough, world-weary 40ish women in the 1960s in movies like In Harm's Way and Hud.   And, with all due respect to other actresses, she had probably the greatest voice in movie history -- rough, raspy, tough, sexy, totally unique.   Here she is in a 1950 noir called The Breaking Point; needless to say, as a younger actress she was a pretty hot ticket:

Joe Biden "Fully Understands" Infanticide and Forced Sterilization in China

Here's Joe Biden, speaking at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China yesterday:

What we ended up doing is setting up a system whereby we did cut by $1.2 trillion upfront, the deficit over the next 10 years.  And we set up a group of senators that have to come up with another $1.2 to $1.7 trillion in savings or automatically there will be cuts that go into effect in January to get those savings.  So the savings will be accomplished.  But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China.  You have no safety net.  Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I’m not second-guessing -- of one child per family.  The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people.  Not sustainable.

So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that's much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that.

Joe Biden claims to be Catholic, at least when he's running for office, which means he ought to be Pro-Life as an article of his professed faith.   But if that's too much to ask of a Democratic politician these days, then let's get at it from the opposite direction:  Joe Biden also claims to be "pro-choice," which I thought meant that Democrats were for women having the right to choose whether to carry a baby to term or whether to have an abortion.   But apparently now he "understands" and won't "second-guess" the policy of China to limit families to one child, which has meant, in practice, massive use of sex selection to abort female babies; forced sterilization of Chinese women; and forced abortions.   State-sponsored killing of millions of babies to Biden apparently equals just another budget balancing technique.  

As someone else said a long time ago about another Joe, have you at last no decency, sir?

***

Here's a good site about forced abortions in China.  

Hat tip:  Hot Air.  

Paul Ryan Not Running for President Update

According to Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard, Ryan is definitely not running for President.

Since Hayes was the one hyping the story a week ago, I guess you have to take this with a grain of salt. 

Here's what the Regular Guy said last week:

I think Ryan will ultimately decide that he can do the most good by influencing current candidates on the budget, rather than running for President, where he will suddenly have to dilute his message by taking positions on Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Israel, the Palestinians, China, North Korea, Venuezuela, gay marriage, abortion, prayer in schools, etc.   I think he knows that if we don't get the budget and the debt crisis squared away, we won't have power to project in foreign policy and social issues will change from pro-life against pro-choice to I-need-food against people trying to steal-my-food.    So he'll focus "like a laser beam" (as they used to say) on the economic issues. 

Not bad for a part-time blogger.

Preference Cascade Update

Rasmussen has had Obama's approval index (strong approval minus strong disapproval) at -20% or lower for two weeks.   Today it registered at -24%, which ties his lowest ever.   44% of Americans, according to the poll, strongly disapprove of the President, while only 20% strongly approve.

Could it have something to do with this sort of Presidential image?

Fiddling (or putting) while Rome burns doth not a popular leader make. 

***

Meanwhile, Gallup's results don't look much better:

Spread the word:  the Emperor Has No Clothes!

What Next in Libya After Qaddafi?

Contemporary America tends to think of "revolutions" in other countries in romantic terms, with good-hearted, selfless, poor rebels fighting against the mean, rapacious oligarchs and tyrants.   It isn't often so black-and-white, and the chaos that ensues after the collapse of a regime isn't necessarily conducive to the development of a civil democratic society.   Where will the Egypt be after all the romantic news reporters have gone, and the Islamists have moved in?   Where will Libya be after the "rebels" take Tripoli and Moammar Qaddafi is exiled or executed?  

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in NRO, captures the uncertainty:

What Libya will look like in a year, no one knows. Without U.S. ground troops, we will have no say over the outcome — and ground troops would mean a politically unacceptable third Middle East occupation and reconstruction. Given the proximity of Libya to Europe, and the fact that the British and French started the intervention — not to mention their thinly disguised obsession with its oil — one hopes that those two countries will do their best to ensure some sort of consensual government. In the meantime, I am afraid that Libya’s sizable wealth and unaccounted-for arsenals may wind up in the wrong hands, as we have seen in the new unrest in Sinai.

As for outcomes, there are many scenarios, but these two may be the most likely: either a sort of on-again-off-again chaos until a military-backed clique or strongman emerges and the same old cycle resumes, or some sort of constitutional system in a decidedly Islamic context, analogous to the Turkish model. In the latter case, we could expect the new state’s foreign policy to be anti-Western, friendly to China and Russia, virulently and actively anti-Israel, and more accommodating with Iran and its subsidized terrorist appendages.

In other words, be careful what you wish for.

Birthdays Today - Cool Chicks Version

Today's birthdays include three cool chicks, women whose intelligence made (or makes) them attractive.   The first, born in 1893, was Dorothy Parker, the writer.  Parker was one of the more famous writers of the 1920s, for her supposed wit and membership in the New York "Algonquin round table" -- writers who congregated in the hotel's bar to trade barbs.   She was mostly known for her short, satiric poems in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and her book reviews, which were often quite mean-spirited.  (She  commented upon reading Milne's Winnie the Pooh, that she had "fwohed up.")   She also wrote some good short stories at a time when the craft was at its peak with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Lardner and others.  But I was surprised to read through a selection of her quotes and find that none of them are really all that memorable, at least to my ear.   Perhaps the most famous is her comment on the Yale prom, where she noted that, if all of the debutantes attending were laid end to end, she wouldn't be a bit surprised.   I guess the moral of the story is that faux world-weariness and meanness is not the same as real wit, and wit is not the same as literary genius.   To read Parker next to, oh, Samuel Johnson, is to see a great fall in culture.  On the other hand, Parker to now is a pretty big fall too, I suspect.

***

The next cool chick whose birthday falls on today is Honor Blackman, the actress in the early James Bond movie Goldfinger who played the wonderfully-named Pussy Galore.   I don't think there's ever been a better Bond girl:

Blackman was born in 1925, which would make her 86 now.   Apparently she's still working too... good for her.

***

Finally, Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig was born today in 1973.   The Regular Wife and I saw her earlier this year in the movie Bridesmaids, which she carried in a very funny performance.   She's also really cute, in my humble estimation. Here's a marginally funny sketch from SNL:

Girl of the Day - Just Another Manic Monday (Susanna Hoffs)

I noticed recently that MTV had reached its 30th anniversary, which struck me as a somewhat dubious achievement.   MTV had an enormous impact in the early 1980s, and not an entirely beneficial one -- I think the music video genre contributed a great deal to out short-attention-span-where's-the-goddamn-clicker culture.   But, because I was in my early 20s and in graduate school for most of that time, I had a lot of time on my hands and ended up watching MTV more than maybe I should have.  

Anyway, there were certain "stars" on MTV that I can't remember ever seeing anywhere else since.   One was the girl group, The Bangles, who had a few minor hits.   The Bangles' lead singer was  a short, dark-haired, doe-eyed girl whose name I never knew, but which I now learn (from the miracle of Wikipaedia) was Susanna Hoffs:

The fact that Hoffs got all the attention was apparently one of the reasons why the band broke up in the late 1980s.   In retrospect, I'm not all that sure what the attraction was -- not my type (too short). 

One of The Bangles' biggest hits was "Manic Monday," which was written by Prince:

Meanwhile, Back in the Nanny State, Voluntary Decline Proceeds Apace

I am sitting on my patio within five miles of the center of Milwaukee in what used to be called the "industrial heartland" of America, and there is not a cloud in the sky and literally no evidence of any air pollution of any kind.   And then I read this story from the Washington Post:

Over the next 18 months, the Environmental Protection Agency will finalize a flurry of new rules to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants. Mercury, smog, ozone, greenhouse gases, water intake, coal ash—it’s all getting regulated. And, not surprisingly, some lawmakers are grumbling.

Industry groups such the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, and the American Legislative Exchange Council have dubbed the coming rules “EPA’s Regulatory Train Wreck.” The regulations, they say, will cost utilities up to $129 billion and force them to retire one-fifth of coal capacity. Given that coal provides 45 percent of the country’s power, that means higher electric bills, more blackouts and fewer jobs.

Are we this stupid?  

Put bluntly, in a country where we have nearly 10% unemployment and a declining manufacturing base of our economy, we simply can't afford environmentalist niceties.  

Put even more bluntly, this country needs more air pollution (meaning:  more industrial production), not less.  

Closing down perfectly productive coal-firing power plants is the type of things countries do when they are intent on committing national economic suicide. 

Girl of the Day - Diane Lozito (w/ the Boss)

Completely obscure, today's Girl of the Day, Diane Lozito, was Bruce Springsteen's girlfriend in the early 1970s, and he used her grandmother's name, Rose Lozito, to get the title of one of his greatest songs, "Rosalita":



Needless to say, her mama didn't like Bruce because played in a rock and roll band.  

And her daddy said he knew that Bruce didn't have any money.

The Regular Son is a fierce Bruce Springsteen fan.    Little man, this one is For You.





 

Girl of the Day - Brit Marling

I haven't seen here in any movies (she's starring in and co-wrote the new sci-fi film Another Earth) but the kind of buzz she's generating makes it seem like Brit Marling is the next Meryl Streep.   An example is this effusion from Ross Douthat in National Review:

Marling has a great face, period:  Long and luminous and expressive, with precisely the mix of loveliness and mystery that separates the potential movie star from the mere onscreen beauty.... Whether Brit Marling keeps turning out scripts or not, every director in Hollywood should be lining up to make sure that she keeps on starring in them.  

More on Paul Ryan for President

Interesting point in a not-quite-persuasive article in The Daily Beast: 

Today’s Republicans remain a party of unequivocally conservative principles (as evidenced by near-unanimous GOP congressional votes against all elements of the Obama big-government agenda). Most Republicans, however (like most of their Democratic and independent neighbors), prefer a moderate, nonthreatening style to the explosive personality of some rhetorical bomb-thrower. Reagan exemplified the necessary blend to perfection: his clear-cut, unwavering conservative values won wide acceptance because they matched a sunny, agreeable, easygoing disposition. Mike Huckabee captured some of the same magic with his classic formulation: “I’m a conservative, but I’m not angry about it.” George W. Bush succeeded with a similar presentation, positioning himself in 2000 as a rock-ribbed religious right-winger who nonetheless respected the other side as a nice-guy “compassionate conservative” and a “uniter, not a divider.” The least-effective Republican nominees get the formulation exactly backwards: Bob Dole and John McCain, both admirable war heroes with impressive Senate records, worried righties (with their imperfect conservative credentials) and everyone else (with an edgy, occasionally angry and explosive, personal style). This year both Perry and Bachmann offer plenty of conservative substance, but without the reassuring moderate style; Romney provides the suave, comforting moderate style, but his Massachusetts record leaves Tea Party partisans uncertain of his conservative substance. Among this candidate crop, Ryan alone (with Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels out of the race) could provide the right formula in terms of both tough solid principle and agreeable personality.

President Arnold Palmer

Drudge and Ace are both beating up on President Obama for playing golf on his vacation on Martha's Vineyard.   Paradoxically, people who don't play golf (which is still most Americans) might not really get why it's so bad that he's playing so much golf.   After all, they might say, isn't a guy allowed to relax?  

It's not because golf gives off an aristocratic vibe while working people are hurting.   I don't care about symbolism.  And it's not because he should always be working and should never play golf... that's too absolute.  

But golf, unlike some other sporting activities like jogging or biking or even playing a set or two of tennis, takes a hell of a long time to play.   Once you go to a course and take some practice swings and hit the putting green for a few minutes, a round of golf at most clubs is going to be a minimum of five hours.    A beer afterwards might push that closer to six.   Five or six hours times the number of rounds Obama's alleged to have played is something like 400-500 hours over the last three years.   That's 10-12 full work weeks spent on the course! 

Meanwhile, I assume he's working pretty hard as a default as President, which means that he doesn't spend much time with his children to begin with.   If he has free time, he ought to be spending that time with his family, not playing golf. 

I know in my own circumstances over the past decade, if I had told my wife after a long week of work that I was going to take off on Saturday and play golf for 5-6 hours with my friends and leave her to tend to the three kids... she'd have my ass in a sling!   So I play only very occasionally in outings or with my brothers-in-law.  

(Both of my brothers-in-law on my wife's side, and one of my brothers-in-law on my side are scratch or near scratch golfers, or have been in the past.   But all of them have cut way back on the amount of golf they play -- or the amount they might like to play -- because of the pressures of work and family.   One brother-in-law who at one point had a -1 handicap has five daughters, and I guarantee he's spent ten times as much time with them at volleyball tournaments over the past ten years than he has on the golf course.)

What kind of guy chooses to use the majority of the very little amount of free time he has (or at least so I assume given he's President) playing golf rather than playing with his daughters or doing something with his wife?  

I think we know the answer to that one.   A narcissist like Obama.

Oh, No, You Didn't!

A writer at The American Thinker rushes in where angels fear to tread:

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.  He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator. 

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? 

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. 

This is the great unspoken thought in American politics today.   Only the fringe (guys at American Thinker) will say it aloud.   Others (Podhoretz at WSJ) will speak more delicately.   But it's out there, and it will grow, even if it remains taboo.... hushed voices nodding about the "A" word.  

Girl of the Day - Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway is one of those actresses who has become famous without ever being in a movie that I would pay to see.   Maybe I'm just out of touch.    Anyway, she has a new movie out called "One Day," which looks awful in the way many Hollywood movies look awful these days -- it looks like it was sold on a pitch that went something like this:  "Anne Hathaway is a mousey smart girl who meets a handsome guy in college and then sees him once a year for a day until they finally fall in love after much heartache and travail while she matures into a beautiful, successful woman.   Hilarity ensues."    Yuck!    So many movies are simply formulas, or sequels, or remakes.   Is the lack of creativity from Hollywood a symbol of America's decline in innovation?   Maybe.   If so, Anne Hathaway movies might be a symbol of a symbol.

On the other hand, she is smoking hot (as the Regular Son would say):

Birthday Today - James Gould Cozzens

Almost completely forgotten, Cozzens, born today in 1903, was one of the great novelists of the mid-century, a writer of what I would call "high middlebrow" novels, novels that weren't experimental in form, but which told complex stories about serious themes that mattered to adults.   His best works begin with The Just and the Unjust (1942), a novel about a young  lawyer that uses the backdrop of a murder trial to examine the mores and relationships within a small town.   It has the single wisest line I can remember from fiction, where the young lawyer is balking at having to seek the support of a somewhat shady businessman for election to DA, and the older man, the businessman, tells him, "you wouldn't worry so much about what people think about you, kid, if you realized that most of the time they aren't thinking about you."  

After The Just and the Unjust, Cozzens, like most adult men, went into the service for World War II.   Cozzens ended up writing (not surprisingly) for the Office of Information Services, digesting reports from the services and collating them (and censoring them) for distribution to the press.   He ended the war as a major, then turned his wartime experiences into his best book, Guard of Honor, about an Army Air Corps base in 1944 in Alabama.  It's the single best novel I've read about World War II, and deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 (over, I might add, Norman Mailer's more celebrated World War II book, The Naked and the Dead).  

Cozzens last great book was the unfortunately titled By Love Possessed (1957), which landed him on the cover of Time, and was a huge bestseller.   In it, he returns again to the subject of a small town lawyer, but this time his central character is a mature man dealing with weighty responsibilities, at work, at home, and in his community.   It's a great book, and it's central character, Arthur Winner, is both very wise and very sad.   I'd describe it as a great 19th century novel written with a 20th century sensibility about adult themes that mattered a great deal to the men and women who had lived through the hard times of the Great Depression and World War II.  

Cozzens very soon fell out of favor -- his political conservatism led many left-wing critics to find reasons to revile him -- but the contrast of his adult themes (responsibility, judgment, prudence, decision-making in a contingent world, loyalty, family, child-rearing, marriage, death) with the silliness of much of the literature of the 1960s is stark.   I like Cozzens a lot better, and believe he should be read much more widely.   Unfortunately, with the left dominating the groves of academe, it's unlikely that he will be.   (I taught Guard of Honor to a college class once; needless to say, they were too young to get it.)

Doofus

OK, I know that as President he would catch some heat from the nanny-state ninnies if he rode a bike without a helmet.  But seriously:

Allen West Goes to the Top of My List of Favorite Politicians

New Congressmen Allen West just rocketed to the top of my list of favorite politicians.   Here is his response to a recent complaint that he should cut off his ties with supposedly "Islamophobic" pro-Israel activists:

If it's good enough for General McAuliffe, the 101st Airborne commander at Bastogne, it's good enough for me.    Kudos to Congressman West for dismissing a complaint like this with the "due respect" it deserved.

By the way, "Steadfast and Loyal" is the motto of the 4th Infantry Division, which went ashore on Utah Beach on D-Day, fought in Normandy, was the first American division to liberate Paris, fought in the Huertgen Forest battle, and then was "resting" just north of Luxembourg when the Germans hit our lines in the Battle of the Bulge, and fought valiantly to halt the penetration.   West was the commander of the 2nd Battalion, 20th Artillery Regiment, 4th Division from 2002 until he left the active military in 2004.

Hmmmmmm.... Scott Walker Pushing Ryan to Run?

UPDATE:  

Hot Air has an interesting take on a potential Paul Ryan candidacy:

A run risks destroying Ryan’s brand. If he jumps in and gets Pawlenty’d in Iowa and New Hampshire, he goes back to D.C. knowing that his reform agenda was rejected even by ardent Republican voters. That would cripple him on the Hill; even if the GOP cleaned up on election day, a new Republican Congress would suddenly be reluctant to pass his budget. He’s taking a big risk on a very long longshot and it could end up setting back not just his political career but his cause.

***

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is apparently pushing Paul Ryan to run for President.   

I think Ryan will ultimately decide that he can do the most good by influencing current candidates on the budget, rather than running for President, where he will suddenly have to dilute his message by taking positions on Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Israel, the Palestinians, China, North Korea, Venuezuela, gay marriage, abortion, prayer in schools, etc.   I think he knows that if we don't get the budget and the debt crisis squared away, we won't have power to project in foreign policy and social issues will change from pro-life against pro-choice to I-need-food against people trying to steal-my-food.    So he'll focus "like a laser beam" (as they used to say) on the economic issues. 

Just a hunch.   If he gets in, I won't be unhappy, needless to say.

The Student Loan Bubble and the Way Out

Ominous article in the Atlantic:

If you want to get a name as an economic seer, try this one. The next subprime crisis will come from defaults on student debts, starting with for-profit colleges and rising to the Ivy League. The parallels with housing are striking. In both, the written warnings aren't understood, especially on penalties and interest rates. And in both, it's assumed that what's being bought will rise in value, in one case the real estate, in the other the salaries which will accrue with a degree. One bubble has burst; the second is already losing air.

Still, there's a difference. With mortgage defaults, banks seize and resell the home. But if a degree can't be sold, that doesn't deter the banks. They essentially wrote the student loan law, in which the fine-print says they aren't "dischargable." So even if you file for bankruptcy, the payments continue due. Hence these stern word from Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers. "You will be hounded for life," he warns. "They will garnish your wages. They will intercept your tax refunds. You become ineligible for federal employment." He adds that any professional license can be revoked and Social Security checks docked when you retire. We can't think of any other statute with such sadistic provisions.

I've been harping on this for years.   There is no reason why college tuition has to cost as much as it does.   It's not worth it, and no one would pay it, except for the explicit shakedown aspect of it.   Colleges and universities are like the mob:  they say, "pay us the money, because I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your family."    You either pay them the extortionate tuition they charge, or else your kid can't get a good job.

This is particularly true nowadays, when a decent college curriculum is only a mouse-click away... for free!   For instance, here is a link to an online video freshman physics class at MIT.   And here is a link to what looks like an interesting  class at Yale called the "moral foundations of politics."    The link includes:  reading assignment, videos of lectures, audio of lectures (if you want to listen while exercising or driving), and .pdf's of handouts.   And here's a calculus class at UC-Berkeley, which you can download for free from iTunes.   So I've now in about five minutes found what looks to be an almost complete, rigorous year of college at elite universities online for free.   I repeat:  for free!   

Now, maybe taking these online for free won't give you quite as good instruction as you might get live from these teachers.   Not quite as good.   But is it really $50,000 worse?   Really?   I don't think so.  

The emperor has no clothes in higher education, and soon people will realize that fact.

Obama, Liberalism and the "Black Community"

Both Drudge and Ace are highlighting this story about an apparently raucous town hall meeting in Detroit where Maxine Waters essentially asked an audience of urban black Democrats for permission to "unleash" the Congressional Black Caucus to put pressure on Obama to do something for the black community:

"The Congressional Black Caucus loves the president too," Waters said.  "We're supportive of the president, but we're getting tired, ya'll.  We're getting tired. And so, what we want to do is, we want to give the president every opportunity to show what he can do and what he's prepared to lead on. We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don't know what the strategy is. We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he's not in any black community.  We don't know that."

As she discussed her dilemma -- frustrated with the president but hesitant to criticize him lest black supporters turn on her -- Waters asked the crowd for its permission to have a "conversation" with the president.  "When you tell us it's alright and you unleash us and you tell us you're ready for us to have this conversation, we're ready to have the conversation," she said. 

Waters apparently noticed that Obama's "Magical Misery" bus tour/campaign junket is apparently spending a lot of time with people who look, well, like this:

The problem, of course, is that what the black community in Detroit wants, and what Maxine Waters wants, and what Obama himself wants too, is a continuation and expansion of the very liberal programs (welfare, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, Planned Parenthood, Medicaid, public education) that have made black Americans substantially more dependent on a dysfunctional government than any other community.   The policies they've championed have destroyed the black community, and more of the same won't change that.   When Maxine Waters says she wants Obama to do more for the black community, I'm reminded of the gal in 2009 (in Detroit, if I'm not mistaken) who was quoted as saying that she was in line to get some "Obama money" that he gets from his "stash."




Or this gal, who thought Obama would pay her mortgage:



These folks are probably nice people, but they have essentially been crippled intellectually and morally by liberalism.

Apologies in Advance...

UPDATE: again, all kudos to Ace.   But I had to share this new one with the Regular Guy's motley collection of readers (you know who you are!) too.  

***

But this is something I had to share.

Hat tip:  Ace.  

Girl of the Day - Cloudy, Mid-August, School Getting Ready to Start, End of Summer Blues Edition (Sunny Bippus)

We have these strange beetles around our house who have not only eaten our roses this year, but have also eaten away at the leaves on our birch tree, so that our backyard looks a lot like fall, with leaves all over the ground and the patio.   Eek!   It's coming.   So, with school getting ready to start for the Regular Children, it seems a good time to return to some beach memories, such as:

This is the SI swimsuit issue cover from 1966, when the Regular Guy was 7 and the Regular Wife was a newborn.   The girl -- who would now probably be 70 or so -- was aptly named Sunny Bippus.   As Jack Paar would say, I kid you not.

Obama Vacates!

Oh, sorry, that headline sounded too hopeful.   Actually, Obama is simply going on yet another vacation to Martha's Vineyard, apparently oblivious to the message that sends to voters struggling in the present economy.   Ah, well, noblesse oblige!   I suppose he needs to recover from all the bad luck he's had:  

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” President Obama fantasized on the campaign stump in Iowa. “But over the last six months, we’ve had a run of bad luck.”

Bad luck?...

The Japanese tsunami, the “Arab Spring” uprisings and Europe’s debt crises are not America’s “bad luck” - Obamanomics is.

The Obama presidency is a case study of what happens when you break faith with the principles that made America great. Mr. Obama has chased investment capital out of the market by implementing the Dodd-Frank financial-sector takeover. He has frozen new hiring by unleashing Obamacare’s enormous costs on employment.

He has trampled the rights of Americans as free consumers with the unconstitutional individual mandate to purchase government-sanctioned health insurance. He has made a mockery of free competition by granting Obamacare waivers to cronies and union friends. He has stymied the technology sector by unleashing his antitrust forces and the manufacturing sector by unleashing his labor-relations forces.

He has ushered in the first-ever downgrade of America’s credit rating by rejecting the Cut, Cap and Balance Act. And he has all but assured that those Americans with capital will stay on the sidelines by maligning them and launching class warfare upon them.

Girl of the Day - Ann Blyth

Ann Blyth turns 83 today.   She had a minor Hollywood career, punctuated  by playing the scheming child-star Veda Pierce in the 1945 version of Mildred Pierce starring Joan Crawford, for which Blyth received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.   But she was a devout Catholic, was married once and only once (the way it's supposed to work), and had five kids, so I suspect she thought she had a great career as a Mom.  

Ryan for President?

Ace is hyping a story that Paul Ryan is seriously considering a run for the Presidency.   You have to wonder whether it stems from the fact that none of the candidates at the last debate even mentioned entitlement reform, which is the elephant in the room in American politics.  

I sat next to Paul Ryan coming back on the plane from Washington about 4-5 years ago.   We talked for a little while about the difficulty of being away from young kids for work.   Good guy; dare I say, a regular guy.    Incidentally, he was reading America Alone at the time on the plane.   So, although he's best known as a budget guru, that's not the only area where he'd be a strong conservative.  

That being said, I don't think he can win if he gets in -- not enough money, not enough organization, not enough time.   And Romney and Perry are formidable candidates.   But I hope he does anyway, because I think it would focus the debate on the important things and, at the very least, set the stage for him to run again, either in 2016 (God forbid that Obama gets re-elected!) or in 2020 (after eight years as VP?). 

Ace thinks Ryan wouldn't be selected for VP, since any candidate is going to want to pick Marco Rubio to go after the Hispanic vote.   I'm not sure I quite agree.   I like Rubio, but he's pretty light on experience.   Ryan has been in Washington for a lot longer than Obama was when he ran, so they couldn't pull the experience angle on him.   Also, I think Rubio's Hispanic background would help Republicans in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California.   Notice anything about those states?   Three of them (FL, TX, and AZ) are locks for Republicans this time around, and one of them (CA) is going to go Democratic no matter what.   So what good does Rubio really do you?   Ryan would make the budget the main issue, which it ought to be, and he'd win you a toss-up state (WI).  

But, holy mackerel, what a deep bench going forward if someone like Perry is choosing among Rubio, Ryan, Christie and Jindal for VP!

A Polling Oddity at Rasmussen

UPDATE:  Gallup shows that Obama had his lowest weekly approval rating yet of 40% total.   You look at this graph and think, "maybe the preference cascade has already started":

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Scott Rasmussen runs one of the best polling companies in America.   On Presidential approval, his metric of the "approval index" (strong approval minus strong disapproval) measures what people who really care think between elections better than a straight survey of "adults" (many of whom simply can't be bothered to have an opinion).  

Anyway, the "approval index" for President Obama has weirdly been stuck on -22% for five straight days.   Only 20% of Americans polled strongly approve of Obama's performance in office, while 42% strongly disapprove.   It's been that way for five straight days.

That seems so bizarre to me as a matter of statistics -- different polls over different days, including weekends, ought to yield some volatility in the results -- that I think it must mean something.   Here's what it might mean.  

I think that Obama has gotten close to the bottom of his support.   I think there are at least 20% of Americans, including the hard-core left and African-Americans, who will strongly support him no matter what he much he fails, because it's an article of faith to them.   I'm not sure that number can go much lower.

Meanwhile, the 42% who strongly disapprove are conservatives who are following what he's doing, and horrified by it.   That number can't go higher, at least not right now.  

Why not?   Well, the remaining 40% or so of the electorate includes a large cohort of Americans who simply can't be bothered to have opinions, and never will.   Call them the "zombies" or the "brain dead" or whatever.   But they exist.  Maybe 20%.  

But I also think there's a substantial group, perhaps 20%, of nominal "independents" who, after years of being preached at to be "moderate" or to "compromise," think having strong opinions is bad manners and "extremist."   They don't support Obama, they just don't want to be heard denouncing him, not yet, because they are afraid it would make them look like all those unwashed masses who listen to Rush Limbaugh or like Sarah Palin.  

So we're stuck, at least for now, with 20% strongly supporting the President, and 40% or so strongly opposing him, and the rest of the electorate either not really caring or not really wanting to speak out yet.   That's why Rasmussen is stuck in a holding pattern.

Here's what I think will happen.   We can't reach the 20% hard-core Obama supporters, and never will.   And we can't reach the 20% or so of the "brain dead" and they won't vote anyway.   But we can, just maybe, reach some of those independents who are just still too afraid to say that they "strongly disapprove" of Obama because they think it's too "harsh" or "mean."   They're not quite there yet, but over the next year those independents just need a push to come over into the light.   When they do, the "preference cascade" that will lead to a landslide against Obama will start.

Girl of the Day - Tess Harper

The actress Tess Harper is 61 today.   She has had a small recurring role on one of my favorite shows, Breaking Bad, as the suburban mother of young meth "cooker," Jessie Pinkman (a story line in an earlier season had to do with how his parents disowned him, and he got revenge by buying a property they owned at a rock-bottom price after divulging to the real estate agent that the house had been a meth-cooking lab for years).    

Anyway, Tess Harper has never been what you would call a star and, in fact, her career was somewhat accidental, taking off when she was cast as the young wife of Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies after attending a cattle call audition in Texas, where she was doing dinner theater and acting at theme parks.   Tender Mercies is a great, great movie, and she is great in it.   Here's a clip: