Fox News Poll: Most Would Vote Against Raising Debt Limit

Fox News Poll: Most Would Vote Against Raising Debt Limit By Dana Blanton

American voters would rather shut down the government than raise the debt limit, even though most believe a shutdown would have a dramatic effect on everyday Americans.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday asked voters to imagine being a lawmaker in Washington who had to decide whether to increase the debt ceiling. The poll found 62 percent would vote against raising it -- even at the risk of shutting down the government.

About one-in-four voters (26 percent) would raise the limit to allow the government to spend more.

Looking at views by political party, Republicans would overwhelmingly vote against raising the debt ceiling (79 percent). So would a majority of independents (62 percent). Democrats, however, split more evenly: 42 percent would vote to raise the limit and 46 percent would vote against it.

Is shutting down the government a big deal? A 58 percent majority thinks a government shutdown would have a dramatic effect on the lives of everyday Americans, while 34 percent think it’s more of a technical issue that lacks real consequences.

Click here for complete poll results.

Voters’ willingness to close the government while at the same time believing it would have a major effect on everyday Americans may stem from the low regard many voters have for those receiving government benefits. Voters are more likely to think people who receive substantial benefits from the government are mostly “freeloaders who are abusing the system” (52 percent) than people who “genuinely need a helping hand” (35 percent).

Opinion is mixed on who can be trusted to make the right spending cuts. When asked who they trust to cut government spending enough to make a difference while also making sure valuable programs are not hurt, slightly more voters trust President Obama (45 percent) than Congressional Republicans (42 percent).

Not surprisingly, most Democrats would trust Obama (81 percent) and most Republicans would trust GOP Congressional leaders (79 percent). Independents split evenly at 37 percent for both Obama and Republicans, and 18 percent say “neither.” House Republican leaders went to the White House Tuesday for negotiations on the budget and spending cuts.

Thirty-four percent of voters think the Obama administration’s policies have hurt the economy, while 28 percent say they have helped. The remaining 36 percent think they have made no difference.

By a 17 percentage-point margin -- 57-40 percent -- voters disapprove of the job Obama is doing on the economy. Still, approval for the president’s handling of the economy is up 6 points from 34 percent in October.

Despite receiving negative ratings on the economy, the president maintains a positive overall job rating: 49 percent of voters approve of Obama’s performance, and 47 percent disapprove. That's little change from last month, when 49 percent approved and 44 percent disapproved.

A year ago the president’s job rating was upside down, with more voters disapproving (48 percent) than approving (43 percent) of his performance (April 6-7, 2010).

Congress continues to receive worse grades from voters: 59 percent disapprove of the job congressional Democrats are doing and 58 percent disapprove of the job Republicans are doing. Moreover, 28 percent of Republicans disapprove of the job their party is doing in Congress and 26 percent of Democrats disapprove of their party's performance.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 914 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 3 to April 5. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/FoxNewsPollBudget.pdf
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/06/fox-news-poll-vote-raising-debt-limit/

Michael Ramirez is right, of course, that the cuts just agreed upon are only a small down payment on what needs to be done:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/PhotoPopup.aspx?id=568664

Should Congressmen Fear the Tea Party?

Should Congressmen Fear the Tea Party?  by John Hinderaker/Powerline
Harry Reid apparently thinks he has a winning smear when he says that the Tea Party is driving Congressional Republicans. In his circle, association with the Tea Party is a bad thing. But is that true of Americans as a whole?

This Rasmussen survey, published yesterday, suggests that association with the Tea Party movement is generally considered a good thing. 48 percent of likely voters say their own views are closer to those of the average Tea Party member than to the average member of Congress. Only 20 percent say their views are closer to those of the average Congressman, while 30 percent are unsure.

Those data suggest that for most members of Congress, the best thing they could do is agree with Harry Reid that their views on the budget are those of the Tea Party movement. It is also noteworthy that Rasmussen's findings have changed little since a year ago, which suggests that the Left's outrageous smears against the movement--racism, etc.--have had little effect.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/04/028772.php

http://liten.be//l98id

http://i810.photobucket.com/albums/zz24/NoMoBama/W2m.jpg

The Rich Really Are Different: Their Incomes Fluctuate More

The Rich Really Are Different: Their Incomes Fluctuate More - The Atlantic

Robert Frank points out that a lot of the reason states are in so much trouble is that many have become incredibly dependent on high earners for their tax revenues:

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes--their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

Mr. Williams, a former economic forecaster for the state, spent more than a decade warning state leaders about California's over-dependence on the rich. "We created a revenue cliff," he said. "We built a large part of our government on the state's most unstable income group."

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois--states that are the most heavily reliant on the taxes of the wealthy--are now among those with the biggest budget holes. A large population of rich residents was a blessing during the boom, showering states with billions in tax revenue. But it became a curse as their incomes collapsed with financial markets.

This is one of the reasons that we can't fix all our budget problems with higher taxes on the rich--if we do that, revenues are going to collapse dangerously every time there's a recession.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/the-rich-really-are-different-their-incomes-fluctuate-more/73170/

Wisconsin Unions Get Ugly--threaten businesses

Wisconsin Unions Get Ugly

Now they're threatening businesses that stay neutral in the state's budget battle. 

Having lost their fight in the legislature, Wisconsin unions are now getting out the steel pipes for those who don't step lively to their cause. A letter we've seen that was sent to businesses in southeastern Wisconsin shows that Big Labor's latest strategy is to threaten small businesses with boycotts if they don't publicly declare their support for government union monopoly power.

Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."

We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.

The letter is signed by Jim Parrett, the "Field Rep." for Council 24 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which is the most powerful union in the AFL-CIO. The letter presents a litany of objections to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's changes to benefits and public union collective bargaining power, describing them as "things that make life working in a 24-7 facility tolerable."

The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

So even businesses that stay neutral in the political battle are considered the enemy and will be punished. Charming stuff, and especially coming from a union that claims (wrongly) to be losing its constitutional rights. Free speech for others apparently isn't all that important.

On Wednesday we called the telephone number listed under Mr. Parrett's name but his voicemail was full. We then spoke with union officials who said they'd ask Mr. Parrett to call us back, but he never called. He has since confirmed the accuracy of the letter to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which reports that the threat is an outgrowth of a boycott campaign by other unions that has targeted M&I Bank and Kwik Trip because those companies or their executives supported Mr. Walker's budget proposals.

This kind of union thuggery is all too common and is in keeping with the larger political goal of preventing union members from exercising their own rights of free association. The Walker reform that union leaders hate the most would require unions to be recertified annually by a majority of their members and let those members opt out of paying union dues.

Union chiefs like Mr. Parrett know what that means for their political clout. After taking office in 2005, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels used an executive order to end collective bargaining for public workers—a power granted by former Governor Evan Bayh.

The number of state public employees has since fallen to 28,700 from 35,000. But more important, the vast majority of those employees stopped paying union dues. Today, 1,490 state employees pay union dues in Indiana, down from 16,408 in 2005. Similar declines have played out in Washington State and Utah, when those states gave members the freedom to choose.

This is the prospect that has Wisconsin labor leaders so furious these days—furious enough that they'll even threaten the livelihoods of local business owners who won't join them at the barricades. This is the nasty modern reality of government union power.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576232780047736062.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Measuring Force--utter incoherence of Obama's non-doctrine

Measuring Force - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online by Thomas Sowell
Measuring Force

Our policy in Libya is incoherent. But we shouldn’t be surprised.

You don’t just walk up to the local bully and slap him across the face. If you are determined to confront him, then you try to knock the living daylights out of him. Otherwise, you are better off leaving him alone.

Anyone who grew up in my old neighborhood in Harlem could have told you that. But Barack Obama didn’t grow up in my old neighborhood. He had a much more genteel upbringing, including a fancy private school, in Hawaii.

Maybe that is why he thinks he can launch military operations against Moammar Qaddafi, while promising not to kill him and promising that no American ground troops will be used.

It is the old liberal illusion that you can measure out force with a teaspoon, not only in military operations micromanaged by civilians in Washington, like the Vietnam War, but also in domestic confrontations when the police are trying to control a rioting mob, and are being restrained by politicians, while the mob is restrained by nobody.

We went that route in the 1960s, and the results were not inspiring, either domestically or internationally.

The old saying, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him,” is especially apt when it comes to attacking a widely recognized sponsor of international terrorism like Colonel Qaddafi. To attack him without destroying his regime is to ask for increased terrorism against Americans and America’s allies. So is replacing him with insurgents who include other sponsors of terrorism.

President Obama’s speech on Monday night was long on rhetoric and short on logic. He said, “I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us.”

Just what would lead him to conclude that this includes the largely unknown forces who are trying to seize power in Libya?

Too often in the past, going all the way back to the days of Woodrow Wilson, we have operated on the assumption that a bad government becomes better after the magic of “change.” President Wilson said that we were fighting the First World War to make the world “safe for democracy.” But what actually followed was the replacement of autocratic monarchies by totalitarian dictatorships that made previous despots pale in comparison.

The most charitable explanation for President Obama’s incoherent policy in Libya — if incoherence can be called a policy — is that he suffers from the longstanding blind spot of the Left when it comes to the use of force.

A less charitable and more likely explanation is that Obama is treating the war in Libya as he treats all sorts of other things, as actions designed above all to serve his own political interests and ideological visions. Whether it does even that depends on what the situation is like in Libya when the 2012 elections roll around.

As for the national interest of the United States of America, Barack Obama has never shown any great concern about that.

President Obama started alienating our staunchest allies, Britain and Israel, from his earliest days in office, while cozying up to adversaries such as Russia and China, not to mention the Palestinians, who cheered when they saw the televised collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Many people on various parts of the political spectrum are expressing a sense of disappointment with Obama. But I have not felt the least bit disappointed.

Once in office, President Obama has done exactly what his whole history would lead you to expect him to do — such as cutting the military budget and vastly expanding the welfare state.

He has bypassed the Constitution by appointing power-wielding “czars” who don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate as cabinet members must be, and now he has bypassed Congress by taking military actions based on authorization by the United Nations and the Arab League.

Those who expected his election to mark a new “post-racial” era may be the most disappointed. He has appointed people with a track record of promoting race resentment and bias, like Attorney General Eric Holder and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Disappointing? No. Disgusting? Yes. The only disappointment is with voters who voted their hopes and ignored his realities.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2011 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263357/measuring-force-thomas-sowell

Our Workforce Lost 2.33 Million People in One Year?

Our Workforce Lost 2.33 Million People in One Year? - By Jim Geraghty - The Campaign Spot - National Review Online By Jim Geraghty

My regular correspondent Number Cruncher takes a look at the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and notices:

The percentage of the overall population that is employed in March 2010 was 58.6 percent. One year later, the total percentage of overall population employed is . . . 58.5 percent. Conclusion: In a growing population we have produced fewer jobs than the number that the population grew. (For the record, the number of Civilian non-institutionalized population was 237.2 million in March 2010, and is 239.00 million in March 2011.)


The number of people who were “not in the labor force” In March 2010 was 83,264,000 (seasonally adjusted). In March 2011, it was 85,594,000 (seasonally adjusted). If you want to know how unemployment dropped a point, look no further than this statistic.

If you remove 2.33 million people from the labor force within one year, that will indeed help lower the unemployment rate. It is, however, not the same as helping the unemployed find jobs.

I’m scheduled to appear on MSNBC’s Hardball tonight with guest host Chuck Todd, discussing the jobs numbers and the 2012 campaign.

UPDATE: Topic change! I’m now talking about this Ron Brownstein piece on “the changing American electorate.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/263656/our-workforce-lost-233-million-people-one-year

A ‘Tea Party’ budget

A ‘Tea Party’ budget - TheHill.com

The U.S. government is broke — a concept the American people understand, but is lost on many of our representatives.

Let’s review the math. Our federal budget (estimated) is made up of incoming tax revenue ($2.2 trillion), spending ($3.5 trillion), deficit, aka the yearly credit card ($1.3 trillion), and current national debt (more than $14 trillion). Basically, debt per taxpayer is now $128K.

The budget is similar to a family crisis created by spending too much on cars, luxury items and vacations at the risk of losing your house and not being able to feed your children. In response, most logical Americans get rid of the expensive car, sell the lavish items and cancel that vacation if they don’t have the money. As a family, they make the right decision and sacrifice together.

Unfortunately the congressional approach is not so simple, since you must consider the all-powerful god for the D.C. politician — self-preservation. Like addicts waiting for their next fix, they need just enough power to keep them alive. For that reason we are mired in a debate more concerned with scoring political points than actually fixing the problem.

Take Sen. Chuck Schumer as an example — he willingly admitted he is playing a political game with regards to spending cuts. He wants to use language like “extreme” to put House Speaker John Boehner in a “box.” Not to fix the problem, not to the help the American people, but to score political points.

Lately, Tea Party leaders haven’t used the friendliest words for my congressmen, John Boehner, and his colleagues in the House who are drafting a new budget. However, at no point in my conversations with him or his staff have I ever felt they were entering into the budget with the sole motivation of scoring political points.

The American voters were clear in 2010 that political points should never trump the well-being of the republic. The election of 2010 mandated that Congress fundamentally limit government. The America people never worry about politicians being in a “box.” They want the box destroyed, and business as usual to end.

These “extreme” positions of the Tea Party Sen. Schumer so mockingly references are things like “don’t spend more than you take in” and “increasing debt doesn’t bring prosperity.” Or take this really “extreme” position — “I know better than government how to run my life.”

So, my advice to Congress: be leaders who will stand on principle in the midst of political theater. Like many Americans over the last few years, we are simply asking Congress to create a federal budget in line with financial realities.

With this in mind, we are proposing a “Tea Party budget.” It was quite easy to draft, since we used the Clinton budget from Fiscal Year 2000. Adjusting that budget for inflation to match 2011 levels, an increase of 33 percent since 2000, the final number would be $2.3 trillion. The Clinton years were fraught with hardcore budget-busting procedures and red-hot rhetoric, yet Bill Clinton ran a $230 billion surplus in Fiscal Year 1999/2000. In 2010, the Federal Budget exceeded $3.5 trillion, a 58 percent increase over the inflation-adjusted 2000 budget.

It would require trimming, but we could live on the same personal income we had a few years ago. That is exactly what we are demanding from Congress. They must take a very serious look at where our money really goes: Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, defense and the Treasury (mostly payment on the debt). These 4 areas of expenditure eclipse all federal tax revenue before we even consider any other departments that make up the remainder of the budget.

The battle isn’t over continuing resolutions, which perpetuate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) extended budget. If the Republicans in Congress are serious about a new direction, focusing on these key areas is the only path. Leaders will make tough decisions: eligibility and benefit criteria for Social Security and Medicare, reduction and block granting of Medicaid funds to the states while at the same time eliminating the extortion process that ties their hands through federal mandating, reductions in defense spending (foreign and domestic) and significant cuts in every single other federal department.

Across-the-board cuts are needed to keep a roof over our families’ heads. Kicking the can down the road never helped a family stay in their home, and will not help the current Republican crop in the 2012 election. Foreclosure is on the horizon and it’s time to get serious about protecting the family by reducing spending, and in that, most Americans find nothing “extreme.”

Littleton and Lillback are Tea Party leaders in Ohio and work with the Ohio Liberty Council, a statewide coalition of more than 65 liberty-minded organizations.

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/152895-a-tea-party-budget

Health Care Law Still Really Unpopular

Health Care Law Still Really Unpopular - The Atlantic

Health Care Law Still Really Unpopular By Megan McArdle

I took a casual gander at the health care poll numbers this morning, and what I saw surprised even me. Obamacare not only hasn't gotten more popular, but is now showing a record gap between favorables and unfavorables:

What's going on here? In part, it's just a matter of who's polling. There was a cycle in the poll numbers even at the height of the political battle over passage, because different pollsters tend to get numbers that are more or less favorable to the program. That effect is even more pronounced now, because few people are polling on it regularly, so having a couple of reliably negative or reliably positive pollsters in a row can make it look as if there's been a big movement.

But while this effect probably accounts for some of the shift, that's not the whole answer. When you compare each individual poll with prior polls by the same outfit, they all show a jump in unfavorables of roughly 3-5% since the fall.

Identifying the change is easier than identifying the cause, however. We haven't had all that much negative news about effects of the law itself since November. There are the lawsuits, of course, which probably aren't helping public perceptions. But I don't know if I want to chalk up such a large jump to a few lawsuits.

We can definitively say what hasn't happened, however; the public is not getting very excited about all the front-loaded benefits like keeping your kid on your health insurance until they're twenty-six

Does this matter? I think it does, in two ways. Firstly, as several legal observers have noted, the Supreme Court is more likely to strike down Obamacare, or at least major pieces of it, if there's clearly a strong public sense that the Democrats overreached. The Supremes are much less likely to overturn a very popular health care law that they think abuses the spirit of the commerce clause, than they are to overturn a health care law which abuses the spirit of the commerce clause, and is hated by a majority of the population.

And secondly, this is fundamentally what Democrats are going to be facing 2012 with. Passing the law so that we could find out what was in it has turned out to be an abysmal failure as a political strategy. Depending on how strong these feelings are, the GOP has a strong message for 2012: give us both houses and the presidency, and we'll get rid of it. Sure, Democrats could stage a filibuster--but I'm not sure the actual Democrats in the Senate are going to, if they get stomped again in the elections.

I'm not saying that this is the most likely outcome: only that these polls make it a potential outcome. I still tend to think that the most important factors in 2012 are going to be the weakness of the Republican field, and the strength of the economic recovery. But this does raise some interesting questions about lock-in and American politics. Most progressives and Democratic strategists assumed that once you got this thing passed, it would essentially become another sacred cow like Medicare and Social Security. But those programs weren't unpopular when they passed. This was. Does that change the political calculus?

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/health-care-law-still-really-unpopular/236653/

Romney: On jobs, where is Obama?

By Mitt RomneyUpdated 5h 24m ago

Sometimes truth arrives from the most unexpected sources. Christina Romer, President Obama's former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, said last week that she was dismayed at Washington's lack of focus on jobs.

By Alex Brandon, AP


"I frankly don't understand why policymakers aren't more worried about the suffering of real families," Romer said. "We need to realize that there is still a lot of devastation out there." She called the 8.9% unemployment rate "an absolute crisis."

How bad is it? Last week, in the blue-collar community of Taunton, Mass., the annual jobs fair was canceled because not enough companies came forward to offer jobs.
Last year, unemployment averaged a shocking 9.6%. The previous year, at 9.3%, was only marginally better. So far in 2011, it has fallen to 8.9%. A consensus has emerged among some economists and politicians that we must accept historically high levels of unemployment over the next several years. Best case forecasts see a range between 7.5% and 8%.

Faces of despair

Even 7.5% unemployment means 11.5 million Americans without jobs. The human cost of that dry statistic can be detailed in a canvas of broken hopes and shattered lives. Workers at job fairs today are confronting an employment market in which there are almost five times as many job seekers as there are openings. Anyone who has visited such a fair or gone to a career center has seen the face of despair up close.

President Obama didn't cause the recession, but he made it worse and caused it to last longer. From the outset, he inaugurated the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs policies we have seen since Jimmy Carter. Further, the White House has still not crafted any discernible plan to put Americans back to work.

Creating good, lasting jobs will require the following:

•A tax policy that rewards savings, investment, entrepreneurial risk-taking and exports.

•Free, open and fair access to foreign markets, with a focus on constructive trade reform with China.

•Elimination of the federal bureaucratic and regulatory stranglehold on business.

•A market-driven energy policy that encourages investment in America and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

•A commitment to fiscal responsibility through budget restraints and entitlement reform.

Not more stimulus

Another stimulus is not the answer: like putting a cup of gasoline on a fire, it produces heat only for a very short time. A stimulus doesn't lead entrepreneurs and businesses to make the long-term investments in people and capital that will help the unemployed get the good jobs they deserve.

Our high unemployment is a tragedy for millions, and it is a tragedy for America. If our society fails to offer a significant segment of its population the opportunity to participate in economic life, the broader social and moral fabric will fray.

One of our greatest strengths as a nation is our dynamism. When we mobilize to solve a problem, we solve it. It might be a cliché to say that leadership is required, but it also happens to be true.

We don't have that leadership now. Instead, we have passive acquiescence. Yet, if there was an ever an issue on which all Americans should agree, it is that when it comes to unemployment, the time to define deviancy upward is overdue.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-03-31-column31_ST1_N.htm

Rasmussen poll shows no bump for Obama on national security

Rasmussen poll shows no bump for Obama on national security by Ed Morrissey

Before Barack Obama gave his speech on Monday explaining his decision to attack Libya, he already had trouble with voters on national security in Rasmussen’s polling, scoring only a 43% approval on the issue against 37% who rated him as poor. Obama’s speech had an impact, but not the one he’d hoped, and not just on national security:

Although President Obama made an address to the nation Monday night to explain his decision to commit U.S. military forces to Libya, fewer voters than ever give him positive grades on his handling of national security issues.


A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows 37% give the president good or excellent ratings on his handling of national security issues. Slightly more voters (40%) say the president is doing a poor job when it comes to national security. (To see survey question wording, click here).


Last week, just after his decision to get involved in Libya, 43% gave the president positive marks for his handling of national security, while 34% rated his performance as poor.


Positive marks for the president on national security are now at their lowest level since he took office in January 2009. His poor rating is the highest measured since last August. One year ago, 45% gave the president positive ratings on national security, while 32% rated the job he was doing as poor.

The really bad news? The survey asked voters to rate Obama on two issues — national security and the economy — and he did best on national security. On the economy, his approval rating is 34/66, while he gets a barely-better 37/62 on national security.

Let’s take a quick look at the internals. The only demos Obama wins on the economy are black voters (88/11), Democrats (just 65%m with 35% disapproving), self-described liberals (77/22) and those unsure of their ideology (56/45), and those earning under $20K (57/44). He wins the same demos for national security, but adds only 40-49YOs (50/49).

Who does that leave out? Notably, independents are deeply dissatisfied on both issues, rating Obama 21/78 on the economy and 27/71 on national security. Self-described moderates are also seriously disaffected, 36/63 on the economy and 41/58 on national security. Women are just as unhappy on both issues, 34/64 on the economy and 40/59 on national security.

Young people, the enthusiastic base for Obama’s 2008 grassroots rise, are downright disillusioned, rating him 44/53 on the economy and a catastrophic 36/62 on national security. It’s worth noting that only 8% of 18-29YOs rate Obama as “excellent” on national security, while 44% rate him as “poor.” That’s the worst rating among all age demos; he only gets significantly worse ratings from Republicans (62%), self-described conservatives (54%), and people earning between $75-100K per year (57%).

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/march_2011/ratings_for_obama_s_national_security_performance_fall_to_new_low

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/03/rasmussen-poll-shows-no-bump-for-obama-on-national-security/

Rasmussen: Obama approval rating continued downward trend in March

Rasmussen: Obama approval rating continued downward trend in March Mark Tapscott Beltway Confidential Washington Examiner

By Mark Tapscott
Rasmussen: Obama approval rating continued downward trend in March

Obama's public support continues to head downward, according to the latest monthly compilation of Rasmussen Reports daily tracking survey.
"The number of voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance inched up a point in March - for the second month in a row - to 40%. This figure has stayed in a narrow range of 37% to 44% since July 2009.

"In March, the number who Strongly Approve of Obama’s performance dropped a point to 25%. That number has ranged from 25% to 30% since October 2009. By comparison, 43% Strongly Approved of the president's performance in January of that year, the month he took office.

"The new findings generate a full-month Presidential Approval Index rating of -15. That’s down two points from last month and down four points from January. The president’s approval index rating stayed between -14 and -17 for most of last year, with one exception in April when it improved to -11."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/04/rasmussen-obama-approval-rating-continued-downward-trend-march

Incomes, not jobs, could sink Obama re-election

Incomes, not jobs, could sink Obama re-election

James Pethokoukis Politics and policy from inside Washington

The Obama 2012 presidential campaign, which has now officially sprung to life, confronts a vexing political puzzle. The unemployment rate is plummeting. After the March jobs report release, White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee pointedly noted that the full percentage-point decline over the past four months is the largest such drop since 1984.

That statistical coincidence dovetails neatly with this David Axelrod-endorsed narrative: Just as Ronald Reagan bounced back from a nasty first-term recession to win re-election in 1984, a jobs rebound will mean four more years for Barack Obama. Got that, MSM? Obama 2012 = Reagan 1984. Now shut your laptops and run along.

But as the Obama political shop has surely noticed, the unemployment rate isn’t the only politically important number on the decline. Simultaneously, their boss’s approval rating has fallen from 51.0 percent on Jan. 24 to 47.4 percent today, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average. A large-sample Quinnipiac survey out last week had Obama at 42 percent. And a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll found that Americans’ confidence in the way the country is going has slumped to its lowest point of Obama’s presidency with 64 percent believing the nation is on the wrong track. Even as more jobs are being created, so are doubts about Obama.

Keep in mind that forecasting models suggest a president with a 50 percent approval rating on Election Day has an 80 percent chance at re-election vs. just a one-in-three chance for an incumbent with a 45 percent rating. And polling analyst Nate Silver notes that every incumbent with an approval rating of 49 percent or higher since World War Two won re-election, while every candidate with a rating of 48 percent or lower lost.

Morning in America 2.0, Mr. Axelrod? More like Threat Level: Midnight. And here’s why: While jobs are growing, incomes are not. And income growth — or the lack of it — political scientists agree, is the economic variable with the most impact on national elections. Strong growth in real disposable personal income led to huge victories for Reagan in 1984, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Weak or negative growth doomed Jimmy Carter in 1980, George Bush in 1992 and John McCain in 2008.

Real disposable personal income fell 0.1 percent in February. Average hourly wages were flat in March, and have grown at a 1.8 percent annualized rate over the past three months, according to the Economic Policy Institute. With inflation running around 2 percent, this means the average American is falling behind, his standard of living dropping. As the Brooking Institution figures things, between October 2010 and February 2011, real hourly and weekly earnings in the private sector fell 1.1 percent.

Even Goolsbee knows those numbers won’t improve a whole lot unless the unemployment rate moves sharply lower. Yet the official White House economic forecast has unemployment averaging 8.6 percent in 2012, not much below the current 8.8 percent rate. (The broader U-6 rate, which includes discouraged workers and part-timers who want full-time gigs, is a sickening 15.7 percent.) JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli thinks a combination of so-so economic growth, a vast pool of unemployed, higher energy prices and the expiration of the 2011 payroll tax cuts means income growth will likely remain “tepid” going forward.

So for now, consider Obama a favorite to win a second term — most presidential incumbents do — but only by the narrowest of margins. If incomes stay stagnant — and if Republicans can nominate someone with a strong, passionate and specific pro-growth economic message — Election Night 2012 could be a long one.

http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/04/02/incomes-not-jobs-could-sink-obama-re-election/

GOP launches mock 'Obama 2012' ad

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/153231-republicans-launch-mock-obama-2012-ad

In Wisconsin, mob rule and intimidation

Katherine Kersten: In Wisconsin, mob rule and intimidation



It's an affront to democracy, but since it's by the left, the media look away.

Death threats to elected representatives. Menacing mobs -- swearing, screaming, spitting -- surrounding them as they walk to work.

Rampaging crowds invading the Capitol, overwhelming police, kicking in doors and climbing through windows. Bomb threats, and rounds of ammunition discovered at the State Capitol.

Is this Nazi brownshirts at work, busting up a meeting of political opponents in 1933 Germany?

No, it's what has passed for "democratic opposition" in Wisconsin over the last six weeks.

As the dust settles (for the moment) on Cheeseland's bruising struggle over public-union power, union supporters are attempting to portray their battle to bring state government to a halt as a noble struggle to defend democracy and "the people's rights."

But the real threat to democracy -- and to the rule of law -- comes from union members and their Democratic allies who have tried to derail the democratic process through mob rule and intimidation. Their omnipresent poster says it all: It's Wisconsin in the shape of a fist.

On March 11, the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced that law enforcement agencies had "investigated numerous threats against elected officials over the last four weeks."

"It's not safe, I think, to be walking on the street and be a Republican in Madison right now," state Sen. Glenn Grothman told CNN. A note pushed under his office door read: "The ONLY GOOD Republican is a DEAD Republican."

"We will hunt you down," ran a threat e-mailed to another senator. "We will slit your throats. We will drink your blood. I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square. This is your last warning."

"I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records," warned another. "We have all planned to assult [sic] you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head."

Police advised GOP Sen. Randy Hopper, a death threat recipient, to cancel his plans to march in a St. Patrick's Day Parade in Fond du Lac.

"Officers say the lawmaker's absence will take some of the pressure off enforcement, but security will be high in Fond du Lac and at other parades in the state," reported Green Bay's WLUK-TV.

Hopper said in a statement that he "had looked forward to walking the parade route, but I in no way want to put the citizens of Fond du Lac in harm's way."

This is small town Wisconsin we're talking about, folks, not Mogadishu.

On the night of March 9, after the state Senate passed the union bill, police smuggled GOP senators through a tunnel to avoid confrontations.

The lawmakers were loaded on a bus under police guard. Immediately, a howling mob swarmed the bus -- pounding on it, shouting curses and finally pursuing it.

Meanwhile, hordes of protesters surged into the Capitol, muscling past police, kicking in doors, damaging windows and shouting, "This is what democracy looks like!" and "Whose house? Our house!"

"Within an hour and a half of the vote, the protesters had seized the building's lower floors," reported WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. "Police gave up guarding the building entrances and retreated to the third floor."

Shouldn't political thuggery of this kind be ringing alarm bells across the nation? Yet national mainstream media have mostly responded with a shrug.

These are the same folks, you'll recall, who burst a blood vessel if a Tea Partier raised his voice at a 2008 townhall meeting on Obamacare.

Over at the left-wing Huffington Post, liberal Lee Stranahan berated major media for their silence: "Proven death threats against politicians are being ignored by the supposedly honest media. ... Ignoring the story of these threats is deeply, fundamentally wrong. It's bad, biased journalism that will lead to no possible good outcome, and progressives should be leading the charge against it."
Now the state's new union legislation is on hold, held up by a judge's restraining order after Democrats claimed that Senate Republicans gave inadequate notice of the vote. (That's rich, considering Democratic senators had been holed up in Illinois for weeks precisely to prevent that vote.)

The GOP could bypass the restraining order simply by voting on the bill again. But Wisconsin Republican Party Executive Director Mark Jefferson told the Wall Street Journal that's unlikely.

"Protesters have congregated at the homes of Republican legislators, surrounded their cars and jeered at them as they walk to work, Mr. Jefferson said," the Journal reported. "'It was such a fiasco before, they're probably not eager to get spit on again,' he said."

In a liberal democracy, such brownshirt tactics should be anathema. If we allow them to succeed in Wisconsin, we can expect them increasingly to poison democratic deliberations across the land.

Katherine Kersten is a senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment. The views expressed here are her own. She is at kakersten@gmail.com.


http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/118684099.html

GOP Can't Ignore Wisconsin Recall Battle

GOP Can't Ignore Wisconsin Recall Battle

For weeks, the national media focused on union protests in Wisconsin.
Aging hippies trashed the state Capitol. Union members were bused in from across the country in color-coded T-shirts. Democrat state senators hid in an Illinois motel.
Each little drama was an organized response to Republican Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill that negated labor's influence with state employees.
You could not turn to any cable or network newscast without seeing Walker -- or other states' Republican governors and legislators copying him.
Then, through a legislative maneuver, Walker outfoxed the Democrats and passed his budget bill.
The TV crews' klieg lights went out. The political circus packed up. Our attention turned to Japan and Libya.
Perhaps we all looked away too quickly.
The story that no one talks about, that has the biggest impact on the 2012 election, is slowly brewing -- with Republicans barely paying attention.
The two sides in Wisconsin did not drop their weapons. They just settled into high-stakes trench warfare.
Wisconsin has what can only be described as a screwy recall law; get enough signatures on a petition and you can trigger new elections.
Democrats hope to use this law to undo the GOP's statehouse majority.
Recall elections could begin as early as June for 16 targeted Wisconsin state senators -- eight Republicans who voted in favor of the law that ends most collective bargaining powers for public-employee unions, and eight Democrats who ran and hid in Illinois in what turned out to be a failed attempt to keep GOP lawmakers from voting on the measure.
When Republicans won big in 2010, Wisconsin was the best example of that midterm wave and the most significant warning to President Obama's re-election campaign: Wisconsin's three-term Democrat U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold went down and the GOP took the governor's mansion, two more congressional seats and state legislative majorities.
All in a state that Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama won as Democrat presidential candidates.
While Wisconsin's story fell off the front page, the left -- fueled by unions, the Democratic Governors Association and MoveOn.org -- has begun a multimillion-dollar TV campaign to support the audacious recall effort.
The only Republican strategy -- and money -- machine that really seems to understand the potential effect is the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) headed by Ed Gillespie, former national GOP chairman. The RSLC is so worried that it is making an unusual mid-cycle investment of money that it could have used in 2012.
Unions and the left are far outspending pro-business interests and the right on recall ads.
Democrats are wise to see more at stake than a single state Senate majority and a new political map that could unseat two freshmen Republican congressmen. They know this is the first battle of 2012 -- their version of 2010's surprise election of Scott Brown, R-Mass., who won a blue-state U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Democrat Ted Kennedy.
Republicans won in Massachusetts because conservatives around the country poured money into Brown's campaign; he raised a million bucks a day and couldn't spend it all.
His opponent, Democrat Margaret Coakley, was strapped and forced to beg money from Washington lobbyists in the race's last 10 days, which Brown quickly used in a commercial against her.
Massachusetts Democrats got ambushed. Will Republicans let that happen to them in Wisconsin?
This will have a chilling effect on every other state dealing with public-employee collective bargaining or pensions in the next two years -- which is just about all of them.
If Walker and other governors cannot tame public pensions and union contracts, you will see tax hikes enacted under freshmen GOP governors across the country in the next few years. It is simple math.
If Republicans don't engage with real cash in Wisconsin, they could lose the state Senate in advance of redistricting this summer, embolden unions and scare hell out of Republicans in statehouses everywhere.
Walker may have won on policy -- yet Republicans could face massive losses nationally if they don't win those Wisconsin recalls.
Just because the Democrats returned from Illinois doesn't mean the left surrendered

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/03/27/dont_ignore_wisconsin_recall_battle_109362.html?sms_ss=blogger&at_xt=4d9006f7d79dff6c%2C1

Rule of thumb: Liberals want conservatives to shut up, and conservatives want liberals to keep talking

Rule of thumb: Liberals want conservatives to shut up, and conservatives want liberals to keep talking The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Hey, did you know that the Huffington Post strives for civil discourse? Just ask ‘em!

Here’s HuffPo’s Mario Ruiz explaining why their ploy to convince people they’re not a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party is now ending, as told to fellow traveler Greg Sargent:

The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s false ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.


He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.

Okay, let’s recap: Depending on your point of view, Andrew Breitbart contributing to HuffPo is either like A) Lex Luthor writing op-eds for The Daily Planet, or B) Superman freelancing for the Legion of Doom’s company newsletter. Among those who are very displeased with Arianna’s decision to invite Breitbart aboard are former White House Race Hustling Czar Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, whose organization Color of Change launched a vigorous shaming campaign against Breitbart. This campaign included spamming Twitter with hundreds (thousands?) of copies of the exact same accusation against Breitbart, and — at least according to them — 43,000 of their members making phone calls to HuffPo. (It seems unlikely that a group nobody had heard of until this week has over 43,000 members, but whatever.)

Initially HuffPo stood by Breitbart, but yesterday they caved, as seen above. Their pretext is that Breitbart was a big meanie to Jones in an interview with our own Steven Nelson. Breitbart called Jones a “commie punk,” a “human toxin,” a “cockroach,” and a “cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak.” Oh, and for good measure, he called Color of Change “left-wing freaks.” That’s the reason HuffPo is giving for pushing him off their front page. That’s the violation of HuffPo’s “tenets of debate and civil discourse.”

This is great news for fans of comedy, because now people get to dig up examples of all the HuffPo front-pagers who’ve indulged in vicious ad hominem attacks over the years. Nelson follows up with a good recap of ad hominems by HuffPo contributors like John Cusack (Republicans are “a league of bastards”; Iraq war supporters are “human scum”), Alec Baldwin (Cheney is a “lying, thieving Oil Whore”), and others. Mickey Kaus looks at HuffPo writer Jason Linkins, who by their own rules should be thrown off the front page. And of course, Breitbart’s Big Journalism site is getting in on the action, pledging to help HuffPo enforce their “ad hominem” rule and providing evidence of such from none other than Van Jones. Remember this one? (See at link)

Or is it only considered uncivil if you disagree with it? Is it only an ad hominem if it doesn’t make a left-wing audience bray in satisfaction?

I’m sure we’ll see more examples of this glaring double standard in the days and weeks ahead. HuffPo has lots of contributors, and according to this precedent, anything those contributors have ever said in any venue is fair game.

Okay, libs: Ready, set, rationalize!

Read more (and all links including YouTube: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/25/rule-of-thumb-liberals-want-conservatives-to-shut-up-and-conservatives-want-liberals-to-keep-talking/#ixzz1I8GsLWj0

The Return of Anarchism « Commentary Magazine

The Return of Anarchism « Commentary Magazine

(DP: This is a longer read but if you have the time, it is extemely illuminating re: current events) The Return of Anarchism Abe Greenwald

In late 2010, several organizations with mysterious names made impressive claims on the world’s attention. During a two-day period in the first week of November, more than a dozen parcel bombs arrived at embassies in Athens and at the offices of leading politicians in three European cities. Only one exploded, burning a mail handler, but European capitals went on high alert, and international mail to and from Greece was halted for 48 hours. Police soon arrested two suspects who were identified as members of a terrorist group called the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei, with more to follow in the ensuing weeks.

In early December, an organization calling itself Anonymous launched disabling attacks on the websites of corporations that had ceased facilitating donations to the whistleblower group WikiLeaks. For the second time in a year, Anonymous slowed down or took offline the likes of Visa, Bank of America, PayPal, and Amazon, and even the sites of some institutions and public figures, such as Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who had come out strongly against WikiLeaks.

On December 23, two mail bombs exploded less than three hours apart, seriously injuring employees at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome. The Informal Federation of Anarchists claimed responsibility and vowed future attacks to “destroy the systems of domination.” And on January 30 of this year, the Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei struck again, with an explosion at the Athens courthouse, where 13 of its members were scheduled to go on trial.

These real-world and cyberspace groups have more in common than names seemingly lifted from comic books. They are anarchists, and the headline-grabbing attacks at the end of last year are only part of a larger recent anarchist trend. According to the European police office, Europol, “Spain, Greece, and Italy reported a total of 40 attacks by left-wing and anarchist groups for 2009. This constitutes an increase of 43 percent compared to 2008; the number of attacks more than doubled since 2007.” The numbers didn’t include cyberattacks, and new numbers from 2010 aren’t in yet—but they are certain to show another spike.

Suddenly, then, an ideological philosophy and political movement that had been thought of as a dusty oddity, a relic of the late 19th century, has returned to the fore with enough consequence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently denounced terrorism “whether it comes from the right, the left, from al-Qaeda, from anarchists, whoever it is.”

What accounts for the new appeal of anarchism? There is one explanation for those attempting to blow up buildings and kill people and another one for those trying to muck about with the Internet. For the bricks-and-mortar anarchists, the 2008 financial collapse gave surprising currency to the idea that their seemingly anachronistic philosophy was actually the only left-wing alternative to an overweening European corporate statism that had failed so spectacularly. The cyberanarchists, meanwhile, have found a dream home inside the Internet, which, as a medium for social and economic interaction, has inspired a degree of antinomian romanticism not known since the first wave of anarchists terrified Europe more than a century ago.



Originally a part of the socialist left in 19th-century Europe and Russia, anarchism arose in response to an undeniably unjust social, political, and imperial order. Anarchists railed against regimes in countries in which genuine monopolies were sanctioned and the poor were punished by all manner of law and taxation. The Industrial Revolution had taken hold, and modernization had created wealth among capitalists but had done little to distribute that wealth equitably. Working conditions were often unspeakable, and as farm workers made the uneasy transition to industrial labor, emperors, kings, and czars took one another’s measure and conspired to expand their empires.

In France, revolutions and coups shape-shifted the country repeatedly from a monarchy to a republic to a dictatorship and back again. When settled, at last, as a republic, France allied with Czarist Russia after 1870 to stave off the threat of a rising industrialist Germany. In Russia, where industrialization was lagging, social unrest following the liberation of the slave class in 1861 was greater than anywhere else in Europe.

Into this turbulent mix came socialists of various stripes, offering hope to peasants and laborers who found no regime worthy of their allegiance. It is among these socialists that anarchists first appeared. Strangely enough, anarchists do not believe in anarchy in the literal sense, a state of utter bedlam. Rather, they are proponents of “anarchism,” a political philosophy defined by seminal Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin in 1910 as “a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government.” In such a society, he said, harmony would be achieved “not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.”

This pacific ideal notwithstanding, anarchism did not actually express itself in a peaceable manner. Indeed, anarchism was the source of a new kind of violent pandemonium without precedent in Western history. Dynamite-throwing, bombing, stabbing, and shooting—these were the tools with which anarchists sought to bring about their earthly paradise under a doctrine they called “propaganda of the deed.” Thus was the conduct we call “terrorism” born.

Anarchists brought their ideas into the physical world with high-profile attacks in Europe too numerous to name. These included the bombing of the French National Assembly in 1893 and the assassinations of French President François Sadi Carnot in 1894, two Spanish prime ministers in 1897 and 1912, King Umberto I of Italy in 1900, and King George I of Greece in 1913.

In its heyday, anarchism was divided into sub-sects. Kropotkin was an anarcho-communist, who foresaw an age of voluntary communal living in which no centralized power would be required to adjudicate disputes or apportion resources. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who declared in 1851 that “anarchy is order,” advocated anarcho-syndicalism, in which worker-owned factories constituted the social and economic anchors of agreeable and sustainable human association. The Russian Michael Bakunin (1814-1876) regarded revolution itself as an essential component of human existence and therefore intrinsically worthy. The German Max Stirner (1806-1856) argued that man’s authority over himself was absolute and that any effort to remove him from the state of nature was harmful and to be resisted.

These hair-splitting abstractions were of little moment next to the way most tended to celebrate violence as a majestic virtue in terms eerily similar to the bloodthirsty ravings of present-day jihadists. “Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates,” said Bakunin, “only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all.” It was such theorizing that sent some of the age’s greatest writers into waging inspired polemical warfare against anarchism. Works like Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1861), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Devils (1867), Henry James’s The Princess Cassamassima (1886), and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1903) offered up unvarnished portraits of an intellectualized evil—portraits that helped consign anarchism to the outmost fringe of enlightened opinion.

As the imperial order of European states gave way, moreover, to fairer and more just regimes, anarchism lost a good deal of its purpose. In his 1873 tract, Statism and Anarchy, Bakunin wrote, “A nation’s geniuses are highly aristocratic, and everything they have done until now has served only to educate, strengthen, and enrich the exploiting minority.” Bakunin was not wrong at the time, especially when it came to his own country. But as bourgeoning capitalist democracies allowed more of its citizens to participate in areas once reserved for the aristocracy alone, the nihilistic rage that fueled anarchism began to wither—or turned instead on the growing middle class, which was the key target not of anarchism but of communism.

Both Marxists and anarchists believe in the illegality and corrupting qualities of capital, profits, rent, and property. Incitement to class warfare is a constant in anarchist literature. Marxists and anarchists both seek the ultimate goal of a state-free society. But whereas Marxists believe that the state will dissolve on its own once it has overseen the establishment of a worker’s paradise, anarchists believe in skipping this intermediary period. Indeed, anarchism’s strongest critique of Marxism is that the centralized political institutions Marxism requires will necessarily lead to corruption and authoritarianism. Anarchist principles usually dictate that people live only on what their efforts earn them and take for themselves only what they need.

Anarchism had a run in the United States as well; Leon Czolgosz shot and killed President William McKinley in 1901. Other American anarchists sent out mail bombs, killed New Yorkers in a 1920 Wall Street bomb attack, and made various attempts on the lives of some politicians and prominent Americans. Despite that, the United States never saw the degree of anarchist violence that kept Europe on edge for more than a quarter of a century. And the national sensation caused in the 1920s by the arrest, conviction, and eventual execution of Sacco and Vanzetti on charges of bombing a Massachusetts shoe factory and murdering a businessman brought America’s anarchist period to a sharp close.

Still, when the newly minted radical leftists of the 1960s began to take up their positions on the ideological barricades, they plundered the old anarchist catalogue and picked up whatever was within easy reach and whatever was most dramatic. Anti-nuclear activists blocked the way to nuclear power plants and called it “propaganda of the deed”; flower children idealized man in a state of nature, and so on. The most important change in the appeal of anarchism during this period was captured by Marshall S. Shatz, who edited the 1971 volume The Essential Works of Anarchism and wrote in its introduction, “With the virtual disappearance of the ‘peasant’ and the assimilation by most industrial workers of what are deemed to be ‘bourgeois’ values and conventions, anarchism in the latter twentieth century has found a new constituency among the educative but restive middle-class young.”
That anarchism soon evolved into a youth-focused pop-culture brand seems to have been inevitable. Within five years of Shatz’s observation, the English punk-rock band the Sex Pistols scored a top-40 hit single with their “Anarchy in the U.K.” The circle-A and black-flag symbols traditionally associated with anarchism became fashionable logos in and around the punk set, worn on the sleeves (and bare arms) not of dynamite throwers but of ordinary high-school kids. With its stark good vs. evil ethos, its anthology of lurid violence, and its intellectual foundations thinned down to a marketable sound-bite wavelength, anarchism was a natural fit for those whose politics arose in part from comic books. Successful graphic-novel franchises preaching the cleansing virtues of destructive violence (like Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta) sprang up. Anarchist language and imagery remain staples of a safe and commercialized Western dropout culture.

Its message suddenly achieved new currency in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. Anarchism began to seem less like theatrical window dressing on an otherwise blurry and lazy left-liberalism and more like a coherent ideological answer for European leftists let down and disappointed by the failures of the statism they once supported.

The financial meltdown and the global recession exposed, in addition to other things, the unfeasibility of the modern European entitlement state. Among the first casualties of the crisis were the Continent’s extensive social-welfare programs. Countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal found themselves on the brink of insolvency, while other countries recognized they were not far behind. Led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who drew up a plan to save her country 80 billion euros over four years, so-called austerity measures were put in place across Europe.

Riots and protests of European citizens began at once and have not yet ceased. But what exactly are they protesting? The best way to think of today’s Euro-anarchists is as a small contingent of rioters who have broken away from the crowd and recognized that asking a failed statist system for more statism is nonsensical. Action aimed at bringing down a failed system at least has a certain logic to it, however dark and unrealistic. Anarchism is the only place for the left to go when statism fails. It is no coincidence that Greece has seen the most anti-austerity rioting and also functions as the center of new anarcho-terrorism.

To be sure, one need not be or become a Euro-anarchist to be suspicious of one’s government in the wake of the financial crisis. Indeed, the American political landscape has recently been transformed by that very suspicion. But the United States was founded on a distrust of government, and its political system is designed to allow citizens a form of redress. When the Tea Party mobilized in 2009 as a response to governmental overreach, it didn’t advocate the destruction of the government. Rather, it demanded a return to a more faithful execution of the principles of the Founders. In Europe, no similarly embedded understanding of the rights of citizens to seek the redress of their grievances against the state exists in the political consciousness. On the Continent, the formation of countries was predicated on tribal ties and geography. A single nation can go from being a benign aristocracy to a military state to a theocracy to a fascist dictatorship and lose little of its identity in the process. It is understandable why Proudhon wrote of his ideal anarchist vision:

As for those who, after the departure of kings, still dream of consulates, of presidencies, of dictatorships, of marshalships, of admiralties, and of ambassadorships, they also will do well to retire. . . . The people no longer want this coin of monarchy; they understand that whatever phraseology is used, feudal system, governmental system, military system, parliamentary system, system of police, laws and tribunals, and system of exploitation, corruption, lying and poverty, are all synonymous.

All forms of government have failed Europeans at one time or another, and the ongoing financial crisis indicates that systemic failure is not beyond the bounds of possibility now. Thus the newfound attractiveness of anarchism, which at least promises its adherents that they will play a role in bringing about that failure rather than simply being passive victims of it.

While the global financial crisis has opened up a new space for anarchism on the political spectrum, the Internet offers cyberanarchists both an exquisitely effective means of attack and a paradisiacal anarchist habitat in itself.

In a November article on cyberwar in the New Yorker, the Obama administration’s “cyber czar” Howard Schmidt is quoted as saying, “The key point is that cyber war benefits no one.” He is wrong. Not only is this not a key point; it is not a point at all. It is perfectly true that no country would benefit from an all-out cyberwar, because the Internet is too thoroughly transnational. An attack on the private or public sector of any nation would result in great losses for other countries monetarily invested in that nation. But cyberanarchists stand to gain a great deal from cyberwarfare. It is a simple and devastating means of attacking governments and profit-making corporations around the world, all without the use of bombs or guns. It is “propaganda of the deed” achieved from the comfort of one’s home. Cyberanarchists are Shatz’s “educative but restive middle-class young” with laptops and wireless modems.

The ability to attack easily on a large scale through the Internet is unprecedented in human history. In 1873, Michael Bakunin lamented that, in Russia, all the various peasant communes were self-contained and self-governed and therefore could not join forces for an effective insurrection against the czar. He noted that “one of the chief duties of the revolutionary youth must be the establishment of a living insurrectionary bond between the separate communes, by all possible means and whatever the cost.” In 2010, Anonymous got upward of 30,000 individual computers to overwhelm targets with data at a moment’s notice.

But it is the way in which the Internet resembles the early anarchists’ utopian visions that is most arresting. Proudhon describes “a solidarity which is based upon general reason, and of which we may say, as Pascal said of the universe, that its center is everywhere, its circumference is nowhere.” And here is Bakunin again: “The natural revolutionaries of the Russian peasant world must be linked together, and wherever possible the same link must be created between the factory workers and the peasantry.” He spoke of a “personal link” through which “the best or most advanced peasants of each village, each county, and each district must get to know their counterparts in every other village, county, and district.” The Internet is Bakunin’s endless personal link, only it is global.
No less chilling is Proudhon’s contention that “beneath the governmental machinery, in the shadow of political institutions, out of the sight of statesmen and priests, society is producing its own organism, slowly and silently; and constructing a new order, the expression of its vitality and autonomy, and the denial of the old politics, as well as the old religion.”

Keep that “organism” in mind while taking in this excerpt from a statement issued by Anonymous and addressing “Governments of the Industrial world”:
[W]e are from the Internet. The new home of social consciousness. . . . We have no elected government, nor are we ever likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks; anonymity. I declare the global social space we are building together to be naturally independent of the tyrannies and injustices you seek to impose on us. . . . You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. . . . Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
This is almost too full of adolescent sci-fi bluster to take seriously. But in some sense, that’s the most worrying aspect of cyberanarchists. The danger isn’t in their seriousness but rather in the lack of seriousness with which they go about gumming up serious things. Consider that during its attack, Anonymous employed an application known as LOIC. This stands for Low Orbit Ion Cannon, which is a name taken from a fictional weapon in a video game. Comfortable, technology-savvy, Western youths are now able to turn our dominant means of communication and exchange into a kind of global video game and call it a meaningful political act. And consider this: there is a 27-year-old California native named Jacob Appelbaum. He is a self-proclaimed anarchist who wears shirts bearing messages such as “F—k politics—I just want to burn shit down.” Appelbaum was a troubled teenager who frequented the local mall in drag and picked fights. It was around that time of his life that he discovered computer programming and hacking, which, according to an interview he gave to Rolling Stone, made him “feel like the world was not a lost place. The Internet is the only reason I’m alive today.” Jacob Appelbaum is the only American member of WikiLeaks. What was stumbled upon as an escape route for an emotionally distraught kid was turned into a conduit for divulged global secrets. Only the modern age could facilitate such a consequential marriage of pubescent neurosis and international catastrophe.

Of the two types of present-day anarchism, the cyber variety is clearly the greater threat. Cyberanarchists are a well-adapted parasitic complication of modern times, whereas the European bomb throwers, for their rising numbers, are almost symbolically retro. Some among the latter have even taken to warning their targets in advance. Moreover, as the world economy finds its footing, disgruntled leftists of all stripes are sure to fade away. But the cyberanarchists, in addition to having the effective means, will also have their cause so long as their “new home of social consciousness” needs defending.

“That we are Utopians is well known,” wrote Peter Kropotkin of his ideological tribe. Whether they are indulging in a violent retro pastime or disruptive futuristic one, today’s anarchists remain utopians, believing, like yesterday’s, that they own the future. And the delusional claim on the world to come will always foster nihilism in the here and now. “We are not the least afraid of ruin,” said the Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durutti. Why? “We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. . . . The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history.” That indifference to the destructive acts of others functions as a dispensation they grant themselves. In this, the anarchists are like the jihadists, who value only the eventuality of the global caliphate and care not at all for the world that actually exists.

Paradoxically, the nihilism that this sense of destiny inspires guarantees that the anarchists, like the jihadists, will be with us only temporarily. For all their sentimentality about man in his natural state, they fail to see that it is in the true nature of humankind to look upon their program of ennobled annihilation, and recoil.

Abe Greenwald is the associate editor of COMMENTARY and writes regularly for its blog CONTENTIONS.

Why the left, on Kochs, all else--is inherently deeply dishonest

Anatomy of a Smear by John Hinderaker/Powerline

The Center for American Progress is generally regarded as a front for the Obama administration. Its President and CEO is John Podesta, formerly Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and the chairman of Barack Obama's transition team. CAP is lavishly funded by George Soros and several other left-wing billionaires. It runs, among other things, a web site called Think Progress, which cranks out a steady stream of slimy hit pieces for the benefit of the Obama administration and the far left.

Soros apparently believes that only left-wing billionaires should be able to participate in public discourse, so his Center for American Progress, through its web site, has carried on a bizarre vendetta against Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Industries. The Kochs are two of the very few billionaires who are active in politics on the conservative/libertarian side, a phenomenon that apparently drives left-wing billionaires wild with rage. I'm not sure why; maybe they think the Kochs are traitors to their class. In any event,Think Progress has stalked the Koch brothers with video cameras and produced one false, over-the-top attack on the Kochs after another, some of which we have had fun dissecting here.

As part of its ongoing obsession with all things Koch, Think Progress has attacked Congressman Mike Pompeo, who represents Kansas' 4th Congressional district. Wichita, where Koch Industries' headquarters is located, is in the 4th district. The 4th district seat was open in 2010, and Pompeo was the Republican nominee. Not surprisingly, the Koch brothers, who are Republicans, supported Pompeo, as did many Koch employees. (Koch Industries employs well over 2,000 people in the 4th district.) The 4th is strongly Republican, and Pompeo easily defeated his Democratic opponent, Raj Goyle, with 59 percent of the vote.

This may be the ultimate dog-bites-man story: Republicans support Republican candidate in Republican district! Republican candidate wins, despite opposition from goofball, Communist-leaning web sites! Not only that, having taken his seat, the Republican proceeds to vote with his fellow Republicans!
.........

What we see here is incest to the third degree. The disgusting morass of left-wing blogs, funded by far-left billionaires like George Soros, spew up an endless stream of slimy attacks on mainstream citizens, like Charles and David Koch, and mainstream politicians, like Mike Pompeo. Democratic Party outlets that are generally presumed to be more respectable, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, watch the dirt flow by and periodically, when they see something promising, pluck it out of the swamp and take it mainstream in order to benefit their party. The Post isn't as bad as some--I have referred to it as the most respectable voice of the Democratic Party--but when it follows this disgusting practice, plucking out the vilest unsubstantiated smear and promoting it for purely partisan purposes, it is hard to distinguish the Post from the most disreputable far-left rags, like Think Progress and the New York Times.

(For all the supporting details, quotes and links, go to full story at site): http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/03/028666.php