Conquer Club

Dancing Mustard wrote:*Tears of laughter stream down face*

black elk speaks wrote:*Angry grunting, of marginal utility or effect*

Dancing Mustard wrote:

black elk speaks wrote:*Angry grunting, of marginal utility or effect*

*masturbates to the site of his own posts... constructs no real basis for any sound argument for why he believes in socialism, and lastly, a nice ~slap on the ass where the door hits him on his way out!*

black elk speaks wrote:

Dancing Mustard wrote:

black elk speaks wrote:*Angry grunting, of marginal utility or effect*

*Bones your mother, then does doughnuts in his Lambo out in the parking lot while funky people applaud and swoon in wonder at his majesty*

*Gets angrier. Runs out of ideas. Copies what DM did better. Cries softly to self*

PopeBenXVI wrote:If they don't ban him I could excommunicate him for you BE? He could still talk though...I guess we would just have to burn him at the stake then. PARTY TIME!!!

PopeBenXVI wrote:no kidding huh? Well if he is guilty then he deserves it. How do you find that stuff out? I don't use the site much more than to play

PopeBenXVI wrote:I ment how did you find out or where do you go to read about that?

nagerous wrote:merge all the shit here!

There are a couple of data points worth keeping in mind as we await President Obama’s address to the nation tonight - and as we digest an aide's claim today, as Jake Tapper reports, that his strong approval rating is "earned." One, while his rating is high, it’s also dead average for a new president. The other is the impressive partisanship beneath it.

We have approval ratings for each of the last nine elected presidents after their first month in office, back to Dwight Eisenhower. (We’re leaving Johnson and Ford aside.) There’s been a healthy range, from a low of 55 percent for George W. Bush after the disputed election of 2000 to a high of 76 percent for his father 12 years earlier. (I’m using ABC/Post polls since Reagan, Gallup previously).

But the average? Sixty-seven percent. And Obama’s? Sixty-eight percent, as we reported in our new poll yesterday. His initial rating, then, is strong – but it’s also generally typical for a new guy.

An increasing factor, though, is partisanship. I’ve previously described a steadily rising correlation between political party allegiance and ideology over the past generation. It shows up in presidential approval, too. The gap between a president’s rating in his own party vs. the out party has been markedly wider for the last three officeholders compared with their six elected predecessors.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were the last two presidents of the less-partisan era. Reagan started with 89 percent approval among Republicans, 71 percent among independents and 56 percent among Democrats. Bush’s first-month approval ratings from these groups were 90, 74 and 64 percent, respectively. Those are 18- and 33-point gaps for Reagan, 16- and 26-point gaps for Bush.

That changed with Bill Clinton: He started with 86 percent approval from Democrats, but just 59 percent from independents and 40 percent from Republicans – gaps of 27 and 46 points, respectively. Then George W. Bush – 86 percent in his party, but dropping to 54 percent among independents (-32 points) and 37 percent among Democrats, 49 points lower than in his political base.

And now there’s Obama, who’s made reaching across party lines a point of principle in his presidency, with little to show for it so far. After a month in the hot seat, 90 percent of Democrats approve of his work, dropping to 67 percent of independents and 37 percent of Republicans. The 53-point difference between Democrats and Republicans in assessing Obama is numerically the biggest in data back to Eisenhower, albeit within sampling tolerances of the gap for George W. Bush.

There are substantive reasons for these differences; Obama’s staked his economic program on a massive infusion of federal dollars, and Republicans are pretty much constitutionally skeptical of the government’s ability to spend money wisely or well, at least on social programs. They’re also especially concerned about the ballooning deficit.

This doesn’t mean there’s no potential upside in Obama’s at least trying to reach across the aisle. Two-thirds of Americans say they’d rather see politicians try to cooperate across party lines, even if that means compromising on important issues. (But likely not if it means compromising on core values, as the message massager John Russonello aptly points out.) And Obama, in our poll, gets credit for seeking compromise in a way the Republicans in Congress don’t. That’s likely helping him among independents, at least as compared with George W. Bush, as the table below shows.

Nonetheless, the bottom line is the same as I suggested shortly after Inauguration Day. Reaching for bipartisanship is all well and good. Actually achieving it, given the sharp and substantive divisions that undergird partisan sentiments, is another issue entirely.

luns101 wrote:We should do shots every time Obama says, "I inherited this situation", "failed policies of the past 8 years", "we can't continue to..." or some combination of those. Some friends of mine who are Democrats used to do the same thing whenever Bush gave a state of the union or joint session of Congress speech.

luns101 wrote:We should do shots every time Obama says, "I inherited this situation", "failed policies of the past 8 years", "we can't continue to..." or some combination of those. Some friends of mine who are Democrats used to do the same thing whenever Bush gave a state of the union or joint session of Congress speech.

pimpdave wrote:

luns101 wrote:We should do shots every time Obama says, "I inherited this situation", "failed policies of the past 8 years", "we can't continue to..." or some combination of those. Some friends of mine who are Democrats used to do the same thing whenever Bush gave a state of the union or joint session of Congress speech.

But certainly not with those same words or phrases...

Were there bonus points awarded everytime Bush let something retarded slip out of his mouth, like "decider", or something else equally mortifyingly evident that he never got off the sauce...

luns101 wrote:

pimpdave wrote:

luns101 wrote:We should do shots every time Obama says, "I inherited this situation", "failed policies of the past 8 years", "we can't continue to..." or some combination of those. Some friends of mine who are Democrats used to do the same thing whenever Bush gave a state of the union or joint session of Congress speech.

But certainly not with those same words or phrases...

Were there bonus points awarded everytime Bush let something retarded slip out of his mouth, like "decider", or something else equally mortifyingly evident that he never got off the sauce...

LOL! No, but they did have a grid set up with catch phrases that he used a lot back then. I can't remember how the game worked out exactly, but it sort of reminded me of one of those grids that people use to predict the score at the end of each quarter of the Super Bowl. If you owned a square with that phrase, you had to drink.

Bush wasn't the most articulate of people, but the whole idea that he has low a IQ is a myth.

GabonX wrote:While he certainly was not the best President we ever had, I find it a bit difficult to call anyone who is elected President on two seperate occasions, or even becomes President, a "chronic under achiever."

got tonkaed wrote:

GabonX wrote:While he certainly was not the best President we ever had, I find it a bit difficult to call anyone who is elected President on two seperate occasions, or even becomes President, a "chronic under achiever."

while you probably would have a hard time justifying anyone elected to such an office as an underachiever in general, the question should rather be raised...did he underachieve as a relative to his position.