Quinnipiac:

President Barack Obama's job approval rating is 48 - 42 percent, the first time he has slipped below the 50 percent threshold nationally[...]

Rasmussen:

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.

Zogby:

President Barack Obama's job performance rating is holding steady at 49% in the most recent Zogby Interactive survey[...]

Fox News:

President Obama's approval rating has hit a new low of 46 percent[...]

And now, Gallup:

The latest Gallup Daily tracking results show 49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, putting him below the majority approval level for the first time in his presidency.

When will Obama realize that America does not want to go in the direction he is taking her?

I took this picture at an unnamed Reston, Virginia store I went to recently:

More than 40 cards pictured. Zero, as far as I can tell, mention "Christmas." Zero celebrate the object of Christmas, baby Jesus. Zero show a manger, Mary and Joseph, or the three kings. One single card reading "Noel" and showing an angel is as close as any card gets to Christmas.

Worry not, however, because the store has made sure to do its best to provide you with about ten - yes TEN - "Green" options, marked with gigantic labels so as to ensure that none among us get offended at the possible lack of green Christmas cards.

Incredible - these cards cater to everyone but the core constituency of Christmas: Christians. I'm all for the free market and support the obvious right of this store to do whatever it wants, but Christians are very much part of the free market as well, and it would serve them well not to stimulate the business of those who will not cater to them.

Last year I wrote about the economics of Christmas gifts, and illustrated the sad reality of the waste brought on by gift exchanges. This year, the evidence piles up.

Now apply this to health care.

In this season of fantasy football, don't you wish an equivalent existed for the more intellectual types among us?

My good friend Josh Blackman, lover of anything and everything law-related, has just launched FantasySCOTUS, a Supreme Court Fantasy League (and, as far as I know, the only one of its kind).

The rules are simple: predict the outcome of each case and how each judge decides on it. At the very least, go over there and take a look. I highly recommend it.

Can you guess which is the Republicans' health care bill, and which is the Democrats'?

(via CfG)

This is quite obvious, but it's nice to hear it articulated by the Left.

There's a reason I'm a huge fan of the Club for Growth.

Few political myths are as frustrating as the one holding that George W. Bush was a very conservative president. Far from it. He may have been pretty darn sure of what he wanted to do, but his resolve was often mistaken for radical conservatism. The fact is, conservatives were hardly well served by the Bush administration, and really have not gotten their turn in about 20 years.

Jonah Goldberg sets the record straight by listing the certainly unconservative (and dare I say, liberal) actions by Bush, and concludes:

[T]he notion that Bush pursued conservative ideas with “dogmatic fixity” is dogmatic nonsense.

Most Democrats were blinded to all of this because of their anger over the Iraq War and an often irrational hatred of Bush. Republicans, meanwhile, defended Bush far more than they would have had it not been for 9/11 and the hysteria of his enemies.

[...] In short, conservatives have had to not only put up with a lot of moderation and ideological flexibility, we’ve had to endure nearly a decade of taunting from gargoyles insisting that the GOP is run by crazed radicals.

Conservatives didn't have what they wanted, yet were told that they did. The worst of both worlds.

Charles Krauthammer:

In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics -- most prominently, rising minorities and the young -- would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed "The Death of Conservatism," while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The '08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia -- presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years -- went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 -- a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus-15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-four in 2009. A 19-point swing.

A few weeks ago, John Hawkins over at Right Wing News polled bloggers, including yours truly, about their least favorite people on the Right. This week, 48 of us were polled regarding our least favorite people on the Left. The top ten are as follows:

10) Janeane Garofalo (10)
10) Al Sharpton (10)
9) Chris Matthews (11)
8) Rahm Emanuel (12)
7) Al Gore (13)
6) Barney Frank (14)
5) Micheal Moore (18)
4) Keith Olbermann (31)
3) Harry Reid (33)
2) Barack Obama (35)
1) Nancy Pelosi (39)

See the entire list here.

From my column today:

Jim Jeffords. Lincoln Chafee. Arlen Specter. Wayne Gilchrest. How many more bad examples do they need? How many RINOs does the Republican establishment need to support, over conservatives’ strenuous objections, before learning how untrustworthy and unreliable the fakers are, both legislatively and politically?

At least one more, apparently.

Enter Dede Scozzafava, the candidate handpicked by the local Republican establishment to run in this month’s special congressional election. The party bosses meticulously perused her record and unearthed an individual who is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-tax increases, pro-porkulus, pro-card check, a recipient of a “Margaret Sanger Award,” once endorsed by ACORN, and in possession of a voting record that would place her to the left of almost half of Democratic state legislators. So naturally, the establishment decided that she would be the perfect candidate to run in a conservative district where even the Democrat would attack her for wanting to raise taxes.

Read the rest here.

You often hear conservatives complaining about "big government," but for those who are less politically-versed, the phrase seems to be too vague and intangible to have any real impact.

Well, here is an example of what the slippery slope of big government can lead to:

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.

Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.

Watford Council was branded a 'disgrace' yesterday after excluding parents from two fenced-off adventure playgrounds unless they first undergo criminal record checks.

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Obama, Reid, Pelosi and Co. have deluged us with the refrain that health insurance companies are ripping us off, and thus need more "competition" from the government in order to lower their prices.

Well, facts have again stood in the way of their claims. It turns out that the health insurance industry is, after all, barely profitable. Hardly the sign of an industry that is raising prices simply because it can:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Profits barely exceeded 2 percent of revenues in the latest annual measure.

Two percent. Wow.

So then, what it is that is forcing companies to charge higher premiums? Well, one is the fact that, through mandates, the government forces the companies to cover certain things that neither the companies wish to cover nor consumers demand - because it increases costs for both. Another is that health care is more expensive than it needs to be due to a broken tort system. Yet another problem is the fact that government regulations prevent companies from competing across state lines and thus reduce costs for everyone.

If you'll notice, all three reasons for higher premiums I listed here are directly resultant from government interference and incompetence. The solution is thus hardly more government. The solution is, as is usually the case, the reduction of government interference in the free market.

From Brett Noel:

You mean, the nation's most notable conservative newspaper is the only one that increased its circulation in the past six months?

Looks like the others have picked their ideology over market forces. And of course, it doesn't help that the Internet is now there to actually offer an alternative to institutional thought. If only the newspapers could get a bailout - oh wait, they just might.

WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,024,269 -- 0.61%
USA TODAY -- 1,900,116 -- (-17.15%)
NEW YORK TIMES -- 927,851 -- (-7.28%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 657,467 -- (-11.05%)
WASHINGTON POST -- 582,844 -- (-6.40%)

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS -- 544,167 -- (-13.98%)
NEW YORK POST -- 508,042 -- (-18.77%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 465,892 -- (-9.72%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 384,419 -- (-14.24%)
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 361,480 -- N/A

NEWSDAY -- 357,124 -- (-5.40%)
DENVER POST -- 340,949 -- N/A
ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 316,874 -- (-12.30%)
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE -- 304,543 -- (-5.53%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 275,641 -- (-11.98%)

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER -- 271,180 -- (-11.24%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS (e) -- 269,729 -- (-9.56%)
BOSTON GLOBE -- 264,105 -- (-18.48%)
DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 263,810 -- (-22.16%)
SEATTLE TIMES -- 263,588 -- N/A

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- 251,782 -- (-25.82%)
OREGONIAN -- 249,163 -- (-12.06%)
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER -- 246,006 -- (-22.22%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE -- 242,705 -- (-10.05%)
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES -- 240,147 -- (-10.70%)

Could you imagine the uproar had Fox News made this insulting faux pas?

Once upon a time, Virginia politicians would do anything for an endorsement by the Washington Post. But now, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, the Democrat in the race, is seeing the Post's endorsement of him used against him. This hilarious ad by the Republican Party of Virginia literally reads from the Post in pretend-praise of Deeds. Brilliant - they've made it so the Post is to Deeds what the Nobel Peace Prize is to Obama.