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Barack Obama's presidency is falling apart, as a growing number of Americans now realize his promises of prosperity and jobs were bogus and his health care law a fabric of lies. A president who promised hope and change has given us despair and a failed,1930s agenda, as a once-mighty economy continues to limp toward the end of its fifth year in "recovery" -- yet with no full, lasting recovery in sight. Twelve months ago, a majority of voters handed him a second term. This week, the Gallup Poll reported that a 54 percent majority disapprove of the job he's doing...

In chapter 1 of the book "Public Opinion", Walter Lippmann writes the following: (page 40) The wireless constantly used the statistics of the intelligence bureau at Verdun, whose chief, Major Cointet, had invented a method of calculating German losses which obviously produced marvelous results. Every fortnight the figures increased a hundred thousand or so. These 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily, weekly, monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, produced a striking effect. Our formulae varied little: 'according to prisoners the German losses in the course of the attack have been considerable' ... 'it is proved...

"If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it." -- Abraham Lincoln History is full of warnings about what happens when people follow public opinion instead of standing by their principles. In its most extreme manifestation, public opinion might well become mob rule when vigilantes take the law into their own hands. Major media have whipped the crowd into its latest frenzy over same-sex marriage, or should I say "marriage equality," the latest euphemism, likely intended to make the masses more accepting of what...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. Before he became a China scholar, our friend Steve Mosher was an engineer. He likes to say that if you are an engineer whose bridges collapse or whose highways break up, you’re likely to lose your Professional Engineer’s license. But if you are a social scientist, or a history professor and all your ideas collapse under the weight of evidence, you get tenure. And if you are a liberal journalist who gets it all spectacularly wrong, you get promoted. Andrew Sullivan is a case in point. He waxed lyrical about the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Less than two months into his second term, President Barack Obama's approval rating has dropped and Americans blame him and his fellow Democrats almost as much as his Republican opponents for a fiscal mess. A Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Wednesday showed 43 percent of people approve of Obama's handling of his job, down 7 percentage points from February 19.

There is an Obama majority in American politics, symbolized by Monday’s throng on the Mall, whose existence is both the consequence of profound changes to our nation’s composition and values and the cause of changes yet to come. That majority, as the president made clear in his remarks, would not exist but for Americans’ struggles to expand our foundational belief in the equality of all men. The drive to expand equality, he said in his speech’s most historically resonant line, “is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.”...

The Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe on Third Avenue is one of those places where men who want to be president stop to look decidedly un-presidential. Al Gore visited the shop; so did John Kerry. President Barack Obama opted for ice cream instead and went to the Windmill, eight miles up the road. “It is where you take them to make candidates look authentic,” explained a Democrat strategist who routinely works on presidential campaigns in the Keystone State. After orchestrating three statewide presidential wins, the strategist said he is sitting out this cycle. He doesn’t see Obama winning Pennsylvania in 2012....

Before the last presidential election I ran into many people I had considered reasonably well-informed and educated, only to be surprised by the extent to which they had been utterly taken in by the obviously ghostwritten Obama hagiography and the media airbrushing of his background. It was scary.A first hand view of how easily manipulated public opinion is. I was astonished that few of these people knew anything about Obama's failures in his one prior job --getting the asbestos out of Altgeld Gardens -- and his singular executive endeavor, managing (at terrorist Bill Ayers' recommendation) millions of dollars from the...

A poll from CNN this week is the latest to show a majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, with 51 percent saying that marriages between gay and lesbian couples “should be recognized by the law as valid” and 47 percent opposed. This is the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of gay marriage.... As we noted last August, support for gay marriage seems to have been increasing at an accelerated pace over the past couple of years. Below is an update to the graph from last year’s...

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey taken at the beginning of this week, 34 percent of likely voters think the United States should get “more directly involved” in the Libyan crisis. Supporters of military intervention might be eager to point out that this number was 12 points higher than the 22 percent who favored greater involvement two weeks earlier. A Gallup survey conducted Monday shows a plurality — 47 to 37 percent — approving of President Obama’s airstrikes in Libya. And a new CBS poll released on Tuesday finds an even higher 68 percent of Americans supporting the strikes. Considering...

Gallup’s headline is, “46% Favor, 40% Oppose Repealing Healthcare Law,” but I think they’re overlooking the bigger news. First, the idea that 14 percent of Americans have no opinion whether or not Obamacare goes into effect is pretty surprising and interesting. Note that Obama and the Democrats need this to be a driving issue for voters in 2012; put another way, only 40 percent of adults (not registered voters, not likely voters) say they want to keep Obamacare as it is. Barring some dramatic new development, the undecided are unlikely to vote against Republicans because they repealed health care. Second,...

The liberal media have been criticizing those 20% of Americans polled who believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. The President declares himself a Christian yet those 20% insist upon determining his religion based upon his father's adherence to Islam. The left would have us believe this is bigotry and intolerance. It should be noted that Canada -- that bastion of liberalism, gay marriage and universal health care -- subscribes to the very same intolerant view. And it's government policy. We're all aware by now of Edward N. Luttwak's May 12, 2008 New York Times piece - recently cited on American...

The main stream media have been in an uproar over the poll results suggesting that approximately one in five Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim. Their incredulity stems from the fact that Obama professes to be a Christian. Therefore, the respondents who believe otherwise must be a bunch of ninnyhammers. Actually, the one in five figure may be a small number. Suppose another famous claim by Obama is polled. In February he claimed to be, "an ardent believer in free markets." What percent of Americans believe that?

Adopted in 1868, the 14th Amendment defined citizenship — making it clear that former slaves and their descendents were American citizens. But part of that amendment, that everyone “born in” the US becomes a citizen, has become controversial during the immigration debate, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others calling for hearings on whether to repeal or revise the language. A Pew survey out this week notes that illegal immigrants who have children here (who then become insta-citizens) represent a not-insignificant portion of new births. Of the 4.3 million babies born in 2008, 340,000 were to illegal immigrants. The breakdown:...

Mayor Bloomberg's popularity rating has dropped to its lowest level in five years, in part because of his ardent defense of a proposed mosque several blocks from Ground Zero, according to a poll released yesterday. New Yorkers' approval of their third-term mayor (pictured) dipped to 49 percent, down from 56 percent in April, as 53 percent of those surveyed said they disagree with his position on the mosque, according to the Marist survey. "The mosque is not doing him any good . . . He's certainly on the wrong side of public opinion on that in the city," said pollster...

How low can President Obama's approval rating go? Pretty low, it appears. The president's approval rating reached a new all-time low, according to a national Quinnipiac survey released today. The survey finds that just 44 percent of registered voters approve of the job he has done as president -- his worst score ever -- with 48 percent disapproving. “It was a year ago, during the summer of 2009, that America’s love affair with President Barack Obama began to wane. In July of 2009, the president had a 57 to 33 percent approval rating," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the...

When tracking President Obama’s job approval on a daily basis, people sometimes get so caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations that they miss the bigger picture. To look at the longer-term trends, Rasmussen Reports compiles the numbers on a full-month basis, and the results can be seen in the graphics below. The number who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s performance inched up a point to 42% in June. At the same time, the number who Strongly Approve fell another point to 26%. Those figures generate a full month Presidential Approval Index rating of -16, down two points from the month...

President Obama's image of leadership flounders in the Gulf of Mexico. While Governor Jindal displays the true qualities of leadership, our president is stuck in Saul Alinksy gear, demonizing a foreign corporation instead of actually doing anything constructive. Disgust at Obama's genuine incompetence at this genuine ecological disaster stretches across party lines and the ideological spectrum. Barry blames Bush for everything about our dismal economy. A partisan rubber-stamp Congress has given Obama the wild and wasteful expenditures which his childish, failed, quasi-Keynesian witches' brew prophesies will spend us into prosperity. It hasn't worked. Now, oddly, congressmen facing electoral apocalypse have...

Presumably, the goal of the Muslim outreach effort has been to soften opposition to our wars in the Middle East, but this too has failed miserably. The Pew report notes that Mr. Obama "receives overwhelmingly low ratings from publics in predominantly Muslim countries for his job performance on Iraq and Afghanistan." Approval ratings ranged from 4 percent to 22 percent, with disapproval ranging 53 percent to 84 percent. When Mr. Obama took office, he promised a regional framework strategy, "AfPak," for resolving the war in Afghanistan that supposedly was more sophisticated than that of his predecessor. With just 6 percent...

I can't put my finger on any single event that may be the cause, but in three days, Obama's approval ratings on Rasmussen's daily tracking poll have gone from 50-49, to 45-54. Among those who feel strongly either way, there has been a drop from 32-40, to 27-44. Forty-four percent ties the peak Obama has ever hit for strongly disapprove. In general, Rasmussen numbers have been more volatile since health care reform was approved.There are days in which Obama's approval numbers are much higher than the average for the prior few months, and other periods when his numbers sink to...