obama

The United States has been on a constant decline in the world when it comes to internet speeds and availability. Here in Ohio our governor wants to change that:

State officials have not determined how much to charge individual institutions to have full access to Ohio’s soon-to-be improved broadband network.

“We don’t have our cost breakdowns yet,” said John Conley, chief of educational technology for the state Board of Regents.

Most universities and research institutions in the state have access to Internet2, a high speed nationwide network designed for researchers that can move high volumes of data quickly. However, that access is limited because the state’s broadband network speed is limited to 10 gigabits per second.

Gov. John Kasich announced last week the state would invest more than $10 million to boost that speed to 100 gigabits per second. The underground fiber-optic network was designed so that it could be upgraded, Conley said.

It's good to see improvements being made here, but I can't help but see a serious bit of hypocrisy in this. In 2009, when President Obama announced he wanted some of the stimulus to go to improving the country's broadband Republicans instantly went to the "big government" and "socialism" memes. Fast forward three years and now it's a good idea. It just exemplifies the most serious problem we face in our political discourse today; the idea can be great unless the other guy comes up with it. It's a problem that has prevented our recovery from the economic collapse and one that will continue to plague us until our leaders grow up and realize that neither side holds a patent on good ideas.

E.J. Dionne has a really interesting article up today and one I totally agree with. He finishes with this:

Obama will thus be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word. He is the candidate defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal, and that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush dismantled. The rhetoric of the 2012 Republicans suggests they want to go far beyond where Reagan or Bush ever went. And here’s the irony: By raising the stakes of 2012 so high, Republicans will be playing into Obama’s hands. The GOP might well win a referendum on the state of the economy. But if this is instead a larger-scale referendum on whether government should be “inconsequential,” Republicans will find the consequences to be very disappointing.

Read E.J.s whole piece as it is really an eye opener to how far off the tracks today's Republican Party has gone.

Gallup is out with a new poll that shows U.S. satisfaction is really low right now. Given the economic state and how broken Congress is, that should come as no shock. Some on the right are pushing this as the "Obama is Carter" meme:

The second term of Jimmy Carter is going about as well as the first one. From Gallup: “PRINCETON, NJ — Throughout 2011, an average of 17% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008. Satisfaction has averaged as high as 60% in 1986, 1998, and 2000.”

What does this mean?

Ok Don, I'll bite. What does it mean?

Expect more cries of racism by Eric Holder and other incompetents.

Expect more cries of sexism by Babs Boxer and other nincompoops.

Expect more cries of income inequality from Paul Krugman and other hypocrites.

And expect more shabby attempts to trap Republican presidential candidates. Remember The Surber Rule: “The economy will win the presidency for Republicans in 2012. Republicans should talk about nothing else, and should avoid troll questions by any reporter who tries to distract them.”

It’s desperation time.

Really? Well when I look at this chart I actually see something else:

Lately I have been thinking a lot about which candidate would be better for President Obama to have to face next year. It's a very important question with the first primary voting starting in a couple of weeks. Some believe President Obama would do better against Mitt Romney, while others believe Newt's the man to take on Obama. I happen to think that Newt Gingrich is the bigger threat to Obama than Romney and want to lay out the reasons for that.

Baggage

Both candidates come with a lot of baggage. Many on the left points to Newt's baggage as a big reason he would not fair as well against Obama as Romney, but there is one big thing that plays into this.

Newt's baggage is well known. It's baggage we have seen him carry since he left the House as Speaker. Republicans know this and have accepted it. Look at his rise in the polls for actual proof of this.

Newt also is very skilled at talking his way out of these problems. We have seen this happening lately and it seems to be working.

Likewise Romney has some baggage too. His support of a mandate while he was governor and his constant flip-flopping on issues are the biggest ones. These actually hurt Romney amongst the base of the Republican Party. Romney is still viewed as a governor of a very blue state and for him to become governor there he had to share some of that state's liberal views. That is a big thing with core Republican voters, but one that could help him with Independents. Overall though I think the baggage issue will have to give Newt the advantage.

Newt's Marriage Problem And Romney's Religion

This is something the left feels is an Achilles heel for Newt. Sadly they are wrong. We live in a time that being married twice or even three times is accepted, even amongst the religious base. Newt has also taken the most important step for these people to accept him - he has found God.

The Republicans are having a hard time grabbing the national security stage. I mean when they have to look at facing President Obama next year, the man who got Osama Bin Laden, they really don't have much to go on.

So what is a poor Republican candidate to do? Make shit up!

Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the Obama administration is cleansing government files of references to radical Islam, an assertion so juicy that politicians keep repeating it — even though it's a wild exaggeration.

The latest to run with the story is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who told a crowd in Des Moines that the president "actually ordered all references to Islam and Muslim sanitized out of our national security documents."

And over the weekend, Newt Gingrich told a veterans' forum in Des Moines that the administration has "issued instructions, for example, that in developing training papers on terrorism that no mention should be made of radical Islam."

Rep. Michele Bachmann paved the way on Oct. 28, when she told 75 Republican faithful in Iowa that "Obama is allowing terror suspect groups to write the FBI's terror training manual."

It turns out that all this came from an incident in 2009 when someone from the FBI gave a speech that drew a lot of criticism from the Muslim community. An order to review training material was given and some is being rewritten, but not by "terrorist" groups as Bachmann claimed. Instead it's being taken care of by a couple FBI agents and three outside experts from terrorist organizations such as Yale University and Johns Hopkins.

Of course facts are pesky things, as another famous Republican once said (**cough** Ronald Reagan) and Bachmann still believes that Barack Obama started the Iraq War.

Some very troubling polling has come out for the Republicans in their attempts to retake the White House. This from PolitcsUSA:

The biggest surprise is in the new NBC/Marist poll of South Carolina, where Obama’s approval rating is a not too upside down for a reliable red state 44%/48%. The big shock is that President Obama has small leads over both Newt Gingrich (46%-42%), and Mitt Romney (45%-42%). Both of Obama’s narrow leads are outside the poll’s 2.1% margin of error. A new Winthrop poll has also found that President Obama is more popular that Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. The Winthrop Poll gives Obama nearly identical to NBC 44.8% approval rating, and only 34.6% approve of Gov. Haley.

And it's not only South Carolina, but also the sunshine state, where Obama's approval rating is edging upwards:

In Florida, Obama has seen his approval rating jump five points since October. It is within the margin of error, but more voters now approve of Obama than disapprove (46%-45%). Obama now leads Romney by seven points, (48%-41%), and Gingrich by 12 points in the Sunshine State, (51%-39%). Newt Gingrich is blowing out Romney in Florida for the same reasons that he is trouncing him in South Carolina. Florida Republicans said that it was more important to them that a candidate shared their values (26%) and is close to them on the issues (28%) than can beat Obama (23%).

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times - what does it say for the state of the Republican Party when they can't find a viable candidate to take Obama on in this economic climate? I can't wait to hear some answers to that!

Another sign of trouble for the GOP:

If the Newt surge persists over the next few months the biggest winner is going to be Barack Obama. We can see that pretty clearly in our newest Florida poll.

If Mitt Romney's the Republican nominee, Obama's in a lot of trouble in the Sunshine State. Obama leads Romney only 45-44, and given that the undecideds skew largely Republican he'd probably lose to Romney if the election was today. Obama being stuck in the mid-4os against Romney is par for the course in our Florida polling. In September Obama led 46-45, in June it was 47-43, and in March it was 46-44. The dial has barely moved all year.

But if Newt Gingrich is the Republican nominee it's a completely different story. Obama leads him 50-44 in a head to head. To find the last time a GOP Presidential candidate lost Florida by more than that you have to go all the way back to Thomas Dewey in 1948. Even Barry Goldwater did better in Florida than Gingrich is right now.

The Republicans are struggling with finding a nominee. Some have tried to compare this to the problems the Democrats had in 2008, but this is the total opposite. The Democratic Party had a problem picking a nominee because of huge enthusiasm for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Republicans are having troubles because they are picking the lesser of two evils.

This also opens up a bigger issue that comes into play during an election cycle - the enthusiasm gap.

Last week President Obama was accused of calling American workers "lazy", which of course he didn't. That hasn't stopped the right from taking his comment out of context and seizing on it as Obama hating America.

While that story is still going on, we now have a new one. Now the Prez has decided to insult our school children:

Speaking at a high school in Australia, President Obama told a group of Aussie students that their counterparts in his country had “fallen behind” when it comes to math and science, saying he wants to reform the public school system.

Obama also asserted that poor children don’t get “support they need when they’re very young’’ and are “already behind’’’ when they enter grammar school, according to a press pool report.

Obama might have thought twice before casting America’s public school kids in a negative light to foreign students. Especially since he can exclude his own children from the system by paying for them to attend private school.

How are that America hating, Muslim terrorist insult our children!