Internet Scofflaw

Hollywood sure has changed.

(Via the Corner.)

I think the most interesting thing in the president’s speech was this:

The insurance companies and their allies don’t like this idea. They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won’t be. I’ve insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

If this were true, the public option would be no big deal. Of course, there are other factors that would give the government an unfair advantage (notably exemption from regulations, and the fact that the government can’t be sued without its permission), but those would be fairly minor. Moreover, they would be more than balanced by the monstrous inefficiency that government management would bring.

ASIDE: The president thinks that the government would save money by reducing excessive administrative costs, et cetera? What planet is he from? As someone who has had the job of filling out government forms to show compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, I can say that the very idea is laughable. But for present purposes, that is all to the good.

An unsubsidized public option would not only be acceptable, it would almost certainly be irrelevant. Like every other government enterprise, it would be expensive and poorly run, and consumers would quickly learn to have nothing to do with it.

Alas, it isn’t true. Of course the public option will be subsidized by the taxpayer. Even if we suppose that this promise is kept in the ultimate bill (which I see as vanishingly unlikely), here’s what will happen:

1. The public option will offer low prices and generous benefits to attract customers, causing it to run a large deficit.
2. The politicians who set this thing up will not allow it to fail, so they will bail it out with an influx of taxpayer funds. It will probably be termed a loan at first, but the loan will never be paid back.
3. The public option will continue to lose money for as long as it takes to drive the private players out of business.
4. At some point after that, the system will be “reformed” again. The loans will be forgiven and public financing made explicit.
5. Liberals will tell us that the government has saved us from the failure of the private health insurance system.

ASIDE: If the final bill goes with co-ops, rather than a public option, exactly the same thing will happen, with the addition that the co-ops will be officially nationalized at some point (like Fannie and Freddie), probably at stage 4.

ANOTHER ASIDE: Mind you, this is assuming good faith! Sadly, that is an unjustified assumption, since a variety of Democrats have already made clear that the public option is a trojan horse intended to bring about single-payer. Most likely, the pledge will simply be dropped on the floor. But even if not, the bill will take other steps to ensure that the public option prevails, such as giving it a large initial endowment, and burying private insurers in new regulation.

What President Obama claims he will do, produce a plan with better benefits and lower prices than existing plans without running a deficit, simply can’t be done. If by any chance this isn’t obvious, health care researchers say so:

Health care policy researchers are contradicting President Obama’s claim that a government-run health insurance program would be self-sufficient and could rely on premiums, saying it’s not possible to insure up to 30 million people with better coverage and reduce costs at the same time.

“The numbers don’t hold up,” Grace Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a think tank devoted to health policy, said Thursday.

Furthermore, Obama’s own example proves the point. He cites public colleges and universities as public institutions that do a good job. Indeed they do, but they do so by relying on enormous public subsidies! In fact, we have recently seen what happens when those subsidies are cut. The University of California, being left to subsist on a smaller-than-usual subsidy, is furloughing staff and faculty, prompting talk of a walkout.

POSTSCRIPT: As usual, the president is very impressed with his own supposed consistency. Is there any instance in the past in which the president has publicly “insisted” that the public option would be unsubsidized?

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that opposition to the president’s health care program weakened slightly after his speech. Before, the public opposed the plan by a 53-44 margin; now opposition is at 51-46.

The shift came from a substantial jump in support by Democrats (from 72% to 80%). Opinion among Republicans (-2%) and independents (+1%) was largely unchanged. Unlike CNN’s poll, which showed a large bounce among speech watchers (a predominantly Democratic audience), Rasmussen polled likely voters.

So there’s no game changer here in terms of public opinion, but it may not have been intended that way. As Larry Sabato points out, the speech appears to have been more intended to unify Democrats by attacking Republicans.

UPDATE: Rasmussen does show some continued movement in the president’s favor in the days following the speech.

UPDATE (9/15): The bounce is gone now.

For the record, I think Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s speech was inappropriate, because that’s just not the way things are done over here. Not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with British-style debate, but for some reason our Congress likes to pretend that everyone gets along.

But there are a few things to observe:

• It’s awfully rich for Democrats to pretend that Wilson’s breach of decorum is somehow unprecedented. For example, Rahm Emanuel said “No president has ever been treated like that. Ever.” Really? What about our last president?
• Obama was, in fact, lying. Worse, in so doing, he was calling other members of Congress liars.
• Through his outburst, Wilson may have forced Democrats to take action on the matter:
  

  In the Senate, Democrats in the so called “Gang of Six,” a group of bipartisan senators on the Senate Finance Committee which is the last panel yet to release its bill, began moving quickly to close the loophole that Wilson helped bring greater attention to.

In light of the above, I think Democrats are overplaying their hand by making a big deal out of this. Ultimately, it will serve to draw attention to a matter that is not at all favorable to Democrats, and away from the president’s speech. Already Wilson has become the main story, and I really don’t think that helps them. So, by all means, let’s have a full investigation and a vote to censure Wilson.

UPDATE: Eeeexcellent. . . (Via Hot Air.)

Gosh, it’s been months since the last time the president nominated a tax cheat. The latest is Lael Brainard, nominated to be Undersecretary for International Affairs.

Dusting off the scorecard:

• Geithner, Treasury Secretary (confirmed)
• Daschle, HHS Secretary (withdrawn)
• Killefer, “Chief Performance Officer” (withdrawn)
• Solis, Labor Secretary (confirmed)
• Emanuel, Chief of Staff (no confirmation required)
• Kirk, US Trade Representative (confirmed)
• Sebelius, HHS Secretary (confirmed)
• Brainard, Undersecretary for International Affairs (nominated)

This is what campaign finance reform was about: shielding politicans from criticism.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Guardian (not the Onion) reports:

Senior executive Tim Nicholson claimed he was unfairly dismissed by a property investment company because his views on the environment conflicted with other managers’ “contempt for the need to cut carbon emissions”.

In the first case of its kind, an employment tribunal decided that Nicholson, 41, had views amounting to a “philosophical belief in climate change”, allowing him the same legal protection against discrimination as religious beliefs.

(Via the Corner.)

Sometimes liberalism defies parody. If you made this stuff up, no one would believe it.

Patrick Courrielche is continuing to advance the NEA propaganda story. Another instance has surfaced of the National Endowment for the Arts working to coordinate political activity. Also, the cover-up is underway.

(Previous post.) (Via the Corner.)

So the president’s school speech turned out to be unobjectionable. That’s no surprise. All the scrutiny made it impossible for them to get away with political content. And once the text was announced, I agree with Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education) that keeping kids home from the speech would be silly.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that Robert Gibbs was right that the controversy was unjustified. The American people have good reason not to trust this president. He observes no distinction between campaigning and governing, and he has already demonstrated a willingness to use the organs of government for propaganda purposes.

But what really gave people reason for concern was the Department of Education’s lesson plan, which made the indoctrination aspect of the affair explicit. (Gibbs did not see fit to address that in his remarks.) The department backpedaled on the lesson plan, which they certainly would not have done without the controversy.

So I would say that the whole controversy had a good outcome. The speech turned out to be unobjectionable (we have no way of knowing what it would have been otherwise), and the lesson plan went away. Gibbs had it exactly wrong: the public scrutiny, far from being unjustified, worked exactly as it should, keeping the administration honest.

What happens now? I don’t think the controversy is entirely over. Certainly there will not be a Congressional investigation as there was after President Bush (41) spoke to students in 1991. But I do think two more things will happen to prolong the controversy:

• First, it will be revealed that some teachers used the original indoctrination plan, despite its withdrawal.
• Second, Democrats will use this affair to try to paint the opponents of President Obama’s agenda as somehow irrational. “Remember when Republicans got all worked up over the school speech, which turned out to be fine?” they will cry. To that, we will respond that we had every reason for concern, and it turned out to be fine because we got worked up over it.

(Previous post.)

Since the revelation that Van Jones (formerly the White House “green jobs czar”) is a wacko, people have wondering how his appointment passed the vetting process. Now we have the answer; the White House doesn’t vet its czars:

Van Jones, the Obama green jobs czar who resigned shortly after midnight Sunday, did not fill out the exhaustive questionnaire White House officials required of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position.

An administration official said special advisers to the president, or czars, are not required to fill out the questionnaire that runs 7 pages and contains 63 questions.

The entire questionnaire, the official said, is reserved for appointees who must win Senate confirmation.

This is pretty amazing. I would have thought that vetting would be an essential part of the process of filling the executive branch, to make sure that its staff are honest and non-crazy. Apparently, the White House does not see it that way. They only vet appointments that will face Senate scrutiny.

I only see two explanations for this. The administration either (1) doesn’t care whether its staff are honest and non-crazy, or (2) is incompetent. Is there a #3 that I’m missing?

UPDATE: Okay, option #3 is they are lying. I should have thought of that.

UPDATE: The American Spectator is reporting that Jones was hired despite objections from the White House Counsel’s office. I’d take that with a grain of salt until it’s confirmed somewhere else. (Via Hot Air.)

Speculation that President Obama would use his upcoming health care address to issue clear requirements for a bill seems to be premature:

White House political adviser David Axelrod said Obama is “not walking away” from a public plan. But asked if the president would veto a bill that came to him without the option, Axelrod declined to answer.

The president “believes it should be in the plan, and he expects to be in the plan, and that’s our position,” Axelrod told The Associated Press.

Asked if that means a public plan has to be in the bill for Obama to sign it, Axelrod responded: “I’m not going to deal in hypotheticals. … He believes it’s important.”

I don’t see any way the president can take charge of the health care debate without a clear position on the public option. If his address just gives us more of the same, it won’t do him any good. Is he expecting to change the tide of public opinion with nothing but charisma? I would enjoy seeing him try.

Another item in the “health care” bill:

Two tax provisions in the health-care bill voted on by the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this summer have gained significant attention. . . But there are other “revenue provisions” in the bill that also deserve a close look.

One would change the law to mandate that the Internal Revenue Service slap penalties on honest but errant taxpayers.

Under current law, taxpayers who lose an argument with the IRS can generally avoid penalties by showing they tried in good faith to comply with the tax law. In a broad range of circumstances, the health-care bill would change the law to impose strict liability penalties for income-tax underpayments, meaning that taxpayers will no longer have the luxury of making an honest mistake. The ability of even the IRS to waive penalties in sympathetic cases would be sharply curtailed.

Democrats think that that IRS should be harsher on honest mistakes. Good thinking, guys.

POSTSCRIPT: As an additional irony, the chairman of the committee that produced this travesty is a tax cheat.

Keith Ellison (D-MN) admits the public option is a trojan horse, intended to bring about single payer:

REP. ELLISON: Most of us are co-authors of HR676, which is a single-payer bill so we feel like we’ve already compromised. I think that the reality is the public option has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office as saving $150 billion, so this actually helps deal with the fiscal responsibility issues…It offers choice, which is a good thing…

ESKOLA: Isn’t the public option really just a step towards the single payer that you want so much?

REP. ELLISON: Yes but the reality is that for many people that’s not what it is.

We’re going to have a “manufacturing czar” now. I think they’re using the wrong Russian historical period; commissar seems more appropriate than czar.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: John Hood is joining the bandwagon.

Robert Lucas, the legendary Nobel-Prize-winning economist and erstwhile CMU professor, has written a great column rebutting a collection of pieces in the Economist on the supposed failure of economics to anticipate the financial crisis. To their credit, the Economist ran the column, which is much better (and shorter) than the pieces it rebuts. Much of it is relevant only as rebuttal, but this point stands on its own:

One thing we are not going to have, now or ever, is a set of models that forecasts sudden falls in the value of financial assets, like the declines that followed the failure of Lehman Brothers in September. This is nothing new. It has been known for more than 40 years and is one of the main implications of Eugene Fama’s “efficient-market hypothesis” (EMH), which states that the price of a financial asset reflects all relevant, generally available information. If an economist had a formula that could reliably forecast crises a week in advance, say, then that formula would become part of generally available information and prices would fall a week earlier. (The term “efficient” as used here means that individuals use information in their own private interest. It has nothing to do with socially desirable pricing; people often confuse the two.) . . .

Over the years exceptions and “anomalies” have been discovered (even tiny departures are interesting if you are managing enough money) but for the purposes of macroeconomic analysis and forecasting these departures are too small to matter. The main lesson we should take away from the EMH for policymaking purposes is the futility of trying to deal with crises and recessions by finding central bankers and regulators who can identify and puncture bubbles. If these people exist, we will not be able to afford them.

With Ted Kennedy’s funeral a week in the past, I hope it’s not too early to note something that seems a bit relevant as Democrats seek to exploit his sainted memory to enact health care nationalization: Ted Kennedy was not a very good person.

There’s Chappaquiddick, of course, and there’s also Kennedy’s bizarre affinity for Chappaquiddick jokes. There’s his boorish/criminal behavior towards women. Perhaps most appallingly, there’s Kennedy’s unsuccessful effort to collaborate with the Soviet Union in order to undermine President Reagan. (Although the incident has been public since Boris Yeltsin briefly opened the Soviet Central Committee archives in 1992, it wasn’t well known until this story hit.)

Somehow, the left idolized this man (even the feminist left!) and the media now calls him “the lion of the Senate.” He was reelected seven times after Chappaquiddick. This all proves that the left will forgive anything at all, if only you promote their causes.

The inevitable result of the minimum wage increase:

According to today’s job report, the overall unemployment rate (the percentage of people in the labor force not working but looking for work) in August rose to 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. The teenage unemployment rate, however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, says the finances of the states are going to get worse, not better. By overspending even when times were good, the states have built up unsustainable public burdens that ultimately will have to be dismantled. Indiana is fiscally sound today, but Daniels still worries about its future. He concludes:

Unlike the federal government, states cannot deny reality by borrowing without limit. The Obama administration’s “stimulus” package in effect shared the use of Uncle Sam’s printing press for two years. But after that money runs out, the states will be back where they were. Even if Congress goes for a second round of stimulus funding, driven by the political panic of bankrupt Democratic governors, it would only postpone the reckoning.

The time to plan and debate is now. This is a test of our adulthood as a democracy. Washington, as long as our Chinese lenders enable it, can practice denial for a while longer. But for states the real world is about to arrive.

POSTSCRIPT: In a related story, many states are trying to save money by nibbling around the edges. This isn’t going to work.

Was it card check? Being given two auto companies? The proposed pension bailout in the health care bill? The lobbying (and violence) for health care nationalization? You can take your pick, but it seems that people have been paying attention to the antics of the labor unions.

Public approval of labor unions has hit an all-time low at 48%, and public disapproval has hit an all-time high at 45%. With the 4% margin of error, public opinion on labor unions is at parity for the first time since Gallup starting measuring it in 1936.

The results on more specific questions show that labor unions are fortunate to be viewed as well as they are. By a 51-39 margin, the public believes that labor unions hurt the economy. By a 62-29 margin, they believe that labor unions hurt non-union workers. By a 46-45 margin they believe that labor unions hurt unionized companies.

(Via Instapundit.)

Unemployment jumps to a 26-year high at 9.7%:

(Graph courtesy of Innocent Bystanders.)

John Hinderaker is calling Pete Stark (D-CA) the most appalling member of Congress, based on this clip. Well, I don’t know about that. But he certainly earns a dishonorable mention:

What is amazing about this clip is the condescension he is able to muster while preaching absolute nonsense: if you had studied at a good school, you would know that debt makes us richer.

ASIDE: Gee, I hope I have the credentials to criticize him. I majored in economics at a good school, but I stopped with just a bachelor’s degree. Perhaps in graduate school they take it all back and teach that debt makes us richer.

The sad thing is that, jackassery aside, Pete Stark is not alone. What I think he’s getting at is an extremist version of Keynesianism that says that all government spending grows the economy. (ASIDE: Keynes’s model predicts that government spending grows the economy under certain conditions that maybe existed during the Great Depression, but that certainly do not exist now.) Unfortunately, the president agrees.

I’ve been ignoring the controversy over Van Jones, the White House “green jobs czar” (whatever that means), being a former communist (the “former” part is assumed) and publicly calling Republicans “a**holes“. I figured he’s just one more crazy in the White House, and his position doesn’t seem particularly important. Nevertheless, this is a bit much:

President Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones has been targeted again and again by conservatives for his controversial views and now they’ll have another item to use as fodder.

Mr. Jones signed a statement for 911Truth.org in 2004 demanding an investigation into what the Bush Administration may have done that “deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.” . . .

9/11Truth.org spokesman Mike Berger told the Washington Times over the phone that all of the signers had been verified by their group. He said 9/11Truth.org board members “spoke with each person on the list by phone or through email or individually confirm they hae added their name to that list.”

“I think in most cases they spoke to them personally,” he added. “No one’s name was put on that list without them knowing it.”

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Van Jones wants to take it back:

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of “the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

(Via Hot Air.)

He didn’t “carefully review the language”?! It’s a truther petition, for crying out loud! What did he think it said?

UPDATE: He’s not just a former communist and a truther, but also a supporter of Mumia Abu-Jamal, cop killer and darling of the lunatic left. Geez. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Mark Steyn (as usual) has it right:

Is Van Jones a real Truther or a faux Truther? The White House position is that he’s the latter – hey, he just glanced at it, saw it was some routine impeach-Bush-for-killing-thousands-of-his-fellow-Americans thing, and signed it without reading it; we’ve all been there, right?

Van Jones Trutherism, like Van Jones Communism and Van Jones Eco-Racism Theory, is a kind of decadence: If you really believed 9/11 was an inside job, you’d be in fear of your life. Instead, for a cutting-edge poseur like Jones, it’s a marketing niche, one that gives you a certain cachet with the right kind of people – like, apparently, Barack Obama.

UPDATE (9/6): Jones also says the state of Israel is illegitimate. In an album he produced in 2002, he says:

What we want to see at this point is the rights of the Palestinian people being respected. And at this point, the end of the occupation, the right of return of the Palestinian people. These are the critical dividing lines, global dividing lines, questions of human rights. We have to be here. No American would put up with an Israeli-style occupation of their hometown for 53 days, let alone 54 years.

You have to do some arithmetic to get what Jones is saying. Subtracting 54 years from 2002 gives us 1948, the year Israel declared independence. Jones is opposing Israel’s very existence.

By the way, the album is full of anti-American sentiment as well, but it’s too vulgar to repeat here.

“Will some energy be saved? Probably. The problem is this benefit will be more than offset by rampant dissatisfaction with lighting.“

It seems that Charles Rangel’s (D-NY) staff has been following his example:

Charlie Rangel’s “forgetfulness” is apparently contagious.

Two of his top aides are among about a dozen highly paid staffers on the powerful tax-writing Ways and Means Committee who have filed a flurry of amendments correcting their financial-disclosure statements since 2002.

Jim Capel, chief of staff for Rangel’s personal office, failed to file any such statements for six years.

On the afternoon of July 14, Capel filed five years’ worth of delinquent reports.

Also, Rangel has been giving a lot of money to Democrats on the Ethics committee.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph reports:

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS. . .

[Dr Hargreaves] added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

(Via Power Line.)

Fox News reports:

A suggested lesson plan that calls on school kids to write letters to themselves about what they can do to help President Obama is troubling some education experts, who say it establishes the president as a “superintendent in chief” and may indoctrinate children to support him politically.

Obama will deliver a national address directly to students on Tuesday, which will be the first day of classes for many children across the country. The address, to be broadcast live on the White House’s Web site, was announced in a letter to school principals last week by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. . .

But in advance of the address, the Department of Education has offered educators “classroom activities” to coincide with Obama’s message.

Students in grades pre-K-6, for example, are encouraged to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”

(Emphasis mine.) This is surprisingly explicit.

UPDATE: The Department of Education is backpedaling:

Today, after Republicans accused the White House of trying to indoctrinate school children with liberal propaganda the White House and the Department of Education changed the section to now read, “Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short‐term and long‐term education goals.”

“We changed it to clarify the language so the intent is clear,” said White House Spokesman Tommy Vietor.

(Via Hot Air.)

Actually, they’re changing the language so the intent is unclear. It was perfectly clear before.

It has become popular in certain circles of late to allege, particularly in reference to health care, that “the free market rations too.” Well, that depends on your definition of “ration”. If by rationing you simply mean allocation of resources, then anything is rationing, and the word is robbed of its meaning. (ASIDE: Economists do sometimes use the word in such a general sense, but accompanied by an adjective as in: “non-price rationing scheme.”)

But the dictionary defines ration this way:

2a: to distribute as rations — often used with out. b: to distribute equitably.

Thus the word “ration” refers to a resource allocation scheme in which each person is assigned a share by some authority. This, of course, is absolutely not what the free market does. The free market is based on the idea that people own the fruits of their labor, and are entitled to make transactions or not as they choose.

With this in mind, Paul Hsieh makes an important point regarding the moral high ground in the freedom vs. rationing debate:

Too often, conservatives then concede this moral high ground to the liberals and defend the free market on purely economic grounds — e.g., a free market would lower costs for everyone. This is a serious mistake. Supporters of the free market should not allow opponents to characterize the marketplace as a form of rationing, let alone an unjust one. Instead, supporters should defend the free market as morally just because it respects individual rights. . .

Examples [of rationing] include sugar rationing during World War II and gasoline rationing during the 1973 oil crisis, when the government dictated the terms and conditions of sugar or gasoline sales.

But in a free society, the government should not be regulating such sales at all. Producers — not the government — created the sugar (or gasoline) in the first place. Hence, they have the moral right to sell it to willing consumers on any mutually acceptable terms. There is no “just” distribution of sugar or gasoline apart from the voluntary exchanges between producers and consumers in a free market.

The same principle applies to health care. Health care does not magically grow on trees. Instead, it is a service that must be created by hard work and rational thought. The producers thus have the moral right to sell it to willing consumers on any mutually acceptable terms. There is no “just” distribution of medical services apart from the voluntary exchanges between producers and consumers in a free market.

Hsieh makes a very good point that is too often missed. The free market is not just about better economic outcomes; it’s about freedom.

(Via Instapundit.)

A Health Care for America Now organizer (none dare call him an astroturfer) trains people on how to shout down health care nationalization dissidents. Plus: “It’s your meeting. Hold on to your meeting.”

Someone tell Pelosi and Hoyer about this clearly “un-American” behavior!

(ViaInstapundit.)

After hovering around parity since mid-July, President Obama’s approval has taken a new dip. Voters now disapprove of the president by a 45-53 margin. Those who feel strongly disapprove by a largely unchanged 30-41 margin.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: A new CNN poll has a majority of independents disapproving of the president, 53-43. (Via Instapundit.)