Thursday News and Views

Morning Paper (oil on canvas) by Richard Lincoln

Good Morning, Conflucians!!!!!

I’m so excited to see the sun out this morning here in central Indiana. It might get up into the 70’s today, and I can’t wait. One of the things I came out here for was to help my mom get the garden going and do other work in the yard. So far the weather hasn’t been very cooperative though. Today should be perfect for yard work.

Via No Quarter, the big cheese in the White House isn’t real popular with “the folks” these days. Here is yesterday’s summary of the latest polls at Real Clear Politics. Obama averaged

And there’s an interactive graph at the link where you can see Obama’s plummeting approval ratings over time. It’s really quite dramatic.

Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidental Tracking Poll showed

that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19. Today’s rating is the lowest earned by the president since the passage of his health care proposal two months ago

Yesterday, Obama’s total approval was only 44% and total disapproval was 55%, with 44% strongly disapproving of his performance! No wonder his coattails are so useless.

Check out the graph:

And here is a page that lists Obama’s Rasmussen ratings going back to inauguration day.

My, my, my…where is the hope? I think it went out the window quite awhile ago. When more people start to realize what horrible catastrophe the oil spill is really going to be, will even more voters strongly disapprove? How low can he go?

Is newly minted Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul a racist? I was shocked when I heard his interview on NPR, summarized by Ben Smith at Politico. He claims he supported Martin Luther King’s fight against discrimination, but Paul also says businesses should be able to refuse service to whomever they wish. Darren Hutchinson has a good summary of Paul’s record on civil rights. The verdict: “Miserable.”

Think Progress has a transcript of the relevant portions of the NPR interview. And here is audio of an interview that Rand Paul did with the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Did The New York Times deliberately smear Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal? That’s what Jamison Foser suggested at Media Matters yesterday. The Times reported a quote from a 2008 video of Blumenthal in which he appeared to claim he had served in Vietnam when he did not. But the Time omitted an earlier part of the video in which Blumenthal said he served during the Vietnam era. Blumenthal claims he simply made a slip of the tongue.

This morning Greg Sargent says the questions aren’t going away. The Columbia Journalism review is also chiding the Times for its careless treatment of the story.

So what are you all reading this fine spring morning? Please post your links and thoughts freely in the comments and have a terrific Thursday!!!