Author Archives: whmacken2013

by - 0 comments

Ferguson prompts a new low for the New York Times editorial page

Over-the-top editorials have been a fixture in the New York Times for years, but it’s newest attempt to justify its opinions hit a new low.

An editorial in last week’s New York Times called for the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Robert McCulloch, to step aside or Gov. Jay Nixon should select a special prosecutor to replace him in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, MO.

mcculloch

A key justification given for the paper’s position – “…more than 70,000 people have signed an online petition calling for a special prosecutor…”

So now one of the largest, most respected newspapers in the United States is advocating policies on the basis of an online petition? Good grief.

This one was started by Jamilah Nasheed, a Democrat who represents part of St. Louis City (District 05) in the Missouri Senate. It was put up on MoveOn.org, a progressive public policy advocacy group.

On Aug. 21, Nasheed presented 70,000 of the signatures to McColluch. “We’re going to demand that the governor do the right thing, and step up to the plate, and not play politics on the back of a dead man,” Nasheed said.

Nasheed, who accused the police officer who shot Michael Brown of “shooting down a man in the middle of a street, execution-style,” has inflamed the situation by threatening that if the police officer who shot Brown is not indicted, “the rioting we witnessed this past week will seem like a picnic compared to the havoc that will likely occur.”

As of the writing of this post, Nasheed’s petition had 78,129 signatures, That’s .01 percent of Missouri’s population and .0002 percent of the population of the United States. Definitely enough to drive an editorial position.

Meanwhile, a MoveOn petition, “Arrest and Try House GOP Leadership for Sedition” has 62,341 signers. Why isn’t the New York Times editorializing in support of this?

by - 0 comments

Obama’s executive orders on immigration: A feast for special interests

“A government above the law is a menace to be defeated.”
Lord Scarman

“This is a nation of laws,” President Obama proclaimed on Tuesday during his plea for calm in Ferguson, MO.

Yes it is. And the President of the United States, who appears to be unable or unwilling to work with Congress on immigration, shouldn’t be focusing his energies on how to go around it.

obama-cnn

“America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that. That’s part of my job,” Obama said in March 2011, at an event hosted by the Spanish-language television network Univision.

“There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president,” Obama added.

So there’s something very dispiriting about his administration’s current maneuvering, in collusion with an array of special interests, to bypass Congress and circumvent immigration law through executive orders.

It reminds me of my time as staff on a committee of the House of Representatives when an impatient constituent complained about House inaction on a piece of legislation. Rep. Edwin Forsythe (R-NJ), the ranking minority member of the committee, replied that the Founders intended Congress to be deliberate. “It keeps a lot of bad bills from passing,” he said.

Instead of letting that legislative process play out, there’s something odious about all the special interests sidling up to Obama and his advisors behind closed doors to plead their case. They haven’t succeeded in pushing Congress to pass an immigration bill to their liking, so they’re happy to win by going in the back door.

This is where special deals for special interests, many of which have likely contributed generously to Obama and Democrats, can get their rewards without public exposure.

In an interesting juxtaposition of stories in today’s New York Times, one story highlighted Obama’s disengagement with Congress. “…nearly six years into his term, with his popularity at the lowest of his presidency, Mr. Obama appears remarkably distant from his own party on Capitol Hill, with his long neglect of would-be allies catching up to him,” the story said.

Meanwhile,another story outlined Obama’s plans to use executive orders to make “potentially sweeping changes to the nation’s immigration system without Congress.”

”America cannot wait forever for them to act,” Obama said of Congressional Republicans.

But the unwillingness of Congress to act on a president’s priorities shouldn’t mean defaulting to unbridled executive action. Rather, it should lead to more aggressive effort to secure Congressional votes.

When faced with Congressional resistance to his civil rights proposals, President Johnson didn’t retreat to the oval office to invent spurious ways to bypass Congress. As Robert Caro has so ably documented, Johnson worked every angle, twisted every arm, and glad-handed every critic to secure passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

According to Caro, when Johnson embarked on his campaign for a civil rights bill, his allies cautioned him about using up his political capitol on a important but doomed effort so soon after ascending to the presidency following Kennedy’s assassination.

Johnson’s reply? “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”

by - 0 comments

If City Club of Portland says “no” to GMOs, is “no” to vaccines next?

With the anti-science GMO silliness that’s going on at the City Club of Portland, I’m surprised it hasn’t recommended that moms reject vaccinations for their kids. After all, Jenny McCarthy, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Charlie Sheen are already on board.

vaccines

A study committee for the City Club recommended in July that the group endorse a November ballot measure mandating the labeling of genetically engineered foods sold in Oregon. The City Club will vote on the recommendation on Wednesday, Aug. 20.

antiGMO

One key element of its reasoning – some consumers want such labeling. If public opinion is to be the primary determinant of whether the City Club endorses a policy, just do a poll and go with the majority. Then they won’t have to do any real independent research.

Of course, even if the City Club did a poll today, that would only tell them what the public thinks at that point. Public sentiment on an issue can shift over time, as the defeat of many once widely supported Oregon ballot measures illustrates.

Good research by the City Club might reveal that the public is really misinformed and being swayed by nonsensical arguments. The fact is, the so-called “collective wisdom” is often wrong. The public does not always have all the relevant information to make an intelligent decision.

Besides, why should the City Club care what other people think. Make up your own mind.

The other principal reason the City Club committee gave for endorsing mandating the labeling of genetically engineered foods sold in Oregon is that it would help track the safety of genetically altered foods.

Come on now, folks.

Independent scientific organizations have overwhelmingly concluded that genetically engineered foods pose no health risk.

For example, the National Academies (the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine) were asked to convene a committee of scientific experts to outline science-based approaches for assessing or predicting the unintended health effects of genetically engineered (GE) foods and to compare the potential for unintended effects with those of foods derived from other conventional genetic modification methods.

The committee’s report found, “To date, no adverse health effects attributed to genetic engineering have been documented in the human population.”

That’s not to say more research isn’t needed. It is. But requiring that all genetically engineered foods be labeled won’t help. More likely, the labeling, in combination with unscientific scare tactics by GMO critics, would simply depress demand for such foods.

But then, maybe that’s what the labeling advocates really want.

by - 1 Comment

Ferguson, MO: So many agendas, so little time

In 1989, when I was a reporter for The Oregonian, I happened to be in the vicinity of Homestead Air Force Base in Florida when Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, was flown in late at night after being captured by American troops in Operation Just Cause.

With my reporter credentials, I managed to secure access to an area near the base where a couple hundred demonstrators had gathered to denounce Noriega. The dynamics were fascinating.

The demonstrators would mill about calmly chatting, drinking cokes and smoking cigarettes until the TV crews yelled, “We’re going live” and turned on their lights. On cue, the demonstrators would quickly come together and erupt in ferocious anger, screaming slogans and raising protest signs. When the camera lights went out, the demonstrators would instantly resume their casual almost family picnic-like behavior.

To the TV viewers, Homestead Air Force base was overrun by a huge mob of anti-Noriega demonstrators demanding justice, but what was actually going on was a scripted, mutually beneficial tableau, with everybody playing their part.

Ferguson, MO feels like that.

Michael Brown

Michael Brown

From the moment Michael Brown was shot to death on Saturday afternoon, August 9, the story ceased to be about him.

For Obama critics, it has provided an opportunity to take him to task for not being more immediately engaged in the matter, for carousing on Martha’s Vineyard while Rome burned, or for injecting himself into the story in the first place.

For Jesse Jackson, who arrived on the scene Friday night, it’s been a chance to remind people he’s still a player on the national stage. For the ever-present Al Sharpton, it has provided yet another chance to visibly insert himself in a controversy, hype it as a racial travesty and raise his public profile. On Aug. 12, Sharpton came to St. Louis to speak to Brown’s family and worked his way around the St. Louis area to demand justice in the shooting. That afternoon he managed to draw more attention by speaking on the steps of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis.

Al Sharpton speaks to a crowd at the St. Louis downtown courthouse

Al Sharpton speaks to a crowd at the St. Louis downtown courthouse

For Benjamin Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin and has been hired by the Brown family as their counsel, it has provided a shot at a second dose of notoriety.

Benjamin Crump

Benjamin Crump

For the no-longer-as-influential NAACP, it has meant a chance to be a player, to hold a packed press conference at the local Murchison Tabernacle CME Church. So many people showed up, a lot of them had to stand outside and listen to speakers.

The NAACP press conference was overwhelmed with attendees

The NAACP press conference was overwhelmed with attendees

For some politicians, the whole affair has been a godsend for their exposure.

Missouri Democratic State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal went so far as to go on MSNBC and call Brown’s death an “execution-style” shooting. She also sent out expletive-laden tweets to Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, such as, “ You don’t know s..t bc you never communicate. F..K you, Governor!” and “F..K you, Governor. I’m calling your bullshit!”

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) weighed in with a tweet,too. “This is America, not a war zone.”

For critics of the distribution of surplus military equipment to police forces around the country, the use of such equipment in Ferguson has given them a chance to advance their messages.

Senator Rand Paul, R- KY, has put the responsibility for the militarization of police departments at the feet of big government, arguing that, “Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies…”

Senator Rand Paul, R-KY

Senator Rand Paul, R-KY

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., has announced his intention to introduce the “Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act,” which would further monitor, limit or eliminate such equipment sales. Johnson and Michael Shank, associate director for legislative affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, took to USA Today on March 10 to proclaim of the military’s program, “Something potentially sinister is happening across America.”

Even the media’s gotten into the act. After two reporters from the Washington Post and the Huffington Post were arrested on Aug. 13 while covering demonstrations in Ferguson, both media outlets and the reporters have gone public with descriptions of the incidents and anguished protests about the “assault on the freedom of the press.”

Ryan Reilly, a reporter for the Huffington Post, talked to MSNBC's Chris Hayes, anchor of “All In,” about his arrest .

Ryan Reilly, a reporter for the Huffington Post, talked to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, anchor of “All In,” about his arrest .

Again, this reminds me of a time when I was at The Oregonian and a con man I was following in an exhausting and circuitous effort over several weeks threatened to kill me. I wanted to include all the details of my travails in researching the story when I wrote it, but a senior editor insisted I delete it. “The troubles you endured in getting the story don’t belong in the paper,” he said. ‘The story’s not about you.

by - 0 comments

Why did Senator Ron Wyden try to bail out union pensions?

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) tried to pull a fast one last month to help out the United Mine Workers of America union.

While Congress, the country and the media were fixated on the twists and turns of efforts to rescue the Highway Trust Fund, Wyden and some other members of Congress pursued an entirely different agenda, using the Trust Fund legislation to bail out the underfunded United Mine Workers of America’s pension plan.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)

When the Senate Finance Committee, which Wyden chairs, first reported out a Highway Trust Fund bill it slipped in a provision advocated by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va). The provision called for $2.7 billion of the funds to be raised to be diverted to help bail out the underfunded pension plan for retired coal miners.

Congressional efforts to bail out the United Mine Workers health and pension plans have been going on for decades.

A 1992 law authorized the transfer of interest accruing to the unspent balance of the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund to help for the United Mine Workers health care fund. That was followed by 2006 amendments to the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program, which provided transfers of general funds to insure the solvency of the Mine Workers health care plans.

This time, however, Wyden’s committee proposed paying for the union rescue with a gimmick called “pension smoothing” that has been roundly criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as nothing more than a sham.

Pension smoothing lets corporations delay contributions to their employee pension plans. Because pension deposits are tax-deductible, postponing them raises corporations’ taxable income and, therefore, increases tax payments to the government.

The problem is the increased revenues from the smoothing period will be largely offset later when corporations will pay less in taxes in years when they rebuild their pension plans to make up for the underfunding period.

In other words, Wyden’s committee proposed using illusory revenue from a corporate pension gimmick to save a failing union pension plan.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget excorciated both the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee for using the ruse.

But there was little public debate on the $2.7 billion union rescue plan. Compare that with the furor surrounding President Obama’s request for $3.7 billion to deal with the surge of children from Central America crossing the southwest border into the United States.

Maybe Wyden, Rockefeller and the measure’s other supporters thought their union bail-out would succeed because it was in a must-pass bill.

Maybe Wyden acceded to adding the bail-out money because he knows his seat is safe no matter what.

Maybe Wyden did it as a going-away-gift to Rockefeller, who’s retiring from the senate at the end of this term.

Or maybe, even though Wyden knows pension smoothing is a farce, he could, as a liberal, care less about the growing national debt when there are favors to be granted.

Thankfully, though, his gambit failed. A Highway Trust Fund bill that transfers $10.8 billion to the Fund finally passed on July 31st after the Senate accepted a House version without the miners’ pension provision. Obama signed the law on August 8th.

But don‘t think that means the end of attempts to bail out the union miners’ pension plan. Members of Congress surely have other tricks up their sleeve.

You’ve got to watch them every second.

by - 0 comments

It’s about time: Walsh drops out of Senate race

Senator John Walsh (D- Montana) dropped out of the race for a full term today following allegations of massive plagiarism on his thesis at the prestigious U.S. Army War College. His withdrawal comes after other Democrats in Congress rallied around him, despite his grave ethical breach.

Senator John Walsh (D-Montana)

Senator John Walsh (D-Montana)

Senator John Tester (D-Montana) had argued that Walsh’s actions were a minor mistake and that voters should overlook a relatively minor mistake when weighed against his military service in Iraq and career serving his country.

As Tester put it, “He’s a soldier, not an academic.”

See earlier post: IN GOD WE TRUST. BUT NOT IN SENATOR WALSH.

by - 0 comments

Paying to fix the VA: a tale full of sound and fury

With exuberant huzzahs, Democrats and Republicans are hailing a compromise reached Monday on a $17 billion veterans bill. It’s a demonstration of a new bipartisanship, they proclaim.

But the bipartisanship has brought forth a deeply flawed bill. That’s because it largely relies on emergency funding to cover the cost, rather than finding comparable savings elsewhere. Only $5 billion of the $17 billion is offset by other cuts.

That means $12 billion of the bill’s cost will be added to the obscene national debt, already over $17.5 trillion.

twain

Politico characterized the compromise as a result of “knock-down, drag-out arguing.”

But in the end, the public acknowledgement of tooth-and-nail fighting was so much sturm and drang. The Republicans are where they said they’d never go. They have agreed to calling a failure of the VA system that has been building for years an emergency and joined with the Democrats in not bothering to pay for most of the fix.

It was a masterful performance on both sides, a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In earlier versions of the VA legislation, the Senate wanted to pay the bill’s entire tab through emergency legislation, which meant the tab would be added to the federal deficit.

But the Republican-controlled House bill called for the cost to be covered by spending cuts from somewhere else in the federal budget.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, tried to cast the House Republicans insisting on budget discipline as folks who wanted to take food out of the mouths of the needy, medical care away from the infirm and quality education away from American children.

“I hope very much we can avoid once again having a major debate about cutting food stamps, education, roads and bridges in order to fund the VA,” Sanders said.

Politico reported today that Senator Ben Nelson (D – Fla) said failure to reach a deal on VA reform would have meant “a huge dagger in the backs of veterans who so desperately need to have the confidence that the VA system is going to be straightened out.”

Now, instead, we have a bill that is a dagger is in the back of American taxpayers and their children who will be burdened with even more national debt.

Sure, sure. Spend away. No budget discipline needed here.

by - 0 comments

In God we trust. But not in Senator Walsh.

Senator John Walsh (D-Montana) plagiarized about two-thirds of a 14 page thesis he submitted to receive his master’s degree at the prestigious U.S. Army War College, the New York Times has reported.

Senator John Walsh (D-Montana)

Senator John Walsh (D-Montana)

The War College’s handbook explicitly states that, “Directly quoting another author’s work without giving proper credit to the author,” is academic fraud and that, “Plagiarism is a serious form of cheating that carries serious consequences.”

Walsh was appointed to the seat early this year by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock after Democratic Sen. Max Baucus resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China, setting Walsh up to defend the seat as an incumbent. Walsh is now the Democratic nominee in the race for a full, six-year term this fall against Republican Rep. Steve Daines.

The response of Walsh, his party and liberal supporters to this grave ethical breach that propelled Walsh forward in his career?

We’re behind him 100%. He’s our guy. His election is going to help us keep control of the senate. He’ll vote the way we want.

Walsh tried to minimize the seriousness of his actions. “My record will be defined by (service in) the National Guard, not by a few citations that were unintentionally left out in a term paper,” he said Sunday.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman, Justin Barasky, called the disclosures “smears.”

“John Walsh is a decorated war hero, and it’s disgusting that Steve Daines and Washington Republicans are going to try denigrate John’s distinguished service after multiple polls show him gaining,” Barasky said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who highlighted Walsh earning a masters’s degree from the War College when he welcomed him to the Senate in Feb. 2014, said Walsh “…has distinguished himself as leader in the Senate…”

Senator John Tester (D-Montana) argued that Walsh’s actions were a minor mistake and that voters should overlook a relatively minor mistake when weighed against his military service in Iraq and career serving his country.

As Tester put it, “He’s a soldier, not an academic.”

The willingness of Democrats to avert their eyes from Walsh’s transgression, to so blithely excuse it, is an obscenity. It’s the kind of behavior that’s behind Congress’ dismal ratings in the eyes of the public. Behavior like Walsh’s matters, even if he’s in your party and voting your way.

“It goes right to his strength — his military record and his integrity,” Montana State University political science professor, David Parker, said to ABC News. “He was willing to take somebody’s words and make them his own. That’s a question of honor.”

by - 1 Comment

Is the Internet making us stupid? We’re reading faster, but remembering less.

Fifty percent of Oregonians don’t know Oregon has two U.S. senators.*

Maybe that’s because they read all their news online.

Think about how you read on the Internet.

You see an article, Are office politics destroying your career? and click on the link to read more. While you read, you are interrupted by an Instant Message from the boss that requires an immediate response. It only takes a minute to respond, but when you come back to the article a link to a Dilbert cartoon about work draws your attention. Then some high priority e-mails require attention. You take a few seconds to check on the latest news. Among the news items you see, Check out Emily Ratajkowski’s photos in the 2014 SI Swimsuit Issue, and take a look.

Where was I, you say to yourself.

Did you even get through the above paragraph uninterrupted?

People are reading more text than ever, but recalling less of it because they’re reading online, a Victoria Business School study on reading behavior has found.

The Impact of the Internet on Reading Behaviour, by Associate Professor Val Hooper and Master’s student Channa Herath, explores the online and offline reading behavior of individuals.

In general, online reading was found to have a negative impact on people’s cognition, with concentration, comprehension, absorption and recall rates when engaging with online material all much lower, principally because people are multitasking and scanning when reading online, not focusing.

computerstupid

“Multitasking when reading online was common, with activities such as reading emails, checking news, exploring hyperlinks and viewing video clips providing distractions,”says Dr Hooper.

Many of the study respondents verified the results, saying they were more likely to remember material they had read offline, which was also why they frequently printed material they really wanted to read closely.

Makes you wonder whether digital readers really absorb all the political messages candidates spend so much money on.

For that matter, I wonder how many people reading this online article will finish or remember it.

*2013 Oregon Values & Beliefs Survey. Executed by DHM Research and PolicyInteractive Research; Sponsored by Oregon Health & Science University, The Oregon Community Foundation, Oregon Public Broadcasting and Oregon State University.

by - 0 comments

Things fall apart

I was enjoying a coffee and pastry at a Starbucks this morning when a man sitting next to me checking his smartphone and reading the paper turned and said, “It looks like the rebels or the Russians might have shot down a Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 300 people. Do you get the feeling everything is just unraveling?”

Yes.

A plan to transport three busloads of Central American families through San Diego for processing at the Murrieta Border Patrol station took an unexpected turn when scores of protesters blocked the buses from entering.

A plan to transport three busloads of Central American families through San Diego for processing at the Murrieta Border Patrol station took an unexpected turn when scores of protesters blocked the buses from entering.

Tens of thousands of children of all ages, most unaccompanied by adults, are flowing across the U.S. Southwest border. Frustration and anger is bubbling up all over the country. Some people are arguing that President Obama has encouraged the stream of immigrants and that strong steps need to be taken to control the U.S. border and send the immigrants home. Others argue the immigrants need to be treated with compassion and welcomed to America with open arms in the spirit of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Whichever side you are on, and just about everybody seems to have taken sides, just 28% of the public approves of the way President Obama is handling the surge of children from Central America, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center or the People & the Press.

Meanwhile, violence is spreading in Gaza and Israel after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank set off a new cycle of violence in the region.

While Hamas militants and Israel exchange rocket fire, stories multiply of civilian deaths, including a story today reporting that four boys, ages 9 to 11, were killed on a beach west of Gaza City.

A boy on a Gaza beach killed in an Israeli attack is carried away.

A boy on a Gaza beach killed in an Israeli attack is carried away.

Of course, the only reason similar horrifying stories of civilian killings by the Hamas militants haven’t surfaced in Israel is because of its effective anti-rocket defenses.

In Ukraine, tension continues as Russia threatens the country, pro-Russian militants fight the government’s forces and, as noted earlier, rumors swirl that a Malaysian Airlines plane with 295 on board, including some Americans, that crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border was deliberately shot down. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in Kiev asserted that the “the airplane was shot down by the Russian Buk missile system.”

wreckage of Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine

wreckage of Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine

In Egypt, after a popular uprising resulted in the first democratically-elected Islamic president in Egypt’s history, forces led by Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the fledgling president and instigated an unforgiving campaign of retaliation against the Muslim Brotherhood and regime critics that continues to this day.

In Syria, after Obama insisted that use of chemical weapons by the the Assad regime would be “a red line for us,” Obama dithered and the civil war escalated, creating a country scarred with destruction and pushing out hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring counries.

obama-redlinespeech821

In Afghanistan, scene of what Obama called “the good war” that needed to be fought, chaos has ensued since the U.S. precipitously withdrew its troops.

In Iraq, after thousands of American soldiers gave their lives in an effort to create a sustainable peace, the U.S.-backed Shia-led government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initiated a cleansing of the Sunni minority. Now we have a violent struggle going on in Iraq with mostly Sunni militants from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

A file image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province (AFP Photo / HO)

A file image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province (AFP Photo / HO)

Meanwhile, despite a roaring stock market, economic insecurity reigns. Just 19% of those surveyed by Pew say economic conditions in the U.S. are excellent or good while 81% rate conditions as only fair or poor. About six-in-ten (62%) still say jobs are difficult to find locally.

Detroit Area Economy Worsens As Big Three Automakers Face Dire Crisis

Obama’s rating for handling the economy also has stayed negative, with 56% disapproving of the way Obama is handling the economy, according to the Pew survey. In fact, Obama’s job rating on the economy has been around 40% for most of the past five years.

Meanwhile, Obama, “a restless president weary of the obligations of the White House,” as the New York Times puts it, jets around the world for fundraisers and dinners with celebrities and wealthy supporters, taking as many breaks as he can for golf.

Barack Obama

Unravelling? You bet.