Meredith Jessup: Obama Approvals Hit New Low

Double Shock: ABC Shows Gulf Residents Panning Obama's Oil Spill Speech; ABC's Katrina Focus Group Praised Bush in 2005
A tale of two disasters: On ABC's Good Morning America this morning, weatherman Sam Champion's piece included reaction from several residents of Florida, Alabama and Louisiana to President Obama's Oil Spill Speech, and found three outright critics and no defenders of the Administration's handling of the disaster. One woman exclaimed: " What I would have liked to heard from him " that he actually had a plan ." The kindest review came from a man in Alabama who merely hoped the...

GOP's David Vitter Has Lead Over Charlie Melancon in Louisiana Senate Race
First-term GOP Sen. David Vitter has a 46 percent to 37 percent lead over Democratic Rep. Charlie Melancon in the race for Louisiana's Senate seat, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted June 12-13. Seventeen percent are Undecided The Margin of Error is 4.42 points. While Vitter's Job Approval Rating is not all that impressive -- 45 percent approve of his performance and 43 percent disapprove with 11 percent not sure -- he benefits by being better known than Melancon, whose...

Analysis: Obama's oil spill speech reflects new battle plan
Washington — For President Obama, the Oval Office address Tuesday night was about more than the Oil Spill. His ability to project more command, competency and compassion in response to the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico — and the eventual success of the administration's actions — will have repercussions for his ability to do anything else, from pushing Legislation on Energy and Jobs to holding down Democratic losses in the Midterm Elections. UNDER 'SIEGE': Obama focuses federal...

Obama pledges recovery after BP oil spill
(06-16) 04:00 PDT Washington - -- Facing a classic presidential calamity, President Obama on Tuesday used his first prime-time Oval Office address to assure the nation that he has a plan to address the catastrophic Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico and promise to end the nation's Oil Addiction. It is a promise made by every president since Richard Nixon nearly four decades ago. Although Obama did not explicitly say he would put a price on Carbon, in effect an Energy tax, he endorsed...

Citi Halts Some Foreclosures Near Gulf Spill
By MATTHIAS RIEKER NEW YORK—Citigroup Inc. is halting certain Foreclosures in the areas affected by the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The bank announced a three-month suspension of Foreclosure sales and notifications, as well as evictions on possessed properties for qualifying borrowers in the Gulf region with first Mortgages held by CitiMortgage. The suspension is effective from Thursday through Sept. 17. Citi expects about 1,000 borrowers to participate initially, but that number...

Reid opponent meets with GOP lawmakers
Washington (AP) - The woman Republicans are counting on to knock out Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid courted GOP Rank and File Tuesday and left it to them to answer for her. Sharron Angle, the Tea Party favorite who shocked the Republican establishment last week, joined GOP senators at their weekly luncheon, part of a Washington trip that included sessions with leading Conservatives. She rushed out without answering questions from some two dozen reporters who followed her as she exited the...

Poll: On Disaster Clean-Ups, Louisiana Voters Give Poorer Marks to Obama Than Bush
Louisiana voters think President George W. Bush did a better job handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than President Obama has done in the wake of the BP Oil Spill, according to a new poll.  The Public Policy Polling survey showed 50 percent of state voters rated Bush's performance in 2005 as better than Obama's. Just 35 percent picked Obama.  The survey by PPP, a Democratic-owned firm, comes as the president tries to inspire confidence in his administration's response to the BP...

BP agrees to $US20b oil spill fund
AFP BP on Wednesday agreed to pay $US20 Billion ($A23 Billion) into an independently run fund to meet the spiralling costs of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster, bowing to tough demands from President Barack Obama. The deal was revealed as top executives from the British energy giant met at the White House with Obama to discuss the crisis, which has triggered the nation's worst Environmental Disaster. Both sides were armed with Legal Teams, after Obama vowed to make BP pay for its "recklessness"...

The Obama Speech
I didn't think it was so terrible, although I pretty much agree with many of the points that Jim Fallows makes here. I know that there was a strong argument for Obama to make a JFK "We'll go to The Moon" sort of Speech, declaring War on Fossil Fuels and so forth. But let's put this into some perspective: Obama has already done an awful lot in 18 months as President, pushing against a know-nothing Deficit reduction tide out in the country (and also among the Concord Coalition elites). He has...

APNewsBreak: Hayward 'devastated' by spill
Washington (AP) - BP CEO Tony Hayward says he has been "personally devastated" by the Explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig and understands the anger Americans feel toward him and his company. In Testimony to be delivered to a House panel on Thursday, Hayward says BP does not yet have answers to important questions about the Oil Spill, which has dumped as many as 118 million of gallons of Oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But Hayward says he hears the concerns, fears, frustrations and anger...

He Suckers! I Have A Political Poll Just For You
Has it occurred to anyone but me that political polling in America no longer can be considered a cottage industry and that these vultures can crunch the numbers and phrase the questions to produce answers their clients desire. I mean politicians can’t go to the Bathroom without taking a Poll. I exaggerate, of course. But it is getting close to that. As a Student of political behavior, I consider Polls as a ballplayer throwing blades of grass in the air to figure which way the wind is...

Doing the Job Media Won't Do: Fact-checking Obama's Gulf Spill Address
Plenty of prominent Media figures were upset with President Obama over his substandard address to the nation last night ( full text ). While most are distraught, none seem to be doing what should be the essential journalistic task of the day: pointing out all of the factual misstatements the president made. So, in absence of a serious attempt at Fact-checking from the legacy Media, let us undertake some of our own. In all, the president misrepresented the Federal Government's--and especially...

Louisiana Voters Give Bush Higher Marks on Katrina than Obama on Oil Spill
Remember how Obama enjoyed demonizing George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina? How about the time he said he could handle an emergency in the Gulf because he ran such a big campaign? A lot of voters fell for his BS, but many of those voters are waking up now that they’ve seen him in action. Public Policy Polling : Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the Oil Spill but one perhaps...

Ouch! Louisianans say Bush did a better job on Katrina
Public Policy Polling buried the lede on their latest survey . This one is going to leave a mark: Louisianans believe that President George W. Bush did a better job handling the crisis in the state than President Obama, 50 to 35. But most Louisianans think the Oil Spill is far more critical than Hurricane Katrina. Louisianans overwhelmingly believe that the effects of the Oil Spill will be far more harmful to Louisiana in the long term than Hurricane Katrina, 76 to 17%. More from David Freddoso...

AP Poll: Most unhappy with Obama on oil spill
(06-15) 17:01 PDT Washington (AP) -- Americans have become just as dissatisfied with President Barack Obama's work on the Gulf Oil Spill as they were with his predecessor's handling of Hurricane Katrina, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday. Even so, the catastrophe appears not to have taken a toll on how Americans view the president overall. Obama's Approval Rating remained steady in the poll and he is more popular than President George W. Bush was two months after the...

False Opposition in One Lesson: Bush women endorse Obamacare, Abortion, and Gay Marriage
Bush women run afoul of GOP orthodoxy She may have been born into a Republican family, but Barbara Bush, the 28-year-old daughter of former President George W. Bush, sounded more like a Democrat this weekend during an interview with Fox News. When "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace asked her whether she supports President Obama's Health Care reform plan, she responded: "I guess I'm glad the bill was passed." You can watch the exchange here (video courtesy of Fox News ): "Why do, basically,...

BP's Hayward to get 'sliced and diced' by Congress
Washington (AP) - BP CEO Tony Hayward has said famously that he'd like his life back. First, he'll need to survive a Congressional Hearing that some are describing as a public execution. "I expect him to be sliced and diced," said Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, which hauls the British executive in for a Hearing/flaying Thursday. Here's advice from a Washington lawyer, Stan Brand, who specializes in criminal Law and...

BP’s failure to cap oil spill unleashes £6 billion shares leak
More than £6 Billion was wiped from the market value of BP last night after the Oil giant’s latest failure to control its Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico provoked mounting anger in the US. With markets in London closed, BP’s German-listed shares plunged almost 8 per cent to €5.39 (£4.56) after the US Government warned that the leak from the blown-out Macondo Well may not be stopped until a Relief Well can be drilled in August. The share price collapse was equivalent...

Blame Obama for the oil spill? How about the press and public?
Everybody and their brother hammers President Obama for his lack of response to the Gulf Oil Spill. But don’t we in the media and the public also deserve blame? If memory serves, the 2008 campaign contained minimal discussion of whether Obama or McCain could govern. There was no clamor for the Candidates to detail how their responses, say, to Hurricane Katrina would have differed from President Bush’s. What discussion there was among party and ideological Activists would not...

GOP's Bill Brady Leading Unpopular Pat Quinn in Illinois Governor Race
While more than half of voters don't know enough about GOP state Sen. Bill Brady to have an opinion of him, he still manages to edge out Illinois' unpopular Democratic Incumbent Pat Quinn in the race for the Governor's seat, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted June 12-13. Brady leads Quinn 34 percent to 30 percent with 9 percent for Green Party Candidate Rich Whitney and 27 percent Undecided. The Margin of Error is 4.2 points. Fifty-six percent of voters do not know much...

IL: 2010 Gov (PPP 6/12-13)
Public Policy Polling (D) 6/12-13/10; 552 Likely Voters, 4.2% Margin of Error Mode: Automated phone ( PPP release ) Illinois 2010 Governor 34% Brady (R), 30% Quinn (D), 9% Whitney (G) ( chart ) Job Approval / Disapproval Gov. Quinn: 27 / 50 Favorable / Unfavorable Bill Brady: 22 / 22 Rich Whitney: 5 / 15

Why economy may not save 2010 Democrats
“Hope” wasn’t just a major theme of Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign. It also might be a one-word summation of the 2010 Midterm Campaign strategy devised by the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill. They hope voters get more comfortable with Healthcare Reform. They hope voters really Care about the technocratic bank bill. And, most importantly, they hope voters begin to sense some impact of a slowly recovering economy on their personal financial...

Nevada candidate Angle left GOP in Reagan years (AP)
Washington – Nevada Senate nominee Sharron Angle , a Tea Party favorite who describes herself as a conservative's conservative, left the Republican Party at the height of the Reagan revolution and became a Democrat for at least several years, Government records show. Documents on file with the Humboldt County, Nev., clerk's office show Angle was a registered Republican until June 1984, when she changed her Party Registration. According to the records, she remained a Democrat at...

Nevada candidate Angle left GOP in Reagan years
Washington — Nevada Senate nominee Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite who describes herself as a conservative's conservative, left the Republican Party at the height of the Reagan revolution and became a Democrat for at least several years, Government records show. Documents on file with the Humboldt County, Nev., clerk's office show Angle was a registered Republican until June 1984, when she changed her Party registration. According to the records, she remained a Democrat at least...