Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.
The resignation was to avoid impeachment (and removal) — he resigned because a group of senators from his own party went to the White House and told him that he’d be convicted if impeached. Because Republicans have the integrity to remove their bad apples, while Democrats circle the wagons around theirs.
Anyway, I’ll bet the reporter who wrote that wasn’t even born at the time.
I sort of hope it does. It would bring things to a head with the problematic Outer Space Treaty.
[Update a few minutes later]
I haven’t looked at the pictures myself, but a reader has emailed me wondering if they’re potentially faked, based on inconsistent shadows, and similarity to past images (while not wanting to sound like the “Apollo moon hoax” people). I don’t have an opinion, but I wouldn’t put it past them.
Of course cronyism is “unusually safe.” If you have to actually compete by producing energy at the lowest price, all kinds of things can go wrong. But if you can get in with the government, so that legislation requires everyone to pay extra for your product whether they want to or not, your investment is “unusually safe.” This is what cronyism–a polite word for corruption–is all about. It is the principal purpose of the modern environmental movement.
So dhey’re doing very well by doing “good.”
Which is both ironic and hypocritical, as Mark Morano pointed out on CNN the other night, given that they’re always accusing skeptics of taking money from the fossil industry.
As he notes, the fact that 55% would prefer to go back to the old system means that the Republicans could run on a simple repeal platform, even without offering a replacement. Though they should offer one that allows severability of employment from health insurance and purchasing across state lines.
Huge amounts of freshwater reserves have been found, under the ocean:
Water scarcity has been a favorite topic for the Chicken Littles of the world. Just 18 years ago the vice president of the World Bank was ominously warning that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” It’s easy to drum up fears of “water wars” some undetermined time in the future, but studies like this one, and discoveries of new water sources like this one in Kenya, or this one under the Sahara, suggest that these fears that have gripped Malthusians — and that Malthusians have in turn used to push through otherwise unworkable policy recommendations — are a lot less serious.