The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

During the 35-day government shutdown, the longest in this country's history, Donald Trump saw his approval rating drop to 37% in Gallup polls. The latest round of Gallup polls were just released this week and it showed Trump's post-shutdown approval rating was up 7 points to 44%. Upon seeing this, my first reaction was, "WTF?!? Are people really this stupid?!?" Considering the fact we elected this man president at all, I suppose it should be obvious by now that answer is a resounding yes! Let's think about this for a moment. Congress passed a bipartisan, nearly unanimous budget bill which Donald Trump said he was going to sign. After receiving some heat from right-wing talking heads like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, Trump changed his mind at the last moment and decided to shut down the government until he received the money he initially wanted to build a southern border wall. The shutdown lasted a record-setting 35 days, where hundreds of thousands, if not mi...

Congressional Republicans can say all they want that the voters gave them a mandate. The fact of the matter is, though, that's simply not true. It'd be one thing if the public approved of Congressional Republicans over President Obama and 50-60%+ of voters actually voted (even that number is sad). However, when just 37% of voters voted, and of those voters, President Obama held a 44% approval rating while Congress held an approval rating of just 16%, I'm sorry, but voters didn't give the GOP a mandate. The public was largely angry and/or indifferent, so those that were angry tended to vote for the party that wasn't in control, so some semblance of change could occur (or the illusion of it), and since Democrats held the majority in the Senate, voters decided it was time to give the Republicans a turn at the Senate wheel. Delving deeper into the numbers, even if I generously give Republicans 60% of the overall vote on election day, that's 60% of the 37% of p...

Well, I'm not sure if there's much point in my writing this blog anymore, but I'll do so anyway. A few days ago, I noticed President Obama's poll numbers were sagging some. I found this to be especially interesting because the economy has been continually improving under his leadership - so for his approval numbers to move in the opposite direction, I found this to be intriguing and somewhat perplexing. In an August 3rd - 5th Fox News poll, it had President Obama at 42% approval and 52% disapproval (net -10). Identical numbers were displayed in an August 9th - 13th Reuters/Ipsos poll. An August 10th - 12th Economist/YouGov poll showed the president at a -9 net approval (44% approval versus 53% disapproval). My hunch about all this was that a growing number of liberal Democrats and Independents were angry at the president for the NSA controversy, and this played a significant factor in his dropping poll numbers. However, I felt so long as the economy continued to imp...