Gallup: Bush Job Approval Now Higher Than Obama’s

What a difference two years — and a host of costly, unsuccessful policies — makes.

Former President George W. Bush’s approval rating, per Gallup, is now 47 percent.
President Obama’s approval rating, per Gallup, is now 46 percent.

People Magazine: Elizabeth Edwards’ Cancer Has Spread to Her Liver

Very sad news today about Elizabeth Edwards. From People:

Elizabeth Edwards’s cancer fight has taken a turn for the worse, with the disease spreading to her liver and doctors recommending against additional treatment.

“Elizabeth has been advised by her doctors that further treatment of her cancer would be unproductive. She is resting at home with family and friends,” the Edwards family says in a statement to PEOPLE.

I hope you’ll join me in praying for her and her children.

Former Raleigh Mayor Paul Coble Elected Chairman of Wake Commissioners

The newly elected slate of Wake County commissioners has elected Paul Coble as board chairman, replacing Tony Gurley in the post. Coble is a fiscal conservative.

Hitler Youth? Try again

Recently writers have pointed to the many things that fascism and communism have in common, most notably Jonah Goldberg in his best-seller “Liberal Fascism.” I thought of his book when I saw this on a photo website today:

Most people seeing the outfits on these kids, and the martial drummer at the right, would think immediately of the Hitler Youth early in the days of the Third Reich, parading in Munich or Regensburg or Nuernburg. But, actually, it’s from a Russian photo website and it shows young communist youth parading in Moscow in 1927, years before the Third Reich came into being.

Here’s a Hitler Youth photo from 1932. Notice any resemblance?

War against Christmas includes stealing Jesus

Liberals complain when conservatives talk about a war on Christmas. They say it’s just a myth, all replacing of “Christmas” with “Holiday” nationwide notwithstanding. But a little-known front in the war has been the actual kidnapping of Baby Jesus from mangers in Nativity scenes. It’s such a problem that a high-tech solution has been developed:

There’s more than a higher power guarding the Baby Jesus on many public displays for the holidays.

There’s also GPS.

Churches, synagogues and other places that display holiday scenes are taking a high-tech approach to an old holiday tradition: theft. They’re embedding Jesus figures, menorahs and Santa statues with global positioning system satellite tracking devices.

It’s unlikely that drug addicts are stealing plastic and ceramic Jesuses to hock in pawn shops. More likely is it’s activist atheists or church-state separation militants doing the stealing. May these GPS Jesuses result in their arrest.

Durham the smartest town in N.C.?

According to Portfolio magazine, anyway. Durham was named the fourth-smartest city in America, far ahead of the North Carolina’s other cities on the list of the 200 smartest cities (PDF).

Here are the N.C. cities that made the list:

4th, Durham
12th Raleigh
55th Charlotte
71st Wilmington
94th Asheville
132nd Winston-Salem
146th Fayetteville
193rd Hickory

Notice what’s missing? Is Chapel Hill in a whole ‘nother category, or did they truly not measure up enough to knock Hickory off the list?

(Link via Jeff Taylor)

UPDATE: Mitch Kokai tells me that the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Metropolitan Statistical Area was split some years ago, into a Raleigh/Cary MSA and a separate Durham/Chapel Hill MSA, and that they are called “Raleigh” and “Durham.” If this poll was based on MSA’s instead of cities, I’m sure Chapel Hill will quickly announce itself responsible for Durham’s high standing.

RIP, Dandy Don Meredith

Don Meredith, who had as much to do with the success of Monday Night Football as Howard Cosell, died yesterday at the age of 72. He had emphysema and had also had a stroke a few years ago.

I liked Meredith, having seen him play in the NFL championship game on Jan. 1, 1967 in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. How I got to go to the Cowboy-Packers championship game is a story in itself.

I came to Dallas from Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls to see my Georgia Bulldogs play SMU, Meredith’s alma mater, in the Cotton Bowl. Georgia handily won that game 24-9 and I was wandering around the Texas Fairgrounds the next day when a total stranger came up to me and asked if I was a serviceman. I said yes and he gave me and my friend two tickets to the NFL championship game that was starting in about an hour.

I was not much of a Cowboy fan (then or now), but I was definitely not a Packer fan, so I rooted for Meredith and despaired with all of Texas when a Cowboy drive stalled on the 2-yard-line as time expired, giving Green Bay the win. He may have lost that game, but he gained NFL immortality four years later when Monday Night Football debuted on ABC.

RIP, Dandy Don.

Burr bolts on Saturday tax-cut votes

North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr was one of 10 Republican senators who cast no vote on in the two Bush tax cut extension votes Saturday. Democrats failed to get the needed 60 votes on either measure to break the Republican filibuster, and maybe these Republican knew it and flew home early, but nothing was guaranteed:

The final results for the two votes — one to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but individuals making more than $200,000 per year and couples making more than $250,000, and the other to extend the cuts to everyone making less than $1,000,000 — were 53 to 36 and 53 to 37, respectively.

In each case, every Democratic senator voted, including the five, and then six, who voted with Republicans. But in one case, ten Republicans didn’t bother to vote, and in the other 11 Republicans didn’t vote. Here are the 11: Bunning, Burr, Chambliss, Cornyn, Gregg, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Sessions, Vitter, and Voinovich.

All the Democrats, even the ones voting with Republicans, managed to vote on each measure.

Are Assange-advising news outlets treasonous?

Much of the lefty chatting class has pooh-poohed the idea that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange can be a traitor since he’s Australian, not American. But what about the American news organizations that are advising him?:

These newspapers ‘have been advising WikiLeaks on which documents to release publicly and what redactions to make to those documents.’ AP questions whether WikiLeaks will follow these redactions, but nevertheless seems quite impressed by this ‘extraordinary collaboration between some of the world’s most respected media outlets and the WikiLeaks organization.

Will the President Mention This in Winston-Salem Today?

In addition to the job-killing tax increase that looms for this country if the current tax rates are not extended to all, there is another cloud that hovers over our economy. When President Obama speaks today in Winston-Salem about the economy, will he finally acknowledge that the death tax must not be revived? Doubtful, but I continue to hope the president will join the majority of Americans who understand what is at stake.

President Obama and Congressional Democrats don’t think this is a high priority, but voters do. A November Gallup Poll found that Americans think that keeping the estate tax “from increasingly significantly” is “very important” by 56% to 17% “not too important.” That’s more than think it is a priority to extend current tax rates (50%), extend jobless benefits (48%), ratify the Start treaty (40%) or let openly gay men and women serve in the military (32%).