Broback’s Blog

The Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center has an interactive dashboard that lets you compare the the approval ratings of post-WWII presidents at any comparable point in their presidencies. I’ve been tracking Obama’s approval against other presidents that were seriously “troubled” at this stage: Reagan, Carter, and Clinton. As those who were around at that time, [...]

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Regarding the Palin nomination, Peggy Noonan, and the premature pontifications here and here: I guess the flip response could be “you wish.” Check out how the three post convention polls are tracking according to realclearpolitics. John Belushi channels his reaction from the great beyond: I guess two can succeed at the let’s nominate a “charismatic [...]

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At least that’s the first thing that came to my mind when I heard of what seems to be an illusory business-friendly tax cut. I’ve heard him say this many times, and it’s always sounded non-sensical to me. Obama says he will: …eliminate all capital gains taxes on small and start-up businesses to encourage innovation [...]

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Wow. The register reports that if you post to your blog using the Google browser, Google owns the content. Hey — that’s “evil”! This reminds me of my discussions with Steve Roth. He’s taken the position that the Republican congress-persons have an inherent evil streak, and recent convictions prove it. I say that absolute power [...]

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Regarding the rather astonishing hypercritical response to nominating someone with executive experience for not-president, I wanted to see what Google was indexing. (As of 9-8-08) If you type the following into Google: “sarah palin” unqualified You’ll get 76,200 results. Now try: “sarah palin” unfairly attacked You’ll get 513,000 results.

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A Google Trends search reveals that many more searches contained the search term “sarah palin” than on “joe biden” immediately post announce of VP status. Is this indicative of “popularity,” or just the curious trying to learn more about a relative unknown? What I find most intriguing is how the “demand” for information (the top [...]

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Maybe there is “hope” after all. This from Greg Mankiw. He quotes Obama’s second autobiography, page 156. the conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan’s central insight–that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing [...]

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