Obama Approval Rating: ?

Day 115 of 1461, or 7.8% through his term, Obama's approval rating hovers at 5%. Will this be the week?

#1: O Admin ponders how to force banks to cut pay. I went over this in detail in this blog, but here's the reader's digest version: They want to control how banks can pay their employees, including non-executives. This includes banks who did not take one thin dime of TARP funds. To top it off, they haven't even found a legal way to do it yet and already there are rumblings about expanding this to the mortgage industry, and further. Disgraceful. For take the next step towards a nationalized economy, he drops 6%.

#2: Silly Chrysler. You don't really need those commercials. The folks at the Chrysler arm of Government Motors (Commonly known as GM) attempted someone radical the other day. They actually tried to determine their own budget on marketing! Poppycock, I say! Fortunately, the Obama Auto Task Force came to the rescue.

"Chrysler wanted to spend $134 million in advertising over the nine weeks it's expected to be in bankruptcy -- the U.S. Treasury's auto-industry task force gave it half that.

So if GM, which is wrestling with the possibility of a Chapter 11 filing itself, is wondering how much influence the task force will have over marketing, the answer is: plenty."

That was close. We almost had a private business making decisions for itself. What a disaster that would've been!

Here's the bottom line. How a private business spends its own money is its own business, and the business of no one else, especially the government, so long as it is not breaking any laws. Last I checked, advertising was in fact legal. If Chrysler wanted to spent $1 million on trained chimpanzees in armor with swords, that would be their own business (and it would be really cool). This is why getting public funds involved in private business is a bad idea. When you do that, you give the government authority to do things it should not be doing. Answer: Let Chrysler fail! For demonstrating his complete lack of regard for personal freedoms, Obama loses 4%.

#3: Businesses are exporting jobs? Let's raise taxes! Here's the link to the blog I wrote on this earlier in the week. Here goes the quick & dirty. Fact: America has the third highest tax rate in the industrialized world for businesses (as of 2003), behind Japan and Germany. Fact: Higher taxes give an incentive for a company to leave town. Fact: I love cheese. Put all these together, and you get bad news for high tax areas, especially if you try to close loopholes that let the company defray the cost of these high taxes. For scaring businesses better than the bogeyman, Obama loses 4%.

#4: Sike! No torture photos, and tribunals are a great idea after all! In a "complete 180" from an earlier position, Obama has decided to fight releasing the 44 photos depicting "torture" perpetrated on prisoners, saying that to do so would "inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger". Obama was intent on allowing the photos to be released as late as April 23rd, but the Magic O has determined that it might not be a great idea after all.

In related news, remember how keeping detainees forever without due process was completely wrong, and Bush was blasted for it during the campaign? Remember how these prisoners deserved the rights of citizens? Yeah, not so much.

"The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

Let me start by saying I agree with both of these decisions. Prisoners of war are not citizens. If they were American citizens, I would say they deserve due process as such. Since they aren't, they don't. Military tribunals are what they ought to get, because that is how we deal with dangerous enemy combatants. The photos should never have been taken, and now that they are, they ought to be destroyed. If misconduct was done (and I'm not convinced that it was misconduct, but whatever) then it ought to be investigated and dealt with appropriately. Appropriately means quietly, privately, and judiciously. Not splashed on every newspaper with detailed instructions to our enemies about exactly how far we will push them if they are captured.

The only troubling thing is such a complete reversal of opinion with little explanation. I suspect that perhaps the world is not the comfy, cozy place it appeared on the campaign trail. The more Obama learns this the more he realizes that perhaps his predecessor wasn't the great Satan he thought he was, at least not when it came to national security. For flopping, Obama loses 2%. For ending up on the right side, he gains 4%.

Let's add up the totals. It appears that our President is at negative 7% Wait! It's the magical point fairy! She has come to drop off a gift, special for the President. The direct intervention of a magical creature gives the President 7 approval points! (cue the Final Fantasy victory music.)

The approval rating now sits at a nice, round 0%. It's almost like I planned that...

Since we have now hit rock bottom, it would appear that our weekly feature is at a close. If you have any ideas on what you might like to see replace it, or how it could continue, leave them in the comments!