March 24, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Is Joe Biden’s low approval rating permanent?
By David Potter
According to a new Ipsos/Reuters poll that was conducted on March 21st and March 22nd, Joe Biden's approval rating has continued to fall to 40 percent, with Americans citing economy and foreign conflict as their top concerns. It was discovered that 54 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion about President Biden's job performance as inflation continues to rise. When asked about the president's involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, only 32 percent said they approved while 47 percent disapproved. This is a five-point increase from last month.
For 28 weeks straight, the economy has remained the top issue of concern for both Democrat and Republican voters. The record-breaking inflation recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics illustrates the poor economic performance under President Biden’s leadership. At the end of February 2022, the cost of fuel was up 43.6 percent from February 2021. The cost of food has also increased dramatically. “The food at home index rose 8.6 percent over the last 12 months, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1981. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increased 13.0 percent over the last year as the index for beef rose 16.2 percent. The other major grocery store food group indexes also rose over the past year, with increases ranging from 5.2 percent (dairy and related products) to 8.2 percent (other food at home).” Used car prices are up 41 percent in the past 12 months. The cost of electricity is up 9 percent in the last 12 months.
Since Biden’s inauguration, consistently rising inflation has been inversely correlated with Biden’s overall approval numbers. This trend has accelerated sharply in 2022 as gas prices are nearing, or even setting, all-time high records throughout the country.
As gas prices and the cost of other goods increased in December 2021 during the holiday shopping season, Biden’s total disapproval started to sharply rise. For blue collar workers and middle-class families with moderate to long commutes, this increased cost was something personal that they felt up close. Partisanship aside, only 27 percent of independent approve of Biden’s performance according to this same Reuters poll.
Importantly, Biden’s approval rating has been underwater in most polls since August of 2021. That was the month during which Biden withdrew U.S. military presence from Afghanistan. Thirteen U.S. Servicemembers were killed in a suicide bombing at the poorly secured Kabul airport during the final days of exiting. The withdrawal has been criticized by the media on both sides of the isle as hasty and poorly executed.
The Afghanistan withdrawal could be considered Biden’s Katrina - an event from which there is no return and no light at the end of the political tunnel. It had the effect of raising questions about Biden’s competency as Commander-in-Chief.
His performance overseeing the withdrawal remains relevant to voters in 2022 as the U.S. is now involved in another major international conflict. Amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden is heavily sanctioning Russia and providing weaponry and supplies to Ukraine. Many fear that Biden may lead the country into a significant war. War/foreign conflict is the second biggest concern of all Americans.
Pocketbook issues along with increased tensions with the world’s largest atomic power and general unease about the President’s health are three major factors contributing to Biden’s record-breaking disapproval. His upside approval may be here to stay for good.
More generally, what this signifies is that congressional Democrats may also be in trouble in November 2022. The Real Clear Politics 2022 Generic Congressional Vote average reflects this possibility.
The average taken across multiple polls indicate a 3.4% advantage for Republicans overall. This advantage started to grow, like Biden’s disapproval, around the Christmas and holiday shopping season of 2021. If history proves itself as an accurate indicator, Democrats will lose the majority in the House and possibly the Senate in 2023. Biden will then be even more legislatively impotent and his biggest opportunity to make an impact will be behind him.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/03/is-joe-bidens-low-approval-rating-permanent/
Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s court packing stand disqualifies her from Supreme Court
By Rick Manning
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled a new harder line on the confirmation of President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson today as he openly criticized her for failing to be transparent in her answers.
McConnell sharply criticized Jackson for “refusing to shut the door on court packing” as both Justice Stephen Breyer who she would replace, and former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had done.
The Republican Leader cited as evidence Jackson’s coy response to the idea of court packing before the Senate Judiciary Committee when she said, “I would be thrilled to be one of however many Congress thought appropriate to put on the court.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept of court packing, it is a process where a partisan majority in Congress and the President arbitrarily change the number of members of the Supreme Court by adding or subtracting members to bring it into philosophical alignment with their political position.
While the Supreme Court consists of eight Justices and one Chief Justice, the Constitution itself does not provide a number for how many members the Court shall have. At the Court’s inception in 1789, that number was set at six by Congress, went down to five for a little more than a year in 1800, before being restored to six. Subsequently, prior to 1869, the number Justices changed multiple times between six and ten until the current number of nine was set and has stood for the past 152 years.
But in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt became frustrated that the Court was not bending to his political will as they found some of his New Deal legislation unconstitutional. As a result, FDR proposed a court packing plan that the Democrat majority in the Senate considered and overwhelmingly defeated by a 70 against, 20 for margin. (Note: The US only had 48 states at the time of this vote as Hawaii and Alaska had not yet been added as states.)
Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s inability to declare a position on this issue that impacts the fundamental independence of the federal judiciary from political manipulation is particularly shocking as this issue has been a hot button one since Joe Biden was elected president with a very narrow majority in the House and an even partisan split in the Senate.
What’s more Justice Ginsburg’s 2019 opposition and warning that, “if anything would make the Court appear to be partisan…” appears to be lost on Judge Jackson.
This open willingness of the Biden nominee to countenance the idea that the make-up of the Supreme Court should be altered to meet whatever the political whims of the day demonstrates that she is more interested in politically driven legal outcomes rather than constitutionally driven ones.
This window into her mind on this one issue, provides enough reason for the Senate to reject her nomination. Every jurist has their own philosophical underpinnings, but it should be presumed that they would make an honest effort to put those aside when deciding cases in the highest Court. Brown-Jackson fails this basic test simply by her clear signaling that she would welcome reinforcements from the far left due to the addition or subtraction of the number of Justices on the Court she seeks to sit upon.
Leader McConnell is right to decry Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s cozying up to the politicization of the Supreme Court. It demonstrates a willingness on her part to sacrifice the Court’s integrity on the altar of brazen politics making her unsuitable to be confirmed. Either because she is unserious in her thinking about the independence of the Judiciary or because she supports its overt politicization. Neither is acceptable for a Supreme Court Justice and the Senate should reject her nomination.
For those interested in learning more about efforts to amend the Constitution to set the number of Justices on the Supreme Court at nine, please go to www.KeepNine.org.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/03/ketanji-brown-jacksons-court-packing-stand-disqualifies-her-from-supreme-court/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured report from Andrew Kerr of the Washington Times, the CDC over-calculated deaths from COVID in children.
Washington Examiner: Reported pediatric COVID-19 deaths plummet 24% after CDC fixes 'coding logic error'
By Andrew Kerr
All-time pediatric deaths from COVID-19 reported on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID Data Tracker plummeted nearly 24% after the agency resolved a "coding logic error" on Wednesday.
The CDC's COVID Data Tracker had presented a misleading impression prior to the fix that children were dying at a sharply amplified rate amid the omicron surge earlier this year. The tool had reported 1,755 all-time deaths from children ages 0 to 17 on Tuesday, with 738 of the deaths occurring during the first 10 weeks of 2022.
After CDC resolved the error, the pediatric death figure reported on its COVID Data Tracker dropped to 1,339 all-time deaths, a reduction of 23.7% from the figure reported the day prior.
"On March 15, 2022, data on deaths were adjusted after resolving a coding logic error. This resulted in decreased death counts across all demographic categories," the data tracker said.
CDC spokeswoman Jasmine Reed told the Washington Examiner the agency's algorithm was accidentally counting non-COVID-related deaths in the data tracker.
"An adjustment was made to COVID Data Tracker’s mortality data on March 14 involving the removal of 72,277 - including 416 pediatric deaths - deaths previously reported across 26 states because CDC’s algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related," Reed said. "Working with near real-time data in an emergency is critical to guide decision-making, but may also mean we often have incomplete information when data are first reported."
Prior to the fix, the CDC's data had been used as the basis for articles published late last week by the Guardian and the New York Post that reported as many as a third of all child deaths from COVID-19 had occurred since the beginning of 2022 amid the omicron surge.
"Children seem to be facing increasing risks as mask mandates are abandoned and vaccination rates stall," the Guardian reported.
The article received a substantial amendment late Thursday after the reporter behind the piece deleted multiple tweets citing the CDC.
The article now cites data from the CDC's weekly provisional data on COVID-19 deaths, which is based on death certificate data and states that 921 children ages 0 to 17 had deaths "involving COVID-19" since the start of the pandemic, a figure significantly smaller than the figure reported by the CDC's COVID Data Tracker.
The CDC came under fire for its lack of transparency surrounding COVID-19 data in late February after the New York Times reported that the agency had published only a small portion of the data it had collected on hospitalizations, vaccines, and wastewater analysis in part because it feared the information might have been misinterpreted by the public.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, railed against the CDC in a March 1 letter for its "disturbing and shameful" lack of transparency surrounding COVID-19 data.
"In the midst of a pandemic, it is unacceptable that CDC would withhold relevant data on COVID-19 that could inform the public and potentially save lives," Johnson wrote to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.
"Throughout the pandemic, CDC and other health agencies have promoted inconsistent policies and recommendations regarding COVID-19," Johnson said. "Many Americans who voiced concerns about these policies have been subjected to ridicule, vilification, and censorship from the press."
"Rather than provide the public with complete access to relevant data to justify its COVID-19 policies, the Biden Administration has apparently favored censorship over transparency," Johnson added.
To view online: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/reported-pediatric-covid-19-deaths-plummet-24-after-cdc-fixes-coding-logic-error
Video: Biden's Supreme Court Nominee Jackson Praised 1619 Project during MLK Day Speech
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y3znmEcgIc