The stage is ours to take a decisive action and move forward into a peaceful and just solution, as times has told us some politicians and stage speakers want power only and deflect their internal problems, immorality and corruption on the expense of their people or blame others only for their misfortunes…..

http://is.gd/11XDR – Yahoo News – Stat of the day: According to a new poll, 29 percent of Iranians hold a positive view toward the United States, down from 34 percent in February 2008

http://is.gd/11XGT – Electoralmap.net – 2008 Election: Pollster Report Card

http://is.gd/11XJz – Wall Street Journal – Grading the Pollsters

http://is.gd/11Ykk – Real Clear Politics – President Obama Job Approval

What I take away from the above and similar articles (including those by Zogby and Gallup) is that Obama’s very popular for his words … not so much for actual actions.

Your mileage may vary.

and yet, that’s precisely their reputation. there’s been a lot written about just that (e.g.), although the “leading” issue isn’t as much a factor in a straight approval rating, since usually the question is simply do you approve or disapprove of someone (sometimes further broken down further with a “strongly” category). there’s not much room for leading in these kind of polls. the reason for the bias (and every polling firm has them) is because they use weighted samples, counting some responses more because of assumptions of what the overall population is.

In other words, let’s not shoot the messenger simply because their numbers don’t jive with your personal opinion

huh? i wasn’t shooting any messenger. i was pointing out that obama’s numbers are stable, even using your own data. at least they are if you are aware of how margins of error work.

a real rating of 57% at this point in time of any administration is statistically very low and likely very troubling to the team of the current POTUS.

now who’s relying on their own biases! i mean, look at that same page you cited above. do you see the column labeled “presidential approval index”? see how it’s a positive number all the way down the column (with one zero) and is never negative? that number compares obama’s approval rating with the average POTUS at this time in his term. your own source directly contradicts what you just said!

anyway, i am sorry nas for this digression in your comments. i didn’t meant o hijack the comments. deepest apologies if you were annoyed by this.

In other words, let’s not shoot the messenger simply because their numbers don’t jive with your personal opinion – even though a real rating of 57% at this point in time of any administration is statistically very low and likely very troubling to the team of the current POTUS.

But that aside, what’s more interesting is a recent TV address made by Mr. Obama, in which he is crediting said Cairo speech with influencing the elections in Lebanon and in Iraq.

In other words, whatever we all think of his words, he’s claiming that they can and do strongly influence the direction of politics in the Middle East.

not to harp on this too much, but statistical innumeracy in the way people use polling data is one of my pet peeves.

One very quick example, he made a promise, technically a pledge, that’d we’d all get 5 days to look at any spending bill. 4 Trillion dollars later we find out that said pledge went the way of so many other promising words.

We’ll see if that changes, but considering his Chicago machine politician heritage, I strongly doubt it.

the problem with that is that it’s not something that obama has the power to do, at least he doesn’t have the power to do it unilaterally. congress, not the president, authorizes the payment of foreign aid. under current political conditions there is zero chance that any cut off of aid to israel would ever pass. if obama were so inclined, he could try to impose condition-based cut-offs, that the funding bill would include an automatic cut-off condition if israel takes some action (like expand settlements). but even then all he could do would propose a bill in congress, a bill that i doubt would actually pass.

the truly remarkable thing about the I/P conflict is how intractable it is, no matter where you turn. the palestinians are divided with no unified leadership, the israeli political system is disfunctional and rewards bad behavior, but also the existing political structure in the u.s. only reinforces the disfunctional status-quo in both israel and the occupied territories. as nas says, the realities of the conflict are a mess. the mess also extends beyond that particular region.

I agree with Nas, money talks. Israel is not the only one that gets huge sums of money from the US, as Nas pointed out – so does Egypt. However, democracy is a much more complicated issue than the Arab Israeli conflict, because, as we saw when the Bush administration insisted on democratic elections in the Palestinian authority we got Hamas. What will happen if Obama insists on democratic elections in Egypt? Wil we get the Muslim Brotherhood that assasinated Sadat and tried to kill Mubarak? Authoritarian regimes are no bed of roses, but in this case, as awful as it sounds to even think it, democracy can make things worse.

I think Obama’s got plenty on his hands right now with the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. One bird at a time…
Give him a chance, I think he will do great things.

In Jordan, there are people on the grassroots level that are striving to increase citizen rights in the country, and while that’s a bold movement, we are in dire need of a government apparatus that is proactive in empowering such a movement and creating a better Jordan, rather than an apparatus that is, at best, a reluctant partner, and at worst, defensive and infantile.

thanks for your comment

Meanwhile, every Arab must go visit and sustain Palestinian economy!