(The Hill) — Voters’ approval first lady Michelle Obama remains high, but a new poll found that her approval ratings have fallen slightly.

According to the Marist Poll released Monday, 63 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of Michelle Obama while 21 percent hold an unfavorable view of her. That’s a slight dip from six months ago when Marist last surveyed voters’ opinions of the first lady. In May, Marist found that 66 percent of voters hold a favorable view of Obama. In September, Marist found that 65 percent of voters held a favorable view and 24 percent had an unfavorable view. In December 2009, Marist found that 68 percent had a favorable view while 20 percent had an unfavorable view.

Broken down by party affiliation, Marist found that 85 percent of Democrats hold a favorable view while 6 percent hold an unfavorable view. Republicans are more evenly split — 42 percent have a favorable view and 39 percent have an unfavorable view. Independents generally like the first lady. The poll found that 58 percent have a favorable view of Obama while 21 percent have an unfavorable view.

Obama has recently been hitting the campaign trail for her husband’s reelection campaign. Last weekend the first lady was in Florida to speak at a number of Democratic National Committee events.

As a comparison, when Bush left office his wife Laura had a whopping 76% approval rating.

But Obama’s State Department made it clear they did not want to cut off funding but had no choice because of existing laws passed by Congress.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The United States said on Monday that it had stopped its funding of UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, following its vote to grant the Palestinians full membership.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters the United States had no choice but to halt funding because of U.S. laws passed in the 1990s, saying Washington would not make a planned $60 million transfer that was due in November.

“The United States . . . remains strongly committed to robust, multilateral engagement across the U.N. system. However, Palestinian membership as a state in UNESCO triggers long-standing legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO,” Nuland said.

Nuland also said the vote Monday by the member states of UNESCO to admit Palestine as a member was “regrettable, premature and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The United States provides 22 percent of the funding of the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Let the assploding hypocrisy begin.

(Politico) — Occupy Wall Street is looking to make its mark — on everything from tote bags to t-shirts.

The Occupy Wall Street movement applied for the trademark to its name on Oct. 24, filing for the use of the mark on its website, in periodicals and newsletters, and on clothing and bags.

But the movement isn’t the only entity hoping to lay claim to the name — Fer-Eng Investments, LLC, of Arizona also applied to trademark Occupy Wall Street on Oct. 24. Fer-Eng Investments wrote in its filing it is intending to use the name on bags, footwear, hats and various other clothing items.

According to attorney Samuel Cohen of the Law Offices of Wylie M. Stecklow, a firm that is part of the Occupy Wall Street legal working group, the movement’s trademark application process will likely take months.

“Trademark filings take a while,” Cohen told POLITICO. “It generally, from when we submit something, and we submitted last week, it takes three to five months for the United States Patent and Trademark Office to get back to us.”

And look who’s accusing them of “Islamophobia.”

(Telegraph) — A satirical French magazine is to publish an edition ‘edited’ by the prophet Mohammed, in “honour” of Islam’s influence on the Arab Spring.

“In order fittingly to celebrate the Islamist Ennahda’s win in Tunisia and the NTC (National Transitional Council) president’s promise that sharia would be the main source of law in Libya, Charlie Hebdo asked Mohammed to be guest editor,” said a statement.

The weekly has been rebaptised Sharia Hebdo for the occasion, and will feature on its cover a picture of Mohammed saying: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter!”

On the back page, a picture of Mohammed wearing a red nose is accompanied by the words: “Yes, Islam is compatible with humour.”

The cover was circulating on social media such as Twitter on Tuesday, with many users incensed and describing it as “puerile”.

The weekly’s publisher, known as Charb, rejected accusations that he was trying to provoke.

This guy is cool?

(Politico) — Chris Matthews thinks President Barack Obama has a lot to learn from John F. Kennedy.

The MSNBC host says the president, whom he famously said sent a thrill going up his leg in 2008, is too arrogant for his own good. He faults Obama for not building relationships with other leaders in Washington, for not asking Americans to follow him and for not showing voters that he has learned from the mistakes of the past three years.

“Obama is very brilliant, but that’s not leadership necessarily,” Matthews told POLITICO in an interview about his new book, “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,” due out Tuesday.

The liberal commentator believes the president’s personality is more like Richard Nixon’s than Kennedy’s in at least one key way.

“He and Obama are detached, very cool customers, but Jack didn’t like to be alone, and I think Obama does,” Matthews said. “Obama is more like Nixon that way. He likes to be alone or just with his family or just with his pals from Chicago, and that’s hurting him politically.”

Keep reading…

Note: starts at 45-second mark.

Via BreitbartTV:

The person recording this video appears agitated when another well-meaning protester starts advising people to step away from the police and to “spread the love.” The agitated protester says “the time where white people can come into our community and tell people what to do is long gone.”

Hell yeah!

(LWJ) — US Predators struck in Pakistan’s tribal areas for the fifth time in six days, killing four “militants” in the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan.

The unmanned CIA-operated Predators, or the more deadly Reapers, fired several missiles at a vehicle as it was moving in the village of Mubarak Shah in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, according to SAMAA. The Associated Press reported that four “militants” were killed in the attack

The identities of the four militants killed were not disclosed. No senior Taliban or al Qaeda leaders are reported to have been killed.

Today’s strike is the fifth this week. In the past six days, the US launched two attacks in South Waziristan and another three in North Waziristan.

Maybe if we give him another hundred million a year he will change his mind?

Via MEMRI:

Mahmoud Abbas: “First of all, let me make something clear about the story of the ‘Jewish state.’

“They started talking to me about the ‘Jewish state’ only two years ago, discussing it with me at every opportunity, every forum I went to — Jewish or non-Jewish — asking: ‘What do you think about the “Jewish state”?’ I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I will never recognize the Jewishness of the state, or a ‘Jewish state.’”. . .

Interviewer: “Don’t you think that it was the resistance that managed to liberate a thousand prisoners?

“Negotiations must always be accompanied by a measure of force. There can be no negotiations without resistance. This has been shown by the experience of people — in Ireland and all countries.”

Mahmoud Abbas: “That’s true, but our circumstances are different. We are not able to wage military resistance.

“Hamas kidnapped — or rather, captured — a soldier, and managed to keep him for five years, and that is a good thing.

“We don’t deny it. On the contrary, it’s a good thing that on a small strip of land, 40 × 7 kilometers, they were able to keep him and hide him.”

“Jewish homosexual pig.”

(IPT) — British Member of Parliament Mike Freer says he was forced to hide behind a locked door and wait for police during a constituency meeting at a mosque Friday. Members of the radical organization “Muslims against Crusades” had advocated targeting Freer over his outspoken friendship toward Israel and vocal concern about the safety of MPs following the stabbing of a colleague.

Protests confronted Freer prior to meeting with constituents at a north London mosque on Friday afternoon. Concerns for his safety were heightened when 12 people forced their way inside. One of them called him a “Jewish homosexual pig,” while others threatened him “as a member of the Conservative Party” and said that “had the blood of thousands of Muslims on his hands.”

Freer is a member of “Conservative Friends of Israel,” and drew ire over a post on his website in protest over the stabbing of an MP colleague by Islamist terrorist Roshonara Choudhry. The attack on MP Stephen Timms should serve as a “piercing reminder” to politicians that “their presence is no longer welcome in any Muslim area,” Freer wrote. Protesters were also upset that he campaigned against a UK visit by radical cleric Raed Salah. Salah was arrested after entering the country due to a ban imposed on him by the Home Office because of his “virulent anti-Semitism.”

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The economy needs no help being destroyed with Obama in office.

Via WaPo:

Here’s David Axelrod, on CNN today, pushing back on Candy Crowley’s suggestion that Obama bears some of the blame for Congress’s failure to act on the economy:

I think this is something — something different going on right now. When you have the leader — the Republican leader of the Senate say, our number one goal — in the midst of this economy, our number one goal is to defeat the president, and they’re acting like it.

They don’t want to cooperate. They don’t want to help. Even on measures to help the economy that they traditionally have supported before, like a payroll tax cut, like infrastructure, rebuilding our roads and bridges and surface transport. These — so you have to ask a question, are they willing to tear down the economy in order to tear down the president or are they going to cooperate?

And, listen, there’s a reason why the Congress is at nine percent in some polls, approval, lowest in history. Because this is different than we’ve ever seen before.

This is an argument that many Congressional Dems and surrogates, such as messaging chief Chuck Schumer, have been making for some time now. But to my knowledge Obama campaign officials have not been willing to go here in quite this way in a high profile setting (there was a fundraising email that made a similar case a few weeks ago).

Keep reading…

Via Town Hall:

You knew it was coming, and here it is. Last week I brought you a story about flyers instructing and encouraging cop killing being found by a Maricopa County Sheriff Deputy at Occupy Phoenix. The flyers were serious enough that the Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center issued a safety memo to Arizona law enforcement, warning them of potential danger.

Now of course, the Occupy movement is blaming the Tea Party for their placement and violent content.

Keep reading…

Does this sound like something a conservative would write? From the flier itself:

Pick any example of abuse of power, whether it is the fascist “war on drugs,” the police thuggery that has become so common, the random stops and searches now routinely carried out in the name of “security” (e.g., at airports, “border checkpoints” that aren’t even at the border, “sobriety checkpoints,” and so on), or anything else. Now ask yourself the uncomfortable question: If it is wrong for cops to do these things, doesn’t that imply that the people have a right to RESIST such actions? Of course, state mercenaries don’t take kindly to being resisted, even non-violently. If you question their right to detain you, interrogate you, search you, invade your home, and so on, you are very likely to be tasered, physically assaulted, kidnapped, put in a cage, or shot. If a cop decides to treat you like livestock, whether he does it “legally” or not, you will usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop. You can’t resist a cop “just a little” and get away with it. He will always call in more of his fellow gang members, until you are subdued or dead.

Basic logic dictates that you either have an obligation to LET “law enforcers” have their way with you, or you have the right to STOP them from doing so, which will almost always require killing them. (Politely asking fascists not to be fascists has a very poor track record.)

So Liebermann gets it and Boehner doesn’t?

(The Hill) — The Occupy Wall Street protests are not reflective of the opinions of most Americans, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday.

“The way this Occupy Wall Street is expressing itself is not reflective of the majority of people in our country,” Lieberman (I-Conn.) said on the Laura Ingraham show.

Lieberman also said that the anti-corporate protesters should mimic what the Tea Party did: form a clear platform and start participating in elections.

“This group ought to do what the Tea Party did,” Lieberman added. “It formed a platform and it got into the election.”

Critics of the protests have said Occupy Wall Street does not have a core set of complaints that make it a coherent movement.

An executioner lines up his sword on the back of the neck of 'sorcerer' Abdul Hamid Bin Hussain Bin Moustafa al-Fakki

The killer draws his sword back as dozens of people watch in the car park

7th-century punishment in a 21st-century world.

(Daily Mail) — Shocking footage has surfaced of a Sudanese man being publicly beheaded in Saudi Arabia for being a ‘sorcerer’.

Crouched on his knees and blindfolded, Abdul Hamid Bin Hussain Bin Moustafa al-Fakki was executed in a car park Medina, in the west of the country, as dozens looked on last month.

The grainy footage — which MailOnline believes is too graphic to publish — shows the executioner lining his sword up on the back of Al-Fakki’s neck, before one swift stroke decapitates him.

The Sudanese man, who was killed on September 20, is believed to have been the 44th person executed in Saudi Arabia this year — and the 11th foreign national.

Lebanese TV host Ali Hussain Sibat, who was sentenced to death over making predictions of the future on his show, had been scheduled to be beheaded on Friday.

Update: Here’s the video. (HT: Rufus)

HT: David D.

Nothing is more infuriating than reading stories about Gitmo detainees we’ve released returning to the battlefield.

(LWJ) — A Taliban suicide assault team killed five people in an attack on a United Nations headquarters in the capital of the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. The attack is the second of its kind in Kandahar city in five days.

A four-man suicide assault team armed with assault rifles and a truck packed with explosives attacked the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kandahar city earlier today. A suicide bomber rammed the truck into an outer wall of the UNHCR compound and detonated the explosives. The blast tore a hole in the outer wall, allowing the three remaining attackers to enter the compound and seize control of a building.

Afghan and Coalition forces engaged the remaining Taliban fighters for more than two hours before killing them. The UNHCR said three of their employees were killed and two were wounded during the fighting. Brigadier General Abdul Razaq, the provincial chief of police, said that four Afghan security guards and a district police chief were killed during the fighting.

Today’s attack in Kandahar is the second in the province in four days. On Oct. 27, four Taliban fighters occupied a building next to the Provincial Reconstruction Team base and opened fire. The Taliban fighters were killed after an eight-hour-long fight fight. One Afghan was also killed.

Both suicide assaults in Kandahar were likely carried out by the Mullah Dadullah Mahaz, or the Mullah Dadullah Front, a radical Taliban subgroup based in the south that is closely linked to al Qaeda. The Mullah Dadullah Front has adopted al Qaeda’s tactics and ideology, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal in December 2010. The Taliban faction is led by Mullah Adbul Qayoum Zakir, the former Guantanamo Bay detainee who has since been promoted as the Taliban’s top military commander and co-leader of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura.

Keep reading…

More like how could anyone think government is the answer?

Via Townhall

He does?

WASHINGTON — Speaker John Boehner said Monday that he understood the “frustrations” driving the Occupy Wall Street movement — but urged protesters to be peaceful to prevent demonstrations from blowing out of control.

“I understand people’s frustrations,” Boehner said during an appearance at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. “The economy is not producing jobs like they want and there’s lot of erosion of confidence in our government and frankly, under the First Amendment, people have the right to speak out . . . but that doesn’t mean they have the permission to violate the law.”

“Beyond that, I lived through the riots of the Vietnam War . . . and you can see how some of those activities got out of control. A lot of people lived through the race riots of 1968 that was clearly out of control, and I’m hopeful that these demonstrations will continue to be peaceful.”

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No joke, one of the classes is on the “art of the protest sign.”

(MSNBC) — A day after Occupy Seattle moved to the campus, instructors at Seattle Central Community College planned to begin teaching classes in support of the group.

The classes, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Sunday, were to be held on the Plaza at SCCC and include such subjects as “Why We Support Occupy,” “Legislative Lobbying,” “The Art of the Protest Sign” and “Filming to Document Human Rights Violations.”

Classes will continue throughout the night.

Karen Strickland, Seattle President of the American Federation of Teachers said in an open letter to Paul Kilpatrick, President of SCCC that the board is in support of SCCC accommodating the request of Occupy Seattle for a number of reasons.

“The students and employees of the SCCD are the 99 percent and are suffering because of the economic inequity that characterizes our society and which has dramatically worsened since the 1970s,” she said.

Occupy Seattle says they adopted a “Good Neighbor Policy” In preparation for the move to SCCC.

Via new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll:

For obvious reasons.

Via Washington Examiner:

Defending his 1981 tax cuts, President Reagan told a packed ballroom at the 1982 Conservative Political Action Conference:

“Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes — one rich, one poor — both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other?. . . Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”

Reagan would go on to beat the class warriors of the ’80s, pushing through landmark tax reform that lowered rates, simplified the tax code and cut the number of tax brackets from 16 down to just two.

Unfortunately, the class warriors are back. They are squatting on public property throughout the country chanting, “We are the 99 percent!” This is class warfare in its purest form. And President Obama told ABC News earlier this month that he is “on their side.”

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is leading the fight against these new class warriors. “President Reagan was absolutely right. Instead of policies that make it harder for Americans to rise, let’s lower the hurdles to upward mobility,” Ryan told a packed auditorium at The Heritage Foundation last week. “That’s what the American idea is all about.”

Keep reading…