Throughout the 2008 election cycle, after Sarah Palin was chosen to run as VP, Democrats consistently compared Palin to Obama as if she were running for president instead of vice president, there are many reasons for tactic that have been well documented but suffice it to say Democrats felt more comfortable with that match up.

That was then, this in now…

With Obama’s approval ratings on a downward spiral for months now a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows the gap between the president and Palin in down to 1 percentage point.

Facing double-digit unemployment, rising spending, deficits and Afghan war casualties plus a keystone but stalled healthcare reform effort that caused a rare Sunday presidential visit to Capitol Hill, Obama recently fell below 50% job approval for the first time.Then, last week’s deft dance of rhetoric over sending reinforcements to Afghanistan but, on the other foot, bringing them home quickly maybe gave him a brief boost. That, however, collapsed with equal rapidity.

Obama’s new Gallup Poll job approval number is 47%. Last month it was 53%.

Regular Ticket readers will recall how in this space in late November we pointed out that Obama’s closely-watched job approval slide was coinciding with Palin’s little-noticed rise in favorability. And it appeared they might cross somewhere in the 40s.

Well, ex-Sen. Obama, meet ex-Gov. Palin.

The new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Palin now at 46% favorable, just one point below her fellow basketball fan.

(The same poll, btw, has bad news for Dick Cheney-haters; the outspoken former VP has climbed out of the 29% basement back up to 39% now. How do you suppose he’s done that without a new book? But that’s another story.)

Not that either Palin or Obama will admit caring about such trivial things as disparate political polls….

What a change a year can make, just 56 weeks, and the presidents approval ratings are going south like a duck in winter. Supporters will claim that it’s George W. Bush’s fault, citing the same tired talking points that have been echoed now for years “the failed Bush policies” and pointing to an inherited rescission.

Critics will claim that the bloom is off the rose and American’s, having seen the type of policies Obama has instituted and supports, have not lived up to the hype (in many cases failing altogether) along with the promise of jobs that have failed to materialize.

While this poll may give some hope and others woe, it’s just a blip on the radar screen of time and in politics one never knows what could happen tomorrow.

Cross-Posted from 73wire.com

From Real Clear Politics

Less than a year into the job, President Obama seems ambivalent about America’s role as the world’s one great superpower. Nor is he enamored of the majestic idea — advanced by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and others — that the United States is the world’s one “indispensable nation.”

-Snip-

“‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite,” Sarkozy said, referring to Iran and North Korea.

You know the world is upside down when the French president sounds so much stronger than the American one.

Here’s the confusing part. Obama knows how to fight. During last year’s campaign, Obama would say: “We don’t throw the first punch, but we’ll throw the last.” Indeed, when Obama slugged it out with political opponents, he would take a blow and hit back twice as hard.

That kind of machismo might come in handy when dealing with the likes of Ahmadinejad. Obama still believes U.N. sanctions will pressure this tyrant into abandoning Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But, as Sarkozy points out, Iran has ignored five U.N. resolutions on that issue since 2005.

Here’s Obama Talking tough about Afghanistan and admonishing Bush and McCain for not sending in enough troops. H/T Gateway Pundit

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama says President Bush’s announcement that he’ll send more forces into Afghanistan is too slow and insufficient. (Sept. 9, 2008)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) says US generals may resign over Obama’s poor leadership.
Breitbart reported on this interview today:

“The President does deserve time to think this through, but not, I think, a lot of time, only because right now we have a strategy that’s not working. Our generals are telling us that, that puts our soldiers at risk. So we have people over there who are at risk because they’re not being guided by a good strategy that keeps them safe, that gets this thing turned around. And if the president chooses just to not do that, but stay there, then I think you’ll see that kind of a thing happen, then you’ll see those kinds of

President Barack Obama comments in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Thursday, June 25, 2009, on the importance of the passing of the energy bill. (AP)

“It is my deeply held belief,” Barack Obama told the United Nations General Assembly, that “in the year 2009 — more than at any point in human history — the interests of nations and peoples are shared.” That is of course the year Obama became president, and he wasn’t shy about referring in his second paragraph to “the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,” though he assured us they “are not about me.”

Before Obama’s speech, I wrote that he seems “stuck in a time warp in which the United States is the bad guy.” Not any more, he seemed to say in his U.N. speech. He has ordered the closing of Guantanamo. He has prohibited the use of torture. He is “responsibly ending” the war in Iraq (no triumphalist talk of victory). He is promising substantial reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons. He has invested $80 billion in clean energy. The United States has joined the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.

All of which is a way of saying that nasty George W. Bush is no longer around with all his self-righteous swagger, and that with (as Obama did not fail to note) the first African-American installed in the White House, America is now on the same page with the rest of the world.

The Obama administration has appealed a ruling, a district court ruling that granted some military prisoners at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits questioning their detention.

Last week, Judge John D. Bates granted limited Habeas Corpus rights to three of the four detainees involved in the case. Along with the appeal, the Justice Department, also asked the judge not to proceed with this ruling citing the governments claim that Supreme Court has yet to extend a constitutional right to Habeas Corpus hearings for all detainees, wherever they may be held around the world. The Judges ruling clearly shows his belief, that the government’s claim of the federal courts having no jurisdiction there has no merit.

Tina Foster, the executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the detainees, condemned the decision in a statement.

“Though he has made many promises regarding the need for our country to rejoin the world community of nations, by filing this appeal, President Obama has taken on the defense of one of the Bush administration’s unlawful policies founded on nothing more than the idea that might makes right,” she said.

I side with the Justice Department and the Obama Administration on this one! Hence President Obama continues to look a lot like George W. Bush… when he’s not trying his damndest to emulate Carter!

If the Judges ruling is overturned, and not re-overturned, Obama will be able to capture and detain prisoners at Bagram Air Base for the duration of the war in Afghanistan.

Let me repeat, for those on the left that beat GWB about the head and neck with this crap for years… If the Judges ruling is overturned, and not re-overturned, Obama will be able to capture and detain prisoners at Bagram Air Base for the duration of the war in Afghanistan.

This action would validate a detention facility outside the purview of American courts, in theater – just the way it should be!!!

This shows that Obama and his administration, despite the rhetoric about Gitmo, believe they have the power and the right to detain enemy combatants to determine their status or detain bad actors for the duration of the war!

I don’t know about you but that looks a lot like George W. Bush to me!!!