Hey, I'm just telling you what the daily tracking poll numbers at Gallup tells us:

-Aug. 30, 2009: 51 percent

-Sept. 1, 2010: 47 percent

I realize that Sean Hannity on Fox News last night announced that Obama had just suffered the worst August for any president ever. And I realize much of the Beltway press has echoed that sentiment, and in fact has spent much of this year pushing its beloved narrative about how Obama's polling numbers are  "falling" fast, and that his presidency is in rapid decline.

But is it true?

Just because the mainstream media and the GOP Noise Machine are (surprise!) in heated agreement about that point, and have been for months, does that make it true? I realize pointing out the fact that Obama has lost four points in his Gallup polling numbers over the last 52 weeks won't do much to discourage that narrative, and who knows, maybe he's about to take a big hit in the Gallup poll and week from now he'll be down nine points vs. one year ago.

But it's it's always useful to address the facts. And the facts according to Gallup's daily tracking poll are that in the last 12 months Obama's approval rating has declined four points. That, in a poll that has margin of error of 3 points. 

In commentary on President Obama's speeches, conservative media have apparently concluded that references to Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech are a handy tool to use, no matter the topic at hand. For instance:

Obama's August 31 address on Iraq

• On the August 31 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Ralph Peters said that when he "listened to" Obama's speech on the end of combat operations in Iraq, "two ghosts appeared. One was the Jimmy Carter malaise speech. The other - the other ghost was Richard Nixon's Vietnamization speeches." (Accessed via Nexis)

Obama's June 15 Oval Office speech on the BP oil spill

• On the June 16, 2010 edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said of Obama's first Oval Office address: "You know -- but what I got out of last night besides I think probably the worst Oval Office address in history or at least in close competition to Carter's malaise speech, it seems to me the Obama so-called magic is gone, the rhetoric is old and stale. The rhetorical tricks are somewhat old and boring and tiresome. You know people aren't fainting any more, Michelle." (Accessed via Nexis)

• During the June 16 edition of his radio show, Rush Limbaugh stated that Carter's speech "is almost verbatim what Obama said last night, almost the exact same speech." Limbaugh added, "I tell you, it's second term of Jimmy Carter! And it's liberalism 100% through and through."

• In a June 15 RedState post titled "Barack Obama Embraces His Inner Jimmy Carter," Erick Erickson wrote, "Whatever the reason, Barack Obama gave the most depressing Oval Office speech since Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. He didn't just embrace defeat, he wore it on his suit as a substitute for an argyle sweater."

Obama's June 2 speech on the economy at Carnegie Mellon

• In a June 4 article on American Thinker, Ed Lasky wrote that "President Obama's speech at Carnegie Mellon University is rightfully being compared to Jimmy Carter's notorious 'malaise' speech," adding, "All that was missing was the cardigan sweater."

• In a June 13 editorial headlined "Malaise at Mellon," IBD wrote, "It might as well have been President Carter addressing the audience of students and faculty at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. Instead it was President Obama who spoke of our dependence on fossil fuels and blamed everybody and everything, except for a lack of presidential leadership, for our current situation." The editorial concluded by stating, "If the students at Mellon were anxious, they had reason to be. We have labeled Jimmy Carter our worst ex-president. He may soon have a rival for that title."

• A June 8 FoxNews.com column stated: "The apt comparison between Obama's speech on the economy and Carter's is that "a crisis of confidence" persists today. There is the same anxiety that in Barack Obama we have another Jimmy Carter--a self-righteous ideologue who is in over his head, championing policies that are not only unpopular but also destructive."

Obama's January 20 Inaugural Address

• In a January 23, 2009 Human Events piece, conservative activist Michael Reagan claimed that "You can hear echoes of that malaise speech in Obama's inaugural address when he said, 'These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.'"

Fox Nation, which has not been shy about obscuring President Obama's faith, tonight displayed the following headline on its website: "Obama is not Muslim, but..."

The headline linked to a column by Ann Coulter titled, "Obama is not a Muslim." This is the same Coulter who repeatedly promoted the lie -- three years after it had been debunked by numerous news organizations (Fox included) -- that Obama attended a madrassa as a child in Indonesia, and who has relentlessly smeared Islam and Muslims.

In her column, Coulter argues that the "nonsense" about Obama being a Muslim "has got to stop" because Obama "is obviously an atheist." She goes on to write that while Obama has professed to be a Christian, the "only evidence" is that he attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years -- which "is even stronger evidence of nonbelief than Bill Clinton returning from Sunday services to receive oral sex from Monica Lewinsky." She concludes by writing that "[a]ll liberals are atheists," adding, "There's only one true Christian liberal in the country and that's Mike Huckabee."

From Coulter's September 1 column:

The nonsense about President Obama being a Muslim has got to stop. I rise to defend him from this absurd accusation by pointing out that he is obviously an atheist.

Leave aside Obama's fanatical opposition to allowing Illinois hospitals to save the lives of babies with God-given souls inadvertently born alive during abortions. Also leave aside the fact that neither of his parents were Christians. And leave aside his current crop of "spiritual advisers," which is a collection of Mother Earth worshippers, polytheists and other nonbelievers.

Now rest from all that "leaving aside."

The only evidence for Obama's Christianity is that he faithfully attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years.

Yes, the guy bellowing "God damn America!" is the one vouching for Obama's Christianity. That's like saying you got sober with the help of your A.A. sponsor Lindsay Lohan.

It is a fact that any non-retarded person (thank you, Rahm Emanuel!) sitting in the Rev. Wright's church for 20 minutes, much less 20 years, does not believe in God. Even stepping inside Wright's church for a moment to get out of the rain is borderline racist.

Going to Trinity United Church of Christ is even stronger evidence of nonbelief than Bill Clinton returning from Sunday services to receive oral sex from Monica Lewinsky. This isn't mere sin -- everybody sins (though some with more frequency and less remorse than others).

Attending Wright's church is the conscious, calculated decision to immerse yourself in hate-filled demagoguery and call it "Christianity."

Previously:

Behind Obama Muslim myth stands the right wing

Right-wing media just can't quit attacking Obama's faith

On his Fox show tonight, Glenn Beck dedicated a segment to attacking Dolores Huerta, the 80-year-old labor activist who founded the United Farm Workers with César Chávez. Huerta has been widely recognized for her work, including by the Girl Scouts and the Community of Christ, which shares roots with Mormons.

Beck introduced the segment by claiming that "all the people around our president come from the same creepy circle of radical 60s types." Beck evidently objects to Huerta's participation in a Labor Department campaign informing workers, including unauthorized immigrants, about the wage and labor standards to which they are entitled. Beck didn't go into detail about the Labor Department initiative, which is interesting since Beck himself frequently asserts that illegal immigrants are being "enslaved" by corporations. For instance, this is from the July 29 edition of his radio show:

BECK: Illegal immigration is slavery. You are enslaving people. These giant corporations -- the government is doing it for voters. The corporations are doing it for cheap jobs. They don't have to provide health care. They don't have to provide -- they don't have to provide anything. They can screw with these people any way they want, put their hands in a meat grinder; "Oh really? What are you going to do?" It's slavery.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Dolores Huerta are trying to fight the very problem that Beck routinely decries. Contrary to Beck's claim that employers "don't have to provide anything," the courts have established that undocumented workers are protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Labor Department has long held a policy of enforcing labor laws without regard to immigration status. The problem is that exploited unauthorized immigrants don't know that. Solis and Huerta are trying to make sure they do.

Sure, Huerta may be trying to stop the same exploitation that infuriates Beck. But Beck finds her political views distasteful, so who cares about the substance of her work; she's getting the witch-hunt treatment. 

Read the full entry ...

At least 100 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News program since he called President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Here are his September 1 sponsors, in the order they appeared:

As the horrifying hostage situation at the Discovery Channel building in Maryland continues to unfold, some in the right-wing media have chosen to use the incident for political gain.

For example, conservative columnist and regular Fox News commentator* S.E. Cupp tweeted that "Discovery terrorist's ideas, if not his methods, make him ideal WH adviser," invoking smears that have been pushed by the right against science advisor John Holdren.

Similarly, Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft has dubbed the gunman a "leftist activist."

Though at this point we know very little about Lee, his apparent demands indicate that his views are far from being grounded in a definable mainstream ideology, either liberal or conservative. Instead, they show a clearly disturbed individual. While Lee calls for "solutions" to problems that liberals typically highlight, such as global warming and unemployment, his lengthy rant is mainly composed of absurd demands such as the following: "All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions."

Additionally, Lee echoes right-wing talking points with his attack on "anchor baby filth":

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

* Cupp's position corrected.

John Stossel bravely speaks out against the scourge of … public restroom stalls that are wide enough to accommodate people in wheelchairs:

Extra-wide bathroom stalls that reduce the overall number of toilets are only some of the unaccounted-for costs of the ADA.

But that’s not the only way the Americans with Disabilities Act is ruining your life, according to Stossel:

And be careful. If you fail to let a customer bring a large snake, which he calls his "service animal," into your restaurant, you could be in trouble.

All of this is because of the well-intentioned Americans With Disabilities Act, which President George H.W. Bush signed 20 years ago.

Service snakes, no doubt, disrupt millions of small businesses a year.

Sure, Stossel’s opposition to bathroom stalls that can accommodate wheelchair-bound users may seem a bit cruel, but at least he didn’t defend, say, price-gougers who charged $20 for a bottle of water in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Oh, wait …

During a segment yesterday on Fox Business' America's Nightly Scoreboard, guest host Tobin Smith and guests Monica Crowley and Tim Carney portrayed U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV), who served four terms in the Nevada Assembly, as a "political newbie."

Carney, a conservative Washington Examiner columnist, said Angle is having some problems because she's a "political newbie" who is "not a seasoned politician." Crowley, a Fox News contributor, similarly claimed Angle isn't an "establishment politician" so she's getting support because "the American people are done with professional politicians, and they want normal folks."  

When Democratic strategist Tara Dowdell pointed out that Angle actually served in elected office, Smith quickly dismissed her, stating, "Well, but you know -- she was a senator [sic] in Nevada, that doesn't --" Smith previously told Angle in an interview that she was his "hero" and an "inspiration."

Angle herself has noted that she is not a "political newbie." On a widely criticized softball interview on Fox & Friends in July, co-host Gretchen Carlson introduced Angle as "somebody who really has not been in politics before." Angle corrected Carlson, stating: "Well, I really have been in politics for about the last 12 years. I started out on a school board, and then I served four terms in the Nevada state legislature. So it's not really the first time that I've ever been here."

In addition to serving as the minority whip in the Nevada Assembly, Angle also unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Congress in 2006. Fox News' July claim that Angle is a political newcomer drew criticism from veteran Nevada journalist Jon Ralston, and Las Vegas' Fox affiliate.

Read the full entry ...

Former Bush speechwriter and current Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson plays fast and loose with the facts:

The primary economic debate between now and the election will concern the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003 -- President Bush's economic stimulus -- which are due to expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress acts. Obama has proposed to eliminate the portion of that stimulus that goes to wealthier taxpayers.

Set aside Gerson’s description of tax cuts for people making more than $200,000 a year as “stimulus”; that’s garden-variety spin. Focus instead on the shell game Gerson plays. First Gerson rightly notes that Bush’s tax cuts are “due to expire” under current law. Then he claims Obama has “proposed to eliminate” a portion of them. Well, no. Obama has talked about not extending them. One needn’t propose their elimination; that’s set to occur under the current law -- the one signed by Bush himself.

Gerson continues:

Democrats might break a Senate filibuster by persuading some Republicans to support an extension of Bush's tax cuts for the middle class but not the wealthy. Momentum, however, runs in the other direction. Republicans are unlikely to give the president a legislative victory immediately before the midterms, particularly one that increases taxes.

Again: That isn’t honest. Such a package would not “increase taxes” on the wealthy. It would allow them to increase in accordance with current policy, as signed into law by President Bush.

Gerson concludes:

Obama’s tax increase on the rich would be used to reduce the deficit, resulting in a net contraction of economic activity. Tax increases to pay for past spending do not stimulate the economy.

There’s no such thing as “Obama’s tax increase on the rich.” You can give Gerson credit for persistence if you like, but regardless of how often he blames Barack Obama for policy signed into law by George W. Bush, it simply isn’t true. The Washington Post is allowing Gerson to lie to its readers. That’s sad, but not surprising.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto tells the truth about the Bush tax cuts: 

Don’t call it "extending the Bush tax cuts." Call it "repealing the Bush tax increase." This would be entirely accurate: Taxes are going up pursuant to legislation enacted by a Republican Congress and signed by Bush.

You know things have gotten bad when a conservative columnist for a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper is more likely to tell the truth about the Bush tax cuts than a Washington Post columnist.

Fox & Friends distorted data to deceptively compare the cost of the Iraq war and the cost of the stimulus bill, citing outdated stimulus estimates and pretending that the U.S. will not spend any additional money related to the Iraq war after 2010.  

After Fox & Friend Brian Kilmeade said he was "stunned" that Obama said the Iraq war contributed to deficits, Fox & Friend Gretchen Carlson said, "Look at the difference in the spending between Iraq, a $709 billion, versus the stimulus of $862 billion." While Carlson spoke Fox & Friends showed graphically the "difference in the spending":

Carlson promised: "You're not going to see this graph too many other places today. Trust me."

Carlson is likely right, but not for the reasons she thinks. 

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San Diego radio station KFMB, which features a lineup of conservative talk programming, is currently hosting the following poll on their homepage:

Read the full entry ...

Yes, the hypocrisy is hard to miss here.

Conservatives are busy touting the size of Glenn Beck's "Honor" rally last weekend, claiming, as Beck does, that at least 500,000 people attended. But there is no official crowd count and in fact the only scientific attempt to tally the rally size was done by CBS, which hired an outside firm to estimate the crowd size:

To calculate attendance at the Beck rally, AirPhotosLive.com used what is called a surveillance aerostat balloon to take pictures from both above the event and closer to the ground. In the video above, which was provided by the company, you can see some of the images used to come up with a figure.

The firm concluded there were approximately 90,000 people at the rally and right-wing bloggers howled in protest. Of course, they didn't take issue with the science of the estimate. They just didn't like the results and so they whined. A lot.

In response to those complaints, Professor Stephen Doig of Arizona State University, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and crowd estimate expert who worked on the CBS crowd estimate, noted the irony in conservatives attacking his work today. The irony was that back in Jan., 2009, when Doig came up with a crowd estimate for Obama's inauguration, and the estimate (800,000) was much smaller than most other crowd estimates, conservatives loved Doig's work.

He writes:

I am amused to see that those who embraced my Obama inauguration estimate as soberly realistic are now attacking the Beck rally estimate, produced using exactly the same methods, as deliberately biased.

And sure enough, here was Newsbusters early last year specifically touting Doig's work in connection to his Obama inauguration estimate  and suggesting news orgs that used larger crowd estimates for that event were (surprise!) liberally biased.

So to recap: When Doig estimated Obama's swearing-in crowd wasn't as large as other people claimed, Doig's work was held up as the unvarnished truth. But today, when Doig estimates Beck's Lincoln Memorial crowd wasn't as large as other people claimed, Doig's work is a joke.

Good to know.

The following has been adapted exclusively for Media Matters from The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, the new book from Media Matters senior fellow Will Bunch. Published by Harper Books, The Backlash is in bookstores this week and also available in the Kindle format.

***

Federal agents called it "Operation Big Fat Lie," and they probably thought they'd put the Illinois-based marketing schemer Bill Heid out of business in the summer of 2005 when they shut down his "Himalayan Diet Breakthrough" that promised customers they could lose weight not through diet or exercise but with a magical paste that oozed from cracks in the South Asian mountain range.

But the very same week that Heid agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission $400,000 -- all he claimed was left from an estimated $5 million in diet-scam profits in the early 2000s -- he was already setting up a new company.

Heid's new firm was called Solutions from Science, Inc., and it offered arguably a much more audacious scheme: To profit off growing fears of a total collapse of U.S. society -- fears that exploded with the 2008 economic meltdown followed by the frenzy of apocalyptic media hosts, especially Glenn Beck of the Fox News Channel.

Over the last two years, Heid has ridden the rising popularity of Beck and his sometimes survivalist bent back to the top of the marketing game. His ads for indestructible canisters of "survival seed banks" to grow a crisis garden, and for solar generators in case the electrical grid falters, are regularly bannered across the top of the hugely popular GlennBeck.com website, and Solutions from Science also airs radio ads on Beck local radio affiliates and has even run a TV ad on Beck's FNC program.

And Heid is shockingly candid in acknowledging his motives and his methods of profiteering off America's economic misery and fear. In fact, to attract marketing associates Heid created a separate website called Hugewadsofmoney.com. He writes: "[I]t wasn't until the economic crisis began in 2007 that I found a vein of pure gold. As the world economy came to a screeching halt and the credit markets shut down, I stumbled upon the most successful formula of my 30 plus in direct marketing, and this is your lucky day, because I'm about to share with you exactly what that secret is."

The Hugewadsofmoney.com website is illustrated with young male speaker at a podium, in front of headlines like "137,000 jobs vanish." The man is fanning himself with a wad of big bills. A headline reads: "Basically the worse things get, the more money you'll make!"

There are few advertising hucksters as flamboyant or as open as Bill Heid, but as I learned while researching my new book -- The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama -- he is far from alone in seeing fear and anxiety in heartland America not so much as the grounds for a political revolution but as an opportunity to rake in some big bucks.

Read the full entry ...

At one point during his absurdly self-promotional rally on Saturday, Glenn Beck claimed, "I have been going to Mount Vernon. I went to the National Archives and I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington." But according to the National Archives, Beck's claim that he held Washington's original inaugural address just isn't true.

Mother Jones reports:

Beck did receive a special VIP tour of the archives, arranged by an as-yet unidentified member of Congress. During that tour, he did get a peek inside the "legislative vault," which isn't open to ordinary visitors. But Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper insists that Beck didn't lay a finger on any precious documents, much less George Washington's inaugural address. That would be a major violation of policy. "Those kinds of treasures are only handled by specially trained archival staff," she explains. Cooper acknowledges that someone at the archives did show the document to Beck, but that was the extent of it. Regarding Beck's claim that he held the document, Cooper says that seeing such documents for the first time can be a very emotional experience. "I'm certain it was a figure of speech," she says.

As Mother Jones points out, during the same speech, Beck urged his audience, "Tell the truth. America is crying out for truth."

In an affidavit reported last night by birther site WorldNetDaily, Thomas McInerney, a retired lieutenant general who now serves as a Fox News military analyst, says that he believes there are "widespread and legitimate concerns that the President is constitutionally ineligible to hold office," and expresses support for an Army officer who is currently awaiting a court-martial for refusing to obey orders from his commanding officers "until the president produces his original birth certificate."

McInerney has been interviewed on Fox News at least four times in the last year, most recently on the August 29 edition of Fox News' America's News HQ. During that time, he has appeared in taped reports on five editions of Fox News' premiere "news" program, Special Report.* He has also written occasional columns for FoxNews.com's Fox Forum. Between January 1, 2002, and May 13, 2008, McInerney made 144 Fox News appearances.

McInerney submitted his affidavit in support of a request for discovery from attorneys for Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin seeking Obama's "birth records." On August 5, the Associated Press reported that Lakin had been "charged with disobeying orders after failing to show up for duty in Afghanistan and questioning whether President Barack Obama has the right to order him there."

McInerney writes that if Obama is constitutionally ineligible, "that creates a break in the chain of command of such magnitude that its significance can scarcely be imagined." Citing the importance of a "unified chain of command" in his own experience commanding nuclear-equipped forces, the Fox analyst claims that "[t]oday, because of the widespread and legitimate concerns that the President is constitutionally ineligible to hold office, I fear what would happen should such a crisis occur today."

McInerney goes on to praise Lakin, writing that he "has acted exactly as proper training dictates. That training mandates that he determine in his own conscience that an order is legal before obeying it." He also credits Lakin for "demonstrating the courage of his convictions and his bravery" by "invit[ing]" a court martial.

The Fox News military analyst concludes:

For the foregoing reasons, it is my opinion that LTC Lakin's request for discovery relating to the President's birth record in Hawaii is absolutely essential to determining not merely his guilt or innocence but to reassuring all military personnel once and for all for this President whether his service as Commander in Chief is Constitutionally proper. He is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship. This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to the Constitution, the Commander is Chief must now, in the face of serious -- and widely-held -- concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here. Our military MUST have confidence their Commander in Chief lawfully holds his office and absent which confidence grievous consequences may ensue.

Of course, President Obama has released his birth certificate, which shows that he was born in Hawaii and is constitutionally eligible to be president. Does Fox News really want to keep someone so detached from reality that they doubt Obama's eligibility on their payroll? Is he really the one they want serving as their military analyst?

If so, that tells us even more about Fox News than we just learned about Thomas McInerney.

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In an August 31 Washington Times editorial, former Reagan administration official and Heritage Foundation writer James T. Hackett attempted to remedy what has so far eluded conservatives - finding "a new Ronald Reagan." His suggested "heir" to "the Gipper's" throne? Sarah Palin, who has been nominated for the role in the past by Ann Coulter and Richard A. Viguerie. 

Now, you would think that conservative media would approach labeling individuals "the next Ronald Reagan" the same way they purport to approach most things - with a "less is more" attitude. This is, after all, the Ronald Reagan, an iconic right-wing hero. Sadly, however, this is not the case. Observe:

• Earlier today, Fox Nation featured the headline: Christie's Starting to Look Like Reagan" and accompanied the headline with the following image:

• In a February 27 article on American Thinker, Bruce Walker wrote that "One Republican in 2008 met all those criteria, and in 2012, he stands out at least as clearly as anyone as our Next Reagan: Fred Thompson." Walker noted the "remarkable similarity in the lives of these two men," adding that Thompson fits Reagan's "role perfectly."
• According to a September 14, 2009 post at The American Spectator headlined "The Next Reagan? Maybe," candidate for Governor of California Meg Whitman has the potential to be "the next Reagan" because "she has clear convictions" and "the determination to carry them out against ... state government," as well as "the optimistic, sunny personality needed to roll with the punches."
• In an October 21, 2007 National Ledger column, Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid offered Mike Huckabee as the next potential Reagan, arguing that Huckabee was "demonstrating that he has the Reagan vision" by "denouncing the Law of the Sea Treaty."
• Right-wing radio host Neil Boortz wrote on his website, "I truly believe that Rubio could very well be the next Ronald Reagan for the GOP. Democrats believe that too ... that's why they're pulling out all the stops to derail him."
• As documented by the blog Think Progress, Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly referred to Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) as "the next Ronald Reagan," adding that Jindal represents "100% conservatism."

Considering that most rising conservative figures are compared to Reagan by their counterparts in the media, maybe the question isn't who is "the next Ronald Reagan," but who isn't it?

Before President Obama delivered his address tonight about the end of combat operations in Iraq, Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News that the speech would be "a mistake," adding, "You don't declare an arbitrary milestone on a fixed timetable when you have no Iraqi government and Al Qaeda is resurgent":

KRAUTHAMMER: He had one task. He has not succeeded. I'm with Michael O'Hanlon ... who says this is a mistake. You don't declare an arbitrary milestone on a fixed timetable when you have no Iraqi government and when Al Qaeda is resurgent. You do it when you have a stable government and then you have a ceremony in which the president and the new leader of Iraq have a ceremony in which the transition is declared mutually acknowledged. This is premature and political and it could be very costly.

But after the speech, Fox News' Sean Hannity complained that Obama didn't explicitly declare victory in Iraq:

HANNITY: If he had his way, we wouldn't have had this today. But he couldn't even utter the words, "we were victorious," which, if I was one of the brave men and women that served there, I think I would be a little offended tonight.

Before the speech, Stephen Hayes said on Special Report that "the real question" is "whether the president treats this as sort of a campaign speech ... or whether he talks to the country as the president, as he should while speaking from the Oval Office":

HAYES: The real question is going to be whether the president treats this as sort of a campaign speech as he did in his radio address this week or whether he talks to the country as the president, as he should when speaking from the Oval Office. From the excerpts and from everything we've been hearing from the White House today, it seems like they didn't make a decision. It sounds like he's going to do a little bit of both.

After the speech, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said he wished the "boring" address had sounded more like Obama's campaign speeches:

O'REILLY: Why was he so boring? ... Here's my problem: I watched this guy on the campaign trail. He was Elvis. the guy was out -- he did this and hope and change and we're and that and the place was going wild, all right? And he was talking about serious things. ... What I'm telling you is that he has changed his demeanor -- still talking about serious things. Talking about serious things in the campaign, he's talking about serious things now. But now he's the boring professor -- not the nutty professor, the boring professor.  

[...]

CROWLEY: During the campaign, he was campaigning, which is the only thing that this man knows how to do --

O'REILLY: Then why doesn't he keep doing it?

Confused?

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Prior to President Obama's speech about the Iraq war, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard said on Fox News that in the past, Obama has not talked "about the troops in a way that treats them as warriors," rather than "as victims":

HAYES: The things that I'm going to be looking for in the speech are a basic acknowledgement of the sacrifice of troops, which I expect we'll hear and hear at some length. But I hope he talks about the troops in a way that treats them as warriors, not as victims. I think that's an important thing for the president to do. He hasn't done it in the past -- it's an important way to talk about it.

In fact, President Obama has praised U.S. forces for, among other things, their "honor," "courage," "heroism," and "incredible dedication." Contrary to the narrative Hayes is trying to push, Obama has called U.S. troops "our best and brightest, our finest young men and women."

In fact, just earlier today Obama spoke at Fort Bliss and stated that "there has not been a single mission that has been assigned to all of you in which you have not performed with gallantry, with courage, with excellence." The remarks echo statements that Obama has made throughout his term.

For instance, in a July 10 address, Obama said:

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At least 100 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News program since he called President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Here are his August 31 sponsors, in the order they appeared:

• Goldline
• MyLife.com
• Lifestyle Lift
• News Corp. (Fox News)
• Cenegenics Medical Institute
• Easy Water
• Resort Quest Vacation Rentals
• Johnson Law Group
• MozyPro.com
• American Advisors Group
• News Corp. (Fox News)
• Rosland Capital
• Newsmax
• Arriva Medical
• News Corp. (Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor)
• Chattem, Inc. (Aspercreme)
• Servpro Industries
• TaxMasters
• News Corp. (Fox News)
• Cenegenics Medical Institute
• Foundation for a Better Life
• Merit Financial
• CreditAnswers, LLC
• News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal)

In February of 2009, Glenn Beck introduced "Nine Principles" and "Twelve Values" he promised could "solve any problem." Number five on that list of capital-V Values was "Humility."

And how has Beck embraced this value?

With a self-promotional rally on the National Mall loosely disguised as a revival-style gathering on the topic of faith.

Beck spent months building up the event, encouraging his followers to join him by posting an outrageous promotional video that compared 8-28 to the moon landing, Iwo Jima, the Montgomery bus boycott and the signing of the Declaration of Independence and likened Beck to Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, the Founding Fathers, and the Wright Brothers. Beck asserted that he was going to "reclaim the civil rights movement" and predicted that the rally would be "an American miracle" or a "defibrillator to the heart of America."

Read the full entry ...