'W' now beats out 'O'
His predecessor may have a little something to do with it, but the man who left the White House with a 28 percent rating -- thanks to the unpopular Iraq war and the poor economy his last few months in office -- is now seen more favorably than the current president.
In a poll by left-leaning CNN, no less, President George W. Bush is seen in a favorable light by 52 percent of those surveyed (and 43 percent unfavorable), while President Barack Obama is seen favorably -- and unfavorably -- by 49 percent.
Obama has changed America in many ways, as he promised he would, but those ways are not necessarily what the country had in mind.
The poll, for instance, found that only 6 percent of Americans believe environmental policy is the most important issue facing the country, but the president has promoted it as if nearly 100 percent believe it.
The numbers also may be based on Bush's decision -- like his father -- not to criticize his predecessor. While Obama has bent over backwards blaming Bush for everything under the sun, Bush has said, "I don't think it's good for the country to have a former president undermine a current president. I think it's bad for the presidency, for that matter."
Metric man
Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, once a Republican, once an independent and now a Democrat, has a policy idea he hopes will launch him past Hillary Clinton and into the 2016 presidential nomination: the metric system.
Perhaps someone should wake him and tell him it's not 1978.
Chafee said he is deeply committed to transitioning the country to the metric system. If Canada can do it, he said, we can do it.
"Let's join the rest of the world and go metric," he said in the speech that launched his presidential campaign. "Only Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States aren't metric -- and it will help our economy."
Metrication in the United States seemed to reach its public zenith in the 1970s with a 1974 public law that stated it is the policy of the U.S. to encourage educational agencies and institutions to prepare students to use the metric system of measurement with ease and facility and the 1975 public law that declared a national policy of coordinating the increasing use of the metric system in the U.S.
Gee was he duped
New York Mets pitcher Dillon Gee says when he donned an orange T-shirt for a team picture recently, he didn't know anti-Second Amendment groups were planning to use the photo to promote gun control.
The orange T-shirts apparently were part of a "Wear Orange" campaign spearheaded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and failed CNN talk show host Piers Morgan.
"This is not why I put on that shirt this day," Gee tweeted. "I in no way support Bloomberg/Morgan or gun control." He later tweeted back to a fan who asked why he wore it by saying, "Was told it was in support of raising awareness for gun violence. I don't support senseless gun violence. That's all."
Anti-Second Amendment groups often use the words "gun violence" and "gun safety" when they mean "gun control." Who doesn't want to be against "gun violence," after all?
Even many of the groups supporting the "Wear Orange" effort have names to hide what is likely to be a gun control agenda. Among them, according to PRNewsWire, are Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in American, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Greenwich Council Against Gun Violence, CT Coalition Against Gun Violence, North Carolina Coalition Against Gun Violence, Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence and Parents Against Gun Violence.
What stands for news
In case you're keeping score, and the Media Research Center did, the ABC, CBS and NBC networks gave Vanity Fair's Bruce Jenner-to-Caitlyn Jenner transition story 48 minutes and 25 minutes of coverage from Monday night through Wednesday morning last week.
The same networks, on the other hand, ignored the story on the upcoming Obamacare price hikes, the president's decline in approval ratings on his handling of foreign policy (the largest drop in recent months) and the economy, the revised 0.7 percent drop in gross domestic product from the first quarter of 2015 and gave but 17 seconds of coverage (by CBS) on a federal appeals court ruling which blocked the Obama administration from putting in place his amnesty proposal without congressional approval.
The network most wild about Caitlyn was ABC, which provided 20 minutes and 10 seconds of coverage over the period.