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Insider Report: Zogby: Bush Poll Numbers Dipping Again Special From NewsMax's Most Informed Sources
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories): 1. Zogby: Bush's Poll Numbers Dipping Again In the face of rising gas prices, partisan sniping over Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and a resumption of insurgent violence in Iraq, President Bush's job approval rating has slipped into a post-holiday funk, again dipping below 40%, a new telephone poll by Zogby International shows. His approval rating almost mirrors the percentage of respondents (40%) who said the nation overall is headed in the right direction. The deterioration in the President's numbers appears to be the result of eroding support among the investor class and others who supported him in his 2004 re-election bid, said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. And the problem is the Iraq war - just 34% of respondents said Mr. Bush was doing a good or excellent job managing the war, down from 38% approval in a Zogby poll taken in mid-October. Story Continues Below
Bush's overall job approval rating in that poll was at 46%.
Among investors, Bush's support for managing the war dropped five points since October, from 45% to 40%, Zogby data shows. But Zogby said the glaring split between how Republicans, Democrats and independents think the President is handling Iraq is remarkable. "The numbers in support for the war in Iraq are extremely low among Democrats and independents," Zogby said. "This is a partisan war." While 61% of Republicans said he was doing a good job managing the war (down from 70% in October), just 11% of Democrats and 28% of independents gave him good marks in that area. Among Democrats, 71% said Bush was doing a "poor" job with the war, while 17% said he was doing only a "fair" job. Among men, 36% said the President was handling the war well, while 31% of women agreed. Bush has retained a base of support for his handling of the broader war on terror, as 46% said he is doing a good job, down just one percent since October. His management of the war on terror had been a consistently bright spot for the President since the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, before dipping below 50% last year. However, half of those surveyed said they feel safer with Bush as President, compared to 38% who said they feel less safe. Respondents rated the war in Iraq and the war on terror as the two top issues facing America. Jobs and the economy were also important, they said, with health care coming in a distant fourth, followed by concern over gas and fuel prices. Asked about his leadership of foreign policy in general, 36% said Bush was doing a good job. Asked about which party they would support when making a decision about the race for Congress in their home district, Democrats maintained a 33% to 26% edge over Republicans. But as the nation's capital sinks further into scandal talk revolving around Congress and allegations of improper gifts doled out by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the poll shows the public has yet to hold one party more responsible than the other. Despite Democratic efforts to paint the Abramoff influence-pedaling case as a Republican scandal, the GOP holds a slight advantage in the minds of respondents when it comes to integrity - 35% said they believed Republicans have more integrity, while 34% gave the nod to Democrats. 19% said neither party had integrity. The nationwide Zogby poll, conducted Jan. 9-12, included 1,030 interviews and carries a margin of error of + / - 3.1 percentage points.
2. Blogger Posts Phony Mel Gibson A Web site calling itself melgibsonsblog, and bearing Mel Gibson's photo, is filled with anti-Semitic comments and other outrageous statements, much of them in Latin. Gibson fans should rest easy: The blog is a hoax, though it claims to be a personal blog by the 'Passion' producer and Hollywood celebrity. Alerted by Canada Free Press editor Judy McLeod - who wrote about a new blog allegedly posted by Gibson - NewsMax located the Web site and checked with a colleague close to the actor/producer. NewsMax was told flat out that the blog was a hoax. Further proof came when a leftist Gibson impersonator - calling himself gobacktotexas - bragged on the ultraleft Daily Kos blog that he had created the phony Web site, and chortled over the fact that he had fooled McLeod. Wrote the blog forger: " ... I started a satirical blog, Mel's Musings, to make fun of the retrograde political and religious views of Mel Gibson," wrote gobacktotexas. "I never thought that there would be many who would think the site was seriously Mel Gibson's ... I posted an article with tongue-in-cheek commentary, from a right-wing tabloid journalist." McLeod reported that the phony blog, which had Gibson making outrageous statements, has since been taken offline, but NewsMax found that it was still online as of 3 p.m. Eastern, January 13.
3. Al-Qaida Sets Up Base in Gaza Following the completion of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September, al-Qaida has established a terrorist base in the Palestinian enclave, sources in the Middle East say. Israeli and American officials fear that by using Gaza as a base of operations, al-Qaida could launch attacks not only against Israeli, but against Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well. "What we are recently identifying is the entrance of various so-called vanguard, precursor elements – al-Qaida operatives without a doubt – who are coming with a long-term plan to establish an infrastructure there," Israel's former military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told the Jewish publication the Forward. Al-Qaida had previously been reluctant to establish a presence in Gaza and the Palestinian territories. For one thing, the militant anti-Israeli group Hamas discouraged foreign groups from intervening in the Palestinian campaign against Israel. But after Israel began its withdrawal in August, al-Qaida began to see the area as a safe haven, said Ya'alon, who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The al-Qaida forces that have entered Gaza belong to the cell that sought refuge in the Halal Mountain area after the July suicide attacks against resorts in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, according to Israel's outgoing chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash. Israeli officials are worried that al-Qaida operatives could smuggle in missiles with a longer range than those currently used by Palestinian militants, the Forward reports. Al-Qaida in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is more eager than founder Osama bin Laden to attack Israeli and Jewish targets.
Former Israeli intelligence officer Yoram Kahati told the Forward: "The battle for Palestine, as Zarqawi sees it, is the ultimate one."
4. Tom Ridge: Bush Spying Was O.K. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said President Bush did not overstep his authority by authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on citizens without a warrant. But he told an audience at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Fla.: "Hopefully the president and Congress will develop a new legal framework with the right oversights to get beyond this" controversy. "We ought to be able to tackle the discussion head-on and leave politics behind." Pointing out that Muslims make up nearly one-quarter of the world's population, and citing the rise of Islamic fundamentalist schools that sanction violence, Ridge said that airport screening and other security measures are "what we're going to have to deal with in the foreseeable future." Ridge became the nation's first Homeland Security chief within a month of the 9/11 attacks, and originated the color-coded alert system. He resigned in December 2004. In his Palm Beach talk, he added that no amount of diligence can guarantee absolute security against terrorist attacks in a free nation where 45 million people visit each year, the Palm Beach Daily News reported. But he pointed to America's previous success in surmounting the threats of the Cold War and said: "We accepted the norm and built the greatest economy in the history of the world."
5. NYC Mayor Bloomberg Dubbed "Honorary Lesbian" A gay rights activist in New York City has bestowed a new title on Mayor Michael Bloomberg that he's none too comfortable with – "honorary lesbian." The "tribute" came from former City Council member Margarita Lopez at a news conference announcing a real estate deal that is allowing a group of artists to buy six buildings in the East Village for $6, the New York Sun reports. Lopez, an openly gay Democrat who left office last month due to term limits, expressed gratitude to Bloomberg for the real estate deal, which she had promoted, and told the audience: "I want the mayor to perform in my first theater piece … I have a lot of stories where he is the main character," and he would have to be "part of the group of people that I am part of, the gay-lesbian-transgender community. And I'm making him an honorary lesbian." Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is state Banking Superintendent Diana Taylor, did not seem to relish the honor, telling the crowd: "Let the record show that the mayor moved right along after that." Editor's Notes:
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