THAT WAPO/ ABC NEWS POLL IS EVEN WORSE FOR OBAMA THAN FIRST REPORTED: Obama has more problems than gas prices.

The new Post-ABC poll shows that “46 percent approve of the way Obama is handling his job; 50 percent disapprove. That’s a mirror image of his 50 to 46 positive split in early February. The downshift is particularly notable among independents — 57 percent of whom now disapprove — and among white people without college degrees, with disapproval among this group now topping approval by a ratio of more than 2 to 1, at 66 versus 28 percent.” . . . Obama also has a substantial problem with independents. The Post’s pollster tells me that Obama trails Mitt Romney 42-50 among independents; against Rick Santorum he trails by a smaller margin, 45 to 48 percent.

And yet the conventional wisdom is that last week was bad for Republicans.

EGYPT CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY, “by condemning the 1978 UN Convention Against Gender Discrimination as ‘incompatible with the values of Islamic sharia.’ Need we tell you that the political forces behind this tastefully timed pronouncement were those empowered by the so-called Arab Spring?”

The wages of “smart diplomacy.”

HEH: Four Years Later, Obama Campaign Still Running Against Palin.

I notice the Obama machine seems to be putting a lot of effort into energizing its base via the recycling of familiar tropes. That’s not the mark of a confident campaign.

UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:

Running against Palin, ginning up a culture war theme: It’s been noted that this is all focused on exciting the base. Contrast that with Mitt Romney’s steady rise and likely nomination. They may be focusing on the base because they are well aware of the stability of the polling numbers which might suggest these are baked in: most people have already made up their minds. If so, then the only thing to be determined is turnout. That would also explain the CW that Republicans are doing poorly, have lots of problems, etc.; the flip-side being to depress turnout among Republicans. This is one reason why I keep beating the drum about Congressional, state, and local elections. However you may feel about the race for the presidency, it has always been about more: change is affected through control of the legislatures at all levels; control of the legislatures is a necessary precondition for any significant change. HCAA would not have been possible without Democrat control of both houses of Congress. HCAA won’t be fully undone, or even significantly modified in the absence of a sweeping rejection by the Supreme Court, without control of both houses of Congress.

That makes sense.

FINDING THE NEWS DEPRESSING? There’s always One Cute Thing A Day.

CRASH THE JUSTICE SYSTEM: Go To Trial. “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”

It would force a sense of priorities.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on cellphones and accessories.

Also, today only: a bluetooth speakerphone for $74.99.

ANDREW KLAVAN: The Zombie Dilemma: Should We Unite? “Let’s face it, Mitt Romney’s going to win the nomination and whatever else you may think about the guy, he’s not a zombie.”

DEBASING THE CURRENCY? A fundamental human right to . . . convenient parking? “There is a cost to this nonsense. The more ludicrous the claims being made under the human-rights banner, the more the concept itself is stretched and mauled completely out of shape, the more that the real elements of human rights are degraded or forgotten. Human rights are not a sticky post on which you paste the latest silly thing that annoys you.”

Debasing the currency seems to be what our global political classes do.

MORE ON THAT Evangelicals vs. Occupy confrontation.

WAPO/ABC NEWS POLL: Gas prices sink Obama’s ratings on economy, bring parity to race for White House.

This is why they want people talking about birth control.

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Anders writes:

Your link on the price of gas and Obama’s economic rating reminded me that in 2008, the last time gas prices were this high, Trilby Lundberg was a near constant guest or source on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Lundberg is a consultant specializing in gasoline price predictions, she’s a peak oil prophet, and she’s still active. But I couldn’t recall hearing her name mentioned at all this year on NPR. A search of NPR’s archives showed I was right.

http://www.npr.org/templates/search/index.php?searchinput=%22trilby+lundberg%22&sort=match&tabId=all

Ms. Lundberg became an unperson at NPR after 2008. Wonder why that is?

Maybe we should call it National Party Radio.

CULTURE CHANGE: In the Christian Science Monitor, a look at the expansion of gun-carry rights in America.

More here.

BACHUS IN THE ALABAMA PRIMARY: The biggest Congressional race this week. A Tea Partier vs. an insider-trading incumbent that Andrew Breitbart wanted beaten.

UPDATE: A Birmingham reader disagrees: “I wish you wouldn’t tout Scott Beeson in the race against Spencer Bachus. Beeson, imho, is an idiot, whose racially insensitive remarks made while wearing a wire in a huge corruption trial here probably went far in allowing the defendants to go scot free. (The retrial resulted in acquittals last week.) Beeson was also the driving force behind the immigration law here that has, so far, resulted in the harassment of foreign engineers, bad press for the state, etc. I fully intend to vote for Bachus over Beeson, and let the ethics charges about his trading stock play out.”

DOUGLAS LEVENE: Reflections on Cambodia: What the Khmer Rouge killing fields tell us about leftist utopianism.

TOP-14 LAW GRADS: Too Good For BigLaw?

ANN ALTHOUSE NOT SO THRILLED WITH THE DEMOCRATS’ NEW CULTURE-WAR REVIVAL:

Of course, Democrats started the conversation, but it was a good conversation to start if the goal was to get some Republicans to say some things that could be used against them. Fortunately, Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who is going to be the nominee, had the sense not to say much. He was “tepid.” Good! We don’t want the government in our bedroom, so we don’t need a passionate President. Let him stay in his office and coolly and calmly do his job, which shouldn’t have anything to do with sex. He’s not our boyfriend.

Man, I loathe this pandering to women! Don’t treat us like we’re stupid. Don’t act like we need your special protection. Don’t buy us things.

But then there’d be no reason to vote Democratic.

X-PRIZE FOUNDER wants ideas for fixing education.

ROGER KIMBALL: “By any rational metric, Obama has presided over a national disaster.” “What’s shocking is not that Mitt Romney is ahead. A syphilitic camel should be ahead. What’s shocking is that the distance is only 5 points.”

Related: Obamalaise: Like Carter, Obama suggests that we have only ourselves to blame for being stuck in the doldrums.

HOW’S THAT ECONOMY GOING? Regulation Nation: New study finds Obama’s regs cost $46 billion a year.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: “Here is a sincere question: Why have the good people of Rochester, N.Y., failed to tar and feather school superintendent Bolgen Vargas as a prelude to running him out of town on a rail?”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Detroit Nears Bankruptcy:

Unemployment in the city of Detroit is estimated at about 20 percent; two thirds of the city’s children live in poverty. The two largest employers in the city: the dysfunctional public school system and the crippled city government. Decades of incompetence and corruption by elected officials in tandem with the decline of the once flourishing American automobile industry and (entirely understandable) flight by the better educated and the better off have thoroughly blighted what was once one of America’s most flourishing cities.

Leftie intellectuals spend a lot of time analyzing the “false consciousness” that keeps American workers voting for Republicans who (in the view of the intellectuals) support anti-worker policies. We don’t hear nearly as much from these incisive social thinkers about the false urban consciousness that keeps voters supporting policies and politicians that have ruined the cities, but there you are. Many of the policies that are dearest to the hearts of powerful Democratic politicians are responsible for wrecking the lives of many of their most loyal supporters, but the loyal supporters turn out year after year.

When American cities embraced the high cost, high regulation statist model two generations or so ago, they were often the richest and most dynamic places in the country. Increasingly “progressive” policies, with higher wages for unionized teachers, bigger bureaucracies enforcing tighter regulations, more “planning” by qualified technocrats and more government services and benefits to improve the quality of residents’ lives were supposed to take the American city into a new golden age.

It’s hard to think of many social experiments that have more disastrously failed. Now many of these once flourishing cities are hollowed out shells, while around them suburbs and increasingly exurbs flourish away from the deadening influence of urbanist politics. None of this affects the hold of progressive and urbanist ideology on true believers; if anything, they believe even more passionately in the cause.

That’s how it usually is with true believers.

Key bit: “If you can’t learn from Detroit, what can you learn from?”