Read Stuff, You Should

I tweeted about this yesterday, but: Gallup had Barack Obama's approval rating at 50% for August 26-28 of last year...and currently has him at 49%.  Yes, that's cherry-picking, but the pollster.com average hasn't moved much more than five points over the last ten or eleven months.  So I wasn't really thrilled with the New York Times giving over much of their op-ed pages to suggestions because "Obama has been able to do little to stop the drop in his public approval ratings."  Well, I suppose, but we're talking a percentage point every other month, or so.  Higher is always better, but it does seem to me that there's a phony impression being peddled in the press about plunging approval ratings.  At any rate, the only worthwhile suggestion is what Mark Blumenthal says; the funniest are Ed Rollins (follow GOP talking points!), Mark Penn, Gray Davis, and the inevitable Harold Ford, Jr. (pass the GOP agenda!).  If you skipped the whole thing, you made the right move.

Meanwhile, I felt out a whole bunch of stuff from my last tab dump, and found more over the weekend.  Here goes:

1. Daniel Drezner on reading research papers as a non-expert.  The comments, too.

2. Everyone has linked to it, but Dave Weigel on FNC and the NBPP is, in fact, well worth it.

3. As is Harold Pollack on the administration's HIV/AIDS policy.

4. Fred Kaplan updates everyone on Afghanistan at the dawn of the Petraeus era.  I need to link to Kaplan more often.

5. Too much serious stuff?  This is fun.

6. Noah Millman, on same-sex marriage.  I'd quibble quite a bit on his idea of a "man" -- but read it yourself.


7. Matt Yglesias sets out the big-picture liberal agenda.

8.  And JSC5 takes on my comments about how to talk on the internet.