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by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama will face a tough audience when he delivers his long-promised address to the Muslim world on Thursday from Cairo University.

In some of the Arab nations and territory in the region, most notably his host country of Egypt, public views about the "job performance of the leadership of the United States'' have improved remarkably from one president to the next - from the view that Arabs held of former President George W. Bush's leadership last summer, to the views they voiced of Obama's leadership in March.

Yet even in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the two nations where Obama will begin his journey this week, a positive view of U.S. leadership is still shared by about one in four of those surveyed: Up from 12 percent last summer to 29 percent in Saudi Arabia, according to survey results released today by the Gallup Poll on the eve of the president's trip, and up from just 6 percent to 25 percent in Egypt.

"These upsurges, which ranged from 11 percentage points in Syria to 23 points in Tunisia, may reflect positive reception to Obama and his administration's public outreach to the Muslim world,'' Gallup reports today. "Obama will deliver his message Thursday with an arguably stronger basis of support than his predecessor ever had in many Arab countries. Nonetheless, approval remains low and underscores the work that remains as Obama seeks to pave a new, more positive way forward.''

In nearly all of the 11 nations and territories where the public was surveyed, public opinion of the U.S. leadership has improved from last year - up 23 percent in Tunisia, from 14 to 37, up 22 points in Algergia from 25 to 47, up 14 points in Qatar, from 8 to 22 percent, up 13 in Kuwait, from 20 ro 33, up 11 in Syria, from 4 to 15 percentage point approval.

In two palaces, however, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, the view of U.S. leadership is no brighter today than it was last summer: 22 percent approval registered in Lebanon, down from 25 points last summer, 7 percent in the Palestinian territories, down from 13 points in June.

• Lindsey Graham's protestations aside, it seems clear that there's neither the will nor the numbers to filibuster the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I'm sure that won't stop Newt and Rush from alienating the rest of the country from the GOP, however.
  


• The president sent a letter to Max Baucus and Edward Kennedy reiterating his support for a public option for what feels like the inevitable health care reform bill that's slowly working its way through Congress. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein helpfully explains the relevance of MedPAC and why it might finally get some teeth, and Greg Sargent documents the Canadian influence.


• It's hard to disagree with the thesis of this Politico piece, that Obama is deliberately poaching GOP moderates for his administration in order to reduce the Republican party down to its core base of Southern supporters.
  


• The right has predictably been freaking out over a New York Times piece that asserts President Obama believes the United States could be "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." As usual, it helps to read the official transcript in these situations. The jury's still out on whether this is sillier than the latest mutterings coming from Michael Goldfarb.


• Mark Levin, last seen screaming at and berating a woman on the air, has a list of "The World's Most Deranged Bloggers." You'd think it would be a roll call of the Left's most pugnacious but actually it's four conservative pundits who tend to point out that people like Levin are nuts. It's odd to think that Levin, author of a book called "Liberty and Tyranny," apparently knows nothing about either subject, but we'll just call this Jonah Goldberg Syndrome from now on.


• Remainders: Tim Pawlenty suggests he'll do what the Minnesota Supreme Court tells him to do; Dave Weigel watches PajamasTV so you don't have to; and Stephen Colbert edits Newsweek?

--Mori Dinauer

Sonia Sotomayor, Pres. Obama's pick for the SCOTUS, heads to the Hill tomorrow for meetings with members. Per the WH, here is her busy itinerary:

Maj. Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

Min. Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT)

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Geithner told China yesterday that the Obama Administration was committed to bringing down the US deficit.
Really?

Barack Obama will quadruple the deficit this year.

Geithner also told China that Team Obama wants to bring down the deficit next year from 12.9% of GDP this year to 3% of GDP next year (a near impossibility)...
Or, in other words, back into Bush territory.

In response, China told Geithner to show them some numbers!
Bloomberg reported, via Bizblogger:

In an interview with Bloomberg Television May 21, Geithner said the administration?"s goal is to cut the budget shortfall to 3 percent of gross domestic product or smaller. That would be down from a projected 12.9 percent this year.

Seventeen of 23 Chinese economists polled in connection with Geithner?"s visit said holdings of Treasuries are a ?Sgreat risk? for the nation?"s economy, according to a Chinese state media report yesterday. Still, the majority argued against quickly cutting them, the Beijing-based Global Times reported.

Geithner, 47, needs to show how the U.S. can prevent the value of China?"s investment from being eroded by a weaker dollar or by the inflation that might be stoked by the stimulus money being pumped into the U.S. economy, according to Yu.

?SIt will be helpful if Geithner can show us some arithmetic,? he said.

...The Treasury released a transcript May 30 of a briefing Geithner gave last week at the Foreign Press Center in Washington. In it, he said he will stress with Chinese officials that he?"s intent on maintaining the dollar?"s strength.

?SI will, of course, make it clear that we are committed to a strong dollar, that we are committed to bringing our fiscal deficits down over the medium term to a sustainable place, to a sustainable level,? Geithner said in the briefing May 27. ?SWe believe in a strong dollar. A strong dollar is in the U.S. interest.?

This doesn't sound good at all.
No wonder China is concerned.

The US has lost 16,000 jobs each day since Obama signed the Spendulus Bill and sunk the US economy further into debt.

The Dish was all over yesterday's big story - the assassination of George Tiller by a crazed Christianist. We traced O'Reilly's troubling rhetoric here, here, and here, and readers checked my reaction here. We chronicled the disturbing role of Operation Rescue here, here, and here, and commentary from the far right here, here, here.  A noteworthy voice on the far-right was Robert P. George, who struck the perfect chord. We also aired personal accounts of abortion here and here.

A traumatic Sunday, to say the least. For the right approach to religion, listen to Bob Wright.

A presidential proclamation marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

Available in full after the jump.

Writing in The Weekly Standard, Senior Editor Michael C. Moynihan looks at the police murder that helped trigger the 1968 German student movement. Previously believed to have been purpotrated by a "fascist pig," new evidence discovered in East German archives shows that the shooter, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was a longtime agent of the East German secret police:

To future Baader-Meinhof leader Gudrun Ensslin, the shooting demonstrated that West Germany was a "fascist state [that] means to kill us all." Ensslin, a 27-year-old pastor's daughter, provided a tidy apothegm for those who would join terror organizations like the 2nd of June Movement (a tribute to Ohnesorg) and the Red Army Faction: "Violence is the only way to answer violence."

And it is this narrative that has persisted—until last week. According to new documents uncovered by two German researchers, Karl-Heinz -Kurras was not the "fascist" cop of popular indignation, but a longtime agent of the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) and a member of the East German Communist party. In a rare moment of justified breathlessness, the ever-excitable German tabloid Bild called the discovery the "revelation of the year."

While there is no evidence that Kurras acted as an agent provocateur in shooting Ohnesorg, it is doubtless true that had his political sympathies—and his covert work for the Stasi—been known in 1967, the burgeoning radical student movement would have been deprived of its most effective recruiting tool. As Bettina Roehl, the journalist daughter of terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, argued in Die Welt, the glut of post-Ohnesorg propaganda helped establish "the legend of an evil and brutal West Germany," while simultaneously minimizing the very real brutality of Communist East Germany.

Read the whole article here.

The plans you are discussing embody my core belief that Americans should have better choices for health insurance, building on the principle that if they like the coverage they have now, they can keep it, while seeing their costs lowered as our reforms take hold. But for those who don't have such options, I agree that we should create a health insurance exchange -- a market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that's best for them, in the same way that Members of Congress and their families can. None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.

By plunging into the details of the reform rather than cheering from the sidelines, as he has done for months, Obama raises the political stakes for the summer?"s big legislative battle, and will hearten liberals who have yearned for his intervention to put a public sector option on the table.

We are thrilled to see President Obama's strong, unambiguous commitment to reform that includes the choice of keeping private health insurance or joining a new public health insurance option. The choice of a new public health insurance plan is the only way to control costs, guarantee coverage, ensure quality and transparency, and set a benchmark by which patients will know whether their private health insurance is truly giving them what they're paying for.

There is tremendous unity among President Obama, key committee leadership in both the House and the Senate, the broad coalition represented by Health Care for America Now, and the American people for reform based on the choice of private or public health insurance plans. It is now clearer than ever that this choice will be a fundamental part of the reform sent to the President's desk this year.