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Following the tension between conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and Republican leaders, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds only 26 percent of voters have positive feelings towards the GOP.

For a man who expresses no desire to lead the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh has a knack for creating problems for those who do.

Still smarting from consecutive electoral drubbings, Republicans now find themselves caught in a crossfire between Democrats pressuring them to denounce the conservative talk radio host’s bombastic criticism of a popular new president and his own denunciations of their party as an embarrassment.

The ongoing controversy over Limbaugh’s statement in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday that he wants “Barack Obama to fail” and the aggressive Democratic pushback it drew has emerged as the latest challenge for a party struggling to find its voice and lacking an obvious national leader.

Few Republicans are eager to alienate Limbaugh’s millions of avid listeners. But as party officials work to expand their shrinking coalition, they are also vexed about how to contend with his more pointed commentaries on hot-button issues and a president whom most in the party have been reluctant to criticize.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele apologized to Limbaugh on Monday after referring to his show as “incendiary” and “ugly” over the weekend — statements that led Limbaugh to say the new chairman was “off to a shaky start.” Steele said yesterday that he and congressional leaders will be shaping the party’s strategy. But he also praised Limbaugh as a “strong conservative voice,” adding, “What ticks the left off is he is effective.”

Delicate balance
Steele’s gyrations reflected the delicate balance Republicans are attempting to find with Limbaugh. Party strategists say his listeners include a huge swath of the activist base, but some of his rhetoric leaves GOP elected officials forced either to defend views they may not support or to disagree with a popular conservative icon.

“The influence Rush has is 20 million listeners,” said Ron Bonjean, who was spokesman for former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), referring to what Limbaugh says is his weekly audience. “But to get back to the majority, we need to also connect to independents who may not be listeners of his show.” Democrats continued to mock Steele for buckling to Limbaugh yesterday, maintained their insistence that Limbaugh is the GOP’s de facto leader, and said they planned no letup in their attacks. The White House and the Democratic National Committee have been coordinating their response, and liberal interest groups are planning to expand their television ads highlighting Limbaugh’s comments in the days ahead.

Hardball
“Rush is the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist who rose to prominence during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Along with lots of others, I intend to continue to turn up the heat until every alleged Republican either endorses or renounces Rush’s statement that he hopes our president fails.”

Limbaugh, meanwhile, brushes aside the idea that he is the chief spokesman for the GOP. “I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be,” he said on his show Monday.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), said Democrats should focus less on attacking Limbaugh and more on working with congressional Republicans.

“If Robert Gibbs is worried about the policies Rush Limbaugh is talking about on his show, he should call into the show. I’m sure Rush would welcome it,” Dayspring said, referring to criticism from President Obama’s press secretary.

Several aides to congressional Republicans declined to comment yesterday about Limbaugh’s role in the GOP, saying they did not want to play into the Democratic strategy of pitting Limbaugh against some party leaders.

Washington has been dramatically reshaped since 1994, the last time the GOP did not control the White House, the House and the Senate, but Limbaugh has been a constant, remaining one of the most powerful voices among conservatives. He helped lead opposition to President Bill Clinton’s agenda, as well as parts of President George W. Bush’s, particularly his proposal to make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens.

Limbaugh’s influence
In the early days of the Obama administration, while congressional Republicans have generally avoided directly attacking the popular new president and instead criticized their Democratic counterparts as not properly implementing Obama’s vision, Limbaugh dubbed the economic stimulus package “the Obama ‘porkulus’ bill” and was credited with playing a role in House Republicans’ unanimous opposition to the legislation. In a meeting with congressional leaders, the president complained about Limbaugh’s influence.

Some congressional Republicans have defended Limbaugh’s comments about wanting Obama to fail, which the talk radio host has explained by saying he wants the president’s policies to fail, not the country. (His full statement was, “So what is so strange about saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to reconstruct and reform this nation so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed.”)

“I know what Rush Limbaugh meant,” House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) said on CNN yesterday. “Look, everybody wants America to succeed, but everyone like me, Rush Limbaugh and others who believe in limited government, who believe in conservative values, wants the policies this administration is bringing forward . . . to fail.”

But other Republicans have argued that Limbaugh’s style is counter-productive. They say that in looking to woo moderate votes to regain control of Congress and the White House, Republicans must take positions that may annoy Limbaugh and his audience.

David Frum, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush and helped coin the phrase the “axis of evil,” wrote on his Web site NewMajority.com that “nothing Steele said will be 1/1000 as harmful to Republicans and conservatives as Rush Limbaugh’s now multiply repeated statement that he hopes President Obama fails.”

Exciting a loyal audience vs. winning voters
In a recent interview, Frum said: “My main problem with talk radio is things you’re doing to excite a loyal audience are very different than things you do to try to win back the departed middle” of the electorate. “We can’t win elections by getting our core voters agitated. But if you’re a talk radio host and you have 5 million who listen and there are 50 million people who hate you, you can make a nice living. If you’re a Republican Party, you’re marginalized.”

One state GOP chairman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to criticize Limbaugh publicly, said “he is the leader of a niche of the Republican Party that simply opposes anything a Democrat ever comes up with.”

But most remain vocal defenders of the radio show host, saying he fires up the GOP base better than anyone else.

“He does far more good than harm,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “The people who listen to talk radio are more politically interested and politically active than people who are listening to ESPN. If you want to get the message out, that’s the way to go.”

Steele took on the delicate political calculation Republicans face more bluntly, saying yesterday: “I’m not here to tick off my base.”

Green jobs include installing solar panels on homes like this one in Newburgh, N.Y. Solar power is still more expensive than fossil fuel, especially now that oil prices have crashed, but President Barack Obama wants to promote renewables as a way to provide domestic jobs, cleaner air and less reliance on imports.

WASHINGTON – Green jobs, where are they and how to get them, will be the focus when President Barack Obama’s task force on middle-class working families formally begins its work on Friday in Philadelphia.

The panel, chaired by Vice President Joe Biden, will hear from experts on the potential to create and fill these jobs.

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed last week includes billions to help create such jobs as installing solar panels and building wind turbines, which also is part of his goal to nudge the country away from dependence on foreign oil and toward reliance on renewable forms of energy.  It is Obama’s belief that such jobs will help raise living standards for middle-class families, who didn’t fare well before the current economic downturn set in and are now feeling pinched along with millions of other people who have lost their jobs and homes, and watched retirement and college savings disappear.

Obama announced the panel last month at the White House. Its purpose is to recommend ways to boost the nation’s middle class. It also will evaluate new and existing policies to determine whether they are helping or hurting the middle class.

“Quite simply, a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can’t have one without the other,” Biden said at the time. “It is our charge to get the middle class, the backbone of this country, up and running again.”

$2,000 drop in middle-class incomes estimated
Jared Bernstein, the task force’s executive director, said middle-class incomes have fallen by about $2,000 in real terms since the start of the decade and that violates a basic American tenet: that you’ll get ahead if you work hard and your children will fare even better.

“Part of this election was about recognizing that a key part of any effective government’s economic agenda had to be reconnecting the living standards of the middle class to that of the expanding economy once it starts expanding again,” said Bernstein — Biden’s chief economist and economic policy adviser.

“We are fortunate enough to be here now and we have a responsibility to carry through on that,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

Green jobs, broadly defined as related to improving the environment, pay up to 20 percent more than other jobs, are more likely to be union jobs and likelier held by men, less so by minorities and city dwellers, according to a draft copy of a staff report to be released at Friday’s meeting at the University of Pennsylvania. Green jobs also are largely domestic jobs that cannot be shipped overseas.

Breaking down the billions
The stimulus bill provides $11 billion for investments in a new smart grid to create more than 3,000 miles of new or modernized high-tech transmission lines; $6 billion for a loan guarantee program to encourage banks to finance green investments; $5 billion to help people weatherize their homes, potentially saving them money on their utility bills; and $500 million for a “green job” training program to be run by the Department of Labor.

Labor unions welcomed the administration’s focus on the middle class.

Anna Burger, who leads the Change to Win group of seven unions, said the task force shows government understands that rebuilding the American Dream and fixing the economy means “creating good jobs with a wage that can support a family, benefits that can keep them healthy and a secure and dignified retirement.”

Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO’s director of governmental affairs, said the makeup of the task force increases its visibility, even though the panel is only advisory.

“This is a high-profile task force with someone in charge who is really committed to this and has been throughout his entire career,” Samuel said. “So we don’t see this as a flash in the pan.”

Biden will be joined at the meeting by several Cabinet members and others on the task force, including the secretaries of energy, transportation, education, agriculture, and housing and urban development, labor secretary-designate Hilda Solis and Melody Barnes, Obama’s domestic policy chief.

A New Zealand frigate patrols past the Ross Ice Shelf in the Southern Ocean in Antarctica.

Professor David Vaughan has an infectious enthusiasm, even when he’s issuing dire warnings about the future of Antarctica. That’s where he is right now, at the Rothera Research Station. He’s just returned from a flight to the Wilkins Ice Shelf – which juts out of the western tip of the Continent. It will probably be his last.

An Englishman whose home is among the dreaming spires of Cambridge, where the British Antarctic Survey has its headquarters, Professor Vaughan has been visiting the world’s coldest places for twenty years. He was surprised to find that the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which began disintegrating a decade ago, hasn’t yet disappeared. But he says it’s in its death throes.

Last year, AC360° reported the Survey’s finding that a slice the size of Manhattan had broken off the ice shelf. Vaughan says the whole shelf is now connected to the rest of Antarctica by a strip of ice just a few hundred meters wide. It’s like looking at an hour glass. This huge slab of ice –11,000 square kilometres (the size of Jamaica) – is about to collapse into the sea. Maybe within weeks, maybe later in the year, says Vaughan.

In the last year, a sequence of images taken by NASA and the European Space Agency has shown fissures opening up – like fault-lines across the ice. I asked Vaughan what they looked like – close-up. “Huge, absolutely huge,” he says. “The cracks in the Wilkins ice shelf and the chunks of ice that are splitting away from the ice-shelf….they’re kind of shopping mall chunks of ice and some are floating off into the ocean.”

In what could irreparably change our global map, the WILKINS ICE SHELF in, Antarctica is about to collapse. Holding on by a sliver of ice, it could be the latest casualty of Global Warming.

Scientists have a clearer view than even a few years ago about the rate of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches north like a thin finger into the south Atlantic. In the last fifty years, average temperatures there have risen more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit – faster than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere. Vaughan says the evidence is now “quite strong” that emissions of greenhouse gases have influenced the Antarctic climate, just as CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) have damaged the ozone layer. The process may have been further accelerated by the warming of the sea – gently cooking the underside of the ice-shelf.  Wilkins is not the first to collapse. “It s about the ninth in the series that s been lost,” says Vaughan…”and at least one of those ice shelves that’s been lost had been there continuously for 10,000 years.”

The collapse of the ice shelves does not in itself much influence sea-levels, but many of them play an important role in holding back the huge Antarctic glaciers. Were they to accelerate toward the ocean, melting on contact, there would be an impact on sea levels. Vaughan has a scientist’s caution in peering into the future. “ The big ice sheets – Greenland and Antarctica – are now the major sources of uncertainty in predicting sea level rise in the future. What’s happening on Wilkins and deeper in the Antarctic continent are major concerns for us.”

A new study published in ‘Nature’ magazine suggests that other parts of Antarctic – far from the Wilkins Ice Shelf – have also been warming, though less fast. U.S. scientists reviewed a half century of satellite and weather records for Antarctica, which showed that temperatures had risen by nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit. The study concluded the process was “difficult to explain” without linking it to greenhouse gases.

Vaughan is a member of the United Nations Panel on Climate Change which predicted that sea levels could rise anywhere between 18 and 59 centimetres (7 to 23 inches) over the next century. Now, as he contemplates the gradually warming Antarctic summer, he wonders whether that assessment was too conservative.

SEAL COVE, Newfoundland – Five exhausted dolphins have been trapped behind drifting pack ice for several days and now need rapid rescue, according to the mayor of an eastern Canadian village.

The 8-foot animals somehow became separated from the open Atlantic and have been swimming for four days in a shrinking open-water area of Seal Cove’s harbor, just 100 feet from shore, said Mayor Winston May said Wednesday.

“They keep going round circles, trying to keep this little pool of water open so that they can have their breathing area. And the whole bay seems to be froze up, there’s no where else for them to go,” said May.

Wayne Ledwell, an expert on whale rescues, said dolphins won’t swim long distances under ice since they need to surface regularly to breathe and the slabs of ice would make that impossible.

Ledwell, who heads Whale Release and Strandings Group, which rescues whales and dolphins, said that if the ice continues to encroach on the open area the dolphins could eventually drown.

May said he asked Canada’s federal Fisheries Department to send an icebreaker to create a channel to the open Atlantic, but that he was told no vessels were available.

“They’re not going to survive much longer,” said May. “You can hear (the dolphins) crying all night long,” he said.

“You could hear the screams coming out of them,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. quoted resident Stanley Banks as saying. “And they were trying to break the ice there just to survive. And there’s us here empty-handed. And DFO (Fisheries) with all this money won’t even send a boat in here to let those out? It’s a crime.”

Ledwell said that sending an icebreaker could pose problems as well. “Those boats push ice ahead of them and that can crush the animal, and that has happened before,” the CBC quoted Ledwell as saying.

The dolphins are regular visitors to the waters around Newfoundland’s Seal Cove, which is about 400 miles northwest of capital city St. John’s.