On September 10, 2012,
in Uncategorized,
by magoo1310
It’s Tuesday, September 11, 2012….and though we forgive….
….we’ll never forget.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, it’s Jay Cost’s latest edition of the Morning Jay, courtesy of Conn Carroll’s Morning Examiner and The Weekly Standard:
Did Obama Really Win the Summer?
As we wait to see the extent and duration of Barack Obama’s post-convention bounce, it makes sense to do a little analytical house cleaning. In particular, a meme developed over the summer that Barack Obama was a strong favorite to win reelection, thanks to a sustained and substantial lead over his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, particularly in the swing states.
This impression has been facilitated in part by several factors: an aggressive Obama PR operation that courts the media in an attempt to create a “bandwagon” effect, registered voter polls that often over-sample Democrats, left-leaning journalists who often assume an Obama advantage; former Obama campaign consultant Nate Silver, whose black-box statistical model for the New York Times has shown an outsized lead for the president (and whose 2010 model consistently placed the battle for the House as a tossup, while giving Democrats a 20 percent chance of holding the House on Election Day), as well the proliferation of surveys conducted by Public Policy Polling, which does regular polling for the hyper-partisan union, the Service Employees International Union.
I want to look at the data from a different perspective. In particular, let’s look at non-partisan, likely voter polls that RealClearPolitics used in its averages from the month of August (multiple polls from the same pollster were averaged and counted only once). What do we see?
Considering the efforts of the Obama team to redefine Romney as a heartless plutocrat, it is interesting to see that, for all intents and purposes, this race was a dead heat last month among those who intended to vote.
A related meme that developed over the summer is that, while the national polls were close, Obama had a much stronger position in the swing states. But was that really true? Let’s run through the list.
Here is Ohio:
Here is Virginia:
Here is Florida:
Here is North Carolina:
Here is Colorado:
What inferences can we draw from these numbers? A few:
1. President Obama’s numbers were mired at or below 47 percent nationwide and the key swing states, despite the fact that he is universally known and has been running many ads to develop a lead.
2. Romney had a lead in North Carolina, while Colorado, Virginia, and Florida were effectively tied.
3. While Obama had a lead in Ohio, his numbers in that state were, on average, the lowest of all the swing states measured here except for North Carolina.
4. Obama has a larger lead in Wisconsin (48.7 to 46.7) and Michigan (47.5 to 45.3), but both states remain very tight. There was not enough polling to build a reliable average for Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire, but given Romney’s media buys and the electoral history of these states, it is a fair bet that the results there were basically similar.
5. After the convention bounce fades and after pollsters shift to likely voter screens, we should see a tightening of the race, and with it an adjustment of the conventional wisdom.
6. In terms of the national polling, Romney has regularly been even or ahead of Obama in the registered voter polls conducted by ABC News/Washington Post, Gallup and CBS News/New York Times. It stands to reason that if these polls had been likely voter instead of likely voter polls, he would have had a small national lead.
Final point: it has often been commented upon that Romney has not led at all in the summer, and that from a historical perspective that is bad news for the GOP. Untrue on both counts.
For starters, when we are talking about historical perspective, really the only poll that has been in constant, regular operation is the Gallup poll, where Romney and Obama were basically trading leads for months prior to the convention.
Additionally, the only challenger who successfully defeated an incumbent and had a comfortable lead all through the pre-convention summer period was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Both Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Bill Clinton in 1992 were stuck in basically the same position as Romney was prior to the conventions.
More importantly, remember this: in 1980, the New York Times had it 44-43 against Reagan going into the last weekend before the election (the other 8% going to John Anderson, a Republican-turned-Independent the MSM did their unlevel best to use against The Dutchman). Need we remind anyone of the results?
In a related item, courtesy of Speed Mach, Breitbart.com‘s John Nolte answers the question we’re most often asked of late:
Facts, History Undermine Media Con That Obama Win Is Inevitable
Over the past ten days, what hasn’t surprised me is how the corrupt media created its own pro-Obama reality coming out of the conventions. What does surprise me is how this coordinated psy-ops push is working to panic a lot of conservatives.
Saturday afternoon I signed off for the rest of the weekend feeling pretty good about where things were. Obama’s convention speech was a dud, the latest jobs report was a catastrophe, and Romney had sharpened his message considerably. Then I wake Monday morning to find conservatives who should know better screaming that the sky is falling. Don’t fall for it.
Let’s start with what the media did to create their own reality around the conventions. There’s no doubt whatsoever that the Democratic convention was far less successful than the Republican convention. Obama’s speech was a dud and the floor fight over God and Jerusalem was the biggest convention debacle of my lifetime. Immediately following these two events, you then had the release of a disastrous jobs report.
But what did the media do? Well, they did what they always do: create an alternate reality. While Obama’s dud speech, the convention floor fight, and the jobs report received some news coverage — no lasting narrative was created that could define or damage Obama. All three stories were quickly killed by a coordinated push (started by Politico) to manufacture a narrative that said Obama’s post-convention bounce is a genuine lead and even “high-placed” campaign officials (who won’t go on the record) believe Romney is losing.
On the flip-side, Romney had a smooth convention, did what he needed to do, and gave a very good convention speech. But what the media did was to grab Clint Eastwood’s speech as a distraction tool. This isn’t Eastwood’s or anyone’s fault; if the media wouldn’t have used Clint, they would’ve used something else. Regardless, the media’s plan was to find something — anything! — to distract from Romney’s message and drive into the ground that the RNC convention was a flop.
In summation: Obama’s bad speech, the Democratic convention floor booing God, and the terrible jobs numbers were given about three hours worth of coverage until the launch of the Inevitability Narrative was coordinated, a narrative that lives on today. Whereas the manufactured Clint Proves Romney’s An Incompetent Boob Narrative still lives on 10 days later.
In other words, using all of its resources to push what I’ve described above, the corrupt media turned a standard post-convention bounce into a OBAMA’S VICTORY IS INEVITABLE!!! narrative.And some conservatives who should know better are falling for it.
A convention bounce is just that — a convention bounce. Romney had one too, you know, and the media didn’t scream then about how the election was over. In fact, as Romney’s poll numbers climbed after the convention, Nate Silver was decreasing his chances of winning at his lofty New York Times’ perch.
Don’t you see? It’s all a ploy, a con, a hustle — it’s all about turning a fabricated reality into a real reality by bumming out conservatives — by killing our fight, our willingness to volunteer and turn out.
What’ it’s mainly about, though, is making damn sure Obama’s speech, the booing of God, and a tragic jobs report aren’t given any oxygen to take hold in the media narrative. Maybe the good news is that Obama and the media are so out of distractions-ideas they were forced to launch the “inevitability” bomb about a month early.
And look at the thin gruel the media’s using to manufacture this inevitability narrative:
THE BULLSH*T:More of Politico’s magical unnamed sources appear from within the Romney camp claiming Ohio is lost.
THE FACTS:A poll released just last week had Romney up three in Ohio and the RCP poll of polls only has Obama up by 2.2 points. PPP — left-leaning pollster affiliated with Obama toadies SEIU — just released a poll showing Obama ahead 50/45 in Ohio. So you know it’s pretty much tied.
THE BULLSH*T:Obama’s convention was a rousing success.
THE FACTS:Obama’s speech flopped and his delegates booed God and Israel.
THE BULLSH*T:The campaign is over. Romney can’t win.
THE FACTS:There are 57 long days to go, four major debates, and the economy is collapsing.
THE BULLSH*T:Obama is winning.
THE FACTS:Romney was also winning after his convention. This is what happens after conventions.
THE BULLSH*T:Conservatives are worried.
THE FACTS:Only those who don’t know the facts.
THE BULLSH*T:Obama can’t lose.
THE FACTS:Even after a three-day media lovefest, Obama’s not polling over 50 in any national polls and most swing state polls. Conditions will never be this sweet for him again…And. He. Can’t. Get. Over. 50.
The media lies.That’s what they do.It’s not about truth; it’s about winning Obama a second term. And in order to rescue him from the disastrous trifecta of a lame speech, booing God and an awful jobs report, the lying media launched this inevitability nonsense.
Don’t fall for this. Fight it. Donate MORE money to Romney-Ryan. Volunteer to make phone calls. Expose the media on social media… (Our personal plan of attack.)
The media’s getting desperate and stupid.And right now we should be having fun fighting and exposing them, not wringing our hands. We have 57 days to defeat the most failed president in our lifetimes and to humiliate the media in the process.
The MSM; bottom line….they lie. Like the Terminator, it’s….
….what they do….it’s ALL they do….particularly when it comes to The Obamao.
Then there’s this question posed by Chris Conover writing at Forbes.com:
Is President Clinton capable of telling the truth?
Uhhhh….the answer, like the actual result of the convention floor vote on restoring reference to God in the Dimocratic Party platform, is a resounding….
And here we thought Dimocrats knew “No” meant “NO”!
Speaking of ugly untruth, it’s the subject of our next item forwarded by Jeff Foutch, courtesy of Reuters:
GM’s Volt – The ugly math of low sales, high costs
General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn’t a good thing for the automaker’s bottom line. Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.
And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others. GM’s basic problem is that “the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced,” said Dennis Virag, president of the Michigan-based Automotive Consulting Group. And in a sign that there may be a wider market problem, Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi have been struggling to sell their electric and hybrid vehicles, though Toyota’s Prius range has been in increasing demand.
As well as one of the most popular trade-ins!Government Motors Motto: Who cares if we lose money on every unit; we’ll make it up in volume! After all, we’re the government!!!
And in the Follow-Up segment, courtesy today of the WSJ, two former JAG lawyers, Steven Kantrowitz and Lawrence Brennan, offer their observations on a subject we raised earlier….
Politics and the U.S. Armed Forces
Gen. Martin Dempsey, our top military officer, has criticized retired service members for political activity. He was wrong to do so.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently criticized former members of the armed forces for “political activities.” He didn’t name names, but his criticism was aimed at former members of special-operations forces supporting a political-action committee critical of President Obama.
Videos distributed by the PAC, called the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, claim that the president has used the operation that killed Osama bin Laden for political gain, and that to do so he permitted sensitive information to be compromised. Gen. Dempsey’s condemnation stated: “The American people don’t want us to become another special interest group. In fact, I think that confuses them.”
The military’s top officer correctly notes that the armed forces must “remain apolitical,” as various statutes and regulations have long prohibited political activity by those serving in uniform. Hence the justified discharge, under less-than-honorable conditions, of a Marine non-commissioned officer who this year posted a video of himself criticizing the president. But Gen. Dempsey condemned as “not useful” the political activity of former military members—who no longer share the obligation to refrain from supporting causes or candidates.
Such former troops have never been silenced. When our service members leave the active-duty military, they get back the full measure of First Amendment rights that all Americans cherish. Three of the four men on Mount Rushmore—including the first president of the country—were elected after serving in the Army.
The retired military community has always “spoken” for those who cannot speak because they are still wearing the uniform.Until now that was considered noble. Since Gen. George Washington, we have urged those who previously served under arms to comment on topics of importance, including politics and especially the national defense.
Perhaps most troublesome is the context of Gen. Dempsey’s criticism. He seeks to silence those with military experience who are concerned that the government may have leaked information that is harmful to our national interests—information that might even lead to casualties as we continue to battle our implacable enemies. (Which puts them in opposition….gasp!….to The Dear Misleader!)
Public commentary by former service members is more important than ever. This is the first presidential election since 1940 in which neither major-party candidate has prior uniformed service.
In 1992, then-Gov. Bill Clinton earned support from retired senior officers, including former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. William Crowe. It was likewise in all the elections through 2008, when then-Sen. Obama sought and received support from retired officers including Gen. Wesley Clark and Colin Powell.
After which I get to relocate here….to London….as Ambassador to the Court of St. James!
Gen. Dempsey’s predecessor, Adm. Michael Mullen, recently joined other retired high-ranking officers to file a friend-of-the-court brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. They put themselves forward as retired senior military officers and advocated for affirmative action (in the form of racial preferences in admissions for service academies and other universities), purporting to articulate what the military needs for its officer ranks. Their advocacy clearly involved political issues, yet it earned no comment from Gen. Dempsey.
No….seriously, Admiral; I only got 30 pieces of silver. How much did it take for you to sell out your country?
During Gen. Dempsey’s tenure the military has actually allowed political activity by those in uniform.Regardless of what one thinks about gays serving openly in the military (now settled), or the ability of lesbians and gays to marry, these are certainly political issues that have been debated in Congress, state legislatures and by the American people. Yet in July the Defense Department encouraged active-duty soldiers to march—in uniform—at the San Diego LGBT Pride Parade.
In this campaign season, it is the general’s public complaint about perfectly justified political activity by retired military members—and not that activity itself—that has politicized the military he leads. Whether he knows no better or is seeking to defend his political patrons, he debases his office by questioning the cherished freedoms of those who have fought for the American people.
Seeing as seppuku’s fallen out of favor, Dempsey should follow the only honorable course available to him, and resign forthwith. Like Mullen, he swore to uphold the Constitution, NOT an Administration. And like the former 1st Company Officer at the Naval Academy, he’s broken trust not only with those under him, but with the country he’s supposed to serve.
Since we’re on the subject of broken trust….
TV Station Pulled Akin’s Ads Due to of Lack of Payment
An equally-applicable headline might have read:
Republicans Pulled Akin Due to Lack of Common Sense
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to the “It’s All About the Children” segment, and this just in from the Windy City:
Chicago teachers to go on strike after talks with district fail
Chicago teachers went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years after their union and district officials failed to reach a contract agreement despite intense weekend negotiations that the union said were productive but still failed to adequately address issues such as job security and teacher evaluations.
The two sides were not far apart on compensation, but were on other issues, including health benefits — teachers want to keep what they have now — and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students’ standardized test scores, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said.“This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided,” she said. “We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel condemned the union’s decision, and said the negotiations could be resolved if the two sides kept talking, “given how close we are.” “This is not a strike I wanted,” Emanuel said. “It was a strike of choice … it’s unnecessary, it’s avoidable and it’s wrong. “
More than 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to hit the picket lines early Monday, while the school district and parents carried out plans for keeping nearly 400,000 students safe and occupied while classes remain empty in the coming days in the nation’s third largest school district. Both Emanuel and union officials have much at stake. The walkout comes at a time when unions and collective bargaining by public employees have come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.
The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children’s education might suffer and where their kids will go while they’re at work.
As these next two headlines courtesy of Bill Meisen detail, what SHOULD have Chicagoland parents worried is the legacy left by Arne Duncan, The Obamao’s vaunted Secretary of Education:
79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading
Soooo….tell us again why Chicago teachers deserve ANYthing more than space in which to drop to their knees and give thanks they still have a jobs at all?!?
As the Puffingtonhost reports:
“….From Emanuel’s perspective, after weeks of negotiation, only two issues remain unresolved. The first is a principal’s right to choose the teachers that work in his or her school. “It’s essential that the local principal who we hold accountable for producing the educational results not be told by the CPS bureaucracy … and not be told by the union leadership who to hire,” he said.
Second, he added, is the impasse over how to implement a recent law that requires standardized tests to count for, initially, one quarter of all teacher evaluations.“I’m telling you, these were the final two issues,” he said, exasperated.
Emanuel was followed by Chicago’s police chief, who said that no police would be on administrative duty Monday. Rather, they would all be on the streets, monitoring protest activity and making sure kids weren’t just hanging out. The district has set up over 100 spaces with alternate activities to keep students safe in places like churches and nonprofits.”
Which, like policing the Charlotte convention, is far more important than combating the violence which has Chicago on a pace to reach unheard of heights for homicides!
And in International News of Note, Jonathan Tobin in CommentaryMagazine.com has the latest on The Obamao’s bosom buddy:
Chavez Playing the Anti-Semitism Card
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is pulling out all the stops in his bid to crush opposition to his authoritarian rule in the election scheduled for October 7. Chavez is seeking to discredit challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski by pointing out his Jewish roots. Chavez has sought to intimidate Venezuelan Jews in the past as a result of the close ties he has fostered with Iran and Hezbollah and his virulent hostility to Israel.But his attacks on the leader of the opposition have escalated the latent Jew-hatred of his regime.
As the Jerusalem Post reports, a study conducted by Tel Aviv University shows that the Caracas government has produced a steady stream of vilification of Capriles that centers on his Jewish roots. Capriles is a Catholic but he is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and many of his mother’s family perished at the hands of the Nazis.
“This is done in a variety of methods, such as defamation, intimidation and conspiracy theories, many of which portray Capriles as a Zionist agent, and by mixing classic and neo-anti-Semitism,” said the report, authored by Lidia Lerner, an expert on Latin America. “A Capriles victory, it is claimed, will inevitably lead to Zionist infiltration.” …
Op-Eds warning of a “Zionist takeover” if Capriles wins repeatedly have appeared in government-controlled media since Radonski’s candidacy was announced in February, the report said. He also has been the subject of anti-Semitic cartoons.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League have expressed concern about the government’s attempt to whip up Jew hatred. The Huffington Post reported in May that Chavez’s allies have compounded the vilification by trying to float the rumor that Capriles is gay as well as Jewish.
Venezuela Propaganda: what it says in red: “Stop the Massacre, for the love of God, for the love of Allah; Jewish assassins! Apocalyptical beasts”
President Obama was quoted over the summer as downplaying any concerns about Chavez by saying he was not a threat to the United States even though the Venezuelan has supported terrorism in neighboring Colombia and has allowed his country to serve as a beachhead in the Western hemisphere for Iran and Hezbollah. But his re-election campaign has illustrated that he shares the ayatollahs’ anti-Semitism as well as their hatred for the United States.
Given Chavez’s control of the media as well as his armies of street thugs, it’s not clear whether Capriles has a real chance to save democracy in Venezuela. But the blatant anti-Semitism of Chavez’s campaign ought to be raising alarms in Washington and the rest of the civilized world about his continued hold on power.
Oughta be….but it ain’t!
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, in the Entertainment Section, another “star” of who we’ve never heard:
‘Wife Swap’ star Alicia Guastaferro busted for prostitution
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