++Gallup has President Obama in positive terrain--48 to 47.
++John Kerry explained that he was not going to apologize for the Republicans' letter to Tehran.
++The Saudis say that if the agreement allows for a large nuclear infrastructure, they want the same.
++John Kerry explained why the letter by the Republicans was constitutionally wrong and how the GOP has the right to vote on listing sanctions.
++Ehud Barack endorsed Isaac Herzog. The economist believes with the crazy quilt of papers that Bibi could assemble a coalition.
++J Street has their election coverage up and running.
++Josh Marshall gives you a sense of the mini-debate that happened between Bibi and Herzog on Channel 10. Bibi complained that Zionist Union had outside help, neglecting to mention the 3 GOP operatives working for him. Bibi listed his accomplishments but they weren't much better than what I wrote last night.
++Vladimir Putin did surface in Kyrgistan.
++The right is positively thrilled by Hillary's e-ghazigate. It takes them back to the early part of their career--Drudge, Ann Coulter, Rush. Back to the 1990s.
++We reached the debt ceiling today and nothing will be done.
++Mitch McConnell will not allow a vote for Loretta Lynch until the Senate passes the human trafficking bill with its abortion clause.
++Now that Richard Scaife is going,the Pittsburgh Tribune is having a crush on Jim Webb.
++Since California has only one year of water left,am receiving conservative e-mails attacking America's Governor Jerry Brown.
++Has anyone seen Chris Christie or Vishnu Jindal? They are the mysteriously missing GOP presidential candidates. Their polling numbers are almost non-existent.
Showing posts with label Gallup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gallup. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2015
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Gallup Doldrums
++Gallup: Romney 50 to Obama 46 Likely Voters;47-47 RV.
++Republican We Ask America:
Iowa Obama 48.7%--Romney 45.9%. Democrats still lead in early voting in Iowa.
Colorado: Obama 47. Romney 48.1%.
++Montana Senate Race: Rasmussen
Tester 48% Rehberg 48%. 3% other party, 2% undecided.
++The Supreme Court turned down Ohio's request to hear the case on Early Voting. Ohio will have to allow everyone to vote the weekend and Monday before election day.
++Voter suppression calls are going around Virginia and Florida aimed at the African-American vote. Billboards saying Voter fraud is a felony being erected near black neighborhoods in Colorado and Wisconsin.
++Correction: The Koch Brothers merely sent out their vote Romney request to 45,000, not 450,000 as I reported.
++Republican We Ask America:
Iowa Obama 48.7%--Romney 45.9%. Democrats still lead in early voting in Iowa.
Colorado: Obama 47. Romney 48.1%.
++Montana Senate Race: Rasmussen
Tester 48% Rehberg 48%. 3% other party, 2% undecided.
++The Supreme Court turned down Ohio's request to hear the case on Early Voting. Ohio will have to allow everyone to vote the weekend and Monday before election day.
++Voter suppression calls are going around Virginia and Florida aimed at the African-American vote. Billboards saying Voter fraud is a felony being erected near black neighborhoods in Colorado and Wisconsin.
++Correction: The Koch Brothers merely sent out their vote Romney request to 45,000, not 450,000 as I reported.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Good Vibrations
++I'm hanging on to Allan Lichtman's prediction about President Obama's re-election. I haven't seen any more keys drop so we venture into the last days before the election waiting on another Jobs Report,some disaster abroad and the barrage of dog whistles on race and the avalanche of attack ads.
++But before tomorrow's debate and rumors of poor polling numbers for the President, let's take stock of where we are today.
**Princeton Consortium led by Sam Wang has a 84% probability President Obama will be re-elected. The meta-margin ticked up today. EV stands at 280 to 258. Romney's bounce was 5.5 its and Obama has made up 3 so far.
**Electoral Vote.com has President Obama at 290 and Romney at 239. Only Colorado is a Toss-up.
**Utah Valley U has Obama at 322 EV and winning with 53% of the popular vote.
**Nate the Great has Obama with 290 EV, 50% of the popular vote and 66% chance of re-election.
**Huffington Post printed a Swing State analysis today that showed President Obama with 290EV. Even subtracting Nevada and Colorado, he would be at 275. Curiously the next available swing state was Virginia, which they only gave Obama a 40.1% chance of winning. Seeing the Obama operation here, let's play pretend and give Virginia to Obama. That would be 303EV.
++ Warning: New York Magazine did a poll of an equal number Democrats and Republican insiders and they predict Obama wins 82% to 18%. These are the Beltway operatives and their judgment is almost always wrong on matters of policy. So I hope they have one good day.
++Intratrade has Obama at 61.6%.
++Most interesting poll of the day was Time Magazine of its readers. Does Mitt Romney lie? 71.83% say yes and 28.17 no.
++The Romney campaign said they found one weakness about Obama that they are going to exploit in this election--Latinos don't find him macho enough.
He's better work fast. Latino Decisions poll today showed Obama at 67 to Romney 23. Remember in 2004, George W. Bush won 40% of the Latino vote to win.
++Catholic for Choice commissioned a poll that showed Catholics supported Obama 46 to 41 and resented abortion emerging as a central campaign issue.
++Reuters/Ipsos has Obama 47 to Romney 45 in likely voters.
++IBD/TIPP Obama 46.9 to Romney 46.6.
++UPI Romney 49 to Obama 46.
++Gallup Romney 49 to Obama 47 LV.
Obama 48 to Romney 46 RV.
++Rasmussen Romney 49 to Obama 48, 2 for other parties and 2 undecided.
++Remember what Nate Silver said about Romney is in trouble whenever his lead is 2 points or less.
++The Gallup poll of swing states that showed Romney with a five point lead is too murky to understand. The problem is that some of his leads are in states that Obama doesn't need and in those he does the lead doesn't materialize.
++The GOP is outspending Democrats 2 to 1 in Swing states but that is deceptive because reports are coming out that the GOP is spending three times the amount for the same spot because they have bought late. The other interesting news is that the Koch Brothers Pac is no longer in the presidential race but at the congressional level. I guess the Koch Brothers ordering 455,000 of their employees to vote for Romney was their last stab at the presidential side of things.
++But before tomorrow's debate and rumors of poor polling numbers for the President, let's take stock of where we are today.
**Princeton Consortium led by Sam Wang has a 84% probability President Obama will be re-elected. The meta-margin ticked up today. EV stands at 280 to 258. Romney's bounce was 5.5 its and Obama has made up 3 so far.
**Electoral Vote.com has President Obama at 290 and Romney at 239. Only Colorado is a Toss-up.
**Utah Valley U has Obama at 322 EV and winning with 53% of the popular vote.
**Nate the Great has Obama with 290 EV, 50% of the popular vote and 66% chance of re-election.
**Huffington Post printed a Swing State analysis today that showed President Obama with 290EV. Even subtracting Nevada and Colorado, he would be at 275. Curiously the next available swing state was Virginia, which they only gave Obama a 40.1% chance of winning. Seeing the Obama operation here, let's play pretend and give Virginia to Obama. That would be 303EV.
++ Warning: New York Magazine did a poll of an equal number Democrats and Republican insiders and they predict Obama wins 82% to 18%. These are the Beltway operatives and their judgment is almost always wrong on matters of policy. So I hope they have one good day.
++Intratrade has Obama at 61.6%.
++Most interesting poll of the day was Time Magazine of its readers. Does Mitt Romney lie? 71.83% say yes and 28.17 no.
++The Romney campaign said they found one weakness about Obama that they are going to exploit in this election--Latinos don't find him macho enough.
He's better work fast. Latino Decisions poll today showed Obama at 67 to Romney 23. Remember in 2004, George W. Bush won 40% of the Latino vote to win.
++Catholic for Choice commissioned a poll that showed Catholics supported Obama 46 to 41 and resented abortion emerging as a central campaign issue.
++Reuters/Ipsos has Obama 47 to Romney 45 in likely voters.
++IBD/TIPP Obama 46.9 to Romney 46.6.
++UPI Romney 49 to Obama 46.
++Gallup Romney 49 to Obama 47 LV.
Obama 48 to Romney 46 RV.
++Rasmussen Romney 49 to Obama 48, 2 for other parties and 2 undecided.
++Remember what Nate Silver said about Romney is in trouble whenever his lead is 2 points or less.
++The Gallup poll of swing states that showed Romney with a five point lead is too murky to understand. The problem is that some of his leads are in states that Obama doesn't need and in those he does the lead doesn't materialize.
++The GOP is outspending Democrats 2 to 1 in Swing states but that is deceptive because reports are coming out that the GOP is spending three times the amount for the same spot because they have bought late. The other interesting news is that the Koch Brothers Pac is no longer in the presidential race but at the congressional level. I guess the Koch Brothers ordering 455,000 of their employees to vote for Romney was their last stab at the presidential side of things.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Good News For Someone
++Bloomberg reported the U.S. public and private debt is the lowest in 6 years.
++Reuters reported that unemployment claims are now the lowest in four years.
++the Foreclosure rate, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, is the lowest in five years.
++The Gallup tracking ticked down 1 point to Romney-48% and Obama 47%.
++Mark Halperin of Times magazine reports that the Romney team is trying to figure out a plan to win the election without O-H-I-O. This would mean we would see a transfer of staff and funds to other Swing States soon.
++The Last I looked and I dread looking again. Nate Silver had Obama at 293.5 EV and Princeton has him at 290.
++Monmouth University or Monmouth College of my youth has a national poll showing that Obama is trailing Romney by a point. Obama 46 to Romney 47.
++To counter the gloom, the Obama campaign has released the figures on new Democratic registrations in the major Swing states. Over 900,000 new Democrats were registered in North Carolina. Rasmussen even concedes that Obama is doing surprisingly well in North Carolina,trailing Romney by three-Romney 51 to Obama 48.
++Tonight is Joe Biden versus Paul Ryan. One major theme ,believe it or not,Romney is gaining in the polls on is a perception that he is more bipartisan than Obama. Yesterday, he basically endorsed a bipartisan Senate healthcare plan that would also have demanded an individual mandate. Today, he suggested a one time amnesty for pre-existing conditions patients so they can get health insurance, although they now can under Obamacare. He has also criticized the stimulus because it wasn't bipartisan enough. Biden and Obama have to make it clear to the American people that the stimulus package accepted hundreds of Republican amendments and Obamacare contains over 200 Republican suggestions and the whole idea was originally thought up by the Heritage Foundation. Biden has to go after Ryan's budget and its effects on Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
++Reuters reported that unemployment claims are now the lowest in four years.
++the Foreclosure rate, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, is the lowest in five years.
++The Gallup tracking ticked down 1 point to Romney-48% and Obama 47%.
++Mark Halperin of Times magazine reports that the Romney team is trying to figure out a plan to win the election without O-H-I-O. This would mean we would see a transfer of staff and funds to other Swing States soon.
++The Last I looked and I dread looking again. Nate Silver had Obama at 293.5 EV and Princeton has him at 290.
++Monmouth University or Monmouth College of my youth has a national poll showing that Obama is trailing Romney by a point. Obama 46 to Romney 47.
++To counter the gloom, the Obama campaign has released the figures on new Democratic registrations in the major Swing states. Over 900,000 new Democrats were registered in North Carolina. Rasmussen even concedes that Obama is doing surprisingly well in North Carolina,trailing Romney by three-Romney 51 to Obama 48.
++Tonight is Joe Biden versus Paul Ryan. One major theme ,believe it or not,Romney is gaining in the polls on is a perception that he is more bipartisan than Obama. Yesterday, he basically endorsed a bipartisan Senate healthcare plan that would also have demanded an individual mandate. Today, he suggested a one time amnesty for pre-existing conditions patients so they can get health insurance, although they now can under Obamacare. He has also criticized the stimulus because it wasn't bipartisan enough. Biden and Obama have to make it clear to the American people that the stimulus package accepted hundreds of Republican amendments and Obamacare contains over 200 Republican suggestions and the whole idea was originally thought up by the Heritage Foundation. Biden has to go after Ryan's budget and its effects on Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Last polls of the Evening
++It will take a few days before we know whether the debate was a one off Black Swan event which upends the whole election. Tomorrow NBC releases its swing state polls as does Quinnipiac. Even at Pollster, Obama still leads with 286 Electoral votes but tomorrow the polls may show steady erosion in the President's position. The Obama campaign shared with the National Journal their internal polls which showed the President up within a margin of error in the swing states. But their sudden openness about this shows how tight the race has become.
++What makes it more frustrating is that the proliferation of polls makes it hard to distinguish the good from the bad and mediocre. You should be aware that Gallup, besides putting on its LV filter, which was faulty last election, has adopted a 50-50 methodology of landlines and cellphones, which should fine-tune their results. Pollsters themselves are dumbfounded by Suffolk University pollster saying they weren't going to poll Florida, Virginia and North Carolina because Obama didn't have a chance to win. Others suggest they ran out of money.
++What baffles me is the acquiescence on behalf of the media to accept Romney's endless lying and evasions on virtually every issue. The subtext of this election campaign is "the Black Man cleaned up the white boys' mess now they want back into the sandbox." The recent unemployment numbers--both federal and Gallup indicates the economy is just beginning to recover from the most awesome drop since the Great Depression. I don't need to say what different achievements President Obama has done to merit re-election. But there is an undertone to this campaign that the four-year barrage of the Republicans against him is paying some dividends now. For all this period they have denigrated him and anything he has done or tried to do. And now the Romney campaign even goes further to blame him for things like not getting the farm bill done which was the fault of the House Republicans. If the Republicans had allowed a vote on the Jobs Bill and the Veterans Jobs Bill,we would be down to 6.3-6.8 unemployment and the Obama Administration would have to be seen as an unvarnished success. This could not be allowed to happen.
++What Romney's victory in the debate accomplished was allow voters the luxury of believing his misrepresentations of Obama's positions and his own and to unleash the hidden resentment that a black man is President. It is OK to now vote against Obama even though you didn't want to last time.
++The consequences of that ,in my opinion, will be awful. Both Romney and Obama know that the economy is set to take off and whoever is President then will get full credit. That is why American corporations with trillions in the bank have withheld investment through the Obama years. If you have read my blog in the past I noted when Mitch McConnell and John Boehner visited Wall Street during the time of the stimulus and pleaded American corporations not to invest and aid the President. But what is most pernicious will be the continued and long-term military involvement of the United States in the Middle East. What will come back for the United States will be the old economy, not a new one, and America will be sorely diminished as a Great Power, while the rest of the world moves forward.
++So let's look at the mishmash of polls tonight:
Fox News Romney 46- Obama 45
IBD/TIPP Romney 48.7-Obama 43.7
Zogby: Ohio Obama 46 to Romney 42.
Rasmussen: Wisconsin: Obama 51 to Romney 49.
New Hampshire: Obama 48 to Romney 48
Nevada: Obama 51 to Romney 47
Survey USA Nevada: Obama 47 to Romney 46
University of North Florida: Obama 49 to 45
Siena: Pennsylvania: Obama 43 to Romney 40.
++Tomorrow's debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. Biden is an expert debater but also someone who can argue the populist line. He has to enlarge his arguments on behalf of the President to go beyond the auto industry and killing bin Laden to argue for the other achievements of the administration. But he has to lay out the case against Romney and Ryan and their habit of lying. He has to blast Ryan for his budget and its implications. He has to lay the defense cuts on Ryan and tell the audience that the Romney campaign has been lying they were Obama's fault when Paul Ryan himself wrote them into the budget. He also has to fend off the new line that the Democrats rammed through healthcare reform and avoided the Wyden proposal because they accepted over 200 amendments by Republicans, who did not vote for the bill. He also has to go after Romney and Ryan over reproductive health issues, which Obama sadly neglected in the first debate. And he also has to go after Romney and Ryan on foreign policy. The administration can not play defense. Everytime they did that during the last four years it hasn't worked.
++What makes it more frustrating is that the proliferation of polls makes it hard to distinguish the good from the bad and mediocre. You should be aware that Gallup, besides putting on its LV filter, which was faulty last election, has adopted a 50-50 methodology of landlines and cellphones, which should fine-tune their results. Pollsters themselves are dumbfounded by Suffolk University pollster saying they weren't going to poll Florida, Virginia and North Carolina because Obama didn't have a chance to win. Others suggest they ran out of money.
++What baffles me is the acquiescence on behalf of the media to accept Romney's endless lying and evasions on virtually every issue. The subtext of this election campaign is "the Black Man cleaned up the white boys' mess now they want back into the sandbox." The recent unemployment numbers--both federal and Gallup indicates the economy is just beginning to recover from the most awesome drop since the Great Depression. I don't need to say what different achievements President Obama has done to merit re-election. But there is an undertone to this campaign that the four-year barrage of the Republicans against him is paying some dividends now. For all this period they have denigrated him and anything he has done or tried to do. And now the Romney campaign even goes further to blame him for things like not getting the farm bill done which was the fault of the House Republicans. If the Republicans had allowed a vote on the Jobs Bill and the Veterans Jobs Bill,we would be down to 6.3-6.8 unemployment and the Obama Administration would have to be seen as an unvarnished success. This could not be allowed to happen.
++What Romney's victory in the debate accomplished was allow voters the luxury of believing his misrepresentations of Obama's positions and his own and to unleash the hidden resentment that a black man is President. It is OK to now vote against Obama even though you didn't want to last time.
++The consequences of that ,in my opinion, will be awful. Both Romney and Obama know that the economy is set to take off and whoever is President then will get full credit. That is why American corporations with trillions in the bank have withheld investment through the Obama years. If you have read my blog in the past I noted when Mitch McConnell and John Boehner visited Wall Street during the time of the stimulus and pleaded American corporations not to invest and aid the President. But what is most pernicious will be the continued and long-term military involvement of the United States in the Middle East. What will come back for the United States will be the old economy, not a new one, and America will be sorely diminished as a Great Power, while the rest of the world moves forward.
++So let's look at the mishmash of polls tonight:
Fox News Romney 46- Obama 45
IBD/TIPP Romney 48.7-Obama 43.7
Zogby: Ohio Obama 46 to Romney 42.
Rasmussen: Wisconsin: Obama 51 to Romney 49.
New Hampshire: Obama 48 to Romney 48
Nevada: Obama 51 to Romney 47
Survey USA Nevada: Obama 47 to Romney 46
University of North Florida: Obama 49 to 45
Siena: Pennsylvania: Obama 43 to Romney 40.
++Tomorrow's debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. Biden is an expert debater but also someone who can argue the populist line. He has to enlarge his arguments on behalf of the President to go beyond the auto industry and killing bin Laden to argue for the other achievements of the administration. But he has to lay out the case against Romney and Ryan and their habit of lying. He has to blast Ryan for his budget and its implications. He has to lay the defense cuts on Ryan and tell the audience that the Romney campaign has been lying they were Obama's fault when Paul Ryan himself wrote them into the budget. He also has to fend off the new line that the Democrats rammed through healthcare reform and avoided the Wyden proposal because they accepted over 200 amendments by Republicans, who did not vote for the bill. He also has to go after Romney and Ryan over reproductive health issues, which Obama sadly neglected in the first debate. And he also has to go after Romney and Ryan on foreign policy. The administration can not play defense. Everytime they did that during the last four years it hasn't worked.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Weird Election Factoids
++If Romney wins, he would become the very first Republican ever to win the presidency without winning his home state. And we will handicap it by giving Romney both Massachusetts and Michigan.
++Over half Asian-Americans are not registered to vote.
++The 7-11 poll picked the winner of the last three Presidential elections. So far it is Obama 60 to Romney 40.
++Sam Wang set his computers whirring at Princeton to project the House elections. This was preceded by a long technical article about his revised methodology, which will be a textbook article in the future. And the results--D.217.5 R. 217.5. He originally called it 218R. 217D because he hates to leave decimals for his calls on the Senate or House. But the computer keep churning out identical numbers so he just printed the straight results.
++Prior to the debate, Simon Jackman of the Political Science Department at Stanford University reports his poll findings. President Obama is running 1% below 2008 at just over 52%. Before the debate, Obama had lost Indiana and North Carolina. In Ohio, Obama is actually polling better than he did in 2008.
++James Zogby is arguing that the 2008 electorate is not the same as 2012. Instead he argues that the minority portion has grown to over 29% and that President Obama is polling 80%of these. That would mean that the Romney formula of driving Obama below 37% of the White Vote would fail.
++Utah Valley University ,led by Jay de Sart and Thomas Holbrook, have printed their projections. They have President Obama winning 332-206. And the popular vote would be 53.13% and Romney winning 46.87%.
++University of Denver has the first fully post-debate poll of Colorado. There have been two strange polls by Gravis and The Conservative Union, which show Romney in the lead--not an impossibility but not with large votes from African Americans and Hispanics. The Colorado poll is Obama at 47 and Romney 43, which would be a slight loss by Obama.
++Rumors have it the NBC/WSJ poll tomorrow will be negative for Obama.
++Gallup tracking still shows Obama 49 to 46 for Romney.
++Rasmussen still has Romney at 49 to Obama at 47.
++Over half Asian-Americans are not registered to vote.
++The 7-11 poll picked the winner of the last three Presidential elections. So far it is Obama 60 to Romney 40.
++Sam Wang set his computers whirring at Princeton to project the House elections. This was preceded by a long technical article about his revised methodology, which will be a textbook article in the future. And the results--D.217.5 R. 217.5. He originally called it 218R. 217D because he hates to leave decimals for his calls on the Senate or House. But the computer keep churning out identical numbers so he just printed the straight results.
++Prior to the debate, Simon Jackman of the Political Science Department at Stanford University reports his poll findings. President Obama is running 1% below 2008 at just over 52%. Before the debate, Obama had lost Indiana and North Carolina. In Ohio, Obama is actually polling better than he did in 2008.
++James Zogby is arguing that the 2008 electorate is not the same as 2012. Instead he argues that the minority portion has grown to over 29% and that President Obama is polling 80%of these. That would mean that the Romney formula of driving Obama below 37% of the White Vote would fail.
++Utah Valley University ,led by Jay de Sart and Thomas Holbrook, have printed their projections. They have President Obama winning 332-206. And the popular vote would be 53.13% and Romney winning 46.87%.
++University of Denver has the first fully post-debate poll of Colorado. There have been two strange polls by Gravis and The Conservative Union, which show Romney in the lead--not an impossibility but not with large votes from African Americans and Hispanics. The Colorado poll is Obama at 47 and Romney 43, which would be a slight loss by Obama.
++Rumors have it the NBC/WSJ poll tomorrow will be negative for Obama.
++Gallup tracking still shows Obama 49 to 46 for Romney.
++Rasmussen still has Romney at 49 to Obama at 47.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
30 Minutes to Debate
++Gallup 49 to 45 Obama
++Marquette Poll of Wisconsin Obama 53 to Romney 42. The Obama Superpac has pulled out of the state.
++Missouri (PPP) Romney 51 to Obama 45.
Larry Sabato and the University of Virginia's Center for Politics predict Obama has 290 Electoral Votes, Romney at 204 and 42 Toss-ups but this will be not enough for Willard to win. They expect the Democrats to retain the Senate and the Republicans to hold the House but with the Democrats clawing their way back but falling short.
++The Drunken Irishman over at Democratic Underground did his numbers and came up with Obama 332 EV and Romney at 206 EV.
The popular vote was Obama at 50.66 to Romney 48.34.
++Have a good debate. I'm too tired to watch.
++The Romney camp already explained that Willard didn't get enough sleep because his sleep was interrupted by a freight train.
++Marquette Poll of Wisconsin Obama 53 to Romney 42. The Obama Superpac has pulled out of the state.
++Missouri (PPP) Romney 51 to Obama 45.
Larry Sabato and the University of Virginia's Center for Politics predict Obama has 290 Electoral Votes, Romney at 204 and 42 Toss-ups but this will be not enough for Willard to win. They expect the Democrats to retain the Senate and the Republicans to hold the House but with the Democrats clawing their way back but falling short.
++The Drunken Irishman over at Democratic Underground did his numbers and came up with Obama 332 EV and Romney at 206 EV.
The popular vote was Obama at 50.66 to Romney 48.34.
++Have a good debate. I'm too tired to watch.
++The Romney camp already explained that Willard didn't get enough sleep because his sleep was interrupted by a freight train.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Before the Debates
++Willard is back on the campaign trail. While throughly prepped for the debate, he decided to wing another element about his tax plan by saying he would limit tax deductions to $17,000. Well,great what does that mean? He also took time to seize on Joe Biden's remarks about the middle class to make some remark that may or may not make sense. At this stage, I would not know what Mitt Romney will show up tomorrow night and if his positions are really his or will he change them for the next debate. The bottom line is that his campaign doesn't know what it is doing and the American people don't like him and are satisfied with Obama. The winner of the debate will be whomever you support.
++Meanwhile Gallup has Obama at 50 and Romney at 44.
++PPP on New Hampshire has it 51 Obama and 43.5 Romney.
++Roanoke College has Virginia at 49 Obama to Romney 41.
++Will the debates matter? I doubt it. The number of undecided voters are down to 2% and they must be brain dead.
++Meanwhile Gallup has Obama at 50 and Romney at 44.
++PPP on New Hampshire has it 51 Obama and 43.5 Romney.
++Roanoke College has Virginia at 49 Obama to Romney 41.
++Will the debates matter? I doubt it. The number of undecided voters are down to 2% and they must be brain dead.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Those were the days my friend. I thought they'd never end.
++Rand Tracking poll: President Obama 50--43.
++Gallup Poll: President Obama 50--44 Romney.
++Pennsylvania: F&M President Obama 52 to 43.
Quinnipiac Obama 54 to 42.
Yesterday Mitt Romney admitted President Obama had not raised taxes during his term in office--yet. But today Romney in Westerville,Ohio told voters not to expect huge tax cuts for the middle class from him. He told the crowd he was going to lower deductions and exemptions--just the things the Obama campaign accuses him of.
++Gallup Poll: President Obama 50--44 Romney.
++Pennsylvania: F&M President Obama 52 to 43.
Quinnipiac Obama 54 to 42.
Yesterday Mitt Romney admitted President Obama had not raised taxes during his term in office--yet. But today Romney in Westerville,Ohio told voters not to expect huge tax cuts for the middle class from him. He told the crowd he was going to lower deductions and exemptions--just the things the Obama campaign accuses him of.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
What's My Name?
++Dance, Barack, Dance. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
++Bloomberg national President Obama 49-43 Likely Voters.
++Gallup President Obama 48 to 45.
++Over 65 years old, PPP 48 to 47.
++Florida: Times Union Insider Advantage President Obama 49 to Romney 46.
Forget Washington,campaign on the road. The reason President Obama is winning is because he is perceived as an honest man doing an impossible job for the American people and not the special interests here in Stoogeland. Fired up, Ready to go! Get'em.
++Bloomberg national President Obama 49-43 Likely Voters.
++Gallup President Obama 48 to 45.
++Over 65 years old, PPP 48 to 47.
++Florida: Times Union Insider Advantage President Obama 49 to Romney 46.
Forget Washington,campaign on the road. The reason President Obama is winning is because he is perceived as an honest man doing an impossible job for the American people and not the special interests here in Stoogeland. Fired up, Ready to go! Get'em.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Saturday at the Polls
++The demonstrations in the Middle East seemed to have ebbed despite Al Qaeda urging more attacks on embassies. The Moslem Brotherhood called off the has demonstrations in Cairo. The Pope visited Lebanon and argued against arm shipments to Syria.And Bibi Netanyahu is scheduled to appear on Face the Nation to discuss the Iranian nuclear threat.
++So where are we at the end of the week. An informal poll by CNN asked "Who do you trust on foreign policy? President Obama or Mitt Romney. 79% selected Obama and 21% selected Romney. For the first time since 9/11, Democrats are trusted the same as a party on the terrorist issue. The New York Times indicated that now Mitt Romney is only trusted on one issue--tackling the federal deficit.
++Nate Silver reports that he has down graded President Obama's probability of winning the election to the mid-70s because of August's poor report on manufacturing which had been a positive indicator for President Obama for months.
++In case you haven't noticed, HuffingtonPost has upgraded their computer model for this year's election using both national and state polls. That's why you see President Obama with a 316 to 206 EV advantage. The only toss-up states they have are Wisconsin and Iowa.
++Israel's Haaretz news paper reports polling of the American Jewish community that shows President Obama with a 70 to 25 lead over Romney. Romney's share of the American Jewish vote has plummeted.
++Rasmussen still has Romney leading President Obama in his tracking poll by 48-45. Other polling groups claim the issue is that Rasmussen's poll typically tilt 4-5 its toward the GOP.
++Rasmussen,however, has a shocking poll for North Carolina. President Obama has a 51 to 45 lead.
++In Virginia, according to Rasmussen, Obama has a 49-48 lead.
++Gallup has President Obama at 49 to 44.
++Reuters/Ipsos tracking has President Obama at 48 to 41.
++CBS/NYT has its poll at 49 Obama-Romney46. But simply taking registered voters, it's President Obama at 51-43.
++If you are interested in foreign opinion, the UPI through Voter International polled 30 countries and President Obama is the choice of 81%.
++In Washington State, Obama is above his 2008 margin at 53 to 36.
++Farleigh Dickinson has Obama leading Romney in New Jersey 52-38.
++The Philadelphia Inquirer has Obama opening his lead to 50 to 39.
++Survey USA has Colorado close at 47-46 Obama .
++In Illinois , Obama has opened up a 47 to 34 lead.
++Michigan The Foster group has Obama by 46 to Romney's 44.
After next week, say goodby to the House, who are going on a two month recess. So don't expect action on the Jobs Bill, the Farm Bill or anything else.
++Romney remarks about the embassy attacks were given wide coverage in all the Swing States and were roundly condemned. The Romney campaign claims they will "refocus" their campaign after the debates. So I guess we can expect the next version of Romney for the last month of the campaign.
++A Federal court ruled against Iowa's efforts to stifle the Vote and delayed any voter purge. In Pittsburgh the Voter ID law goes to court again because the original court decision upholding the law used a legal precedent used during the days of slavery.
++Paul Ryan seems to be cultivating the Confederate vote in Florida by referring to the state as "the breadbasket of the South", which was a term used by the Confederates during the civil war.
++Meanwhile Gallup had President Obama at 49-44.
++So where are we at the end of the week. An informal poll by CNN asked "Who do you trust on foreign policy? President Obama or Mitt Romney. 79% selected Obama and 21% selected Romney. For the first time since 9/11, Democrats are trusted the same as a party on the terrorist issue. The New York Times indicated that now Mitt Romney is only trusted on one issue--tackling the federal deficit.
++Nate Silver reports that he has down graded President Obama's probability of winning the election to the mid-70s because of August's poor report on manufacturing which had been a positive indicator for President Obama for months.
++In case you haven't noticed, HuffingtonPost has upgraded their computer model for this year's election using both national and state polls. That's why you see President Obama with a 316 to 206 EV advantage. The only toss-up states they have are Wisconsin and Iowa.
++Israel's Haaretz news paper reports polling of the American Jewish community that shows President Obama with a 70 to 25 lead over Romney. Romney's share of the American Jewish vote has plummeted.
++Rasmussen still has Romney leading President Obama in his tracking poll by 48-45. Other polling groups claim the issue is that Rasmussen's poll typically tilt 4-5 its toward the GOP.
++Rasmussen,however, has a shocking poll for North Carolina. President Obama has a 51 to 45 lead.
++In Virginia, according to Rasmussen, Obama has a 49-48 lead.
++Gallup has President Obama at 49 to 44.
++Reuters/Ipsos tracking has President Obama at 48 to 41.
++CBS/NYT has its poll at 49 Obama-Romney46. But simply taking registered voters, it's President Obama at 51-43.
++If you are interested in foreign opinion, the UPI through Voter International polled 30 countries and President Obama is the choice of 81%.
++In Washington State, Obama is above his 2008 margin at 53 to 36.
++Farleigh Dickinson has Obama leading Romney in New Jersey 52-38.
++The Philadelphia Inquirer has Obama opening his lead to 50 to 39.
++Survey USA has Colorado close at 47-46 Obama .
++In Illinois , Obama has opened up a 47 to 34 lead.
++Michigan The Foster group has Obama by 46 to Romney's 44.
After next week, say goodby to the House, who are going on a two month recess. So don't expect action on the Jobs Bill, the Farm Bill or anything else.
++Romney remarks about the embassy attacks were given wide coverage in all the Swing States and were roundly condemned. The Romney campaign claims they will "refocus" their campaign after the debates. So I guess we can expect the next version of Romney for the last month of the campaign.
++A Federal court ruled against Iowa's efforts to stifle the Vote and delayed any voter purge. In Pittsburgh the Voter ID law goes to court again because the original court decision upholding the law used a legal precedent used during the days of slavery.
++Paul Ryan seems to be cultivating the Confederate vote in Florida by referring to the state as "the breadbasket of the South", which was a term used by the Confederates during the civil war.
++Meanwhile Gallup had President Obama at 49-44.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Late Afternoon after Libya and Cairo
++Since I have received dozens of right-wing attacks on Obama for the assassination of our ambassador to Libya, the demonstrations in Cairo and the attack on the embassy in Yemen, I'll let these people who thought Romney's attack on the President on 9/11 was appropriate to go off and have some time to contemplate the error of their ways.
++Meanwhile back in the election campaign, Allan Lichtman and his keys to the White House still holds to his prediction of an Obama victory.
++Yesterday Gallup has Obama at 51% approval rating and 50 to 43 over Willard.
++Fox News had Obama 48 to 43.
++Esquire/Yahoo poll 50-46.
++Rasmussen had Romney back on top by 47 to 46.
++PPP-New Mexico Obama 53 to Romney 42.
++ Michigan Obama 47 to Romney 37.
++Quinnipiac --New York Obama 62 to Romney 34.
++Missouri--Rasmussen--Romney 48 to Obama 45.
++NBC/Wall Street Journal --Ohio Obama 50 to 43.
++NBC/Wall Street Journal--Virginia Obama 49 to 44.
++NBC/Wall Street Journal--Florida Obama 49 to Romney 44
++WMUR--New Hampshire --Obama 45, Romney 40.
++Onsight Public Affairs--Obama 49 to Romney 44.
Late last night before revisions, Nate Silver has Obama at 319 EV to Romney 219. Obama with 91.6% chance of winning.
From the moment Romney answered the right's call to become more aggressive against Obama it was like the exploding cigar.
++Meanwhile back in the election campaign, Allan Lichtman and his keys to the White House still holds to his prediction of an Obama victory.
++Yesterday Gallup has Obama at 51% approval rating and 50 to 43 over Willard.
++Fox News had Obama 48 to 43.
++Esquire/Yahoo poll 50-46.
++Rasmussen had Romney back on top by 47 to 46.
++PPP-New Mexico Obama 53 to Romney 42.
++ Michigan Obama 47 to Romney 37.
++Quinnipiac --New York Obama 62 to Romney 34.
++Missouri--Rasmussen--Romney 48 to Obama 45.
++NBC/Wall Street Journal --Ohio Obama 50 to 43.
++NBC/Wall Street Journal--Virginia Obama 49 to 44.
++NBC/Wall Street Journal--Florida Obama 49 to Romney 44
++WMUR--New Hampshire --Obama 45, Romney 40.
++Onsight Public Affairs--Obama 49 to Romney 44.
Late last night before revisions, Nate Silver has Obama at 319 EV to Romney 219. Obama with 91.6% chance of winning.
From the moment Romney answered the right's call to become more aggressive against Obama it was like the exploding cigar.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Memorial Day Poll Wrap-up
So The Donald said again that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and has sent investigators to Hawaii to pester those poor souls. Donald said the early reference by Obama's agent that he was born in Kenya was reasonable because Barack Obama wasn't planning on running for President.
Conservatives are all up and arms because President Obama misspoke today and referred to his sons, just showing he can't read a teleprompter. I'll bet he was referring to servicemen and women. A later e-mail said it showed he believed he was the father of our country.
Obviously people have a lot of time on their hands.
Meanwhile the tale of the tape:
I applaud Reason for their Wisconsin poll because it is one of the few to include Gary Johnson. Obama 46-Romney 36 and 6 for Johnson.
I repeat Massachusetts. Obama 59 to 34 for Romney.
California: Obama 50 to Romney 34.
North Carolina: Romney 47 to Obama 45. Note: Charlie Cook put North Carolina back as a toss-up after having it "lean Republican".
YouGov. (national) Obama 46 to Romney 42.
Rasmussen: Obama 45 to Romney 44
Gallup Tracking: Obama 47 to Romney 46.
Conservatives are all up and arms because President Obama misspoke today and referred to his sons, just showing he can't read a teleprompter. I'll bet he was referring to servicemen and women. A later e-mail said it showed he believed he was the father of our country.
Obviously people have a lot of time on their hands.
Meanwhile the tale of the tape:
I applaud Reason for their Wisconsin poll because it is one of the few to include Gary Johnson. Obama 46-Romney 36 and 6 for Johnson.
I repeat Massachusetts. Obama 59 to 34 for Romney.
California: Obama 50 to Romney 34.
North Carolina: Romney 47 to Obama 45. Note: Charlie Cook put North Carolina back as a toss-up after having it "lean Republican".
YouGov. (national) Obama 46 to Romney 42.
Rasmussen: Obama 45 to Romney 44
Gallup Tracking: Obama 47 to Romney 46.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Hey Abbott-abad*
*stolen from header to a post by the leftwingnoisemachine
Maureen Dowd, who hasn't always been an Obama enthusiast, write a fun column in the New York Times today entitled "Cool Hand Barack" about the President's notorious cool under pressure. Bill Maher called him the "multi-tasking ninja." And Dana Millbank puts in another perspective about the prospects on bipartisan cooperation saying that the Pax bin Laden is over, quoting Jim DeMint yesterday saying that the president acted like a third world dictator when it came to the economy. House Republicans held a news conference where they said that the bin Laden stuff was fine but what is President Obama doing about the $5 a gallon gas.
Rasmussen reports that Obama has not gotten a bounce out of killing bin Laden. Gallup has him up to 50% with a three point gain, NYT/CBS poll has him at 57%, while Washington Post has him at 56% approval. A more interesting poll was the Newsweek/Daily Beast poll--which gauged Obama two days before and two days after bin Laden. The approval rating stayed at 48% before and after. It only had 40% say he should be re-elected and said that Bush by 45-31 was better on terrorism than Obama. However, 55% said that Obama was a strong leader but only 5% said that this would make them more inclined to vote for the President.
Leading Islamophobe Pamela Geller of Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero fame reported in her blog that all the national security team demanded the operation go ahead but Obama balked at the advice of--get this--Valerie Jarrett, who isn't around the White House anymore, and Leon Panetta had to overrule him. She writes that it was a coup against President Obama but she quickly followed up with a post saying that there was nothing illegal or unconstitutional about it.
Brent Bozell of Media Research Center complained that President Obama played subtle and undignified games with the whole event and claimed total credit for the operation and even failed to mention George W. Bush at the Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday afternoon. He even didn't thank President Bush at the bipartisan dinner Monday night. Brent protests that our media didn't even wonder if Obama was rude and no one seemed in a hurry to credit President Bush. "My one regret is that Bush 434 didn't get his scalp. he deserved it more than anyone."
The Tea Party Nation, the Koch-funded group, thought President Obama "managed totally to FUBAR the situation." Judson Phillips accused President Obama of only going after bin Laden to help his re-election bid, attacked him for announcing bin Laden's death during Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice slammed the administration for not having bin Laden's body "wrapped in pig fat before burial."
Teabagger Amy Jo Rice of the Maine ReFounders sent out an email to all teabaggers that bin Laden's death was simply a plot by Obama to distract America from its economic problems as he needs to find a way "to improve his record of leadership and running this country." She says a successful mission causes more problems that it solved because "we entered another country without their knowledge and carried out a military operation, and was a foriegn policy failure.
She continues on:"Bringing one terrorist to justice is not the makings of a great President, nor does it make him a hero. I am sure our Campaigner-in-Chief will ride out the glory in his attempt to be re-elected. nothing has really changed in his lack of leadership to turn our nation around and be on the road to prosperity,instead of the road that we are on that very soon ends at the edge of a cliff."
Teabagger Judson Phillips blasted the "Obama regime". "they have managed to take what should have been a celebration of victory and make it almost anything but. Americans celebrated the death of an archenemy. Obama looked ike he was seriously inconvenienced. Did he even smile one time when he was making the speech?"
At least Condi Rice added some levity when she said that George W. Bush's bullhorn speech on top of the rubble of the Twin Towers was "One of the most important moments in American History."
Bill Maher today snidely said that since the Republicans aren't good at national security or economic policy, what do they bring to the table?
For all you fans of the ticking time bomb scenario, which Republican Peter King is resurrecting to justify torture, how do you explain bin Laden living in the same compound for six years, the bulding haven't been started in 2004, if waterboarding produced the key evidence?
The people really angry over the resurrection of the torture issue are the professional intelligence people and interrogators, who feel slighted for their awesome, sophisticated multi-dimensional way bin Laden was eventually tracked down. They point that after tracking the courier through Paksitan,they followed him 24/7 until he came to the compound. The compound was built exactly the same as bin Laden's prior haunts in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. The interrogators claim that if torture worked this information should be acquired within two to three days of an Al Qaeda detainee. Instead,those waterboarded denied knowing the man and only after a militant was captured did they get the information ultimately used to actually identify him. And then we were off on a several year hunt that used virtually every aspect of intelligence gathering known to the United States.
But of course, maybe we should have taked to the grocer who sold the compound Coke and Pepsi or the baker who said bin Laden loved his native style bread. Or maybe inquired whether anyone at Pakistan's West Point noticed him.
I find it ironic that people in Pakistan refer to Abbottabad as "the closest to England you can get without being there."
The Guardian reports today that the preliminary assessments of the hard drives and other materials taken from the raid show that bin Laden did continue to direct Al Qaeda operations throughout the world and in Somalia, Yemen and Africa. It will be interesting in the months ahead to see how much the United States rolls up.
But the real bummer to Al Qaeda is not the elimination of their charismatic leader but the emergence of Al-Zawihiri as the successor. An Egyptian, who is widely disliked by the Al Qaeda rank-and-file, he has an uncanny knack of getting everyone to hate him. You may have heard his broadcasts during the Egyptian Revolution, where he criticized the Egyptian people for not following an Islamic way of life. The Muslim brotherhood has been in a long-standing way with Zawihiri because he ratted their militants out when he was in prison. Only a few years ago, their theologians went after Al Qaeda for its false teachings. Their target was the Egyptian. It will be interesting to see the internecine struggles bin Laden's death provokes.
The Economist said that President Obama now has "bullet-proof national security credentials." The most famous Irish bookmakers now have Obama as a 71% favorite to win re-election and Intratrade had him at 59.5% before the bin Laden murder. Intratrade actually was more accurate than the polls in 2008.
Several columnists have pointed out the irony that President Obama would have the foreign policy/ national security advantage, while the Republicans would be perceived as having the economic policy advantage going into 2012--the reverse of our usual politics.
Maureen Dowd, who hasn't always been an Obama enthusiast, write a fun column in the New York Times today entitled "Cool Hand Barack" about the President's notorious cool under pressure. Bill Maher called him the "multi-tasking ninja." And Dana Millbank puts in another perspective about the prospects on bipartisan cooperation saying that the Pax bin Laden is over, quoting Jim DeMint yesterday saying that the president acted like a third world dictator when it came to the economy. House Republicans held a news conference where they said that the bin Laden stuff was fine but what is President Obama doing about the $5 a gallon gas.
Rasmussen reports that Obama has not gotten a bounce out of killing bin Laden. Gallup has him up to 50% with a three point gain, NYT/CBS poll has him at 57%, while Washington Post has him at 56% approval. A more interesting poll was the Newsweek/Daily Beast poll--which gauged Obama two days before and two days after bin Laden. The approval rating stayed at 48% before and after. It only had 40% say he should be re-elected and said that Bush by 45-31 was better on terrorism than Obama. However, 55% said that Obama was a strong leader but only 5% said that this would make them more inclined to vote for the President.
Leading Islamophobe Pamela Geller of Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero fame reported in her blog that all the national security team demanded the operation go ahead but Obama balked at the advice of--get this--Valerie Jarrett, who isn't around the White House anymore, and Leon Panetta had to overrule him. She writes that it was a coup against President Obama but she quickly followed up with a post saying that there was nothing illegal or unconstitutional about it.
Brent Bozell of Media Research Center complained that President Obama played subtle and undignified games with the whole event and claimed total credit for the operation and even failed to mention George W. Bush at the Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday afternoon. He even didn't thank President Bush at the bipartisan dinner Monday night. Brent protests that our media didn't even wonder if Obama was rude and no one seemed in a hurry to credit President Bush. "My one regret is that Bush 434 didn't get his scalp. he deserved it more than anyone."
The Tea Party Nation, the Koch-funded group, thought President Obama "managed totally to FUBAR the situation." Judson Phillips accused President Obama of only going after bin Laden to help his re-election bid, attacked him for announcing bin Laden's death during Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice slammed the administration for not having bin Laden's body "wrapped in pig fat before burial."
Teabagger Amy Jo Rice of the Maine ReFounders sent out an email to all teabaggers that bin Laden's death was simply a plot by Obama to distract America from its economic problems as he needs to find a way "to improve his record of leadership and running this country." She says a successful mission causes more problems that it solved because "we entered another country without their knowledge and carried out a military operation, and was a foriegn policy failure.
She continues on:"Bringing one terrorist to justice is not the makings of a great President, nor does it make him a hero. I am sure our Campaigner-in-Chief will ride out the glory in his attempt to be re-elected. nothing has really changed in his lack of leadership to turn our nation around and be on the road to prosperity,instead of the road that we are on that very soon ends at the edge of a cliff."
Teabagger Judson Phillips blasted the "Obama regime". "they have managed to take what should have been a celebration of victory and make it almost anything but. Americans celebrated the death of an archenemy. Obama looked ike he was seriously inconvenienced. Did he even smile one time when he was making the speech?"
At least Condi Rice added some levity when she said that George W. Bush's bullhorn speech on top of the rubble of the Twin Towers was "One of the most important moments in American History."
Bill Maher today snidely said that since the Republicans aren't good at national security or economic policy, what do they bring to the table?
For all you fans of the ticking time bomb scenario, which Republican Peter King is resurrecting to justify torture, how do you explain bin Laden living in the same compound for six years, the bulding haven't been started in 2004, if waterboarding produced the key evidence?
The people really angry over the resurrection of the torture issue are the professional intelligence people and interrogators, who feel slighted for their awesome, sophisticated multi-dimensional way bin Laden was eventually tracked down. They point that after tracking the courier through Paksitan,they followed him 24/7 until he came to the compound. The compound was built exactly the same as bin Laden's prior haunts in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. The interrogators claim that if torture worked this information should be acquired within two to three days of an Al Qaeda detainee. Instead,those waterboarded denied knowing the man and only after a militant was captured did they get the information ultimately used to actually identify him. And then we were off on a several year hunt that used virtually every aspect of intelligence gathering known to the United States.
But of course, maybe we should have taked to the grocer who sold the compound Coke and Pepsi or the baker who said bin Laden loved his native style bread. Or maybe inquired whether anyone at Pakistan's West Point noticed him.
I find it ironic that people in Pakistan refer to Abbottabad as "the closest to England you can get without being there."
The Guardian reports today that the preliminary assessments of the hard drives and other materials taken from the raid show that bin Laden did continue to direct Al Qaeda operations throughout the world and in Somalia, Yemen and Africa. It will be interesting in the months ahead to see how much the United States rolls up.
But the real bummer to Al Qaeda is not the elimination of their charismatic leader but the emergence of Al-Zawihiri as the successor. An Egyptian, who is widely disliked by the Al Qaeda rank-and-file, he has an uncanny knack of getting everyone to hate him. You may have heard his broadcasts during the Egyptian Revolution, where he criticized the Egyptian people for not following an Islamic way of life. The Muslim brotherhood has been in a long-standing way with Zawihiri because he ratted their militants out when he was in prison. Only a few years ago, their theologians went after Al Qaeda for its false teachings. Their target was the Egyptian. It will be interesting to see the internecine struggles bin Laden's death provokes.
The Economist said that President Obama now has "bullet-proof national security credentials." The most famous Irish bookmakers now have Obama as a 71% favorite to win re-election and Intratrade had him at 59.5% before the bin Laden murder. Intratrade actually was more accurate than the polls in 2008.
Several columnists have pointed out the irony that President Obama would have the foreign policy/ national security advantage, while the Republicans would be perceived as having the economic policy advantage going into 2012--the reverse of our usual politics.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Getting the August Bile Out of The System
August seems to be the cursed month for President Obama. The Gallup poll records the highest gap for Republicans--10--in their history tracking elections. (The highest for Democrats was 32% around the time of Watergate.) But it should be noted that a Gallup poll in August 2008 had McCain at 54 to Obama's 44%. It was one of the only that showed McCain ever ahead. The University of Buffalo predicts the Republicans will take the House and Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball also has the Republicans taking the House with a team more far right than New Gingrich's in 1994. Larry Sabato writes that there is even a chance that Republicans will take the Senate. Nate the Great Silver is being coy about his House numbers. He believes the Gallup poll is an outlier but that the Democrats' fortunes have sunk in the last month. Most agree with my prediction that Republicans will sweep state houses in the Midwest.
Larry Sabato predicts we are in for two years of nothing getting done in Washington. Given the severity of the problems facing the country, this is a disaster in the making. Even more so because Republicans are now signing on to Ryan's "Blueprint for the Future", which will raise taxes significantly on the lower and middle classes and cut dramatically taxes on the wealthiest and corporations. It will also cut social security benefits and severely restrict Medicare, which now serves 50 million Americans. Objective analysts of the plan say it will further increase the national debt.
Candidates like Sharron Angle should be reason enough for Democrats to get out to vote. The Christian Reconstructionist backed by Karl Rove's American Crossroads came out yesterday against public education. She already has come out against social security, unemployment insurance, the Department of Education and the EPA. Of course, she is for repealing Obamacare. The Alaskan teabagger Miller has already questioned the constitutionality of social security and Medicare. (This issue was decided by courts years ago. But with the Roberts Court, who knows?)
The Majority of Republicans believe Barack Obama wants to institute Sharia Law in the United States and that he sides with Islamic fundamentalism. Last summer he wanted to install death panels to pull the plug on grandma. As a result I back both. Pulling the plug on grandma would save health costs and reduce our national debt and Sharia Law would eliminate the interest payments on my considerable credit card debt. So, my wife would have to wear a headscarf.
Tonight President Obama speaks to the nation for an allotted ten minutes graciously allowed him by the national networks to announce the official end of the combat in Iraq. Republicans already beat him to the punch in speeches today that praised President George W. Bush and claimed that he was responsible for the conditions that allowed us to leave. The Republicans went on to berate the President on Israel, fighting terrorism and the Afghanistan War. Which we all know they would be better at since we saw the excellent foreign policy of the previous eight years.
Only Sunday, President Obama spoke to the residents of New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of Katrina. Besides the Administration's commitments to the Gulf region on the BP oil spill, people neglect to mention its bolstering efforts at reconstruction after the Katrina disaster. Through the stimulus package and other programs, the single-spaced list of programs just aimed at Katrina-related reconstruction runs two full pages. But local polls in Louisiana give credit to Bobby Jindal and not Barack Obama.
This phenomenon is frustrating to read and hear about. Jonathan Alter in an article "The Illustrated Man" documents the on-going smearing of the President and his apparent inability to escape the targeting by Fox News and the Right, despite a lengthy and impressive list of achievements that have affected every American.
Former Clinton adviser and toe-sucker Dick Morris promises when the Republicans take power they will successfully close down government. He promises his Fox audience this time he will support it and it will work. Democrats are now scrambling around to figure out how the Administration can play small ball if Republicans come back into power. Some believe that the lunacy of the right will be on display with House investigations into Acorn, the New Black Panther Party and the TARP ballouts, even though that was Bush's program. This , they're convinced, will create a reaction from the American people that will propel the Democrats back in 2012. Remember those were prosperous times and America was not at war. The mood of the country may not be with the Democrats on this. Fox News had not even been invented yet and internet blogging was in its infancy. Already we see other news agencies like CNN and even MSNBC cowed by the Right, chasing conservative audiences.
What's dangerous now is that there really is only one rational party in the United States. The Republicans have deliberately made the choice to be anti-rational because this is effective in creating historic amnesia. Their agenda has become so radical, the Left must blush. They are the first de-constructionists in our political system,re-writing all of American history from its origins to today to provide validation for their wholesale assault on our system. It is no mistake that the Republican reaction is to roll-up the advances made by the New Deal during the Great Depression and to thwart the implementation of the range of new reforms created by the Democrats. Their appeal must be emotional because their policy prescriptions as outlined recently by Tan Man Boehner and the Mitch McConnell will only make the social and economic situation worse by several factors.
There is a reason for this intensity on the part of the Republicans. Their Southern strategy is now being extended to the rest of the country. While Barack Obama was elected with the most popular votes in American history, they have taken every effort to de-legitimize him as President. They are defending what they perceive as aggrieved white people, who have lost their jobs and are protesting at the urgings of the corporations and billionaires the very social services government provides. If George W. Bush destroyed the American peoples' trust in government, this only validates that government can't do anything. Therefore, government must be destroyed. The Republicans know that they have alienated every single demographic group with the exception of white males in this country. This is their last chance to put a stake in the system before they look at a generation in the desert. The mid-terms are being waged as a cultural war with the religious Right acting as a vanguard for the Republicans, who have embraced anarchy as the Koch Brothers proudly proclaimed. Policy solutions are purely secondary to them at this point. Remember this is their last chance to vindicate their worldview.
Remember the Republicans have sought to make every major piece of reform attempted by President Obama his Waterloo. They have failed at every level. But they have succeeded by obstructionism to allow other elements that are needed for America's economic recovery. This obstructionism is blamed on Democrats and not Republicans as polls repeatedly point out. The Democrats' job is to reverse this trend as much as possible before the election.
President Obama will be spending labor day with the AFL-CIO, which has stepped up to the plate in an admirable fashion in recent months. He has to use this occasion to lay out some new economic strategies and to outline the stark choices in the days ahead. We are not talking about George W. Bush coming back but people who are the most rightwing in modern American history. And he should also give the progressives a gift--Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Protection Agency. Even if she can't get confirmed, it's worth fighting for.
This week, President Obama will be the host of peace talks between Bibi Netanyahu and Abbas. Even though American and Israeli policy for the past 20 years supports the creation of a Palestinian state, American commentators such as George Will and others now argue against such an idea. While the initial face-to-face talks may not produce earthbreaking results, it's clear that some deals are on the table. Netanyahu actually has put together a serious negotiating team on several sensitive issues. If the talks are somewhat successful, we might be absent a President after January, while he spends his time globe-trotting either for peace agreements or to repair our shattered relations with the rest of the world. If you can't get anything done at home, go abroad.
When Congress comes back from vacation, the issue of the Bush tax cuts takes center stage. The Washington Post and CNN have written that Democrats do not have the 60 votes to kill the tax-cuts for the wealthy. Notice how soon we got conditioned to the idea of 60 votes being the threshold for anything to get done, even though all the bills being hung up would pass with overwhelming majorities--just not the sacred 60 number.
It's true the tax issue will have to be deftly played. The Republicans have already ginned up the argument that these will be Obama's tax hikes, even though they are set to expire anyway in 2011. The problem facing the Democrats is that they must fight for the middle-class tax cuts, make it overt and repeat it over and over that is what they are doing. But if the filibuster holds, they must argue that the tax cuts for the wealthy must be paid for. This is the real dilemma Democrats face. None of the tax cuts under Bush were paid for--that's why they have to be phased out according to law. The Republicans want the tax cuts for the wealthy but they must be paid for out of severe cuts from the discretionary or social spending in the budget. Which is just what the Republicans want. They want to use the tax cuts for the wealthy to reduce any support for the middle class in the America. It's pure robbery and the Democrats must call them on it and beat them up with a club with it. If the American people actually fall for the Republicans on this, may God have mercy on their souls because they will undermine their own welfare. Be assured neither party will cut anything from defense to pay for these tax cuts.
Thank God, August is over. But I don't think the fever has broken yet.
Larry Sabato predicts we are in for two years of nothing getting done in Washington. Given the severity of the problems facing the country, this is a disaster in the making. Even more so because Republicans are now signing on to Ryan's "Blueprint for the Future", which will raise taxes significantly on the lower and middle classes and cut dramatically taxes on the wealthiest and corporations. It will also cut social security benefits and severely restrict Medicare, which now serves 50 million Americans. Objective analysts of the plan say it will further increase the national debt.
Candidates like Sharron Angle should be reason enough for Democrats to get out to vote. The Christian Reconstructionist backed by Karl Rove's American Crossroads came out yesterday against public education. She already has come out against social security, unemployment insurance, the Department of Education and the EPA. Of course, she is for repealing Obamacare. The Alaskan teabagger Miller has already questioned the constitutionality of social security and Medicare. (This issue was decided by courts years ago. But with the Roberts Court, who knows?)
The Majority of Republicans believe Barack Obama wants to institute Sharia Law in the United States and that he sides with Islamic fundamentalism. Last summer he wanted to install death panels to pull the plug on grandma. As a result I back both. Pulling the plug on grandma would save health costs and reduce our national debt and Sharia Law would eliminate the interest payments on my considerable credit card debt. So, my wife would have to wear a headscarf.
Tonight President Obama speaks to the nation for an allotted ten minutes graciously allowed him by the national networks to announce the official end of the combat in Iraq. Republicans already beat him to the punch in speeches today that praised President George W. Bush and claimed that he was responsible for the conditions that allowed us to leave. The Republicans went on to berate the President on Israel, fighting terrorism and the Afghanistan War. Which we all know they would be better at since we saw the excellent foreign policy of the previous eight years.
Only Sunday, President Obama spoke to the residents of New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of Katrina. Besides the Administration's commitments to the Gulf region on the BP oil spill, people neglect to mention its bolstering efforts at reconstruction after the Katrina disaster. Through the stimulus package and other programs, the single-spaced list of programs just aimed at Katrina-related reconstruction runs two full pages. But local polls in Louisiana give credit to Bobby Jindal and not Barack Obama.
This phenomenon is frustrating to read and hear about. Jonathan Alter in an article "The Illustrated Man" documents the on-going smearing of the President and his apparent inability to escape the targeting by Fox News and the Right, despite a lengthy and impressive list of achievements that have affected every American.
Former Clinton adviser and toe-sucker Dick Morris promises when the Republicans take power they will successfully close down government. He promises his Fox audience this time he will support it and it will work. Democrats are now scrambling around to figure out how the Administration can play small ball if Republicans come back into power. Some believe that the lunacy of the right will be on display with House investigations into Acorn, the New Black Panther Party and the TARP ballouts, even though that was Bush's program. This , they're convinced, will create a reaction from the American people that will propel the Democrats back in 2012. Remember those were prosperous times and America was not at war. The mood of the country may not be with the Democrats on this. Fox News had not even been invented yet and internet blogging was in its infancy. Already we see other news agencies like CNN and even MSNBC cowed by the Right, chasing conservative audiences.
What's dangerous now is that there really is only one rational party in the United States. The Republicans have deliberately made the choice to be anti-rational because this is effective in creating historic amnesia. Their agenda has become so radical, the Left must blush. They are the first de-constructionists in our political system,re-writing all of American history from its origins to today to provide validation for their wholesale assault on our system. It is no mistake that the Republican reaction is to roll-up the advances made by the New Deal during the Great Depression and to thwart the implementation of the range of new reforms created by the Democrats. Their appeal must be emotional because their policy prescriptions as outlined recently by Tan Man Boehner and the Mitch McConnell will only make the social and economic situation worse by several factors.
There is a reason for this intensity on the part of the Republicans. Their Southern strategy is now being extended to the rest of the country. While Barack Obama was elected with the most popular votes in American history, they have taken every effort to de-legitimize him as President. They are defending what they perceive as aggrieved white people, who have lost their jobs and are protesting at the urgings of the corporations and billionaires the very social services government provides. If George W. Bush destroyed the American peoples' trust in government, this only validates that government can't do anything. Therefore, government must be destroyed. The Republicans know that they have alienated every single demographic group with the exception of white males in this country. This is their last chance to put a stake in the system before they look at a generation in the desert. The mid-terms are being waged as a cultural war with the religious Right acting as a vanguard for the Republicans, who have embraced anarchy as the Koch Brothers proudly proclaimed. Policy solutions are purely secondary to them at this point. Remember this is their last chance to vindicate their worldview.
Remember the Republicans have sought to make every major piece of reform attempted by President Obama his Waterloo. They have failed at every level. But they have succeeded by obstructionism to allow other elements that are needed for America's economic recovery. This obstructionism is blamed on Democrats and not Republicans as polls repeatedly point out. The Democrats' job is to reverse this trend as much as possible before the election.
President Obama will be spending labor day with the AFL-CIO, which has stepped up to the plate in an admirable fashion in recent months. He has to use this occasion to lay out some new economic strategies and to outline the stark choices in the days ahead. We are not talking about George W. Bush coming back but people who are the most rightwing in modern American history. And he should also give the progressives a gift--Elizabeth Warren as head of the Consumer Protection Agency. Even if she can't get confirmed, it's worth fighting for.
This week, President Obama will be the host of peace talks between Bibi Netanyahu and Abbas. Even though American and Israeli policy for the past 20 years supports the creation of a Palestinian state, American commentators such as George Will and others now argue against such an idea. While the initial face-to-face talks may not produce earthbreaking results, it's clear that some deals are on the table. Netanyahu actually has put together a serious negotiating team on several sensitive issues. If the talks are somewhat successful, we might be absent a President after January, while he spends his time globe-trotting either for peace agreements or to repair our shattered relations with the rest of the world. If you can't get anything done at home, go abroad.
When Congress comes back from vacation, the issue of the Bush tax cuts takes center stage. The Washington Post and CNN have written that Democrats do not have the 60 votes to kill the tax-cuts for the wealthy. Notice how soon we got conditioned to the idea of 60 votes being the threshold for anything to get done, even though all the bills being hung up would pass with overwhelming majorities--just not the sacred 60 number.
It's true the tax issue will have to be deftly played. The Republicans have already ginned up the argument that these will be Obama's tax hikes, even though they are set to expire anyway in 2011. The problem facing the Democrats is that they must fight for the middle-class tax cuts, make it overt and repeat it over and over that is what they are doing. But if the filibuster holds, they must argue that the tax cuts for the wealthy must be paid for. This is the real dilemma Democrats face. None of the tax cuts under Bush were paid for--that's why they have to be phased out according to law. The Republicans want the tax cuts for the wealthy but they must be paid for out of severe cuts from the discretionary or social spending in the budget. Which is just what the Republicans want. They want to use the tax cuts for the wealthy to reduce any support for the middle class in the America. It's pure robbery and the Democrats must call them on it and beat them up with a club with it. If the American people actually fall for the Republicans on this, may God have mercy on their souls because they will undermine their own welfare. Be assured neither party will cut anything from defense to pay for these tax cuts.
Thank God, August is over. But I don't think the fever has broken yet.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Blue Rain*--The Final Cut
Hooray! President Obama has delayed his trip to focus on health care. We're becoming a banana republic when the President flies overseas and has to worry what mischief is going to play out in D.C.
Thank you , Frank Schaeffer. On http://www.frankschaeffer.blogspot.com/ , my favorite repentent co-creator of the Religious Right morphs back into his Calvinist mode to sternly lecture us all that under our "fickle noses" this is a time of national rebirth and he's delighted with President Obama, even more than he has been. He rips the shrivelled old conservatives abnd blasts the left for dumping on Obama. He proceeds to list all his achievements in the past year and taunts Obama's critics as they say" that's not good enough."
Rachel Maddow interviewed Nancy Pelosi last night. While not my favorite politician, the Speaker has been ferociously effective as a leader. Every one of the President's campaign promises except immigration reform passed the House last year. Now over 290 bills are bottled up in the Senate.
Could some one please muzzle Larry O'Donnell? Last night was another bummer about the health care bill. This was after a day when Harry Reid sent a blistering letter to Mitch McConnell on why he is going to use reconciliation and the House leadership walked away from dealing with Bart Stupak and the anti-abortion crowd. But Larry focused on the strange news yesterday that the Republicans say that Republicans asked the Parliamentarian whether President Obama would have to sign the Senate bill before reconciliation. Now we have no statement from the Senate Parliamentarian on this and on the face of it it doesn't make any sense considering past uses of reconciliation. But never mind, let's all worry..
The CBO price tag came in. The Healthcare bill saves about $190 billion over ten years and another $1 trillion in the second ten years. And it comes in under $900 billion. So the Speaker of the House is beginning to mark it up on Monday.
Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen warn Democrats about passing healthcare because of the dire consequences in the fall. Their long column in the Washington Post recites the depth of American opposition to health care reform.. Interesting thing is that they only quote our friend Mr. Rasmussen on his polling data--which conveniently didn't ask about the specific provisions of the bill. Last night Nancy Pelosi effectively laid out the meaning of healthcare in her interview with Rachel Maddow. She pointed to both the human and fiscal necessary for it and did it in great detail.
Now as I turn the curve on my taxes, let's make healthcare costs personally. Remember my eye operation is being billed this year. For 2009, the McColm family, which takes no medicines and last year had nothing wrong, spent cash out of pocket for medical expenses and insurance--$25,100. That is over half the average income of the American family. It is no joke to say that if anything serious happened, I would have to declare bankruptcy. That's why I want healthcare reform.
All is not well in GlennBeckistan: After the Jesuit dog whistle, conservative Catholics followed suit in their criticism of his positions on religion. Wakening from his deep slumber, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners, called on Christians to boycott Beck. His own church said that the Book of Morman was almost entirely a book about social justice. Let's not carried away guys. However, the term "social justice" does appear some 180 times in Morman doctrinal texts.
After "changing American history"--that was his promise--with the Eric Massa interview, Glenn Beck decided to go after FDR. We know from the Wall Street Journal and Amity Schlaes that FDR prolonged the Depression. Actually, we know from economists trained in the period that FDR cut the unemployment rate from 25-12% and did other things like create Social Security and the FDIC. But Beck's complaint about this President who was as popular as Obama was that he hired Communists. Yes, he did after the U.S. formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. In my mind, I always wondered why the Communists ended up in the Department of Agriculture.
Anyway, Beck then extolls Joe McCarthy's crusade against these characters and mentions the Dies Committee. (He should have disclosed his mentor the Morman" historian" was a staffer for the Dies Committee and was subsequently fired by J.Edgar Hoover from the FBI for being "paranoid and too extreme in his anti-Communism".) And he brings up the conservative's favorite hero Whittaker Chambers. A little dirty secret--Whittaker only ratted out the NKVD cells that were not longer functional to protect the one left behind. Conservatives love the rumpy looking Whittaker Chambers for bringing down fancy pants Alger Hiss. But they love him even more for saying that the United States already lost the Cold War in the 1950s.
Now how this relates to Barack Obama I don't know. But he gets around to Woody Guthrie and the song "This Land Is Your Land". I wrote about how delighted I was last year when Pete Seegar sang the uncensored version of the song at the Lincoln Memorial. A year later Beck picked this up. And said that this was a song about the Communist dream. He told his audience that Barack Obama's initiative to save millions of acres for the wilderness was a Maoist plot. Actually this was an extension of Theodore Roosevelt's vision , a man Beck hates worse than Mao.
Beck also decided to attack the union movement for harboring communists. For future shows I hope he mentions that the AFL-CIO's international department was led by the former head of the American Communist Party , Jay Lovestone. This could provoke another Jesuit-style backlash by older union types.
Howell Raines finally wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, chastising his fellow journalists for not mentioning that for the first time in modern American history we have a self-proclaimed news agency identified with a single political party. He called on his feloow journalists to start going after Roger Ailes and his right-wing Echochamber. A little late but welcomed.
My interest in Rep. Paul Ryan's Blueprint for the Future was only reinforced yesterday as the American Spectator and other conservative publications have endorsed it. Ryan asked the CBO to score his budget plan--using only his revenue figures. The plan called for the total dismantling of all entitlement programs, an increase in taxes on the Middle Class, a substantial reduction in taxes on the rich and corporations. Even people like Andrew Sullivan seem infatuated with the Ryan plan. Maybe it's like figuring out some mathematical formula to eliminate our deficit.
The final results for the Ryan plan were ruinous. If adopted, the federal government would be gasping for air and deficits would run so large through 2019 we couldn't ever recover. That's using his revenue figures. This is the new Supply-Side theory and I promise you it will be part of the Republican platform in 2012. I call it Aircraft Carrier Economics. The United States would become a gigantic platform from which one can launch endless wars but there would be no benefit to any Americans. I think Paul Ryan would have gotten along great with Brezhnev. They share the same worldview.
Leonard Pitts wrote a column lamenting the fact the GOP's own campaign now is based on fear. Sentimental guy that he is he waxed nostalgic for the days when politicians from both the right and left encouraged us to adopt higher principles that united us. It's not morning in America, he writes, it's now High-Noon every day.
To my conservative friends who believed President Obama would not donate his Nobel Prize money to charity, yesterday he did and the charities are all posted on line. Actually he made some good choices, emphasizing educational funds for minority students, including Native Americans. He also gave a sizeable gift to the Clinton Haiti Fund. Conservatives always liked to brag about how Dick Cheney gave his earnings from Halliburton to charity when he took office. The charity was the Richard Cheney Vice Presidential Library--believe it or not.
You will have noticed that I have not been referring to the FreeRepublic website lately. Yesterday their bloggers said that if health care reform passes they can't wait until 2012. They must engage in armed struggle now. At this point, I can't help but believe the Secret Service is n camped out at that website and in Jim Robinson's office.
A retired General sent me his latest article , which called for Revolution, because Washington is adopting progressive socialism and we constitutionalists must stop it. It reminds me of Sterling Hayden's great performance as a right-wing general with a private army in Winter Kills, which was about the JFK assassination. I don't respond because his notion of constitutionalism is based on the white nationalist movement and he doesn't even know it.
On President's Day, leading ministers of the Southern Baptist Church prayed to God for the death of President Obama. They think he is either the one to usher in the age of the Anti-Christ or the anti-Christ himself. Nero was the real Anti-Christ because he persecuted early Christians and inspired the Book of Revelations. Tim Lahaye of the Left Behind Series said it was Gorbachev because he had the mark of the beast on his forehead. Sarah Palin's minister believes the Anti-Christ is gay,which, I guess brings us back to the Vatican. But all this contradicts some of the think of the Southern Baptists, who believe the rapture ic coming in May 2012, before our next election. So no need for armed struggle or assassination--everything is solved.
Our Texas School Board problem hasn't been solved by the defeat of the wingnuts. They still refuse to include a section in the American History text why we have separation of church and state. They also want to include a section on the Emancipation Proclamation that it raised expectations of minorities too high.
George Will writes that Roberts should boycott the State of the Union address and wants more people to do so. After all we have a Black President and he's too uppity--I'm just translating. But Roberts, who is miffed by Obama's justified criticism of the Citizens United decision, should have been on the court of John Marshall when he ruled for the Cherokee Nation against its forced removal to Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson ignored him and the press asked about the Supreme Court Decision. Jackson said,"Let him (Marshall) enforce it."
Drudge reminds us that Obama's approval rating fell to its lowest point in Gallup of all time! Gallup reminds its readers that Obama's weekly approval ratings are very consistent and holding up. Rasmussen must be pleased he's getting traction--imaginary though it is. RS2000 has Obama where he was last week with a slight drop in the disapproval ratings.
We have an immediate consequence of the Citizens United ruling. Millions of dollars are flowing through front organizations with the usualy names like Americans for Free Donuts. The Corporate flood is a last gasp to defeath healthreform. I have never seen a time when corporate America has waged such an unrelenting war against the American people. Whether it's health reform or fiscal reform. And they don't even pay taxes or create jobs here!
The Democrats pledged they will not use earmarks for corporate funding anymore. The Republicans came in a day late and said they would do this also--for one year! The group of Republicans who signed onto this plan netted over $400 million in earmarks last year. K Street is in deep mourning and generating op-eds to defend their work on behalf of corporations.
* Hendrix's last cut on the album.
Thank you , Frank Schaeffer. On http://www.frankschaeffer.blogspot.com/ , my favorite repentent co-creator of the Religious Right morphs back into his Calvinist mode to sternly lecture us all that under our "fickle noses" this is a time of national rebirth and he's delighted with President Obama, even more than he has been. He rips the shrivelled old conservatives abnd blasts the left for dumping on Obama. He proceeds to list all his achievements in the past year and taunts Obama's critics as they say" that's not good enough."
Rachel Maddow interviewed Nancy Pelosi last night. While not my favorite politician, the Speaker has been ferociously effective as a leader. Every one of the President's campaign promises except immigration reform passed the House last year. Now over 290 bills are bottled up in the Senate.
Could some one please muzzle Larry O'Donnell? Last night was another bummer about the health care bill. This was after a day when Harry Reid sent a blistering letter to Mitch McConnell on why he is going to use reconciliation and the House leadership walked away from dealing with Bart Stupak and the anti-abortion crowd. But Larry focused on the strange news yesterday that the Republicans say that Republicans asked the Parliamentarian whether President Obama would have to sign the Senate bill before reconciliation. Now we have no statement from the Senate Parliamentarian on this and on the face of it it doesn't make any sense considering past uses of reconciliation. But never mind, let's all worry..
The CBO price tag came in. The Healthcare bill saves about $190 billion over ten years and another $1 trillion in the second ten years. And it comes in under $900 billion. So the Speaker of the House is beginning to mark it up on Monday.
Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen warn Democrats about passing healthcare because of the dire consequences in the fall. Their long column in the Washington Post recites the depth of American opposition to health care reform.. Interesting thing is that they only quote our friend Mr. Rasmussen on his polling data--which conveniently didn't ask about the specific provisions of the bill. Last night Nancy Pelosi effectively laid out the meaning of healthcare in her interview with Rachel Maddow. She pointed to both the human and fiscal necessary for it and did it in great detail.
Now as I turn the curve on my taxes, let's make healthcare costs personally. Remember my eye operation is being billed this year. For 2009, the McColm family, which takes no medicines and last year had nothing wrong, spent cash out of pocket for medical expenses and insurance--$25,100. That is over half the average income of the American family. It is no joke to say that if anything serious happened, I would have to declare bankruptcy. That's why I want healthcare reform.
All is not well in GlennBeckistan: After the Jesuit dog whistle, conservative Catholics followed suit in their criticism of his positions on religion. Wakening from his deep slumber, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners, called on Christians to boycott Beck. His own church said that the Book of Morman was almost entirely a book about social justice. Let's not carried away guys. However, the term "social justice" does appear some 180 times in Morman doctrinal texts.
After "changing American history"--that was his promise--with the Eric Massa interview, Glenn Beck decided to go after FDR. We know from the Wall Street Journal and Amity Schlaes that FDR prolonged the Depression. Actually, we know from economists trained in the period that FDR cut the unemployment rate from 25-12% and did other things like create Social Security and the FDIC. But Beck's complaint about this President who was as popular as Obama was that he hired Communists. Yes, he did after the U.S. formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. In my mind, I always wondered why the Communists ended up in the Department of Agriculture.
Anyway, Beck then extolls Joe McCarthy's crusade against these characters and mentions the Dies Committee. (He should have disclosed his mentor the Morman" historian" was a staffer for the Dies Committee and was subsequently fired by J.Edgar Hoover from the FBI for being "paranoid and too extreme in his anti-Communism".) And he brings up the conservative's favorite hero Whittaker Chambers. A little dirty secret--Whittaker only ratted out the NKVD cells that were not longer functional to protect the one left behind. Conservatives love the rumpy looking Whittaker Chambers for bringing down fancy pants Alger Hiss. But they love him even more for saying that the United States already lost the Cold War in the 1950s.
Now how this relates to Barack Obama I don't know. But he gets around to Woody Guthrie and the song "This Land Is Your Land". I wrote about how delighted I was last year when Pete Seegar sang the uncensored version of the song at the Lincoln Memorial. A year later Beck picked this up. And said that this was a song about the Communist dream. He told his audience that Barack Obama's initiative to save millions of acres for the wilderness was a Maoist plot. Actually this was an extension of Theodore Roosevelt's vision , a man Beck hates worse than Mao.
Beck also decided to attack the union movement for harboring communists. For future shows I hope he mentions that the AFL-CIO's international department was led by the former head of the American Communist Party , Jay Lovestone. This could provoke another Jesuit-style backlash by older union types.
Howell Raines finally wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, chastising his fellow journalists for not mentioning that for the first time in modern American history we have a self-proclaimed news agency identified with a single political party. He called on his feloow journalists to start going after Roger Ailes and his right-wing Echochamber. A little late but welcomed.
My interest in Rep. Paul Ryan's Blueprint for the Future was only reinforced yesterday as the American Spectator and other conservative publications have endorsed it. Ryan asked the CBO to score his budget plan--using only his revenue figures. The plan called for the total dismantling of all entitlement programs, an increase in taxes on the Middle Class, a substantial reduction in taxes on the rich and corporations. Even people like Andrew Sullivan seem infatuated with the Ryan plan. Maybe it's like figuring out some mathematical formula to eliminate our deficit.
The final results for the Ryan plan were ruinous. If adopted, the federal government would be gasping for air and deficits would run so large through 2019 we couldn't ever recover. That's using his revenue figures. This is the new Supply-Side theory and I promise you it will be part of the Republican platform in 2012. I call it Aircraft Carrier Economics. The United States would become a gigantic platform from which one can launch endless wars but there would be no benefit to any Americans. I think Paul Ryan would have gotten along great with Brezhnev. They share the same worldview.
Leonard Pitts wrote a column lamenting the fact the GOP's own campaign now is based on fear. Sentimental guy that he is he waxed nostalgic for the days when politicians from both the right and left encouraged us to adopt higher principles that united us. It's not morning in America, he writes, it's now High-Noon every day.
To my conservative friends who believed President Obama would not donate his Nobel Prize money to charity, yesterday he did and the charities are all posted on line. Actually he made some good choices, emphasizing educational funds for minority students, including Native Americans. He also gave a sizeable gift to the Clinton Haiti Fund. Conservatives always liked to brag about how Dick Cheney gave his earnings from Halliburton to charity when he took office. The charity was the Richard Cheney Vice Presidential Library--believe it or not.
You will have noticed that I have not been referring to the FreeRepublic website lately. Yesterday their bloggers said that if health care reform passes they can't wait until 2012. They must engage in armed struggle now. At this point, I can't help but believe the Secret Service is n camped out at that website and in Jim Robinson's office.
A retired General sent me his latest article , which called for Revolution, because Washington is adopting progressive socialism and we constitutionalists must stop it. It reminds me of Sterling Hayden's great performance as a right-wing general with a private army in Winter Kills, which was about the JFK assassination. I don't respond because his notion of constitutionalism is based on the white nationalist movement and he doesn't even know it.
On President's Day, leading ministers of the Southern Baptist Church prayed to God for the death of President Obama. They think he is either the one to usher in the age of the Anti-Christ or the anti-Christ himself. Nero was the real Anti-Christ because he persecuted early Christians and inspired the Book of Revelations. Tim Lahaye of the Left Behind Series said it was Gorbachev because he had the mark of the beast on his forehead. Sarah Palin's minister believes the Anti-Christ is gay,which, I guess brings us back to the Vatican. But all this contradicts some of the think of the Southern Baptists, who believe the rapture ic coming in May 2012, before our next election. So no need for armed struggle or assassination--everything is solved.
Our Texas School Board problem hasn't been solved by the defeat of the wingnuts. They still refuse to include a section in the American History text why we have separation of church and state. They also want to include a section on the Emancipation Proclamation that it raised expectations of minorities too high.
George Will writes that Roberts should boycott the State of the Union address and wants more people to do so. After all we have a Black President and he's too uppity--I'm just translating. But Roberts, who is miffed by Obama's justified criticism of the Citizens United decision, should have been on the court of John Marshall when he ruled for the Cherokee Nation against its forced removal to Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson ignored him and the press asked about the Supreme Court Decision. Jackson said,"Let him (Marshall) enforce it."
Drudge reminds us that Obama's approval rating fell to its lowest point in Gallup of all time! Gallup reminds its readers that Obama's weekly approval ratings are very consistent and holding up. Rasmussen must be pleased he's getting traction--imaginary though it is. RS2000 has Obama where he was last week with a slight drop in the disapproval ratings.
We have an immediate consequence of the Citizens United ruling. Millions of dollars are flowing through front organizations with the usualy names like Americans for Free Donuts. The Corporate flood is a last gasp to defeath healthreform. I have never seen a time when corporate America has waged such an unrelenting war against the American people. Whether it's health reform or fiscal reform. And they don't even pay taxes or create jobs here!
The Democrats pledged they will not use earmarks for corporate funding anymore. The Republicans came in a day late and said they would do this also--for one year! The group of Republicans who signed onto this plan netted over $400 million in earmarks last year. K Street is in deep mourning and generating op-eds to defend their work on behalf of corporations.
* Hendrix's last cut on the album.
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