Happy HUMP day, Everyone! Hope you’re enjoying U2.
Where The Streets Have No Name
Scott Brown: Desperate much
Atta Gal, Claire. That’s how you break Todd “Rapin’ Akin.
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Black Girls Rock!
Flickr Photos
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Potus Takes Oath of Office
Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China
My Brothers Keeper
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AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
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Tweety did two good segments yesterday.
Here’s that first segement with that sterling comment from Cynthia Tucker.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#49185842
Tweety goes all in on the GOP’s politics against the President – their attempts to delegitimize him.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#49185980
David Corn strikes again
NEW ROMNEY VIDEO: In 1985, He Said Bain Would “Harvest” Companies for Profits
This clip shows the young CEO focusing on businesses as targets for his investors, not as job creators or community stakeholders.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+motherjones%2Fmain+%28MotherJones.com+Main+Article+Feed%29
ThinkProgress@thinkprogress
BREAKING: Florida officially restarts voter purge, revised list still appears to be inaccurate http://thkpr.gs/QozJYE
First lady Michelle Obama to tape appearance on ‘Steve Harvey’ talk show, set to air Oct. 3
By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, September 26, 1:34 PM
CHICAGO — First lady Michelle Obama will appear on Steve Harvey’s new daytime talk show.
The show’s producers say she will tape her appearance on Thursday. It’s scheduled for broadcast on Oct. 3. “Steve Harvey” is taped before an audience at NBC’s studios in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
She Got Caught: Colorado Woman From County Clerk’s Office Registering Only Romney Voters!
(Voter Fraud Caught On Tape)
To Us – Obama for America TV Ad
A young boy reaches over to give President Barack Obama a ‘high-five’ at a campaign event at Kent State University
KAPOW! Where are you, Rikyrah?
HEE HEE HEE
HELLOOOOO!
Cynthia Tucker: There’s been so much focus on what Romney and nem been doing wrong, and NOT ENOUGH FOCUS ON WHAT PBO IS DOING RIGHT.”
DING, DING, DING!!! We have a WINNER!
Cain S. LaTrans@snkscoyote
Scott Brown’s team under fire for racist antics http://fb.me/23e0AyY1U
Scott Brown Says He “Regrets” the “Unacceptable” Behavior of His Staff
Source: New York Times
6:43 p.m. | Updated BOSTON — After a second day in which a video of racist behavior by his staff members threatened to overwhelm his re-election bid, Senator Scott P. Brown’s campaign issued a statement Wednesday evening saying he “regrets” what he called “unacceptable” behavior.
He also issued a verbal warning to his staff members who participated in the tomahawk chops and Indian war whoops — and to all of his staff — that such conduct would not be tolerated, according to a statement from his office.
The statement, from his spokeswoman, Alleigh Marre, follows:
“Senator Brown has spoken to his entire staff – including the individuals involved in this unacceptable behavior – and issued them their one and only warning that this type of conduct will not be tolerated. As we enter the final stretch of this campaign, emotions are running high, and while Senator Brown can’t control everyone, he is encouraging both sides to act with respect. He regrets that members of his staff did not live up to the high standards that the people of Massachusetts expect and deserve.”
The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation had asked Senator Scott P. Brown to apologize for what he called the “downright racist” gestures of Brown supporters at a campaign event Saturday in Dorchester, Mass.
Read more: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/cherokee-chief-demands-scott-brown-apologize-for-supporters-actions/
Phoenix Mayor Attempts To Live On A Food Stamp Budget: ‘I’m Tired, And It’s Hard To Focus’
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/26/917651/phoenix-mayor-attempts-to-live-on-a-food-stamp-budget-im-tired-and-its-hard-to-focus/?mobile=nc
When local activist groups challenged Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to live on a food stamp budget for a week to mark Hunger Awareness Month, he took them up on the offer and found out just how hard it was. Stanton kept a diary on the challenge, which allotted him roughly $29 a week, the same amount 1.1 million Arizonans receive from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) each week.
By day four, Stanton noted that he was “tired” and “it’s hard to focus” after leaving the house for work without time to scramble eggs or eat a decent breakfast:
OK- ran out the door today with no time to scramble eggs or even make a sandwich. So I’m surviving on an apple and handful of peanuts, and the coffee I took to the office until dinner. I’m tired, and it’s hard to focus. I can’t go buy a sandwich because that would be cheating- even the dollar menu at Taco Bell is cheating. You can’t use SNAP benefits at any restaurants, fast food or otherwise. I’m facing a long, hungry day and an even longer night getting dinner on the table, which requires making EVERYTHING from scratch on this budget. It’s only for a week, so I’ve got a decent attitude. If I were doing this with no end in sight, I probably wouldn’t be so pleasant.
Yeah, Mayor Stanton, going HUNGRY it’s a bitch.
CAPTION THE PIC:
PBO to tree trunk: That you in there, Mitt?
Come on, stop watching me?
LOL Does this campaign make my Azz look big?
PBO to whomevers in the office:
Willard did WHAT?
Source: The Hill
Mitt Romney talking tough on China is “a lot like that fox saying, ‘you know, we need more secure chicken coops,’ ” President Obama charged on Wednesday.
“I understand my opponent has been spending some time in Ohio lately and he’s been talking tough on China,” Obama said at a campaign stop at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “He says he’s going to take the fight to them, he’s going to go after these cheaters.”
Obama dismissed Romney’s “newfound outrage,” hitting the GOP nominee for profiting for years from sending jobs to China. “I mean, it’s just not credible” for Romney to talk tough now, Obama charged.
-snip-
Read more: http://thehill.com/video/campaign/258801-obama-compares-romneys-tough-talk-on-china-to-a-fox-protecting-chickens
LOL The Last Word videos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=168c3cOsKO4&feature=player_embedded
Sep 26, 2012
Legendary crooner Andy Williams dies at 84
ad news to report from the music world: Legendary singer Andy Williams died Tuesday night.
His spokesman tells Lifeline Live that Williams died after a year-long battle with bladder cancer. He was 84.
VIDEO: Legendary crooner Andy Williams has died
Williams, who was one of the most popular vocalists of the 1960s as well as an avid golfer, died at home in Branson, Mo., where he owns the Moon River Theatre. Moon River — by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini — was one of Williams’ signature songs. On Twitter, fans are saying farewell to our “huckleberry friend.”
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2012/09/26/legendary-crooner-andy-williams-has-died-dies/70001170/1?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet#.UGNj3LKPV_H
Beat that BROWN AZZ, MA Dems!
Mr. Obama’s refreshing defense of free speech
By Editorial Board, Published: September 25
WHEN ANTI-AMERICAN demonstrations spread around the world this month, the Obama administration focused much of its public response on denouncing the anti-Muslim video that had provoked outrage and provided a pretext for extremists. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rightly distanced the U.S. government from the video and stressed the American system of religious tolerance; more disturbingly, the White House asked Google to consider removing the offending video from its YouTube Web site.
So it was heartening Tuesday to hear Mr. Obama, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, deliver a vigorous defense of freedom of speech, including the right of individuals to “blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs.”
“Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views — even views that we disagree with,” the president said. Without such freedom, he said, individuals might be stopped from practicing their own faith; “efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics or oppress minorities.” He concluded: “Given the power of faith in our lives and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-obamas-refreshing-defense-of-free-speech/2012/09/25/217791aa-0731-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_print.html
Mitt Romney likes to talk tough on China—but he’s maintained extensive investments in Chinese companies that use the same unfair trade practices he says he’ll combat. As a new Obama for America ad points out, Romney seems to have no problem with Chinese companies stealing America ideas if it means he can make a profit: http://bit.ly/OpR7gV
TNR on when “when Romney was anti-anti-China, not so long ago”: http://bit.ly/P5B8Pj
3CHICSPOLITICO says Romney’s “grasping at foreign straws with China hypocrisy”: http://bit.ly/P5BhSN
· It’s not just China. Romney’s tax returns reveal he repeatedly bet against the U.S. dollar by investing in Swedish, Norwegian, Canadian, and Austrian currencies: http://bit.ly/Q03EUZ
When Mitt Romney callously claimed that 47% of Americans are not pulling their weight, he attacked millions of hardworking people who already pay a significant share of their income in taxes—including Social Security, state taxes, local taxes, gas, sales, and property taxes. Obama for America has released a new ad that asks, “Instead of accusing hardworking Americans of failing to pay their fair share, shouldn’t we stand up for them?” http://bit.ly/VILycE
Speaking at the Education Nation Summit yesterday, Romney doubled down on his assertion that limiting classroom size is not an important factor in improving our nation’s schools. But Massachusetts teachers who worked under Gov. Romney disagree. Obama for America has released a video highlighting educators recounting what happened to schools in their state under Romney’s tenure—including bigger classroom sizes, fewer out-of-school programs, higher fees, and deep budget cuts: http://bit.ly/Oq0Cwo
· Karoli on how Romney is perfectly okay with campaign funding for corporations—but not for teachers: http://bit.ly/QaLu1h
Alternet runs through the nearing deadlines for early voting: http://bit.ly/SlUJzw
Could these kids be any cuter?
They are TOOOO cute!
Some polling blurbs from Steve Benen at Maddow Blog:
* A new Bloomberg National Poll puts Obama’s lead over Romney at six points, 49% to 43%, driven in large part by the public’s unfavorable view of the Republican candidate.
* In Ohio, a new Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT poll shows Obama leading Romney by 10 points, 53% to 43%.
* In Pennsylvania, the Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT poll shows Obama leading Romney by 12 points, 54% to 42%.
* In Florida, the Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT poll shows Obama leading Romney by nine points, 53% to 44%.
* In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, both the Quinnipiac/CBS/NYT poll and a Washington Post poll show incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) with double-digit leads over Josh Mandel (R).
* The same is true in Florida’s U.S. Senate race, where the same two polls show Sen. Bill Nelson (D) with even bigger leads over Rep. Connie Mack IV (R).
Romney becomes mendacious about mendacity
By Steve Benen
Wed Sep 26, 2012 12:36 PM EDT.
CNN’s Jim Acosta had a brief interview with Mitt Romney in Ohio yesterday, and asked about some of the more outrageous claims included in campaign attack ads. The Republican’s response was pretty remarkable, even by Romney standards.
Acosta noted that fact-checkers have raised concerns about some Romney/Ryan ads, and asked, “Haven’t you also played fast and loose with the facts from time to time?” The candidate replied, “We’ve been absolutely spot-on. And any time there’s anything that’s been a miss we correct it or remove it.”
When Acosta asked if this applied to the infamous welfare lie, Romney replied, “Absolutely,” and then proceeded to tell the welfare lie all over again.
As the guy who chronicles Mitt’s Mendacity, I’m almost inclined to take this personally.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/26/14112721-romney-becomes-mendacious-about-mendacity?lite
In the latest polling:
But here’s the key finding: In both states, majorities think the economy is either improving now or will improve under Obama’s policies.
In Florida that number is 56 percent; in Ohio it’s 58 percent. Simply put, the numbers who don’t think the economy will improve under Obama’s policies are too small right now for Romney to win. And get this: 62 percent in Ohio — where there is a significant auto industry presence — think the auto-bailout was mostly a success.
STICK A FORK IN ROMNEY; HE’S DONE. We need a good graphic. Where you at, SG2?
BWA HA HA HA Loving it!
LOL!
Posted at 08:53 AM ET, 09/26/2012
TheWashingtonPost
The Morning Plum: Mitt Romney’s conundrum deepens
By Greg Sargent
After discovering that his backward looking framing of the race — are you better off than you were four years ago? — isn’t working, the Romney campaign has vowed to place a greater emphasis on what this election means for the next four years. The new frame is: We can’t afford another four years like the last four.
That’s the basis for Romney’s new ad, which features him talking directly to the camera. He allows that both he and Obama care about poor and middle class families — which suggests he is back to running against the good version of Obama, i.e., the nice guy who is in over his head, rather than the bad Obama who wants to take your hard earned money and benefits away and hand it out to those other people. He paints a dire picture of the Obama economy, and says his policies will do better:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum-mitt-romneys-conundrum-deepens/2012/09/26/2d9a8c82-07c5-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html
Posted at 11:31 AM ET, 09/26/2012
TheWashingtonPost
Among Obama supporters, enthusiasm hasn’t dimmed
By Jamelle Bouie
A common theme we keep hearing from conservatives who are unhappy with the public polls is that the surveys assume a 2012 electorate that looks a lot like the one in 2008. For instance, The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost argues that we should be wary of polls showing a strong national and swing state advantage for President Obama for exactly that reason. It’s worth considering Cost’s argument, because we’ll likely be hearing a lot of this.
Cost wisely stays away from the controversy over partisan weighting; as many pollsters have noted, party identification is a fluid variable that changes with public attitudes. To weigh in one direction or another is to make a particular judgment about how things should look, not how they are. Instead, Cost focuses his attention on two things.
Averaging five polls — Rasmussen, Gallup, Survey USA, Battleground and Pew — Cost finds that Romney and Obama are tied among independents, which for him, doesn’t track with a race where one candidate holds a 4 to 5 point lead over the other. “You do not get a four-point lead overall with a tie among independents, unless you are squeezing substantially more votes out of your base than your opponent is,” Cost writes.
Of course, what could be happening is that more Dem-leaning independents are self-identifying as Democrats than is happening on the GOP side. If so, that would mean the remaining pool of independents could split evenly, even as the overall electorate favors Obama. We don’t know if this is the case, but the point is that there isn’t enough information to make a particular claim about how the race should look based on the independent vote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/among-obama-supporters-enthusiasm-hasnt-dimmed/2012/09/26/cb65e624-07e7-11e2-9eea-333857f6a7bd_blog.html
Posted at 01:05 PM ET, 09/26/2012
Mitt Romney blunders again on taxes
By Greg Sargent
Igor Volsky flags an important quote from Mitt Romney at an Ohio rally this morning:
Either that is an error by Romney, or he is freely admitting that is tax plan would target exemptions and deductions enjoyed by the middle class. Romney has claimed that his tax plan — which contains across the board tax cuts that disproportionately and hugely benefit the rich — will be revenue neutral, and that he will accomplish this by targeting loopholes that benefit the rich. But he hasn’t explained which ones he’d target, and the Tax Policy Center found that his plan could not pay for itself unless he also targeted loopholes enjoyed by the middle class, canceling out their tax cut and then some.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Romney’s Current 3.6 Percent Chance Of Winning
That is the current “now-cast” in Nate Silver’s model if the election were held today. Romney’s odds in late August peaked at 37 percent. So his odds of winning have been reduced by 90 percent in less than a month. We wait for Obama’s convention bounce to subside – and it bounces up once again. Now, Silver knows that there will be – surely – a regression to the polarized meme. His November 6 forecast gives Romney a 20.3 percent chance of winning. But the latest data from Florida and Ohio are just devastating. Ohio has probably gone for good, barring some dramatic shift. Here’s the poll of polls for Florida since June:
That’s with heightened sensitivity and includes Rasmussen. But even if you smooth it out as much as you can, Obama’s lead is solid. In Florida he is now polling higher than at any point this year and is well past the 50 percent mark. And this:
In the Florida poll, among the those who say they are “definitely” going to vote, more respondents identified themselves as Democrats (36 percent) than those who identified themselves as Republicans (27 percent); independents were 33 percent. The Florida poll found that Mr. Obama holds nearly a 20-point lead among women, while Mr. Romney’s edge among men is about 3 points.
I don’t think that Romney can buy this kind of shift back with casino money or Rovian slanders against a more popular man. He has to persuade those voters back. The debates are his last chance. But if Obama is seen as winning them – and the argument he has to make is simply more popular in specifics than Romney’s – I can see this race breaking even more open.
We have found that Romney in general loses votes the more he opens his mouth in public and private (two categories fast merging). He’s lost the core terms of this campaign (it’s now a choice, not a referendum), he has lost the specifics (the vagueness of his tax plan is indeed a red flag), he is insisting you can cut the debt by cutting taxes for the very rich like him, then calls half the country deadbeats, leading to ads like this:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/
Romney’s Sudden Make-Over #341
The one minute ad above is the Romney campaign’s response to the fundraiser tape fallout, deploying a drastically different tone from most of the campaigns ads and with Romney himself making the direct appeal to voters. Note how he repeats the word compassion and tries to draw a much more gentle contrast between himself and Obama.
The trouble is: the instant transformation might make things work. Voters could look at this and say “This is just another sales technique. He’ll try anything.” The ideological shape-shifter becomes a human shape-shifter. He actually underlines the difference between his snide, callow remarks about half of Americans at a big fundraiser … and this new Mr Rogers version. Roger Ailes would have planned this media image from January on. But the GOP base had their chance, and Jon Huntsman got nowhere. The whole thing reinforces my conviction that this is a party in a near death spiral.
They cling to bromides from 1979, trying to repeat the unrepeatable in utterly different circumstances. Both Romney and Ryan live in bubbles – among mega-money-men and life-long Rand-groupies – utterly alien to most Americans. This is a riveting moment: a party nearing the edge of what could be a psychic break. By which I mean
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/romney-goes-re-direct.html
Introduction: President Obama at Bowling Green State University
President Obama in Bowling Green, Ohio: Live Now
http://www.c-span.org/Campaign2012/Events/Pres-Obama-Campaigns-at-Ohio-Universities/10737434386/
Crowd in Bowling Green OH waiting for PBO
…He losing his base, don’tcha know! LOL
Wah Wah Wah..
LMBAO “SWEET JESUS!
Romney-Ryan= THE DREAM SCREAM!
hilarious..
one can carry only so much water for Willard.
LOL by now one side of Joey Scar’s body is lopsided.
Does Monsanto Man Mitt Romney Secretly Eat Organic?
—By Tom Philpott| Wed Sep. 26, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Mitt Romney hasn’t divulged many details about what kind of agriculture policy he’d pursue as president (sound familiar?). But all signs suggest that he’d follow the agribiz party line. As Wayne Barrett showed in a recent Nation piece (my comment here), Romney has ties to agribusiness giant Monsanto that date to the ’70s, when GMO seeds were an R&D project, not a business model. According to Barrett, Romney, then a young Bain consultant, helped nudge Monsanto on its path away from disgraced industrial chemical concern toward its current status as world-beating agribiz player. Then there’s the agribiz execs and shills the GOP nomineee tapped for his campaign’s Agriculture Advisory Committee.
But guess what? In the privacy of his campaign jet, the beleaugured presidential contender apparently eats organic, reports the Today Show’s Peter Alexander:
And, while I’ve never been invited up front, sources close to the campaign tell me the shelves are stocked with a wide variety of healthy fare. Kashi cereals, hummus, pita as well as organic applesauce. Everything’s organic, I’m told, including the ingredients to Romney’s favorite, peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/report-monsanto-man-mitt-romney-eats-organic
Alec MacGillis (TNR): Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are embarked on a multi-day bus tour of Ohio, even as Karl Rove is openly speculating about whether the Republicans ought to start thinking about doing what they’ve never done before – chart an Ohio-less route to the White House. “Look, there are 11 different ways to win without Ohio,” Rove said on Fox News Monday night.
Yes, it’s come to that: the man who secured George W. Bush’s reelection with a tremendous turnout effort in Ohio in 2004 is now on the verge of declaring the Buckeye State a lost cause. And that was before the latest Ohio poll came out, the Washington Post one this morning that has Obama up eight.
It’s worth stepping back to consider how remarkable this state of affairs is. Since Barack Obama started running for president, Ohio was supposed to be his Achilles heel.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/107729/how-obama-made-ohio-lean-dem-state
USA Today: If a new polls are any guide, President Obama has big leads in two states that could nail down his re-election: Ohio and Florida.
Obama leads Republican Mitt Romney by ten points – 53%-43% – in Ohio, according to the Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News survey.
Obama’s lead is nine points in Florida, 53%-44%.
The president also leads Romney by 12 points in Pennsylvania, a state the Democrats have carried in five straight presidential elections.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
By Steve Benen
Wed Sep 26, 2012 8:35 AM EDT.
Rep. Michael Grimm’s (R-N.Y.) career is off to a rocky start. The conservative freshman, in the middle of his first re-election bid, is campaigning while facing an investigation from the FBI’s public corruption unit, and subpoenas have already been issued as part of a federal grand jury probe. It’s generally not a good sign when politicians run into this kind of trouble.
But Grimm’s troubles took an even more curious turn over the weekend, when some windows were broken at his campaign office on Staten Island. Vandalism, of course, is never acceptable, but Grimm did his best to dramatize the incident, calling it a “politically motivated crime” that constituted an “assault on democracy” and an “attack on free elections.”
Even more importantly, Grimm also said the broken windows on Saturday night were part of a larger crime — the Republican said the vandals had also broken into one of his computers and erased “confidential” files. This seemed very hard to believe — the holes in the windows were far too small for a human to climb through — but that was the claim Grimm made publicly.
Yesterday, Grimm’s version of events took a turn for the worse.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/26/14110401-grimms-fairy-tales?lite
JohnJHarwood:
New NYT/CBS/Quinnipiac swing-state polls: Obama +9 over Romney in FL, +10 in OH, +12 in PA. Over 50% in all three.
Yes PBO is leading in these swing state polls, the very states that have been placing draconian voter suppression laws on their legislative books. Get out and vote people!
Posted at 03:07 PM ET, 09/25/2012
TheWashingtonPost
Obama, Jimmy Carter, and `poll denialism’
By Greg Sargent
I noted this morning that many Mitt Romney supporters are hatching crazy conspiracy theories to explain why the polls show him losing. Among them: the idea that the major news orgs are deliberately mis-weighting their polls with Dem-skewed samples, to create a false narrative of an inevitable Obama victory.
Steve Benen calls it “poll denialism.” Ed Kilgore has similar thoughts:
There are really only three ways to deal with all the evidence that Obama is ahead with time beginning to run out: (1) blame it on a bad Romney campaign; (2) argue some 1980-style “big shift” to Romney is inevitable and perhaps already baked into the cake; or (3) just deny it all on grounds most of the pollsters are wrong, biased or both.
Unsurprisingly, this last approach is wildly popular at the moment…if you don’t like what the current electorate seems poised to do, create yourselves another one more to your suiting that’s older, whiter and more conservative just by putting your thumb on the scale (which is exactly what “Party ID weighting” amounts to, with varying degrees of semi-justification).
Of course, it’s not 1980. The electorate is vastly different; if Obama does manage to holds a several point lead in the key states, it’s unlikely that the shrinking pool of undecided voters will break towards Romney in the overwhelming numbers he needs. And yet, as Dave Weigel notes, Republicans are still convinced that any day now, if only they go at Obama hard enough, they will finally be able to pry off his mask and get swing voters to see him as the second coming of Jimmy Carter:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/obama-jimmy-carter-and-poll-denialism/2012/09/25/231508ba-073d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html
The Diversity Of The White Working Class
John Sides takes a close look at the white working class vote:
In my experience, the white working class gets a ton of attention, especially when elections come around. It probably gets more attention that it deserves—particularly since its diversity means it’s that hardly a monolithic voting bloc and since there are lots of ways to build a winning electoral coalition in American politics with varying degrees of support from the white working class.
Weigel adds:
To win the election in a squeaker, Barack Obama needs to win around 39 percent of the white vote. But outside the South, if he’s winning, he’ll be basically tying Romney with whites or losing them by 2-5 points. He’s the first Democrat to win national elections in the post-Dixiecrat era.
Drum charted the regional differences:
In the West, Midwest, and Northeast, the white working class vote is fairly evenly split. Romney is slightly ahead in the West and Northeast, while Obama is slightly ahead in the Midwest. It’s only in the South that the white working class vote is overwhelmingly Republican, and this is what skews the national results, which show Romney ahead 48%-35%.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/the-diversity-of-the-white-working-class.html
25 Sep 2012 06:27 PM
Iowa Prepares To Vote
Scott Conroy reports on early voting efforts:
On Thursday, Iowa will become the first swing state to begin early voting. Once it has been gradually rolled out nationwide, early voting is expected to be even more consequential than was the case four years ago — perhaps all but foretelling the winner of the presidential race before Election Day comes around on Nov. 6.
For months, staffers and volunteers at the Obama campaign’s more than five dozen Iowa field office have worked relentlessly to encourage Democrats to request absentee ballots, which any registered voter in the state is allowed to fill out and submit before the polls open officially in six weeks.
As of Monday, registered Democrats had requested 109,709 such ballots in Iowa, while Republicans there had requested less than one-fifth of that total (20,458).
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/iowa-prepares-to-vote.html
Romneyhood and the Rouse of “Double Taxation”
Tuesday, September 25, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 4:56 PM
4Mitt Romney was asked on Sunday if it’s fair for people like him to be paying the low ‘capital gains’ tax rate while people who make money from work pay up to a top marginal rate of 35%. Unphased, Romney answered in the affirmative explaining that capital has already been taxed once, at the corporate level, which is what justifies the low rates on investment income (capital gains).
Let’s take that argument a little further. After all, corporations only make profit because consumers buy things, and they buy those products with the money they have after they paid taxes. So, the money corporations get from their customers has already been taxed once, right? Why should they pay tax on it again? Under this logic, no contractor you ever hire to work on your home should ever have to pay a dime in taxes, since you are paying them from your after-tax income. Any work that is paid for with after-tax dollars should then be tax free. And under this logic, the only time money should be taxed is when it goes from a corporation to you, via the means of compensating for work. Every other tax is “double taxation,” and thus unfair.
These arguments can be confusing, and even convincing, if we don’t understand the basic concepts of where the instance of taxation always occurs: at the point of transfer. This is the one characteristic all taxes have in common, and given that taxes are the way we pay for ongoing government, it is the only reasonable way to tax. You owe income/payroll taxes when you get paid. Sales tax is paid at the point money goes from your wallet to a retailer. If that weren’t the case, lots of taxes could be characterized as “double taxation.”
This, by the way, is the notion used to exempt the privileged from all sorts of taxes. Republicans want to get rid of the inheritance tax because, they argue, the inheritance has already been taxed once, and taxing it again at the time of inheritance amounts to “double taxation.” The fact that the people who are inheriting it never paid their share of taxes is irrelevant. And I suppose the fact that it means the children of the super wealthy get to inherit fortunes without paying any taxes on it themselves is just a happy side effect.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/09/romneyhood-and-rouse-of-double-taxation.html
Romney Negativity Muddies Message as Obama Leads in Poll
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis – Sep 25, 2012 7:00 PM CT
Republican Mitt Romney’s negative ratings are preventing him from capitalizing on President Barack Obama’s vulnerabilities in the race for the White House, according to a new poll that gives the incumbent a lead heading into the first of three presidential debates.
Half of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Romney — a September high for a presidential challenger in the last three decades — and 49 percent of likely voters consider the former Massachusetts governor out-of-touch compared with 40 percent who say that of Obama in the latest Bloomberg National Poll conducted Sept. 21-24.
Still, Obama heads into the closing stretch of the race with a majority of Americans — 53 percent — disapproving of his handling of the economy, and Romney holding a slim edge as the candidate likely voters rate best able to create jobs. The president does have one clear advantage — his economic plan is breaking through with more Americans, who give him a 48 percent to 39 percent advantage over Romney on having a vision for a successful future.
In the head-to-head contest, Obama leads Romney among likely voters, 49 percent to 43 percent, even as 60 percent of Americans say the nation is headed off on the wrong track as the president completes his first term.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-26/romney-negativity-muddies-message-as-obama-leads-in-poll.html
Polls Show Obama Is Widening His Lead in Ohio and Florida
¶ COLUMBUS, Ohio — For weeks, Republicans in Ohio have been watching with worry that the state’s vital 18 electoral votes were trending away from Mitt Romney. The anxiety has been similar in Florida, where Republicans are concerned that President Obama is gaining the upper hand in the fight for the state’s 29 electoral votes.
Those fears are affirmed in the findings of the latest Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News polls of likely voters in both states, which show that Mr. Obama has widened his lead over Mr. Romney and is outperforming him on nearly every major campaign issue, even though about half said they were disappointed in Mr. Obama’s presidency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/us/politics/polls-show-obama-widening-lead-in-ohio-and-florida.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
Anne Romney = IT’S HARD
First Lady Michelle Obama = I can’t complain; other families have it hard. My concern is for them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Albg8HfNWcA&feature=player_embedded
The cop in this film is sooooo stupid! How stoooopid is he? Well, he got caught because he submitted the cost of the drugs he planted on his expense account as a : “REIMBURSABLE EXPENSE OF DOING BUSINESS!”
Good Morning, Ed & Everyone. :-)
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Good Morning!
On the house for ALL!
Just what I like! ;)
Thank you!