Category: Barack Obama

Do You Believe the Ohio Polls?

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McDonald’s sign in Galion, Ohio, offers congratulations to local
high school football players David Nay and Nathan Cass.

GALION, Ohio
A recent series of three polls — by the Washington Post, Quinnipiac and Fox News — show Mitt Romney getting blown out of the water in Ohio, and those of us who are skeptical about these numbers (c’mon, 10 points?) are being derided as “poll denialists.”

It is worth pointing out that these polls were all taken in the immediate aftermath of the “secret video” uproar, and all of them are now at least five days out of date. The Fox poll was taken Sept. 16-18, the WaPo poll was taken Sept. 19-23 and Quinnipiac’s poll was taken Sept. 18-24.

There has been no new public polling since Monday, which is significant in that Paul Ryan and Romney spent three days this week campaigning in Ohio — Lima, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo. We must ask: Do polls matter more than the campaigns themselves? Do the national media control the narrative to such an extent that 4,000 people turning out for Romney in Toledo can be dismissed as irrelevant? Is all the grassroots effort by Americans for Prosperity moot?

We’re still four days away from the first debate, Wednesday in Denver, and yet we are being told that Obama’s headed for a landslide victory in Ohio, and thus re-election Nov. 6.

Really? Reports of declining Democrat registrations don’t justify even a tiny smidgen of doubt about this allegedly foregone conclusion? Let’s consult another poll:

A new survey by Gallup asked Americans how much trust and confidence they have in the mass media — newspapers, television and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly: a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all. The result shows that “trust” disappeared long ago. Trust becomes disgust.
Gallup has been taking this measurement over the past decade or so, and the erosion of trust has been consistent and steady since at least 1998. Twelve years ago, 53 percent of Americans told Gallup that they had “a great deal” or at least “a fair amount” of trust in the media. By this year, only 40 percent of Americans put their trust in newspapers, television and radio to tell them what’s going on in the world. A remarkable 60 percent said they had “not very much” trust or “none at all.”

How do underdog candidates — and let’s admit Mitt is the underdog at this stage of the campaign — cut through the media filter? On Wednesday, for the first time, Americans are going to get a chance to see Romney and Obama on the same stage, head-to-head, and if you think that debate is going to be a walkover for Obama, you don’t remember the Jan. 26 debate in Jacksonville, Fla., where Mitt fatally lacerated Newt Gingrich.

Keep in mind that Romney doesn’t have to be declared hands-down winner of that debate in order to “win.” All he has to do is to “look presidential,” avoid gaffes and get in a couple of good zingers and everything that happened before will be forgotten.

Should that happen — if Mitt scores at least a draw in the first debate — the narrative changes and, by the time Paul Ryan meets Joe Biden in the Oct. 11 vice-presidential debate, we’ll be hearing about a race that is a neck-and-neck horse race.

Yet there are those Ohio polls, and there are those who are willing to take the polls as evidence that the campaign is all but over. Doug Ross lists some of the improbable beliefs necessary to buy into this argument:

[Y]ou have to believe that the Tea Party never organized or simply disappeared into thin air
[Y]ou have to believe that Obama’s act of adding $6 trillion — 60 percent — to the national debt, which has resulted in the country’s first credit downgrade, is wildly popular . . .
[Y]ou have to believe that the 2010 tidal wave election never happened

You don’t believe that, do you? No, of course not.

Frankly, despite all the certainty of the pollsters and pundits, I don’t think most people in Ohio (or anywhere else) are paying much attention to the campaign at this point. In the parking lot of this McDonald’s in Galion, there is not a single car with a bumper sticker for either Obama or Romney and, driving around the state this week, I haven’t seen a lot of yard signs.

Obama may be ahead in Ohio right now, but the campaign is far from over, because many voters haven’t yet made up their minds. The attempt by the Obamaphile media to create the appearance of an early decision — with the help of the polling firm of “Madoff, Marist, Quinnipiac and Ponzi” — ought to be rejected as the propaganda ploy it really is.

Understand that most Ohioans are currently more concerned with Ohio State football (the Buckeyes beat Michigan State 17-16 today) than they are with the upcoming election. These sensible Midwesterners, who two years ago elected Republican John Kasich govern0r and Republican Rob Portman to the Senate, are unlikely to buy into a lot of media hype going ’round.

 



 

PREVIOUSLY:

This Lawlessness Should WARN All Americans About Second Obama Term

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by Smitty

Insty helps us get to some interesting details about the “Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988“.

. . .a United States labor law which protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide sixty- (60) calendar-day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees.

Now, this administration has been unable to get a budget passed, and, having blown off its own Simpson-Bowles Commission, has the DoD on the brink of sequestration cuts.

The terrifying truth has the administration wetting itself:

But the Friday guidance from the Office of Management and Budget raised the stakes in the dispute, telling contractors that they would be compensated for legal costs if layoffs occur due to contract cancellations under sequestration — but only if the contractors follow the Labor guidance.
The guidance said that if plant closings or mass layoffs occur under sequestration, then “employee compensation costs for [Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification] WARN act liability as determined by a court” would be paid for covered by the contracting federal agency.

Let me see if I grasp this: OMB is telling employers that, as long as they toe the OMB line, the employers can blow off the law, and the government will have their six.  Is it legal to encourage lawlessness like this?

This should be referred to the Court of Public Opinion for a vote in November. Americans, if you can’t read between the lines here, and see the danger, what more is there to say? Based on this, and the pattern of behavior in which these shenanigans fall, I reasonably expect that BHO is going to quantitatively ease himself into an open-ended term. The 22nd Amendment isn’t going to get any more respect than the WARN Act from this creep.

Update: more at Maggie’s Notebook

Update II: linked at Walla Walla Tea Party Patriots

The New O-Phone Is Here!

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Many people are excited about Apple’s latest upgrade to the iPhone, but this Obama voter was even more excited about the free phone she got because (she says) of President Obama:

Rush Limbaugh says this is the “new model citizen,” and liberals have predictably rushed to condemn this as RAAAAACIST:

The Obama Phone video belongs to a genre popular on conservative blogs in which poor people, usually black, confirm conservatives’ worst 47-percent fears by saying they can get something for nothing because Obama’s in office. The message is, “Here’s what Obama’s supporters really look like.”

That item, by the way, is by Elspeth Reeve, whose career was launched in disgrace by the Scott Beauchamp scandal, and who has yet managed to fail her way upward to the Atlantic, proving once again that liberalism can excuse any sin committed on behalf of the liberal cause.

Fabricated stories and shabby ethics? No problem!

Exactly how Reeve got this gig as the expert mind-reader of conservative bigotry — The Racism Whisperer — I don’t know, but I agree with Patterico’s defense of the free-phone video:

Conservatives should not have to shy away from such amusing examples of entitlement mentality simply because the particular proponent of that mentality happens to be black.

By the way, I was waaay ahead of the curve on this free cellphone issue, having first reported about it in October 2008. That’s right — the free cellphone program pre-existed Obama’s election.

So the Democrats have their usual defense: Blame Bush!

UPDATE: Charlie Spierling of the Examiner provides background on the free phone program:

The program is called Lifeline, established in 1984, originally created to subsidize landline phone service for low income Americans, funded by government-collected telecommunication fees, paid by consumers.
In 2008, the program was expanded to support cell phones which quickly escalated the cost of the program. In 2008 the program cost $772 million, but by 2011 it cost $1.6 billion.
A 2011 audit found that 269,000 wireless Lifeline subscribers were receiving free phones and monthly service from two or more carriers. Several websites have been created to promote “free” government cell phones, including the”The Obama Cell Phone” website at Obamaphone.net.

Yes: Taxpayers are forced to pay $1.6 billion — billion, with a “B” — to provide free cellphones for Obama voters.

And if you don’t like it, you’re a racist!

 


Get on the Bus! AFP Leads ‘Obama’s Failing Agenda Tour’ Across Ohio

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FINDLAY, Ohio
By one of those strange flukes of luck, my buddy Nathan Martin got in touch with me yesterday to tell me that Americans for Prosperity’s “Obama’s Failing Agenda” bus tour of Ohio would be in the area today. So I met up with them in Perrysburg and rode the bus down I-75 to Findlay, where there will be a “Hands of My Health Care” rally today at 6 p.m. at Findlay Square (318 Dorney Plaza). Friday, there will be events in Sidney, Troy and Dayton.

When people drive past the bus, they often honk to show their support. The bus is also accompanied by the “Has Brown Worked For You” van, highlighting the record of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Visit FailingAgenda.com to learn more.

 Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!


Samuelsohn: ‘President Barack Obama Is Trying Hard To Win Veterans. . .’

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by Smitty

I guess Darrenn Samuelsohn’s opener may be true for ‘pander’ values of ‘win’. Viewed through some distorted Lefty lens, where veterans are just a large, disciplined special interest that can be bribed into line with programs and platitudes, #OccupyResoluteDesk really could be trying hard.

But veterans of all services spend a great deal of time in the weather. They know rain. They also know when that warm fluid down the back is something else entirely.

Obama’s veterans-outreach efforts have been “failing because voters understand that his defense cuts threaten our position as a global power, unemployment for returning veterans is at an unacceptable level, and the VA system is breaking under a backlog of disability claims that has doubled on his watch,” Williams said.
Ray Kelley, national legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said he expects Obama will have some success this fall with the post-Sept. 11 generation of veterans because of the Iraq War and his programs for returning troops. But older veterans — the majority conservative white males — will probably stick with Romney, and that’s despite Obama’s work on many of their issues.

Sweet, sweet raaaaace card! But no: you could swap Mitt Romney with Herman Cain with scant effect on the numbers. Why? Because veterans are steeped in meritocracy. Which is why Cain, or other staunch Americans like Allen West, enjoy massive veteran support. Conversely, even the idle curiosity that might have garnered Obama a few military followers initially has long since worn away.

Veterans tend toward more or less intense support of our Constitution as written. Not many veterans may formulate or agree with an analysis as deep and thoughtful as Dinesh D’Souza’s 2016. Many vets may opt for something shorter: “Frickin’ Commie,” for example. How else to react to “Corpse-man” or “General McRaven”, or a party that puts Turkish planes over Soviet ships behind an Admiral speaking at the DNC?

“Trying hard”? Really? If that’s the notion of trying, I’m sure would hate to see subtle contempt. Oh, wait. Maybe we have.

via Instapundit

 

Separated At Birth: Dick Tracy / Robert Gibbs Edition

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by Smitty

I’m probably being unfair to Dick Tracy here, as he’s at least an honorable cartoon character, juxtaposing him with a cretin like Gibbs.

Keep lying, Gibbs. The more you urinate down the back of the American public and call it rain, the more it motivates honest Americans to make sure that you and your lying masters are separated from levers of power on a permanent basis.


What a godforsaken tool.

Both via Breitbart