The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Polls: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies?

Posted on | September 26, 2012 | 12 Comments

DAYTON, Ohio
By the time you read this, I expect to be on the road to the Columbus suburb of Westerville, where Mitt Romney will have a rally with a special guest, golf legend (and Ohio native) Jack Nicklaus. Doors open at 6 a.m. for the event that begins at 8 a.m. and a recent poll shows 47 percent of readers believe I’ll be driving 90 mph to get there.

Why should we care what the polls say? Why has second-guessing polls become such an obsession of Republicans in recent weeks? That’s a main theme of my American Spectator column today:

Nearly 4,000 people turned out Tuesday to cheer Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at an airport rally here, their numbers and enthusiasm contradicting polls that show President Obama leading by a wide margin in the Buckeye State. This contradiction inspired me to conduct my own poll, although my methodology might not have been entirely scientific: I walked up to the crowd behind the barricade and shouted, “Does anybody here believe the polls?” The crowd shouted back in unison: “No!”
Perhaps my survey wasn’t based on a random sample, but I’m pretty certain of the conclusion: Republicans here are profoundly skeptical of polls indicating Obama on the verge of walking away with Ohio’s 18 Electoral College votes. Nor is this skepticism limited to Ohio. A Web site devoted to examining sources of bias in polls, UnskewedPolls.com, has become increasingly popular among Republicans. The site’s proprietor Dean Chambers echoes many in pointing out how “the weighting and/or sampling of Democrats, Republicans and independents in each survey” can produce numbers wildly at variance with the likely results on Election Day. Many of the polls that show large advantages for Obama also show a “skew” in party identification toward Democrats – over-representing them compared to their numbers in previous elections — which can be “enough to make the results unreliable,” as Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com says.
What causes conservatives to complain about these skewed polls is that so many journalists seem more interested in covering the polls than in reporting about the actual campaign. This produces headlines and TV coverage that seem intentionally designed to demoralize Republicans and persuade undecided “swing” voters — who have a tendency to vote for the candidate they perceive as the likely winner — to support Obama. The polls which most favor Obama, including a Washington Post poll released yesterday that showed Obama leading by 8 points, get hyped by the media and are incorporated into a pre-fabricated media narrative that depicts Romney as hapless, ineffective and “out of touch.” That such poll-driven coverage could function as a self-fulfilling prophecy — in fact creating the result it pretends to predict — is an increasing worry for conservatives. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

Category: American Spectator, Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Mitt Romney, Ohio, Polls

LIVE AT FIVE: 09.26.12

Posted on | September 26, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Romney, Ryan Double-Team Ohio

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney greet supporters

Ohio Newspaper Association poll claims Obama up 51-46

President Urges UN To Confront Roots Of Muslim Rage
Warns that time to peacefully resolve Iranian nuke crisis running out

Did Liz Warren Practice Law In Massachusetts Without A License?
Collected money for representing corporations against asbestos victims, union retirees



POLITICS
Romney Confident Despite Poll Numbers

Romney & Ryan campaigning in Vandalia

WaPo poll shows Obama with alleged 8-point lead in Oiho
Related: Rigging the polls?

Senate Conservative PAC May Fund Akin After All

Selma City Council Stops Work On Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue

Mayor Bloomberg Gives $75,000 To Dissident NY Democrats’ State Senate PAC, Also Hands $1 Million to NY GOP Senate PAC

New York A Busy Battleground Of Competitive House Races

Ethics Panel Clears Rep. Waters, Reproves Grandson/Chief Of Staff

Columnist Arrested For Vandalizing NY Anti-Jihad Poster



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Down, Gas Up, And Gold Even As Dollar Gets Stronger; NYMEX $90.77, Brent $111.00
Yahoo Replaces CFO As CEO Draws Up Turnaround Plan
Staples Under The Gun
Caterpillar, Apple Push Wall Street Lower
Sheila Bair Brings Out Financial Crisis Skeletons In New Book
Barnes & Noble Unveils $199 Nook HD
Wells Fargo Latest Bank To Be Hit With Cyberattacks
RIM CEO: We Have A Clear Shot At Number 3
Foxconn Factory Reopens After Riot
Toys R Us Sued Over Nabeo Tablet



SPORTS
Lingerie League, Lawmakers Pile On Replacement Refs

Not good enough for the NFL, but they’re working Monday Night Football?

So bad even Scott Walker wants the union refs back

Kottaras’ 10th-Inning Homer Lifts A’s Past Rangers

Freddie Freeman Sends Braves Back To Post-Season With 9th-Inning Dinger

Beckett, Dodgers Lose 2-1 To Padres

Twins Rally, Hand Yankees Costly Defeat


Price Goes The Distance, K’s 13 As Rays Drop Red Sox 5-2

Cubs Fall To Rockies 10-5 In Game Mercifully Shortened By Rain

Wright Ties Mets Hit Mark In 10-6 Loss To Pirates

Nats Can’t Escape Early Hole, Lose 6-3 To Phillies



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Bristol Palin Returns To DWTS: Lighter, Hotter, More Determined

Bristol Palin, then and now

Attributes weight loss to “cutting out the junk”, chasing baby Tripp

Madonna Exhorts Fans To Vote For “Black Muslim In The White House”

Lady Gaga Poses In Underwear, Dishes On Eating Disorders

Lil’ Wayne Deposition Short On Memory But HILARIOUS

Justin Timberlake’s MySpace Gears Up For Relaunch

Miley Cyrus Beds Ashton Kutcher

FX Teams With Coen Brothers, Noah Hawley For Season Adaptation Of  “Fargo”

Lindsay Lohan: Stress-Induced Asthma?



FOREIGNERS
As Spain Prepares For More Austerity, Rioters Battle Police
Explosions Rock Downtown Damascus; Blasts Aimed At Air Force HQ, Central TV Station
PRC, Japan Foreign Ministers Meet In New York To Discuss Senkaku Islands Flap
BBC Apologizes To Queen For Abu Hamza Leak
Nork Leadership Announces Educational Improvements; No Word On Economic Reform
Former PM Shinzo Abe Elected Head Of Opposition LDP
South Africa’s Julius Malema Faces Legal Trouble, Arrest Warrant



BLOGS & STUFF
WyBlog: Let’s Send This High School Marching Band To North Korea!
Jammie Wearing Fool: Brown Staffers Taunt Warren Supporters With War Whoops, Tomahawk Chops
NRO Corner: Elizabeth Warren, Coal Miners’ Foe?
Gateway Pundit: Romney Campaign Challenges Biased Media Polls
Allen West: “The President Continues To Offer Apologies…”
Victory Girls: Obama’s UN Speech Says “Don’t Slander The Prophet Of Islam”
Atlas Shrugs: Mona El-Tahawy Arrested For Assault While Vandalizing Anti-Jihad Poster
Jihad Watch: Leftists Rejoice At Vandalism Of Pro-Freedom, Pro-Israel
Mickey Kaus: Will MSM Start Working For Mitt?
NewsBusters: CNN’s Acosta Asks Romney How He’d Assure Blacks He’d Be Their President Too
Lonely Conservative: Love Takes The Lead, Receives Vile Packet Of Hate
Beltway Confidential: David Brooks Is Dead Wrong

Category: Live at Five

SCENES FROM ROMNEY-RYAN RALLY

Posted on | September 25, 2012 | 3 Comments

Mitt Romney speaks while Sen. Rand Paul (left), vice presidential
candidate Rep. Paul Ryan and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman listen.

DAYTON, Ohio
I blogged about the huge crowd for today’s rally at the Dayton Airport Expo Center in Vandalia, including singer Lee Greenwood, and someone on Twitter replied demanding photos, but I couldn’t get photos to upload on the available WiFi at the airport.

OK, so here it is, along with some other photos (click to enlarge any of them) showing the size of the crowd and other scenes from the event.

He’s proud to be an American — aren’t you?

This wide-angle shot (and I urge you to click and see it full-size) gives you a partial idea of how big the crowd was. The crowd wrapped around on both sides and behind the camera riser from which the photo was taken.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman is interviewed by a TV crew after the rally.

Romney adviser Kevin Madden answers questions during an informal press “gaggle” after the rally.

A button vendor displays his wares after the event. I chatted briefly with him and he explained that he travels all over the country — it’s a full-time job — selling this merchandise at Republican rallies. So I guess Mitt Romney has already started creatings jobs and he’s not even president yet!

 



 

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Category: Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Mitt Romney, Ohio, Paul Ryan

Free @NiceDeb !!!

Posted on | September 25, 2012 | 33 Comments

by Smitty

 

 

NiceDeb is one of the solid blogs on the right, and a friend of this blog for years. ToS violation my left foot. She’s being harassed.

Update: thanks for the assist, Instapundit!

Update II: NiceDeb is back, thanks to an outpouring of help from all, including Doug Ross.

Category: Blogging

ROMNEY-RYAN AT DAYTON AIRPORT

Posted on | September 25, 2012 | 8 Comments

VANDALIA, Ohio
Awaiting the arrival of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at the Dayton Airport Expo Center, an outdoor rally under gray overcast skies. There is a cool wind — it’s about 65 degrees — and intermittent drizzle.

A huge crowd of several thousand people here who don’t believe the polls. Seriously, I just conducted a non-random survey of the crowd, shouting out, “Is there anybody here who believes the polls?” A resounding “no.”

UPDATE: The Romney plane just taxied to a stop here. The hottest site on the Web today is UnskewedPolls.com.

UPDATE II: Paul Ryan: “After four years of getting the runaround, it’s time for a turnaround.”

UPDATE III: Mitt mentions that Rob Portman spends his weekends playing Barack Obama in debate practice. “He’s good at it, too. When it’s over with, I want to kick him out of the room.”

Here’s an article about Team Romney’s pushback against the skewed polls.

UPDATE IV: Talking about the importance of small businesses, Mitt just told the story of a guy named Jimmy who graduated second from the bottom of his high school class. Jimmy started out making sandwiches in his family’s garage. “And now Jimmy John’s . . . employs 60,000 people.”

UPDATE V: Event is over. Official attendance was 3,800. There was just a brief press gaggle with top Romney campaign adviser Kevin Madden, who said: “We don’t make any decisions in this campaign based on what public polls say.” He said it’s a close race, and he expects it to remain “close all the way to November.”

I’ve got photos, but for some reason can’t get them to upload here, so I’ll get those up in a subsequent post when I get back to the motel.

Category: Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Mitt Romney, Ohio, Paul Ryan, Polls

PAUL RYAN IN CINCINNATI

Posted on | September 25, 2012 | 17 Comments

CINCINNATI, Ohio
At Byers Steel for a Paul Ryan rally and the WiFi is much better than yesterday. The original press release said that Mitt Romney would also be here, but there’s been a schedule change and R-Money won’t join us until this afternoon (2:30 p.m.) at Vandalia.

UPDATE: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul introduced Ryan, who began by cracking jokes about the Green Bay Packers’ defeat in Monday night’s NFL game, comparing Obama to the replacement refs.

UPDATE II: During Q&A, Ryan was asked about Democrats’ attacks on the GOP’s Medicare reform proposals. “Can you give us a three- or four-sentence response?” the man asked. Ryan replied, “How about a three-word response? It’s not true.”

UPDATE III: Dude! Ryan just came within a few words of saying “Higher Education Bubble.” He said that government keeps “pumping money into” colleges and universities, and spoke of the need to get to “the root cause of tuition inflation.”

UPDATE IV: The last question for Ryan was about the threat of a nuclear Iran. He exited the stage to the rocking sounds of AC/DC’s “Runaway Train.” Next stop, Vandalia.

A sign reminds those arriving at the event that early voting is already underway. This is a working steel factory. The townhall event was held in a warehouse area full of steel I-beams and rebar.

A MoveOn.org banner among the handful of protesters — no more than two dozen — outside the event, which drew several hundred people on a rainy Tuesday morning. I say “several hundred” because the official number, 1,500 seemed a good bit high to me. The Associated Press lady sitting beside me in the media filing area says she thought maybe a thousand people were here.

Just bumped into Mike Biundo, who managed Rick Santorum’s primary campaign and is now working for the Romney campaign. Mike says he’s now assigned to Ohio “for the duration,” and that the campaign’s internal polls show a much closer race than the absurd Washington Post poll showing Obama ahead by 8 points (which, naturally, Politico is hyping).

Category: Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Ohio, Paul Ryan

Cracking Under Pressure?

Posted on | September 25, 2012 | 10 Comments

DAYTON, Ohio
No, not me. I haven’t lost it yet. I’m talking about Team Obama telling reports to “f–k off,” among other things. The situation is not as rosy for the Democrats as the media would have you think, but I’m under pressure — gotta drive to an event in Cincinnati this morning — so I’ll just quickly cite my American Spectator column:

Reporters circled around Reince Priebus at a campaign rally Monday in Lima and one asked the Republican National Committee chairman what he thought of polls showing Mitt Romney trailing President Obama in this crucial battleground state. Priebus said he was satisfied that the GOP challenger was “within a field goal” of the incumbent, and made a bold prediction: “We’re going to outspend the DNC 10-to-1 [in Ohio] for the next six weeks… We’re going to crush ’em on the ground.”
Such confidence might surprise those millions of Americans who know only of the presidential campaign what the major news media tell them. More than 1,500 people turned out in Lima on a Monday afternoon to see Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan. The size of the crowd that packed inside the Allen County Veterans Memorial Civic and Convention Center might seem a significant indicator of GOP strength in the heartland, but it was scarcely noticed or mentioned in the horse-race coverage of the election campaign. Instead, the media’s narrative of the race relies heavily on poll numbers suggesting that Obama’s re-election is all but assured. Among these is the most recent Ohio poll, by the University of Cincinnati, that showed Obama above the magic 50-percent threshold, leading Romney by five points, 51-46.
This theme was made explicit in an Associated Press article over the weekend with the headline, “Tide shifts to Obama in most competitive states.” Such tendentious reporting has drawn increased skepticism from critics, including Tom Blumer, who suggest it is part of a deliberate effort to create a false sense of momentum for the Democrat. And when the media are caught in gross errors — e.g., reporting that 18,000 people attended an Obama rally at a 5,000-seat arena — this skepticism seems entirely justified. In fact, there are reasons to believe the momentum has actually begun to shift toward Romney and Ryan, given the recent debacle in Libya, which Ryan hit hard in his speech Monday in Lima. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

 



 

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Category: Uncategorized

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

Posted on | September 25, 2012 | 8 Comments

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

 

Category: Barack Obama
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