HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread 10/5

by — ,

– The federal investment in public broadcasting equals about one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Elimination of funding would have virtually no impact on the nation’s debt. Yet the loss to the American public would be devastating.

– Romney Dominated Debate, Say Pundits Trying To Figure Out GOP Candidate’s Policies

– Rob McKenna wrote on Slog yesterday.

– Good jobs numbers. Also, it’s tough to find stories that don’t frame it as political (I understand why people frame it like that this close to the election, but still).

– In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.

– Bugs and poop are in our future.

Comments

  1. 1

    Polls out today in Key Swing States-
    Florida WeAskAmerica Obama 46, Romney 49 Romney +3
    Virginia Rasmussen Reports Obama 48, Romney 49 Romney +1
    Virginia WeAskAmerica Obama 45, Romney 48 Romney +3
    Ohio Rasmussen Reports Obama 50, Romney 49 Obama +1
    Ohio WeAskAmerica Obama 46, Romney 47 Romney +1

    Again, it may not last but clearly Romney kicked Obama’s ass in that debate, for whatever it’s worth, and here are some results.

  2. 2

    Having spent time in SE Asia and the Indian sub-continent where many bugs are aggressive enough and big enough to take down mammals I prefer to simply leave them off the menu. The poopwater is, however, a given. Water is a finite resource, there is already a chance that the water in your coffee maker was recently in someones toilet, just removed and processed several times. After a five year exile I recently escaped from Las Vegas which already recycles its effluent via Lake Mead. Some Southern California cities have started to leave out the interim steps. Toilet to tap is closer than you think.

    And how ’bout that Mitt? He sounds like some of my former students when challenged as to the accuracy of their research papers….or in my case the horsepower and torque numbers of their engine projects…..my facts are as valid as any facts!

  4. 4

    @1 Jerry,

    You keep hoping for change there fella.

    Gekko/Galt is the anvil
    We are the HAMMER!

    Hammer it home

  5. 5

    Remember that Gekko/Galt chest thumping over who won the debate on Wednesday? And the wailing of Obama supporters?

    Well, a skunk can’t change its stripes, and Slick Willard just really couldn’t help himself and had to lay in to Big Bird. You know, that character that the 47% moochers watch on the free TV.

    How Big Bird can teach two political candidates a new lesson

    Mitt Romney’s mention of the beloved Muppet isn’t the first time Big Bird’s name has popped up in an argument over public broadcasting funding. But this time, the mention went viral on Facebook and Twitter.

    The phrase “Big Bird” was appearing 17,000 times every minute on Twitter. At midnight, CNN reported that mentions of Big Bird on Facebook were up an astronomical 800,000%.

    You know who loves Big Bird? EVERYBODY!

    Gekko/Galt is the anvil
    We are the HAMMER!

    Hammer it home

  7. 7

    In other polling news ….
    September Is the Best Fund-Raising Month for Obama in 2012

    President Obama’s campaign raised more money in September than any candidate has raised in a previous month this year[snip]
    Mr. Obama and his allies at the Democratic National Committee raised more than $150 million in September.[snip]
    The campaign said on Monday that it had collected money in more than 10 million individual donations, a record.

    10 million donors translates into 10 million+ campaign volunteers. Ground game bitches!

  10. 10

    WRT religious intolerance – glad to see someone is taking on the shreiking Pammy Geller and her racist ranting (she’s a big Randian as well, BTW).

    Makes me think of a Facebook exchange I’ve been having with a former high school classmate – who has moved to North Carolina and found NASCAR and God.

    He told me yesterday, that he heard on ‘church radio’ KLOVE, that Obama had denied that this is a Christian nation and that ‘their actions support that they’re a Muslim administration’. He is worried that the government is ‘going against scripture’.

    How does one respond to such stupidity?

  13. 13

    @2 Curiously, tap water in the LA area is now considerably better quality than it was, say, 25-30 years ago. It used to taste strongly of limestone and rust from the LA Aqueduct. (At its worst, mind you, it was nowhere near as disgusting as I suspect tap water in Phoenix is to this day.) Perhaps more/better filtering and treatment of supply water has somewhat compensated for less-than-perfect processing of wastewater.

    Then we can talk about the Salton Sea (shudder!)

  14. 14

    Speaking of drinking water….

    I’m still amazed at the concept of a water bottling plant in Anacortes. They want to take water from the Skagit River? I mean, have you seen what ends up downstream in our rivers?

    When my kids were rowing, our club held a duel regatta with one of the “blue-blood” crews that regularly rows on Lake Washington. The coxswains got a special instruction on how to steer in a river with a tidal current, as opposed to just gliding across the lake.

    I got a special kick when these tiny gals (coxswains are usually small) when they got their final instructions: “Okay, just a few final notes. This is a working river, which means that you have to get out of the way of tugs and barges coming downstream – even if you are in the middle of a race. And avoid logjams and dead cows floating in the river, they can break your boat in half. And try not to fall into the river – it’s got lots of fertilizer and cow poop in it, and who knows what else.”

    The teenage girls, who just minutes ago were barely awake for the 7:00 a.m. briefing, had eyes the size of silver dollars. “Why do we have to row HERE????” they were muttering to one another.

  15. 15

    Romney to staff, on the unemployment numbers (as heard by a fly on the wall):

    “Wow, dodged a bullet on that one. Good thing the debate came before the report. Hopefully the numbers will be back up before I have my next debate involving domestic policy. Who else can we call to have their company put off hiring for another month?”

  16. 16

    # 1: Who the heck is “We Ask America”? I haven’t heard them listed as one of the major polling organizations.

    My wife complained that she got three calls on her cell phone from pollsters this past week, and one of them was a push-pull poll.

  17. 17

    Why do republicans hate funding anything that could be educational to other people’s kids?

    Cutting support to PBS to reduce the deficit is like trimming your toenails to lose weight.

    Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500G hard drive.

  18. 18

    Game changing news today ….
    the NRA has endorsed Gekko/Galt. Oh, yeah. Nevermind.

  21. 21

    @18
    The NRA’s just endorsed the guy who signed some of the most restrictive state guns laws. Nice!

  22. 22

    @20
    The Republican’s have tried to kill PBS & NPR a bunch of times and every single time it hasn’t worked and it’s turned around and bit them in the ass. These people are incapable of learning.

  25. 25

    17. No Time for Fascists spews:

    Why do republicans hate funding anything that could be educational to other people’s kids?

    They see it as the only way to continue to claim that they, their ancestors, and their progeny deserve their wealth because they are “more intelligent” than others. If they limit the numbers having access to a decent education to those who can afford to pay it’s highest tuitions, then they have rigged the playing field.

    Of course, it’s just like the scoundrels to consider “competition” to first involve holding everyone else down, and then claiming victory when they win? Mitt Romney’s son, in one of his stories where he tried to make his Dad seem more “human”, described a family foot race where he tripped up his daughter-in-law so he could win.

  26. 26

    Been super busy this week but I caught this nugget on the radio a bit ago. (When did KVI become the station that plays third rate right-nuts. They’re like the Federal Hockey League of talk radio.)

    Don’t even know the show host but he was bleating about BLS numbers and pointing out that if you add up all the people unemployed, underemployed and working at 40% or less of their expected pay level, you get 23 Million Americans, and then he hit, “That’s an un/underemployement rate of 21%” That’s why it jumped out at me. 23 million isn’t even close to 10% of the population.

    And that’s why talk radio on both sides is bad for intelligence. I’m going to round here. There are 308,000,000 people in the U.S. so 23Million is about 7.5% which is not 21%. So let’s break it down to people of employment age not including seasonal teens (24%) and Seniors generously assuming they all retired at 65 (13%) and aren’t in the labor market, just people over 18 and under 65. 53% of 308million is 163Million. 23Million from a labor pool of 163Million is 14% which is pretty close to the current U6 level.

    So he tossed out 21% knowing it has no basis in reality (or he read it on a blog and didn’t check) knowing that people in their cars aren’t going to check. He’s an expert on the radio, he must be right. This isn’t strictly a right wing radio phenomenon.

    Yes, I am a giant nerd for thinking about this. Getting your info from the radio will often make you wrong.

  28. 28

    @27
    BB don’t need no safe house…he and Grover are going to open a can of whoop ass on Willard any minute now!

    (3….2…1…Cap’n Crunch comment about safe houses and Benghazi being our generation’s Pearl Harbor)

  29. 29

    @1, 16, 19

    Since those polls came out this morning, “We Ask America” has been thrown in to a 403 error. I got on the homepage before I started my day but it was so slow I never got to any actual data. So not enough money to handle an uptick in bandwidth OR they really don’t want anyone seeing their methodology.

  31. 31

    “Cutting support to PBS to reduce the deficit is like trimming your toenails to lose weight.

    But, but, but Bob says, since raising taxes on the rich doesn’t solve the debt problem in itself, why bother? But he’ll shoot Big Bird to save a few bucks.

  32. 32

    2012 runner up, de facto 2016 Republican presidential front-runner and currently Willard Rmoney campaign surrogate, Santorum, has something to say to undecided voters about this here Big Bird controversy.

    “I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past,” Romney’s ex-primary rival said. “I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird. You can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them

    “Pro-life” Republicans, killing the things they love.

  33. 33

    One of the big things holding back corporate spending and hiring is the prospect of the U.S. economy going into a tailspin if Ron Paul’s budget sequestrations take effect. The only way to avoid sequestration is to have an agreement on a budget.

    So let’s look at the scenarios.

    (1) Romney wins Presidency, Republicans retain House and take Senate. No action on budget until Romney and new Senate take office in January, economy is on teeterhooks waiting to see what they would do.

    (2) Romney wins Presidency, Republicans retain House, Democrats retain Senate. No action until January unless Obama and Democratic Senate agrees to cave in entirely (sort of like the Dec. 2010 deal to save unemployment benefits).

    (3) Obama wins Presidency, Republicans retain House, Republicans gain Senate. No budget deal at all unless on Republican terms (defense not cut, taxes on wealthy cut, safety net virtually eliminated).

    (4) Obama wins Presidency, Republicans retain House, Democrats retain Senate – back to square one (where we were earlier this year, budget deadlock).

    (5) Obama wins Presidency, Democrats win House, Democrats retain control of Senate – a budget gets passed, financial markets sigh in relief, U.S. and world economy start to improve.

    (3)

  34. 34

    You know that stereotype of Slick Willard and the Republicans being anti-worker oligarchs who would do anything to their employees to put just a little more gold on top of their mountains of gold?

    Coal Miner’s Donor
    A Mitt Romney benefactor and his surprisingly generous employees

    The accounts of two sources who have worked in managerial positions at the firm, and a review of letters and memos to Murray employees, suggest that coercion may also explain Murray staffers’ financial support for Romney. Murray, it turns out, has for years pressured salaried employees to give to the Murray Energy political action committee (PAC) and to Republican candidates chosen by the company. Internal documents show that company officials track who is and is not giving. The sources say that those who do not give are at risk of being demoted or missing out on bonuses

    Gekko/Galt is the anvil
    We are the HAMMER!

    Hammer it home

  35. 35

    The Obama Job Numbers are pure bullshit. Even Liberal Economists are calling them “flukes” aka bullshit

    Liberal economist Dean Baker, with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the September rate drop “almost certainly a statistical fluke.”

    They ought to be revised quickly. But hey, it’s Obama’s appointee in charge of the numbers!! What a surprise. The Chicago Mafia will do anything to win. Crooks. Even the in the tank MSM is calling bullshit on this disgrace.

  36. 36

    @30

    There’s been quite a few Gary Johnson signs popping up around my place. Romney, not so much.

  37. 37

    The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) people are rather offended at the attempts to claim that their numbers are affected by political considerations. They have quite a few economists on their staff, and multiple layers of cross checks.

    I’ve worked with BLS folke before, we shared our data with them regarding exports and the value of sales exported from the U.S. They seemed very professional, and frequently called me asking to explain whenever numbers didn’t match normal variances. Their most important consideration was accuracy.

  38. 38

    Jack Welch attacked the unemployment numbers, joining the chorus or right-wing lunatics and Romney supporters.

    For those who know Jack Welch, it’s not much of a suprise. He spent twenty years turning G.E. from a manufacturing company to a financial holding company (with a few notable exceptions). His tenure at G.E. was well publicized as he laid off hundreds of thousands of employees and closed down businesses which didn’t meet his requirement of being (# 1 or # 2 in the industry), earning the name “Neutron Jack” (he killed the employees but the buildings were left standing, like a neutron bomb). Each year he fired 10% of the managers and gave bonuses to the top (favored) managers. In the meantime he recieved bigger and bigger bonus and stock option packages, and was worth an estimated $720 million as of 2006. When CEO pay, including backdating of stock option strike prices, perks, and other such abuses became the subject of criticism, he became ballistic, claiming that government had no right to interfere with executive compensation, even for publically-traded companies.

    In short, ideologically he’s a Romney clone, and the business practices he helped to pioneer have been the source of many of the problems we now face as a country.

  39. 39

    By the way, Harry Stonecipher was a colleague of Welch at G.E., and McNerney was groomed as a potential successor of Welch. Stonecipher was responsible for dismantling Boeing’s ability to produce aircraft parts in-house, out-sourcing the work, scrapping the tooling, and laying off the employees with decades of experience. McNerney was responsible for much of the 787 debacle, choosing to make the 787 not according to the systems and processes which Boeing used for the 777, but instead using the McDonnell-Douglas manufacturing systems (McDonnell-Douglas hadn’t successfully put a new airplane from design to full production since the mid-1980’s, and had continual costs in doing so). He also out-sourced all but the final assembly of the 787 (Stonecipher’s vision), but didn’t have quality controls and oversight in place at the various vendor’s factories.

  43. 43

    @40,

    Well, so far the debate hasn’t hit Obama all that hard.

    Ras is saying Mitt’s ahead in VA/FL and close in OH, yet the swing state tracker poll has Obama up 50/45; and 49/47 on the national.

    Which makes absolutely no sense at all to me; but I’m not a statistician.

    As for your article, it doesn’t say how much Romney is spending; or whether it will even equal what Obama is spending; did I miss something. It read like an advertisement for Mitt’s advertisements.

  44. 44

    @ 43

    I don’t disagree with your second through fourth paragraphs.

    I do think the debate has hit Obama hard, just not in ways that can objectively be measured. His campaign is scrambling. Perhaps as many as 70 million people watched him get beat on Wednesday.

    Next time we’ll see a different Obama, and it may be as humorous to watch as the difference between Al Gore in debate 1 and Al Gore in debate 2 was.

    Meanwhile, Romney’s stoked, Republicans are stoked, people like Peggy Noonan have been schooled without Romney having to say a word to her, and the donors that were in the process of shifting to Obama now are stopped dead.

    The swing-state aggregate polls and the national polls don’t matter. What matters is turnout in the swing states. Poll data won’t be all that representative over short periods of time. Let’s see poll data several days after the VP debate. That might be more telling. Ryan might school Biden or Biden might smack down Ryan even without providing much in the way of informational data. My money would be on Ryan right now because there’s probably no one better to point out Obama’s failures than he.

  45. 45

    @40

    You’re just so precious, Cap’n.

    Is this the carpet bombing?? *snort*

    You haven’t seen the Ipsos data right after the debate? Where Romney did indeed improve – only with Republicans, and Obama markedly improved with Independents?

    No?

    Release the hounds? You’re just precious.

  46. 46

    @ 45


    You haven’t seen the Ipsos data right after the debate? Where Romney did indeed improve – only with Republicans, and Obama markedly improved with Independents?

    Well, then, Obama has nothing to worry about, does he?

  48. 48

    @ 45

    I hadn’t seen the poll until you brought it up. Here’s the link and it was a Reuters/Ipsos poll:

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/.....6458.story

    According to this poll, Obama lost four points in two days:

    The online tracking poll conducted between Monday and Friday showed 46 percent of likely voters backed Obama, versus 44 percent for Romney.

    Obama had led Romney by 6 percentage points in the poll released on Wednesday and the edge narrowed to five points – a 48-43 percent lead for Obama – in polling up to Thursday. That was the first including a day of interviews after the meeting in Denver.

    The article also had stuff like this:

    In more bad news for Obama, one in five voters said the Democrat’s performance in the contest in Denver on Wednesday made them feel more negative about him and almost a third said they felt more positive about his Republican challenger.

    and this:

    It remained to be seen whether his weak performance in Denver will become a long-term problem for Obama. He has two more chances to redeem himself in debates – a second is set for October 16 and the third is on October 22.

    Lib Despair, that’s Reuters writing in the article about their own poll, conducted with Ipsos. Are you sure your takeaway @ 45 is a realistic intepretation of the poll?

    You’re starting to sound like the Iraqi Information Minister, man. “The Tigris is full of downed American planes!! What bombs just outside?”

  50. 50

    @46

    Obama has nothing to worry about, does he?

    No, I don’t think he really does. Do you really think Willard is going to pull this out?

  52. 52

    I do think the debate has hit Obama hard, just not in ways that can objectively be measured.

    Only in ways that can be perceived in Cap’n Crunch’s wet dreams.

  53. 53

    @51
    A Republican presumes to lecture anyone on decorum?

    Puh-leez.

  54. 54

    @ 50

    Do you really think Willard is going to pull this out?

    Here’s what I think:

    1. Take away Obama’s personable appeal to voters and this election is over. He’d be toast. The economic data do not support retention of the incumbent. Pure and simple. People like him so they may keep him regardless of his performance.

    That’s what you’re hoping for. I think Darryl made a nice statement when he said he was happy about what’s happened in the past 3 3/4 years. OK. But that’s not what much of America thinks right now and that’s not what most Americans think when the economy is doing……. not well.

    2. Romney is the best thing the Republicans have to offer. Snicker, laugh, guffaw, whatever. He’s the best candidate in 2012, among those willing to run. So the GOP at least is leading with its best.

    3. Conservatives have rallied around Romney. To be sure, a great many have done so because they detest Obama, but they’ve rallied around Romney. The percent of Republicans polled who say they’ll vote for Obama is as small as the percent of Democrats who say they’ll vote for Romney.

    4. The GOP is motivated. They’re motivated by hate to some extent, but so was the Democrat party in 2004. Motivation means turnout. They will be there.

    I’ll use this opportunity to throw out something I’ve been reading this week. Dunno if it’s been on HA by anyone else, dunno if I believe it, would be very interested if Darryl would comment, but here it is:

    Polls, ballot requests suggest Romney overtaking Obama in Ohio

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10.....z28TcRw11K

    I don’t know what it means when the GOP is requesting so many more ballots as a percent of the electorate than they did four years ago. I’ve been told that the GOP prefers to show up in person to vote while Dems prefer to do the mail-in thing. Dunno.

    But this is different than four years ago. In OH, at least, the GOP seems to be showing much more relative interest in this form of voting than it did four years ago. It may not mean anything but I don’t think it’s a positive for Obama and it might be a harbinger of sorts.

    5. Polls might not reflect reality. Pollsters willing to state what they think national turnout will be this year are saying numbers around D +3. So when you see a national poll that has Dem voter participant up +8 or higher, there’s something very wrong. Turnout was more or less even in 2010 and D +7 in 2008. This ain’t 2008.

    6. Most polls have Romney winning independents. Obama needs independents.

    7. Obama is consistently below 50%. Sometimes he gets to 50% but he’s more like 46-48% most of the time. Yes, there’s 1. above, but he’s not at 50% very frequently.

    8. The economy is faring less than well and today’s numbers, while not a disaster for Obama, also aren’t all that great, unless being below 8.0% unemployment is going to be a huge benefit to him. Maybe it will be. I don’t know. But a lot of revision went into the current numbers, and apparently more incremental jobs were counted in the last month – 873,000 – than has happened since 1983. We didn’t increase our job creation fivefold in the past 30 days. We just didn’t. We added 114,000 jobs and the number of unemployed fell by 456,000. So a whole lot of reclassification occurred somewhere. I’m not going black helicopter on this. I’m just wondering what the next adjustment will be and whether it will occur on November 2nd or in December or January. I don’t know.

    But the economy is what counts.

    9. Foreign policy is no longer Obama’s advantage here. Libya information expands by the day and none of it looks good to Obama. People in intel are talking and memos/emails are dropping. Every day there’s a new revelation. And it’s not Fox or Drudge, necessarily. It’s Eli Lake at the Daily Beast/Newsweek/TinaBrownwhocommentsfrequentlyonMSNBC, and it’s CNN. Those are not traditionally anti-Obama news organizations and they’re doing a good job with this, so far.

    10. Univision. Obama got hit twice by them in quick succession – the interview in which they asked tough questions and the expose’ on Fast and Furious in Mexico and in other Spanish-speaking nations. Latinos saw this, and I think it might sink in although I don’t know. It won’t gain Romney votes but it might cost Obama votes and/or turnout.

    11. Ryan/Biden debate. I don’t know how this will turn out but would you be willing to bet it’s a net plus for Obama? I think that, if you were honest, you would express significant concern. That would be a very dangerous time to Let Joe Be Joe. Ryan doesn’t miss much.

    I’m tired and it’s almost 6:30 but maybe I’ll pick this up later.

    Yes, I really think that Romney has a solid opportunity. I really, really do.

  55. 55

    The Democrat Party & Obama Campaign is filled with whiny bed-wetters. Their guy Obama has 1 horrible night and they panic screaming LIAR about Romney, juicy the unemployment numbers, continuing to lie about our Ambassador for Libya asking for more protection. You idiots have over-reacted and guess what? Independents don’t like that. You should be focusing on these swing voters who are looking for leadership they can trust. How does all the hot rhetoric and screeching LIAR help you do that? Fools. But hey, thanks! Knew we could count on your over-emotional reaction to make this a very close election.

    You idiots are so hysterical, you are now pinning your hopes on a strong performance from JOE BIDEN???
    http://thehill.com/homenews/ca.....ial-debate

    WTF.
    The Democrat Party and Obama Campaigning are melting down because of an emotional over-reaction.

  56. 56

    Ok, so soon the Obama-juiced Unemployment numbers will be revised. In addition, Obama will need to explain the 4th straight trillion dollar deficit. Team Romney is jumping all over this. This is from Associated Press–

    A new estimate puts the deficit for the just-completed 2012 budget year at $1.1 trillion, the fourth straight year of trillion dollar deficits on President Obama’s watch.
    The result was a slight, $207 billion improvement from the 2011 deficit of $1.3 trillion.
    The bleak figures from the Congressional Budget Office, while expected, add fodder for the heated presidential campaign, in which Obama’s handling of the economy and the budget is a main topic. Friday’s release came as the government announced that the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent last month, matching the rate when Obama took office.
    “President Obama once promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, but … he’s broken that promise, and has presided over his fourth straight trillion-dollar budget deficit,” said Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan. “The President’s reckless spending habits have burdened the American people with another $5.4 trillion in debt while failing to bring a real recovery for the 23 million Americans struggling for work or the 15 percent of Americans living in poverty.”
    The 2012 deficit was 7 percent of the size of the economy, an unsustainably high level. The figure is lower than the first three years of Obama’s presidency, but higher than any other year since 1947.

    Oh yeah, the Obama Regime has Mr. Clutch, Joe Biden, waiting in the wings to make all this sound great. That ought to make you all feel better. Joe Biden being called on to save the day. I’m laughing so hard it hurts.
    Then you had some idiot TV commentator who screams racism if his coffee isn’t hot enough screeching that Obama performed so poorly BECAUSE HE IS BLACK AND COULDN’T BE SEEN AS AN ANGRY AGGRESSIVE BLACK MAN. WTF.
    Even Democrat analysts called this lunacy.
    You fools are literally handing Romney the election.

  57. 57

    @54

    All horserace, no conviction.

    I’ve been asking you for months for 5 simple little reasons why I should vote for Willard Romney. What is he going to do for America? How is he going to make our lives better?

    You haven’t, ever, produced such a list.

    It’s not because you won’t, but because you can’t.

    Your long-winded post above – it’s all horserace, all arguments why Obama will lose, but nothing about why Romney should win.

    Don’t you see the vacuousness in that?

    Don’t you see that Americans don’t like Romney, not on a whim, not about friendship, but that they can sense there’s no core there. He will quite obviously say anything that he thinks his immediate audience whats to hear. He’s a cipher.

    Say what you will about Obama, but people sense a core, a real human motivated not by MORE! but by service.

    Now, I think Obama is WAY to conciliatory and WAY too centrist, but he’s orders of magnitude better than your hollow schmuck who wants to kill Big Bird.

  58. 58

    @54

    What that looks like you posted is this morning’s talking points for you keyboard commandos at the wingnut mothership to mainline into the liberal sites you’re assigned to fuck with.

    Way to go, Cap’n.

  59. 59

    Ok, so soon the Obama-juiced Unemployment numbers will be revised.

    You mean revised upward, just as the last few months had been, right?

    Moran.

  60. 60

    Can you find the political slant in this piece?

    The result was a slight, $207 billion improvement from the 2011 deficit of $1.3 trillion.

    I’d say it was calling a 20% decrease in the deficit, year-to-year “slight”.

  61. 61

    The figure is lower than the first three years of Obama’s presidency, but higher than any other year since 1947.

    Translation:

    Deficits ballooned massively under Bush II (SSHHHH! HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED) bigger than anything since the Great Depression and WWII, and under Obama’s improved stewardship, they’re shrinking.

  62. 62

    5. Polls might not reflect reality. Pollsters willing to state what they think national turnout will be this year are saying numbers around D +3. So when you see a national poll that has Dem voter participant up +8 or higher, there’s something very wrong. Turnout was more or less even in 2010 and D +7 in 2008. This ain’t 2008.

    It really just blows any shred of credibility that you might have tried to cling to when you go all poll-truther like that.

    Just hang it up, Cap’n.

  63. 63

    2. Romney is the best thing the Republicans have to offer. Snicker, laugh, guffaw, whatever. He’s the best candidate in 2012, among those willing to run. So the GOP at least is leading with its best.

    Now that’s just sad and pathetic.

    You feel good because your guy is better than Herman Cain and Ricky Santorum and Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich?!

    My, what phase of grief are we in? Is there ‘delusional’ between ‘angry’ and ‘bargaining’?

  64. 64

    @ 57

    All horserace, no conviction.

    Lib Despair, I believe, firmly, that between the two choices, Romney will be better than Obama.

    That’s all you need to know. I’m not here to respond to each and every one of your requests. I’m here to counter the lovefest for Obama that is HA.

    I have a deep conviction to spend the next four weeks and four days pointing out to you every chance I get why Obama is unlikely to be re-elected.

    One can revel in the positives of one’s chosen candidate. Or, one can smear the negatives of one’s opponent candidate in that candidate’s supporters’ faces.

    I much prefer the latter. Your responses are very much part of the reason I do.

    Oh. One more thing.

    My consolation, should Obama be re-elected, Lib Despair, is that your children, and not I, will foot the bill for the nation’s decision.

    To all, a fond adieu.

  65. 65

    Cap’n Crunch sez…

    I don’t know what it means when the GOP is requesting so many more ballots as a percent of the electorate than they did four years ago.

    You should have stopped with “I don’t know”.

    You link to a piece of Daily Caller AgitProp that breathlessly reports about the impending Romney Ohio “blowout” based on “data” collected by what is reported as a “nonprofit” but failing to mention that it’s a right-wing activist organization. It collected data purporting to compare rates of absentee ballot requests by party between 2008 and 2012. Dolt, you can’t compare those, because the data from 2008 are final, and the data from 2012 are incomplete. They don’t make a valid comparison.

    Moreover the Daily Caller piece quotes a “University of Dayton Professor” about the impending blowout, but fails to mention that he isn’t a disinterested expert, but the author of trash like 48 Liberal Lies About American History.

    Do you have nothing but this easily shredded amateur-hour propaganda?

    This is what you’re basing your wordy analyses on?

  67. 67

    @ 65

    To repeat myself, regarding the Ohio absentee ballot thing, I don’t know. It’s why I wondered aloud what Darryl might think of it (inviting him to smack me down in the process, of course).

    I also don’t know what to make of this:

    with certainty, the data does support that the changes in voter registration in Cuyahoga County have made it extremely difficult for Obama to win Ohio.

    http://pjmedia.com/blog/ohio-p.....epage=true

    By throwing this stuff out there all I’m trying to do is make people think, criticize, and perhaps rebut what I’m reading. It’s why I’m here. I know what people on the right think. I want to know how the same material is looked at by people on the left.

  68. 68

    I’m not here to respond to each and every one of your requests.

    You’re sounding more like puddy every day.

    Or, one can smear the negatives of one’s opponent candidate in that candidate’s supporters’ faces.

    Especially when their candidate has no actual positives of their own, at least positives that supports are willing to talk about in mixed company. Unrelenting upward wealth transfer isn’t one of them.

    What ever happened to “You make me think, I make you think.”?

    My consolation, should Obama be re-elected, Lib Despair, is that your children, and not I, will foot the bill for the nation’s decision.

    Yup, just another I GOT MINE!!!! Republican.

    Hang it up, Cap’n.

  69. 69

    Kos is a left-wing activist.

    Doesn’t mean he’s not right an awful lot of the time.

    I would not disagree. However, facts have a well known liberal bias, and the Daily Caller is a right wing propaganda outlet with no discernible relationship with truth. Not an analogue to DailyKos at all.

    The piece you linked to, in particular and as I showed, was a tissue-paper-thin piece of wishful mal-analysis aimed at low information fools.

    You really need to do better if you want to avoid being eclipsed by puddy as a source of intelligent right-oriented analysis.

  70. 70

    @ 68

    You’re sounding more like puddy every day.

    And every time you suggest I’m some sort of paid plant to harass you divine leftist Obamabots on HA, Lib Despair, you sound more and more like Rujax.

    As I watched this video:

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-G.....-in-Debate

    I tried to envision which of the people being interviewed would match up with the characters on HA. Came up with a few pretty close matches.

    Which of them do you think reminds me of you, Lib Despair? I’m pretty sure I saw your UW twin in the video. If only they panned out a ways so I could see whether she was wearing the same kneepads you do.

  71. 71

    Liberal Scientist is a Dirty Fucking Socialist Hippie is also a whiny bed-wetter. Typical of the unhinged left that resort to name-calling to try and sway independent, undecided voters.
    You vulgar bastards will cost Obama the election, but your perpetual anger has blinded you to what you ought to be doing…defend Obama’s record.
    That’s why Obama got his ass kicked in the debate. Defending his economic record was impossible.
    BTW, Obama defending his abysmal foreign policy record which is a policy of weakness and appeasement, ought to be even more hysterical.

    @70–
    I saw the Wisconsin video. Those folks represent the average IQ of an Obama supporter. Less than 80. Talk about uninformed.
    And of course we have Al Goreski blaming the elevation.
    We have some bonehead trying to inject racism..that Obama couldn’t go on the attack for fear of being perceived as an angry black man.
    The list of excuses just keeps coming..prolonging Obama’s agony.
    If the left weren’t so unhinged, they would merely say Obama did not perform up to his standard and will do better next time.
    Instead, we are still talking about it.
    Thanks Fools

  72. 72

    Have you noticed how physically unattractive the average Obama supporter is at these rally’s?
    Holy Shit.
    The Ugly Stick is working overtime, especially in Wisconsin.
    I’d be angry too if I was as ugly as some of those hairy-legged broads.

  73. 73

    What, no comment about the Times endorsing Koster?

    The Times says Koster’s “views are well known and consistently applied over decades in elective office and public service” while DelBene is only known “from the campaign trail.” The Times further says that “Koster understands the fragility of the economy from the Main Street level, and the anxiety and uncertainty of the small-business operator. He is equally conservative about ending overseas conflicts and cautionary about going to war without a clear mission and exit strategy.”

    The Times adds, “We disagree with Koster on social issues, but in Congress right now, his fiscal viewpoint and elected experience are what�s needed,” which is notable given that almost everything the Democrats and DelBene are saying about Koster right now is bizarrely about abortion, while our economy and federal government’s fiscal health are, to put it mildly, in the toilet.

    The Times actually gave precisely the reason they ought to be endorsing Romney!

  74. 74

    Jerry @ 73,

    “What, no comment about the Times endorsing Koster?”

    Ummm…I hate to shake ya, there, Squirt, but nobody is the least bit surprised that the Seattle Times would endorse Koster.

    What fucking planet do you inhabit?

  76. 76

    @ 75

    I wonder if Anthony Weiner found Breitbart credible?

    Truthfully, I don’t wonder at all about that.

  77. 77

    Bob @ 76,

    “I wonder if Anthony Weiner found Breitbart credible?”

    Apparently, God got the last word on Breitbart’s credibility!

  78. 78

    @ 73

    The Times actually gave precisely the reason they ought to be endorsing Romney!

    Actually, I thought they gave a pretty good reason for not endorsing Romney, although a ‘No endorsement’ decision would have been my preference.

    As I recall, the standout reason they gave for not endorsing Romney was a lack of specifics. Post-debate that’s being addressed to some extent (I won’t provide a link but check around – stuff was written today) although it’s more than a little bit overdue.

    I think it’s fine for me to jab Lib Despair with anti-Obama stuff and not address his requests for pro-Romney defense from me.

    It’s not fine for Romney to avoid specifics. Let’s hear ’em.

  81. 81

    I see I’m not the only one @ 78 discussing the lack of specifics this week:

    “But, where are the answers? I mean, why aren’t you more specific? …”

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....-at-rally/

    She ended the letter with a question for the president: “My next question is to President Barack Obama. What is your specific plan to fix the economy you said you would fix 4 years ago?”

    Let’s hear it, Mr. President. Other than raising taxes on people you expect to do the hiring, what’s your plan?

  83. 83

    Bob,

    “I think you mean Allah, not God.”

    Ummm…Allah and God are identical deities (the God of the Old Testament), so either way…..

  85. 85

    @84 –

    “I think you mean Allah, not God.”

    It’s kind of amazing how much arrogance
    & religious intolerance
    can be packed into just 7 words.

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