Friday, September 14, 2012
The continuing saga of Mitt Romney's (lack of) Tax Returns (VIDEO)
Why should we be entitled to less information about Mitt Romney than Mitt Romney requires of Paul Ryan?
Probably because we don't count for very much in his eyes.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Over the next few months you have a choice to make. (VIDEO)
Over the next few months you have a choice to make. Not just between two political parties or even two people. It's a choice between two very different plans for our country.
Governor Romney's plan would cut taxes for the folks at the very top, roll back regulations on big banks, and he says that if we do our economy will grow and everyone will benefit.
But you know what? We tried that top-down approach. It's what caused the mess in the first place.
I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way. So that we can afford to invest in education, manufacturing, and homegrown American energy for good middle class jobs. Sometimes politics can seem very small. But the choice you face, it couldn't be bigger.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
Can someone explain Haqqani network logic to me?
Some stuff in this world just blows my mind.
Okay, so let me get this straight:
"Hey, we're holding one of your Soldiers hostage, but if you designate us as Terrorists, then we'll kill him"??
And that's supposed to make you somehow...what? Less Terroristy?
Seriously??
Okay, so let me get this straight:
"Hey, we're holding one of your Soldiers hostage, but if you designate us as Terrorists, then we'll kill him"??
And that's supposed to make you somehow...what? Less Terroristy?
Seriously??
Senior members of the Haqqani network said that the United States' designation of the militant group as terrorists could endanger the life of an American soldier thought to be in their custody and jeopardize peace talks.
"The Obama administration and U.S. military commanders know that their soldier Bowe Bergdahl is in our possession," a Haqqani commander told NBC News in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location on Friday. "He is in our custody, but his government failed to make any sincere effort for his release, and now this new development could add to his woes."
The Haqqanis, a Pashtun tribe with strongholds in southeastern Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, have been blamed for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and other high-profile assaults in Afghanistan. The group is also believed to be holding U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured in 2009 in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, bordering Pakistan’s South Waziristan.
In Mitt Romney's world "Cars get the Elevator, and Workers get the shaft" (VIDEO)
Yeah, we know what you're sayin'.
Nothin' could be finer than to be in Carolina, and seeing Gabby Giffords (VIDEO)
Still gives me chills.
Victory over violence. Victory over death. Most of all, victory with just a few simple words.
Victory over violence. Victory over death. Most of all, victory with just a few simple words.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Sandra Fluke's complete Speech before the DNC (VIDEO)
"We’ve also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we’d have the right to choose. It’s an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That’s the difference."
Elizabeth Warren's complete Speech before the DNC 2012. (VIDEO)
"I’m here tonight to talk about hard-working people: people who get up early, stay up late, cook dinner and help out with homework; people who can be counted on to help their kids, their parents, their neighbors, and the lady down the street whose car broke down; people who work their hearts out but are up against a hard truth--the game is rigged against them."
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Watch in amazement as @ABC News commits Journalistic malpractice right before your very eyes (VIDEO)
This is one of those stories that seems designed and destined to produce mixed feelings in me. In the end, though, you'll see my feelings are not that mixed.
On the one hand, it's freakin' Ashley Judd. Big time, actual Movie Star, talking about how she schleps it, like the rest of us Volunteers, hoofing it from door to door on behalf the President in freaking Tennessee! For that alone, she deserves major, big-time kudos.
But she's the only one who deserves kudos. ABC News, on the other hand...
Honest to God, WTF?? There is a speech is being made by Former Governor Ted Strickland, and he's absolutely KILLING IT. This is what would be called, you know...actual news...something usually covered by something called a News Organization, or in the case of ABC News, an Organization with "News" in its name. But no, ABC News elects to skip actual news, and talk to the Movie Star.
Epic...freakin'...fail.
What amuses me so much, is that Journalists seem to get really, really peeved when they see how much (at times) the public truly hates them. What they never seem to understand is that this is the stuff that makes us hate them.
CNN Interviewer surprised Kamala Harris is so popular. We in California are not. (VIDEO)
She's on a fast track to Governor.
I don't like Cory Booker anymore, but he gave a good speech. (VIDEO)
I am no fan of Cory Booker.
Too self interested (granted, all Politicians are, but he is nakedly so), and his Bain Comments were beyond the pale for me. He won't be getting any support from me should he try for National Office, because I just don't trust him.
But he gave a great speech Tuesday, kicking off the convention.
Too self interested (granted, all Politicians are, but he is nakedly so), and his Bain Comments were beyond the pale for me. He won't be getting any support from me should he try for National Office, because I just don't trust him.
But he gave a great speech Tuesday, kicking off the convention.
"The work begins anew. The hope rises again, and the dream lives on." (VIDEO)
The dream will NEVER die. We miss you, Senator Kennedy.
Deval Patrick's Speech before the Democratic National Convention (VIDEO)
"It’s time for Democrats to stiffen our backbone and stand up for what we believe. Quit waiting for pundits or polls or super PACs to tell us who the next president or senator or congressman is going to be. We’re Americans.
We shape our own future. Let’s start by standing up for President Barack Obama."
Carina Castro's stealing the show at the Democratic National Convention (VIDEO)
This is the complete speech, but it's going to be a great thing to see his little girl in the White House one day.
Monday, September 3, 2012
President Obama Speaks to Troops at Fort Bliss, Texas (VIDEO)
President Obama's really gotten into Unit Pride. Just listen to the responses he gets when he names individual units.
Friday, August 31, 2012
The Truth About Romney Economics: John from GST Steel
"Bain Capital didn't care one iota about this plant, this group of employees. The only thing Bain Capital cared about was a quick buck."
The Truth About Romney Economics: Randy from Ampad
"When you're put to the street like that, no one can imagine what it's like to have that ripped from under you in just a matter of minutes."
The Truth About Romney Economics: Cindy from Dade
The 850 jobs that Bain Capital eliminated in Miami allowed those workers a Middle Class Lifestyle. They could send their kids to college.
But those are not the kind of jobs Mitt Romney creates.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
When Mitt Romney came to town (Bealsville, OH) he cost everyone a day's pay.
Welcome to Mitt Romney's America:
What the hell is Mandatory...but no one was forced to attend mean exactly??
When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.
The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.
A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.
Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend." He said the company did not penalize no-shows.
What the hell is Mandatory...but no one was forced to attend mean exactly??
The GOP's Debt Hypocrisy...
When the Republicans talk about the Debt during their convention, the one thing they're going to leave out is that pesky part about how they're the one's who ran it up.
Expect Bill Clinton's speech to bring down the house.
I think we can expect a tough-as-nails, bring-down-the-house speech from former President Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.
Here's why:
Here's why:
James Bennet notes the following unguarded aside by Karl Rove to the Washington elite's stenographer, Mike Allen. Rove was unsurprisingly comfortable enough to say the following about a chat with Mitch Daniels:
And I said, 'Mitch, is there a white Democrat south of Indianapolis who's supporting Obama who's not a college professor in Bloomington?' [Laughter] And he stopped for a minute over his green beans and says, 'Not that I can think of.'
You know, Indiana's gone.
The simple assumption of racial politics as the driver of campaigns is what's striking. Karl Rove became what he is - a persistent whitehead on the face of American politics - because he learned the art of race-baiting politics in the South. Romney - having given up on Lainos and blacks and gays - is now betting the bank on the white resentment that has been fast losing potency since the 1990s. Which is where Bill Clinton comes in. He is used in that ad. His speech at the DNC should take on this lie aggressively, call Romney personally on it, and demand that the lie end. No one has more cred on this than Clinton. He should punch hard.
In many ways, this is the biggest moment in Bill Clinton's post-presidential life. Killing racial wedge politics would be a fitting finale to his life's work on that subject.
President Obama revs up the Federal Response to Hurricane Issac
President Obama swings the Federal Government into action, in anticipation of what is now Hurricane Issac, and pleads with local residents not to tempt fate, but to listen to their local officials, and when they give the word to go...GO!
Jindal asks for more assistance from Federal Government, doesn't see the irony.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal won't be at the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week. With Tropical Storm Hurricane Issac bearing down on his state, this is how it should be.
But at the same time, the Republicans in Tampa are going to be spending a lot of time crying about how President Obama has turned America into a "Dependent State", moaning about the debt (which they ran up), and the role of the Federal Government in general.
When you hear them say that today, again and again...and when you stop rolling on the floor, laughing out load, remember this story. Remember, which of the Republican All-Stars is going to the Federal Government asking for more money.
It's not that Gov. Jindal shouldn't ask for help. He absolutely should. It's his job
It's that Gov. Jindal doesn't get to turn around and bitch about anyone else asking for Government help...ever again.
But at the same time, the Republicans in Tampa are going to be spending a lot of time crying about how President Obama has turned America into a "Dependent State", moaning about the debt (which they ran up), and the role of the Federal Government in general.
When you hear them say that today, again and again...and when you stop rolling on the floor, laughing out load, remember this story. Remember, which of the Republican All-Stars is going to the Federal Government asking for more money.
It's not that Gov. Jindal shouldn't ask for help. He absolutely should. It's his job
It's that Gov. Jindal doesn't get to turn around and bitch about anyone else asking for Government help...ever again.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Even Windsocks are more consistent than Mitt Romney (VIDEO)
Do not, REPEAT, do not try to follow Mitt Romney's positions on anything. It just produces migraines.
"MassCare is a model for the nation". "I'd repeal Health Care Reform". "It's great for Massachusetts, where I got healthcare for all". "But it's a bad idea for the Nation as a whole". "It's a part of my plan in 2008". "It's bad now that President Obama has passed it".
Black is white. Up is down. Dogs and cats living together...Mitt Hysteria!
Poll: Latinos Prefer Obama By 39-Point Margin
I'm sure in Republicanland, this Poll is excellent news...for Mitt Romney.
A poll released on Monday from Latino Decisions shows that Latinos registered voters prefer President Barack Obama to presumtpive Republican nominee Mitt Romney 65 percent to 26 percent. The results are in line with previous polls showing Obama ahead amongst the key demographic -- the PollTracker Average shows the President ahead of Romney by a 29.2 percent margin overall.Of course, this poll won't mean anything if Latinos don't show their strength at the polls this November.
The poll also showed that 56 percent of Latinos also believe the GOP is ignoring their concerns, while 21 percent added that they believe the Republican Party is 'hostile' to Latinos.
Mitch McConnell waves the white flag on the Missouri Senate Seat...
Just because he's giving up on it, doesn't mean we stop fighting:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Republicans can withstand losing the Missouri Senate race, where the party has cut off support for Rep. Todd Akin in his challenge to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, in the wake of Akin's false comment about "legitimate rape" not leading to pregnancy.
"We can take the Senate without Missouri," McConnell USA TODAY. "It'd be a lot easier to take it with Missouri."
Charlie Crist endorses President Obama, and prepares a speech for the DNC.
Methinks Charlie Crist won't be an Independent for long.
Oh, and there's that little speech he's preparing for next week.
I have no doubt that Charlie Crist is a small-c Conservative, but this values are perfectly in line with Democratic ones.
As Republicans gather in Tampa to nominate Mitt Romney, Americans can expect to hear tales of how President Obama has failed to work with their party or turn the economy around.
But an element of their party has pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students that they've proven incapable of governing for the people. Look no further than the inclusion of the Akin amendment in the Republican Party platform, which bans abortion, even for rape victims.
The truth is that the party has failed to demonstrate the kind of leadership or seriousness voters deserve.
Pundits looking to reduce something as big as a statewide election to a single photograph have blamed the result of my 2010 campaign for U.S. Senate on my greeting of President Obama. I didn't stand with our president because of what it could mean politically; I did it because uniting to recover from the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes was more important than party affiliation. I stood with our nation's leader because it was right for my state.
President Obama has a strong record of doing what is best for America and Florida, and he built it by spending more time worrying about what his decisions would mean for the people than for his political fortunes. That's what makes him the right leader for our times, and that's why I'm proud to stand with him today.
Oh, and there's that little speech he's preparing for next week.
Former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, three Democratic officials confirmed to CNN Monday.
The move follows his endorsement of President Barack Obama on Sunday. Crist cited the president's leadership following the economic collapse and surrounding health care, as well as his disagreements with the GOP platform as reasons for his backing.
I have no doubt that Charlie Crist is a small-c Conservative, but this values are perfectly in line with Democratic ones.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Ummm, did Mitt Romney just attempt a BIRTHER joke?? (VIDEO)
No. Sorry. Uh-uh. Not having it.
Is this Mitt Romney saying he believes in Birtherism? No.
Is this Mitt Romney declaring he's a racist? No. Not only that, he really hasn't said anything racist at all during this or any previous campaign. I don't think he's got a racist bone in his body.
But...
Is this Mitt Romney feeding his base, and providing cover for the racists and race-baiters in his Party, who's support he needs going into November??
Yes, YES...a THOUSAND TIMES YES!!!
Listen, it boils down to this...no one cares about Mitt Romney's Birth Certificate, or Ann's. At the same time, no one cares about the President's Birth Certificate either, except for the racists and race-baiters in Mitt's own party.
But for you to make a joke, about the President's Birth Certificate, implying that he's got something to hide (and yes, Governor Romney implied exactly that in his cough-cough "joke"), and then for him to turn around and deny access to the Tax Returns that every candidate for President, Republican or Democrat combined have given over since the time of your esteemed, and apparently, infinitely smarter Father, ranks you, Mitt Romney, as a hypopcrite of the first order.
Oh GOD, I can't wait to kick this guys ass in November. Let's get this done.
Is this Mitt Romney saying he believes in Birtherism? No.
Is this Mitt Romney declaring he's a racist? No. Not only that, he really hasn't said anything racist at all during this or any previous campaign. I don't think he's got a racist bone in his body.
But...
Is this Mitt Romney feeding his base, and providing cover for the racists and race-baiters in his Party, who's support he needs going into November??
Yes, YES...a THOUSAND TIMES YES!!!
Listen, it boils down to this...no one cares about Mitt Romney's Birth Certificate, or Ann's. At the same time, no one cares about the President's Birth Certificate either, except for the racists and race-baiters in Mitt's own party.
But for you to make a joke, about the President's Birth Certificate, implying that he's got something to hide (and yes, Governor Romney implied exactly that in his cough-cough "joke"), and then for him to turn around and deny access to the Tax Returns that every candidate for President, Republican or Democrat combined have given over since the time of your esteemed, and apparently, infinitely smarter Father, ranks you, Mitt Romney, as a hypopcrite of the first order.
Oh GOD, I can't wait to kick this guys ass in November. Let's get this done.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Change of blog design.
Something infected my previous blog layout with a ShopWiki.com bot, which I didn't appreciate. To get rid of it, I picked another layout from Blogger.com, and that veeeery annoying problem has gone away.
Just fills me with reams of confidence in Blogger.com.
Just fills me with reams of confidence in Blogger.com.
How to read a Poll. (No, seriously, I got help from a Math Prof. and everything!)
It’s a truth of American Political Life that a lot of Americans just don’t trust polls, or polling for that matter.
Usually, it has to do with feelings. There’s a gut level feeling a lot of Americans have, and when a poll doesn’t match their gut they tend to discount not just the poll, but polling in general.
It’s not really fair if you think about it. Polling, as well as Statistics itself, are actual provable science. Polling does work…when it’s allowed to work.
Let’s take an example from a poll that was released on August 21st, 2012 from the firm of Foster McCollum White Baydoun, which, according to Nate Silver of the New York Times’ respected FiveThirtyEight Blog, conducts polls for Democratic candidates as well as independently.
They have Mitt Romney with a lead in Florida.
Okay. Not too weird. Mitt and the President have been flipping Florida back and forth in recent polls. Most of the last polls give Obama the lead.
Foster, McCollum, White and Baydoun gave Mitt Romney…a 14.6 point lead.
Huh?
Excuse me??
If I have one tremendous advantage in life, it's that if I have any kind of mathematical question, I can pick up the phone and call an actual Professor of Mathematics and get my questions answered.
Of course, the fact that this Math Professor is also my Father, kinda guarantees he'll take my calls, at least every once in a while.
By way of background, Dad is a former Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland-College Park, former Chair of the Math Department at the University of Maryland-College Park, and currently a Visiting Professor of Mathematics at his Alma Mater, Rice University in Houston, Texas.
(Side note: While Dad has a fairly impressive Mathematical resume, but he’d want me to emphasize that he’s not a Statistician).
“Dad,” I asked. “What the @#$’s up with this poll??”
“Read me the internals,” he replied.
Now, what are the internals? Internals are shorthand term of for all these concepts we’re going to be talking about: Sample size, margin of error, etc.
I cracked open the document from Foster, McCollum, White and Baydoun, and read him what I could find…
…and then, he started laughing. Out loud. On the phone.
Unfortunately, Dad tends to speak in precise Mathematical terminology, only some of which I can understand without the aid of a dictionary. Fortunately, peering further down into Nate’s column, I got a good easy-to-understand reason why Dad was laughing so hard:
See? Right at the end there, he said it plain as day. It was a badly designed poll from the outset, all but guaranteeing a result no one should believe.
But what’s worse? Nate Silver still uses this data in his Polling Aggregator Site.
Everyone is.
All of the sudden, we’re looking at a closer election from the Polling because of what one Poll did to Florida, even though the results are more than suspect.
Unlike me, you may not have a PhD in Mathematics on speed dial. You just read the results of these polls, and react to the consequences.
But what if you could look at a polls so-called “Internals”, and decide for yourself out if they’re worth anything?
What if you could read a poll, and not have to depend on anyone on CNN or MSNBC to do it for you?
Here are a few helpful hints:
First, you need to understand how statistics work. And I’m bringing this up because this is the image I’ll go back to again and again.
I want you to imagine a bowl of Vegetable Soup, filled with tomatoes, beans, onions, what have you. It’s a big bowl, and you want to get good taste of what it’s like. So you dip your spoon in.
Well, that spoonful of soup? That’s pretty much what a poll is. When you went in, you hopefully got a representative sampling of tomatoes, beans, onions, and what have you. Odds are, though…you didn’t. It’s a tiny spoon, and it’s a big bowl. Maybe you get more broth than beans. Maybe you get more onions than tomatoes. Mathematically this is the concept behind margin of error, another thing you see referenced in polls all the time.
Of course, if you used a bigger spoon, you’d get a better sampling of what’s in the soup, and thus a lower margin of error.
Which brings us to our next concept…
The first thing a Pollster does before taking a poll is create a model.
Model, you hear that all the time. What does it mean? In our Vegetable Soup scenario, it means the Pollster is going to guess in advance how many beans are in your bowl, how many tomatoes, onions, etc.
In Politics, the Pollster is going to guess in advance who’s going to show up at the polls: how many old people, how many young, how many blacks, whites, Latinos, etc. Sometimes, they use data based on previous elections. Sometimes, they’ll stretch outward and try to guess the future.
But the key word is…guess. It may be a guess backed by a lot of empirical data, in the end, it’s still a guess.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. If the Pollster is guessing what’s in the bowl before he’s even taken a bit, what’s the point of the poll?
And thus, you discover one of the dangers of watching a lot of polls. You are dependent on the models they use, which, nine times out of ten, you’re not going to see. (And that tenth time, you may not understand without a PhD in Mathematics on speed dial).
You saw this a lot in the 2008 Election. It was a wave election, a change election, one that President Obama won, but one in which he had been trailing in a lot of early polling, especially during the primaries. Why? Because a lot of the early modeling was based on a false assumption. It was based on who showed up in 2004, not who was going to show up in 2008.
For the purposes of this election, as in the example above, if the Pollster decides a lot more old folks than young are going to show up at the polls in Florida, then guess what…President Obama is going to get swamped. Of course, guess what happens in the reverse is true?
So long story short, before you go panicking about any one poll, knowing a little about the Pollster’s model matters. If you don’t trust the model, you can’t trust the poll.
Next, you have to look at the sample size.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a Poll that showed Mitt Romney with a healthy lead in a National poll. The lead made no kind of sense to me at the time (or ever). I mentioned it to my Dad, and as always, asked me to crack open those internals.
I told my Father that this poll was conducted with a sample size of a thousand respondents, with a margin of error of plus or minus four points.
A half hour later, when Dad stopped laughing out loud, he was able to tell me that the poll was a joke.
Sample Size is just how many people answered all the pollster’s questions. The Pollster will start out calling 6,000-7,000 people. Most of them won’t be home. You call 6,000-7,000 people to get 1,000-1,500 respondents.
The poll Dad and I were laughing about had a sample of 1,000 people...nationally. It was a decent size for a State poll (the Foster, McCollum, White and Baydoun survey, for example had 1,503 respondents, but they were only polling Florida). But this poll wasn't in one state, but all 50. Hence Dad’s laughter. It was too frighteningly small of a sample to give you an impression of anything. It’d be like, instead of using a spoon to sample the soup, you used the end of a toothpick instead.
For something like a State Poll, a thousand respondents is a good sized sample. For a National one, you want something a bit larger. Problem is, most Pollsters work for news organizations, and they have things called deadlines. You can probably put a poll into the field, calling 6,000 people and getting a 1,000 respondents, and you could probably do it in a overnight (at most a two or three days). But of course, the quicker the turnaround, the worse a poll is going to be, the lower the sample, and the higher the margin of error.
So remember, your average Newspaper Poll isn’t interested in the quality of the poll, they’re interested in beating the other guy with the results. Speed is all that matters, even if it ruins the poll.
How the Poll is gathered matters.
This is another area that allows Pollsters to play games with the results. Calling people on the Telephone and asking them stuff is the traditional way of putting a poll in the field. That’s all well, and good, but the problem is what kind of phones people use has changed over the last 5 years or so. Young people are more likely to be on cell phones instead of land lines. Older folks (not all, but a lot) tend to be on land lines, not cell phones.
So what do you think happens if a Pollster calls nothing but landlines?
Yeah, your sample will skew older, and affect the result.
The same thing happens with Registered Voters versus Likely Voters. One group will give you a Poll answer one way, another the other. Every one of these choices will affect the outcome of the poll, and these decisions are made in advance of the poll being taken.
State Polls are more important to you than National Polls.
This is something Nate Silver harps on over and over and over again…and he’s right. Why? It’s simple 9th Grade Civics.
Despite everything you may have heard, we the people do not decide the results of Presidential elections. We only indirectly decide them.
The winner will not be determined by the number of votes cast. They are decided by Electors, as in Electoral College. Electors are chosen by the winners of individual states on November 6th. It is mathematically possible for a Presidential candidate to lose the Popular Vote, and still win. It has happened three times in our history, the last being a particularly nasty event in December of 2000.
In the end, the State Polls matter more because it is by winning our individual States that we choose the Electors. National Polls are interesting in a general “taking your temperature” kind of a way. But what really matters is the States.
How the questions are asked matters.
This is trickier to explain, because it’s hard to quantify. Simply put, how you phrase the questions, and in exchange, explain the answers matters. The simplest turn of phrase in a question can affect how the respondent answers. The most extreme example of this is so-called “Push Polling” where the question is phrased in such a way as to guarantee an answer for example.
“Did you know Candidate X favors the kicking of puppies?”
Who’s NOT going to react negatively to that?
Questions can be asked in far more subtle ways that can pull answers one way or the other. Pollsters know this. They’ve been doing this for years, and the hucksters of the world (Rasmussen, anyone?) can potentially skew things anyway they want.
The individual ups and downs of poll don’t matter, all that matters is the trendline.
You’ve seen it yourself. If you look at a polling graph it looks as though its made of broken glass with hundreds of little jags and shards.
Polls blip up and polls blip down, and much hay (i.e., panic) is made over those individual blips.
My father calls those blips “squiggles.”
He has one bit of Political advice that doesn’t vary from year to year:
Stop looking at the squiggles.
Don’t tell me who went up a point and who went down a point day to day, that’s useless. Yet, Media outlets do it all the time. A poll comes out Monday, showing Obama up by 5. Pundit strum and drang begins. What is Mitt Romney doing wrong, blah-blah-blah. 24 hours later, another poll comes out (from a different polling company with a different sample, questionnaire and margin of error, mind you) showing Obama only up by 4. All of the sudden, it’s where did that point go? Why did Obama lose a point? What has he done wrong?
Are you kidding me?
This is the functional equivalent of weighing yourself every day, and freaking over gaining 3/10ths of a pound.
Worse, it’s the equivalent of weighing yourself everyday on your scale at home, then weighing yourself on some other scale, and freaking over the difference. Please, don’t do it.
Finally, remember the main thing, only one poll matters, the one on November 6th, 2012.
We’ve showed them once in 2008, and we’ll show ‘em again in 2012. If our people show up at the polls, if we rush the barricades, if we vote in overwhelming numbers, we can’t lose. Period.
So, that's it. This article won’t make you an expert on polling, but it should give you a clearer understanding of how it works.
If you want to look a the sites my Dad really likes as far as the Math goes (and God help you if you do), he loves the Princeton Election Consortium and Dr. Sam Wang. Dad loves what he’s doing with Neuro-science and mathematics. Right now, Dr. Wang is predicting a 89% chance of an Obama win. Dr. Wang has refined his formula, and he’s been right for the last twenty years.
Dad also likes Nate Silver and Fivethirtyeight.com at the New York Times. The only reservation he and I both have is that Nate has decided to use the State of the Economy in his data, and we’re both not sure what Econ data he’s using, and how much of it, and what quality. Basically, we thought what he did in 2008 wasn’t broke, so why fix it?
Usually, it has to do with feelings. There’s a gut level feeling a lot of Americans have, and when a poll doesn’t match their gut they tend to discount not just the poll, but polling in general.
It’s not really fair if you think about it. Polling, as well as Statistics itself, are actual provable science. Polling does work…when it’s allowed to work.
Let’s take an example from a poll that was released on August 21st, 2012 from the firm of Foster McCollum White Baydoun, which, according to Nate Silver of the New York Times’ respected FiveThirtyEight Blog, conducts polls for Democratic candidates as well as independently.
They have Mitt Romney with a lead in Florida.
Okay. Not too weird. Mitt and the President have been flipping Florida back and forth in recent polls. Most of the last polls give Obama the lead.
Foster, McCollum, White and Baydoun gave Mitt Romney…a 14.6 point lead.
Huh?
Excuse me??
If I have one tremendous advantage in life, it's that if I have any kind of mathematical question, I can pick up the phone and call an actual Professor of Mathematics and get my questions answered.
Of course, the fact that this Math Professor is also my Father, kinda guarantees he'll take my calls, at least every once in a while.
By way of background, Dad is a former Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland-College Park, former Chair of the Math Department at the University of Maryland-College Park, and currently a Visiting Professor of Mathematics at his Alma Mater, Rice University in Houston, Texas.
(Side note: While Dad has a fairly impressive Mathematical resume, but he’d want me to emphasize that he’s not a Statistician).
“Dad,” I asked. “What the @#$’s up with this poll??”
“Read me the internals,” he replied.
Now, what are the internals? Internals are shorthand term of for all these concepts we’re going to be talking about: Sample size, margin of error, etc.
I cracked open the document from Foster, McCollum, White and Baydoun, and read him what I could find…
…and then, he started laughing. Out loud. On the phone.
Unfortunately, Dad tends to speak in precise Mathematical terminology, only some of which I can understand without the aid of a dictionary. Fortunately, peering further down into Nate’s column, I got a good easy-to-understand reason why Dad was laughing so hard:
Once in a great while, a poll comes along with methodology that is so implausible that it deserves some further comment. The Foster McCollum White Baydoun poll of Florida is one such survey.
The poll was weighted to a demographic estimate that predicts that just 2 percent of Florida voters will be 30 or younger. It’s a decent bet that turnout will be down some among younger voters this year, but that isn’t a realistic estimate. In 2008, according to exit polls, 15 percent of voters in Florida were between 18 and 30.
The poll also assumed that 10 percent of voters will be between the ages of 31 and 50. In 2008, the actual percentage was 36 percent, according to the exit survey.
The poll projected Latinos to be 7 percent of the turnout in Florida, against 14 percent in 2008. And it has African-American turnout at 10 percent, down from 13 percent.
If the turnout numbers look something like that in November, then Mr. Obama will lose Florida badly. He’ll also lose almost every other state; his electoral map might look a lot like Walter Mondale’s.
But the share of voters 50 and younger in Florida is not going to drop all the way from half the electorate to roughly one-tenth of it, as the poll assumed. That is far beyond the range you can get from reasonable disagreement about methods, or from sampling error. It looks like the result from a badly-designed statistical model that never got a sanity check.
See? Right at the end there, he said it plain as day. It was a badly designed poll from the outset, all but guaranteeing a result no one should believe.
But what’s worse? Nate Silver still uses this data in his Polling Aggregator Site.
Everyone is.
All of the sudden, we’re looking at a closer election from the Polling because of what one Poll did to Florida, even though the results are more than suspect.
Unlike me, you may not have a PhD in Mathematics on speed dial. You just read the results of these polls, and react to the consequences.
But what if you could look at a polls so-called “Internals”, and decide for yourself out if they’re worth anything?
What if you could read a poll, and not have to depend on anyone on CNN or MSNBC to do it for you?
Here are a few helpful hints:
First, you need to understand how statistics work. And I’m bringing this up because this is the image I’ll go back to again and again.
I want you to imagine a bowl of Vegetable Soup, filled with tomatoes, beans, onions, what have you. It’s a big bowl, and you want to get good taste of what it’s like. So you dip your spoon in.
Well, that spoonful of soup? That’s pretty much what a poll is. When you went in, you hopefully got a representative sampling of tomatoes, beans, onions, and what have you. Odds are, though…you didn’t. It’s a tiny spoon, and it’s a big bowl. Maybe you get more broth than beans. Maybe you get more onions than tomatoes. Mathematically this is the concept behind margin of error, another thing you see referenced in polls all the time.
Of course, if you used a bigger spoon, you’d get a better sampling of what’s in the soup, and thus a lower margin of error.
Which brings us to our next concept…
The first thing a Pollster does before taking a poll is create a model.
Model, you hear that all the time. What does it mean? In our Vegetable Soup scenario, it means the Pollster is going to guess in advance how many beans are in your bowl, how many tomatoes, onions, etc.
In Politics, the Pollster is going to guess in advance who’s going to show up at the polls: how many old people, how many young, how many blacks, whites, Latinos, etc. Sometimes, they use data based on previous elections. Sometimes, they’ll stretch outward and try to guess the future.
But the key word is…guess. It may be a guess backed by a lot of empirical data, in the end, it’s still a guess.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. If the Pollster is guessing what’s in the bowl before he’s even taken a bit, what’s the point of the poll?
And thus, you discover one of the dangers of watching a lot of polls. You are dependent on the models they use, which, nine times out of ten, you’re not going to see. (And that tenth time, you may not understand without a PhD in Mathematics on speed dial).
You saw this a lot in the 2008 Election. It was a wave election, a change election, one that President Obama won, but one in which he had been trailing in a lot of early polling, especially during the primaries. Why? Because a lot of the early modeling was based on a false assumption. It was based on who showed up in 2004, not who was going to show up in 2008.
For the purposes of this election, as in the example above, if the Pollster decides a lot more old folks than young are going to show up at the polls in Florida, then guess what…President Obama is going to get swamped. Of course, guess what happens in the reverse is true?
So long story short, before you go panicking about any one poll, knowing a little about the Pollster’s model matters. If you don’t trust the model, you can’t trust the poll.
Next, you have to look at the sample size.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a Poll that showed Mitt Romney with a healthy lead in a National poll. The lead made no kind of sense to me at the time (or ever). I mentioned it to my Dad, and as always, asked me to crack open those internals.
I told my Father that this poll was conducted with a sample size of a thousand respondents, with a margin of error of plus or minus four points.
A half hour later, when Dad stopped laughing out loud, he was able to tell me that the poll was a joke.
Sample Size is just how many people answered all the pollster’s questions. The Pollster will start out calling 6,000-7,000 people. Most of them won’t be home. You call 6,000-7,000 people to get 1,000-1,500 respondents.
The poll Dad and I were laughing about had a sample of 1,000 people...nationally. It was a decent size for a State poll (the Foster, McCollum, White and Baydoun survey, for example had 1,503 respondents, but they were only polling Florida). But this poll wasn't in one state, but all 50. Hence Dad’s laughter. It was too frighteningly small of a sample to give you an impression of anything. It’d be like, instead of using a spoon to sample the soup, you used the end of a toothpick instead.
For something like a State Poll, a thousand respondents is a good sized sample. For a National one, you want something a bit larger. Problem is, most Pollsters work for news organizations, and they have things called deadlines. You can probably put a poll into the field, calling 6,000 people and getting a 1,000 respondents, and you could probably do it in a overnight (at most a two or three days). But of course, the quicker the turnaround, the worse a poll is going to be, the lower the sample, and the higher the margin of error.
So remember, your average Newspaper Poll isn’t interested in the quality of the poll, they’re interested in beating the other guy with the results. Speed is all that matters, even if it ruins the poll.
How the Poll is gathered matters.
This is another area that allows Pollsters to play games with the results. Calling people on the Telephone and asking them stuff is the traditional way of putting a poll in the field. That’s all well, and good, but the problem is what kind of phones people use has changed over the last 5 years or so. Young people are more likely to be on cell phones instead of land lines. Older folks (not all, but a lot) tend to be on land lines, not cell phones.
So what do you think happens if a Pollster calls nothing but landlines?
Yeah, your sample will skew older, and affect the result.
The same thing happens with Registered Voters versus Likely Voters. One group will give you a Poll answer one way, another the other. Every one of these choices will affect the outcome of the poll, and these decisions are made in advance of the poll being taken.
State Polls are more important to you than National Polls.
This is something Nate Silver harps on over and over and over again…and he’s right. Why? It’s simple 9th Grade Civics.
Despite everything you may have heard, we the people do not decide the results of Presidential elections. We only indirectly decide them.
The winner will not be determined by the number of votes cast. They are decided by Electors, as in Electoral College. Electors are chosen by the winners of individual states on November 6th. It is mathematically possible for a Presidential candidate to lose the Popular Vote, and still win. It has happened three times in our history, the last being a particularly nasty event in December of 2000.
In the end, the State Polls matter more because it is by winning our individual States that we choose the Electors. National Polls are interesting in a general “taking your temperature” kind of a way. But what really matters is the States.
How the questions are asked matters.
This is trickier to explain, because it’s hard to quantify. Simply put, how you phrase the questions, and in exchange, explain the answers matters. The simplest turn of phrase in a question can affect how the respondent answers. The most extreme example of this is so-called “Push Polling” where the question is phrased in such a way as to guarantee an answer for example.
“Did you know Candidate X favors the kicking of puppies?”
Who’s NOT going to react negatively to that?
Questions can be asked in far more subtle ways that can pull answers one way or the other. Pollsters know this. They’ve been doing this for years, and the hucksters of the world (Rasmussen, anyone?) can potentially skew things anyway they want.
The individual ups and downs of poll don’t matter, all that matters is the trendline.
You’ve seen it yourself. If you look at a polling graph it looks as though its made of broken glass with hundreds of little jags and shards.
Polls blip up and polls blip down, and much hay (i.e., panic) is made over those individual blips.
My father calls those blips “squiggles.”
He has one bit of Political advice that doesn’t vary from year to year:
Stop looking at the squiggles.
Don’t tell me who went up a point and who went down a point day to day, that’s useless. Yet, Media outlets do it all the time. A poll comes out Monday, showing Obama up by 5. Pundit strum and drang begins. What is Mitt Romney doing wrong, blah-blah-blah. 24 hours later, another poll comes out (from a different polling company with a different sample, questionnaire and margin of error, mind you) showing Obama only up by 4. All of the sudden, it’s where did that point go? Why did Obama lose a point? What has he done wrong?
Are you kidding me?
This is the functional equivalent of weighing yourself every day, and freaking over gaining 3/10ths of a pound.
Worse, it’s the equivalent of weighing yourself everyday on your scale at home, then weighing yourself on some other scale, and freaking over the difference. Please, don’t do it.
Finally, remember the main thing, only one poll matters, the one on November 6th, 2012.
We’ve showed them once in 2008, and we’ll show ‘em again in 2012. If our people show up at the polls, if we rush the barricades, if we vote in overwhelming numbers, we can’t lose. Period.
So, that's it. This article won’t make you an expert on polling, but it should give you a clearer understanding of how it works.
If you want to look a the sites my Dad really likes as far as the Math goes (and God help you if you do), he loves the Princeton Election Consortium and Dr. Sam Wang. Dad loves what he’s doing with Neuro-science and mathematics. Right now, Dr. Wang is predicting a 89% chance of an Obama win. Dr. Wang has refined his formula, and he’s been right for the last twenty years.
Dad also likes Nate Silver and Fivethirtyeight.com at the New York Times. The only reservation he and I both have is that Nate has decided to use the State of the Economy in his data, and we’re both not sure what Econ data he’s using, and how much of it, and what quality. Basically, we thought what he did in 2008 wasn’t broke, so why fix it?
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Newt Gingrich, the very model of bull@#$%, racist consistency. (VIDEO)
So lemme get this straight...
The Romney Campaign has no proof...apparently whatsoever...that the President has removed the Work Requirement for Welfare reform.
But they're going to keep saying it anyway?
Well, when Richard Trumka's happy, I'm happy...
Via TPM:
Labor and President Obama haven’t always seen to eye. But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he couldn’t be happier with the way the campaign is shaping up.
“I think the president’s making the case right now that he should be making — that this is about two different types of economy,” Trumka told reporters Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
It wasn’t always this way. After Republicans took over the House in 2010, the White House pivoted to deficit reduction, agreeing to major spending cuts as the GOP threatened to shut down the government — or worse. Trumka and other labor officials were put off by the new emphasis on trimming government and warned it was a political as well as economically dangerous.
But last year, with the recovery unexpectedly slowing down and Democrats convinced there was no overcoming the Republican Party’s anti-tax fervor, Obama launched a new legislative push for the American Jobs Act, a bill designed to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, relief for state government and infrastructure investments.
“I don’t want to say ‘I told you so,’ but last Labor Day he started talking about jobs and the economy and creating jobs and a different vision, and he’s not let up since then,” Trumka said.
Robert Samuelson...stopped clock.
It should come as no surprise that I can't stand the Washington Post's (cough-cough) Economics Columnist, Robert Samuelson...mostly because I don't think he knows much about Economics.
Let's see here's me blasting him (however briefly) for saying the Stimulus wouldn't work. Here's me saying outright Krugman's smarter than he is (no surprise, only one of them has a Nobel Prize). Here's me saying that as long as Samuelson continues to work there, the Washington Post will remain a substandard newspaper.
But you know what they say, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Thus, I present to you...Robert Samuelson...stopped clock:
...but when someone as idiotic, biased and right-winged as Samuelson thinks Mitt Romney is out of touch, boy o' boy...Mitt Romney is out of touch.
Let's see here's me blasting him (however briefly) for saying the Stimulus wouldn't work. Here's me saying outright Krugman's smarter than he is (no surprise, only one of them has a Nobel Prize). Here's me saying that as long as Samuelson continues to work there, the Washington Post will remain a substandard newspaper.
But you know what they say, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Thus, I present to you...Robert Samuelson...stopped clock:
There seems to be a Democratic mole inside Mitt Romney’s campaign. Could it be Romney himself? Well, of course not. But considering the campaign’s behavior, it might just as well be. President Obama and his allies have cast Romney as a wealthy fat cat who’s out of touch with everyday Americans and who would use his presidency to enrich the already rich. To counter this damning image, the last thing you’d expect Romney to do is embrace a tax plan favoring the super-rich.Let's get one thing straight, I still think Samuelson's an idiot, and I'd still fire him yesterday for being fundamentally antithetical to his job description (a writer about the Economy who knows nothing about the economy)...
Which is exactly what he has done.
After examining Romney’s proposal, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that households with incomes exceeding $200,000 would receive tax cuts; meanwhile, taxes would rise for the other 95 percent of the population. Taxpayers making more than $1 million would receive an average cut of $87,000; those making less than $200,000 would pay an average of $500 more. Romney denies that he would raise taxes on the middle class but has provided no evidence that the Tax Policy Center’s analysis is wrong.
What can he be thinking?
...but when someone as idiotic, biased and right-winged as Samuelson thinks Mitt Romney is out of touch, boy o' boy...Mitt Romney is out of touch.
Wow. Did Mitt Romney really run a Mafia-style Tax Scheme while at Marriott Corp.? (VIDEO)
It's a little complicated...but it's kinda devastating.
"Son of Boss" is the name of a Tax Scheme used by people understand all 7,300 pages of the U.S. Tax code to get out of paying as much taxes as they can.
Even John McCain was critical of this Tax Shelter...and in his words, that's exactly what it was...a Tax Shelter.
CNN has reported (and the video is right there below), that the IRS has collected $3.2 billion from 18,000 people who have used "Son of Boss", including $29 Million from the Marriott Corporation.
And would anyone care to guess who was head of the audit committee of the Marriott Board of Directors from 1993 to 1998?
C'mon, have you been paying attention to this blog?
In case you're wondering, Edward D. Kleinbard and Peter C. Canellos's original editorial can be found here. Their new Editorial, talking about Marriott Corp. (as referenced in the video above), can be found here.
"Son of Boss" is the name of a Tax Scheme used by people understand all 7,300 pages of the U.S. Tax code to get out of paying as much taxes as they can.
Even John McCain was critical of this Tax Shelter...and in his words, that's exactly what it was...a Tax Shelter.
CNN has reported (and the video is right there below), that the IRS has collected $3.2 billion from 18,000 people who have used "Son of Boss", including $29 Million from the Marriott Corporation.
And would anyone care to guess who was head of the audit committee of the Marriott Board of Directors from 1993 to 1998?
C'mon, have you been paying attention to this blog?
In case you're wondering, Edward D. Kleinbard and Peter C. Canellos's original editorial can be found here. Their new Editorial, talking about Marriott Corp. (as referenced in the video above), can be found here.
What happens when Mitt Romney is called out for lying? (VIDEO)
Nothing. He doesn't answer the question.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Boehner's quiet admission that he knows his Caucus is NUTS!
Congress did something halfway sensible today:
A shutdown, believe it or not, would've been bad for all sides. While I think it would have finished off the GOP once and for all, do we really want who knows how many Federal Employees out on the street just as Halloween is rolling around, with Thanksgiving and the Pre-Christmas Shopping Season to follow?
Rooting for the bad to give you something good is what Republicans do.
Added to that, have you even known Boehner's caucus to negotiate in good faith? Yeah, me neither.
Still remains to be seen if Uncle Johnny can wrangle up the votes from his side of the aisle. All I know is Harry will deliver his, as will Nancy.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid have reached a short-term spending deal that would remove the possibility of a government shutdown from the politically sensitive fall campaign season, the two announced Tuesday.
Under the agreement, Congress would agree to fund the government for six months when the fiscal year expires Sept. 30, setting agency spending for the year at $1.047 trillion.
A shutdown, believe it or not, would've been bad for all sides. While I think it would have finished off the GOP once and for all, do we really want who knows how many Federal Employees out on the street just as Halloween is rolling around, with Thanksgiving and the Pre-Christmas Shopping Season to follow?
Rooting for the bad to give you something good is what Republicans do.
Added to that, have you even known Boehner's caucus to negotiate in good faith? Yeah, me neither.
Still remains to be seen if Uncle Johnny can wrangle up the votes from his side of the aisle. All I know is Harry will deliver his, as will Nancy.
Remembering Thelma Glass (VIDEO)
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Thursday, July 26, 2012
President Obama Speaks at the National Urban League Convention (VIDEO)
This is the speech where the President talks about sensible Gun Control. Because guess what? He's going to lose the Gun Lobby vote.
For some reason, Mitt Romney always assumes he's the smartest guy in the room.
Like...clockwork. Mitttens goes to England. Mittens offends the English.
I've originally been saying that Mittens thing was "say anything you need to say to close the deal". That's a salesman's mentality, and its worked well for him (and him alone) in the business world. But there's another tick to Mitten's personality that we need to pay attention to, and it could spell disaster for the country should, God forbid, he get elected.
He really thinks that where ever we goes, he's the smartest person in the room. Automatically. It's a near-Newt Gingrich level of myopia.
Worse, he automatically thinks that where ever he goes, he's the best person in the room, morally, spiritually, what have you.
Look at this incident. Mitt ran an Olympics, and thinks he did brilliantly at it. In actuality, it was you and I who did brilliantly at it since it was our Tax money who bailed out the Salt Lake Games.
I mean, seriously, how smart to do you have to be if you're facing a multi-billion dollar hole in your bank account to ask for money?
So, Mittens triumphs, in his mind. Years later, he goes to London, and feels that he should add his two cents to what's going wrong with the London games, since after all, he knows best.
Well, Londoners, having gotten to know him all of 24 hours, figure out that he doesn't know best, and they tell him, right down to Prime Minister Cameron, tell him to stuff it.
This is what terrifies me about a Mitt Romney Presidency. A guy who won't share budgets when it suits his purposes. A guy who doesn't think its any of our business what's in his taxes, when he's applying for a job to be our President, and asking for our votes to do it. This is a guy who just thinks, frankly, he's better than you. Worse, he assumes its the natural order of things, and you should sit back and accept the fact that he's better than you.
There's a distinct possibility that should he win, he might be worse than Bush. Admittedly, that's a very low bar, but if he's in the White House, we might be looking on that 47th in Job Creation Number (that he had as Governor of Massachusetts) with longing fondness.
Mitt Romney’s big international tour got off to a rocky start Thursday morning, as British officials including Prime Minister David Cameron took offense at the Republican candidate’s criticisms over London’s preparedness for the Olympics.
Romney expressed wariness over England’s ability to pull off the Olympics without a hitch, as well as reservations over security.
“You know, it’s hard to know just how well it were turn out — will turn out,” said Romney, who ran the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. “There are a few things that were disconcerting, the stories about the — private security firm not having enough people — the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”
The comments did not go over well in Britain. Cameron rebuffed Romney’s criticism during a visit to the Olympic Park in Stratford Thursday morning, according to The Telegraph. “You’re going to see beyond doubt that Britain can deliver,” Cameron said.
I've originally been saying that Mittens thing was "say anything you need to say to close the deal". That's a salesman's mentality, and its worked well for him (and him alone) in the business world. But there's another tick to Mitten's personality that we need to pay attention to, and it could spell disaster for the country should, God forbid, he get elected.
He really thinks that where ever we goes, he's the smartest person in the room. Automatically. It's a near-Newt Gingrich level of myopia.
Worse, he automatically thinks that where ever he goes, he's the best person in the room, morally, spiritually, what have you.
Look at this incident. Mitt ran an Olympics, and thinks he did brilliantly at it. In actuality, it was you and I who did brilliantly at it since it was our Tax money who bailed out the Salt Lake Games.
I mean, seriously, how smart to do you have to be if you're facing a multi-billion dollar hole in your bank account to ask for money?
So, Mittens triumphs, in his mind. Years later, he goes to London, and feels that he should add his two cents to what's going wrong with the London games, since after all, he knows best.
Well, Londoners, having gotten to know him all of 24 hours, figure out that he doesn't know best, and they tell him, right down to Prime Minister Cameron, tell him to stuff it.
This is what terrifies me about a Mitt Romney Presidency. A guy who won't share budgets when it suits his purposes. A guy who doesn't think its any of our business what's in his taxes, when he's applying for a job to be our President, and asking for our votes to do it. This is a guy who just thinks, frankly, he's better than you. Worse, he assumes its the natural order of things, and you should sit back and accept the fact that he's better than you.
There's a distinct possibility that should he win, he might be worse than Bush. Admittedly, that's a very low bar, but if he's in the White House, we might be looking on that 47th in Job Creation Number (that he had as Governor of Massachusetts) with longing fondness.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
There's "no active role, whatsoever", and there's what Mitt actually did...
Seriously, at this point, I'm just glad to see Journalism actually happening in this campaign:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he had no active role in Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded, after he exited in February 1999 to take over Salt Lake City's Winter Olympics bid. But according to Bain associates and others familiar with Romney's actions at the time, he stayed in regular contact with his partners over the following months, tending to his partnership interests and negotiating his separation from the company.
Those familiar with Romney's discussions with his Bain partners said the contacts included several meetings in Boston, the company's home base, but were limited to matters that did not affect the firm's investments or other management decisions. Yet Romney continued to oversee his partnership stakes even as he disengaged from the firm, personally signing or approving a series of corporate and legal documents through the spring of 2001, according to financial reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
I do believe this is Sec. Timothy Geithner calling out the Huffington Post... (VIDEO)
Because I know of no Media organization more dedicated to this lie, that HuffPo:
"Tampered"
Back to business as normal...and what do you know? Mittens came out with another ad...and he lied in it...
...again.
...again.
"The Choice" - Obama For America TV Ad (VIDEO)
"Over the next four months you have a choice to make. Not just between two political parties or even two people. It's a choice between two very different plans for our country.
Governor Romney's plan would cut taxes for the folks at the very top, roll back regulations on big banks, and he says that if we do our economy will grow and everyone will benefit.
But you know what? We tried that top-down approach. It's what caused the mess in the first place.
I believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class. Asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way. So that we can afford to invest in education, manufacturing, and homegrown American energy for good middle class jobs. Sometimes politics can seem very small. But the choice you face, it couldn't be bigger."
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Charles Blow: Putting the hay down where the goats can get it... (VIDEO)
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Sunday, July 15, 2012
Funny you should mention "Blind Trusts" Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin (VIDEO)
So Paul Ryan (he of the Paul Ryan budget which destroys Medicare) goes on Face The Nation, and says this:
Funny thing that:
“People are not worried about the details as to when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital to save the Olympics or the details about his assets, which are managed by a blind trust for Pete’s sake,” Ryan said on “Face the Nation.” “They’re worried about their jobs and their family’s future.
Funny thing that:
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Uhhh, Romney submitted a disclosure form to the Government last month, and may have lied on it.
Uhhh, Professor Carmel...you want proof? David Corn of Mother Jones may have found you some proof:
Like all presidential candidates, Romney has to submit a financial disclosure statement to the Office of Government Ethics. He filed his most recent one last month, and the disclosure contains a very clearly stated footnote:
Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake [Olympics] Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.There's no ambiguity there: not involved in Bain operations in any way. But that's not true.
As I reported, in November 1999, Romney signed a SEC filing that noted he was the "sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President" of several Bain entities that had acquired 22 percent of medical-waste firm Stericycle. The form also stated that Romney shared "voting and dispositive power with respect to" 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle "in his capacity as sole shareholder" of the Bain entities that were part of this $75 million investment.
To repeat: Romney signed a Bain document pursuant to a $75 million deal. That would appear to qualify as involvement in Bain activity. And according to a Bain spokeswoman, Romney signed such documents more than once. She told me that after February 1999 Romney was a "signatory on certain documents" until his separation agreement with Bain was finalized in 2002.
President Obama's Interview with Scott Thurman of WJLA (VIDEO)
Oh, boy...does this bring back memories.
If, like me, you grew up in the 70s, then the sight of Gordon Petersen leading your evening news coverage was de rigeur. I don't remember a night when me, Mom and Dad weren't sitting around the Dinner Table, and he wasn't on the screen, followed shortly thereafter by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. And of course, for most of those years, he was paired by Maureen Bunyah...
Of course, that was WUSA (formerly WTOP) Channel 9, the DC CBS Affiliate. Now, they're on Channel 7, the ABC affiliate, because WUSA (run by Gannett) are cheap bastards.
If, like me, you grew up in the 70s, then the sight of Gordon Petersen leading your evening news coverage was de rigeur. I don't remember a night when me, Mom and Dad weren't sitting around the Dinner Table, and he wasn't on the screen, followed shortly thereafter by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. And of course, for most of those years, he was paired by Maureen Bunyah...
Of course, that was WUSA (formerly WTOP) Channel 9, the DC CBS Affiliate. Now, they're on Channel 7, the ABC affiliate, because WUSA (run by Gannett) are cheap bastards.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Story behind the Bain Story...or how depending on @factcheckdotorg or @GlennKesslerWP for facts can burn you.
Okay, so it turns out Mitt Romney lied (to a possibly criminal degree) about when he left Bain. No surprise there, these are his core ethics at work: do whatever you have to do, say whatever you have to say to close the deal, i.e: win the Presidency.
But the story behind the story is equally as interesting, if not more disturbing, and continues to call into question the quality of so-called "Factchecker" websites like Factcheck.org and Glenn Kessler's column at the Washington Post.
Okay, basically the story is this. The President's Campaign team put out an ad saying that Mitt Romney was responsible for the layoffs perpetrated by Bain Capital. The Annenberg Center's Factcheck.org labeled the attack unfair. The President's team pushed back, putting out a six page letter doubling down on the claim. Factcheck remained unconvinced.
Then, David Corn, he of Mother Jones and MSNBC (soon to be NBC News), picked up the ball and ripped out a really strong piece on his investment in Stericycle, a company that made money disposing of medical waste and aborted fetuses. Here's the key bit from that piece:
In 2001 and 2002, Romney filed Massachusetts state disclosure forms noting he was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital NY, Inc.—a Bain outfit that was incorporated in Delaware on April 13, 1999—two months after Romney's supposed retirement from the firm. A May 2001 filing with the SEC identified Romney as "a member of the Management Committee" of two Bain entities. And in 2007, the Washington Post reported that R. Bradford Malt, a Bain lawyer, said Romney took a "leave of absence" when he assumed the Olympics post and retained sole ownership of the firm for two more years.Okay, do we get that? Even though Romney has been saying over and over again that he left Bain in 1999, and has nothing to do, whatsoever with whatever bad stuff they did after that...a Massachusetts state disclosure form and a SEC Filing say otherwise.
And Factcheck and Glenn Kessler's reaction? To stand by their previous, lazy ass reporting.
Thus, David Corn decided to punch back...again:
Romney's actual departure date is significant. If he did fully leave Bain in February 1999, he is better able to argue that he cannot be held responsible for the firm's actions afterward—though he maintained his ownership interest in Bain and its various entities for years and, consequently, benefited from these deals. This past week, the Obama campaign has been tussling over this issue with FactCheck.org, the independent fact-checking organization created by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. After the Obama campaign launched an ad blasting Romney as a "corporate raider" who "shipped jobs to China and Mexico," FactCheck.org called the ad false, partly because Romney had exited Bain in February 1999, prior to the deals in question. In reply, the Obama campaign sent a six-page letter to the group, challenging its determination regarding Romney's departure. But FactCheck.org reaffirmed its initial conclusion and told the Obama-ites their complaint was "all wet." Meanwhile, Dan Primack, a senior editor at Fortune, took issue with my article for noting that the SEC documents undercut the claim that Romney had no participation in any Bain decisions after February 1999.
Both Primack and FactCheck.org were unimpressed by the fact that the Boston Herald reported on February 12, 1999, that Romney was not resigning but taking a leave, during which he would provide Bain "input on investment and key personnel decisions." FactCheck.org pointed out that this story also noted Romney would "leave running day-to-day operations to Bain's executive committee," and the group cited an April 4, 1999, Associated Press story reporting that Romney was overwhelmed by his Olympian task and had no time for Bain. Primack insisted that the Herald story and a July 19, 1999, Bain press release referring to Romney as "currently on a part-time leave of absence" and quoting him speaking for Bain Capital were not all that telling, because when Romney left for Salt Lake City he probably "assumed that he'd still be involved in [Bain] decision-making, albeit from a distance," but ended up not doing that, due to his workload in Utah. Primack said he has "numerous sources," including many who were with Bain, who have told him that Romney did not make any investment-related decisions after February 1999.
What about the various SEC documents—some of which Romney signed—that identify him as controlling assorted Bain entities and large blocs of shares in firms in which Bain invested after February 1999? The Obama campaign letter cited at least 63 SEC filings after March 1, 1999, that describe Bain entities as "wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney." Both Primack and FactCheck.org contended that these documents prove only that Romney continued on as an owner of Bain, not as a decision maker.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also jumped on the bandwagon.
The gist of the disagreement comes down to this: There’s no question that numerous public filings and some contemporaneous press references say Romney was still running things at Bain after 1999. But his campaign insists that whatever securities filings may have said, in practice, he was so busy running the 2002 Winter Olympics that he actually had no role at Bain after early 1999. That’s possible in theory. But there’s no evidence for it besides self-interested claims by Romney. And there’s plenty of documentary evidence to the contrary. After all, what you tell the SEC is really supposed to be true.
But here’s the thing. I’ve found yet more instances where Romney made declarations to the SEC that he was still involved in running Bain after February 1999. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet noted these.
The documents go into different aspects of Romney’s ownership of various Bain and Bain related assets. But in both Romney had to say what he currently did for a living.
And finally, one of my faves, Steve Benen worked it (providing, by the way, a lot of the timeline for this piece):
What Josh highlighted were two SEC filings from July 2000 and February 2001 in which Romney listed his "principal occupation" as "Managing Director of Bain Capital, Inc." At the risk of putting too fine a point on this, one cannot be gone from Bain in February 1999 and also be the managing director of Bain in February 2001.
Now, you might be thinking, "Does this really matter? What difference does it make exactly when Romney left Bain?" It matters quite a bit, actually.
For one thing, call me old fashioned, but Romney is supposed to tell the truth, both to the public and to the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this point, Romney's claims don't add up, and it's not unreasonable to ask for an explanation.
On a related note, it also matters whether or not Romney told the truth on his official financial disclosure forms.
And then, of course, there's the whole point of why Romney wants people to believe he left Bain earlier than the apparent date. The Republican candidate probably doesn't want to be on the hook for a series of controversial Bain investments -- again, see Corn's reporting -- and layoffs, which would help explain his competing explanations.
FactCheck.org's editors appear to have accepted Romney's claims at face value, but the documentary evidence now appears to point in the opposite direction. Here's hoping they, and others in media, give this another look.
I guess its easy for Factcheck.org and Glenn Kessler to take on Liberal Writers for a Liberal Magazine and Blogs. After all, let's call this game what it is: Factcheck and Kessler are more interested in their reputations as "impartial artibers of truth" rather than doing...you know...their job in getting the truth out there.
So what do they got to say now that the Boston Globe has gotten involved?
Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.
Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”
Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.
The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.
Contradictions concerning the length of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital add to the uncertainty and questions about his finances. Bain is the primary source of Romney’s wealth, which is estimated to be more than $250 million. But how his wealth has been invested, especially in a variety of Bain partnerships and other investment vehicles, remains difficult to decipher because of a lack of transparency.
Whoops.
Also, it should be noted (as it was by Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall), that The Boston Globe totally skunked David Corn and didn't mention his work at all the story. Stay classy, Boston Globe!
Meanwhile, Kessler and Factcheck.org? Staying with their original line.
Josh Marshall's reaction? (just as a highlight):
Meanwhile, Glenn Kessler seems to be sticking with his earlier claims that Romney actually did end his roll at Bain in 1999, hanging his hat on the fact that the former SEC official the Globe asked about documents had given money to Democrats. This strikes me as the feeblest crutch of contemporary journalism. The issue is the filings — not the person you found to give a quote about them.
Yeah, no hope of them staying classy there.
Folks, putting your total trust in any single one of these yahoos is asking for trouble. You cannot rely on a single arbiter to be your judge and jury over what is and isn't the truth. If you want to get the facts, then like Democracy itself, it's going to make you work at it. You've got to read multiple stories, and you've got to form that picture for yourself. Don't let the folks who claim to have "Fact" in their name do that work for you. As this an other instances have proven, you can't trust 'em.
What proof? Here's another instance. (Granted this one's about Politifact, but the the claim remains the same):
Meanwhile, what has David Corn done now? He's done what a good Reporter should do. He's moved on:
EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing
The GOP candidate decries China poaching US jobs. But at Bain he held a large stake in a Chinese company that did just that.
Last month, Mitt Romney's campaign got into a dustup with the Washington Post after the newspaper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm the GOP presidential candidate founded, invested in several US companies that outsourced jobs to China and India. The campaign indignantly demanded a retraction, claiming that these businesses did not send jobs overseas while Romney was running Bain, and the Post stood by its investigation. Yet there is another aspect to the Romney-as-outsourcer controversy. According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.Lemme quote Josh one more time:
Read [David's new story] now before it appears as someone else’s exclusive.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Seriously, Mitt? Seriously??
From TPM:
Mitt Romney told Fox News Wednesday that black leaders support him, but are afraid to say so publicly.
After his speech to the NAACP national convention Wednesday, Romney said he connected with black leaders in private and was assured that the loud and sustained booing he got for promising to repeal the health care reform law didn’t represent the feelings of all African American voters, even if they can’t say so in public.
“I spoke with a number of African-American leaders after the event and they said, you know, a lot of folks do not want to say they will not vote for President Obama but they are disappointed in his lack of policies to improve the schools,” Romney told Fox, according to a rush transcript. “The president has not been able to get the job done and people want to see someone would can get the economy going so I expect to get the African American votes, and at the end of my speech having a standing ovation was generous and hospitable and I believe we disagree on some issues like ‘Obamacare’ on a lot of issues people see eye to eye, they want someone getting the economy going.”
Polls show Romney has made no inroads with the African American electorate. He’s pulling single-digit support among black voters in the PollTracker Average. But by Romney’s account, it’s possible black voters are simply afraid to tell pollsters their real feelings.
Just so you know...
It's game time.
This blog will be active for the 2012 Election (duh!), but a majority of my blogging will be done at the Pasadena Democratic Blog, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Tumblr accounts, which I will hopefully figure out a way to feed here.
So in the meantime, particularly if you're in Pasadena/Southern California Area, follow @pasadenadems on Twitter, and the Pasadena United Democrats on Tumblr and Facebook.
We're going to do this. We're going to win in November, re-electing President Obama.
But the only way this is going to be easy, is if we make it look easy. How do we make it look easy? By working very hard.
This blog will be active for the 2012 Election (duh!), but a majority of my blogging will be done at the Pasadena Democratic Blog, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Tumblr accounts, which I will hopefully figure out a way to feed here.
So in the meantime, particularly if you're in Pasadena/Southern California Area, follow @pasadenadems on Twitter, and the Pasadena United Democrats on Tumblr and Facebook.
We're going to do this. We're going to win in November, re-electing President Obama.
But the only way this is going to be easy, is if we make it look easy. How do we make it look easy? By working very hard.
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