The Preference Cascade. How Close Is Romney To A Total Blowout Of Obama?

Just one of those pleasure-reading articles that are predicting that Obama will be blown right out of the White House.

The question is just how possible is it that the wheels will completely fall off the Obama campaign???

Watching the Collapse of the Obama Campaign
By Jack Kelly – October 29, 2012

The Navy needs more ships, Mitt Romney said in last Monday’s debate. It has fewer now than in 1916.

President Barack Obama pounced. “Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them … ”

In the spin room, some journalists laughed and applauded. Liberals imagine themselves to be intellectually and morally superior to conservatives. They love to put them down.

But “sarcasm and condescension only work if the speaker’s presumption of lofty superior knowledge is borne out by his command of actual facts,” said Pastor Donald Sensing, a retired Army colonel.

Mr. Obama was wrong on both the thrust of his argument, and on the examples he used. Aircraft carriers need smaller ships to protect them, lest they be sunk. The military has many more bayonets now than in 1916. Marines think so highly of them they’ve designed a new one, modeled on the famous KA-BAR fighting knife. Special Forces soldiers on horseback were critical to ousting the Taliban.

The facts matter little to liberals. Their assumption of intellectual superiority isn’t based on actual knowledge. Journalists declared the president the winner of the debate.

But facts and civility do matter to most Americans. A CBS panel of undecided voters in Ohio chose Mr. Romney, 6-2. A video of the dismay of CBS “This Morning” co-host Norah O’Donnell when this was reported is zipping across the Internet.

The Navy and shipbuilding are very important in southeast Virginia. With his wisecrack, the president may have kissed the state goodbye.

It isn’t just in Virginia where Mr. Obama’s fortunes are plummeting. When Missouri isn’t a swing state, but Minnesota is, Democrats are in big trouble. No challenger who’s cracked 50 percent in Gallup’s tracking poll has ever lost. Mr. Romney is polling better at this point in the campaign than did every victorious challenger from 1968 on.

It’s hard to see how the president can mount a comeback. His strategy of demonizing Mitt Romney collapsed when Americans saw in the first debate the GOP candidate has neither horns nor hooves. In an NBC/WSJ poll Monday, 62 percent of respondents said they want “significant change” from Mr. Obama’s policies, but he’s offered little in the way of an agenda for a second term. Instead he makes excuses, and ever more petty attacks. Voters now think Mr. Romney is just as “likeable” as Mr. Obama.

So the question may not be whether Mr. Romney will win, but by how much. When this dawns on Ms. O’Donnell, the video will be priceless.

Our politics are now so polarized I doubt that any candidate in either party — not even JFK or Ronald Reagan — could win much more than 52 percent of the popular vote. But law professor and blogger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) thinks the odds of a preference cascade are rising.

Economist Timur Kuran coined the term to explain why totalitarian regimes usually collapse suddenly. A preference cascade happens when people discover millions of others share their doubts about the Great Leader. Massive media bias has made the term applicable here, Mr. Reynolds said. The Barack Obama that Americans saw in the debates bears little resemblance to the heroic figure portrayed by the news media.

The crowds have been enormous at Romney/Ryan events this past week. If this is the start of a preference cascade, many Democrats may drown in the undertow. The Obama campaign has vacuumed up so much Democratic money there’s little left for other candidates.

In yet another fund-raising appeal on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said he and Michelle would be fine if he loses. If the president’s friends are indeed buying him a $35 million mansion in Hawaii, as Chicago blogger Kevin Dujan (Hillbuzz) claims, that’s certainly true. But public employee unions, crony capitalists and others who feed at the public trough have reason to panic.

Underlings must wonder if there will be legal consequences for the laws they’ve broken. I predict an orgy of document shredding Nov. 7.

The biggest losers could be “mainstream” journalists. Their blatant bias has dropped trust in the news media to an all-time low. It’ll plunge further if more evidence of collusion with the administration emerges. Nobody trusts a liar. There will be bankruptcies.

//
Jack Kelly is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/10/29/the_obama_presidency_is_about_to_be_swept_away.html at October 29, 2012 – 10:25:20 PM CDT

You first need to understand what has been going on: we have seen a GIANT collapse of Obama to the tune of a well-into-the-double-digits implosion of Obama’s reelection versus just a few weeks ago.  One question that emerges is was Obama’s pathetic debate performance alone really that damning of him as a leader?  Was it because Obama had spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to build a despicable straw man caricature of Mitt Romney that Romney obliterated in that debate?  Is it that the American people now largely realize they can no longer trust Obama as his demagogic hate ads were confronted by the reality that Mitt Romney is NOT the bogeyman that Obama so dishonestly claimed?  Or was it that Obama never really had the kind of lead that the media assured us over and over again that Obama had – and that it was merely the propaganda of the mainstream media propping Obama up all along?

I honestly don’t know that answer to that; but I do know that the collapse of Obama has been breathtaking right before the election and that all the momentum at this point belongs to Romney who is surging EVERYWHERE that matters.  And Romney’s surging to over fifty percent is significant because no candidate has EVER lost election with a lead over fifty percent at this point in the race.

The mainstream media polls that have had – and in a few cases still have – Obama up have relied on models that counted on a +8 Democrat turnout for Obama; which is stunning given that Obama only had a +4 Democrat turnout in that 2008 election in which absolutely everything turned Obama’s way.  Those models are simply downright false given what Gallup just found:

Gallup quietly published some stunning data this morning. Based on surveys conducted from October 1 through 24, Gallup finds that 36% of likely voters call themselves Republicans, compared with 35% who are Democrats. If leaners are included, the GOP advantage is 49%/46%.

How important is that? In 2008 the Democrats had a ten-point party ID advantage, 12 with leaners. If the data released today correctly reflect the voting population this year, you can throw away all of those polls that are D +9, D +7–or, for that matter, D +1. Substantially all polls show Mitt Romney with a wide lead over Barack Obama among independents. So if today’s party ID data are correct, not only will the presidential election not be close, but the Republicans will do better than currently expected in the Senate and House, too.

Now, you factor that surplus of Republican voters this year along with a sixteen point advantage in Republican enthusiasm over Democrats, and then you factor those two details along  with the nineteen-point Romney advantage with independent voters (52% to 33% for Obama), and you’ve got the very real possibility of an historic asskicking that the media simply would NOT examine.

ABC News just moved Pennsylvania and Minnesota – two blue states – into the tossup column.  Key battleground states are beginning a tectonic shift toward Romney.  And perhaps in an even more powerful signal, early voting has favored Romney by a 52% to 45% margin after early mainstream media reports that declared just the opposite.  One could compare this campaign to World War II: The Germans held all the advantages over Russia until Stalingrad in 1942 – and then the tide turned and suddenly the Germans found themselves fighting a losing battle across a huge front that went from Russian ground to German ground.  That’s what’s happened this election to Obama, with his first miserable debate performance serving as his Stalingrad.

That last is huge due to the sheer sample size: 15% of registered voters have already cast their ballots in the United States, and they have voted for Romney over Obama by a 52% to 45% margin.  That news is huge because historically Republicans prefer to vote by absentee ballot and Democrats heavily favor early voting.  So again Republicans are not only fighting but winning on a Democrat battlefield.  And that seven-point margin even beats the giant six-point advantage Romney has according to Gallup’s latest polling before Hurricane Sandy hit.

What is Obama’s only advantage?  Well, here’s an example:

PolitiChicks.tv has just received confirmation that a voter in Las Vegas tried voting for Governor Mitt Romney but the machine automatically checked “Obama” multiple times instead.

Our source said:

“Yesterday I went to an early voting site at Centennial Center in Las Vegas, NV. I went with my 19 year old son who was a first-time voter. I went to an open machine and inserted my card. When the selections came up, all of the candidate pairings were listed and I touched the box for Romney/Ryan. The checkmark appeared next to President Obama’s name. I touched the check mark removing it and touched the box next to Romney’s name again. Again, the checkmark appeared next to Obama. I motioned for an observer to come over and showed him. I touched the mark next to Obama, removing it and again touched Romney’s name. The checkmark appeared next to Obama. At this point, the gentleman next to me was looking over my partition to see. I touched the checkmark, again removing it from Obama’s name and selected Romney. The checkmark appeared next to Romney. I double-checked the paper ballot to ensure that Romney was indeed selected and cast my ballot. I didn’t make a fuss but have called our local election department only to get recordings. I also wrote an email to the Clark County Election Department about the incident. My son said that he had no issues casting his ballot.”

I called the Las Vegas GOP office but haven’t gotten a response from anyone about this yet.

Please folks, check and re-check your ballots before turning them in. A similar case was reported earlier today in North Carolina.

And here’s the story on North Carolina.

The only chance Obama has at this point is massive voter fraud.  You just can’t overcome the following disadvantages: the other party is larger than your party AND has more enthusiasm to get out and actually vote; plus independent voters support the other candidate by nineteen points more than they support you.  Democrats only “hope and change” is to cheat and to cheat massively.

[Update, 10/31/12]: Just to make it official, Obama is cheating in Ohio, too:

Voting machine swaps Obama for Romney
Incorrect inputs irritate voter
6:51 AM, Oct 31, 2012

MARION — Joan Stevens was one of several early voters at the polls on Monday. But when Stevens tried to cast her ballot for president, she noticed a problem.

Upon selecting “Mitt Romney” on the electronic touch screen, Barack Obama’s name lit up.

It took Stevens three tries before her selection was accurately recorded.

“You want to vote for who you want to vote for, and when you can’t it’s irritating,” Stevens said.

Stevens said she alerted Jackie Smith, a board of elections member who was present. Smith declined to comment, but Stevens says she mentioned that the machine had been having problems all day.

ddd

Romney Surge Continues With Seven-Point Gallup Lead And First EVER Lead In Electoral College Over Obama

First of all, there’s the Gallup poll of likely voters (the most accurate measure of actual voter turnout):

Mitt Romney has opened up a 7-point lead.  And if that number is even close to correct, this race is OVER.

Only a few days ago, the blabbing heads were talking about Romney winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college.  But now the Romney surge is showing up there, too in the RCP average:

Both developments are enough to individually put Chris Matthews into a straitjacket and then into a rubber room.  Not that he didn’t belong there already.

But just to make sure he enters his rubber room with a mouth frothing with rabis, too, another developement is that Obama is may be losing by four points in Pennsylvania.

The Washington Times has an interesting write-up about all of these recent developments:

EDITORIAL: Romney’s electoral insurgency
Republicans are picking off states while Democrats scramble
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Thursday, October 18, 2012

A political tectonic shift is under way. Heading into the final weeks of the  presidential campaign, the electoral map is changing decisively. Areas  previously thought safe for Barack Obama are  becoming competitive, and tossup states are turning into safe havens for Mitt Romney. A month ago, commentators were  claiming the roads to victory were closing for the Romney campaign. Now it’s the  Obama camp hunkering down to make a last stand around a few critical states.

On Thursday, the RealClearPolitics electoral-vote map gave Mr.  Romney the lead for the first time. President Obama  had an 88-vote advantage two weeks ago, but now the challenger leads by five.  This 93-vote swing took place chiefly because four states on the Great Lakes — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — changed from “leaning Obama” to tossups. This combined 64-vote loss significantly broadened the territory the  Obama team needs to contest.

Last week, Suffolk University  pollster David Paleologos took criticism  for saying Mr. Romney had a lock on Florida,  Virginia and North Carolina, worth a collective 57 electoral votes. Today, that  is orthodoxy. The New York Times‘ Nate Silver, who still points to an Obama  win, has Florida, Virginia and North Carolina in the Romney column as well as  Colorado’s nine electoral votes, which many analysts see as beyond Mr.  Obama’s reach.

Adding up these states puts Mr. Romney’s  base at 257 electoral votes, a mere 13 from victory. This was considered  impossible a few weeks ago. From that substantial position, the Republican could  win by taking Ohio (18 electoral votes), Michigan (16) or Pennsylvania (20).  Even if he lost all three of these large states, he still would end up on top by  taking Wisconsin (10) and one other small swing state from among New Hampshire  (4), Iowa (6) and Nevada (6).

This is the background to Major Garrett’s National Journal report on  Wednesday that Obama operatives have been  reduced to pursuing a four-state strategy. They are entrenching in Ohio, New  Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada in hopes of blocking the Romney endgame and eking out  a victory. Whether this strategic-hamlet approach can prevail against the Romney  insurgency remains to be seen, but it doesn’t account for the fluid nature of  the electoral battle space.

It’s true no Republican has won the White House without the Buckeye State,  but history isn’t destiny. In the 10 elections between 1952 and 1988, California  went for Democrats only in 1964. If Mr.  Obama focuses resources to hold Ohio but loses Pennsylvania or Michigan, he  won’t be re-elected.

Mr. Romney’s options for victory are  increasing while Mr. Obama’s dwindle. As the  Obama campaign hunkers down into its final electoral redoubts, it’s worth  recalling Gen. George S. Patton’s dictum that “fixed fortifications are  monuments to the stupidity of man.” The tighter Mr. Obama tries to grip these four states, the  more likely the election will slip through his fingers.

Obama and his mob of Chicago communists are going to be throwing more crap than monkeys in a dirty cage between now and the election.

Obama Vs. Gallup (When A Communist Dictator Doesn’t Like The Polls, He Has The Pollster Shot)

I wish I could label the Obama regime “Nixonian.”  But Obama makes Nixon at his worst look like a choirboy at his best:

Emails suggest Axelrod leaned on Gallup after unfavorable poll
Published September 06, 2012
FoxNews.com

Employees at the venerable Gallup polling firm suggested they felt threatened by Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod when he questioned the methodology of a mid-April poll showing Mitt Romney leading the president – according to internal emails published Thursday.
 
That poll showed Romney leading Obama 48-43 percent.
 
The exchange, according to emails published by The Daily Caller, started when Axelrod sent a tweet saying the tracking poll was “saddled with some methodological problems” and directing followers to a National Journal story in which a professor suggested outdated sampling.  
 
According to the email chain titled “Axelrod vs. Gallup,” the White House in addition asked that a Gallup staffer “come over and explain our methodology,” which was apparently perceived as a subtle threat.
 
A Gallup official said in an email he thought Axelrod’s pressure “sounds a little like a Godfather situation.”
 
“Imagine Axel[rod] with Brando’s voice: ‘I’d like you to come over and explain your methodology…You got a nice poll there … would be a shame if anything happened to it… .’”
 
The exchanges also show that Gallup invited White House officials to its Washington offices, but it remains unclear whether any of the meetings occurred. 
 
However, when Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, the Obama administration’s Justice Department revived a 2009 whistle-blower lawsuit against the firm by joining the suit, a senior Gallup official alleges.
 
The suit was filed by former Gallup employee Michael Lindley, who claims the firm violated the False Claims Act by overcharging the federal government for its services.
 
Gallup declined to talk about the issue. Calls to the Justice Department, the White House and the Obama campaign have not been returned.
 
Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs told The Washington Times this week that he was unaware of any communications between the campaign and Gallup.

You want an investigation about “methodology”?  This is EXACTLY how the Obama “methodology” works.  The Eric Holder “Justice” Department has repeatedly been sicked on anybody Obama has regarded as a political enemy:

Internal emails between senior officials at The Gallup Organization, obtained by The Daily Caller, show senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempting to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president.

After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit that appears damning on its face.

Obama has sicked Eric Holder on numerous states that had the audacity to try to get Obama to uphold federal law (whereas Obama is ABOVE the law).  Arizona and a lot of other states know what its like to try to suffer attack after attack from their own openly hostile federal government.

Obama sicked the NLRB on Boeing because it had the audacity to think it had the right to open a plant in right-to-work state South Carolina.

Obama flagrantly trampled over the rights of SECURED GM and Chrysler bondholders when he stole their equity and handed to his union allies along with $79 billion in taxpayer money.

Obama played the same game he’s playing with Gallup with Gibson Guitar that he attacked to intimidate them after they stuck their heads out by stupidly believing they had free speech rights in Obama’s America.

Just as Obama played the same game by attacking Sherrif Joe Arpaio after Arpaio clashed with him on immigration – whether he had any legitimate grounds to do so or not.  After a three-year-long witch hunt, mind you.

Obama is described in terms of his “Nixonian quality” regarding his godawful treatment of the press.

And Obama is out to make Nixon’s enemies’ list look like a list of people to write ‘thank you’ notes to.

That’s not an exhaustive list, boys and girls; that’s just the stuff I thought of off the top of my head.  Obama is a Chicago Gestapo-style thug, pure and simple.

And so, lo and behold, what does Gallup give Obama next time around?  The Outside The Beltway title says it all: “Obama Gets ‘Big Bounce’ in Gallup Poll.”  What were the odds of that happening?

Of course, Obama’s stooge David Axelrod brought it to our attention: Gallup has crappy methodology and so the organization’s work ought to be ignored – especially when their work is coming with Obama’s gun to their head like it is.

CU-Boulder Analysis That Has Accurately Predicted EVERY Presidential Race Since 1980 Says Romney Wins, 52.9% To 47.1%, By 320 To 270 Electoral Votes

The Colorado University analysis is based primarily on economic data.  So it ought to be a highly relevant fact that Gallup just released a poll that says Americans disapprove of Obama’s economic performance by a measure of 60 to 36.

Obviously, there will probably eventually be a first time for CU-Boulder’s analysis to be wrong, but this is sure good news for Romney (and America!) and bad news for Obama and liberals:

CU-Boulder analysis of election factors points to Romney win
Wednesday, 22 August 2012 18:23 staff

A University of Colorado analysis of state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980 forecasts that the 2012 winner will be Mitt Romney.
 
The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.
 
“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.
 
According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.
 
“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”
 
Their model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran strongly, 1980 and 1992. It also correctly predicted the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore received the most popular vote but George W. Bush won the election.
 
The study will be published this month in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. It will be among about a dozen election prediction models, but one of only two to focus on the Electoral College.
 
While many forecast models are based on the popular vote, the Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.
 
In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income, which indicates the extent to which people have more or less disposable income. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.
 
Accordingly — and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time — each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.
 
Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said. The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”
 
In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had any statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention; the home state of the vice president; or the partisanship of state governors.
 
In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.
 
In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.
 
The authors also provided caveats. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and close tallies in certain states. The current data was taken five months in advance of the Nov. 6 election and they plan to update it with more current economic data in September. A second factor is that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall an unexpected direction.
 
“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,” Berry said.
 
Election prediction models “suggest that presidential elections are about big things and the stewardship of the national economy,” Bickers said. “It’s not about gaffes, political commercials or day-to-day campaign tactics. I find that heartening for our democracy.”

There are, for the record, 538 electoral college votes.  If Obama wins 218, that means that Romney will win 320.  And this analysis has Romney winning virtually ALL the critical swing states.

Personally, for the sake of America, I hope the margin is even greater.  I hope that Romney has an overwhelming mandate to restore America and undo Obama’s failed attempt to “fundamentally transform” it.

Does this mean Republicans should ease off the throttle?  HELL NO!  It means that we ought to be like General Patton and determine to drive right through and right over the enemy.

Give money donations, knowing that unlike Obama supporters you won’t be pissing your money away in a failed cause to top off a failed presidency.

Give time donations, knowing that if you volunteer for the Romney campaign, you’ll be serving the next president of the United States rather than wasting your time like Obama supporters.

And give your vote, knowing that if you vote for Romney, you’ll be voting for the winner rather than wasting your vote on the loser.

[Update, 8/23/12]: It is being reported today that new polling shows in the Real Clear Politics average that Mitt Romney is gaining momentum in eight of the nine key swing states while Obama is either flat or losing ground.

Just To Brighten Your Day: Romney Has Overtaken Obama In The Polls Even As Obama’s Approval Has Plummeted

Nice to see articles like this from the Washington Times:

LAMBRO: Romney polls overtake Obama
President’s approval plummeting
By Donald Lambro – The Washington Times
Thursday, August 16, 2012

Let’s get a few things straight about the presidential race between President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. It’s not a dead heat anymore.

Everyone knew this was going to be a close race, but as of this week, Mr. Romney moved slightly ahead of President Obama. Not by much, maybe a couple of points, but he clearly has begun to move into the lead.

Heading into July, the race clearly was a tie, with the Gallup Poll showing each candidate at 46 percent in its head-to-head daily surveys. But something happened this week that appears to have changed the political equation.

Perhaps it was Mr. Romney’s choice of veteran Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee. Or more evidence of the Obama economy’s persistent weakness and soaring gasoline prices. Or the tough TV ads Mr. Romney’s campaign has begun running after months of being punched around by an avalanche of negative ads in the battleground states.

Whatever the reason, the numbers began slowly but clearly to edge Mr. Romney’s way, and Mr. Obama’s numbers took a nose dive on his job-approval ratings.

The first indication that Mr. Obama’s shaky presidency was taking a tumble came Monday, when the Gallup Poll’s daily tracking survey showed his job-approval numbers plunging to 43 percent and his disapproval climbing to 50 percent.

Then, on Wednesday, Gallup’s candidate matchup suddenly was leaning in Mr. Romney’s direction, 47 percent to the president’s 45 percent. That’s where things stood heading into Friday.

While a number of factors are contributing to Mr. Obama’s slight decline and Mr. Romney’s rise in the national polls, there is no doubt the economy and jobs are the biggest factors driving this race.

Gallup proved that Thursday when it released new poll numbers showing voters were giving Mr. Obama some of the worst scores of his failed presidency on the economy, job creation and four years of $1 trillion-plus deficits that most trouble the American people.

White House morale, which reportedly is declining fast, must have sunk even further when staffers looked at Mr. Obama’s bleak approval-disapproval numbers on these issues:

Creating jobs: 37 percent approval and 58 percent disapproval.

The economy: 36 percent approval and 60 percent disapproval.

The federal budget deficits: 30 percent approval and 64 percent disapproval.

These aren’t just disastrous job-approval scores, they are among the worst in recent presidencies, including the one Mr. Obama followed in 2009.

“Obama’s ratings on the economy are significantly worse than all three prior successful presidential incumbents at this same point in their first term,” Gallup reported Thursday.

“His 36 percent approval rating on the economy is well below George W. Bush’s rating in August 2004 (46 percent), Bill Clinton’s in August 1996 (54 percent), and Ronald Reagan’s in July 1984 (50 percent),” Gallup said.

It’s worth noting that in Reagan’s case, the 1984 election was all about Reagan’s tax-cut-driven recovery versus tax increases proposed by Democratic nominee Walter Mondale. Reagan won in a landslide, carrying 49 states.

In many ways, the central election issues in 1984 were the same ones we are fighting over today. Tax cuts get the economy back on its feet, stimulate capital investment, create more jobs and produce more revenue to boot.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan are embracing lower taxes, just as John F. Kennedy, Reagan and, eventually, even Bill Clinton did, to build the economy, while Mr. Obama and the Democrats are running on raising taxes to grow the government and increase spending.

Mr. Obama and his party charge that lowering taxes will worsen the deficit, when one of the chief culprits driving the Obama deficits, besides his spending binge, is slower 1.5 percent economic growth and an 8.3 percent jobless rate. People who don’t have jobs don’t pay income taxes.

Meantime, another issue is emerging in the campaign that is hurting Mr. Obama’s quest for a second term, and that is his directive to rewrite the welfare reform law of 1996.

That directive will grant waivers to the states to override the welfare reform law, according to a study written by two top analysts at the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley.

“The new welfare dictate issued by the Obama administration clearly guts the law and seeks to impose its own policy choices — a pattern that has become all too common in this administration,” they wrote.

In a nutshell, Mr. Obama’s directive says the “traditional TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) work requirements can be waived or overridden by a legal device called the Section 1115 waiver authority,” they said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a separate study of that section, “Effectively, there are no TANF waivers.”

The Romney campaign has been hitting the airwaves with an ad lambasting the administration for its backdoor attempt to undermine the welfare reforms. The Obama campaign has counterattacked, charging the ad is a lie and that Mr. Romney sought the same kind of waiver authority as governor.

Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, while criticizing the Romney ad, said “There is something fishy about the administration’s process on this memorandum.” He gave the Obama camp “a solid three Pinocchios” for its shaky waiver claim against Mr. Romney, saying “there is little evidence that is the case.”

Increasingly, as Mr. Obama’s disapproval numbers have been getting worse, his campaign has been making up things that aren’t true. A sense of desperation and hysteria is creeping into its bipolar rhetoric, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. warning voters (guess who?) that Mr. Romney will “put y’all back in chains.”

Historically, Gallup says, presidents who won a second term had near 50 percent job-approval ratings. But with Mr. Obama’s ratings stuck in the mid to low 40s, it looks as if the end is near.

Donald Lambro is a syndicated columnist and former chief political correspondent for The Washington Times.

If that doesn’t make you happy, then consider the Purple Poll which examines the dozen swing states that will decide the presidency.  Romney is now leading in Ohio, Virginia and Florida.

What is most promising of all is that Obama has enormously outspent Romney the last several months – even as Romney has actually outraised Obama during those months – due to the campaign laws that prevent Romney from spending money he has raised for the general election until he is the official nominee of his party.  After the GOP convention near the end of August, it will suddenly be ROMNEY who has the huge money edge over Obama.  Obama has spent hundreds of millions lying and slandering and demonizing – and it basically hasn’t done him any good.  And in less than three weeks it will be Romney on serve.

The race is close.  But it is very possible that Romney is beginning to break through.

Pray.  Contribute/donate.  Volunteer.  And vote.  For the love of God and the love of America.

Who Do You Trust More To Tell Us About Unemployment? Big Brother (8.3%) Or Gallup (9.1%)?

Which turned out to be more accurate?

“We must win the war, and we can win it! Each man and each woman, the entire German people, must call forth their utmost in work, courage, and discipline.” — Nazi government, January 1945

Or:

“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.” — Jailed journalist Stephen Laurant, circa 1935

Sometimes it is vital to pick the right people or the right agencies to believe.

Right now the Obama government is telling us that the unemployment rate is 8.3 percent and about to drop even further after numerous positive developments.

That view is not shared by leading polling organization Gallup:

Gallup: Unemployment at 9.1%, But 19% Need Jobs
Thursday, 08 Mar 2012 02:19 PM
By Martin Gould

The unemployment rate shot up by half a percentage point in February, according to figures released by the polling organization Gallup on Thursday.

The jump from 8.6 percent in January to 9.1 percent last month is the largest month-by-month increase in more than a year, Gallup said. It is the highest rate since August.

Gallup’s figures differ from the official government unemployment rate because they do not adjust the figure for seasonal variations or include anyone under 18. The survey suggests that the official figures will also show an increase from January’s 8.3 percent when they are released on Friday, said Gallup’s chief economist Dennis Jacobe.

“If the government’s unadjusted unemployment rate increases to the degree that Gallup’s has from mid-month to mid-month, then the government’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate could show an even larger increase,” Jacobe said.

He predicted the government figure for February would stand at either 8.5 or 8.6 percent.

Gallup’s figure reveals the largest single month increase since December 2010 when it went up from 8.8 percent to 9.6 percent. According to the organization, the underemployment rate – which includes part-time workers who want to be in full-time employment, rose from 18.7 percent to 19.1 percent in February, the highest since last May.

“Regardless of what the government reports, Gallup’s unemployment and underemployment measures show a substantial deterioration since mid-January,” added Jacobe. “In this context, the increase in unemployment as measured by Gallup may, at least partly, reflect growth in the workforce, as more Americans who had given up looking for work become slightly more optimistic and start looking for work again.

“So while there may be positive signs, the reality Gallup finds is that more Americans are looking for work now than were doing so just six weeks ago.
Official Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures have shown the rate go down from 9 percent since September.

And even Gallup is far more optimistic than the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office as stated in its annual report:

The [CBO] office says that will leave the unemployment rate at 8.9 percent at the end of this year, well above current the current rate of 8.5 percent, meaning the jobless rate would be increasing at election time.

[…]

And in 2013, CBO estimates unemployment will be even higher — at 9.2 percent.

As to the question as to whether Obama has created more jobs or destroyed jobs, this conversation was telling during official testimony with CBO director Douglas Elmendorf:

That prompted this exchange between Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and the CBO director. “Let me ask you, are there more people working today or fewer people working today than at the — on inauguration day of 2009?” McClintock asked.

“I believe the answer to that,” said Elmendorf, “is there are fewer people, congressman.”

Who are you going to believe?

There is an intentionally false picture being presented by somebody (see also here and here).  That much is abundantly clear.

In the case of Nazi Germany, had the German people believed the likes of Stephen Laurant, imagine how much suffering they could have spared themselves and the rest of the world.  But they were fools who chose to believe the wrong people.

Right now, Barack Obama is trying to get himself re-elected so there will be absolutely no reason for him to restrain himself in the pursuit of policies that will lead America to economic ruin.

Like the German people prior to World War II, if the American people foolishly choose to believe the wrong sources, we won’t get a do-over; they will rightly receive ruin.  Because we are responsible for our choices in this world.

Gallup Predicts New Unemployment Rate Will Skyrocket To 8.6 Percent

Note that the actual official unemployment rate ought to be 9.1 percent in February.  Note that the last few months of snowjob from the Obama media was a giant crock of crap.

You should also note that the REAL unemployment rate is actually over NINETEEN PERCENT!!!

Note that the dire CBO prediction regarding the weak and faltering US economy under Obama is coming to pass (and see a more detailed explanation of the CBO report here).

Thursday, March 1, 2012
Gallup’s Unadjusted Unemployment Data Suggest Increase in BLS Adjusted Figure

Gallup finds U.S. unemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, to be 9.1% in February, based on almost 30,000 interviews with a random sample of Americans. When Gallup applies the 0.5-percentage-point seasonal adjustment that the government applied to its unadjusted data for February last year, it produces an adjusted unemployment rate for February 2012 of 8.6% — a substantial increase from the 8.3% adjusted rate the government reported for January.

The findings provide a preview of what Gallup will report in its monthly employment release next Thursday, March 8. Because Gallup’s data are collected continuously throughout the month, the data are available now, one week ahead of the BLS report scheduled for Friday, March 9.

 

Three key factors help determine the relationship between Gallup’s measurement of the unemployment rate and the unemployment rate reported by the government. The first involves the relationship between Gallup’s and the government’s unadjusted survey results. Data from the past two years show that on an unadjusted basis, Gallup’s and the government’s unemployment measurements track fairly closely in both direction and magnitude.

 

 

Gallup reported an unadjusted rate of 8.6% for January 2012 and the government reported an unadjusted rate of 8.8%. Gallup’s and the government’s unadjusted results also tracked closely in January 2011 (9.9% versus 9.8%, respectively) and January 2010 (10.9% compared with 10.6%).

 

The results were similarly close in February 2010 (when Gallup found 10.6% versus the government’s 10.4%) but diverged significantly in February 2011, when Gallup reported an unadjusted rate of 10.3% and the government an unadjusted rate of 9.5%. That is, after the government re-based its unemployment data in January 2011, Gallup’s and the government’s February results differed in both magnitude and direction.

 

Relating Gallup’s current findings to the likely unemployment rate the government will report for February depends on a number of somewhat complex key assumptions. Consider the following scenarios:

Based on its full-month measure, Gallup finds that the unadjusted unemployment rate increased by 0.5 points, to an average of 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January.

• If we assume the government’s unadjusted unemployment rate experienced a similar 0.5-point increase, it would rise to 9.3% in February from January’s 8.8%. Applying the 0.5-point seasonal adjustment (based on the government’s February 2011 adjustment) to the February 2012 unadjusted rate (9.3%) would result in an increase in the U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to 8.8% in February 2012 from January’s 8.3%.

• If we instead assume the government’s unadjusted rate increased by 0.3 points in February to exactly match Gallup’s measurement at 9.1%, this would produce an increase in the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to 8.6% in February 2012 — assuming the use of the February 2011 seasonal adjustment of 0.5 points.

Of course, there are lots of other possible assumptions. For example, the government’s unemployment estimate is based on a mid-month measurement. Gallup’s mid-month measurement for the unadjusted unemployment rate in January 2012 was 8.3% and it was 9.0% in mid-February. If we were to apply this mid-month increase of 0.7 points to the government’s unadjusted January rate of 8.8%, the resulting unadjusted 9.5% would lead to a 9.0% seasonally adjusted rate.

 

On the other hand, the government re-based its household survey once again in January 2012. If the government’s unadjusted survey results are unchanged (8.8%) or go lower in February, the government’s seasonally adjusted rate is likely to do the same.

 

A second factor to consider is the way the government seasonally adjusts its unadjusted unemployment rate for February. As noted previously, the government used a 0.5-point adjustment factor to seasonally adjust its results in February 2011. However, in 2010, it used a slightly different 0.6-point adjustment. Applying this larger seasonal adjustment to Gallup’s full-month results would produce an 8.5% adjusted unemployment rate for February 2012 — up from 8.3% in January.

 

A third factor that affects the unemployment rate might involve shifts taking place in the size of the workforce. If Americans seeking work get discouraged and drop out of the workforce in large numbers, it is likely to reduce the unemployment rate. This appears to have happened at various points in the past. Gallup’s measurement of the participation rate — the percentage of Americans in the workforce — shows a decline to 67.6% in February from 68.2% in January. If the government shows a similar decline in the workforce, it is likely to lower the U.S. unemployment rate that the government reports and that may not be fully picked up by Gallup’s data.

 

In sum, Gallup’s Daily tracking of the U.S. unemployment rate — which is not seasonally or otherwise adjusted — shows an increase in February from January. This reflects a consistent measurement of the job-market reality that Gallup has measured since January 2010. It may be that various factors will lead the U.S. government on Friday, March 9, to release a different unemployment rate than that implied by Gallup’s results, but that report will not change the reality in the marketplace.

Under Obama’s failed leadership millions and millions of Americans have simply given up and dropped out of the employment picture altogether.  And Obama loves it when he’s crushed the spirit of another worker, because that artificially lowers the unemployment rate and makes his failure artificially appear good.

This economy is teetering and on its way to a very hard fall.  And it is simply beyond laughable that the propaganda media would continually tell us that things are going just peachy dandy under their messiah’s marvellous leadership.

Barack Obama: The ONLY President Who Could Make Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Actually Look GOOD

Jimmy Carter is infamous for many things.  But he’s probably the most infamous for his “malaise” speech.

It was the speech of a man who had no idea how to solve a crisis.

In fact, regarding the central economic problem imploding America, Jimmy Carter said:

“It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

But Ronald Reagan had a solution.  He turned America around rather than lecturing the nation about what was wrong with it.

Obama has America full of malaise and more, because he, too, is a completely failed leader with zero ideas:

September 29:

“The way I think about it is, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track.”

November 12:

“But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America.”

See the “Jimmy Obama” video for more:

Obama has actually surpassed Jimmy Carter as the worst failure this country has ever known:

Barack Obama: Making “Malaise” Look Good
By fitsnews • on November 29, 2011

You’ve no doubt heard the comparisons before, but now it’s official: U.S. President Barack Obama is a worse president than Jimmy Carter.

At least that’s the opinion of the American people, as conveyed to Gallup pollsters.

“President Obama’s slow ride down Gallup’s daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history,” writes Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report.

“Since March, Obama’s job approval rating has hovered above Carter’s, considered among the 20th century’s worst presidents, but today Obama’s punctured Carter’s dismal job approval line,” Bedard continues.

According to Gallup, here are the approval ratings for ten of the last twelve presidents (including Obama) at this point in their administrations:

Dwight Eisenhower: 78 percent
George W. Bush: 55 percent
Harry S. Truman: 54 percent
Ronald Reagan: 54 percent
George H.W. Bush: 52 percent
Jimmy Carter: 51 percent
Bill Clinton: 51 percent
Richard M. Nixon: 50 percent
Lyndon B. Johnson: 44 percent
Barack Obama: 43 percent

This list obviously doesn’t include John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was polling at 58 percent in a poll taken nine days before his death, however. The list also doesn’t include former president Gerald Ford, who left office in January 1977 after serving less than two-and-a-half years as president.

Amazingly, despite his historically awful approval ratings Obama is still even money to defeat even the most “electable” Republican challenger – which should tell you all you need to know about the ideological bankruptcy of the current crop of GOP contenders.

As for the last paragraph, I agree – to a limited degree.  I’ve been appalled at how pathetic the GOP field has largely become.  Mitt Romney is a pandering flip flopper who is only surpassed by Barack Obama for saying one thing and then saying another.

Here’s the UK Telegraph’s Top Ten list of Obama flip flops. 

Notice that it doesn’t even include Obama’s abject hypocrisy and self-righteous demagoguery regarding the debt ceiling.

As bad as Mitt Romney is, he won’t have much of a problem blowing Obama out of the water on the charge of flip flopping.  To call Obama a “serial liar” has the defect of being unfair to serial liars.  But that said, Mitt Romney is truly pathetic.  And it makes me sad that he’s my party’s probable nominee.

To suggest that Newt Gingrich is “intellectually bankrupt” only goes to reveal the serial bias of the author of the above article.  Even Bill Clinton lavished praise on Newt Gingrich about being something very different indeed from “intellectually bankrupt.”

But Newt Gingrich has his own set of “issues” that undermine him as a legitimate conservative.  Here’s one:

Here’s another:

“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” he said when asked about Ryan’s plan to transition to a “premium support” model for Medicare. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

And I’m only slightly happier about his candidacy than I am about Mitt Romney’s.

Fwiw, I don’t trust Mitt Romney because he is the kind of man who will tell you whatever you want him to tell you to get elected; and he’ll say one thing and say another and then deny that he ever contradicted himself.  I don’t trust Newt Gingrich because the man is brilliant – but seems to desperately want everyone to celebrate that brilliance.  Just for one example, if he doesn’t tow the line on the global warming agenda (see him sitting on Nancy Pelosi’s couch above), the media will depict his view as ignorant in ten thousand different stories.  And I seriously wonder if the man’s ego can withstand the criticism of the “intelligentsia.”

Btw, here’s a sad, pathetic comparison as to the things that Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama have in common.  It doesn’t make any of them look very good.

And in that sense it’s like 2008 all over again.

There comes a point of no return for a nation.  And one of the things that herald that point of no return is a nation’s inability to recognize that their leader is going to lead them straight to hell.  I fear that we’ve reached that point of no return in this our very own God damn America.

Such a nation will go down hard.  And it deserves to go down hard.

Barack Obama is an abject failure.  Four more years of Obama is tantamount to a vote for the United States of America to slit its own throat and then stagger around like a headless chicken before it collapses for good.

The problem is that the worst failure in American history will have a billion dollar political warchest from all the crony capitalist deals he’s made to rob America blind.  And that when America needed one most, the GOP couldn’t produce another Ronald Reagan.

Instead, we have the choice between a couple of guys who won’t be that good at getting America back to where it needs to be versus a complete failure who will utterly implode this country.

Will Americans actually vote to re-elect the worst president in history?  Will we actually vote for a guy who is so bad that he actually makes even Jimmy Carter look good?

All I can say is, “Lord, please don’t give us the leaders we deserve.”

Obama Down To Support Of Rabid True Believing Marxist Ideologues

This speaks volumes.

From Gallup:

According to Gallup, only 39% of Americans approve of Barack Obama, versus 54% who disapprove of him.

Some other big numbers: 17% of Americans think the economic outlook is getting better under Obama, versus 79% who say it is getting WORSE under Obama.  8 percent of Americans believe the economic conditions are excellent or good, versus 53% who think economic conditions are poor under Obama.

Rasmussen has this:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 20% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -22 (see trends).

And when you click on that trends link, you find that Obama has been down in this -22 dump longer than he ever has.

I think of North Korea and Kim Jong Il. I think of a country that is literally starving due to a leftwing socialist’s policies. I have said:

Since Obama was elected, I’ve been saying that a third of American voters would continue to support Obama even if he led us into the stone-age-like conditions that Kim Il Jong has led his people into. We could be living in the dark and freezing at night, and scratching our own fecal matter from the ground in order to have something to burn, and this group of people would still adore their Dear Leader.

I said that well over a year ago.  And we’re getting to that hard-core true believer crowd of rabid fanatics now.

The media propaganda and “the state” are so behind Kim Jong Il that even as the people literally starve to death and die by the millions, they thank their lucky stars for their “Dear Leader.”  The tiny, emaciated people hang pictures of him in their homes and even literally worship him.

And that’s just where the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media and a dwindling but fanatic few Americans are at.

Gallup: In 29 Months Of Obama Presidency Americans Have NEVER ONCE Believed The Economy Improving

This is really quite amazing, given the constant media propaganda constantly assuring us that recovery is right around the corner and every new piece of bad economic news was somehow “unexpected.”  But the majority of the American people have never once believed that our führer has NEVER been anything other than a failure.

Gallup: In No Month of Obama Presidency Has Majority Believed Economy Improving
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

(CNSNews.com) – Barack Obama has now been president for more than 29 months, yet in none of those months has a majority of Americans believed the nation’s economy is getting better rather than worse, according to the Gallup poll.

In fact, in no month of Obama’s presidency has belief that the economy is getting better exceeded 41 percent among American adults, a peak it reached in April 2010 and again in January 2011.

In the most recent three day-period reported by Gallup—July 1-July 3—only 31 percent of Americans said they believed the economy was getting better. Meanwhile, 63 percent said they believed it was getting worse.

Each day, Gallup asks approximately 500 American adults a simple question: Do they think that economic conditions in the country as a whole are getting better or getting worse? Gallup then regularly publishes the most recent three-day average percentage for each answer, while periodically publishing the monthly averages.

While 41 percent is the highest percentage of Americans who told Gallup they believed the economy was getting better during any month of the Obama presidency, there have been some three-day periods in which a somewhat higher percentage told Gallup they believed the economy was getting better.

However, since the three-day period ending on Oct. 15, 2009, according to day-by-day data released by Gallup, the percentage of Americans who said in any three-day period that they believed the economy was getting better peaked at 46 percent on Dec. 30, 2009-Jan. 3, 2010.

The last time as many as 40 percent of Americans said they believed the economy was getting better was in the three-day period that ended on Feb. 16, 2011.

In June, belief that the economy was getting better never rose higher than 34 percent in any three-day period.

We voted for an evil man.  We voted for the “God damn America” candidate.  And what a surprise, God damn America is precisely what we have.

If you think that more Marxism or more of the militant homosexual agenda will change that, then go vote for Obama and his Democrats again.  Go ahead.  Vote for more hell.  Because one day soon under ObamaCare you’re going to die and then you will burn there for all eternity.

If you think that 1 in 7 Americans being on food stamps is the way to go, and 1 in 5 would be better yet, then by all means, keep voting for the food stamp president.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”  That is exactly what Obama has done; he has taxed and regulated and strangled success and he has subsidized and rewarded failure.  And now we’re supposed to be shocked at all the failure we’re seeing???