Swing States -- What's Really Happening

[Homeland Security]

Pennsylvania -- not really competitive. Republicans will win western part of the state for first time in decades, but suburban Philly is getting bluer. Obama by eight or so.

Ohio -- Obama has a slight lead. Upper Midwest starting to trend away from Dems, but GOP anti-union campaign fell flat in Ohio where it succeeded in Wisconsin and Indiana. This will come down to ground game.

New Hampshire -- I don't think it's as competitive as some do. GOP brand still ruined by Bush years there. Romney with name recognition does as well as he can there, but NH is still lean Dem.

Virginia -- Demographically trending away from GOP due to government employees in northern counties. Obama is throwing a huge arsenal to hold Virginia. Deep-red southern Virginia is inflamed against Obama and will turn out. A true toss-up.

North Carolina -- Black turnout, Austinization of Asheville delivered NC narrowly in 2008. This state is more like Missouri than Virginia though. Romney is up at least five. Likely GOP.

Michigan -- Dems weaker than usual because of defection of white blue-collar Catholics and depopulation of Detroit. Romney also has roots here. Not sure the trend is strong enough to turn it red this cycle. It's more of a swing state than Pennsylvania is but not much.

Indiana -- not really a swing state; Romney will win easily.

Wisconsin -- polls even when Walker won his recall showed Obama in the lead. Walker won recall on the strength of middle-of-the-road voters not thinking the recall was justified rather than a red shift in the electorate. Ryan makes it a little closer even but I think this is about the same as Michigan.

Missouri -- there was a blip when Jeebotard Akin opened his mouth, but since then MO has gone back to Romney in double digits.

Iowa -- another true toss-up. Obama has both barrels aimed at it.

Florida -- Obama got a lot of Cuban voters in 2008 he won't get this time. He's also weaker among Jews and seniors. It doesn't necessarily turn it red, but I have Romney up slightly here. Sort of the flip side of Ohio. Again, groud game makes the difference.

Colorado -- trending away from GOP due to increasing Hispanic population and Anglo hostility towards them, and Californization of Denver. Hickenlooper is popular and effective. However, 2008 result more because of GOP disarray that cycle than demographic trends. As with all other states except Florida and its Cubans, Hispanic turnout is about half the Anglo rate. I have Romney up by four or five. If someone in the state GOP, especially the Colo Spgs crowd, does or says something stupid it could stay blue.

New Mexico -- more or less a blue state now due to western Hispanic Dem solidarity and leftie flavor of northern New Mexico overwhelming southeastern ranchers. Saw a Romney bounce after GOP convention due to Martinez speech but it won't last.

Arizona -- not really a swing state. Hispanics are a solid Dem block but the whites basically vote like it's Mississippi.

Nevada -- this is another true toss-up where the Hispanics and California transplants basically balance out the western conservatives. Interestingly, the way the math works Nevada hasn't been seen as a critical toss-up worth a lot of resources but that could change.

I expect some idiots to come in here and claim that South Carolina or Georgia or Texas on one side, or Oregon or New Jersey or Minnesota on the other side are up from grabs. To pre-empt, let me explain: shut up, you fucking moron. No, they aren't.

Based upon this, if you consider OH and FL toss-ups, then Obama is up 251-215 and Romney more or less needs to run the table. He has a shot, but clearly Obama has the high ground. If Ohio goes Blue, then Obama is at 269 and Romney has to win every other state for an Electoral College tie. Then it goes to the Republican House of Representatives and Romney wins.

Well, he "wins," because if there's an Electoral College tie there will be massive fucking civil unrest and the United States probably splits apart in 2013.

[SnakeBoy]

I expect some idiots to come in here and claim that South Carolina or Georgia or Texas on one side, or Oregon or New Jersey or Minnesota on the other side are up from grabs. To pre-empt, let me explain: shut up, you fucking moron. No, they aren't.


:lol Well you definitely won that imaginary argument.

[CosmicCowboy]

Seriously

I heard some guy on the radio yesterday saying that Texas was in play and could go for Obama and I was like "what the fuck?...how did this dumbass get on the radio?"

[Slomo]

According to FOX Swing states = Battleground states?

[Juggity]

In 15-20 years, Texas will be blue.

But not in 2012.

[Clipper Nation]

Well, he "wins," because if there's an Electoral College tie there will be massive fucking civil unrest and the United States probably splits apart in 2013.

No, if there's an Electoral College tie, it goes to the House, and while Obama and Romney continue to bicker, the March 3rd deadline approaches.... then, faced with the prospect of J:lole Bid:loln in the White House, the House overwhelmingly votes RON PAUL as POTUS.... Ron bless

[Homeland Security]

No, if there's an Electoral College tie, it goes to the House, and while Obama and Romney continue to bicker, the March 3rd deadline approaches.... then, faced with the prospect of J:lole Bid:loln in the White House, the House overwhelmingly votes RON PAUL as POTUS.... Ron bless
I think that's been Luap Nor's plan all along mwahahahahahaha

[BradLohaus]

In 15-20 years, Texas will be blue.

But not in 2012.

Hispanic influx in Texas and rest of southwest plus white flight out of certain northern swing states to already red states means just about everyone here will get to see the day when a republican POTUS and congress is impossible, at least anywhere near what the party is today.

Permanently left SCOTUS rules social issues while both parties shift left on economics. Texas elects Hispanic democrat governor sometime in 2020s. After that, see New Mexico.

2030s: People start saying, "Have you ever heard of Pat Buchanan?"

[mavs>spurs]

The longer that hispanic families are here, they become more republican each generation. This is because they are largely catholic and don't believe in abortion or gay marriage. In 15 or 20 years, those same hispanics won't need anything from Obama in the form of citizenship and will vote republican.

[Jacob1983]

If Willard doesn't win Ohio, he's fucked. Case closed. Since 1960, only one person has lost Ohio and still won the presidency. It was JFK but yeah history ain't happening this year.

[MannyIsGod]

The longer that hispanic families are here, they become more republican each generation. This is because they are largely catholic and don't believe in abortion or gay marriage. In 15 or 20 years, those same hispanics won't need anything from Obama in the form of citizenship and will vote republican.

:lmao

[mavs>spurs]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/26/Gallup-Finds-Second-Generation-Hispanics-More-Conservative-Than-Immigrant-Hispanics


GALLUP: SECOND-GENERATION HISPANICS MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN IMMIGRANTS

by TONY LEE 26 Jun 2012 71 POST A COMMENT

Based on a recent Gallup poll that found President Barack Obama with a 66 percent to 25 percent lead over Mitt Romney among Hispanics, liberals prematurely celebrated not only winning the Hispanic vote this election year by wide margins but winning the Hispanic vote for generations to lock in a so-called permanent liberal majority.
Not so fast.
A closer look at the numbers suggest that second-generation Hispanics may not be as liberal as immigrant Hispanics, and this underscores how important full assimilation of Hispanics into the American culture will be.
According to the poll’s findings, Hispanic voters who are immigrants “say by almost 5-to-1 that the government should do more to solve our country's problems,” but “among registered Hispanic voters who are the U.S.-born children of immigrants, that ratio narrows to nearly 2-1.”
The poll found that 72% of Hispanics support Obama. However, among Hispanics whose parents were born in the USA, only 58% support Obama.
When it comes to Mitt Romney, 18% of Hispanic immigrants and 22% of first-generation Hispanics support Obama's Republican challenger. However, among Hispanics whose parents were born in America, Romney support nearly doubles at 35%.
Furthermore, 16% of immigrant Hispanics ranked immigration as the top issue of this election cycle. For Hispanics whose parents were born in America, only 7% ranked immigration as their top priority.
Right now, immigrant and first-generation Hispanics outnumber those whose parents were born in America. But in the future, when more Hispanics are born to American-born parents while immigrant Hispanics move up the economic ladder, Democrats may not be able to take the Hispanic vote for granted, as Romney has accused Obama of doing.

[Wild Cobra]

:lmao
Laugh all you want Manny. Most the Hispanics I know in Oregon are conservative and vote republican. I have never seen many of the legal Hispanics want to vote democrat.

[mavs>spurs]

Yeah, and what that article doesn't cover is that it goes further than 2nd generation. The third generation, fourth, etc are each more conservative than the last. Manny is just an ape looking chode who doesn't know jack about shit and shouldn't be taken seriously.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Yeah, and what that article doesn't cover is that it goes further than 2nd generation. The third generation, fourth, etc are each more conservative than the last. Manny is just an ape looking chode who doesn't know jack about shit and shouldn't be taken seriously.

the irony..lol

[ElNono]

Hispanics are just like any other group. If you tell them what they want to hear, they'll follow. It's not really a conservative/liberal ideological divide at this point in time. There's more pressing concerns for some of them, like their close families not getting deported or having access to jobs/education.

[z0sa]

Hispanics are just like any other group. If you tell them what they want to hear, they'll follow. It's not really a conservative/liberal ideological divide at this point in time. There's more pressing concerns for some of them, like their close families not getting deported or having access to jobs/education.

One sometimes wonders why Obama commands so much of the Latino vote . . .

[Homeland Security]

Hispanics are just like any other group. If you tell them what they want to hear, they'll follow. It's not really a conservative/liberal ideological divide at this point in time. There's more pressing concerns for some of them, like their close families not getting deported or having access to jobs/education.
And their not being ideological means that when 25-30% of one party vocally expresses its hatred for them, it makes the decision to vote for the other party pretty easy.

[boutons_deux]

Pro-Romney SuperPAC: 'Enormous Opportunity' In Western Swing States

Some well-funded pro-Mitt Romney superPACs are pulling their TV ad dollars in Pennsylvania and Michigan and are doubling down on efforts in what they consider to be more crucial swing states — such as Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Colorado.

Those are states where President Obama has also been spending considerable time campaigning lately, but where he's facing a barrage of attack ads from his Republican rival and the conservative superPACs, such as American Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/09/11/160965678/pro-romney-superpac-enormous-opportunity-in-western-swing-states?sc=17&f=1001

[FuzzyLumpkins]

The longer that hispanic families are here, they become more republican each generation. This is because they are largely catholic and don't believe in abortion or gay marriage. In 15 or 20 years, those same hispanics won't need anything from Obama in the form of citizenship and will vote republican.


A demographic overview

Our findings (Table 4) show that 41 percent of Catholics are Democrats, with Republicans at 37 percent and Independents at 22 percent. This is close to the findings from Pew Research and other studies in which Democrats claimed between 40 percent and 42 percent of the total Catholic population, Republicans between 36 percent and 38 percent, with Independents (including Greens) getting most of the others.

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005c/093005/093005n.htm

[mavs>spurs]

GALLUP: SECOND-GENERATION HISPANICS MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN IMMIGRANTS

your numbers don't mean shit but i won't even try to explain to you why. you obviously don't see it.

[Clipper Nation]

And their not being ideological means that when 25-30% of one party vocally expresses its hatred for them, it makes the decision to vote for the other party pretty easy.

Huh? If anything, the GOP blatantly panders even more to Hispanics than the Democrats do, tbh.....

[Wild Cobra]

Huh? If anything, the GOP blatantly panders even more to Hispanics than the Democrats do, tbh.....
I find it moronic that either party does. The legal Hispanics don't want such insults. Only the illegals like the messages being put out.

[Homeland Security]

Huh? If anything, the GOP blatantly panders even more to Hispanics than the Democrats do, tbh.....

I'm not speaking of the politicians necessarily. I'm saying that 25-30% of Republican voters are overtly hostile towards Hispanics. Not illegal immigrants, Hispanics in general. Don't view them as legitimate Americans. Hate the way they look, the way they talk, their aesthetic sense, their culture, food, music, religion, everything. Hate that they ever speak Spanish. Really hate seeing signs in Spanish, even if it's below the English in little type. Hate it if they go into a grocery store and see Oaxacan cheese or trepas for sale. Hate that Tejano/Norteno/Conjunto radio stations exist. Hate that Univision broadcasts over the air.

I've seen it in Texas, but the hatred in Texas is nothing compared to what I've seen in California and Arizona, or across the South.

It's hard to find political common cause with people who hate you.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm not speaking of the politicians necessarily. I'm saying that 25-30% of Republican voters are overtly hostile towards Hispanics. Not illegal immigrants, Hispanics in general. Don't view them as legitimate Americans. Hate the way they look, the way they talk, their aesthetic sense, their culture, food, music, religion, everything. Hate that they ever speak Spanish. Really hate seeing signs in Spanish, even if it's below the English in little type. Hate it if they go into a grocery store and see Oaxacan cheese or trepas for sale. Hate that Tejano/Norteno/Conjunto radio stations exist. Hate that Univision broadcasts over the air.

I've seen it in Texas, but the hatred in Texas is nothing compared to what I've seen in California and Arizona, or across the South.

It's hard to find political common cause with people who hate you.
If you have that statistic, what is it for democrats?

Besides, I don't believe that number. Maybe up to 15%, but 25% is a real stretch when talking about "legal" Hispanics in my opinion.

[mavs>spurs]

^Better get the fuck out before shit really hits the fan..that mathematician used his formula to predict race riots in 2016 remember? If you ain't wanted somewhere just take the hint..

[boutons_deux]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/26/Gallup-Finds-Second-Generation-Hispanics-More-Conservative-Than-Immigrant-Hispanics

breitbart :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

breitbart :lol

Ah...delicious Vitamin I.

[Homeland Security]

If you have that statistic, what is it for democrats?

Besides, I don't believe that number. Maybe up to 15%, but 25% is a real stretch when talking about "legal" Hispanics in my opinion.

I don't know what it is for Democrats, I'm sure it's significant, but they don't wear it on their sleeve like the ones on the right do. If they hate, they're awful quiet about it.

[Wild Cobra]

I don't know what it is for Democrats, I'm sure it's significant, but they don't wear it on their sleeve like the ones on the right do. If they hate, they're awful quiet about it.
Now it makes sense. Just like all other things, if you are not politically correct, then you are racist.

[boutons_deux]

Ah...delicious Vitamin I.

TB, fan of the scumbag Breitbart :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

Swing and a miss. lol thinkprogress

[ElNono]

One sometimes wonders why Obama commands so much of the Latino vote . . .


And their not being ideological means that when 25-30% of one party vocally expresses its hatred for them, it makes the decision to vote for the other party pretty easy.

Both correct... and there's the answer to z0sa's comment

[boutons_deux]

One sometimes wonders why Obama commands so much of the Latino vote . . .

The Dems represent the Have-Nots, the Repugs the Haves, iow, the 99% vs 1%.

Blacks and Latinos are overwhelmingly at the bottom of the 99% and were hurt much worse by the Banksters' Great Depression than the whites.

I figure most of the Latinos have figured out the Repugs don't give shit about them or the blacks. The blacks certainly have.

[Homeland Security]

Now it makes sense. Just like all other things, if you are not politically correct, then you are racist.
Yes, just ask anybody else in this forum. I am nothing if not a stickler for political correctness.

You are the biggest fucking idiot in the history of mankind.

[Homeland Security]

Wild Cobra calling Homeland Security "politically correct" has to make this an instant classic thread.

[Wild Cobra]

Wild Cobra calling Homeland Security "politically correct" has to make this an instant classic thread.
No, I call you a troll.

[boutons_deux]

Obama leads Romney in four swing states

New polls in four battleground states show President Obama holding a lead of 5 to 7 points over Republican nominee Mitt Romney, reinforcing the national surveys that indicate that the incumbent gained ground with his convention last week.

Of the four, Obama’s largest lead comes in the critical state of Ohio, where he leads Romney 50% to 43% among likely voters, according to the latest NBC/Wall St. Journal/Marist University poll. The survey also polled likely voters in Florida, where Obama led 49% to 43%, and Virginia, where he led 49% to 44%.

In a separate survey by New Hampshire’s WMUR-TV, Obama led Romney 45% to 40% in that state.

Predict a winner: Updated battleground states map

The polls in all four states were taken in the days immediately following the Democratic nominating convention, so they may have caught Obama at a high point. Often – although not always – candidates gain ground after their conventions, then see their support erode in subsequent weeks.

Still, the results highlight the challenge that Romney faces. To gain the 270 electoral votes he needs for election, he would need to win most of the states that the two campaigns consider battlegrounds. Currently, Obama appears to have at least a small lead in all those states except for North Carolina, where recent polls have shown the two neck and neck.

The new swing-state polls show two reasons why Obama has maintained that lead: Voters continue to view him more favorably than Romney, and Romney has been unable to persuade swing-state voters that he would be better able to handle the economy.

The gap in favorability is particularly large in Ohio, where 51% of likely voters have a favorable impression of Obama while only 40% feel that way about Romney. In other states, Romney comes closer to parity with Obama, but only in Virginia does the Republican nominee get a net-favorable rating, 46% to 45%, compared with 53% to 43% for Obama.

Asked which candidate could best handle the economy, Ohio voters, again, have the most negative view of Romney. In that state, likely voters favor Obama on the economy by 48% to 44% for Romney.

The Obama campaign has spent the summer bombarding Ohio voters with advertisements criticizing Romney’s business and economic record. In particular, they have emphasized the president’s decision to bail out the U.S. automobile industry, which Romney opposed. The state has a large number of jobs tied to the car and truck business.

In national surveys, Romney used to enjoy majority support on the question of who could better handle the economy, but he’s lost that margin since the Democratic convention. Support on that question is key for his campaign since Obama gets much higher marks on other issues, including who could best handle foreign policy.

http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=2714033&postId=2714033&postUserId=7&sessionToken=&catId=5217&curAbsIndex=0&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523 desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%2 6DQ%3DsectionId%253A5217%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D3

Gecko would handle the economy better? :lol

[Jacob1983]

Willard is fucked.

[boutons_deux]

Poll Finds Obama Is Erasing Romney's Edge on Economy

President Obama has taken away Mitt Romney's longstanding advantage as the candidate voters say is most likely to restore the economy and create jobs, according to the latest poll by The New York Times and CBS News, which found a modest sense of optimism among Americans that White House policies are working.

the Democratic Party is viewed more favorably than the Republican Party. The poll also found that more likely voters give an edge to Mr. Obama on foreign policy, Medicare and addressing the challenges of the middle class. The only major issue on which Mr. Romney held an advantage was handling the federal budget deficit.

:lol (with his and Ryan's plans increasing the deficit by $5T! :lol People are so stupid )

the presidential race has taken on a new sense of urgency, the poll found, with enthusiasm increasing among voters. A plea for patience, which Mr. Obama delivered at the Democratic convention, appears to be resonating with some voters.

The poll found that 51 percent of those voters supported Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., while 43 percent supported Mr. Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/us/politics/obama-erases-romneys-edge-on-economy-poll-finds.xml?f=19

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

Gecko has few weeks to take 38 electoral votes from Obama.

[boutons_deux]

Fox News Censors Their Own Polls / Banishes All Reporting On Fox Nation If Results Show Obama Ahead

Most recently, the Fox News poll published yesterday gave Obama a pronounced lead of 48% to 43% for Romney. It included a 12 point swing in Obama's favor by Independents, and the GOP advantage in enthusiasm has evaporated.


In virtually every category of voter attitude Obama held a lead:

On foreign policy (+15),

education (+14),

Medicare (+11),

health care (+9),

terrorism (+8),

immigration (+4),

taxes (+3),

making the country a better place to live (+2),

honesty (+11),

steady leader (+10 ),

the right experience (+7),

keeping promises (+4),

strong moral values (+2).

Romney led only in helping small businesses (+2) and

understanding capitalism (+25). :lol

There has been no mention of this poll on the Fox News community web site, Fox Nation. And this is not the first time that's occurred. Last month the Fox Nationalists posted the results of a Rassmussen poll that put Romney in the lead. The article neglected to say that three other polls released the same day had Obama ahead, and one of those was a Fox News poll that put Obama up by nine points.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/14/1131881/-Fox-News-Banishes-Their-Own-Polls-From-Fox-Nation

[boutons_deux]

Challenged on Medicare, G.O.P. Loses Ground

Maria Rubin is one of the coveted independent voters in this swing state - so independent that she will not say whether she is voting for President Obama or Mitt Romney. She does share her age (63) and, more quickly, her opinion on Medicare: "I'm not in favor of changing it, or eliminating it."

Her attitude speaks directly to one of the biggest challenges facing the Republican ticket this year: countering the Democrats' longstanding advantage as the party more trusted to deal with Medicare.

In the 2010 Congressional races, successful Republicans believed that they had finally found a way to do that, by linking the program's future to Mr. Obama's unpopular health insurance overhaul and accusing Democrats of cutting Medicare to pay for it. This summer Mr. Romney resumed the offensive, eventually joined by his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan.

Initially, polls suggested that the Republican strategy was working. Democrats fretted that Mr. Romney would win the retiree-heavy Florida and increase his support nationwide among older voters, who lean Republican anyway. David Winston, a Republican pollster, wrote a month ago of "a structural shift in the issue" that left the parties in "a dead heat" and Mr. Obama unable to mount an effective response.

But in recent weeks Mr. Obama and his campaign have hit back hard, and enlisted former President Bill Clinton as well, to make the case that the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare would leave older Americans vulnerable to rising health care costs. Now their counterattack seems to be paying off.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted over the last week, found that Mr. Obama held an advantage over Mr. Romney on the question of who would do a better job of handling Medicare. That is consistent with other recent polls and is a shift from just last month, before the parties' national conventions, when the two men were statistically tied on the issue.

At the heart of the conflict is the proposal backed by Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan to change the way Medicare works in an effort to drive down health care costs and keep the program solvent as the population ages. Under their plan, retirees would get a fixed annual payment from the government that they could use to buy traditional Medicare coverage or a private health insurance policy. Supporters say the change would hold expenses down by introducing more competition into the system.

Critics say the fixed payments might not keep up with rising insurance costs and could leave older Americans facing cutbacks in care or paying more out of their own pockets. Democrats contend that Medicare's rising costs can be held down within the existing system.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/us/politics/in-poll-obama-opens-medicare-edge-over-romney.xml;jsessionid=83CA7754A7470CF2877C63E84DBC 6737?f=77

Maybe Americans aren't as stupid and ignorant as Repugs think they are. :lol

[Wild Cobra Kai]

One sometimes wonders why Obama commands so much of the Latino vote . . .

Is your IQ room temp? The Arizona law and the rush of red state copies drove them right into his waiting arms.

[Wild Cobra Kai]

Huh? If anything, the GOP blatantly panders even more to Hispanics than the Democrats do, tbh.....

The GOP words and actions are not comparable and they're smart enough to see it. See: Arizona law and it's cheap copies.

[Wild Cobra]

Is your IQ room temp? The Arizona law and the rush of red state copies drove them right into his waiting arms.
Do you know what your question implies with "room temperature" and "Arizona" this time of year?

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Do you know what your question implies with "room temperature" and "Arizona" this time of year?
That your IQ is still under 100 and therefore below average :lmao

[Wild Cobra]

That your IQ is still under 100 and therefore below average :lmao
if you wish to believe that, it doesn't matter to me what you think. I was only asking a question. It's been 3 digits in Phoenix all week.

[BradLohaus]

Bush got about 40% of the Hispanic vote in one of his elections. That's as good as it gets for Republicans. It's around 70% to 30% for Obama over Romney. This whole electing a new people thing is going to work out very well for the left; they will be able to rule over Brazil 2.0.

I saw a Michael Moore video on HuffPost a couple of weeks ago and he said something fascinating. According to him Obama won the 2008 popular vote by 10 million votes, but the only age demographic he won was 18-29 year olds. He lost to all age groups over 30. He also lost the white vote.

As history clearly shows, great civilizations are always run by a very diverse group of brilliant 20 somethings. Works every time...

[boutons_deux]

Heard on NPR the big movement in Hispanic vote in FL towards Dems is from non-Cuban Hispanics moving into FL in recent years, outnumbering the Cold Warring/BombCuba Cubans.

[boutons_deux]

Romney to pledge to fix troubled U.S. immigration system

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will pledge to Hispanics on Monday that if elected he will fix the troubled U.S. immigration system in an appeal to a rising voter bloc that overwhelmingly favors Democratic President Barack Obama.

The last serious attempt at an immigration overhaul, made by Republican President George W. Bush in 2007, collapsed in Congress as conservatives rebelled against the plan, which they called an amnesty for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States.

After promising during his 2008 campaign to take on the immigration issue, Obama never followed through, leading to disappointment among various Hispanic groups.

Romney will point to Obama's inability to work on the problem as a failure.

"Candidate Obama said that one of his highest priorities would be to fix immigration in his first year in office. Despite his party having majorities in both houses of Congress, the president never even offered up a bill," Romney will say.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/17/us-usa-campaign-romney-idUSBRE88C17C20120917

Hey, Mr Gecko, did ja know? a majority in the Senate is Constitutionally sufficient, but the Senate has gridlocked itself by ignoring the Constitution's 51 and requiring 60, which Barry NEVER had.

[Wild Cobra Kai]

if you wish to believe that, it doesn't matter to me what you think. I was only asking a question. It's been 3 digits in Phoenix all week.

Room temperature <> ambient outdoor temperature

The vast majority of Arizonians have an AC or at least a swamp cooler.

[Wild Cobra]

Bush got about 40% of the Hispanic vote in one of his elections. That's as good as it gets for Republicans. It's around 70% to 30% for Obama over Romney. This whole electing a new people thing is going to work out very well for the left; they will be able to rule over Brazil 2.0.

I saw a Michael Moore video on HuffPost a couple of weeks ago and he said something fascinating. According to him Obama won the 2008 popular vote by 10 million votes, but the only age demographic he won was 18-29 year olds. He lost to all age groups over 30. He also lost the white vote.

As history clearly shows, great civilizations are always run by a very diverse group of brilliant 20 somethings. Works every time...
In other words, he lost to the groups that have increased wisdom with aging...

[BradLohaus]

Here's the Michael Moore video I was talking about. The part I mentioned starts around 3:30 or so. If he's right, and I don't doubt that he is, then that is just an amazing statistic. Obama won big and quickly; it was over very early that night. But if only people over 30 voted he would have lost. You would think this would be well known, but this is the first I've heard of it. Probably not a stat the democrats would want the public to be too aware of. The delayed adulthood of today has to be common knowledge across the country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE13hHvbS7w

Anyway, Romney has to carry so much that McCain lost. Ohio, Florida, Virgina, and North Carolina... just to be in the race. The shifting demographics might be hitting faster then even the most pessimistic conservative thought just a few years ago. It's not just race; the vast majority of Republican women are married. Ever more female never married/divorced/single moms means more liberal women, who will raise more liberal never married/divorced/single moms.

The Democrats know these votes are theirs; the right has no chance of getting a significant share of them anywhere near its current form. All of the demographic changes that have taken place and will continue to take place favor the left. The dominant coalition of non-whites, single women and the young that's been inevitable for a while in presidential elections may already be here.

[boutons_deux]

How to Solve the Swing-State Puzzle

If you don't follow the polls every day, just follow the money. For example, as of Sept. 6, according to National Journal, the campaigns and outside groups spent a combined $330 million on advertising in states carried by George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. In states that were carried by Democrats in those elections, like Michigan, they've spent one-tenth as much. This implies that Obama will get a better result than his party did in those years. On the other hand, the lack of appreciable expenditures in Arizona, Missouri or Georgia, which John McCain carried in 2008, indicates that Obama is not actively trying to expand his map, either.

The most plausible range of outcomes runs from Obama losing the election by about two percentage points, slightly better than John Kerry did, to his winning it by perhaps six or seven, slightly worse than his margin from four years ago. Given where the election is being contested, however, the most likely outcome is that Obama wins enough tipping-point states to eke out a victory.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/nate-silver-solves-the-swing-state-puzzle.xml?f=19

[Winehole23]

could be an ephemeral post-convention sugar high, but the enthusiasm gap favors the Dems in this USA Today poll of likely voters:


There is one front on which the Democrats have scored clear and perhaps crucial gains. The "enthusiasm gap" that favored Republicans by 11 points a year ago suddenly has moved to a 9-point advantage for Democrats — a crucial asset when it comes to turning out supporters to the polls.


The percentage of Democrats who say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting has surged from 53% last month to 73% now. Republican enthusiasm has risen but by not nearly as much, to 64% from 55%.


Those gains in enthusiasm might reflect the effectiveness of the conventions in boosting base supporters: 16% of Democrats but just 6% of Republicans said the political conventions had "a great deal" of impact on their vote.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-09-18/obama-romney-swing-states-poll/57803524/1

[boutons_deux]

lots of "Christian" voters aren't enthusiastic about a hard-core Mormon

lots of "conservatives" aren't enthusiastic about, don't trust Gecko because of his moderate stances as MA gov and installing "socialisitic" MA health care. recruiting hard-ass, kill-govt, (bogus) deficit hawk Ryan was supposed to give Gecko conservative cred,then Ryan starts repeating that he doesn't set policy, Gecko does. :lol

Gecko's only hopes are still his 1%er's/UCA/Wall St war chest and scorched-earth disenfranchisement of Dem voters in swing states.

[boutons_deux]

In Repug/Rick Scott's Wisconsin, Gecko is struggling

Wisconsin Offers Window Into Challenges Facing Romney

Seven weeks until the election, with Mr. Romney facing new questions about his ability to gain trust among voters experiencing economic hardships, his campaign is increasingly pointing to Wisconsin as a place where a statewide Republican resurgence could rub off on Mr. Romney.

But President Obama has overtaken Mr. Romney on who would do a better job handling the economy, according to a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely Wisconsin voters. The poll also found that Mr. Obama has a 17-point edge over Mr. Romney when voters are asked if a candidate cares about their needs and problems.

As the president makes his first campaign visit of the year to Wisconsin on Saturday, the poll found that Mr. Obama was the choice of 51 percent to 45 percent for Mr. Romney among likely voters. The six-point lead, which includes those who said they were leaning in one direction or another, marks a slight shift in Mr. Obama's direction since Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin joined the Republican ticket last month.

The findings of the poll, along with the fallout from newly exposed remarks Mr. Romney made at a fund-raiser in which he bluntly suggested that 47 percent of Americans saw themselves as victims who are dependent on the government, offer a window into the challenges confronting his campaign here and other important swing states during the final 48 days of the race.

Rob Jankowski, an independent voter who supported Mr. Obama four years ago but has been disappointed by his economic leadership and disapproves of his health care plan, is among the 3 percent of voters in the survey who say they are still undecided. He said he did not feel loyalty to Mr. Obama simply because he supported him last time, but he said Mr. Romney had not made his case.

"Obama is putting out his plans and his details and being more public on that, but with Romney it's kind of gray,"

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/politics/obama-holds-edge-over-romney-in-wisconsin-poll-shows.xml;jsessionid=7D763B39B25554B617EB3FC2856DC DBE?f=19

[boutons_deux]

The Repugs can't win legitimately, so it's the Rove hate, lie, slander machine plus:

Looking, Very Closely, for Voter Fraud




It might as well be Harry Potter's invisible Knight Bus, because no one can prove it exists.

The bus has been repeatedly cited by True the Vote, a national group focused on voter fraud. Catherine Engelbrecht, the group's leader, told a gathering in July about buses carrying dozens of voters showing up at polling places during the recent Wisconsin recall election.

"Magically, all of them needed to register and vote at the same time," Ms. Engelbrecht said. "Do you think maybe they registered falsely under false pretenses? Probably so."

Weeks later, another True the Vote representative told a meeting of conservative women about a bus seen at a San Diego polling place in 2010 offloading people "who did not appear to be from this country."

Officials in both San Diego and Wisconsin said they had no evidence that the buses were real. "It's so stealthy that no one is ever able to get a picture and no one is able to get a license plate," said Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin agency that oversees elections. In some versions the bus is from an Indian reservation; in others it is full of voters from Chicago or Detroit. "Pick your minority group," he said.

The buses are part of the election fraud gospel according to True the Vote, which is mobilizing a small army of volunteers to combat what it sees as a force out to subvert elections. Ms. Engelbrecht's July speech in Montana was titled "Voter Fraud: The Plot to Undermine American Democracy."

True the Vote's plan is to scrutinize the validity of voter registration rolls and voters who appear at the polls. Among those in their cross hairs: noncitizens who are registered to vote, those without proper identification, others who may be registered twice, and dead people. In Ohio and Indiana, True the Vote recently filed lawsuits to force officials to clean up voter rolls.

Efforts to tighten voter requirements have become a major issue in the presidential election. Over the last few years, many states have passed voter identification laws, and many of those are being challenged in court.

Now, a network of conservative groups is waging an aggressive campaign on the ground. In a report this month, the liberal-leaning organizations Common Cause and Demos cited True the Vote as the central player in this effort, which it called a threat to the fundamental right to vote.

"It is not about party or politics; it is about principle," Ms. Engelbrecht said.

While she portrays True the Vote as nonpartisan, it grew out of a Tea Party group, King Street Patriots, that she founded in Texas. An examination shows that it has worked closely with a variety of well-financed organizations, many unabashed in their desire to defeat President Obama.

A polished and provocative video, circulating among Tea Party activists, seeks to raise a "cavalry" to march on swing states and identifies True the Vote as a participant in the effort, called Code Red USA.

In the past year, Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, and other Republican-leaning independent groups have sponsored meetings featuring Ms. Engelbrecht and other True the Vote speakers. A spokesman for Americans for Prosperity said that the group had hosted events including True the Vote speakers but that election integrity was not a focus of his group.

Election integrity has become a focus for other activists, including James E. O'Keefe III, a video producer known for his undercover stings of the now defunct community organizing group Acorn. He recently aimed his camera on North Carolina voters in what turned out to be a botched attempt to show that foreigners had registered.

Voter registration has occupied a contentious corner of American history for decades. The perception that voting is ripe for fraud stems in part from the condition of voter rolls in many jurisdictions. The Pew Center on the States issued a report in February finding that more than 1.8 million dead people remained on voter rolls and that about 2.8 million people were registered in more than one state. Another 12 million registrations contained flawed addresses, it said.

Even so, there have been few cases of widespread fraud, according to the Justice Department. A bipartisan commission in 2005 found little evidence of extensive fraud, even while recommending the use of voter identification.

While there have been some recent criminal cases involving local elections, the Justice Department said in a statement that the record has not shown that significant "voter impersonation fraud - the type of fraud that many states claim their voter ID laws are aimed to prevent - actually exists."

But Ms. Engelbrecht said, "Anyone who tells you that election integrity efforts are a solution looking for a problem is way misinformed."

True the Vote is now using proprietary software to accelerate the process of challenging voter registrations. It says its databases will ultimately contain all voter rolls in the country. Using computers, volunteers can check those rolls against driver's license records, property records and other databases, turning the process into an assembly line production.

But when True the Vote vetted petition signatures in Wisconsin's recall election, the state's Government Accountability Board reported that the process was "at best flawed." The group raised questions about thousands of signatures that the board deemed valid.

Roots of a Cause

Ms. Engelbrecht, who at 42 is younger than most of the Tea Party members she addresses around the country, said that until four years ago she was apolitical, a churchgoing mother of two who ran a successful oil field machinery business with her husband in Fort Bend County, Tex.

"Then in 2008, I don't know, something clicked," she said. "I saw our country headed in a direction that, for whatever reason - it didn't hit me until 2008 - this really threatens the future of our children."

The epiphany prompted Ms. Engelbrecht to work as a poll watcher in the 2009 local elections along with others in the King Street Patriots, the Tea Party group she founded. It was supposed to be a one-day assignment, but it crystallized the concerns of Ms. Engelbrecht and her fellow volunteers, who said they saw shenanigans including outright fraud. The group felt duty bound to continue its activities.

In Houston, the group targeted the Congressional district represented by Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who is black. Ms. Engelbrecht said the group settled on Ms. Lee's district because thousands of addresses there housed six or more registered voters, which it took as an indication of inaccurate registrations. The methodology, which the group still uses, could disproportionately affect lower income families.

Volunteers spent five months analyzing 3,800 registrations in Ms. Lee's district, discovering more than 500 voters that the group said were problematic. More than 200 voters were registered at vacant lots, prompting Ms. Engelbrecht to later remark that those voters had a "Lord of the Rings Middle Earth sort of thing going on."

The reality was far less interesting.

"They had one particular case I remember very well," said Douglas Ray, the Harris County assistant attorney who represents the election registrar. "They had identified an address where eight or 10 people were registered to vote. There was no building there." Mr. Ray found out that the building had been torn down and that the people simply moved.

As a result of the organization's work in 2010, 400 to 500 voters were put on "suspense," forcing them to provide additional information verifying their addresses. By the fall 2010 election, volunteers again appeared to focus on minority neighborhoods, this time as election observers, Mr. Ray said.

"The first day of early voting, at many of the 37 locations, primarily in minority neighborhoods, dozens of poll watchers showed up sent by King Street Patriots," Mr. Ray said.

The influx of white election observers in black neighborhoods caused friction with voters and poll workers, bringing back memories of a time when racial intimidation at the polls was commonplace in the South, said Gerald M. Birnberg, a lawyer and former chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party. True the Vote has strongly denied that it has engaged in voter suppression.

"Whether that was the intention or just born of some innate paranoia is largely irrelevant," Mr. Birnberg said. "That's how it was perceived by people at the polls."

Working in Wisconsin

The boiling political caldron of Wisconsin was the next stop for True the Vote. It teamed up with two Tea Party organizations to review nearly one million signatures on petitions demanding the recall of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. The partnership called itself Verify the Recall.

"We have been hearing reports of duplicate signatures, questionable practices and downright fraud in the gubernatorial recall effort," Verify the Recall said in a pitch to volunteers. "The integrity of Wisconsin's elections and associated processes are at stake; free and honest elections - the cornerstone of our political process - are being threatened."

True the Vote began working in Wisconsin in 2011, the same year it received a $35,000 grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which is based in Wisconsin and is a major backer of conservative causes, including Americans for Prosperity. The foundation's president and chief executive, Michael Grebe, was Mr. Walker's campaign chairman for his 2010 campaign and for the recall election, which he won.

Mr. Grebe said in an interview that the grant was for activities unrelated to the recall. He said the donation was ultimately returned because it was given on the premise that True the Vote would be granted tax-exempt status by the I.R.S., which Ms. Engelbrecht said has not happened despite several attempts.

Ms. Engelbrecht has said her goal was not to stop the recall election, which had been backed by labor unions, but to prove to those behind it "that unions cannot strong-arm America." She said thousands of volunteers helped enter petition signatures into a database, which was then analyzed by the group's software. Of the one million signatures, True the Vote said 63,038 were ineligible, 212,628 required further investigation and 584,489 were valid.

The accountability board concluded that about 900,000 signatures were valid and, in a memorandum reviewing True the Vote's work, criticized its methods.

For example: Mary Lee Smith signed her name Mary L. Smith and was deemed ineligible by the group.

Signatures deemed "out of state" included 13 from Milwaukee and three from Madison.

The group's software would not recognize abbreviations, so Wisconsin addresses like Stevens Point were flagged if "Pt." was used on the petition.

Signatures were struck for lack of a ZIP code.

While the board commended the group for encouraging "a strong level of civic engagement," it found that True the Vote's results "were significantly less accurate, complete and reliable than the review and analysis completed by the G.A.B."

On Election Day, poll watchers appeared to have slowed voting to a crawl at Lawrence University in Appleton, where some students were attempting to register and vote on the same day.

Charlene Peterson, the city clerk in Appleton, said three election observers, including one from True the Vote, were so disruptive that she gave them two warnings.

"They were making challenges of certain kinds and just kind of in physical contact with some of the poll workers, leaning over them, checking and looking," said John Lepinski, a poll watcher and former Democratic Party chairman for Outagamie County.

He said that as a result of the scrutiny, the line to register moved slowly. Finally, he said, some students gave up and left.

Ms. Engelbrecht said the True the Vote observer at Lawrence University believed that students were being permitted to register and vote without proper identification.

In Racine, conservative poll watchers also alleged fraud, including a claim that a busload of union members from Michigan had come to Wisconsin to vote illegally. The Racine County Sheriff's Department determined that the accusation had been based on an anonymous call to a radio station.

"There is no evidence this bus convoy existed or ever arrived in Racine County," the Sheriff's Office said.

As for the buses her organization saw in Wisconsin, Ms. Engelbrecht could not provide details. "It was reported to us that this had occurred," she said. "I know these sightings were also being reported on the radio."

The Code Red Cavalry

Driving down the Interstate in Florida, you may see an R.V. wrapped with a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

These eye-catching vehicles are mobile command centers for registering and energizing voters. They are part of a citizen effort to "defeat Obama, hold the House and win the Senate in November," Fred Solomon, a retired Alabama businessman, said in an e-mail to fellow Tea Party supporters.

Mr. Solomon is a coordinator for Code Red USA, the plan to flood swing states with conservative volunteers. "Partnering with True the Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group, we will train and put election observers in polling places in the swing states to reduce voter fraud," Mr. Solomon said in his e-mail.

Code Red USA is financed by the Madison Project, a political action committee whose chairman is former Representative Jim Ryun, a Kansas Republican who was regarded as among the most conservative members of Congress. The provocative video promoting Code Red accuses Democrats of "a clear intent to commit massive voter fraud."

Despite Mr. Solomon's e-mail and the video, which identifies True the Vote as a participant, Ms. Engelbrecht said her group has no role in the effort.

Nevertheless, Mr. Solomon and many other conservative activists have followed Ms. Engelbrecht's lead.

Mr. Solomon said he was a volunteer poll watcher in Wisconsin and is concerned that voter fraud is rampant around the country. "We just don't understand why dead people are voting," he said.

Finding that someone voted in the name of a dead person is the holy grail of the voter integrity movement, said Jay DeLancy, a retired Air Force officer in North Carolina who embraced the cause after attending a True the Vote meeting last year. Mr. DeLancy, who runs the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, said the group recently submitted the names of 30,000 people who he said were dead yet remained on voter rolls in the state.

Earlier this year, he challenged more than 500 registered voters who he said were not American citizens. After reviewing the challenges, election officials refuted most of them, but confirmed that three were noncitizens who had registered improperly. One had voted.

Mr. DeLancy said he was convinced that the elections agency overlooked many noncitizen voters.

"They want me to look stupid and to look like I'm wasting taxpayer money," Mr. DeLancy said.

He said he split from True the Vote partly because the group raised concerns about focusing on immigrants. "They're not wanting to be branded some kind of anti-immigrant activist group," Mr. DeLancy said.

Mr. DeLancy said he made challenges after comparing voting rolls with citizenship information in jury duty records.

The strategy was used by Mr. O'Keefe, who is known for undercover video stings. Shortly after the North Carolina primary in May, Mr. O'Keefe posted a video aimed at proving noncitizens were registered to vote.

A narrator says: "William Romero is registered to vote in North Carolina. Here is a copy of his voter registration form, where it says he was born in Colombia, South America. He is not, however, a United States citizen."

The video cuts to a young man, dressed in green lederhosen, walking into Mr. Romero's polling place and giving Mr. Romero's name and address. When he is asked to sign his name certifying that he is William Romero, the man, whose right hand was bandaged, says he is unable to sign and leaves.

The video later shows what appears to be the same man in green lederhosen impersonating a registered voter named Zbigniew Gorzkowski.

Not only were Mr. Romero and Mr. Gorzkowski citizens, but the State Board of Elections concluded that Mr. O'Keefe's operatives may have broken several laws, and turned over evidence to prosecutors. "Further, the videos made false or unfounded allegations that only hurt the elections process," North Carolina election officials said in a report.

Mr. O'Keefe, who did not respond to requests for an interview, is on probation for unlawfully entering a federal building in New Orleans in an aborted sting targeting Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana.

Mr. Romero could not be reached for comment. Mr. Gorzkowski, a naturalized United States citizen who operates a deli in North Carolina, said the video was extremely embarrassing, especially after a Polish newspaper ran an article suggesting that he was at the center of a voting scandal in the United States.

'Never Had Any Problem'

Late last month, Ms. Engelbrecht was in Columbus, Ohio, for a True the Vote workshop. About 90 people signed up for the event at a suburban Holiday Inn, where they listened to speeches and discussed how to challenge questionable voters, including 51,000 "nonexistent" people in just one county that True the Vote's Ohio volunteers say are registered to vote.

During the meeting, Anita MonCrief, True the Vote's senior adviser, unleashed her vitriol at what she said was a coalition of voter registration groups, accusing them of "doing voter fraud since at least the early '90s," she said.

"And these groups target minority areas. Why? Because it's so much easier to go work in those areas where they say people have been forgotten or they don't have a voice. Then, when anybody pays a little bit of attention to the fact that there's a high level of fraud coming out of the African-American communities, they say: 'Oh, you're a racist. You don't want black people to vote,' " said Ms. MonCrief, who is black. "Vote fraud deniers is what I call them."

After the event, the volunteers, known as the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, submitted challenges of 380 registered voters in Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati. One of the voters, Teresa Sharp, received a notice from her local Board of Elections stating that her family's right to vote had been challenged and ordering her to attend a hearing on Sept. 10.

"I've always voted," said Ms. Sharp, who had even been a poll worker. "Never had any problem."

At the hearing, she said she asked, "Why are you all harassing me?" She said she believed it was because "either they don't want Obama in there or the fact that I'm black."

Amy Searcy, the director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, said there was no discernible racial pattern in the challenges. Of the 380 challenges, about 35 voters will have to prove that their addresses are current if they appear at the polls. A vast majority of the objections were thrown out.

In the case of Ms. Sharp, a representative of the Ohio Voter Integrity Project withdrew the challenge and apologized to the family.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/politics/groups-like-true-the-vote-are-looking-very-closely-for-voter-fraud.xml?f=77

massive voter registration fraud, AND massive fraudulent voters.

NO EVIDENCE, ANYWHERE, EVER. BUT IT MUST BE STOPPED! :lol

Some Repug states, cities have even made voter registration drives ILLEGAL.

Repugs' America is Truly Beautiful.

[boutons_deux]

Mark McKinnon on Why Time Is Running Out for Mitt Romney

Ex-Bush aide Mark McKinnon keeps waiting for Romney to turn his campaign around and show the right stuff. After the 47 percent tape, he’s not sure that moment will ever come.

Well, the release of the Romney tape was a moment that certainly revealed something about him. But not what I was hoping for. Just the opposite. It reveals a deeply cynical man, who sees the country as completely divided, as two completely different sets of people, and who would likely govern in a way that would only further divide us.

Now I honestly don’t know what Romney can do to win support from the voters he needs to gain a majority. I thought the debates would be an opportunity, but he has dug his hole so deeply now, I don’t know if he can pull himself out.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/19/mark-mckinnon-on-why-time-is-running-out-for-mitt-romney.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

[boutons_deux]

Jeffress: Vote For Perry Because Romney Is Not A True Christian


Following his endorsement and introduction of Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit, Robert Jeffress went on Focal Point with Bryan Fischer to chastise Romney's Mormon faith, arguing that he is not a "true, born again follower of Christ." He said that only Perry can defeat "the most pro-homosexual, most pro-abortion president in history."

"It is not Christianity, it is not a branch of Christianity," Jeffress said, "It is a cult." Jeffress went on to explain that many evangelical Christians will not vote for Romney because he is a Mormon and therefore not "indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God." He even claimed that Romney's Mormon faith "speaks to the integrity issue" as it explains why he has reversed his position on abortion rights, among other issues.

Incidentally, Bryan Fischer will be speaking immediately after Romney at the summit and has claimed that Mormons do not have rights under the First Amendment. As we have previously noted, this is not the first time Jeffress has attacked the Mormon faith and Mitt Romney for his religion, saying Mormons "worship a false god."

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jeffress-vote-perry-because-romney-not-true-christian

In 2012, Gecko didn't speak, but Ryan did

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/whos-who-values-voter-summit-2012

[Borat Sagyidev]

The longer that hispanic families are here, they become more republican each generation. This is because they are largely catholic and don't believe in abortion or gay marriage. In 15 or 20 years, those same hispanics won't need anything from Obama in the form of citizenship and will vote republican.

in 15 or 20 yrs? You mean when the generations that have been disenfranchised by the GOP grow up and have voting rights?

Just because they are Catholic doesn't mean they will vote Republican. There are very conservative Cubans-Americans I know that would rather not vote at all than vote republican.

[boutons_deux]

Something Big Is Shifting in the Electorate -- Obama Has Moved Over 50 Percent Line in Three Vital Swing States

President Obama has pulled ahead in the swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin, according to a new poll by released Friday morning by the Wall Street Journal/ NBC News/Marist College, “reaching the 50 percent threshold in all three battlegrounds.”

The WSJ/NBC/Marist poll finds that Obama is up by 5 percentage points over Romney in Iowa and Colorado, and up by 8 percentage points in Iowa. This fits the overall pattern in polling this week where the nation’s electorate is shifting toward Obama after seeing how and he and Romney responded to the attack on the American embassy in Libya on 9/11, and heard Romney’s harsh remarks about “47 percent” of Americans failing to pay federal income taxes and being overly dependent on federal benefits.

What’s particularly striking about the shift toward Obama is not just that poll after poll has found that Romney is too distant from voters—whereas Obama is more concerned and likeable, but as was found in the WSJ/NBC Colorado results, that likely voters there have slightly more confidence in Obama on the economy than Romney, and much more confidence in Obama on foreign policy.


http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/something-big-shifting-electorate-obama-has-moved-over-50-percent-line-three-vital

[Jacob1983]

Willard still fucked. He better hope Obama comes out of the closet or gets caught in a bed with a high school boy or a goat because right now that's the only chance Romney has of winning.

[Wild Cobra]

Willard still fucked. He better hope Obama comes out of the closet or gets caught in a bed with a high school boy or a goat because right now that's the only chance Romney has of winning.
It would take the goat. The age of consent in DC is 16 years, so it wouldn't matter to the left.

[Jacob1983]

Yep and you're right. Most Americans don't care if two guys get in bed and do their thing. However, if someone is screwing a goat or an animal then people are like "WTF".

[boutons_deux]

Polls Show Obama Is Widening His Lead in Ohio and Florida

COLUMBUS, Ohio - For weeks, Republicans in Ohio have been watching with worry that the state's vital 18 electoral votes were trending away from Mitt Romney. The anxiety has been similar in Florida, where Republicans are concerned that President Obama is gaining the upper hand in the fight for the state's 29 electoral votes.

Those fears are affirmed in the findings of the latest Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News polls of likely voters in both states, which show that Mr. Obama has widened his lead over Mr. Romney and is outperforming him on nearly every major campaign issue, even though about half said they were disappointed in Mr. Obama's presidency.

But Mr. Romney is facing mounting hurdles in these two critical states, which hold nearly as many electoral votes as the rest of the swing states combined. Mr. Romney's lead among older Americans has shifted toward an advantage for Mr. Obama; his competitiveness with Mr. Obama on who would better handle the economy has dipped into slightly negative territory; more view Mr. Romney unfavorably than favorably - the opposite is true for the president - and majorities say Mr. Romney does not care about the problems of people like them.


http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/us/politics/polls-show-obama-widening-lead-in-ohio-and-florida.xml?f=19

[boutons_deux]

Poll: Romney Ahead in Presidential Race, Say Replacement Refs

G.O.P. Presidential nominee Mitt Romney finally got some good news today as he found himself ahead of President Obama in a poll of N.F.L. replacement referees.

The survey, which immediately lifted the spirits of the Romney campaign, was taken among replacement refs on the field during N.F.L. games that they were supposed to be officiating last Sunday and Monday.

According to the poll, if the election were held today the replacement refs would have Mr. Romney beating President Obama by a score of 14-12.

By a wide majority, the replacement refs “strongly agreed” with the statement, “I’m pretty sure I’m right about this but I need to talk it over with some other people first.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/09/poll-romney-ahead-in-presidential-race-say-replacement-refs.html#ixzz27b6w0puN

[Clipper Nation]

In other words, he lost to the groups that have increased wisdom with aging...
:lol Acting like old voters are somehow wise instead of just being old, ageist, selfish pricks

The "old white people" voting bloc only cares about three things: securing their handouts, eliminating all other handouts, and making sure young people get no benefits but still pay down the debt their elders ran up for them, tbh.... they only buy the rest of the neocon crap to validate their deeply-held prejudices and religious beliefs, tbh....

[boutons_deux]

6 Ways Mitt Romney's Getting His Butt Kicked


1. The Polls

Conspiracy theories about “skewed” polls aside, Obama maintained a very small but persistent lead throughout most of the spring and summer, and since the conventions, he has opened up a significant lead, especially in the crucial battleground states that decide the election.

The Gallup daily tracking poll has Obama up by 6 points nationwide, and TPM's average of all recent polls has him up by just under 5 points.

But the real story is in the swing states. A Washington Post poll out yesterday found Romney trailing in Ohio by 8 points and by 4 points in Florida – without which, Romney has a very tough map. According to TPM's averages, Obama also enjoys leads in Virginia (4 points), Colorado (3 points), Pennsylvania (8 points), Iowa (4 points), Nevada (5 points), Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin (8 points), New Mexico (9 points), Romney's home state of Michigan (11 points) and a razor-thin lead in New Hampshire. The only “swing state” Romney leads is North Carolina – Mitt's up by a a third of one percent there in the average, but Obama's led in the 4 most recent polls.

According to New York Times polling guru Nate Silver, if the election were held today, Obama would have a 96.4 percent chance of victory.

2. The Money Race

It wasn't supposed to be this way, but the Obama campaign crushed Team Romney in August fundraising, setting a new record for the month with $85 million dollars to Romney's $66 million.

That's just the campaign's coffers, however. The Republican National Committee has raised a lot more than its Democratic counterparts. And then there are the outside groups.

But what we're seeing is that having control of the cash means something. Romney doesn't dictate how the RNC or these SuperPacs spend their loot, and the result has been a less targeted effort.

As far as ad spending, Paul Blumenthal notes a huge disparity:

The campaign committee might be raking in large numbers, but it has questionably refused to spend big money on advertising. Romney's campaign spent a total of $66 million in August -- the same amount it took in -- with only $18.4 million going to media buys and production. The advertising budget for the Obama campaign nearly equaled the entire Romney August budget, with $65 million put forward for television.

This advertising disparity is nothing new. Since Romney became the presumptive nominee in May, the Obama camp has dumped tens of millions every month into advertising to define the Republican candidate before he could define himself. In total, including August's numbers, the Obama campaign has outspent Romney on advertising by nearly 600 percent -- $171.4 million to just $30.3 million.

3. People Don't Like Mitt Romney

It's been a persistent finding all year: Obama enjoys a higher favorability rating than job approval – some of the people who don't think he's done a good job still like him personally. He had a ten point net favorability rating in the latest Pew poll.

For Mitt, the story is quite different. As Pew Research noted, Romney is the first candidate since 1988, for either major party, to be saddled with a negative net favorability rating in September.

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/romney_negative_territory.png

4. The Issues

Remember them? The story for most of the summer leading up to the conventions was that the American people preferred Obama to Romney on most issues, save the most important one: handling the economy. That's what was keeping the race close.

But Obama's post-convention surge happened as – or because – he pulled ahead of Romney on the economy. According to the latest Washington Post poll:

Fifty percent of all voters say they trust the president more to deal with the economy; 43 percent say so of his Republican challenger... The president also holds a big lead over his rival on who is trusted to advance the interests of the middle class.

That means that Obama now leads on not only key character traits, but every issue the pollsters ask about, except for whom voters trust more to reduce the deficit. Here's the scorecard from Pew's September 19 survey:

5. Coattails

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/screen_shot_2012-09-26_at_1.28.17_pm.png

Obama was not the only politician to emerge from the convention with a gust of wind in his sails. Democrats' newfound enthusiasm seems to be having an impact on down-ballot races. On August 26, the day before the RNC began, Nate Silver gave Democrats a 50-50 chance of holding the Senate. In the month since, their chances of holding the upper chamber have increased to 83 percent.

According to The Hill, Republican strategists are concerned about the top of the ticket dragging down their party’s chances:

Republican strategists say that Romney has had a rough stretch recently and warn it could cost the party Senate seats if his execution fails to improve by November.

“Every year the top of the ticket has a great influence on the races below. Massachusetts is a very competitive race, and we have a great candidate in Scott Brown. If Obama wins overwhelmingly, it’s a lot more difficult for Scott Brown to get reelected,” said John Weaver, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2000 and 2008 presidential bids.

“If your guy wins the White House, he’s going to sweep in one or two or three Senate races that might not happen otherwise,” he added.

The ongoing Mittastrophe also has a number of GOP candidates for the House squirming.

6. Enthusiasm

The rise in Obama's polls following the conventions is almost entirely a result of disenchanted Democrats coming back into the fold and getting fired up for the general election. For much of the race, the GOP had counted on an “enthusiasm” gap in their favor, but that appears to have reversed itself.

In the latest Washington Post poll, 94 percent of Obama supporters were somewhat or very enthusiastic about voting in November, while just 6 percent were unenthusiastic. 86 percent of Romney voters were similarly fired up, while 13 percent said they were “not so enthusiastic” or “not enthusiastic at all.”

75 percent of Obama supporters said they were voting for the president, while 22 percent were voting against Romney. It's a very different picture for the Republican: only 45 percent of Romney supporters say they're voting for him, while half say they're voting against Obama.

Losing Older Voters

It should come as surprise to nobody that Romney's selection of Paul Ryan – and embrace of his plan to end Medicare as we know it – isn't playing well with older voters.

It's wrong to say Romney's losing among this group – he holds a 4-point lead among voters over 60 in the latest Reuters/ Ipsos poll. But the trend is not looking good for the Republican ticket, as Reuters noted earlier this week:

New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks - since just after the Democratic National Convention - support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has crumbled, from a 20-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama to less than 4 points.

Romney's double-digit advantages among older voters on the issues of healthcare and Medicare - the nation's health insurance program for those over 65 and the disabled - also have evaporated, and Obama has begun to build an advantage in both areas.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/6-ways-mitt-romneys-getting-his-butt-kicked?paging=off

[clambake]

thats a huge alternet vortex

[boutons_deux]

If Repug voters are obviously outnumbered, then cheat, kill the Dem voters.

Tea party groups work to remove names from Ohio voter rolls

The groups and their allies describe it as a citizen movement to prevent ballot fraud, although the Republican secretary of state said in an interview that he knew of no evidence that any more than a handful of illegal votes had been cast in Ohio in the last few presidential elections.

"We're all about election integrity :lol :lol :lol — making sure everyone who votes is registered and qualified voters," said Mary Siegel, one of the leaders of the Ohio effort.

Some Democrats see it as a targeted vote-suppression drive. The names selected for purging include hundreds of college students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans in counties President Obama won in 2008.

The battle over who belongs on the voter rolls in Ohio comes as supporters of Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, are making elaborate plans to monitor the polls and mount legal challenges after the Nov. 6 election if necessary.

Obama's reelection campaign and Romney allies are already fighting in court over Republican efforts to block Ohio voters from casting ballots the weekend before the election. In 2008, Ohio's final weekend of early voting drew tens of thousands of African Americans to cast ballots, mainly for Obama.

The racial dimension of the 2012 clash over weekend voting burst into the open last month when one of Ohio's most powerful Republicans, Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse, told the Columbus Dispatch, "We shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African American — voter-turnout machine."

Some Democrats see the developments in Ohio as part of a national drive by Obama's opponents to minimize turnout of his supporters, one that includes efforts elsewhere to impose new voter ID rules.

"Too much of this is going on for this not to be a coordinated effort," said Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party in the tea party stronghold of southwestern Ohio.

The Rev. Rousseau A. O'Neal, one of a group of black ministers from Cincinnati who provided buses to take African Americans to the polls in 2008 and plan to do so again in November, described the tea party project and the curtailment of weekend voting as "bigotry of the highest order."


http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=2775471&postId=2775471&postUserId=7&sessionToken=&catId=5217&curAbsIndex=1&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523 desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%2 6DQ%3DsectionId%253A5217%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D3

[boutons_deux]

FL the same, trying to steal the WH like it did in 2000

Florida Officially Restarts Voter Purge, Revised List Still Appears To Be Inaccurate

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/scott.jpg

Florida has officially restarted it’s controversial purge of registered voters less than 6 weeks before election day. Governor Scott’s intention to resume the effort, detailed in a PowerPoint presentation, was first reported by ThinkProgress.

Initially, Florida identified 180,000 potential non-citizens to be purged from the voter rolls. That list was subsequently narrowed down to 2600 “sure fire” non-citizens. When it became clear in early June that even the smaller list was riddled with errors, elections officials stopped the effort.

According to the Miami Herald, Florida has sent just 198 names to local election supervisors. (Of those, no more than 36 have ever cast a ballot.) But there is already evidence that the latest list still is not accurate.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/26/918971/florida-officially-restarts-voter-purge-revised-list-still-appears-to-be-inaccurate/

[boutons_deux]

Ryan Budget a Loser in Swing States

A series of internal polls conducted by the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA found that voters in key swing states hold sharply negative views of Paul Ryan’s budget — which is to say, the budget to which Mitt Romney irrevocably lashed his presidential aspirations when he picked Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee.

Priorities USA asked between 600 and 800 respondents in the states: “Based on what you have seen, read or heard about it, do you support or oppose the budget plan proposed by Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, also known as ‘the Ryan Budget’?”

In all cases, the polls, shared with Salon before their public release, found the budget plan’s popularity to be underwater by close to 10 points.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/poll-ryan-budget-loser-swing-states

Repug Pres candidate selects VEEP running mate who helps destroy his campaign! :lol

2008 all over again.

[Wild Cobra]

The only poll that matters is on that Tuesday in November.

[boutons_deux]

The only poll that matters is on that Tuesday in November.

that's why Repug states are working so hard to suppress Dem voters

[boutons_deux]

GOP Quietly Hires Firm Tied to Voter Fraud Scandal for Work in Battleground States

The Palm Beach Post report last night that a Florida Republican Party contractor turned in at least 106 “questionable” registration firms, with “similar signatures” and wrong addresses, doesn’t seem like a national news story. But it has unwoven a somewhat concealed effort by Republicans in several states to deploy a firm with an ugly history of allegedly destroying Democratic voter registration forms and other acts of fraud.

The contractor in Florida is called Strategic Allied Consulting, a business entity created a few months ago and registered online by a former Arizona Republican Party director named Nathan Sproul.

Sproul, a consultant based in Tempe, is infamous for accusations that his firms have committed fraud by tampering with Democratic voter registration forms and suppressing votes. Sproul was hired by the Romney campaign for a period of five months that began last November and ended in March. But now there’s evidence that the payments continued, only to a different name.

As Greg Flynn of BlueNC pointed out earlier this month, Strategic Allied Consulting recently put up a proxy to hide the fact that its website was registered by Sproul; but not before Flynn took a screen shot. Flynn notes that the firm has been aggressively hiring in Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. He flagged two large payments to the firm from GOP committees in Florida and North Carolina.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/170198/gop-quietly-hires-firm-tied-voter-fraud-scandal-work-battleground-states#

The Repugs suppress Dem voters because Repugs LOVE DEMOCRACY AND AMERICA! :lol

[Wild Cobra]

that's why Repug states are working so hard to suppress Dem voters
Believe as you wish.

[Homeland Security]

I went back and looked at the current numbers... very little has changed in reality from when I first posted this thread. Not sure what the pollsters think they're seeing with these turnout models -- maybe confirmation bias? The only changes I've seen are NH moving from lean Obama to a toss-up, and CO and NV moving away a little bit from Romney.

Obama's still in the lead and is the favorite, but he's not pulling away. However, the calendar increasingly is becoming Romney's enemy.

[boutons_deux]

WC, political reality and AGW denier

" The polls are wrong! All of them. Except of course Rasmussen, that rock of right-minded methodological certitude jutting out from the ocean of relativist corruption. I’d like a nickel but would settle happily for a penny for every tweet I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks from a conservative braying about a given poll’s sample.

There are loads of them but the gold medalist of this event by far is Dick Morris, who sits there on the Fox set like a betumored walrus on an ice floe assuring his viewers not to worry. His riff to Sean Hannity Monday night, a night when everyone else saw that Obama’s lead was getting comfortable-to-the-point-of-insurmountable, is worth quoting at some length: “[Romney] is at the moment in a very strong position. I believe if the election were held today Romney would win by four or five points. I believe he would carry Florida, Ohio, Virginia. I believe he would carry Nevada. I believe he would carry Pennsylvania.” Even Hannity at this point interjected, “Oh, come on.” But on Morris went. He knew of a private poll in Pennsylvania, “by a group that I’ve hired in the past,” that had Romney two points behind.

“People need to understand,” he continued, “that the polling this year is the worst it’s ever been. Because this is the first election where if I tell you who’s gonna vote, I can tell you how you’re gonna vote.” He went on to say that polls are assuming a six- or seven-point Democratic edge, and he assumes a three-point edge."

It’s not lies with which Limbaugh and Morris are now coming face-to-face. It’s the truth. Americans like Barack Obama. They don’t like Romney. And they really don’t like Ryan.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/michael-tomasky-on-the-gop-s-self-delusion-syndrome.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

[boutons_deux]

Mitt Romney's 47 Percent Remark Hurts Him In Swing States

A new wave of polls offer a closer look at the political aftermath of Mitt Romney's comments on the "47 percent," with an overwhelming number of voters responding that they both knew of the now-infamous video of Romney at a private fundraiser and viewed him less favorably as a result. The Republican presidential nominee has been widely criticized for saying that nearly half of Americans back President Barack Obama because they are government-dependent "victims" who believe they are "entitled" to health care, food and housing.

Voters have a mostly negative reaction toward the 47-percent comments at a time when the president appears to be widening his lead across swing states. The latest findings are also consistent with other national surveys taken in the days immediately after the video was widely reported, but paint a more troubling picture of the impact those remarks may have had on Romney's standing with independent voters.

On a national scale, 54 percent of registered voters viewed Romney’s comments unfavorably, while only 33 percent saw them in a favorable light, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday. Fifty-seven percent of independents had a negative reaction.

Separate surveys in the key battleground states of Florida, Wisconsin and Colorado, conducted by the Democratic-affiliated firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) and released earlier this week, provide more insight into voter reaction to the 47-percent remarks.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/mitt-romney-47-percent_n_1916159.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=092712&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Repug vote suppressors and voting day intimidators will REALLY have to work overtime now.

[BradLohaus]

:lol Acting like old voters are somehow wise instead of just being old, ageist, selfish pricks

The "old white people" voting bloc only cares about three things: securing their handouts, eliminating all other handouts, and making sure young people get no benefits but still pay down the debt their elders ran up for them, tbh.... they only buy the rest of the neocon crap to validate their deeply-held prejudices and religious beliefs, tbh....

:downspin: Do you really think that people under 30 are more wise than people over 30? I'm guessing you're under 30.

[boutons_deux]

Wall St. Loses Faith in Their Man Romney -- 6 Really Bad New Signs for the GOP Candidate

Though the election is far from over, Team Romney has had some tough times recently. The now infamous “ 47 percent” video [3] may have been the worst of it, but it certainly wasn’t the last of it; the bad news just keeps on coming for the Romney campaign. Below are several recent developments that must contribute to Romney and his handlers shaking in their boots.

1. Wall Street is giving up hope for a Romney win.

Wall Street executives have obviously been rooting for a Romney victory. However, “now many masters of the universe concede they may not get their man,” Politico reports [4].

Across Wall Street and the broader landscape of corporate America, even strong supporters of Romney acknowledge that swing state polling numbers and the direction of economic data and markets suggest it’s time to brace for a second Obama term.

Though money from Wall Street donors doesn't appear to be drying up for the Romney campaign, "the business community tend to follow data and play percentages. And right now they favor the president." That does not inspire confidence.

2. He keeps alienating poor voters, AKA “them.”

After the 47 percent debacle, you’d think Romney would step up his game in courting low- and middle-income voters. In his new campaign ad [5], he does try to woo those voters -- but he fails by reinforcing the notion that poor Americans are not like him. Garance Franke-Rute at The Atlantic [6] on Romney’s “them” problem:

In the 47 percent video, it was "those people."

"I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," Romney said.

But presidential elections are always about the grand national us. They are about we, the people. And when it come to a candidate, they are about me and you.

Garance Franke-Rute [6] points out that instead of an "us" Romney makes poor and middle class voters a "them": "President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families. The difference is my policies will make things better for them."

3. Romney’s backed himself into a corner by saying good things about RomneyCare.

Romney’s presidential campaign has relied in large part on Romney denying and/or ignoring the similiarities between ObamaCare and the Massachusetts health care plan he pushed through as Governor. Well, the Republican candidate is starting to slip up on that front. As Salon’s Steve Kornacki [7] reports, Romney has bragged about his RomneyCare legacy a few times of late, and it’s put him in a tight spot.

[W]hen Obama embraced RomneyCare and the GOP embraced reflexive opposition, it left Romney with nothing to say. The best he can do is occasionally invoke his main gubernatorial feat in interviews like he did with Allen and hope there’s not any immediate backlash from his base. And even if there isn’t, it just reinforces his plight, with the media covering not the content of his remarks but the oddity of it all.

4. He just keeps embarrassing himself.

Romney’s robot-like charisma can’t be winning him many votes. In this clip (hat-tip Raw Story [8]), Romney can’t get the whole name-chant thing down with the crowd at a recent campaign event. Even right-winger Joe Scarborough had to cover his eyes and cry, “Oh, sweet Jesus.” Here’s the cringe-worthy moment:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news [9], world news [10], and news about the economy [11]


5. He’s not backing down from some of his worst ideas.

As Sahil Kapur at TPM reports [12], Romney’s tax plan has few supporters, on the left or the right -- a Tax Policy Center study even said it was “not mathematically possible” – but that’s not stopping him from going full steam ahead. One of Romney’s spokespeople told TPM, “The governor’s plan calls for a 20% rate cut for all brackets, revenue neutrality, while ensuring that high-income earners continue to pay at least the same share of taxes. All of these goals are achievable, and the governor will work with Congress to enact tax reform that meets each of the goals he has proposed.”

6. And finally, he doesn’t have the all-important Samuel L. Jackson endorsement.

Samuel L. Jackson has recorded a hilarious, F-word-packed pro-Obama ad [13] for the Jewish Council on Research and Education. If I were Romney, I wouldn’t want to be on Sam Jackson's bad side.


http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/wall-st-loses-faith-their-man-romney-6-really-bad-new-signs-gop-candidate

[boutons_deux]

How The Tea Party Hopes To Purge Thousands of Ohio Voters

Members of an Ohio tea party group are taking it upon themselves to individually police alleged voter fraud, launching challenges to a targeted list of voters that includes hundreds of college students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans in counties President Obama won in 2008. In all, the group has sought to remove from the voter rolls at least 2,100 registrations in 13 Ohio counties, nine of which Obama won in 2008, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The alleged perpetrators of this voter fraud include Lori Monroe, a 40-year-old recovering from cancer, whose apartment for the past seven years was allegedly listed as a commercial property; and eight members of an African American family, whose four-bedroom home where the family has lived since the 1980s was allegedly listed as a vacant lot. The group has also focused on challenging college students for failure to specify a dorm room number, a claim that every election board has thus far found invalid.

The group behind this crusade has dubbed itself the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, an offshoot of Texas-based True the Vote, which champions voter purges and voter ID laws and has been building a “poll watcher” network, an effort documented by Colorlines’ Brentin Mock:

[True the Vote National Elections Coordinator Bill] Ouren and Americans for Prosperity gathered these recruits in Boca Raton in July to instruct them on how they could become “empowered” vessels for True the Vote’s poll watcher program. True the Vote is most widely known for its advocacy of restrictive photo voter ID laws. But while that might garner headlines, the group’s real focus is on policing the act of voting itself. As Ouren declared during the group’s national summit in April, and repeated again in Boca Raton, his recruits’ job is chiefly to make voters feel like they’re “driving and seeing the police following you.” He aims to recruit one million poll watchers around the country. […]

True the Vote encourages recruits to “build relationships with election administrators” because “they control the access to the vote,” as Ouren told a gathering in Houston. In 2010, the group was able to get a list of voter registration data from Republican Harris County registrar Leo Vasquez, who reportedly refused the same to the Democratic Party, for which the party sued. When the King Street Patriots submitted to him their list of fraudulent actions they claimed to see at the polls, Vasquez accepted them without verification and held a press conference with Engelbrecht asserting Harris County polls were “under a systemic and organized attack.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/27/921421/how-the-tea-party-hopes-to-purge-thousands-of-ohio-voters/

[boutons_deux]

Catholics Flee Romney-Ryan-Dolan

http://dailydish.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e2017ee3d13a8f970d-550wi



On June 17, Obama held a slight edge over Mitt Romney among Catholics (49 percent to 47 percent), according to the Pew Research Center. Since then, Obama has surged ahead, and now leads 54 percent to 39 percent, according to a Pew poll conducted Sept. 16. Among all registered voters, Obama leads Romney 51 percent to 42 percent, according to Pew. Obama and Romney are essentially tied among white Catholics, which some pollsters call the ultimate swing group.

But Obama's current even status among white Catholics now is an improvement over 2008, when McCain beat Obama among white Catholics by 52 - 47. Obama's total Catholic vote against McCain was where he is now: 54 percent. But Romney has only 39 percent compared with McCain's 45.

A small word of thanks to Cardinal Dolan, Robert George and K-Lo for helping shift the Catholic vote massively toward Obama with their summer campaign for religious liberty.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/catholics-flee-romney-ryan-dolan.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon

[Clipper Nation]

:downspin: Do you really think that people under 30 are more wise than people over 30? I'm guessing you're under 30.
Have you seen some of the old fossils that vote every year?

[RandomGuy]

Bump. Because if the group of polls was truly an anomolous coincidence, then one would expect that outlier to resolve itself and the data get closer to what HS said it should have been.

[RandomGuy]

Now it makes sense. Just like all other things, if you are not politically correct, then you are racist.

Wow... I missed that one.

WC calling someone who seriously advocates mass murder of people he doesn't like "politically correct".

That has got to earn you a trolling merit badge of some sort.

[Wild Cobra]

Once again Random, you twist the words.

You must be one dizzy person.