Archive for September, 2012
![Monday Daily Delawhere [9.24.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8039/7998110735_f28892bb11_z.jpg "Monday Daily Delawhere [9.24.12]")
Sunday Open Thread [9.23.12]
Sorry this is late! Lots of cooking is going on at my house — roasted tomato and basil soup and a dark chocolate cake. Let the cooking season begin!
Romney: Rules Are For The Help
Via BuzzFeed:
Mitt Romney’s campaign took a hard line with the Spanish-language network Univision, making last-minute demands in the run-up to last week’s town hall that helped insure his success in the forum, sources familiar with the broadcast told BuzzFeed.
When the Republican took his place Wednesday night in the first of two back-to-back candidate forums televised on the mega-network, he was greeted by an adoring, raucous crowd that cheered his every word, and booed many of the moderators’ questions. The next night, President Obama was treated to stone cold silence from the audience as he was aggressively grilled on his lackluster immigration record.
That’s quite a different audience response. Wonder why? Perhaps it had to do with this: “they (the Romney Campaign) told the network and university that if they weren’t given an exemption to the students-only rule, they might have to “reschedule.” Or… Nice show you have scheduled. It would be shame if something happened to it.
![Sunday Daily Delawhere [9.23.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8176/7998110787_e1f7ce3024_z.jpg "Sunday Daily Delawhere [9.23.12]")
The YouGuv Polling Report, plus a Senate Forecast [9.22.12]
![The YouGuv Polling Report, plus a Senate Forecast [9.22.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8170/8013514075_c8e72c1100_z.jpg "The YouGuv Polling Report, plus a Senate Forecast [9.22.12]")
We have a TON of polls today, like yesterday, because of a polling outfit called YouGuv. Who are they? Here is Daily Kos Election’s description:
The firm is a British firm, that moved into the American market in 2007 when they bought out Polimetrix, a California-based firm that had done a lot of internet-based polling in 2006 in an arrangement with Stanford University. Their polling is based on internet samples, a method which some find problematic (some aggregators of polling, indeed, refuse to utilize their data). It is a methodology that I also confess to qualms about, because when you have a sample that is essentially volunteering to participate, and a smaller universe from which to draw from, the potential pitfalls are pretty self-evident.
However, the true measure is performance. […] YouGov … has earned at least a cycle’s worth of benefit of the doubt. Their 2010 track record was more than reasonable. Indeed, of the 18 pollsters that offered up a substantive number of polls, YouGov came in fourth place in terms of their accuracy (defined as the percentage of races where they came within three percent of the final margin).
Another new polling outfit that has performed a polling dump today is Purple Strategies. Some of their results are eye raising. They have Obama winning North Carolina but losing Florida, and yet within three of Romney in Arizona. I will bet you everything I own that there is no way that is possible. If Obama wins North Carolina, he is winning Florida too. And if he is making Arizona a swing state, then he is up ten in Florida and 5 in North Carolina. Then again, Purple Strategies has been more pro-Romney this cycle, and if Obama is making Arizona competitive, then maybe this race has just broken wide open…
Saturday Open Thread [9.22.12]
The first day of Fall! The local primaries are done, but there is still campaigning going on. The Democratic Coordinated Campaign is walking neighborhoods for candidates this weekend. Are you out working for any candidates this weekend?
Where’s Mitt?
Every day, Daily Kos lists the scheduled campaign appearances by the candidates and their spouses. For at least the last two weeks, I’ve been gobsmacked (love that word, borrowed it from Bryan Alvarez over at Wrestling Observer) by the virtual absence of Mitt Romney from the campaign trail. He’s doing private fundraising events and apparently […]
![Saturday Daily Delawhere [9.22.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8444/7998115732_ab7ae9a8be_z.jpg "Saturday Daily Delawhere [9.22.12]")
He Will Follow.
If Mitt Romney wins the election, undoubtedly a vanishing possibility but still a possibility, he will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu Government in Israel, currently lead by Prime Minister Netanyahu. In case you are living under a rock during the last three years since this latest Likud government has been in power, the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu is not interested in peace. It is not interested in fairness. It has illegally pursued further expansion of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. And it seeks, openly and in a manner than can only be described as “frothing at the mouth,” preemptive war with Iran. Sound familiar?
Indeed, a Netanyahu-Romney pact for war is a foregone conclusion. And isn’t it always the other way around? When an American President is recognized as having a partnership or alliance with another foreign head of state or government, isn’t it always recognized that the American leader is the senior and superior leader in the alliance? Remember Clinton-Blair, Bush-Blair and Reagan-Thatcher? In our horrible hypothetical future, for the first time I can ever recall, the American President, god forbid Mitt Romney, would be the junior partner being told by the senior partner, Netanyahu, what to do and when to do it. Romney is on record as seeing no way he could ever say no to an Israeli prime minister on anything. So there you have it.
A 1960 Question.
I saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog last week and have been meaning to pass it along. It concerns an interview with a Mormon feminist (which seems to me to be a contradiction in terms) named Judy Dushku. She relates her personal experience with the Republican nominee for President of the United States, which took place when Mr. Romney was running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994.
Imagine If…
Republicans embraced the anti-vaccine idiotic message:
I’m glad that (apart from Donald Trump) the anti-vaccine movement isn’t really linked to the right. Can you imagine if vaccine skepticism were seized on by the right-wing noise machine? It would spread like wildfire. A third of Americans simply wouldn’t vaccinate their children, insisting that the health effects of vaccination are just a “theory.” Every Republican in Congress would have to sign an anti-vaccine pledge. There’d be movements to make vaccines illegal in the red states, and dispensers of vaccines would be defunded in those states, and their offices would be shut down. Right-wing billionaires would bankroll documentaries linking vaccination to Hitler and eugenicism, and the Fox/talk radio crazies would flock to those documentaries, which would break box-office records. Half the books on the bestseller list would have covers depicting Democratic politicians as Dr. Mengele.
So… I guess there’s a silver lining?
Friday Open Thread [9.21.12]
First Read reports that the actual election (i.e. the casting of actual votes) begins in half the country tomorrow.
“Idaho and South Dakota today are the first states to begin early-in-person voting. Also today, absentee voting begins in Minnesota, West Virginia, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Georgia, Arkansas, Idaho, and Maryland. This brings the total number of states already accepting ballots to 12. Thirteen additional states (South Carolina, New Jersey, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Delaware, Virginia, Louisiana, and Missouri) will begin absentee or early voting on Saturday.”
Meanwhile, we have the full Bill Clinton interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
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