Tag: Congress

Bad News for Obama: Racism Could Cost Him Re-election

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trumpchump
Donald Trump, who claims Pres. Obama is not the legitimate POTUS because he was not born in Hawaii, and who also questioned whether Obama belonged at Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude, is from New York and attended the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Just sayin'.

Creative research published by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz shows Obama will be in trouble in his bid for re-election in part because of his race.

Stephens-Davidowitz decided to see if there was a correlation between Google searches for the word, “nigger” and voting behavior. Yes, he looked at searches for that word.

The conditions under which people use Google — online, most likely alone, not participating in an official survey — are ideal for capturing what they are really thinking and feeling. You may have typed things into Google that you would hesitate to admit in polite company.

He examined searches conducted nationally in the years 2004 to 2007, before Obama was officially running, and long before he was the front-runner on the Democratic side. From that study, he identified the most, and least, racially charged areas of the country.

Most racially charged areas of America:

  • West Virginia
  • Western Pennsylvania
  • Eastern Ohio
  • Upstate New York
  • Southern Mississippi

The state with the highest racially charged search rate in the country was West Virginia. Other areas with high percentages included western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, upstate New York and southern Mississippi.*

Next, Stephens-Davidowitz came up with a baseline for how a generic Democratic candidate would have performed based on the vote for John Kerry in 2004 which presumably reflected the ballots of people who were likely to go Democratic, even if a not very exciting, privileged, rich Massachusetts liberal who said stupid things like, “I voted for it before I was against it” was the candidate. He also looked at how Democratic Congressional candidates did in the 2008 election.

The results were striking: The higher the racially charged search rate in an area, the worse Mr. Obama did.

[…]

Even the Staples Guy Says Mitt Was Trying to Make Money, Not Jobs

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mittfiringThe only one who doesn’t know what the goal of Bain Capital was when Mitt Romney ran it is, apparently, Mitt Romney. Tom Stemberg, the Staples guy himself, says Bain was not trying to create jobs but was instead trying to create wealth for its principals. Duh.

A top surrogate to Mitt Romney said making money — rather than creating jobs — was the primary goal of the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee when he was running Bain Capital LLC, saying he “acted responsibly” as chief executive officer of the private-equity firm.

“The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money,” said Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples Inc. (SPLS), in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital.” Bain also helped businesses grow, so “these things had redeeming social value, in addition to making Mitt and his investors a lot of money.”

Stemberg made the remarks to set the record straight in an ad perceived as negative toward Romney, which portrays Mitt as a corporate raider. While objecting to that spot, Stemberg gave $20,000 to the Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future to make negative ads about Obama.

Now That Romney is the Republican Candidate, Penn. Voters are Shifting To Obama

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47 – 39

Percent of Pennsylvania voters who say they favor Obama (47) and Romney (39), according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. The results were, respectively, 45 – 42 last month, indicating that now that the president’s opponent is no longer “generic Republican” but Romney, voters are shifting toward Obama.

If Republicans Wanted Prices at the Pump to Fall, They Would Go Along with Obama’s Plan

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gaspump

The president is proposing a plan that would actually make a dent in gas prices. And no, it’s not drill baby, drill because, as Obama explained, there’s a big hole in that idea.

…the problem is we use more than 20 percent of the world’s oil and we only have 2 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Even if we drilled every square inch of this country right now, we’d still have to rely disproportionately on other countries for their oil. That means we pay more at the pump every time there’s instability in the Middle East, or growing demand in countries like China and India.

Instead, the president wants to attack gas prices both administratively — meaning acting as allowed without Congress needing to do that whole law-passing thing of which they seem incapable — and legislatively. Both strategies start by attacking the real problem — oil speculation. Obama:

We can’t afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage, and driving prices higher — only to flip the oil for a quick profit…That’s not the way the market should work. And for anyone who thinks this cannot happen, just think back to how Enron traders manipulated the price of electricity to reap huge profits at everybody else’s expense.

Obama made good a long time ago on a campaign promise to close the “Enron loophole,” which allowed traders to evade American regulations by buying and selling electronically or overseas.

So here’s what he’s asking our representatives in Washington to do.

[…]

Vote on Ending Big Oil’s Government Handout Came Down to the Math

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  • Since Obama became president, my dog’s hip dysplasia has gotten worse.
  • Since Obama became president, my car’s value has decreased.
  • Since Obama became president, violence in Syria has skyrocketed.
  • Since Obama became president, all kinds of sh*t has happened.

How about it? What else has changed over three years that we can blame on Obama? Anybody?

Back here in Realityland, we are amazed at the low-information people who eat up this post hoc mess, produced by the American Energy Alliance. The AEA is a lobbying group opposed to Obama’s plan to discontinue government subsidies for the richest industry in the world, which quit needing government subsidies in the days before Jed Clampett became a millionaire.

[…]

Those Crazy Florida Drivers: Rep. Alan Grayson Hits a Bus

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Health Care Overhaul Grayson
Former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson

When former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) hit the side of an Orlando transit bus earlier this month, it’s doubtful he meant to give opponents in his race to represent a newly drawn Congressional district rich deposits of metaphors to mine. But boy, did he.

  • Nat Sillin, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee: “If you thought the only thing reckless about Alan Grayson was his big-government, tax-and-spend agenda, think again. It turns out on the road to destroying jobs, he’s endangering innocent bystanders in more ways than one.”
  • Mark Oxner, Republican running for the new Dist. 9 seat: “Alan Grayson’s driving record is bad, but his voting record is even worse. His progressive policies would run our economy under the bus. His driving may be a threat to our streets, but his political views are a threat to our future. One of the scariest things you can hear: ‘I’m Alan Grayson, I’m from the government, and I’m driving over to help.'”
    • Dave Barry on Florida: ‘Everybody drives in the left lane, at speeds ranging all the way from Indianapolis 500 down to Car Wash’
  • Julius Melendez, Republican also running for the new Dist. 9 seat: “[Grayson’s] imperfect driving isn’t the important issue in this race. My driving record isn’t perfect either, but…If the voters of District 9 vote for him, he’ll drive the budget and our future the way he drives his Mercedes Benz.”

Critics point to a history of vehicle violations that might be considered excessive outside of Florida, where according to humorist and Florida resident Dave Barry, the state “automatically issues a driver’s license to every new arrival, including stranded whales. We have so many motorists driving into buildings down here that in some areas you’re safer standing in the middle of the street, where they’re less likely to hit you.”

[…]

The Myth of Mitt’s Moderateness

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So much for the arguments by independents that Mitt Romney is a moderate.

Mitt is not a moderate, he’s not a liberal, he’s not a conservative. He’s a rich guy doing whatever he thinks he needs to do to claim the power that rich guys feel entitled to.

Mitt is not a moderate, he’s not a liberal, he’s not a conservative. He’s a rich guy doing whatever he thinks he needs to do to claim the power that rich guys feel entitled to. And if that means saying one thing to these people and the opposite to others, so be it.

Addicting Info on Romney’s reaction to the decision by an appeals court that California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in the state, is unconstitutional:

Not long after the ruling was handed down, Mitt Romney, eager to pander to ultra conservative anti-gay hate groups, made a statement, condemning the decision.

[Romney’s statement begins] “Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.” [Romney’s statement ends]

The problem with Mitt’s statement is that the judges did indeed correctly interpret the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about marriage. It does not say that straight couples are the only ones who can marry, nor does it say that homosexuals can’t get married. What the Constitution does say is that everyone has the right to personal liberty, privacy, and equality under the law. Laws that ban consenting adults from marrying violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Constitution. In other words, the judges made the right call. So basically, Romney is promising to appoint judges who will consistently misinterpret the Constitution, which is similar to what Newt Gingrich has promised to do.