Tag Archives: Obama

Gaming Poll Data: Biden a Bust

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

USA Today invested good money surveying people who are not going to vote in this year’s elections. Why? So they could find out how Barack Obama would do in November if everyone did vote.

According to this survey among the people who will not be voting, Obama beats Mitt Romney 43% to 14%. Yes, I know. There is a certain Alice-in-Wonderland aspect to all this, but let’s keep going.

The 800 person sample was not exactly an exact cross section of America.

For instance the sample contained 351 people who were registered to vote, and registered with one of the two major parties, but said there was no more than a 50/50 chance that they would participate. Of those 351 people, 242 (30%) said they were registered Democrats. 109 (14%) said they were Republicans. Continue reading →

Did Obama Ever Run a Lemonade Stand?

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

This presidential election is going to be about 1 thing and one thing only: ‘Do you believe that America is built on the notion that free people engaging in free enterprise is the BEST thing we can do as a nation…or that everything flows from the federal government?’

That is pretty much it, ladies and gentlemen. We have always had the debate in our national elections over more or less ‘control’ from a centralized authority in Washington starting with the debates in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Continue reading →

Campaigns, Conventions, Summer Vacations

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

August in Your Nation’s Capital slows to a crawl. The Congress is gone – which is good news for the Republic. In normal years the President and Vice President head for some shore somewhere.

Well, George W. didn’t. He headed for Crawford, Texas which meant the national press corps got to hang out in Waco for weeks at a time. Compare and contrast that with going to Martha’s Vineyard for a Presidential vacation and you can see why political reporters tend to be Democrats. Continue reading →

Romney Reality Differs from Perception

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Cleveland, Ohio
Midwestern Legislative Conference

Donna Brazile and I did our very popular “He said; She said” act in Cleveland for legislators from the Midwest. We will take the act somewhat further on the road next week when we reprise it in Edmonton, Alberta for the Western Legislative Conference.

The buzz among the political cognoscenti is how much damage the Romney campaign has suffered from the attacks on his time at Bain Capital. The problem is, there is no evidence – thus far – that the attacks have had any effect. Continue reading →

By The Numbers

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

We did this a couple of months ago, and I decided, as we are now within four months of election day, to take another look at the polling numbers of former Presidents in their first terms.

As of Sunday afternoon, President Obama’s job approval, according to Gallup, was 46%. His disapproval was also 46%. In the past half-century only George W. Bush has won re-election with an approval score of under 50%.

Let’s go to the chart.

Here’s the list of Presidential approval ratings at approximately the same point in their first terms going back to Lyndon Johnson: Continue reading →

Bain Gambit Takes Campaign to Gutter

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

A United States Senator who enjoys wide respect for his legislative skill and political insight predicted privately the other day that the 2012 Presidential campaign may become one of the most negative and brutal in our nation’s history, rivaling the 1800 Adams-Jefferson campaign.

His prediction was ever so prescient because the very next day a spokeswoman for President Obama accused Mitt Romney of being either a liar or a felon.

The American people need to put a stop to this nonsense before it gets any worse. The Republican mudslinging in the primary was disgusting, and now it is a cancer in the general election campaign.

Continue reading →

Watergate Lessons Not Learned (Part II)

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The recent stream of classified information leaks compromise our national security on a number of fronts, and they only add to the crisis in public trust in government, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Watergate.

While the main body of leaks is investigated by Congress and the Justice Department there are several subplots, or as lawyers and editors like to call them, sidebars to this sad saga that should not go unattended.

The first is the misuse of anonymous sources. It has reached epidemic proportions among traditional and new media. Those journalists, or pseudo journalists, who use them have absolutely no public oversight. The users and abusers answer to no one, except in some cases, a faceless, nameless editor who may be as much a participant in the misuse as the reporters. We don’t get to judge. Continue reading →

Watergate Lessons Not Learned (Part I)

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The leaks of classified information from the Obama Administration in recent weeks raise the specter of a Watergate scandal and lessons not learned.

There have been at least five different incidents in which it appears people in the White House or the Obama Administration, or people with their sanction, have leaked highly classified information to the media, presumably to make Obama look tough on terrorism.

Each incident has its own set of dubious circumstances. Each has its own disturbing story of compromised national security, the endangerment of professionals in clandestine services, the abuse and betrayal of our friends and allies, and the abuse of the White House and other government offices for partisan advantage.

The five latest incidents were: Continue reading →

President Obama’s Fine Mess

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

My friend Meg’s mother likes to say, “Everything is fine until it’s not fine.” That pretty much sums up Barack Obama’s quest for reelection.

The President stepped in it last week when he reiterated his belief that the private sector is “doing fine.” The Romney campaign jumped on the statement and got plenty of traction framing the President as out-of-touch on what is really happening with our economy.

When unemployment is north of eight percent, obviously things are not fine with the private sector. It is easy to see why the White House believes everything is fine with the private sector, especially as compared to the public sector. Jobs have been created in the market place but have been lost in government, especially at the state and local level. The Obama team sees those statistics and assumes that the real problem with the unemployment numbers comes with severe cuts in government spending. Continue reading →

The Gaffe That Keeps On Giving

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Two weeks ago the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a bomb on the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama when it released data showing only 66,000 jobs had been created in May – far below estimates – and that the top-line unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.2 percent.

This past Friday at a press conference, in response to a question about the GOP’s contention that it is his Administration’s policies that are strangling job growth, President Obama said, “the private sector is doing fine.”

He went on to explain that the rise in unemployment is largely due to budget difficulties at the state and local government level because mayors and governors are not getting the “kind of support they need from the federal government.” The federal government needs to send money to states and cities so those governments can hire more people. People who may do important work, but create nothing.

A few short hours after Obama had essentially proclaimed the return of prosperity for private industry, Bloomberg.com was running a piece by Chris Burritt headlined, “CEOs Losing Optimism as Job Slowdown Imperils U.S. Growth.” Continue reading →

Wisconsin Win

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

It is tempting, but not entirely accurate, to say “Obama Loses!” after Democrats suffered another embarrassing defeat last night when the effort to recall Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker failed by the surprisingly wide margin of 55 percent to 44 percent for the Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. An independent got about one percent of the vote.

As of this writing, with 76 percent of Wisconsin’s precincts reporting, it’s over. Walker wins. Much of the Political Punditry Class has been touting this as a preview of the 2012 Presidential election, but now that the Republican won, don’t expect to hear too much of that kind of talk.

In fact, the ink was barely dry on the headlines when the word went forth that it was actually a good night for Obama because the exit polling showed Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 51-45. This is being spun by the Obama team as a victory even though Obama won Wisconsin by a 56-42 margin over John McCain in 2008.

An exit poll showing the incumbent President just barely over 50 percent does not a victory make, seems to me. Continue reading →

Economy Ticking Time Bomb

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Bayeux, France, I am in Normandy for the annual D-Day commemoration on Wednesday. As part of this year’s festivities the World War II Foundation, headed by Tim Cook is presenting a statue of Major Dick Winters who was the central character in “Band of Brothers.”

More about that on Wednesday.

As I type this it is 5 AM Monday morning in France. That means it is 11PM Sunday night on the East Coast of the United States.

That is only useful because I am looking at the Asian markets as they open for business after Friday’s dreadful jobs numbers. As of this moment both the Japanese and Hong Kong market indices are down two percent. The European markets are set to open lower in that same range which means if the Dow follows suit it will lose nearly 250 more points today and end well below 12,000.

Other than my 401(k) being worth about 268.67(k) or minus one-third of its value, I am not much of a player in the stock market. However, like you and everyone else I have a monetary interest in the direction of the economy.

The direction appears to be decidedly down. Continue reading →

Trumped Up Trump

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

A made-up controversy over where the President was born trumped a real tragedy that unfolded in the President’s adopted hometown, which tells you a lot about the nature of this campaign.

Donald Trump somehow wormed his way into the campaign coverage by continuing to question where the President was born. Trump is a private citizen and he can have all of the doubts he wants about Mr. Obama. It’s not really relevant to a bigger national discussion about where we are going as a nation.

The Obama campaign is more than happy to keep the focus on the Donald and off what is actually happening in America, more specifically what is happening in the City of Big Shoulders. Continue reading →

A Marriage of Inconvenience

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

When Joe Biden was selected by Barack Obama to be his Vice Presidential running mate I was thrilled. I thought “If Obama wins, Biden’s propensity to trip over his own tongue will provide enough material to write two columns a week.” I would only have to earn the third column.

For the most part, darn it, Biden has behaved himself and hasn’t been the loose-lipped fool he has been since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware when he was 29 years old.

Biden made up for all of that this past weekend when he proclaimed his support for gay marriage on “Meet the Press”.

That put so much pressure on the President, that he had to come out (so to speak) in favor of gay marriage his own self after attempting to finesse the issue until after the November election.

Here’s something you might not know: Biden had taped that interview on Friday. It would appear that no one on the VP’s staff thought it was newsworthy enough to drift into the West Wing and tell the President’s folks that Biden had said he was for gay marriage. After the fact the Obama folks tried to pretend this was all part of a long-ago developed strategy. Continue reading →

Women of Obamaland and Campaign Fakery

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Perhaps it was all part of a plan.

Still it seems oddly coincidental that just as revelations come out that the woman Barack Obama dated in one of his many autobiographies was actual not a woman but a composite of several women, the Obama campaign is unveiling Julia, another fake woman. Here is a tidbit from National Journal about Julia: “If the 2008 campaign had Joe the Plumber, 2012 might have “Julia,” a fictional woman created by the Obama campaign to show his strengths on women’s issues.

On Thursday, the campaign launched a webpage called “The Life of Julia,” tracking how the president’s policies have helped her throughout her lifetime and contrasting those to Mitt Romney’s policies. Starting at her childhood and ending at retirement, each slide shows an older Julia and a new policy. For example, at 31-years-old, a visibly pregnant Julia is at the doctor’s office. The caption reads, “Under President Obama: Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform.” As for Romney’s policies, the site says, “Health care reform would be repealed.” Continue reading →

Taxpayers Paying for Perpetual Campaigns

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

President Obama is expected to spend a record-breaking $1 billion on his re-election campaign. That’s a lot of money, but there’s more. There are super PACS and interest groups and party organizations, all of which will spend added millions on his re-election.

There’s another pot of money, however, that should be added to the total–the growing amount of tax dollars being used to fund trips and functions that are classified by the White House as “official government business” but are in reality, purely partisan campaign events.

Speaker John Boehner finally spoke up last week, calling the President’s whirlwind taxpayer funded tour of college campuses “pathetic” and “beneath the dignity” of the White House. The President went to colleges in three battleground states, at taxpayers’ expense, presumably to rally support for a problem that was pretty much solved before Air Force One left the ground.

The college town tour was just one of many diversions of taxpayer funds to the campaign. It’s been going on for nine months, and it’s getting worse. Continue reading →

Presidential Campaign Rules of the Road

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Great Barrington, MA

Now that we’re deep into the general election campaign – about 72 hours into it – let’s review the rules.

No matter how many times you’ve hear it, it bears repeating that an election for President in the United States are not a national event. It is a collection of 51 separate elections. The number of electoral votes each state gets equals the number of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives plus its two Senators. Thus California gets 55 electoral votes (53 Congressional Districts plus two Senators) while Wyoming (a single Member state) gets three.

The District of Columbia, although it has one non-voting Delegate to the House and no Senators, by virtue of the 23rd Amendment gets three electoral votes which is why there are 535 voting Members of the House and Senate but 538 electoral votes. One half of 538 is 269. Thus, the magic number to be able to take the Oath of Office on January 20, 2013 is 270 – half of the electoral votes plus one.

I took your valuable time to remind you of all that because as you listen to geniuses like me on TV and radio for the next seven months talk about how many women are voting for Obama; how many men are voting for Romney; how many religious conservatives and how many college students will actually turn out to vote you should keep all that in mind. Continue reading →

Martin Killing Not Trivial Moment

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Trayvon Martin incident is no trivial moment in American history.

Mr. Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman in a Sanford, Florida gated community. Zimmerman says he was defending himself. Civil rights leaders and the Martin family believe it was murder.

The Sanford Police Department doesn’t quite know what to believe, and so far, has refused to arrest Zimmerman.

Upon this one deadly confrontation, America’s racial past and future collapse.

Will we ever live in a post-racial society or must we continue to harbor resentments and fears that poison our respective outlooks on our society?

I was watching a documentary the other night on PBS about Reconstruction in the old South. For a brief moment in time, things improved for blacks in the South after the Civil War. African-Americans were allowed to vote, and several were elected to political office, including the United States Senate. Continue reading →

Obama’s Real Re-election Problem

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Chicago Sun-Times Lynn Sweet picked out an interesting morsel in Jodi Cantor’s book about the Obama family:

“When Michelle Obama worked in Mayor Daley’s City Hall in the early 1990s, she was “distressed” by how a small group of “white Irish Catholic” families — the Daleys, the Hynes and the Madigans — “locked up” power in Illinois.

She particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white Irish Catholic — the Daleys in Chicago, the Hynes and Madigans statewide.”

Obama White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, one of those hated white Irish Catholics, resigned the same weekend that the book’s juiciest tidbits leaked out.

It is probably all just a coincidence, but sometimes coincidences reveal bigger truths.

And the bigger truth is that Bill Daley left the White House because he lost to Valerie Jarrett and to the President’s wife in the battle for the philosophical direction of the Obama White House. Continue reading →

Intrigue With Iran

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

So, let me get this straight. The Iranian government decided it would be a good idea to launch a plot to kill the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the U.S. To do this they sent two geniuses to contact a guy they thought was a Mexican drug bandito but was actually an undercover agent pretending to be a drug bandito to do the deed.

They offered the undercover agent pretending to be a Mexican drug bandito $1.5 million to blow up the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. while he was dining at a restaurant in downtown Washington, DC.

Oh, yeah. This was going to go down like clockwork.

One-point-five-mil for a member of a Mexican drug gang? The Iranians could have gotten some Russian Mafia thug from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to do it for bus fare and an all-expenses paid night at the Elliot Spitzer suite at the Mayflower Hotel in DC. Continue reading →