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Rogue Politics » Entries tagged with "Democrats"

Obama: we’ve turned the corner; American People: no we haven’t

President Obama has repeatedly said that the economy has turned a corner. According to Dick Morris’s polling, the American people disagree: From May 5-11, 2012, I conducted a survey of 6,000 likely voters. On such a mammoth sample, the margin of error is less than 1 percent. I found that Romney has amassed a sizable lead over Obama of 51-42, far in excess of what published polling and surveys of registered — as opposed to likely — voters are indicating. If Romney were to win 51 percent of the vote, the election would, of course, be very close. But if he could hold Obama to 42 percent, it would be a landslide. So the obvious question is how Romney should go about winning the voters in between. To answer this question, I drilled … Read entire article »

Filed under: Featured

The Pied Piper no more?

A politicians’ most finely honed instinct is re-election. That’s certainly proving true. With Election Day nearing, Democrats are jumping off President Obama’s sinking ship: North Carolina’s Brad Miller, who voted for the law, now laments that “we would all have been better off” if Congress had dealt with more pressing issues “and then came back to health care.” Barney Frank complained that the Democrats “paid a terrible price for health care.” And Virginia’s outgoing Sen. Jim Webb said the law would be Obama’s “biggest downside” in the election and had cost him “a lot of credibility as a leader.” Meanwhile, stalwart Massachusetts liberal Elizabeth Warren is now calling to repeal a piece of ObamaCare, the 2.3% tax on medical devices, because, she says, it “disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial … Read entire article »

Filed under: PageTwo

Quietly robbing Peter (and his parents) to pay Peter

Several things are abundantly clear about the federal student loan program. The first thing that’s clear is that it’s been a mix of blessings and curses to students. Another thing that’s clear is that it’s a way of hiding the fact that the cost of tuition is too high. The third thing that’s clear is that it first robs Peter to borrow money to Peter. Actually, it’s more likely that the federal government is robbing from Peter’s parents today to borrow money to Peter. In return for doing Peter this ‘favor’, Peter ‘gets’ to pay the money that the federal government took from Peter’s parent with a tidy interest rate tacked on, thereby adding interest rates to the injury. To court the vote of young people, President Obama is promising to steal … Read entire article »

Filed under: PageTwo

Another Obama talking point bites the dust

One of President Obama’s favorite talking points just disappeared: Republican senators are accusing President Obama of pushing a “less-than-honest” claim about the scarcity of domestic oil, after a U.S. Geological Survey study showed the United States might actually hold a quarter of the world’s untapped, undiscovered supply. The president often uses a much different statistic in speeches. He said Tuesday, as he has before, that “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,” Obama said, while pitching a plan to crack down on oil market speculators. But a U.S. Geological … Read entire article »

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What’s the real reason behind Rep. Ellison’s retweet?

Rep. Keith Ellison and controversy apparently go hand-in-hand. Here’s Rep. Ellison’s retweet: Rep. Ellison’s communications team immediately distanced their boss from the controversial retweet: UPDATE at 12:24: Rep. Ellison’s Communications Director Jennifer Porter Gore responds, “As with all Twitter accounts a retweet is not an endorsement. The congressman removed the tweet because it appeared to endorse use of a nasty term, which is not what we wanted.” There’s more: UPDATE: Rep. Keith Ellison has distanced himself from a Twitter user who referred to Mitt Romney as a “douche bag.” If we take Rep. Ellison at his word, the next logical question is this: What message did Rep. Ellison think he was sending in retweeting that disgusting pejorative? This isn’t the first time that Rep. Ellison has shot his mouth off: During a July 8 speech … Read entire article »

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Franken won’t let Buffett Rule die

Whatever else is said about the Buffett Rule, one thing’s certain: Sen. Franken won’t let it die: Sen. Franken, who co-sponsored the defeated Buffett Rule provision, said voters will invariably need to compare the Democrats’ approach with that put forward by House Republicans, who passed a budget that couples lowered tax rates across the board with deep cuts to federal spending. Franken said he preferred to raise revenue through taxes on high-income earners to prevent deeper cuts from coming elsewhere. “Anybody who’s been on the ground looking at what the economy has been doing knows that we have to make investments in education and infrastructure and innovation,” Franken said. “If you don’t have some more revenue coming in you can’t do that without increasing the deficit.” First, if Sen. Franken thinks that the … Read entire article »

Filed under: PageTwo

President Obama treats symptoms, doesn’t fix problems

President Obama’s ideological rigidity is preventing him from solving the problem of high gas prices. Instead of increasing domestic oil production, President Obama is going after commodity markets: Fighting to contain voter anger over sky-high gas prices, President Barack Obama urged Congress to toughen penalties for improper manipulation of oil markets and called for stricter government oversight of energy markets. “None of these steps by themselves will bring gas prices down overnight,” the president said in the White House Rose Garden. “But it will prevent market manipulation and make sure we’re looking out for American consumers.” Mr. President, if you were “looking out for the American people,” you’d instruct the Interior Department and Energy Department to increase domestic oil permitting by 25-50% within a month. That would quickly drive prices down. If you … Read entire article »

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Media (and campaign communications) malpractice

This article on the CBS website is another bit of proof that reporters either don’t get it or they’re part of an obfuscation team. Here’s the title to the article: The bubble wars: Obama and Romney battle over who is “out of touch” It goes downhill after that: One way to think about the 2012 presidential campaign is as a battle between two houses: Barack Obama’s White House and Mitt Romney’s San Diego house. The Romney campaign would like to make Obama a prisoner to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., turning every perk and privilege of the presidency into a sign that he is far removed from the people he is supposed to lead, especially anyone struggling in this economy. “Years of flying around on Air Force One, surrounded by an adoring staff of true … Read entire article »

Filed under: PageTwo

Is Team Obama running on fumes?

It’s been apparent for quite awhile that the DFL won’t have anything to tout as accomplishments or highlights. U.S. Senate Democrats are in similar shape. Jay Cost’s article highlights the fact that President Obama’s only chance of getting re-elected, other than the biggest voter fraud campaign in history, is to hope people stop wanting to talk about the things they want to talk about most: I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the average swing voter does not want to talk about the “war on women,” the Buffett rule, or whatever else Team Obama is going to throw out there in the weeks and months to come. That voter wants to talk about jobs, the economy, the deficit, gas prices, the health care bill–in other words, all the issues where the … Read entire article »

Filed under: PageTwo

It’s not the original story, it’s the spin

In the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation, the popular cliche was that it wasn’t the break-in that got Nixon. It was the cover-up. These days, that can be adapted to a different scandal. In the case of factchecker Politifact, it isn’t the initial story that nailed them. It was the spin that nailed them. Here’s the first details: On April 5, Politifact conceded that the 92.3 percent figure cited by the Romney campaign was accurate and, then, promptly, and unbelievably, said that the claims made by the Romney campaign were “mostly false.” Here’s how Team Romney rocked Politifact: Politifact’s report left many scratching their heads, and one such person was Lanhee Chen, Romney’s Policy Director, who fired off an e-mail that eviscerated Politifact’s analysis point by point. “Putting aside the obvious problems with rating … Read entire article »

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