That is actually the preferred outcome, to have a vote but yet to have the result be business as usual continue in Washington. It is a little bit akin to the World Wrestling Federation, wrestling matches where it is all rigged. The outcome is predetermined. They know in advance who is going to win and lose and it is all for show.
. . . It can't be done. I guarantee that all of the pundits we see going on TV and intoning in deep baritone voices: This cannot be done--if we were back in the 18th century, they would be writing messages in dark ink and sending it by carrier pigeon, saying: This cannot be done. You can't stand up to the British Army. It can't be done. It is impossible. Accept your subjugation. Accept your taxation without representation. Accept that this is impossible.
If we fast forward to the Civil War--a time of enormous pain, anguish, and bloodshed in the United States--there were a lot of voices then who said the Union cannot be saved. It cannot be done. Accept defeat. I suspect those same pundits, had they been around in the mid-19th century, would have written the same columns: This cannot be done.
If we go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany--look, we saw it in Britain. Neville Chamberlain told the British people: Accept the Nazis. Yes, they will dominate the continent of Europe, but that is not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We cannot possibly stand against them.
In America there were voices who listened to that; I suspect the same pundits who said it couldn't be done. If this had happened in the 1940s, we would have been listening to them. Even then they would have made television. They would have gotten beyond the carrier pigeons and letters and they would have been on TV saying: You cannot defeat the Germans.
If we go to the late 1960s when a President, John F. Kennedy, told this country: We are going to send a man to the Moon--when John F. Kennedy told this country we are going to send a man to the Moon, there were a lot of people who said: It cannot be done. It is impossible.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I will tell you the single biggest surprise in arriving to the Senate is the defeatist attitude here. I mean, we don't even talk about how to win a fight. There's no discussion. We talk about, "Hey, let's get a show vote so we can go tell our constituents we're doing something." But I promise you, Rush, if you had to sit through one Senate lunch, you'd be in therapy for a month.
~ Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, just after finishing his Filibuster, on Rush Limbaugh, Sept. 25, 2-13
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’d remind my colleagues that, in the 2012 election, Obamacare, as it’s called — and I’ll be more polite, the ACA — was a subject that was a major issue in the campaign. I campaigned all over America for two months, everywhere I could. And in every single campaign rally I said “we had to repeal and replace Obamacare.” Well, the people spoke. They spoke, much to my dismay, but they spoke and they re-elected the President of the United States. No that doesn’t mean that we give up our efforts to try to replace and repair Obamacare. But it does mean elections have consequences and those elections were clear, in a significant majority, that the majority of the American people supported the President of the US and renewed his stewardship of this country. I don’t like it, it’s not something that I wanted the outcome to be. But I think all of us should respect the outcome of elections, which reflects the will of the people. (About the Nazi-analogy in Cruz's speech)
. . . I resoundingly reject that allegation. That allegation, in my view, does a great disservice. I do not agree with that comparison; I think it's wrong.
~ Senator John McCain, R-AZ, chastising Ted Cruz from the Senate Floor
Ted Cruz, whatever we decide he is or whatever he decides to be, he is no Winston Churchill battling Hitler any more than Snoopy was battling the Red Baron. Just today after declaring himself the man to stand alone, he gave up the colors and voted the same way as all other 99 Senators.
~ Chris Matthews on MSNBC
You’re protecting America from this terrible Obamacare plan that, once we get a taste of [it], we’ll never want to be without. You only win if the program fails. Obamacare is your Springtime For Hitler.
~ Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
He's holding the American people hostage because he's so sure he's right and everybody else is wrong. Senator Cruz has actually advanced our cause. He has alienated some of his colleagues. He has united Democrats, and he's shown the American people that he is willing to hold them and their well being hostage unless he gets his way.
~ Senator Chuck Schumer, R-New York
You have to add to that brew that there’s a political opportunism here. He’s going to die on this hill, and then he’ll turn around and tell all of the conservatives that he was alone. That benefits him politically, even though it’s terribly narcissistic in some respects—
~ Sam Stein of Huffington Post on Morning Joe
All politicians are narcissistic, but this is just phony, this isn’t even inspiring narcissism. Churchill was a narcissist. But this is just pretend. He can be doing this in his closet and it would have the same exact effect on America.
~ Joe Scarborough of MSNBC
It was kind of nice to see John McCain come out and try to put down this analogy and this excessive rhetoric that Ted Cruz is throwing around, but I think in a lot of ways by putting Sarah Palin on the ticket, the Republican establishment, that is John McCain and John Boehner - they rode into power on the backs of his Tea Party tiger.
They've really handed over the keys to the car to these folks and now they're upset that, with gasoline provided by Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio, that they're out there connecting directly to the base of the Party.
It's quite clear that Ted Cruz is not in town to legislate. He's there to do what Sarah Palin and others want him to do - to talk about death panels, to be excessive, to bring things down. They take hostages not to get leverage, but they want to blow up the bank! They want to shoot the hostage! That's where we are with the Republican Party and we got there because people like John McCain and John Boehner made common cause with these folks.
~ David Corn on Hardball
I'll just tell you one thing, and I'm speaking for all white people, especially people trying to change the last 50 or 60 years - and a lot have really tried to change - I'm sorry for this stuff. That's all I'm saying.
~ Chris Matthews on Hardball
Here is the moment. It was not on the program. It was not on anybody's schedule. We did not know it was coming. And it was not spoken into any microphone. . . . "I want to take a look one more time. I'm not going to see this again."
The President looking in one direction, while everyone else looking toward him was moving past him.
That is the moment when you see the man inside the trappings of the office. When you see the way that any of us might feel a little overwhelmed in human terms by the importance of your office. The singular scale of the importance of that particular office. That was a cool moment.
Days like this are special because of what is scripted and preordained about them. The least suspenseful things on days like this are the most important things on days like this. Things that display the ritual of how we peacefully and agreeably move between Presidencies in America. Days of ritual are days of foregone conclusion. They are scripted. Which makes it all the more amazing when there is not a script. Like that moment after his Inaugural Address when we saw the President turn to be as amazed to see that crowd as that crowd was to see their President.
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC
I'm honored and grateful that we have a chance to finish what we started. Our work begins today. Let's go. -bo
Inspiring to see people streaming to the Capitol on this brisk, sunny Inaugural, as Americans have done for generations.
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) January 21, 2013
As if a cold Monday in January wasn’t dreary enough, today has been dubbed ‘Blue Monday’, the most depressing day of the year.`
~ Steve Doocey on Fox and Friends
Fox on Obama's Speech:
Chris Wallace: This was an unyielding, uncompromising espousal of a liberal agenda.
Brit Hume: This is utterly bereft of an outreach to the opposition.
Mark Levin: I think there’s a lot of perverse thinking that goes on in Obama’s mind, radical left-wing thinking. He was indoctrinated with Marx and Alinksy propaganda.
I thought it was an amazing speech, and historically very important. This was really Obama unbound. And I think what's most interesting is that Obama basically is declaring the end of Reaganism
~ Charles Krauthammer on Fox News
Fox News is fun to watch today. It's like an all-day live Adele song.
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 21, 2013
Ladies and gentlemen, the late Alex Haley, the author of Roots, lived his life by these six words: "find the good and praise it.” Today we praise the American tradition of transforming, or reaffirming, immense power in the inauguration of the President of the United States. We do this in a peaceful, orderly way. There is no mob. No coup. No insurrection. This is a moment when millions stop and watch. A moment most of us always will remember. It is a moment that is our most conspicuous and enduring symbol of the American democracy. How remarkable that this has survived for so long in such a complex country when so much power is at stake. This freedom to vote for our leaders and the restraint to respect the results.
~ Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, Co-Chair of the Inaugural Committee
"I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, a Mugwump or whatever. This is a day when you have to say 'What A Country!'
~ Dan Rather
He went big. He went lofty. He went ambitious. And he went unmistakably liberal.
~ Jonathan Karl on ABC News
That was really historic. To hear the President of the United States mention the word Stonewall in the same sentence as Selma, in the same sentence as Seneca Falls, certainly for gay and lesbian Americans, that is a stunning statement and a real leap forward for gay and lesbian Americans.
~ Anderson Cooper on CNN
I just want to say, there were moments in this speech, but there was a theme, we the people go back to the Founders, think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was an uplifting, beyond rhetoric, there was a theme of our job is not finished until our gay brothers and sisters have equal rights under the law. This was a bigger moment, I think, than a lot of people initially gave it credit for. I just think, with re-election, he is thinking much more broadly and much more inclusively, and I was very moved, just being up there in that frozen crowd, looking out over the masses.
~ Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC
Gigantic. And he connected it all to the patriots of 1776 that we keep widening in our democracy. And he made those places almost like battlefield spots in American history, like Oxford, Mississippi, or Normandy or Iwo Jima. And it's an iconic speech.
. . . I thought it was a marvelous speech and it's brave and it's bold and I think it's going to play well in history.
~ Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley on CNN
Reminds you of another second inaugural: Lincoln’s. So much of Lincoln in that speech, from the Gettysburg address to the second inaugural itself. I thought what was interesting was an attempt to draw a balance – of course, he’s a man of the progressive side – but he tried to draw a balance there between a government ruled by an elite and then a government ruled by a mob both being a problem.
~ Chris Matthews on Obama's Second Inaugural Address
FLOTUS has to sit next to Boehner. That is the definition of marital love and sacrifice. #inaug2013
— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) January 21, 2013
First Lady's Epic Eye Roll
Just danced to "Let's Stay Together" with the love of my life and the President of the United States. I’m so proud of Barack. –mo
The President was elected on the basis that he was not Romney and that Romney was a poopy-head and you should vote against Romney.
~ Grover Norquist on CBS This Morning
The numbers we were looking at looked like we stood a pretty good chance of winning. So, when the numbers came in, going the other direction. When we saw the turnout that was occurring in urban areas that were unprecedented, it did come as a bit of a shock. So, those are the toughest losses to have -- the ones that catch you by surprise.
~ Ex-Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, R-WI
To too many swing voters in the country, when you hear the word conservative now, they think of loons and wackos. We gave up 5 U.S. Senate seats over the last two election cycles by people who were just out there, completely extreme. Manifestly unprepared for the offices that they're running for. Our elected leaders are scared to death of the conservative entertainment complex - the shrill and divisive voices that are bombastic and broadcasting out into the homes. And this country is rejecting the social extremism of the Republican Party on issue after issue.
~ 2008 McCain Adviser Steve Schmidt on Meet the Press
(The Tea Party) brings some talented people into politics — think of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson for example — but it also brings some wackos and weirdos and witches, and we put too many of them on the ticket.
. . . The Constitution, in its wisdom, guarantees us a free press, but not a fair one. And Republicans need to learn to have candidates that don’t make unforced errors. … Don’t nominate dogs, okay? Tea party folk, like the peace movement folk, want to nominate the … purest candidate.
~ Conservative Analyst Michael Barone
The president won an extraordinary victory. And the fact is we owe him the respect of trying to understand what they did and how they did it. But if you had said to me three weeks ago, Mitt Romney would get fewer votes than John McCain and it looks like he’ll be 2 million fewer, I would have been dumbfounded.
. . . The great thing about elections is they belong to the American people. I was wrong last week, as was virtually every major Republican analyst. And so, you have to stop and say to yourself, if I was that far off, what do I need to learn to better understand America?
~ Newt Gingrich
It's pretty funny to hear Gingrich make his mea culpa on the Today Show when he spent two years saying 'The only way you can understand Barack Obama is to see him as an anti-colonialist Kenyan.' And now he's surprised that he's out of step with most of the country?
~ David Corn of Mother Jones on Hardball
It must have been confounding to discover that the guy they said was not 'one of us' - was somehow 'the other' - turned out to be the leader of the country. That's a big mistake to make. (laughter)
~ Chris Matthews on Hardball
The Republicans drowned in a sea of spin within an echo chamber within a time machine. There are so many levels of denial that led them to this point - it's stunning.
. . . They thought most Americans agreed with them that Barack Obama was an evil maniacal figure, purposefully leading America to ruin! We have the birthers on the far end of that. They portrayed him as being feckless, someone who apologizes for America, and they said the economy was worsening when actually it's not . . . it's getting better, just not fast enough.
They were just again and again not in tune with, whether it's polls or attitudes towards women, it was 1950s versus 2012. So it's not surprising to me they feel 'dumbfounded' now.
~ David Corn of Mother Jones on Hardball
Do we want to stay in the Moral Majority mindset? Or do we want to get into a 21st century mindset that recognizes just how diverse this country is, and how valuable an asset they are to our party.
~ Ex-RNC Chairman Michael Steele on Hardball
You have to demonstrate what you're for, not what you're against. I think that's the key ingredient, and sell a vision that's positive for America, not a negative vision about what's wrong with America. I think you have to have both. We didn't sell a positive vision, we didn't explain to people what we're for.
~ Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
It's one thing to shoot yourself in the foot, just don't reload the gun. So, I intend not to reload this gun when it comes to Hispanics. I intend to tear this wall down and pass an immigration reform bill that's an American solution to American problem. But we have nobody to blame but ourselves when it comes to losing Hispanics. And we can't get them back with some effort on our part.
~ Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Face the Nation
Democrats complain furiously that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity smear the left, but I wonder if the bigger loser isn't the Republican Party itself. Those shows whip up a frenzy in their audience, torpedoing Republican moderates and instilling paranoia on issues like immigration.
All this sound and fury enmeshes the Republican Party in an ideological cocoon and impedes it from reaching out to swing-state centrists, or even understanding them. The vortex spins ever faster and risks becoming an ideological black hole.
~ Nicholas D. Kristof
Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers
— Jack Welch (@jack_welch) October 5, 2012
(Scroll Down for complete transcript of Chris Matthews Interview with Jack Welch w/video at bottom of post)
Anybody, any serious person who has any familiarity with how these numbers are tabulated understands that these are career employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that are responsible for compiling and analyzing these numbers and they do that on their own.
~ White House Spokesman Josh Earnest
I think it would be impossible to really manipulate the numbers. Certainly, it would be impossible to manipulate the numbers and not be found out.
. . . At turning points, sometimes the household survey turns a little quicker than the payroll survey does. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t give out false signals
~ Keith Hall, former Head of Bureau of Labor Statistics, on LA Times
. . . There’s nothing wrong with the numbers. The only issue is the interpretation of the numbers. The numbers are what they are.
~ Keith Hall on Wall Street Journal
Listen, I would never send a tweet like Jack Welch, and I respect Jack - he's a great guy. That's why last month I said it would be below 8% before the election. That's why I said it. I don't say things I can't prove - that was my prediction. I will leave it at that.
. . . Of course a lot of people are staying home working on their computers, selling things on Ebay, and they're probably part of that 800,000 number. It's not the kind of jobs I want, but I can't prove that it was fudged. I do find that that's the kind of question I'm finding on the Trading Floor. It is what it is. I'm on record last month saying it would be below 8 and if you look at interest rates, they all popped. I told you they'd get it under 8 percent -- they did! You can let America decide how they got there!
~ Rick Santelli on CNBC
If you go just based on Twitter right now, and the people I follow who are conservative - they're about to make a huge mistake. They're gonna say BLS numbers are horrible, some people are already saying the numbers are made up to help the president politically. They have to find a way to talk about the economy and why Governor Romney would be better, not to try to - it's exactly what they did with the polls the last two months, to attack the methodology. These numbers are good. They're not only good symbolically, they represent the economy moving in a better direction.
~ Mark Halperin of Time on MSNBC's Morning Joe, via MMFA
I don't think BLS cooked numbers. I think a bunch of Dems lied about getting jobs. That would have same effect.
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) October 5, 2012
October "surprise:" 43 consecutive months of above 8% unemployment, & 1 month before election, the rate miraculously drops to 7.8%. Ahem.
This just proves what a criminal Obama is. He has lied & forced his labor dept to report 7.8% Unemployment with only 114,000 jobs created.
— Fritz Harrod (@bignels2) October 5, 2012
How do 800,000 people leave the work force; 114,000 jobs created and this is touted as good news...? Unemp rate is rigged!
— Barbara Foss (@b_bfoss) October 5, 2012
Another name for the Labor Dept's bogus "7.8 percent" unemployment number -- "Obama's October Surprise." Thanks, Hilda.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 5, 2012
I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here. Somehow by manipulation of data we are all of a sudden below 8 percent unemployment, a month from the Presidential election. This is Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book "Rules for Radicals"- a must read for all who want to know how the left strategize. Trust the Obama administration? Sure, and the spontaneous reaction to a video caused the death of our Ambassador......and pigs fly.
~ Congressman Allen West on Facebook
We’ve hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. Case in point, within minutes of the jobs report, Twitter filled with Republicans claiming the books were somehow cooked, the numbers aren’t real, etc.
Let’s take a deep breath. Jobs reports are about the economy, not about the election. Confusing the two leads to very bad analysis.
. . . The fact is that there’s not much that needs to be explained here. We’ve seen drops like this — and even drops bigger than this — before. Between July and August the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — two-tenths of one percent. November-December of 2011 also saw a .2 percent drop. November-December of 2010 saw a .4 percent drop. This isn’t some incredible aberration. The fact that the unemployment rate broke under the psychologically important 8 percent line is making this number feel bigger to people than it really is.
~ Ezra Klein on Washington Post
Martin Bashir: Republicans appear to have more conspiracy theories than L. Ron Hubbard produced in his lifetime. Goldie Taylor: I don't know if there's anything that this particular Republican Electorate believes in, whether it's global warming or the unemployment numbers . . . Martin Bashir: Conspiracy. Conspiracy. Conspiracy. Out to Chicago. Conspiracy. Goldie Taylor: As Toure said earlier (on the Cycle), "White Folks be Trippin'".
~ Martin Bashir Show in MSNBC
Trustworthy economic data is a very valuable public good that serves as a useful production input for tons of private businesses. It also helps smaller-scale government agencies and nonprofits make smarter decisions. And last but by no means least, precisely because the BLS is credible presidents know that they'd take an enormous political hit if they were seen as manipulating it.
~ Matt Yglesias on Slate:
The way things are going, if the GOP doesn't win this election, I'd say there's a 20% chance of a congressional investigation into vote fraud and a 5% chance of an Avignon Presidency set up by those who refuse to believe the election was lost.
~ David Weigel on Slate
Today’s full-scale freakout over a decent jobs report is a sight to behold. Spare me the false equivalence: yes, you occasionally find people on the left claiming that the numbers have been faked or the truth hidden, but not leading figures in the media and major-league plutocrats. (Next time people try to portray Jack Welch as an icon of success, a man we should listen to, remember this moment)
. . . The thing is, although such antics are funny in a way, they’re also menacing. By attacking anyone who presents awkward facts, the right exerts an intimidating effect. It won’t get the BLS to retract today’s jobs report, but it might bully news organizations into avoiding objective economic analysis, and maybe even into blurring their reporting right now.
So this is crazy and stupid; but it’s also scary.
~ Paul Krugman on The New York Times
COOPER: Well, you said these Chicago guys will do anything.
WELCH: A question mark might have been better. Last night I had a question mark.
COOPER: So you wish you would have --
WELCH: A question mark would have been better.
COOPER: So, you don't really stand by the notion --
WELCH: I stand by it. I stand by that these numbers have to be examined.
...
WELCH: Somebody ought to be investigating. Somebody should have looked at this and said wait a minute, we just dropped the GDP this much. How can we have the greatest economy since June of '83?
COOPER: But, there are legitimate questions about how the house - I mean, it seems like your problem is how the household survey is done and that's very legitimate. There are always questions and they're always revising the numbers.
WELCH: I want to have a long discussion about it.
COOPER: Right. And certainly, your tweet certainly has provoked discussion but again --
WELCH: It's to important. This election is too important for one number based on 60,000 phone calls and 100 million plus people to determine the outcome.
COOPER: But again -- to say these Chicago guys will do anything --
WELCH: That's what I tweeted.
COOPER: Right. But, you don't stand by that tonight?
WELCH: What do you mean, I don't stand by it? I've got a tweet out there. I stand by it.
. . .
ALI VELSHI: There are two great facts you make, Jack. You know, as the best CEO America has ever had, there are two very powerful things you can say here. One is let's take a look at how the BLS, bureau of labor statistics and department of labor measures unemployment, number one, and b, maybe you think Barack Obama's not doing a good job and Mitt Romney should be replacing him. But to honestly suggest that there's corruption, that the Obama campaign may have had something to do with cooking these books, why do you need to do that at a time when U.S. trust for government and institutions is at an all-time low. That is not good for society. What does Jack Welch gain by introducing this? There are so many CEOs who talk nonsense. What do you gain from this, Jack? Why don't you take this opportunity to take it back?
WELCH: Ali, I love you. I'm not talking nonsense, OK?
VELSHI: I love you more, Jack, but fix this.
WELCH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute before we have this love- fest. I told you that these numbers are implausible. We don't have a five percent GDP growth in this quarter. We don't have it, Ali. We revised the second quarter down, I'm involved in 14 businesses, I've been looking at them over the last week. The third quarter is not strong. It's not strong, from restaurants --
VELSHI: OK. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this, Jack.
I agree with you. This is a lousy economy. 1.3 percent GDP growth is lousy and yet on Wednesday night, Mitt Romney said again and by the way, Barack Obama backs up this claim that either one of them will create 12 million jobs in four years. That is three million jobs a year or 250,000 jobs a month. We got 114.
At 1.3 percent economic growth there's not an economist in this country who thinks it will be higher than three percent in 2013 and probably similar in 2014 and 2015. That's a lie, too, right? Why don't you call Mitt Romney out on that?
WELCH: Well, because Mitt Romney is thinking about a plan which would lower regulations, which would change the tax, which would drive an energy policy that's very aggressive. I don't know if he's going to get 12. I'm not a Romney surrogate. I'm not in the campaign. I have never talked to the campaign. I have nothing to do with Romney. I just believe this number should not determine the outcome of the presidential election. Did you see today -- VELSHI: I agree with you. Jack, you're a hero to business people in this country. You're a hero to all sorts of people. Just do it now. Let's do it. I can go back to loving you and you can go back to loving me. Just do it now and say it's not right what you said. Nobody cooked the books. You don't truly believe that, do you?
WELCH: I said I should have put a question mark at the back of it.
Welch: Chris these numbers are a series of assumptions. Tons of assumptions. And it just seems somewhat coincidental that the month before the election the numbers go one-tenth of a number below where it was when the President started. Although I don't see anything in the economy that says these surges are true. The 873,000 jobs in the household survey is the strongest economy since 1983. I don't think you can find an economist - there were 25 of them this morning that predicted 8.1 to 8.2 but they did predict 114,000 jobs. We got 114,000 jobs. And somehow the assumptions ended up at 7.8%.
Matthews: Let me just go back to your tweet this morning. It must be embarrassing for you to do a tweet now with the power you used to have. I mean "tweeting" doesn't seem like something I'd see from Jack Welch and I mean it. But here - you put out the word here - "Unbelievable jobs numbers" - fair enough - "these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers." What evidence do you have that they got to the BLS, that Chicago guys got to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and jimmyed these numbers by .3% as you put it?
Welch: I have no evidence to prove that. I just raised the question.
Matthews: No, you didn't just raise the question. (reads tweet again) So you're just asserting here in your tweet that you put out at 8:35 a.m. this morning, five minutes after the report came out. Did you talk to any economists or anyone in the National Income Accounting world that understood how these numbers were put together before you accused the "Chicago Guys" of changing the numbers?
Welch: Chris, I know that these numbers are gathered by a series of wild assumptions. Maybe they weren't right at 8.5 - maybe they weren't right at 8.4 - but it seems coincidental that one month before the election they would end up at 7.8%.
The President today is on the stump. The President - all he's talked about is 7.8. He didn't mention 600,000 jobs added in the government sector . . .
Chris: See, you're . . . It’s not your attitude about Obama people care about, it's your analysis. And you came out this morning and asserted, not a question mark, or concern about a coincidence, but you say "These Chicago guys will do anything so they change the numbers." Do you want to take that back?
Welch: No. I don't want to take anything back.
Matthews: This is an assertion that there was jimmying with the numbers, that there was corruption here, that there was infiltration getting to--
Welch: Laughs
Matthews: It’s not funny, Jack. You’re talking about the President of the United States playing with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers. This is Nixon stuff. This is what Nixon did back in the old days, accused of this.
Welch: Chris, don’t lose it now.
Matthews: I'm not losing it. (smiles) Look at my face, I'm not losing it.
Welch: I can't see your face.
Matthews: Do you want to take back the charge that there was corruption here?
Welch: No, I don't want to take back one word in that tweet.
Matthews: So you assert right now as of 5 o'clock this afternoon that (reads tweet again).
Welch: I didn't say what they did, I said they'll do anything.
Matthews: And what did they do here?
Welch: They've been calling Mitt Romney a liar, a falsehood, for the last 48 hours after the debate.
Matthews: But you don't have any independent evidence. You didn't - from the time the numbers came out this morning at 8:30 and 8:35 when you tweeted. You didn't use that 5 minutes to gather any actual information or evidence?
Welch: No but Chris, I tweeted last night that I predicted they'd be at 7.9%.
@dmacd11 at 7.9 it would be Chicago and labor Sec in action
Matthews: Okay. And? Why did you make that prediction?
Welch: 'Cause I guessed that's what would happen a month before the election.
Matthews: So you guessed that the "Chicago Guys" would do this.
Welch: Well . . . I don't want to put words in the mouth of what I said last night. But that's what I did.
Matthews: Let's go back to the tweet. What started this whole band today, with people with a lot less IQ than you, and certainly a lot less business sense, like Alan West, and some of the real screwballs out there are following the band you're leading, and the band you put together today was that there's corruption here from the Chicago people, meaning the guys around President Obama, got to the BLS and manipulated the numbers.
Welch: Chris, stop it, now! I reviewed 15 businesses this week, from restaurants to rental cars to widgets. I have seen everybody with a third quarter equal-to or weaker-than a first quarter. In order to get 873,000 new jobs you would have to have a GDP going at 4-5%. The second quarter was downgraded from 1.7 to 1.3. The third quarter is not going to be very strong. It just defies the imagination to have a surge larger than any surge since 1983 a month before the election. I leave it to you to do all the analysis.
Matthews: (Reads Quote from Keith Hall, previous Head of Bureau of Labor Statistics that "numbers are good") So why do you know more than him? Do you really think - it gets back to the question of integrity. Do you believe the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, lacks integrity? That a President of the United States . . . Nixon said he could never get to them. He used to say there was an ethnic factor, that they were all Jewish people over there and he didn't trust them. He thought they were all out to get him. Now you say the President controls the BLS? Previous Presidents said they couldn't get their hands in that place because it was so independent.
Welch: You don't think it's coincidental that we've got the biggest surge since 1983 in the job surge? Come on, Chris.
Matthews: It's .3 of one percent shift this month. It went from 8.1 down to 7.8.
Welch: It was .2 - 8.3 last month, 8.1 to 7.8 this month. It's a 6% improvement in employment in two months. Chris! 6% improvement? It would require a GDP - the numbers -
Matthews: Jack, all I want to know is when we write this down three weeks from now or four weeks when the election's over, I want to know what you meant. Do you mean it's a coincidence, or do you mean you have evidence that there was corruption here in these numbers.
Welch: No evidence of corruption. None whatsoever.
Matthews: Okay. So these "Chicago guys" had nothing to do with the numbers that came out today.
Welch: Oh, I don't know that.
Matthews: Then why'd you say it? (reads tweet again). You just said it in your tweet! I'm always careful when I tweet, Jack. I usually have someone like my producer and say 'read my tweet.'
Welch: I'm careful too.
Matthews: Do you stand behind your tweet?
Welch: I wanna raise the question of these numbers.
Matthews: You just raised the question.
Welch: Chris, these numbers defy logic. They defy logic. We do not have a 4-5% booming economy with 873,000 people added. I mean - stop it, Chris! On the face of it, we don't have this GDP. I love you, but you can't get there.
Matthews: I think you're a great brilliant businessman who's in some ways - I wish you were in charge of my stock options these days because you made a lot of money for us here. But let me ask you this one more time so that all the people out there of lesser intellect will stop marching in your band - Jack Welch thinks this is a coincidence. Jack Welch does not think the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the boys in Chicago changed the numbers.
Welch: No, no - Jack Welch is raising the question for some good analyst to go look at.
Matthews: Okay, good - you're raising the question. You certainly did that. Jack Welch, thank you very much for joining us at the very top of Hardball tonight.
RUSH: Folks, there are a couple of polls out there today that are just outrageous. One is the CBS/New York Times poll. The other is the Washington Post poll. I'm telling you: They are irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about, and that is to depress you and suppress your vote. These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over.
. . . there could be a lot of reasons for this. Voter suppression, voter depression, set up the possibility of allegations of voter fraud.
They have all these polls with Obama running away with this, and then say Romney wins. Guess what happens? People blow a gasket on the left. There's also early voting going on, and they know this stuff is not reported to reflect opinion. They're trying to shape opinion with these polls.
Dick Morris: [Romney] at the moment is in a very strong position. I believe if the election were held today, Romney would win with four or five points. I believe he would carry Florida, Ohio, Virginia. I believe he would carry Nevada. I believe he would carry Pennsylvania.
Sean Hannity: Aw, come on!
Dick Morris: And I believe he would be competitive in Michigan. I just saw a poll in Pennsylvania by a group that I've hired in the past and I trust their polling. Two points behind. And Rasmussen has it five points behind. People need to understand that the polling this year is the worst it's ever been.
Because this is the first election where if I tell you who is going to vote, I can tell you how they're going to vote. You tell me that you're black or Latino or a college kid or a single mother, I'll tell you how you're going to vote.
And if you tell me you're over 65, you're a man or a married white woman, I'll tell you how you're going to vote. And I'll be right 2 out of 3 times.
Therefore the issue is who's going to vote. Polling is very good at saying how you're gonna vote, it's very bad at saying who is going to vote. And the models these folks are using are crazy. They assume a Democratic edge of six or seven points. I'm assuming a 3 point Democratic edge, and even that is very likely an overstatement.
O'REILLY: . . . Are these polls dishonest?
ROVE: No. Look, we endow them with a false scientific precision they simply don't have. If you've got nine points more Democrats than Republicans and you're nine points more --
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: You you're going to have a poll that reflects that.
ROVE: -- yes, nine points more Obama. Think about this. Romney and Obama get each roughly the same percentage of Republicans and Democrats as -- as their opponent. That is to say they carry their -- their base overwhelmingly. Romney, among Independents is winning by three points.
So -- so if Romney is winning the Independents and winning the Republicans do you think in a battle ground state like Florida, he's nine points down and the answer is no....
ROVE: . . . So look, we've got to be careful about, you know, we have a proliferation of these polls. There have been 87 national polls in the last 30 days. That's more polls than were run in the last six months of the 1980 presidential race.
O'REILLY: All right.
ROVE: Last week -- last week alone, we had 51 state level polls; and the week before that, 41.
O'REILLY: I understand that but -- but here -- here -- look, from my point of view as a news analyst and I believe that the folks know I'm honest in that regard, when news agencies like the CBS News on the radio report the polling and it shows that Barack Obama has leapt out to a big lead in Florida and Ohio, that gets inside people's minds. They remember that. And that can only help the President. That helps the President.
ROVE: Sure.
O'REILLY: Because the perception is he is going to be the winner.
. . . . . . O'REILLY: All right, real quick, real quick, your board, the Karl Rove board where is the race in Ohio and Florida in your opinion?
ROVE: Well, toss-up in both states.
O'REILLY: Toss-up? It could go either way at this point in history.
ROVE: Sure.
O'REILLY: All right, Mr. Rove. We appreciate that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fox's laughable case for Romney
. . . Rove's role is nuttily professorial. He has adopted one of those erasable white slates popularized by the late Tim Russert. On it he scribbles integers with plus or minus signs. These, he alleges, are the amounts being added to President Barack Obama and/or subtracted from Romney by such daredevil organizations as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, NBC, CNN, Gallup and the co-opted poll-averagers at the website RealClearPolitics. Bottom line: This vast conspiracy is downgrading Romney three to nine points by using screens that overstate the votes of blacks, Latinos, Asians, women and the young.
Morris, who is beginning to bear a waxen resemblance to Orson Welles, explained, I think, that pollsters cheat by using false baseline figures from previous elections. Morris didn't have time to explicate fully how every news organization except Fox has signed up to help Obama by disseminating these cooked figures. Even so, O'Reilly thanked Morris for explaining polling mysteries he said he had not previously understood.
. . . I think there's a secret behind O'Reilly's trademark smirk. Were it in his interest to say what's on his mind about the candidates' performance to date, he'd almost certainly admit that Obama has come on like a superstar candidate of the Reagan ilk, and so far Romney is one of the biggest duds in post-World War II presidential elections.
~ Howell Raines on CNN
Conservative blogger Dean Chambers ... analyzed these polls favoring President Obama, and then reached the scientific conclusion that they "just didn't look right." So Chambers set up his own polling site, "UnskewedPolls.com," where he unskewed all the national polls by skewing them in favor of Romney - and surprisingly found that Mitt had nearly an 8 point lead! And that doesn't even count the margin of error.
And given how many errors Romney's made, I think he should get all of it.
No surprise, folks, this "feels accurate" polling has caught the attention of some GOP intellectuals, like Texas Governor Rick Perry, who tweeted: "Always nice to get unfiltered, or in this case unskewed, information." Amen! If we had only had more accurate polling during the primaries, Perry could have dropped out way sooner.
~ Stephen Colbert
GOP partisans shouldn’t worry about a conspiracy. They should worry that this is a snapshot of how Americans feel about the two major parties.
It’s not the polls, it’s the policies. Now that’s a reason for Republicans to be depressed.
~ Eugene Robinson on The Moderate Voice
After four years of relentlessly condemning Obama as an historic failure and all around bad person, conservatives are desperately trying to explain the disconnect between their dire Obama denunciations and the on-the-ground political reality about Obama's polling surge. They need a scapegoat, and pollsters have been cast in the role.
. . . An Obama victory will confirm that bloggers and talk shows hosts were right all along because the skewed polls worked (as the conspiracy intended) and drained Republican enthusiasm. And that's why Obama won re-election: Not enough Republicans voted!
~ Eric Boehlert on Media Matters
The funniest prank that Fox News plays on viewers occurs every other night, when freelance strategist Dick Morris -- a former Clintonite who now despises Democrats -- lurches in front of a camera and explains that Republicans will win everything.
. . . According to Morris, literally 100 percent of "undecided" voters will eventually vote against Barack Obama. Leaving aside how the theory ignores spillover to write-ins and third-party candidates, this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Nate Silver, bless him, has already explained why the "incumbent rule" doesn't actually exist.
. . . There's literally no evidence that undecided voters will break the way he says they're breaking. But he's telling an audience of voters -- and more importantly for him, potential consumers -- that the media is covering up how Mitt Romney's winning the election. It's silly, and at the same time it lays the ground for endless paranoia if Romney doesn't win.
~ David Weigel on Slate
It's all about the enemy. Of course it starts with the media, starts with the liberal media. The liberal media wants Mitt Romney to lose, its in Barack Obama's back pocket, so on, and so forth. Now it extends to the pollsters. Pollsters are supposedly riggin' these things.
Nobody's rigging anything. Nobody. In fact what the polls are showing is that fewer and fewer people who are being called by pollsters want to call themselves Republicans.
~ Michael Tomasky of Daily Beast on Hardball
Why would anybody ever ever ever, I don't care who pays them, ever listen to what Dick Morris has to say about anything? Especially when he says 'all the polls' including Fox's own polls are not to be trusted because he doesn't like the numbers. He doesn't like what they're saying this week.
~ ~ Chris Matthews on Hardball
You imagine that back in the Republican Green Room there's this giant crack pipe that they are all hitting on constantly - hittin' it hard! . . . Dick Morris bought the pipe!
. . . The rank and file literally believe some of this nonsense. They believe that evolution didn't happen, global warming's a hoax, Obama's a Kenyan, But people like Dick Morris, and Sean Hannity for that matter, who've spread alot of this propaganda, they know better than this! And there's a method to their madness here. They're not delusional, their dishonest. They're not crazy, they're craven.
What they're trying to do and accomplish is to say in advance that if President Obama wins this election, it's because the pollsters suppress the Republican vote. It's therefore an illegimate election, he's not really President. They're settin' the table for that.
~ Ron Reagan on Hardball
. . . reputable national polls out there, show that Obama is ahead in most of these key battleground states. That's obviously disconcerting to a lot of Republicans. Some of them, like Karl Rove, for example, have repeatedly gone out there and suggested that these polls are biased against the Republicans because they're oversampling Democrats, for example, as opposed to Republicans. And as a result, don't trust these polls, they're not reliable. So it's sort of convenient for a lot of these Republicans, like Karl Rove, to go after the NBC poll or the ABC poll or CNN polls.
But what they don't say is that the FOX News polls are showing almost exactly the same thing. FOX has some good polls. . . . You don't hear them complaining about the FOX News polls. They're complaining about the others, so there is an imbalance there.
~ Wolf Blitzer on CNN
New rule —if you’re one of the 5% of American voters who are still undecided on who to vote for, it’s okay to admit you just don’t give a sh**. Really, if at this point you still can’t figure out who you like more, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama — stay home, because you probably couldn’t find your polling place anyway. I mean, what more information does someone need to make this choice? Obama has been president for nearly four years, and Mitt Romney has been running for president since 1971, when his space egg incubated, and he burst out of an astronaut’s chest.
And they’re really not that much alike. If you can’t tell this man, from this man, you’re not a swing voter. You’re a lesbian. It’s okay that there’s a tiny fraction of uncommitted voters in a few swing states who will decide this election, but can we all please stop treating them like they’re somehow more noble and discerning than the rest of us?
For example, you know who’s an ‘undecided’ voter?” The Octomom. Yup, somebody asked her, and well, turns out she doesn’t even know who Mitt Romney is.
And that, in a nutshell, is America’s celebrated undecided voter. Put on a pedestal by the media as if they were Hamlet in a think tank, searching out every last bit of information high-minded arbiters poring over policy positions and matching them against their own philosophies. Please, they mostly fall into a category political scientists call ‘low information voters,’ otherwise known as ‘dipsh**s.’
For example, according to a PEW research study, 40% of Democrats do not know that the Republicans are the Conservative Party. Let me repeat that. No, I'm not going to repeat that - it's too depressing.
Instead, let's look at someone else who announced this week that they were an 'undecided voter.' Kim Kardashian. Yes, she described herself as a 'Liberal Republican.' Of course there aren't any of those anymore, but pieces of knowledge like that don't reach the low-information voter. But Donald Trump does. He tweeted: "Hey, Kim Kardashian. I hear you're undecided and I can explain why you should vote for Mitt Romney."
Hey @kimkardashian--I hear you are undecided in the election. I can explain why you should vote for @mittromney.
Well, this is a microcosm of the whole election. Because the only way Romney can erase Obama's lead is know-nothings like Donald Trump can convince know-nothings like Kim Kardashian that Republican-style trickle-down economics won't wreck the economy the way it has before. And he might do it because Kim Kardashian thinks 'trickle-down' means the last shot of your sex tape.
And the worst part of this is that America's entire electoral process - the debates, the convention, the ads, the photo-ops with the corndogs - it's all targeted at this tiny section of the population that's just not that interested. Which would make them by definition the least-qualified for this decider's role. When are low-information wishy-washy people ever desirable to talk to? There's a reason why when you have a problem you never seek their advice. 'Hey, you know who you should talk to 'bout that thing you're going through? Someone who doesn't know anything about it!'
This year at the debates we should skip that thing where the undecideds dial in their reactions to every little moment, and instead hook up the dial to their foreheads to see if there’s any measurable brain activity. I don’t need to see another focus group with these nincompoops — I’ve seen enough of them to know why they’re called focus groups — because they’re groups of people who have trouble focusing — and if I want to see a bunch of ignorant jackasses bullsh***ing about the election, I’ll watch Fox and Friends.
"The Clinton Magic"
In a sweeping, sprawling, drawling 48-minute stemwinder of a speech last night, the former President of the United States drove a rhetorical truck through the biggest opening that Mitt Romney and the Republicans created for Democrats last week.
~ Ross Douthat on The New York Times
"Bill Clinton, the reverse Clint Eastwood?"
~ Headline on CNN
I would recommend to my friend Paul [Begala] here, tonight when everybody leaves, lock the doors. You don't have to come back tomorrow. This convention is done. This will be the moment that probably re-elected Barack Obama. Bill Clinton saved the Democratic Party once, it was going to far left, he came in, the new democrats took it to the center. He did it again tonight.
~ CNN Republican Pundit Alex Castellanos via Crooks and Liars
I always figured that if Bill Clinton landed on Mars. He would know how to do it with them. He would know how to reproduce. He would know everything. He would just instinctively know how to talk to people. They would be laughing in about five minutes. The Martians.
~ Chris Matthews of MSNBC in a cosmic swoon over Bill Clinton
[Clinton's Speech] was like the FDR administration, in the sense that it went on a very long time, the Democrats loved it, and when it was over you had no recollection of what life had been like without it.
It was too big to fail. It was almost too big to check. It would be like fact checking a century. At dawn tomorrow, I am going to see the factcheckers off on their long voyage into miles and miles of wild, verdant speech. I expect them to write me every month to offer an update on their progress. Perhaps they will return by 2016 with a report.
~ Alexandra Petri on Washington Post
"Clinton’s Speech: The Power of a Hug"
A subtext of the address was that, just like Bill Clinton, wavering voters need not love Obama to understand that he’s a better choice than Romney. When the two Presidents came together and hugged after the speech was (finally) over, the distance between them made their embrace all the more powerful.
~ Ryan Lizza on The New Yorker
"Bill Clinton's masterclass teaches the Republicans and the British Right a lesson"
. . . Clinton struck an important blow. He put the Republicans down, not with a withering assault but by sounding reasonable. He pretended to rise above the fray while taking apart his opponents.
~ Iain Martin on The Telegraph UK
Clinton evoked nothing more than a country lawyer earnestly trying to save his client, and willing to exhaust every argument at his disposal to do it. He seemed as if he would not rest until he had you on his side, and while he was having fun and hamming it up, there was an undisguised earnestness that forced you to actually consider what he was saying. "Folks, whether the American people believe what I just said or not may be the whole election," Clinton said. "I just want you to know that I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it."
A few minutes after Clinton was finished, a spokesman for the Romney campaign delivered its response: ""President Clinton drew a stark contrast between himself and President Obama tonight." He did nothing of the sort, of course. But the point was, the GOP knew it wouldn't get far taking on Clinton. Instead, the Republicans could only hope he was so good at pumping up Obama that Obama might pale in comparison. In its way, that was the greatest tribute of all.
~ Molly Ball on The Atlantic
~~~~~~~
Bill Clinton should be the Secretary of Explaining Things.
