Showing posts with label hardball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hardball. Show all posts

Friday, January 24, 2014

Mike Huckabee - #UncleSugar and the Feminine Libido

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Ex-Gov of Arkansas, sometimes Preacher, and Tea Party Conservative Mike Huckabee really stepped in some deep Man-ure on Thursday when he decided to talk about Ladyparts and Birth Control. You just have to read it to believe it. If this attack on women is rebranding, then the GOP deserves all the Fail it can get. And for delighted Democrats on Twitter, it was a day to give Huckabee a new nickname - "Uncle Sugar."


From Washington Post
I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a 'war on women,'" Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in Washington. "The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”

Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.

"If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it," Huckabee said. "Let's take that discussion all across America."







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Memo to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and the bosses at for-profit corporations who think they belong in every doctor’s office and that they should be able to decide whether their employees have access to birth control: Women who use birth control do not have an “overactive libido.” We are not looking for a handout from “Uncle Sugar” to score a contraceptive fix. We are not sluts. This is not the reality for women — it never has been and never will be.
~ Birth Control Activist Sandra Fluke, who was called a "slut" by Rush Limbaugh in 2012

To be honest, I have no idea what he's talking about.
. . . You open your medicine cabinet, or your woman does, and there's this little guy from Arkansas. And he's talking to you about your prescription. And you go how did you get in my medicine cabinet? Or, what are you doing in my bedroom? (laughs)
(later in the show show). . . I recall a basic, too-often ignored fact of politics: there are more women voters then there are male voters. And given that, what is it in the Republican DNA that makes them talk as if they've never talked with women? They talk as if they are the party of cave dwellers who come out of their habitats every four years to grunt something so retro, so awkward, so Cro-Magnon as this.
. . . Didn't Mike get the Memo? Didn't he learn anything from Akin and Murdoch, the rape-rappers, to avoid getting too up-close and personal with the boy/girl front? That when some out-of-it Republican starts talking about the birds and the bees they start sounding like what John McCain refers to Cruz as - a "Wacko Bird."
~ Chris Matthews on Hardball

He was trying to make the point that the Party needs to fight this idea that the Party is in a war on women. And it's the Democrats who have sort of manufactured this war.
. . . Going into this election cycle we need to talk about something other than what the Democrats want us to talk about.
~ Michael Steele, ex-head of RNC and spokesperson for House Speaker John Boehner, on Hardball

Why does he want to talk about our libidos in the first place, really?
. . . It's the very definition of looking at us as sex objects.
~ Salon pundit Joan Walsh on Hardball

I think Governor Huckabee would probably phrase it differently. Mike speaks off the cuff, as some of us are known to do, and probably would [have] chose different words to communicate that.
. . . In fact, Republicans have been tremendous in supporting equality of women, in the workplace and other places. We happen to disagree on reproductive rights and abortion. But on the issue of contraception, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of disagreement in America.
~ Rick Santorum defending Mike Huckabee

. . . whoever said it, it sounds offensive to me, and to women.
~ White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

The fact that Huckabee doesn’t understand what birth control actually does is the perfect illustration of why decisions about women’s health should be left between a woman and her doctor — not politicians.
~ Planned Parenthood

Here we go again. What galaxy do these right-wing men live in? So now contraception is like welfare? I’m reading him right, right? This is what he said—in essence, that birth control, provided by people who think women can’t control their libidos, makes women “helpless.” It’s the culture of dependency again, but this time transferred from the ghetto to the uterus. The Democrats, I guess, want women to go out and have unrestrained sex, so Democrats can then go out and destroy America by distributing these sinful contraceptive devices. So women, you see, are not human beings with agency and volition about their sexuality in Huckabee Land. They’re nothing more than the cat’s paws of the godless, baby-killing Democrats, who want to keep them on the Democratic plantation. The Pill, the welfare check, the Earned Income Tax Credit—all the work of Satan, propagated by the party of Satan.
~ Michael Tomasky on Daily Beast

Don't be a victim of your gender, ladies! By which I think Huck means: Don't be slaves to your uteri! Stop all this fornicating and reproducicating. Actually, wait, don't stop reproducicating. Keep punching out the babies on every rare occasion that you have contraception-free manseed-receiving missionary sex with that special God-chosen mate, who can worship you for all that you are, as you nurse and baby-bounce and clean up the messes. You feel that? That's you living up to your potential. Screw Uncle Sugar and his nectary socialism! All you need for self-actualization are Cousin Gospel, Nephew Bassinet, and Grandpa Bathtub Gin. Vote Republican!
~ Adam Weinstein on Gawker







































































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Friday, July 19, 2013

Chris Matthews Apologizes for Racism ~ Right Wing Heads Explode

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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



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Monday, November 12, 2012

Surprised Poopy-Heads Try to Rebrand GOP

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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
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Friday, October 5, 2012

Jack Welch Says "Chicago Guys" Created 7.8% Jobless Rate for Obama

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(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


These numbers don't add up, they don't make sense.
~ Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe



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 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

Jack Welch Interview on Anderson Cooper October 5, 2012
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.

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Chris Matthews Interview with Jack Welch on MSNBC's Hardball

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%.



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.


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Friday, September 28, 2012

Rush, Dick and Rove Skewed into Frenzy by Polls - Updated

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Rush Limbaugh, September 26, 2012
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 on Sean Hannity, Fox News
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.



Karl Rove on Bill O'Reilly, transcript via Fox News:
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-OReilly

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



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Sunday, April 22, 2012

Etchin' to be President

Originally Posted March 23, 2012, on Livejournal


Etch A Sketch stock closed up 140% today. ~ Tweeted by Nate Silver, Statistician and Political Blogger

Chris Matthews: This guy has given us the template! This guy has given us the toy to use! This guy is going to have people waving this thing in his face. (Holds up an etch-a-sketch).
Howard Fineman: Well the good thing for Romney is that this is still only March. Chris: Now there's a consolation.(Laughter all around)
~ Discussion on MSNBC's Hardball

Some top Republicans are urging Newt Gingrich to leave the race, but he says he's sticking around. If they could get him to marry the race, he would probably leave it eventually.
~ Jimmy Kimmel

Rick Santorum said he's not worried about unemployment. Well, he will be in November.
~ David Letterman

(Wednesday was) Ann and Mitt Romney's 43rd wedding anniversary. This means that 43 years ago Mitt proposed to his wife and due to a weak field of candidates, she said yes.
~ Conan O'Brien

Mitt Romney vehemently denies he is like an Etch-A-Sketch. Unless you like Etch-A-Sketches. Then he's totally like an Etch-A-Sketch.
~ Journalist William K. Wolfrum On Twitter

Anyone check to see if Mitt strapped his Etch A Sketch spokesman to the roof of his car yet?
~ Author Steve Weinstein on Twitter

Happy to see Etch A Sketch, an American classic toy, is DRAWING attention with political candidates as a cultural icon and important piece of our society. A profound toy, highly recognized and loved by all, is now SHAKING up the national debate. Nothing is as quintessentially American as Etch A Sketch and a good old fashion political debate.
~ Statement from Ohio Arts, maker of the Etch-A-Sketch from ThinkProgress

You’ve got Mittens The Clown dressed in a top hat and doing magic tricks with an Etch-A-Sketch. You’ve the Rick The Clown with the painted-on sad face, crying because the Devil is in the D.C. details. You’ve got Newt The Clown wearing a moon rocket and leaping unsuccessfully into the air as he runs around the stage. And finally, you’ve got Ron The Clown with his head barely peeking out from his giant clown suit, always falling down onto the floor and refusing any help to get back up. After the performance, President Obama comes out onstage like Ed Sullivan saying, “Thank you Republican clowns for that wonderful bit of comedy.”
~ Mr.TrueLiberal in an essay called Mayday! Mayday! The GOP Is Being Shot Down In Flames on Daily Kos.
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