pacino wrote:

Why does Bruce Springsteen dub "pain" as the wages of toil and hard work?

this one doesn't even make sense, not that the other ones do either, but at least i can see their fake line of thinking.

pacino wrote:were the polls randomly not skewed after the first debate?

I have been predicting for this entire year, since he won the nomination, that Mitt Romney is going to defeat President Obama in the election this year. Currently I project Romney winning 54 percent of the popular vote and as many as 359 electoral votes. Even when all those polls shows Obama holding big leads I said Romney was really winning and the polls were skewed. Then soon after I illustrated exactly how skewed the polls were and the polls suddenly began to be less skewed, more accurate and started showing something closer to the real Romney lead in the presidential race.

Voters have figured out that President Obama has no message, no agenda and not even much of an explanation for what he has done over the past four years. His campaign is based entirely on persuading people that Mitt Romney is a uniquely bad man, entirely dedicated to the rich, ignorant of the problems of the average person. As long as he could run his negative ads, the campaign at least kept voters away from the Romney bandwagon. But once we all met Mitt Romney for three 90-minute debates, we got to know him — and to like him. He was not the monster Obama depicted, but a reasonable person for whom we could vote.

As we stripped away Obama’s yearlong campaign of vilification, all the president offered us was more servings of negative ads — ads we had already dismissed as not credible. He kept doing the same thing even as it stopped working.

The result was that the presidential race reached a tipping point. Reasonable voters saw that the voice of hope and optimism and positivism was Romney while the president was only a nitpicking, quarrelsome, negative figure. The contrast does not work in Obama’s favor.

His erosion began shortly after the conventions when Indiana (10 votes) and North Carolina (15) moved to Romney (in addition to the 179 votes that states that McCain carried cast this year).

Then, in October, Obama lost the Southern swing states of Florida (29) and Virginia (13). He also lost Colorado (10), bringing his total to 255 votes.

And now, he faces the erosion of the northern swing states: Ohio (18), New Hampshire (4) and Iowa (6). Only in the union-anchored state of Nevada (9) does Obama still cling to a lead.

In the next few days, the battle will move to Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Minnesota (16). Ahead in Pennsylvania, tied in Michigan and Wisconsin, and slightly behind in Minnesota, these new swing states look to be the battleground.

Or will the Romney momentum grow and wash into formerly safe Democratic territory in New Jersey and Oregon?

Once everyone discovers that the emperor has no clothes (or that Obama has no argument after the negative ads stopped working), the vote shift could be of historic proportions.

The impact on Senate races could be profound.
...The most likely outcome? Eight GOP takeaways and two giveaways for a net gain of six. A 53-47 Senate, just like we have now, only opposite.

Barack Obama’s parting gift to the Democratic Party.

Or will the Romney momentum grow and wash into formerly safe Democratic territory in New Jersey

Four years in and we find out the guy can’t even play basketball.

“He’s not that good,” NBA Commissioner David Stern finally told us about basketball-obsessed President Obama in an interview with Reuters. “He’s not as good as he thinks he is.”

Talk about a game-changer. This was the whole reason we elected him in the first place. After eight years of the stuttering un-hipness of the Bush administration, we wanted somebody cool, modern, edgy. Somebody who had game, rhythm. Somebody with a jump shot.

Obama was so cool, he was even terrible at bowling.

He played with the stars. He practiced with Duke University’s legendary squad. He made Reggie Love, Duke’s former star captain, his “body man” on the campaign trail. NBA legends Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Carmelo Anthony want to hang out with him for fundraisers.

It all began to fall apart just days after he ascended to the presidency and the media began asking questions about Mr. Obama’s basketball chops. Turned out, he didn’t really play on his college basketball team as was widely reported. Not even junior varsity.

Then came the injuries. Who could forget that sad picture in the fall of 2010 of Mr. Obama, nursing a busted lip with an ice pack, watching from an upstairs window as the White House Christmas tree arrived on a horse-drawn carriage?

And his nerdy obsession with filling out the NCAA college basketball brackets, even as the American economy spun further and further out of control. (Of course, the fact he filled out brackets for both the men’s and women’s tournaments gave the game away.) One year, he even drew rebuke from the Duke coach, who advised that “the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets.”

On and on Mr. Obama played. At 51, he still considers himself such a baller that he plays with a mouth guard and wears custom-made basketball shoes embroidered with his number. He plays with real basketball pros, as if he is somehow their peer.

But, it turns out, it’s all Mr. Obama’s delusion — a pose he strikes for the cameras. In reality, people who know basketball are actually making fun of him. “He’s not as good as he thinks he is,” the commissioner finally tells us.

Mr. Stern went on in the interview to explain that Mr. Obama is “a lefty, he goes the same way every time.”

This should sound familiar to anyone who has watched the president’s disastrous attempts at governing. He promised us post-partisanship but actually only goes to the left. In politics as in basketball, he only plays on the left half of the court.

But it is the loss of coolness that will cost him the most. Nothing is so uncool as pretending to be good at something that you are not. There goes the much-prized youth vote of 2008.


Read more: HURT: Obama loses coolness as hoops skills are challenged - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... z2AuvJMvNu
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Mr. Stern went on in the interview to explain that Mr. Obama is “a lefty, he goes the same way every time.”

This should sound familiar to anyone who has watched the president’s disastrous attempts at governing. He promised us post-partisanship but actually only goes to the left. In politics as in basketball, he only plays on the left half of the court.

Silver wrote:7 polls released in Ohio in past 48 hours: Obama +2, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +5, Obama +5, Obama +5. #notthatcomplicated

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index improved to -14 for the week ending Oct. 28, the highest level of weekly confidence in the economy since Gallup began Daily tracking of economic confidence in 2008.

traderdave wrote:But once we all met Mitt Romney for three 90-minute debates, we got to know him — and to like him.

Speak for yourself, Mr. Morris

...but a reasonable person for whom we could vote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srw3RdiIlrQ

jerseyhoya wrote:RCP R+0.9
TPM R+1.0
Pollster R+0.3

Nate O+1.7

Makes a big point about how 2 point leads tend to hold up (re: Ohio) as his model is 2%+ off from all the big national polling aggregators.

phdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:RCP R+0.9
TPM R+1.0
Pollster R+0.3

Nate O+1.7

Makes a big point about how 2 point leads tend to hold up (re: Ohio) as his model is 2%+ off from all the big national polling aggregators.

New averages from today (and change since Friday):

Nate O+1.9 (O+.2)
RCP tied (O+.9)
TPM O+1.3 (O+2.3)
Pollster R+.8 (R+.5)

Nate with the most stable numbers. I'm not sure what's up with Pollster. Don't they know that they should be leaning towards Obama to help set the narrative? I wonder if Republicans are going to start making the Huffington Post their polling aggregator of choice now.

I just noticed that they don't seem to be including RAND. What's wrong with RAND? The RAND poll is cool (in my unbiased opinion) because it is a panel of people who are interviewed repeatedly and rate their likelihood of voting for a candidate as well as their likelihood of voting in general.