Tag: lies

The White House and their false claims of deficit busting, in one handy picture.

Short version: use this image against would-be Democratic deficit busters.

fixed deficit

Longer version: the White House is trying to have its own facts, again. At issue is their recent attempt to brag that the deficit for 2014 has been reduced to a ‘mere’ 2.8% of GDP. As Twitchy ably notes/rebutted in response, that would be great, except for two minor little problems:

  • The debt is still spiraling out of control; and
  • As the Washington Times put it, back in October: “The deficit has indeed declined, but from the $1.4 trillion peak achieved in Mr. Obama’s stimulus-fueled first year in office. He can hardly celebrate cutting in half what he first tripled.*”

Continue reading The White House and their false claims of deficit busting, in one handy picture.

The obligatory “Yeah, @barackobama remembers that politically awkward uncle after all” post.

OK, this is what I don’t get about this story:

The White House confirmed on Thursday that President Obama had met his uncle, Onyango Obama, who was granted legal residency to the country this week — reversing a previous statement.

The White House had previously told The Boston Globe that the president had never met his uncle, after Onyango — referred to as Omar — was arrested in 2011 for drunk driving.

But White House press secretary Jay Carney revised that statement on Thursday, saying the press office had not actually asked the president about his relationship with his uncle before talking to the Globe in 2011.

Continue reading The obligatory “Yeah, @barackobama remembers that politically awkward uncle after all” post.

@BarackObama just keeps flat-out lying to his most loyal supporters on #obamacare.

The latest iteration:

Turns out that the reported 40K Obamacare signup “figures are derived from reports that the government sends to each participating insurer early every evening, letting them know which customers have signed up that day.” Which means that Sebelius knew what those numbers were, all along. She and her boss. Continue reading @BarackObama just keeps flat-out lying to his most loyal supporters on #obamacare.

2012 shaping up like 2004, on the Generic Congressional Ballot level.

I spent perhaps a bit too much time this morning trying to put the spreadsheet below into graphical form:

Pollster Time R D R +/-
NPR Oct 3/4 43 43 0
NPR Sept 4/4 45 48 -3
Politico Oct 4/4 46 45 1
Politico Oct 3/4 46 46 0
Politico Oct 2/4 44 46 -2
Politico Oct 1/4 45 46 -1
Politico Sept 4/4 44 46 -2
Politico Sept 3/4 45 47 -2
Rasmussen Oct 4/4 46 43 3
Rasmussen Oct 3/4 44 43 1
Rasmussen Oct 2/4 42 43 -1
Rasmussen Oct 1/4 43 44 -1
Rasmussen Sept 4/4 45 41 4
Rasmussen Sept 3/4 44 43 1
Rasmussen Sept 2/4 44 43 1
Rasmussen Sept 1/4 42 44 -2

It shows the current pollsters checking the Generic Congressional Ballot, as per RCP.  Most of the labels are self-explanatory: “R +/-” represents the amount by which Republicans are ahead/behind on any given poll.  RCP’s current average is R+1.3, which represents a strong shift towards the Republicans in the last month among all three pollsters: 5 points for Rasmussen, 4 points for Politico, and 3 for NPR (although ‘shift’ is possibly the wrong word for the last one, given that there’s only been two polls).

Continue reading 2012 shaping up like 2004, on the Generic Congressional Ballot level.

#rsrh Looking at/for the partisan enthusiasm gap.

The following is a fairly vivid example of why people want to see crosstabs whenever possible when it comes to polls:

A R L
Romney 37 40 46
Obama 52 50 47
Republican 37 38 44
Democrat 50 49 48

The above is from a just-released AP-GfK poll; as you can see, it shows Obama up by one (47-46) over Romney in a poll of likely voters.  Bad news for Obama, as the intent was that he was supposed to be opening up a lead at this point; not so great news for Romney either, since the D+4 sample is a lot more likely to be reflective of the actual voting electorate in November than the D+7 or higher nonsense that we’ve been seeing lately.  But that’s another post. Continue reading #rsrh Looking at/for the partisan enthusiasm gap.

Attention, @barackobama: Source required on “We will not let the truth get in the way.”

On Wednesday, at a speech in Charlottesville, VA, President Obama made this statement:

And they were asked about it and they said — one of their campaign people said, we won’t have the fact-checkers dictate our campaign. (Laughter.) We will not let the truth get in the way. (Laughter.)

This is a reference to comments made Tuesday by Romney pollster Neil Newhouse to Buzzfeed regarding Obama’s gutting of welfare reform; more specifically, the perhaps vehement media reactions to one ad cut by Romney attacking said gutting. Newhouse stated:

“Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he said. The fact-checkers — whose institutional rise has been a feature of the cycle — have “jumped the shark,” he added after the panel.

Continue reading Attention, @barackobama: Source required on “We will not let the truth get in the way.”

#rsrh This analysis of decaying Democratic percentages…

…by The New Republic (!) is all very well, but it lacks one key phrase: “voting enthusiasm.”  Which makes a certain amount of sense: dwelling on that topic might force one to come perilously close to turning a ‘the election is tied’ narrative into an ‘actually, Obama is more or less losing right now’ one.  And we can’t have that.

Here’s the real problem with the polling, honestly: we don’t know what the electorate is going to look like in November.  We just know that basing it on ’08’s numbers is a mistake… but nobody knows how much of a mistake it’ll end up being.  And while it’s easy for me to say “Well, they should just eyeball it and pick voting percentages that look right,” that’s because I’m not a professional pollster…

Moe Lane

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines)

On that potentially troublesome Cook County poll.

Well, troublesome for Barack Obama.

The Daily Caller reported on a poll today that gave a rather remarkable result: it showed Barack Obama ahead of Mitt Romney 49 to 37… in Cook County, Illinois: which of course includes the City of Chicago.  Being under 50% in what can be considered the ultimate Democratic stronghold is not good news for the President.  In 2008 Cook County went for Obama over McCain 67/32; in 2010 it went for Quinn over Brady 54/40… which helped make the difference from Obama’s blowout 62/37 win statewide in 2008, and Quinn’s squeaker 47/46 win in 2010.  Put another way: if this poll is accurate, Obama’s got trouble in Illinois.

Since this report has been making the rounds of the Internet, I thought that I’d look into it a bit.  It turns out the poll comes from McKeon & Associates, which has been polling in Illinois since at least the 1980s.  A quick call to Michael McKeon got me access to the poll itself, which I’ll be talking about after the fold.

Continue reading On that potentially troublesome Cook County poll.