Motley Moose – Archive

Five days to go and after a week of nail-biting, media horse-racing and a deadly storm which it seems we weathered as best we could there are some good signs for the Obama campaign.

Florida and Virginia, all but out of the game a week ago by consistent but narrow margins, are back on the menu:

Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, which once looked like they were slipping more into the Romney orbit, have pulled back to essentially even-money contests.

The seven jump ball states with a total of 94 electoral votes are Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), and Virginia (13).

Charlie Cook – Chance of Split Electoral-Popular Vote Very Real National Journal 30 Oct 12

Recent polling in both states, while marginal, shows an occasional Obama lead:

Quinnipiac University, on behalf of CBS and the NY Times, stuck a dagger in Romney’s Ohio hopes by showing President Barack Obama up 50-45, as well as a one-point lead in Florida and two-point lead in Virginia.

Kos – Obama’s crazy good polling day Daily Kos 31 Oct 12

This is an improvement, though well within the margin of error.  Keep the faith Mooses, this is close but Romney has failed to move the needle in the past ten days and time is running out.  He’s in Florida tomorrow if that is any indication of the state of his internal polling.

Don’t anyone FP this on impulse or anything… this is not some profound philosophical treatise on the origins and journeys of humankind.

I mean seriously, where the hell is everyone?

Every time the Moose got slow in recent years, I said to myself, “Just wait til election season 2012.” Now here we are and most folks are… uh, where?

I see some of you piddling about with a comment here, a comment there… but… where is everyone? Where is my John? Where is my Holz? Where are you all?

What is happening in everyone’s lives? I know what’s happening in mine. An abridged version: I got dumped, I moved back to my hometown which caused me to lose the job I’d held in my former living situation, and am now working at the first place that would take me… an ophthalmologist’s office. (I absolutely fucking HATE it, in case anyone is wondering.) I am tired and stressed and defeated, but I am alive (enough).

But where… where… where is everyone else?

This is the second part of a series of posts analyzing California’s propositions:

• Vote Yes on Proposition 30 – Jerry Brown’s Budget Plan

• Vote No on Proposition 31 – Changes to State Budgeting

• Vote No on Proposition 32 – Union-busting

• VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 33 – CAR INSURANCE

• Vote Yes on Proposition 34- Death Penalty

• Vote No on Proposition 35 – Human Trafficking

• Vote No on Proposition 36 – Three Strikes Law

Good Intentions…

Proposition 31 is a well-intentioned proposition. Unlike several of the propositions out there today, it’s not funded by special interests or companies looking to make a profit. It’s a proposition funded by California Forward, a group legitimately dedicated to reforming California’s budget. The folks at California Forward put a lot of time and thought into drafting this proposition; it’s basically a collection of reforms in the budgeting process that they think would best help the state.

More below.

We have no idea what internal polling is showing the respective campaigns but we can try to guess.  Chait suggests the GOP has been conning the media with Romney’s momentum and it seems it was working in spite of a small pre-debate lift for Obama.  The substance of the debate isn’t the issue at this point but thank goodness its behind us with a tailwind:

Romney only has two weeks left to move the needle two points in Ohio, Nevada and Iowa, or Wisconsin and any other tilt-Obama state, and relitigating the facts and memes from last night’s debate are assured to take up at least a couple of critical days. If Romney’s deficit in Ohio is larger than one or two points, then that’s a real lost opportunity. Of course, if the Romney campaign believes they have already brought the race back to a dead-heat in Ohio, losing three days worth of lost comeback isn’t terrible – so long as the president doesn’t outright make gains as a result of the debate.

Nate Cohn – Extraordinarily Tight Race With Fourteen Days To Go New Republic 23 Oct 12

Besides agonising over the next Ohio or other state poll guessing the internals is the only game in town.

Hola Moosies!

I’m in a New York state of mind and decided to chill out to some neighborhood folks doing the Boricua thing for Obama. (for Spiffy)

Leslie Gore was part of the musical soundscape of my teenage years, and I like the real women in this video supporting women’s rights and calling out the R’s.

(Written by an American expat of European ancestry living in the European Union)

In the heart of New York City in Times Square, a youthful in appearance African-American male, who was obviously mentally ill produced a knife, given his lack of capacity and clear copus mentis impairment, and almost as if it were a magic wand, everyone and everything it seems in Times Square stopped what they were doing and followed him. Now a foreigner seeing or reading this might ask why? Only a foreigner could ask this because the Americans all instinctively knew that the police at any second could kill Darrius lawfully. When the video starts out Darrius has 2 minutes 51 seconds left to live. He would retreat until his pursuers boxed him in, and then he would be summarily executed. This case deserves to be full investigated by a body outside of the NYPD!

SPIEGEL QUOTE: Police spokesman Browne will later say that the officers opened fire after Kennedy had come within “two to three feet” — less than a meter — of them. Police Chief Kelly will report: “The officers got out of the car. As a result, Kennedy approached the officers with the knife; they had no place to go.”  BOTH MEN KELLY AND BROWNE, AREN’T TELLING THE TRUTH.

(End of quote)

No one in America’s press would criticize these actions, because they are common place. So it was that the mainstream German magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ in true investigative reporting spoke the truth in the above quote, which is that the police were clearly prevaricating. (Please note: In the youtube video below, when shots ring out the person taking this video was about 25 yards away form the shooting).

SPIEGEL QUOTE:The various videos circulating on the Web clearly show that KENNEDY IS AT  LEAST 15 to 20 FEET AWAY FROM THE officers STANDING AT THE SQUAD CAR WHEN THEY START SHOOTING. And it isn’t as if they had just gotten out of their cars and were taken by surprise by their victim or somehow found themselves in a situation requiring self-defense. In fact, they are standing there with their weapons drawn, waiting for Kennedy, who passes another shop, the Jewelry Patch, before turning around and facing his death.

Closer than we would like but it looks like we’re going to win this thing:

Bottom line: right now the candidates are dead even in the national vote, but it’s slightly trending towards Obama, perhaps beginning after the second debate or perhaps a bit before that. To the extent we can tell, the electoral college plays a bit better for Obama than it does for Romney, meaning that in a tie election overall it’s more likely that Obama wins. It’s a very close election, and no one should believe that it’s all over by any means. But there’s no question that I’d rather be in Obama’s position than in Romney’s going into the last debate and then the final weeks.

Jonathon Bernstein – State of the race: Obama is slightly ahead Washington Post 19 Oct 12

So besides obsessing over polls, poll averages and the Undecided what’s up in the world today?

This is the first part of a series of posts analyzing California’™s propositions.

• Vote Yes on Proposition 30 – Jerry Brown’s Budget Plan

• Vote No on Proposition 31 – Changes to State Budgeting

• Vote No on Proposition 32 – Union-busting

• VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 33 – CAR INSURANCE

• Vote Yes on Proposition 34- Death Penalty

California’s Budget Problems

Proposition 30 is the most important proposition on the ballot this year.

More below.

Heh.  Say what one will about the lameness of the media when Ezra Klein, Jonathon Bernstein, Jonathon Cohn, Greg Sargent and Taegan Goddard write thoughtful post-debate pieces premised on the fact your guy won, well…  He won.  Their collective reasonable wonkiness seems easily more credible than the polemic Right; not to mention vastly preferable to the aimless synchronised swimming of CNN and Politico.  Factor in the winning polling verdicts and one presumes the mainstream narrative will come to the same conclusion when the music stops.  And what a sweet victory it is:

Governor Romney doesn’t have a five point plan. He has a one point plan, and that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector, that’s been his philosophy as governor, that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate. You can make a lot of money and pay lower tax rates than someone who makes less. You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and you still make money. That’s exactly the philosophy that we have seen in place for the last decade. That’s what’s been squeezing middle class families, and we have fought back for four years to get out of that mess. The last thing we need to do is to go back to the very same policies that got us there.

Rush transcript of President Obama-Mitt Romney town hall debate Daily Kos 16 Oct 12

Why vote for Obama’s second term?  Asked and answered.  What’s the Moose consensus on the post-debate vibe?  Which ass-kicking is going to hurt Romney the most?

The next pivotal episode of “Who Wants to Be a President?” is about to begin:

Topic: Town meeting format including foreign and domestic policy

Air Time: 9:00-10:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Location: Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York (Tickets)

Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates

Participants: President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney

Moderator: Candy Crowley (CNN Chief Political Correspondent)

The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which citizens will ask questions of the candidates on foreign and domestic issues. Candidates each will have two minutes to respond, and an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate a discussion. The town meeting participants will be undecided voters selected by the Gallup Organization.

Given the stakes and a second opportunity for the media to change the course of the election with subjective scoring this should prove riveting.