It's kind of funny that today there are polls out this morning claiming to show that Romney has closed the gap in Virginia and Florida. It's funny, because it's not true - at least not in Florida. And I'm not the one saying it - Republican strategists are. WPTV ran the following story about a memo they uncovered from a Republican strategist. Spoiler alert: for the Republicans, it's worse than 2008.

We wonder what gives political candidates the brazen oomph to bill campaign stops - in which they play their candidate's bio video - as 'storm relief' events. One of the things that enables that is the sad state of our media. We have political "journalists" who see nothing but politics in everything someone does. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post became the prime example of it this morning. The president canceled campaign events in Ohio scheduled for tomorrow in order to stay in Washington, DC, to monitor the emergency response to superstrom Sandy, while Mitt Romney will continue to politic in Florida.

So what is Sam Stein's take on this? Why, it must be a political move on the president's part!

WASHINGTON -- The politics of Hurricane Sandy are obviously difficult to game out. But the White House has clearly decided that it would look uncomfortably partisan for the president to be on the stump while the federal government was managing a massive natural disaster. And so, on Tuesday morning, the administration announced that President Barack Obama would be off the trail on Wednesday, canceling a swing through the critical state of Ohio.

This is truly disgusting. As Americans on the east coast are battling to stay safe (and in some cases, alive) in the midst of post-tropical cyclone Sandy, Mitt Romney can't be bothered to hold off campaigning. His campaign first told us that he's canceling events tomorrow, but then, they told us, nevermind. Oh, and this time, they are going to insult everybody's intelligence by holding events in Ohio and Wisconsin, and labeling them 'storm relief.'

Romney will attend an event in Kettering, Ohio, Tuesday morning with race car driver Richard Petty and country music artist Randy Owen. [...]

The Romney campaign did not advise what the event would entail, but a Republican source indicated attendees would be asked to bring disaster relief supplies to the event, and that Romney might give brief remarks.

Why Ohio, governor? You know, that state you used to be governor of, Massachusetts? It's in the way of the storm. That's where your campaign headquarters are. Go hold your 'storm relief' event there. But no, you're appearing in an event in Ohio, a state not impacted by this storm.

As the election gets closer - it's barely a week away - pollsters and pundits may still be agonizing over what happens on the day of November 6, but the election is not actually on November 6. Rather, the election ends on November 6. The election is now. Millions of Americans are casting early ballots, and in record setting numbers that seem to already be blowing past the previous records set in 2008. Early voting was the President's strength in 2008, and it will certainly be that way again this year. Just some numbers coming in from across the country and from crucial states:

Florida, which just started voting on Saturday, reports numbers already above records:

The Times' Adam Smith reported on Twitter, "More than 20k pple voted eary today so far in Hillsborough Co...In 08 biggest single day (11/1/08) was 18,736.

The Miami Herald's Marc Caputo tweeted, "Miami-Dade early voting so heavy that by 3 pm 14,745 people voted -- more than ENTIRE first day of 08 EV (12,000). 12-hour total: 22,625."

Gary Fineout of the Associated Press, "Leon County - a Democratic stronghold in Fla - had a record turnout for early voting with 5447 votes cast on day 1."

So there's an YouTube video released by the Obama campaign that has the conservatives completely up in arms.



No, really. They are going completely apeshit over this video. Oh, God forbid a young woman would ask her peers to cast their first ballot for the President. They are so concerned about Lena Dunham "comparing voting with losing one's virginity." Oh, so vulgar. And - OMG - she wants young (white) girls to be seduced by that black guy. Noooo.

A lot of reaction to the Log Cabin Republicans' endorsement of Mitt Romney has centered around major disconnect of a supposedly pro-LGBT group endorsing the most anti-equality party. And those are all valid criticisms. But there is a more painful reality at play here, and it isn't just about marriage and gay servicemembers in the military. We know why Romney shouldn't be the candidate of any pro-LGBT group. The truth is that their given reasons for supporting Mr. Romney is far more cynical and hurtful to LGBT Americans than their excuses for Romney's mishaps. From the Log Cabin endorsement message:

We believe that President Obama has broken his promises to our country. Rather than focusing on job creation, he pushed through an extremely partisan, expensive and intrusive healthcare bill, presided over a United States credit downgrade, and has made no credible attempt to cut spending as our national debt has topped $16 trillion. Our nation is in a financial crisis, and we are in desperate need of a change in course.

If LGBT issues are a voter's highest or only priority, then Governor Romney may not be that voter's choice. However, Log Cabin Republicans is an organization representing multifaceted individuals with diverse priorities. Having closely reviewed the candidate’s history and observed the campaign, we believe Governor Romney will make cutting spending and job creation his priorities, and, as his record as Governor of Massachusetts suggests, will not waste his precious time in office with legislative attacks on LGBT Americans.

We already know that the President is running up unprecedented amounts of support among minority voters, particularly Hispanics. But I have been told not to bother with the minority vote, since they never come out to vote (evidently neither the 2008 national election nor the 2010 Senate election in Nevada actually took place). There are a lot of ways to gauge minority voter participation this year - the President's extraordinarily high approval among minorities, his push for and action on immigration, the Republicans' stern anti-immigrant, intolerant posture, etc. But I want to present a tangible reason to pay attention to the minority - especially the Latino - vote this year: technology; specifically smartphones. This may be a whole new ballgame from the one pundits are used to.

When the Internet became commonplace, the digital divide in home Internet indicated some time ago ethnic minorities suffering from an access gap. Here's what's changing that: smartphones. We are now experiencing a digital leap - in which the tables are turned and minorities are more likely to own smartphones than are whites. Nielson's Mobile Inside Study gives us a look into the picture:

Source: Nielson Mobile Insights Study, 2012, as Reported in Slate Magazine.

Horses and bayonets. That's the most memorable phrase from the presidential debate last night - a phrased used by President Obama to school Romney on the modernization of the military. At the debate, Mr. Romney showed up with a severe case of Romnesia, and President Obama promptly mopped the floor with him. Romney tried to make it the "me, too" debate by appearing to agree with the President on everything, not only raising the question, well then, why is he running? - but also allowing President Obama to point out positions Romney took just weeks ago, correctly painting him as someone not ready to lead. And that matters, more than anything, in foreign policy.

But while the President and his team got smart about Romney's propensity to abandon all his positions to win votes and appear a bumbling fool in the process, last night's debate may have had a worse effect on Mitt Romney than just the Obama campaign accusing him of lacking a core. Conservatives - namely, neoconservatives - are now flipping out at Romney's bizarre about-face. A pain-stricken Glenn Beck sent out this tweet last night:

I thought the president did extraordinarily well. He destroyed Romney on Iran, Israel, China and global competitiveness. Romney was bewildered, tripping all over the place. He showed himself utterly unqualified and unready to be President. And the Right wing is already beginning to freak out.

This is actually an important tweet. Because the right wing isn't concerned about Romney's positions. They want him to beat (and beat up) Barack Obama. And Romney didn't do that tonight. You might expect it to dim conservative enthusiasm a bit.

Update: The CBS snap poll is out, and it's devastating for Romney: Obama wins 53% to 23%.

I have had it up to here with the Republican intransigence against the United States of America. I have had it with the GOP not just hurting our country economically for political gain, but politicizing every war-and-peace topic. At some point, when a political party seems incapable of coming together at an hour of crisis, of putting America before their political futures; at some point when a political party is hell bent on launching political attacks on American civil servants in harm's way, and on document dumping for political gain - at that point you have to stop and say: this is not patriotic. This is not patriotism. This is unpatriotic behavior.

When this president set a clear path forward to exit Iraq, Republicans cried with no clear alternatives. When this president took out bin Laden, the Republican media machine went on overdrive to try to deny him credit. When this president ended the national security nightmare of throwing out qualified, brave soldiers out of the military because of their sexual orientation, Republicans warned of a coming apocalypse.

From the beginning of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, Mitt Romney started running his mouth. Before the facts were known, he couldn't help himself from running to the microphone to attack the people in the Embassy who were trying to protect their own lives. Mitt Romney has been so brazen, he even forgot to pay attention to the President's words, when he spoke in the Rose Garden the day after the attacks. Last week, Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, dumped 166 pages of sensitive State Department documents revealing and endangering the lives of many who are cooperating with the United States within Libya.

Ahead of tonight's presidential debate on foreign policy, President Obama's campaign released a brilliant ad, pointing out Mitt Romney's bluster of a foreign policy and the choice that lays before us: empty our treasury in chest-thumping, dumb wars that ultimately make our country less safe vs. using our resources here at home to rebuild America:



This is a powerful ad. It's sobering, it's real, and it connects the cost of a cowboy foreign policy to the economic future of our country. During the last Republican administration, we abandoned our pursuit of the terrorists who attacked this country to go invade another country that posed no national security challenge for the United States. And that last Republican president, George W. Bush, insisted on cutting the taxes of the wealthy as our country was, to borrow a phrase from Mitt Romney, "borrowing from China" to pay the bills of war and tax giveaways. We exploded defense spending, divested in America's future, and got the catastrophe of 2008 to show for it.

Oh, Romnesia stings. It got under Mitt Romney's skin. If you have been living under a rock the past couple of days, here's the quick and dirty on Romnesia: the President, campaigning in Viriginia on Friday, introduced a new term for Mitt Romney's condition of abandoning his own policy positions at the speed of light: Romnesia.



Apparently, the sting was a little too much for Mr. Entitled:

"The Obama campaign has become the incredible shrinking campaign," Romney said at an oceanside rally here with his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan. "This is a big country with big opportunities and big challenges. And they keep talking about smaller and smaller things."

I don't know if it's TPV that's been crawling under Nate Silver's skin, but he's been feeling the need to defend his methods. We're at a point where Nate Silver himself points out the horrific track record of Gallup and insists on including it in his models anyway - and including it as the single largest factor in his trendline calculations. But it was on Tuesday that he actually came up with ways to justify it: he responded to the critics of his poll aggregation with a strawman argument: those of us calling for a better examination of internal data in a poll before it is included in aggregation without question are "cherry-picking" polls, or, at the least, doing a less obvious form of the same.

There is a more subtle form of bias, however, that a lot more of us are prone to. That bias is to look at all the data — except for the two or three data points that you like least, which you dismiss as being “outliers.” [...]

Strawman. Nobody is seriously making the case that you only include polls that we "like," Nate. We are arguing that poll aggregators have a responsibility to examine the poll's internals and demographic data in context of actual voting patterns of the recent past and to an extent, current early voting. No one is arguing that you throw out a poll if it favors Romney. We're saying that you throw out a poll, for example, if it shows conservatives will dominate this election by a 6-point higher margin than the ultraconservative electorate in 2010.

But Nate doesn't like to do that either. I am thinking that's because it makes too much work for him, but he has his excuse:

If you're curious, yes, I borrowed part of the title from Liberal Librarian here. At the debate on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney thought he was moving in for the kill, and he got spanked hard on Libya. Not only was he check mated by the President when he decided to nitpick on whether or not the President said the words 'act of terror' describing the attacks in Benghazi the day after they happened, moderator Candy Crowley chimed in and set the record straight, on a direct quote from the President's statement in the Rose Garden.

Jon Stewart provided the most hilarious take on this exhange:

Pause the video and watch the president's face and his eyes when he knows he's got Romney on the ropes. The President knew this was going to happen. You could see it in his eyes. It is almost as though he re-asserted the fact that he did call it an act of terror in the Rose Garden precisely to elicit that response from Romney.

Last night, President Obama put Mitt Romney in his place, while Romney looked like a petulant rich boy who doesn't think the rules apply to him. Let me correct that. Romney is a petulant rich boy who doesn't think that the rules apply to him. The President was prepared, he was on the offense, and he let Mitt Romney get away with nothing. In the first debate, Romney made it clear that he isn't interested in debating the facts, only in getting away with lies. And the media gave him a pass. So this time, the President showed up as the man who we know to be the greatest counterpuncher in American politics - certainly in my lifetime and probably ever - and he decimated Romney's lies.

You can read about the antics elsewhere. I will just say that Romney did himself no favors by trying (and failing) to roll over the moderator, and by telling THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES "you'll get your chance." But if Romney's attitude was one of a smug, entitled bully, President Obama responded by spanking that bully on national television. Let's get to a few of those instances:

Warm-up Act: The president exposed the entitled smug early, along with the right wing philosophy of government.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: 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 somebody who makes a lot 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.

Maybe I'll write about the second debate in another post. It was certainly a master class on how to eviscerate your opponent politically and show him up for the empty suit he is. But I'll have to watch the debate more closely, and I have something else in mind tonight.

There's the old saying: "He was the right man in the right place in the right time." In my callow youth, when I believed that one person couldn't change the world, I would have scoffed at that notion. History was motivated by movements, not individuals. The best for which you could hope was to be on the right side as history's tide rolled along.

I still believe in the idea that history is molded by movements. The Arab Spring is an example of that, of a popular uprising with no clear leaders, but which has a clear agenda.

But, Barack Obama has made me completely reconsider the idea that an individual cannot effect change.

There was no doubt who won the debate tonight. As Al Sharpton said on MSNBC, the bully got whopped tonight. The President delivered facts, and he did it in style. He called out Romney on his lies, to the point when even Candy Crowley, the debate moderator had to live-fact-check Romney (on the President calling the Libya attack terrorism the day after the attacks).

The President wasn't simply in command of the facts. He was in command. Romney acted like a spoiled brat crying to the moderator (this time though, Crowley refused to be rolled over).

There was only one president on that stage tonight, who swallowed the rich boy whole.

Your floor. What did you think?

So the holier-than-thou whiny Left prognosticators at Daily Kos commissioned a poll, and surprise surprise, it shows Obama losing nationally, among "likely voters," to Mitt Romney by a 50-46 margin. OMG! Quick! Run around with your hair on fire!

Once again, I became nitpicky and wanted to look at the poll's internal demographics. Here's what I found: The Daily Kos poll demographics look more like the electorate in 2010 than in 2008. Actually, the Kos sample is more conservative than even the ultraconservative 2010 electorate. And yes, if you believe the makeup of the electorate in 2012 will be the same as or more conservative than the makeup in 2010, Obama will lose. Also, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

This weekend, I called out Nate Silver of 538 fame for his actual abysmal record of predicting contested, close state-wide races in federal elections. It seems though that Nate might be aware of the pitfalls of his model that unquestioningly counts all polls, no matter how out-of-whack and skewed they are, on the assumption that the biases in the polls eventually average out (which, given the right's astroturf polling, is not likely). So, he has come up with a new CYA strategy: claim that there is a "state-national poll stalemate."

For the last week or so, we have been hoping to decode a confusing polling landscape. President Obama still appeared to hold a narrow Electoral College lead on the basis of state-by-state surveys, while national polls were suggestive of a tie or perhaps the slightest edge for Mitt Romney.

If the current polls hold, predicting the election outcome will boil down to making a series of educated guesses about the relationship between state and national polls, and between the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Here, I'll decode it for you, Nate: stop including every cooked up poll in your "analysis" and have a look at the internals and demographics. Figure out if a given poll warrants inclusion given the demographics and actual electoral history. The "likely voter" models, especially of national polls and state polls conducted by national pollsters, are drastically out of whack with their own registered voter numbers, as well as actual turnout demographics of the 2008 elections. If you take out this large right-skewing effect, or stop including every astroturf poll in your model (not to mention account for the clobbering Mitt Romney is receiving from the early vote), you will see that there is no "stalemate" here.

While nearly every conceivable TV liberal pundit was running around with their hair on fire last week, freaked out over polls of 'likely voters,' I said that not only were these 'likely voter' models (which, incidentally, pollsters switch to at the beginning of October, the same time as the first debate...) weighed more heavily towards the GOP than presidential election history would indicate, but also that they fail to take into account the effectiveness of President Obama's legendary ground game in bringing out the not-so-likely to vote. Presidential polls are stuck into an amazing case of cognitive dissonance: they see Obama having an edge among registered voters, Romney erasing that lead among likely voters, and President Obama creaming Mitt Romney among those who have actually voted.

Last week, I pointed to the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll that, even with an admittedly right-skewed sample, running away with 67% of votes already cast. This weekend, Public Policy Polling was out with numbers from Ohio, cementing the President's 51% breakaway in the state among even the "likely voters" found in numerous other polls, and, among those who have already voted,

The key finding on this poll may be how the early voters are breaking out. 19% of people say they've already cast their ballots and they report having voted for Obama by a 76-24 margin. Romney has a 51-45 advantage with those who haven't voted yet, but the numbers make it clear that he already has a lot of ground to make up in the final three weeks before the election.

Crossposted from ThisIsOurTime Blog

Last Thursday at the Vice Presidential Debate, Joe Biden came out swinging, fact checking Paul Ryan on the spot, not letting him go unchecked with the same lines of lies and misrepresentation that was evidenced during the last Presidential debate by his boss, Mitt Romney. The performance of Vice President Joe Biden was aggressive, rightly dismissive and very persistent that he looked and spoke like he had this fierce urgency of putting the Romney/Ryan campaign into shreds and I must say he certainly has out performed above and beyond what critics thought would be soft exchange.

Joe Biden clearly won the debate simply because he was sincere, had passion and conviction, he knew and lived most of what he was talking about and more than anything he was not artificial and aloof like his debating "friend" from the other side was. The contrast couldn't be any clearer on issue after issue as Joe Biden showed the difference between the look back and stay in the ditch plan of Romney/Ryan and the moving forward plan of the President.

Biden didn't waste one minute going after Romney's record from the get go. He started with dismantling the bogus assertion that Romney cares about 100% of America as he hammered Romney's denigration that American people would never “take personal responsibility” exposing the behind close door billionaire and millionaire private meeting where Romney said, he doesn't worry about the 47% Americans" showing that the Romney/Ryan ticket is disconnected and don't understand the middle class.

Mark my words. When on November 7, pollsters are looking at each other wondering what went wrong with their "likely voter" models, it will have one predominant answer: the underestimation of the Latino vote. The latest Rocky Mountain poll shows the presidential race tied in Arizona, with Obama having a slight edge.  Hmm, what could possibly turn Arizona, the state with a Papers Please law so unconstitutional that even this Supreme Court threw out most of it, into a purple state? This:

The number of undecided voters in this poll is a bit staggering, but if true, it could spell real trouble for Romney. Whether or not this poll is an outlier, that Latino voters number, at least, is not a fluke. Just days before the release of the Rocky Mountain Poll, a Latino Decision/America's Voice poll gave the President an 80-14 lead among Latino voters in Arizona.

It's pretty well established now that Paul Ryan was out of league, and that Joe Biden ran circles around Mr. P90X. But this was the most chilling moment of the debate:



Let me reiterate Ryan's response to the question as to whether those who believe abortion should remain safe and legal in this country should be concerned should Ryan and Romney be elected: Yes.

I hate to do this to the Professional Left's most darling polling professional, but Nate Silver is simply not that good at predicting closely contested statewide races for federal office.

True, he catapulted to national attention by "correctly predicting" 49 out of 50 states presidential electoral outcomes in 2008. Nicely done. But not nearly as nicely as the number looks at a first glance. You could have predicted the outcomes of about 40 states without any need for polling data. News flash: most states aren't "in play" for president. Still, 9 out of 10 is pretty impressive, but I could have done it by simply guessing that Barack Obama would basically run the table in the swing states - and really, did you really need polling data to know that after McCain and Palin showed us who they were? Seriously, no "calculus" needed.

We really got a closer look at Silver's ability to call close races, though, in 2010. Once again, Five Thirty Eight's Wikipedia entry will tell you that Nate Silver correctly called 34 out of the 37 Senate races that year. Technically, yes. But then again, you could have called at least 32 of them. I mean, really. Did we need Nate Silver to predict that Barbara Boxer was going to win in California or that Lincoln was going get thrown out in Arkansas? Come on. There really were only five (maybe actually four) closely contested races for the Senate in 2010: Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Alaska and Washington state (if you can even consider WA and NV close, but let's.) Do you know how many of those races Silver called correctly? Two. That's right. Out of the 5 close Senate races, Nate Silver missed the mark on 3.

The Polling Industrial Complex and The Media "Horse-race" Narrative
by nancy a heitzeg

I am writing this in the immediate aftermath of the Joe Biden Beat-down of Lyin Paul Ryan, aka the VP Debates.

The Sunshine Patriots and Fair Weather White Guys got what they claimed they wanted all right -- the Democratic Party's #1 Enforcer had high-sticked, body checked, fact-checked and dropped the gloves, all with in the span of 5 minutes.

And for 90 minutes, He. Never. Let. Up.

Ryan was left with nothing but smirks, endless water sipping and spin, including talking himself into sending more troops into Afghanistan, scaring seniors with Social Security privatization and Medicare vouchers, and denying the right to choose with a new twist - now Position #671 on Abortion from the Romney/Ryan campaign.

A clear win -- the contrast was stark and Ryan was clearly out of his league. On all counts.

So were the Hacks happy now?

Well sort of. But tonight -- unlike last Wednesday's melt-down - they decided to be "professional". Their right leaning counter-parts who declared the bullying Romney a clear victor on "style" were now reduced to complaining that Biden was too assertive. And last week scowling bad, but now smiling is out.

And the insta-polls? A CBS snap poll of undecided voters (no demographic detail provided) had 50% declare Biden the winner. And CNN, whose sample of old white men from the South last week declared Romney the overwhelming winner, now reports that a sample with fairly even Republican Democrat and Indie splits ( no demographic at all) declares Ryan the Winner 48% - 44%.

And if the waters were not muddied enough, Nate Silver decides --within an hour, before the dust is even settled - to report these two "polls" as "evidence" of a Biden "hold". No clear winner - no probable poll impact.

As Joe Biden would say, "Malarkey!!"

But but but the Page Clicks and the Horse Race must go on.

Joe Biden was soooo mean! He laughed at our boy Ryan! He interrupted Mr. P90X! Wuaaaaa. That was, in a nutshell the Right crying foul after Paul Ryan got owned by Joe Biden last night. TPM put out a video that captures it nicely.



Here's how you know Biden won the debate hands down last night: Nobody, not the media, not even Republicans, is even trying to counter Biden's substance. The wingnut right and media's whinefest centers around the notion that Biden was too happy a warrior last night (yeah, good luck with that line of attack). But on the facts, Biden wasn't just in command last night, he was right. Even the media heads trying their hardest to quibble with Biden came up with big, whale-sized lies from Ryan while playing semantics with Biden's words.

Did you see it? Did you? Did you see Joe Biden thoroughly clean Paul Ryan's clock, steamroll him, and then back up just to make sure? The media thinks Cheney's performance in 2004 "reset" that race. If that's true, tonight was a monumental disaster for the Romney-Ryan campaign, as well as for the conservative movement. Biden floored Ryan on everything: on national security and foreign policy, on the economy, on Medicare, on absolutely everything.

Ryan waffled and stumbled on nearly everything. Biden was in command of the facts, and he called Ryan out like the petulant kid he is.

Remember that Joe Biden said at the DNC that Barack Obama got to see the depth of his loyalty over the past four years? Well, we got to see it tonight. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Aw the hell with it. Thank you, Joe!

Anyway, have at it! Open thread.

There's an amazing case of cognitive dissonance among American pollsters right now. According to their predictive models, registered voters lean Obama, likely voters lean relatively more towards Romney, and votes in the bank lean heavily Obama. Wait, what? Yes. Check out this teaser from today's NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll in Ohio:

One-in-five respondents (18 percent) said they have already voted, and, of those, almost two-thirds (63 percent) said they voted for Obama.

For anyone counting, that is already a 5-point margin of the entire Ohio electorate for Obama. Ohio might just be over for Romney. Mind you, this is a poll which NBC admits has a more conservative-skewed sample than the actual voting populous in 2008 (from exit polling) and still has Obama ahead 51-45, which means Romney is still underperforming McCain in the state. Not only that, that Romney voters aren't voting yet may well mean that Romney hasn't closed the deal for his voters the way Obama has for his.

The Washington Blade is now reporting that the Department of Homeland Security, for the first time in history, has issued written guidelines for prosecutorial discretion in deportation cases to take families into account - LGBT families. Immigration cases have had a long-standing tradition to take family situations into account while pursuing deportation of an individual, but given that state and federal laws have kept same-sex families from being legally recognized as families, never before have our families enjoyed the same considerations. Now, they will.

Here's the relevant part of the newly issued guidelines.

The guidance offers three criteria for immigration personnel as they determine whether a same-sex relationship would “rise to the level of a ‘family relationship’”:

Same-sex relationships that rise to the level of “family relationships” are long-term, same-sex relationships in which the individuals

• are each other’s sole domestic partner and intend to remain so indefinitely;
• are not in a marital or other domestic relationship with anyone else; and typically maintain a common residence
• and share financial obligations and assets.

You know, in other words, a family.

The media and the pollsters, as if right on queue, have started feeding the masses the "news" that the "race for president is tightening." I have made the case that most of that is horse manure, but I have also made the case in the same breath that the universe of who votes will determine who wins this election. In that vein, let's talk a little bit about the polling universes. Gallup recently switched to hilighting "likely voter" numbers rather than registered voters, but today's numbers from Gallup shows a tie on likely voters while the president is ahead 50-45 nationally among registered voters. A CNN/ORC poll from Ohio put Mitt Romney within 4 points of the President (51-47) among who they consider "likely" voters, whereas the same poll's registered voter preferences showed the president with a commanding 10-point (53-43) lead.

So, why does that matter? Aren't likely voters what should be looked at this late in the game? Not exactly. Firstly, the newly registered are almost never considered 'likely', since they have no voting history (it's like having no credit). Given the way pollsters determine who is a likely voter - which includes a given person's voting history - the "likely" voter universe is always skewed towards conservatives. This is one of the pitfalls of the Left - we're good at yelling loudly and shooting our own people in a circular firing squad, but we are not good at voting. Conservatives vote far more consistently than liberals. Want evidence? See 2010, when Democrats, at the insistence of the loud, whiny media voices, stayed home handed the Speakership to John Boehner.

But in terms of polling, that still makes sense, right? I mean, if liberals don't vote as often, it's no wonder they don't count as likely to vote. Right, except for one thing: the OFA turnout machine. President Obama's ground-game is legendary, and the most overlooked story of this election cycle. Here's how the ground-game is playing out in numbers right now, by a couple of metrics.

My wife is one of those people with pre-existing conditions. Her life of obesity has led to a myriad of problems, chief among them being hypertension and diabetes.

A few months ago, she finally decided that the life she was leading was not worthy of the term "life". She either had to make a change, or die. The choices were that stark.

So, together we embarked on the journey of weight loss surgery. She had considered it before, but fear usually won out; it's not a surgery to be chosen cavalierly; and any surgery has risks, especially with the conditions she has.

Today she went to the surgeon's nutritionist, who gave her a list of things to do beginning two weeks prior to the surgery, and what she would have to do for the rest of her life. Let that sink in. For the rest of her life. This surgery isn't liposuction. Once you undergo bariatric surgery, your life is permanently changed; you can't go back to living the way you had before. This kind of life change requires a heroism that few people possess. It's a heroism that chooses life over death, that chooses the hope of something better over the certainty of growing desperation.

I mention this episode from my personal life because this is a personal essay. But it's also a political essay. In this election, the personal has never been more political.

Barack Obama is using Big Bird to chase down Mitt Romney.



After President Obama's campaign released this ad, the Republicans are on a little bit of imbalance mode this morning. The Romney campaign called the ad "troubling." John McCain appeared on MSNBC to whine about it.

Last week, we talked a little bit about the Right's attempt to play the refs by complaining that pollsters were polling too many Democrats - where in fact, the numbers were justified by both the Democrats' registration advantage and last presidential election's voting patterns. So what did our national media and pollsters do? They quickly groveled at the feet of the loud screeching noise-makers, of course.

Today, for example, there is a Pew poll out showing Mitt Romney has taken a lead in national polling of likely voters, 49-45, a full 11-point swing since the same poll from two weeks ago. Did the debate make all the difference? Don't be silly. Here's what really happened: Pew polled fewer voters altogether, and, they acquiesced to the wingnut browbeating and entirely took away the Democratic registration advantage documented in actual voting in 2008, registration data, and well, their own previous polling. Here, in a nutshell, is what really happened:

Sunshine Patriots and Fair Weather White Guys

by nancy a heitzeg

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Where were the Great White Liberal
WhalesPundits following Mitt Romney's sweaty serial lie-fest of last Wednesday??

Were they busily fact-checking his lie a minute "performance"??

Were they bemoaning his bullying tactics? Questioning his cheat-sheet?? Speculating - a'la Jack Welch - that he seemed higher than rigged BLS job numbers??

Were they decrying the disgusting deployment of a very vicious "Father Knows Best" Patriarchy that will cut off your Big Bird kids to save literal pennies for writing his rich friends a tax cut??

Were they, great fair weather fighters of racism, asking (as Chris Rock did) if Mitt Romney just called the President a "boy"??

Oh No..

Confusing a Presidential Debate with a hockey game, they were outraged!! outraged!! that the President did not leave Romney's blood on the ice.

Unable to escape the lure of patriarchal show of force metaphors, they uniformly abdicated any claim to either journalism or liberalism and defaulted to tantrums.



White Man 101.

A "stunned" and red-faced Ed Schultz foamed at the mouth and metaphorically broke shit.

Chris Matthews was in full melt-down, fantasizing that Hardball is somehow the equivalent of Kill Bill I and II. "We have our knives out!!!!"

Michael Moore concern trolled Twitter, alternating calling for a touchdown or a drone strike.

Bill Maher, who apparently believes his $1 million contribution now entitles him to call the President "Barry", suggested that Obama show Romney his gun.

Andrew Sullivan apparently felt personally "jilted" and was eventually reduced to the counting of eye-blinks.

Oh course.. White Men know Best..Arm chair quarterbacks, back-seat drivers, always second-guessing. Their own guy.. Especially the First Black POTUS.

Isn't it fascinating how quickly these supposed "allies" turn the minute that the women or people of color don't do it their way?? Even if their way is wrong???

There are others ways to "fight" and win without punching someone's lights out. Anyone who has followed the career of Barack Obama should surely realize this by now. Especially those who are paid to do so.

It is already clear that Obama refusal to bring up the "47%" at the debates denied Romney the opportunity to "apologize" to 68 million viewers. It is already clear that Romney Lies and Save Bird are the emerging theme of the debate.

And there will be more. Some of us -- especially those not intoxicated with the White Man Way - knew that..

So, some advice to the Fair Weather White Guys.. There is another debate coming up next week.



Let the first words out of your mouths post-debate be Ryan Lies. Because He Will -- as always. Who the hell cares if he looks like Great White Hunter or comes out in cammo?? He Lost.

Let me put this in your vernacular.

Chill the F*&* Out.

Get a F*&^ing Grip.

Don't say you're an ally and then punk us out. Women and People of color are tired of cleaning up your messes.

Do your job..

Or we'll do it for you.

Folks, the wingnuts on the Right are hopping mad. They are having a meltdown. Why? Because America is doing better and creating jobs under the black guy - we can't have that! It must be a conspiracy!

Never mind that a day earlier, Gallup, which no one would accuse of being influenced by anyone with the Obama campaign, basically predicted the same unemployment rate as the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported.

Jack Welch is the former CEO of GE and a Romney supporter. This little twit and his tweet got a lot of play in the morning shows, with hacks like Mark Halperin on Morning Joe venerating this scum. And it's still getting a lot of play. The blatant contempt for our career non-political public servants is shamefully apparent from statements like this. But besides the media's propensity to flock to right wing conspiracy theories (birthers, death panels, poll deniars and now, Jack Welch), the only reason the crackpot conjecture has any resonance at all is a misleading comparison between the job growth number of 114,000 which is in line with population growth, and the reduction in the unemployment rate to 7.8%.

In bad news for Mitt Romney but excellent news for the American people, the unemployment rate dropped last month to 7.8% - the first time it has been under 8% (also sadly for the Romney campaign, killing a beloved talking point) in nearly four years. The economy added 114,000 jobs in September according to the employer survey, and more importantly, the Household survey found 873,000 more people reported having jobs than last month's estimate (note that the two are different because (a) it takes time for people to report being employed after the time they are added to payrolls, (b) startups and self-employments are part of the household survey, and (c) lots of jobs were unaccounted for before).

The jobs added numbers for July and August were revised up by a total of 86,000 (with this trend, we may see eventually see last month's numbers revised up as well). Taking it all into account, the economy has now added private sector jobs for the past 31 months, with a total of 5.2 million private sector jobs under President Obama's leadership. Reversing a Republican death grip, the public sector added jobs in the last three months along with the private sector.

I have read no less than three beltway "fact-checkers" - Washington Post, the AP, and The Daily Beast - all trip all over each other to claim that President Obama's description of his fiscal plan, one that achieves $4 trillion in savings over the next decade and raises $1 in revenue for every $2.50 in cuts, is inaccurate, or at least fudging the numbers.

The twist is this: none of these fact-checkers dispute that counting everything the President does count, the math does actually add up. What they all have a beef with is what savings President Obama is counting - namely that he is counting savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the $1 trillion in cuts included in last year's debt limit deal.

Here's my question to these venerable fact-checkers: why shouldn't those things count? I contend those savings must count, especially given the contrary to Glenn Kessler's claim at the Washington Post, much of it not actually "in the bank."

Last night at the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney told many breathtaking lies. But one of the most ridiculous - and easily fact-checkable, was this:

MR. ROMNEY: [...] The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for getting a plant overseas. Look, I’ve been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant.

MR. LEHRER: Let’s --

MR. ROMNEY: But the -- the idea that you get a break for shipping jobs overseas is simply not the case.

We'll get to the meat of the matter in just a second, but first note this: Mitt Romney just admitted that he has shipped jobs overseas! If you follow his own logic, why would he need a new accountant with that knowledge if he weren't shipping jobs overseas (and thus be eligible for the break)? Of course, the fact is, Mitt Romney may well be eligible for many such tax breaks.

But the central fact was so wrong on Mitt's side, even Fox News had to acknowledge this:

Technically, companies can claim a deduction for the costs associated with moving jobs overseas.

I watched last night's debate. Stupid, silly me, I was watching it for substance, and from that perspective at least President Obama cleaned Romney's clock. But right after the debate, which I watched on MSNBC, I found two angry white men screaming hopping mad at Barack Obama on my TV. These two men were venerated "news" man Chris Matthews and the self-appointed Liberal spokesperson and former Republican Ed Schultz. What did they get so worked up about? That Obama was "professorial" (why the f*ck is that a bad word these days, anyway?) and not as aggressive. The closest these screaming heads got to mentioning the policy matters the debate revolved around was lamenting that the President didn't confront a schoolyard bully to a mano-a-mano over his "47%" comment.

Oh, Didja hear? Dijjah? 67% of voters who watched the debate, according to a CNN/ORC survey conducted pre- and post-debate, thought Mitt Romney "won" the debate, while only 25% thought Barack Obama did. At least, that's how CNN is billing it. But some of us got curious. Some of us wanted to look at the poll's internals, so to speak. I got a look at it. I just wanted to know who they polled.

Ready for this? Here we go:

So, what I do is write. It’s what I do best. It’s the one gift which the Universe has bestowed upon me.

What did I see during the first debate? What I always see when watching Barack Obama. Someone who doesn’t blindly follow his gut like the previous President.

Remember the quote from Newt Gingrich about Romney? “How can you debate someone who lies about everything?”

Obama knew this about Romney. He knew that Romney would get on that podium, lie and filibuster and bully. “I paid for this microphone, Mr. Lehrer,” to paraphrase the Gipper.

And he knew that you can’t really debate someone like that.

Romney is an entitled prince. He again proved that he believes the rules don’t apply to him. And that type of person has the ability to bend those of weaker will to his point of view. I was sorely disappointed in Mr. Lehrer being cowed by the bully.

But, again, in this debate, Mitt Romney showed the country just what kind of person he is. Entitled. Prickly. Without a moral compass. Willing to jettison any “belief” to gain a momentary win.

And if this was a win—which I don’t believe it was, but more on that below—it will be just that, momentary.

So Mitt Romney is floating the idea of capping deductions at $17,000 in order to pay for his gaping tax cuts for the wealthy. I am very much in favor of the idea of capping itemized deductions - regular readers of the TPV may remember that I had advocated for the Simpson-Bowles plan that, among other things, lowered tax rates and zeroed out deductions. In an ideal tax code, we would have a progressive income tax where all income (whether from work or from "capital gains") treated equally, with rates that are based upon your income level, not your behavior. At the very basic of concepts, I am not particularly fond of the idea of the government skewing the market by the means of tax incentives - whether for investment income or for purchasing a home.

But we're not starting from scratch. We're thinking about making changes to the tax code. Even in that vein, capping deductions at $17,000 would not be such a bad idea if it weren't pure pixie dust in the context of Romney's overall tax proposal. First, it doesn't compensate for even half of the new rich-heavy tax cuts for the, let alone the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the uber wealthy. Second, the overall tax plan would still have an impact of lowering the tax burden on the rich while raising it on everyone else. Third, there's no way on Planet Earth you can ever get this passed, as big charities and churches will kill it before it ever gets to Congress.

Well, everyone in the media is doing it. Telling us what the debate is going to be like, blah blah blah. Well, thankfully, we don't have to reach too far back in history to see what happens when President Obama debates in a free-wheeling format. I present to you, my debate preview: Obama goes to the fox's den and humiliates the foxes.

Enjoy!

I am beginning to suspect that math has a liberal bias. While Mitt Romney is very busy lying to the American people about the President's stellar record of standing up to China, the facts and numbers are rudely intruding, yet again. Last month, US manufacturing returned to expansive territory, while Chinese manufacturing continued contraction. The good news for the American economy (aka horrible news for the Romney campaign) comes from that liberal bastion, Wall Street Journal:

The Institute for Supply Management said Monday that its purchasing managers' index—a gauge of the factory sector—rose to 51.5 in September from 49.6 in August. A reading above 50 indicates expansion. U.S. stock markets moved higher after the release. [...]

Good news within the U.S. ISM survey was the rebound in demand. The new-orders index rose to 52.3 from 47.1 in August. The exports index edged up to 48.5 from 47.0.

The production index continued to shrink, although it improved to 49.5 from 47.2. The employment index rose to 54.7 from 51.6.

In the mean time...

Meanwhile, according to an official measure released earlier China continued to be in contractionary territory. Europe continues to struggle, with the euro zone still shrinking, though at a slower pace than August. Individual members France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain were all contracting.