Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 197

New Feature: This Day in the Obama-Romney Race

One year ago the race for the White House reached its final month with--yes, this is true--Mitt Romney looking like a plausible winner, despite his "47% blunder"--thanks to Barack Obama's stumble in their first debate.  So, starting today, I will post an excerpt from my ebook,  Tricks, Lies, and Videotape,  which collects my daily campaign items from The Nation and from this blog, in a unique day-by-day tracking of the race.  Note on the below: Gallup later admitted some of its polling was "skewed" in the direction of Romney.

So, for October 8, 2012 :

A new Gallup poll out today, based purely on what voters believe in the post-debate period, finds the race for the White House tied at 47%–47%. Just a few days ago Gallup gave Obama a 6% lead and found a 54% approval rating. Why the plunge? Gallup found Romney’s win in the debate—or, if you will, Obama’s flop—the worst in its recorded history. Of those who watched, Romney won by 72 to 20.
  This is an even wider margin than the instant polls indicated, and perhaps reflects more folks being affected by the media coverage, which kicked in at full-Romney-win throttle. Even most Democrats said Romney won (no surprise there—even SNL noted MSNBC libs’ shaken reaction).
  Also troubling for Dems: part of the Gallup poll was taken in the aftermath of Friday’s good jobs numbers.
  Gallup’s daily tracker (actually a seven-day average) as of yesterday still gave President Obama a 3 point lead.  There was a bit of good news: Some other polls suggest that Romney’s ‘bounce” may be over and settling in at about a 3% gain, as Nate Silver at The New York Times calculated.
  Perhaps more troubling in all this is that many polls in swing states suddenly find Romney gaining or taking the lead. Wisconsin and even Ohio (which the GOP was seemingly about to write off) appear to be back in play. And just as bad, or worse: Obama’s debate performance appears to be dragging down Dems in key Senate contests. Some polls, for example, show Senator Sherrod Brown’s lead over his amazingly callow challenger in Ohio now very surmountable. And expect more bad news this week in Missouri and Virginia and elsewhere as polls emerge—unless the jobs numbers report cools that trend.
  The bottom line is: Five days ago, Obama appeared to be cruising to victory, with ever-widening leads in most of the swing states. If the debates, or world events, did not produce a bombshell, there was little chance he would lose. And the jobs numbers report proved much better than expected (even if the right-wingers cried “conspiracy”).
  Now, it’s all up for grabs again—including Democratic control of the Senate. Already, outright anger toward Obama for fumbling the debate so badly has been expressed by some supporters on the left, and surely this will explode if it turns out to be the negative turning point in the entire campaign. Of course, this is very premature. Joe Biden may whip Paul Ryan, and Obama will surely do better in the two remaining debates with his opponent. But perhaps the damage has been done.
  What I fault Obama for is not lack of preparation on facts—he had them at his command—but seemingly lackadaisical planning on how to rebut Romney to his face. And even more damaging (given the media’s obsession with style), and quite inconceivable: his lack of attention to how he’d look in the now-common split-screen coverage, and his refusal to craft and deliver a strong closing statement. The Romney camp, fearing a powerful Obama closer, had tried in advance to eliminate any final statements in this debate.
  Meanwhile, media coverage of the first debate is getting increasing attention. I will just mention for now Paul Krugman’s reaction, as expressed on a Sunday morning show yesterday. Like me, Krugman has roasted Obama’s debate performance but also hits the media’s lack of focus on the many Romney lies in the debate. A more honest and balanced media response to the debate would have been: Romney wins on style, Obama on truth-telling. Yes, Obama deserved to take a hit in the polls, but it would have been less pronounced if Romney’s mendacity had received equal play.

Tools of Ignorance

New book by Ilya Somin charts and laments the  "willful ignorance" of so many Americans, and all of the wonderful new media will do nothing about it.

Never before has so much raw and refined political intelligence been available at such a low cost to citizens willing to buy a cheap computer and Web connection — or pay the bus fare to the local public library. But uninformed the people are, as Ilya Somin delineates in his subversive new book, Democracy and Political Ignorance, and their ignorance is willful!

“The sheer depth of most individual voters’ ignorance may be shocking to readers not familiar with the research,” Somin writes on his first page. Many Americans don’t know how the government works, they don’t know much about who runs the government, and they’re clueless about how government programs work.

We're NOT Number One--Or Number Fifteen, Even

AP with report on new global survey of adults in various countries and their level of reading, math skills and problem solving.  We see a lot of such stories on students but this is grown-ups.  And the USA, of course, ranks "below average" they find, placing 16, 17, and 21.   Japan, Finland, Sweden and some of the other usual suspects do well. Consider this:  "Japan, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Flanders-Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and Korea all scored significantly higher than the United States in all three areas on the test."

And folks in Poland and Estonia, among other countries, scored as well as U.S. in tech areas.

Americans scored toward the bottom in the category of problem solving in a technology-rich environment. The top five scores in the areas were from Japan, Finland, Australia, Sweden and Norway, while the U.S. score was on par with England, Estonia, Ireland and Poland. In nearly all countries, at least 10 percent of adults lacked the most basic of computer skills such as using a mouse.

Great and Greatest

Congrats to Dodgers for being first to advance.  Their run began this past June after Robert Jay Lifton and I attended Dodgers-Mets game in NYC--which we used to do yearly but not for awhile.  Robert is Dodgers fan since his days in Brooklyn--75 years ago...  Kershaw and Koufax left.

Indictment in Steubenville 'Cover-Up'

Surprise: Just announced indictment of first adult in the Steubenville rape case, a tech guy at the high school charged with hindering the investigation and perjury. The "digital trail" was partly erased, we  long known.

Attorney General Mike DeWine would only say Rhinaman of Mingo Junction was charged in connection to his job as IT director for the Steubenville schools. “This is the first indictment in an ongoing grand jury investigation,” DeWine said in a statement. “Our goal remains to uncover the truth, and our investigation continues.” Football players Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays were found guilty in March of raping the girl during a boozy party that followed a scrimmage in August 2012.

Shutdown Axes Death Benefits to Soldier Families

Shocking report on how the shutdown denies the usual $100,000 death benefits, normally sent within 36 hours of a death, to families of the five U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan over the weekend.


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Did a 'NYT' Reporter Get 'Deep Throat' Fired?

Interesting interview at the Princeton alumni site with longtime D.C. insider William Ruckelshaus, a former deputy attorney general who resigned in the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal.  He recalls that when he was running the FBI he fired Mark Felt, the #2 guy, over alleged leaks to the Nixon White House--after getting tipped off by a reporter from the NYT.  Now, whether it was actually that reporter or someone claiming that is not known for sure.  Here's the excerpt:

Stories about information obtained from the wiretaps continued to appear in the Times, so obviously there was a leak somewhere in the FBI. I received a call from a man who identified himself as a reporter who was writing these stories for the Times. He said, “I suppose you’re wondering where these leaks are coming from. Well, they’re coming from Mark Felt.”
 I confronted Felt the next day. He denied being the source of the story, but I told him I had the information on good authority and didn’t believe his denials. He had violated every stricture at the FBI about the sanctity of information in their possession, that you don’t release that to the media, ever. The next morning, Felt had his resignation on my desk, which I took as an admission of guilt. Years later, Max Holland interviewed me for a book he was writing about Felt. Holland told me he didn’t think I had actually been talking to the Times reporter.

Don't Worry, Bibi

Tuesday update:   Max Fisher at Wash Post explains why Netanyahu's malignant and out-of-touch view of modern Iran is so revealing and damaging--and also supports Iran's claims to be terribly misunderstood.

Earlier:  Pathetic Netayanhu claims in interview that Iranian youth need to revolt before their country gets nuclear weapons--reminding them that they cannot even wear jeans or listen to Western music. So they take to Twitter and to the streers to dispute him fully.   Sad line from NYT story:  Noting that Netanyahu cited Neda's tragic death in revolt, reporters adds: "No one disputed the horror of Ms. Agha-Soltan’s death. But many did note that she had been wearing jeans."

'60 Minutes' Too Much?

George Zornick at The Nation with strong critique of last night's "60 Minutes" hatchet job segment on the alleged massive fraud in our Social Security disability system. Tom Coburn the star so antennae must be raised.   I plan to look into this tomorrow. I do know there was still response in the piece from analysts and defenders.  Here's an excerpt:

The report by Steve Kroft made big promises, purporting to reveal a “secret welfare system” with its own “disability industrial complex,” and an out-of-control bureaucracy “ravaged by waste and fraud.” He also said SSDI might be “the first government benefits program to run out of money.” But when it came time to deliver, Kroft didn’t have the goods.

Updates: More criticism here from national disability groups.  And economist Dean Baker slams it here:  "Disability is a large program. That means there will be some fraud. This is not news, except perhaps at CBS.  Perhaps the most remarkable part of this story is that the Sixty Minutes crew seem to think they are being tough for going after people on disability."

Local Paper Continues to Press for Gun Owner Records

Surprised, though happy, to see this today.  I wrote a good deal about this months ago when my mediocre local newspaper the Journal-News here just north of NYC, a Gannett outlet, published the names of registered gun owners in my county, just after Sandy Hook.  You may have heard about the storm of criticism they received, not for counting the numbers or mapping but actually supply names and addresses.  They backed off but continued to press another county, Putnam, for the records, promising not to print names this time.  Still they were refused.

I presumed they've given up, but no, they continue to seek the records--and now suiing over it.