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President Barack Obama's job approval ratings have hit new lows over the past month, yet he continues to hold slight leads over Republican candidates in head-to-head polling. Of the two, the approval ratings are a slightly better measure of Obama's re-election prospects, signaling a very tough contest ahead. But history tells us to be wary of both as predictors of the 2012 outcome. It is still very early.Frank Newport:
[Chris] Christie is well known in New Jersey and in Republican political circles. He is not well-known nationally. Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin recently reviewed all extant polling data on Christie. There is not a lot of it. Between 50% and 65% of Americans say they have never heard of Christie or don?t know enough about him to have an opinion. As Charles says: ?Christie looks like a lot of governors who, however well known in their home states, are far less visible nationally, or even regionally."I guess there's a difference between arguing that weight should not make a difference and arguing that weight does make a difference, but it's a subtle one. Just no "momentum" jokes, please. And remember, "no one is as popular as the day before they run." I think Fred Thompson said that (and if he didn't, he should have.)
...
At any rate, were Christie to get into the race, his weight no doubt would become an issue. Our data suggest that most Americans claim one?s weight doesn?t affect their views of a person, but it?s difficult to pinpoint the impact of weight in a more subliminal, subconscious evaluation or reaction to a candidate. Research shows that people make quick judgments based on just looking at the face of a political candidate -- judgments that can predict the winner of political races. It?s certainly possible that quick judgments based on a candidate?s weight could also factor into a voting decision.
Speaking of Fred, was it really only two months ago that I wrote this?
Now, Rick Perry is no Grampa Fred. He's a great deal more energetic and possibly a great deal more ambitious. He has cash to tap and a strong appeal to evangelicals and social conservatives. He plays well in GOP primary polling, even without declaring. But how is he going to play on a national stage?And speaking of Rick Perry:
...Things can change, and they undoubtedly will. But Rick Perry, while formidable, is not automatically the next president just because he decides to run.
The campaign of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas found itself on the defensive on Sunday over a report that he had hunted at and taken guests to a West Texas camp with a racially charged name that his father, and later Mr. Perry, had leased.How is he going to play on a national stage? Not so well.The Washington Post reported on Sunday that at least seven people it interviewed said the name for a portion of the property, Niggerhead, was visible on the rock at the entrance ?at different points in the 1980s and 1990s,? and that a former worker said he believed he had seen it as recently as three years ago. ...
?Campaigns are like an MRI for the soul ? whoever you are, eventually people find out,? Mr. Axelrod said in an interview Sunday night. ?Time will tell whether this comes to reflect him or not.?
By age 6, children should have vaccinations against 14 diseases, in at least two dozen separate doses, the U.S. government advises. More than 1 in 10 parents reject that, refusing some shots or delaying others mainly because of safety concerns, a national survey found.And since we're talking vaccines, don't miss It's flu season (featuring a shot without pain!) from yesterday.Worries about vaccine safety were common even among parents whose kids were fully vaccinated: 1 in 5 among that group said they think delaying shots is safer than the recommended schedule. The results suggest that more than 2 million infants and young children may not be fully protected against preventable diseases, including some that can be deadly or disabling.
The nationally representative online survey of roughly 750 parents of kids age 6 and younger was done last year and results were released online Monday in the journal Pediatrics. They are in line with a larger federal survey released last month, showing that at least 1 in 10 toddlers and preschoolers lagged on vaccines that included chickenpox and the measles-mumps-rubella combination shots. That survey, also for 2010, included more than 17,000 households.
The Pediatrics survey follows other recent news raising concerns among infectious disease specialists, including a study showing the whooping cough vaccine seems to lose much of its effectiveness after just three years ? faster than doctors have thought ? perhaps contributing to recent major outbreaks, most notably in California. Also, data reported in September show that a record number of kindergartners' parents in California last year used a personal belief exemption to avoid vaccination requirements.
Obama?s victory, in the meantime, partly demobilized the left. With Democrats in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, stepped-up organizing didn?t seem quite so urgent.The administration was complicit in this, viewing the left?s primary role as supporting whatever the president believed needed to be done. Dissent was discouraged as counterproductive.
This was not entirely foolish. Facing ferocious resistance from the right, Obama needed all the friends he could get. He feared that left-wing criticism would meld in the public mind with right-wing criticism and weaken him overall.
But the absence of a strong, organized left made it easier for conservatives to label Obama as a left-winger.
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?And the right course politically at this stage is to have states carry out their own right-to-work legislation. And as you know, right-to-work states, those 22, have created 3 million jobs over the last 10 years. The union states have lost about half a million jobs. So right to work is the way to go if you want good jobs.?
The Washington Post fact checks this, ultimately giving it a two Pinocchio rating:
Romney?s remarks appeared rooted in actual Labor Department data, even though he spouted some numbers that didn?t match his own analysis. Regardless, the former governor exaggerates the importance of these statistics, and he fails to acknowledge that factors other than labor laws play a role in determining job growth.
The fact check is solid as far as it goes, offering a couple of good rebuttals to Romney's claims about job creation, countering not that RtW states have worse job creation, but that labor law is neither the only nor the decisive factor in job creation. For instance, it cites the Oklahoma example?manufacturing jobs in that state peaked the year before it passed RtW?and the fact that Alaska and Texas, both with oil, one heavily unionized and one RtW, have had roughly the same employment increase over the past 10 years.
But how far it goes pretty much stops with Romney's claims about job creation. There are some passing references to the lower-quality jobs found in RtW states, but it doesn't actually include Romney's claim that RtW leads to "good jobs" in the fact check. But that's worth taking a look at, because the idea that there are jobs and then there are good jobs is an important one.
An EPI study actually linked in the fact check found that, controlling for worker race and education levels as well as state-level factors like cost of living and unemployment:
People who are "unemployed" in the way Mitt Romney is?who started out wealthy and are now so wealthy they will never have to work again?may not have to worry about things like lower wages or lower chance of having health care or a pension. But that doesn't mean they can't care. It's just that Mitt Romney doesn't, at least not if caring might get between him and the Republican presidential nomination.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/M9B3UfCwwVg/-Romney-misleads-withanti-unionclaims
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Violence in Afghanistan is up nearly 40 percent over last year, a United Nations report released Wednesday found, contradicting claims by the U.S.-led coalition that security has improved since last year.The U.N. report, information for which is compiled by the U.N. mission here and submitted to the Security Council quarterly, said that as of the end of August, there had been an average of 2,108 "security incidents" each month this year, a 39 percent increase compared with the same period in 2010.
To be continued...
The Defense Department and contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root failed to act as quickly as they should have to protect those exposed to a carcinogenic chemical at an Iraqi water treatment plant in 2003, according to a report Wednesday by the Defense Department's Inspector General.The report was hailed as a victory for Oregon soldiers by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who was one of a group of senators who sought the IG's evaluation, and by Oregon National Guard troops who are among those suing KBR. They accuse the contractor of knowingly exposing them to sodium dichromate, an anticorrosive compound that can cause skin and breathing problems and cancer.
Because KBR "did not fully comply with occupational safety and health standards required" under its contract with the Army, the Inspector General found, "a greater number of Service members and DoD civilian employees were exposed to sodium dichromate, and for longer periods, increasing the potential for chronic health effects."
They didn't support the troops. They used the troops to support their cynical, selfish political and economic agenda.
"Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent upon diversity in all other aspects of life seems bent on eliminating diversity of moral judgment -- particularly moral judgment based on religious views," Scalia said.As examples, he cited attempts to sue a religious university in Washington, D.C., for offering only same-sex dorms and other attempts by a law school association to bar schools that discriminate against homosexuals.
"I hope this place will not yield -- as some Catholic institutions have -- to this politically correct insistence upon suppression of moral judgment, to this distorted view of what diversity in America means," Scalia said.
Millhiser:
Scalia?s suggestion that there is something quintessentially Catholic about being anti-gay ? a view that millions of American Catholics would no doubt find deeply offensive ? is more than a little bizarre. The reality is that Catholics tend to be more supportive of gay rights than other Christian sects.Moreover, his insistence that religious institutions enjoy a special right to discriminate against gay people is particularly troubling, and it has worked its way into his decisions on the Supreme Court. In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a conservative Christian student group claimed the special right to have a state university subsidize their organization even though it refused to comply with the university?s anti-discrimination policy. Scalia joined a four justice dissent that would have given anti-gay groups exactly this right.
Now, let?s be clear. All groups have a First Amendment protected right to build institutions and use those institutions to spread their viewpoint. Indeed, if an institution ? whether religious or otherwise ? wants to outright engage in hate speech, than that is their right under the First Amendment. But Scalia is advocating something entirely different here. He believes that anti-gay groups can demand that society as a whole support their alternative lifestyle, and he also seems to believe that religious schools have a special right to force their way into organizations that find anti-gay discrimination repugnant.
If fear of future regulations and taxes is holding business back, as everyone on the right asserts, why didn?t the Republican victory in the midterms set off a surge in employment?
There are a lot of reasons to be against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his possible entry into the presidential race, but his weight shouldn't be one of them.
Especially in Britain, the United States and Australia, governments of different stripes have increasingly looked to such companies to expand detention and show voters they are enforcing tougher immigration laws.Some of the companies are huge ? one is among the largest private employers in the world ? and they say they are meeting demand faster and less expensively than the public sector could.
But the ballooning of privatized detention has been accompanied by scathing inspection reports, lawsuits and the documentation of widespread abuse and neglect, sometimes lethal. Human rights groups say detention has neither worked as a deterrent nor speeded deportation, as governments contend, and some worry about the creation of a ?detention-industrial complex? with a momentum of its own.
This could be fun:
The Israel Museum in Jerusalem launched its Dead Sea Scrolls Project Monday, placing five of the ancient texts on line for the general public to study, the museum announced.The website - http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/ -was developed in partnership with Google and displays searchable, high resolution images of the texts, as well as short explanatory videos and background information.
One of the five:
The Great Isaiah Scroll, inscribed with the Book of Isaiah and dating from about 125 BC, is the only complete ancient copy of any biblical book in existence.
Glenn Greenwald on the traditional media typically missing the real story, when Iran finally released American hikers Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal:
Fattal began by recounting the horrible conditions of the prison in which they were held, including being kept virtually all day in a tiny cell alone and hearing other prisoners being beaten; he explained that, of everything that was done to them, "solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives. Bauer then noted that they were imprisoned due solely to what he called the "32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran," and said: "the irony is that [we] oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility."
And more from Fattal:
In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.
You also probably didn't see much in the traditional media about Fattal thanking Hugo Chavez, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, Mohammad Ali, Cindy Sheehan, Desmond Tutu, the governments of Turkey and Brazil, Muslims from around the world, and even Iranian government officials along with U.S. officials in helping procure their release.
Climbers and custodians of Everest say that rapid climate change could soon make for an ice-free ascent of the world's tallest mountain.Their warning comes come amid a new international effort to gauge the effects of climate change in the Himalayas ? and shield local people from potential hazards. A US-funded mission, led by the Mountain Institute, is meeting in Kathmandu to try to find practical solutions to the threat of catastrophic high-altitude flooding from lakes forming at the foot of melting glaciers.
Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/93-W48KS1OA/-Midday-open-thread
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