Friday, September 28, 2012

Unskewedpolls.com And Why Romney Will Win


A Word Or Two About Q-Star News, Unskewedpolls.com And Why Romney Will Win

BY UTAH SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

Editors note: About half of this post is recycled content from a recent comment of mine, so if you think you have seen it before, you probably have – but it also has two important aspects – it fits and I am lazy…so there you go. This one is like the Soylent Green of posts.

First of all, I don’t think Q-Star is a pollster – they take the polls that are conducted by others and re-weight them to reflect something that is closer to reality. Most of the polls are using a sampling that reflects the 2008 election even though the 2010 mid-terms did show a dramatic shift in party

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Chapter X: Obama Brings Chicago Politics to Washington

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program included $499 billion in 
federal spending, most of which was channeled through state and local 
governments. Eight of the 10 states getting the most contracts were heavily
Democratic, with highly unionized state and local government work forces, 
according to stimulus award data at recovery.gov.

Chapter X: Obama Brings Chicago Style Politics to Washington
From the Washington Examiner

Chicago has been called the home of "gangster government." How bad is it?

Consider the following facts about the city from which President Obama rose through the ranks of American public life, from community organizer and local lawyer to the Illinois state legislature to the U.S. Senate and finally the Oval Office:

Chapter VIII: Obama's State Pension Scheme

William Atwood, executive director of the
 giant Illinois State Board of Investment, 
told The Washington Examiner that 
Obama was relentless in applying pressure. 
"Anytime I saw him, he brought the issue up. 
I would see him in Springfield or I would
see him at a function and invariably he
raised the issue."

Chapter VIII: Obama's State Pension Scheme 
From the Washington Examiner

State Sen. Barack Obama and members of an Illinois lobbying group representing politically connected minority-owned businesses launched a campaign in 2000 to pressure state pension funds to help their friends and donors.

Obama and his cohorts targeted state officials in charge of pension funds for teachers, police and firemen, and regular government employees.

Much as the Rev. Jesse Jackson had been doing for years to Fortune 500 corporations, Obama and the Alliance of Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs, or ABLE, demanded that the officials set aside at least 15 percent of pension assets for management by minority-owned investment companies.

Chapter VII: The Myth of Obama as State Senate Reformer

Former Illinois state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, 
a maverick Republican and reformer, said
Obama never fought corruption, by
Republicans or by Democrats: "He never
wanted to upset the apple cart with the 
Chicago machine."

Chapter VII: The Myth of Obama as State Senate Reformer
From the Washington Examiner

Shortly after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Prairie State Blue, a liberal blog, attributed his victory to the fact that Illinois' deeply entrenched government corruption had forced "political reformers" in the state legislature like Obama "to network outside the traditional political circles."

The claim illustrated Obama's success throughout his career at presenting himself as an outsider and reformer even as he became a skillful operator inside one of the nation's most corrupt political systems.

Earlier this year, a study by the Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs pointed to the convictions in recent years of four governors, two congressmen, a state treasurer, an attorney general and 11 state legislators.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Chapter VI: The Poor People Obama Left Behind


A man moves furniture at the Altgeld Gardens
 housing project Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, on 
Chicago's South Side. where Democratic 
presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., 
used to work as a community organizer. 
(AP Photo)
Chapter VI: The Poor People Obama Left Behind
From the Washington Examiner

Four years after Barack Obama's historic election as president, little seems to have changed for the African-American communities on Chicago's South Side.

The lack of change -- or the sense that these neighborhoods are getting worse -- is eroding the president's standing among African-Americans in his hometown.

In 2011, Chicago suffered the third-highest black jobless

Chapter V: Obama's Toughest Critics on the Left

Obama’s toughest critic on the Left, the late
Robert Fitch, charged that Obama’s most 
trusted aide, Valerie Jarrett, made a fortune
as a real estate developer. Fitch, a radical 
leftist and freelance journalist who 
specialized in urban politics and economics,
said Obama surrounded himself with people
 who got rich on Chicago’s $1.6 billion 
neighborhood demolition program known 
officially as the Plan for Transformation.

Chapter V: Obama's Toughest Critics on the Left 
From the Washington Examiner

Barack Obama's carefully constructed image as a civil rights lawyer who wanted to heal the black community was greeted with skepticism by some Chicago activists.

"I never drank the Kool-Aid about Barack Obama," veteran Chicago black activist Eddie Read told The Washington Examiner. Read is president of the Black Independent Political Organization, one of Chicago's largest black community groups.

Read -- who describes himself as a "black nationalist" -- said Chicago streets are filled with genuine "street gangsters" and phonies known as "studio gangsters." The latter are impersonators who make money acting in studio-produced rap videos.

The same dichotomy is found among Chicago's street activists, Read said. "So what you get from me is I'm still up in the air on whether or not my brother Obama was a real

Chapter IV: For the Slumlord's Defense, Barack Obama, Esq.

via Getty Images and ap A security company
owned by now-jailed political fundraiser 
Tony Rezko sought help from Obama
and then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in an effort
to gain a lucrative contract in Iraq, 
according to a report published in 2007.

Chapter IV: For the Slumlord's Defense, Barack Obama, Esq.
From the Washington Examiner


Writing in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama said he became "a civil rights lawyer" because "to lend meaning to a community's suffering and take part in its healing -- that required something more."

There was indeed "something more" to Obama's legal career, but it wasn't civil rights litigation at the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he was employed for a decade.

"He spent about half his time working with Bill Miceli and my former partner, Allison Davis, and that team," senior partner Judson Miner told The Washington Examiner. Most of the entries on Obama's client list for the firm from that period were in real estate, construction and finance.

Miceli and Davis were the partners in charge of the firm's housing and real estate practices. Davis would later leave