Wednesday, October 10, 2012

IBD/TIPP Poll: Romney Jumps To 5-Point Lead Over Obama, 48% – 43%…

IBD/TIPP 2012 Presidential Election
Daily Tracking Poll

Day 2: Oct. 10, 2012

Romney: +5.0

Romney’s lead widened to 5 points from 2 points on Tuesday, as he continues to chip away at key Obama support.
Romney’s edge among independents widened to 20 points from 18 just a day before.
Obama’s lead among women narrowed from 10 points to 8 points.
Romney also continues to make inroads among middle-class voters, moving from a 6-point lead against Obama with this group to a 10-point lead.
The current data include only polls taken after Romney’s resounding debate win over Obama on Oct. 3.

	Obama	Romney	Not Sure
OVERALL	43.7%	48.7%	6.1%
REGION
Northeast	49%	42%	9%
Midwest	47%	47%	4%
South	40%	54%	5%
West	43%	46%	9%
AGE
18-44	50%	44%	6%
45-64	40%	51%	7%
65+	37%	54%	5%
GENDER
Male	36%	57%	6%
Female	50%	42%	6%
RACE
White	34%	58%	7%
Black/Hispanic	82%	13%	3%
HOUSEHOLD INCOME
Under 30K	50%	44%	5%
30K-50K	46%	49%	4%
50-75K	41%	48%	11%
75K+	44%	51%	5%
PARTY
Democrats	86%	7%	5%
Republicans	3%	95%	1%
Ind./Other	34%	54%	12%
INVESTOR CLASS
Yes	44%	50%	6%
No	44%	47%	7%
AREA TYPE
Urban	48%	43%	7%
Suburban	47%	46%	6%
Rural	34%	58%	6%
WHITE
White men	28%	64%	6%
White women	39%	52%	7%
BLACK/HISPANIC
Black*	91%	6%	3%
Hispanic*	64%	30%	4%
WOMEN
Single women	58%	37%	5%
Married women	43%	47%	8%
EDUCATION
High School	41%	47%	9%
Some College	42%	52%	5%
College Degree+	46%	48%	5%
IDEOLOGY
Conservative	18%	76%	5%
Moderate	54%	37%	8%
Liberal	89%	4%	5%
HOUSEHOLD DESCRIPTION
Upper/Upper Middle	52%	41%	7%
Middle	41%	51%	5%
Working	40%	50%	8%
Lower*	50%	45%	6%
RELIGION
Protestant	35%	60%	5%
Catholic	43%	46%	6%
Other Christian	40%	56%	3%
Jewish*	47%	25%	28%
Other*	51%	36%	11%
None	67%	27%	5%
UNION HOUSEHOLD
Yes	59%	33%	6%
No	41%	51%	6%
2008 VOTE
Obama	83%	9%	8%
McCain	2%	94%	4%

Polling period: 10/4 - 10/9
Margin of Error: +/- 3.5%
Sample Size: 757 likely voters (identified from 873 registered voters with party affiliation of 39% Dem, 31% GOP, 30% Ind.)
Methodology: Traditional telephone methodology using Random Digit Dial (RDD) landline and cell phone samples

Via: IBD

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Issa Calls For Classified Briefing On Libya Intel

Fresh off his hearing on security deficiencies at the U.S. mission in Libya, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday called for a classified briefing on what the Obama administration knew — and when — about the causes of Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi.

“Right now, what we've agreed to, [ranking member Elijah] Cummings [(D-Md.)] and I, is formally asking for a classified briefing so that a lot of what wasn't discussed here, the committee would have knowledge of,” Issa told reporters. “And of course that's not an open hearing.”

He said it would be modeled on Tuesday's hearing for the Republican chairmen of committees of jurisdiction over intelligence and foreign affairs, and should include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the FBI. Asked if he would invite the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Issa said “not necessarily.”

Republicans on Issa's committee have been chomping at the bit to go after Rice, who told five Sunday shows five days after the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans that initial intelligence suggested an anti-Islam video posted to YouTube had caused the violence. The administration later said the attack was an act of terrorism.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) all told The Hill they think the committee’s next move should be to request Rice to testify before the panel.

“President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Ambassador Rice have a lot of questions to answer,” said Chaffetz, the chairman of the committee's panel on national security. Chaffetz said it was up to Issa to decide whether to request her for another hearing, but that he’d “love to hear from her sooner rather than later because she’s got a lot to explain.”

Issa himself told The Hill that “someone in Congress will cover some of these ambiguities.”

Via: The Hill

GAI RESPONDS TO OBAMA 'FACT CHECK' OF FRAUDULENT DONATIONS REPORT

The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) on Wednesday called out the Obama campaign for refusing to address the ownership of the Obama.com domain by a campaign bundler who lives and has business interests in China. GAI also alleged that the Obama campaign has not fully addressed its weak online security measures to prevent fraudulent or foreign campaign donations.

GAI President Peter Schweizer said GAI was “troubled by the fact that the Obama campaign has nothing to say about one of the main concerns we detailed in our report: the mysterious Obama.com redirect website anonymously owned by China-based campaign bundler Robert Roche.”

“Robert Roche has an unusually close relationship with the Chinese government, to whom he is dependent for the operation of his Chinese-based company, Acorn International,” Schweizer said. “At the same time, he owns this redirect website which sends international web traffic to a contribution page of the president’s campaign.”

The Chinese government has a history of trying influence American elections through campaign contributions, and Roche is not a random figure. He was seated at the head table of the China State Dinner in 2011.

Immediately after the progressive magazine Newsweek published a story, based on a nine-month GAI investigation of how easily foreigners can illicitly donate to President Barack Obama’s campaign due to lax online security measures, the Obama campaignresponded with a purported “fact-check” that tried to dismiss the report as a partisan attack on the Obama campaign.

Via Breitbart

Hillary Throws Obama Under The Benghazi Bus?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department now says it never believed the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a film protest gone awry, giving congressional Republicans new fodder for criticizing the Obama administration's initial accounts of the assault.

The State Department's extraordinary break with other administration offices came in a department briefing Tuesday, where officials said "others" in the executive branch concluded initially that the protest was based, like others in the Middle East, on a film that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.

That was never the department's conclusion, a senior official told reporters.

The Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a hearing Wednesday on diplomatic security in the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attack as become a political football in the final weeks before the election.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the State Department of turning aside pleas from its diplomats in Libya to increase security in the months and weeks before the attack in Benghazi. One scheduled witness Wednesday, Eric Nordstrom, is the former chief security officer for U.S. diplomats in Libya who told the committee his pleas for more security were ignored.

Via: AP

No White House Press Briefing in Last 15 Days

The White House has not held a press briefing in the last 15 days, according to records on the White House's website. The last one was held on September 24, 2012, by White House press secretary Jay Carney.

However, in that 15 day time period, and including today, there have been 11 press gaggles. Nine have been conducted by Carney, while 2 have been held by principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest. Campaign surrogates David Axelrod and traveling press secretary Jen Psaki have participated in the gaggles.

But there's a big difference between a gaggle and a press briefing. Gaggles are limited only to those members of the press who are traveling with the president of the United States and are not video taped. Press briefings, on the other hand, are open to credentialed media (who obtain White House approval) and are on camera.

Gaggles tend to by shorter in length than a normal press briefing, usually being held for approximately 10-15 minutes at a time. And are these days very often held aboard Air Force One to accommodate the frequent campaign stops across the country by President Obama.

Via: Weekly Standard

The Uncharitable Joe Biden: Better at Giving Away Your Money Than His

Before he became Vice President, Joe Biden was not exactly Santa Claus. So, one thing I think you will not see during the Vice President debates is a discussion on charity—Joe will not want to discuss this at all.

Just when I thought that there was no politician stingier than Barack Obama—who, before he became President, gave as little as .6% of his income to the poor—lo and behold Obama picked as his running mate, a man who gives far less to the poor than he. While Obama’s tax returns prior to his 2008 election reveal a portrait of a man who privately gives very little to the poor—less than any Republican I know—Joe Biden gives even less.

In fact, Biden’s charitable giving is so abysmally poor that he makes even Obama look like Santa Claus. Biden may well have been the stingiest man in the Senate. For two of the most “liberal” senators in Washington, they were embarrassingly conservative when it comes to reaching into their own pockets and helping the poor, whose cause they pretend to champion. If they thought that the public actually knew how little they did privately to help the poor, these two hypocrites would never again spout their populist drivel about Republican “trickle down” economics or criticize the Republicans for not doing enough to help the poor.

A close look at his returns reveals the true depths of their hypocrisy.

From 1998 through his election in 2008, Joe Biden’s income varied between $200,000 and $400,000. Where I come from, that is serious money

. Yet, amazingly, his reported annual charitable giving—as shown on his Schedule A—varied between a whopping $120 during the lean years and a little less than $400 when he felt extra charitable. [The rare exception was 2007, when he was running for office and gave a less than generous $995 to the poor.] No, I have not missed a decimal place. He does not give in terms of five figures, nor does he give in terms of four figures. At least before he became Vice President.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

LEAVE ME ALONE OBAMA

Big Bird, it seems, isn’t thrilled about his cameo in the presidential race.

The folks at Sesame Street are asking the Obama campaign to pull down a TV ad released Tuesday that mocks Mitt Romney for vowing to yank the subsidy to PBS.

At the presidential debate in Denver last week, Mr. Romney said he would end the subsidy in view of the nation’s fiscal troubles.

More In Big Bird

“I love Big Bird,” the Republican challenger said “… But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.”

Up went an ad by team Obama called “Big Bird’’ that suggests Mr. Romney is targeting children’s programming rather than legitimate threats to people’s economic interests.

The ad shows images of Bernie Madoff and others implicated in various financial and corporate scandals. A narrator then intones: “And the evil genius who towered over them?”

A silhouette of Big Bird flashes on screen.

“Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street,” the narrator said.

The ad is airing on national cable and broadcast TV, in time slots devoted to comedy shows, the Obama campaign said.

Sesame Street isn’t amused. Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit educational organization that produces and owns the show, issued a statement Tuesday saying “we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.”

Via: WSJ

WSJ Economist: No Grounds for Obama's Tax on Wealthy

Wall Street Journal economics expert Stephen Moore tells Newsmax that there is “no case on economic grounds” to heed President Barack Obama’s call for higher taxes on wealthier Americans.

He says raising those rates would simply encourage wealthier taxpayers to hide their money and wouldn’t boost revenues as predicted by “the anti-Clinton” — President Obama.

And he warns that the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts next year could cause a double-dip recession.

Urgent Poll: Who Won the Presidential Debate? Vote Here!

Moore is a senior economics writer and editorial board member for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and former president of the Club for Growth and a best-selling author. He also wrote the cover story for Newsmax magazine’s October issue.

Moore’s new book is “Who's The Fairest of Them All: The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes and Wealth in America.”

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Moore was asked if Obama and the Democrats are advocating higher taxes on the wealthy to improve the economy or to win over middle-class voters.

“I don’t think anybody thinks that raising tax rates will improve the economy. At least I certainly hope no one does because the history is so unequivocal that that’s not the case,” Moore says.

Read more on Newsmax.com: WSJ Economist Moore: No Grounds Logic for Obama's Tax on Wealthy
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Via: Newsmax

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Claire McCaskill Camp Rocked By Shocking Allegations

Feds paid $40M to firms tied to McCaskill's spouse

BY DAVID A. LIEB
ASSOCIATED PRESS

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Businesses affiliated with the husband of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill have received almost $40 million in federal subsidies for low-income housing developments during her first five years in office, though it appears only fraction of that has made it to the family's bank accounts, according to an Associated Press analysis.

McCaskill's Republican challenger, Rep. Todd Akin, says the federal payments should be a cause for concern among voters. He's attempting to portray the Democratic senator's family as a prime beneficiary of government largesse.

"There is a conflict of interest and a breach of trust with the citizens of our state," Akin said in an interview with the AP.

McCaskill campaign spokesman Caitlin Legacki called such assertions "flat-out wrong."

There is no evidence that McCaskill personally routed the money to her husband's businesses. But she voted for some - and against other - bills that funded the federal housing and agriculture departments, which in turn provide subsidies to businesses with federal contracts to provide low-income housing.

The AP reviewed five years' worth of federal personal financial disclosure statements filed by McCaskill, which list more than 300 "affordable housing" businesses in which her husband, Joseph Shepard, had at least a partial ownership during the time she has been in office. At least one-third of those businesses also appear to be listed as recipients of federal payments in an online government database that tracks spending.

VIa: The Miami Herald

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Olive Garden And Red Lobster To Cut Workers Hours In Advance Of Obamacare…

Prepping for Obamacare, Chain Cuts Workers' Hours

The owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants is putting more workers on part-time status in a test aimed at limiting the impact of looming health coverage requirements.

Darden Restaurants [DRI 54.74 -0.36 (-0.65%) ] declined to give details but said the test is only in restaurants in four markets across the country. The test entails increasing the number of workers on part-time status, meaning they work less than 30 hours a week. Under the new health care act, companies will be required to provide health care to full-time employees by 2014. That would significantly boost labor costs for businesses.

About 75 percent of Darden's employees are currently part-timers.

Bob McAdam, who heads government affairs and community relations for Darden, said the company is still learning from the tests, which was first reported by The Orlando Sentinel.

A startling report by the Government Accountability Institute finds that almost half (47.3%) of congressional campaign donation websites lack basic anti-fraud credit card security systems common on most e-commerce websites. That, says Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer, leaves federal House and Senate elections vulnerable to illegal foreign or fraudulent credit card contributions.

“Fraudsters and foreign governments have long sought to illegally influence U.S. elections,” Schweizer said in an interview with Breitbart News. “From the Shah of Iran funneling money to Richard Nixon’s campaign, to Johnny Wong and Charlie Trie shuttling funds to Bill Clinton’s election coffers, campaign donor fraud is a bipartisan problem with a long history. But in the Internet age, the threat is now just a click away.”

There are 380 members of the House of Representatives seeking reelection that have active donation pages on the web, and 194 have campaign websites that require donors to enter their credit card security code, known officially as the Card Verification Value (CVV). Of the remaining 186 members of the House of Representatives who lack basic anti-fraud protections, 125 are Democrats and 61 are Republicans.

In the Senate, 25 senators’ campaign donation websites were found to lack basic credit card protections; four are Republicans, 20 are Democrats, and one is an Independent.

The Government Accountability Institute report, titled America the Vulnerable: Are Foreign and Fraudulent Online Contributions Influencing U.S. Elections?, also investigated the donation websites of the two major presidential candidates. Gov. Mitt Romney’s website requires donors to enter the credit card security code. President Barack Obama’s website does not.

“Here’s the good news: it’s a one click solution,” says Schweizer. “Federal candidates simply need to tell their webmasters to do the right thing and turn on CVV protection. The FEC should also require candidates to use basic anti-fraud protection and make publicly available all campaign donations, including those under $200 that are currently kept private.”

To find out if your senator or congressperson is vulnerable to foreign or fraudulent online donations, visit the Government Accountability Institute’s interactive map at www.campaignfundingrisks.com.

Via: Breitbart

Obama launches pre-emptive strike ahead of Romney’s foreign policy speech

LEXINGTON, Va. — President Obama’s re-election campaign on Monday launched a pre-emptive strike ahead of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s planned foreign policy address, arguing that Mr. Romney has failed the the commander-in-chief test on the global stage — in part by staking out positions to the right of former President George W. Bush.

The Obama camp released a new television advertisement and issued a memo on Monday criticizing Mr. Romney’s bumpy overseas trip this summer as well as his response to the assaults on the U.S. diplomatic post in Libya — highlighting how a national security adviser to GOP Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign called Mr. Romney’s stance on Libya the “the worst possible reaction."

Mr. Romney is set to give a broad-scale attack on Mr. Obama’s handling of foreign policy and national security issues in a speech this morning here at the Virginia Military Institute.

In the memo, two former top Obama national security advisers — Michele Flournoy and Colin Kahl — say the former Massachusetts governor’s “latest effort to reboot and re-set the Romney foreign policy” cannot hide the fact that he pushes positions “outside of the mainstream and often to the right of even George W. Bush.”

That, they say, is not surprising because Mr. Romney has surrounded himself with the same ex-Bush advisers who embraced what they called the “with-us-or-against-us approach” that led to “some of the worst foreign policy failures in American history, including the Iraq War.”

The Obama camp also challenged Mr. Romney “to move beyond swagger and slogans” and spell out how exactly his foreign policy approach would differ from the current occupant of the White House.

Via: Washington Times

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Conservative Happenings

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

IBD/TIPP Poll: Romney Jumps To 5-Point Lead Over Obama, 48% – 43%…

Issa Calls For Classified Briefing On Libya Intel

GAI RESPONDS TO OBAMA 'FACT CHECK' OF FRAUDULENT DONATIONS REPORT

Hillary Throws Obama Under The Benghazi Bus?

No White House Press Briefing in Last 15 Days

The Uncharitable Joe Biden: Better at Giving Away Your Money Than His

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

LEAVE ME ALONE OBAMA

More In Big Bird

WSJ Economist: No Grounds for Obama's Tax on Wealthy

Claire McCaskill Camp Rocked By Shocking Allegations

Olive Garden And Red Lobster To Cut Workers Hours In Advance Of Obamacare…

Prepping for Obamacare, Chain Cuts Workers' Hours

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Report: NY, NJ, CA Worst Business Tax Climates

Ouch: Ann Romney Compares Obama To A Petulant Child For His Post-Debate Temper Tantrum…

REPORT: NEARLY HALF OF CONGRESS VULNERABLE TO FRAUDULENT, FOREIGN ONLINE DONATIONS

Obama launches pre-emptive strike ahead of Romney’s foreign policy speech

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