If this poll is right, it's Panic Time At The Obama Disco.

Two-thirds of likely voters say the weak economy is WashingtonÂ’s fault, and more blame President Obama than anybody else, according to a new poll for The Hill.

It found that 66 percent believe paltry job growth and slow economic recovery is the result of bad policy. Thirty-four percent say Obama is the most to blame, followed by 23 percent who say Congress is the culprit. Twenty percent point the finger at Wall Street, and 18 percent cite former President George W. Bush.

...

Obama’s campaign, under the slogan “Forward,” has sought to steer voter attention less toward current and past economic performance and more toward questions about Republican Mitt Romney’s work in the private sector economy. It has launched attacks on the challenger’s role as head of the private equity firm Bain Capital, casting him as a jobs “outsourcer” whose firm shipped thousands of U.S. positions overseas.

The Hill Poll, however, shows the extent to which voters hold Obama responsible for the economy and reveals his vulnerability should the election become primarily a referendum on his economic management.

Obama, for obvious reasons, wants the election to be a choice between him and Romney, not a referendum on his administrations record to date. Clearly that's not happening.

Of course, if it comes to a choice election, Romney is likely ok with that too.

By more than 2-1, 63%-29%, those surveyed say Romney's background in business, including his tenure at the private equity firm Bain Capital, would cause him to make good decisions, not bad ones, in dealing with the nation's economic problems over the next four years.

The findings raise questions about Obama's strategy of targeting Bain's record in outsourcing jobs and hammering Romney for refusing to commit to releasing more than two years of his tax returns. Instead, Americans seem focused on the economy, where disappointment with the fragile recovery and the 8.2% unemployment rate are costing the president.

This is getting ugly for Obama in a hurry (and beautiful for Romney). Of course, it's just the end of July, so no celebrating yet.

Related: If you're interested in keeping track of the electoral college race...there's an ap for that! more...

Posted by: DrewM at 11:21 AM | Comments (308)
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Per Survey USA's latest release, President Obama's lead has been halved, down to just 46-40 over Mitt Romney.

So Mitt can carry the one state that Reagan lost in 1984? more...

Posted by: CAC at 10:20 AM | Comments (46)
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This scam first caught my attention a couple of weeks ago via a report out of Cleveland.

A myth that President Obama is giving people money to pay their bills has prompted thousands of people across the country to try to pay for utilities, phone service and loans using bogus bank routing numbers.

United Way of Cleveland's 2-1-1 changed its answering machine Monday to say rumors of the Obama program were false after fielding dozens of calls.

Later that day, a United Way employee was on an RTA bus when a rider stood up and announced to fellow passengers that Obama was paying people's bills.

Apparently now this scam has moved east and to the shock of nobody, some dopes in New Jersey are falling prey. I'm entitled to call them dopes since I live among them.

The scam began on the West Coast in May or possibly earlier, and then quickly moved east.

The hook — cast through phone calls, e-mails and text messages — was the same. The federal government, in a new stimulus plan, would pay that month’s utility bill. To apply, all a customer needed to do was provide a Social Security number and their own bank routing code.

None of it was true. It was just an identity theft sting aimed at stealing personal information. Plenty of people, though, took the bait.

In Louisiana and Texas, Entergy Corp. reported about 2,000 of its customers were conned. Other power companies that cover Tampa, Fla., the Carolinas, parts of Mississippi and several Midwestern states also reported hundreds more being taken in by the phony offer.

But nowhere in the nation was the scam apparently more effective than in New Jersey.

It seems this really sophisticated scheme involving asking for a Social Security number is something new to the folks around here. On the upside, the primary local provider, PSE&G, is kindly reminding any idiots who fell for this that they still have to pay their gas bills. But they've got their work cut out for them since there's no shortage of stupidity in these parts.

Officials at Public Service Electric & Gas Co., the state’s largest utility, said more than 10,000 customers were taken in after news of the "free" utility bill payment program quickly spread — not by the still unknown scammers, but by customers themselves, eager to share their good fortune.

It's really difficult to imagine where people may have gotten the notion that Dear Leader was going to be paying their bills.
more...

Posted by: Guest Blogger at 09:25 AM | Comments (418)
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Remember Washington Post writer Jason Horowitz and the discredited "Romney hates teh gheys because he cut some kids hair in high school" story? Instead of firing him for that piece, the Post has apparently made him their go-to Romney biographer.

In today's installment of The Life of Mitt we learn a number of things....

First, Romney is a Mormon (bet you didn't know that) and that's he's actually traveled and done business around the world.

Romney, fond though he is of singing “America the Beautiful” and describing the “special gift” of his nationality, is, himself, no stranger to the wider world. His 21 / 2-year mission to France shaped his Mormonism. The internationalism at Harvard accented his education. His foreign travel as a young consultant, the early Central American investment in Bain Capital and the windfall he received from deals in Italy all boosted his signature business. He uses his chairmanship of the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, literally the world’s games, as Exhibit A to make his case as a turnaround artist.

Of course that's supposed to make the hick tea party types worried about him or something. But don't think he'll appeal to Obama's cosmopolitan elite base, no sir! No chance of that.

This week, Romney is to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies in London and make stops in Israel and Poland. The trip offers him a platform to highlight his extensive travel as a salesman of American-centric beliefs, but it also serves as a reminder that the world has curved RomneyÂ’s trajectory

"American-centric beliefs"? Can't say I've ever heard that phrase before. I guess I naturally figured anyone running for President would have beliefs that were shaped by being an American and fit with traditional American values. Apparently this is a separate thing only Mitt has. At the risk of being a racist I must ask, where are Obama's beliefs centered?

But don't get hung up on that because BREAKING: Mitt's a Mormon who speaks a little French. Of course all he knows is memorized bits of Mormon (he is a Mormon you know) theology. And for fun, our man at the Post quote a random bit that might just, accidentally of course, remind people Mormons are a little different than traditional US Christians.

Romney arrived in July 1966, learning the language in a Normandy class that emphasized the memorization of French along with proselytizing conversation and reciting of Joseph SmithÂ’s 13 Articles of Faith (“10: Zion (the new Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent . . .”).

I wonder why Horowitz picked that Article and not say, numbers 1, 3 or 13?

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

3. We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Just a coincidence that he picked out one of the most, um, unusual, articles of the faith.

There's more, it's a long piece, but you get the gist.

Of course there's nothing wrong with biography pieces on candidates but the four web-pages worth of information on Romney in this one article is far more than we heard about Obama's college years (except for unquestioned, cherry-picked quotes from his books) and certainly more than we heard about the beliefs of Reverend Wright.

I keep coming back to this notion of Romney's "American-centric beliefs". If that's so noteworthy to Horowitz, we're left to wonder (being racists) where Obama's beliefs come from and why they aren't the subject of such a long and inquisitive story.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:37 AM | Comments (204)
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And if it wasn't the tea party, it was some other rightwing nutjob! /MFM

Gabe posted the following on Twitter this morning, and, to be honest, I'd forgotten about half of them.

FLASHBACK: when Dr. Amy Bishop shot her colleagues, the Left speculated that she was a Tea Partier. In fact, she was an Obama donor.

FLASHBACK: Discovery Channel hostage-taker was supposedly a climate change denier. In fact, he was an enviroweenie, D.Channel intern.

FLASHBACK: the census-taker was supposedly hanged by extremist anti-tax Tea Partiers. In fact, he hanged himself.

FLASHBACK: the Times Square Bomber was speculated to be upset about [Health Care Reform]. In fact, he was jihadi scum.

FLASHBACK: the guy who flew his plane into the IRS in TX was supposedly a Tea Partier. In fact, he quoted from the Communist Manifesto.

FLASHBACK: the guy who was stabbing NYC cabbies was supposedly an anti-Ground Zero Mosque Tea Partier. In fact, he supported the GZM.

FLASHBACK: the Pentagon shooter was supposedly a Tea Party extremist. In fact, he was a 9/11 Truther.

FLASHBACK: when the Ft. Hood shooting happened, the Left speculated that it was a “RWNJ.” In fact, it was a Muslim nutjob.

FLASHBACK: When the Tucson shooting occurred, it was immediately blamed on Tea Party rhetoric. In fact, Loughner was a-political & insane.

Is it just me, or is it odd that the media's go-to suspect in these things is always, always on the conservative side of the political spectrum. It's almost like they have an agenda or something.

Posted by: andy at 07:32 AM | Comments (269)
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The President of the NCAA, Mark Emmert, is giving a press conference right now.

You can watch the press conference here.
[Update: Press conference is over]

The penalties are as follows:
1. A 60 million dollar fine against Penn State. That money will be used to help fund child sexual abuse programs. For context, 60 million dollars is roughly one year's profits for Penn State's football program. Also, college money is fungible, so this might come at the expense of academic departments.
2. Penn State is banned from participating in Bowl games for four years.
3. Penn State has to reduce 10 initial and 20 total scholarships for each year over the next four years.
4. Any current player or incoming athlete can transfer without penalty. Emmert also announced that any scholarship athletes that don't want to play for Penn State can stay at school with full scholarship. (h/t Jeff Emanuel)
5. All wins from 1998 to 2011 will be vacated.

I wish Joe Paterno had lived long enough to see this.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:22 AM | Comments (462)
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Happy Monday.

Democrats in the House aren't playing nicely with each other. Quite a few are refusing to pony up cash for the DCCC and don't really care about Pelosi's attempt to shame them into contributing.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is seeking to reassert itself now that the U.S. has withdrawn. Yesterday was the deadliest day this year---93 killed in bombings across 13 cities and towns.

US Airways has reacted to a new, supposedly pro-traveler Department of Transportation requirement that they print on tickets the allowance and cost of interlining baggage by simply stopping interlining when passengers have been ticketed for different legs of their journey on different tickets. This means that, for passengers using separate airlines for separate legs of a journey, passengers will have to collect their bags from baggage check, re-check them on the next leg, and then go through security again.

Science! Energy-efficient CFL's can harm human skin.

A riot broke out in Anaheim yesterday after officers shot and killed an unarmed man. The police are being rather tight-lipped about what occurred. Community members say the man was shot in the back as he ran from officers.

Egypt has lifted its five-year blockade of Gaza, allowing Palestinians unrestricted travel back and forth across the border.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (260)
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The Top 150 Conservative Websites - July 2012

As determined by their Alexa traffic rankings. Here are just the top 20. 

And AoSHQ (and the other mu.nu ilk) aren't too far down either:

Not too shabby.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 04:47 PM | Comments (702)
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Dismal earnings, lowest since 2008, point to recession.

While this quarter's earnings reports have crossed a substantially lowered profit bar, future expectations through the year indicate a recession could be on the way.

Estimates for the third and fourth quarters have been dropped to levels not seen since the days of the 2008 financial crisis, below even the muted 2 percent expected level of inflation.

That's an ominous recession sign for an economy that has barely managed to attain positive growth this year even with the strong level of earnings beats, according to an analysis by Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx in New York.

Nouriel Roubini says "we're not even close to a robust recovery." Was that just a nice way of saying we're headed toward recession? You know, like "I'm not even close to losing weight" kind of means I'm eating chocolate eclairs like there's no tomorrow? How about any recovery?

The reality is the opposite: For several reasons, growth will slow further in the second half of 2012 and be even lower in 2013—close to stall speed. First, growth in the second quarter has decelerated from a mediocre 1.8 percent in January-March, as job creation—averaging 70,000 a month—fell sharply.

I know almost nothing about economics, but the idea of printing money doesn't sound good because... printing money. (If that link fails, you can get to the article from Drudge's "third round of pumping" link.) And it seems like it would be especially painful for those on fixed incomes, since it makes their money worth less. Right? And we've already tried that anyway. A couple of times. What would be the point now? Maybe some of our resident econ whizes would care to explain.

Follow me on Twitter.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 03:53 PM | Comments (159)
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Totalitarian homunculus Michael Bloomberg can't stop yammering about it.

Bloomberg applied pressure on the presidential candidates two days after a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. using an assault rifle and other semiautomatic weapons. Both Obama and Romney have muted their campaign rhetoric since the shooting spree and offered condolences to the victimsÂ’ families.

“Expressing sympathy is nice ... but somebody’s got to do something about this,” Bloomberg said. “And this requires, particularly in a presidential year, the candidates for president of the United States to stand up and once and for all say, yes, they feel terrible. Yes, it’s a tragedy. Yes, we have great sympathy for the families, but it’s time for this country to do something. And that’s the job of the president of the United States.”

Jesse Jackson sounded off less than a day after the shootings. Dianne Feinstein said that during an election year "it's a bad time to embrace a new subject." Election year? More like right now is a bad time. Howard Kurtz pointed out how troubling it is to turn the atrocity into ideological fodder so soon--while victims are still being treated.

Regardless, some apparently feel it is appropriate. CNN's Candy Crowley pressed John McCain, who stated what should be obvious: Stricter gun control laws will not deter determined lunatics. The Norway killer, Anders Breivik, for example, was able to acquire weapons and carry out mass slaughter in a country with very tight laws. Crowly continued, though, framing her questions in a way that assumed the reasonableness of gun control. (Video below the fold.) Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, took a similar position: "“I’m not sure there is any way in a free society to be able” to stop a deranged individual from assembling a deadly arsenal . . . ."

The Wall Street Journal asks how a free society protects itself from a twisted mind and concludes there is no real defense other than law enforcement and community.

The much harder question is how a free society protects itself from a twisted mind. Families, educators and medical professionals need to be aware of the behavior that might signal psychotic breaks of the kind that tormented Loughner. In the case of Breivik, simple evil seems to suffice as an explanation. (See Sohrab Ahmari's account of his trial nearby.)

A civilized modern society is paradoxically more vulnerable to an act of individual malevolence than it is to a terror plot that at least its law enforcers are watching for. There may be no real defense against the Loughners and Holmeses save for the guardrails of watchful friends, family and community. And society's determination through its justice system to suitably punish the killers.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 01:22 PM | Comments (334)
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