New Poll: Santorum leads Romney by 9

Rick Santorum has opened up a 9 point lead over Mitt Romney in a new national Quinnipiac University poll, 35% to 26%.  Gingrich is in third place with 14% and Paul is in fourth with 11%.  In a head-to-head contest, Santorum now leads Romney by 13 points, 50% to 37%. 

If there is no clear leader by the convention, Republicans say they would prefer the convention pick New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as their top choice (32%), followed by Sarah Palin and Jeb Bush (20% each), and Mitch Daniels (15%).

Santorum’s comments about birth control and women in combat apparently have not hurt him among Republican women.  He continues to obtain about the same level of support among Republican women as men.

Read the full poll results here: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1708

New 2012 election projections

Election Projection (EP) has updated its forecast for the 2012 election.  As of February 20^th, EP projects Obama will win re-election with 332 electoral votes (270 needed to win).  Republicans will pick up seats in the Senate with an equal division of the seats between Democrats (49 + 1 Independent who caucuses with the Democrats) and 50 Republicans.  EP says Republicans will retain the House with 243 seats to 192 for the Democrats.  See the chart below and additional information at: http://www.electionprojection.com/blog/

Republicans attack women. Pure and simple.

Daily Kos reports:

For the second day in a row, the Virginia House of Delegates has postponed a vote on the controversial legislation that would require women seeking an abortion to have an invasive, trans-vaginal ultrasound. After hundreds of Virginians lined the streets around the capitol in silent protest yesterday, the House postponed the vote until today.

But the controversy over the legislation, and perhaps the fear that they might just be overreaching on this one, led to another postponement.


Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/21/1067077/-Controversial-abortion-bill-vote-postponed-in-Virginia-nbsp-House?via=search

I want you to fully understand what the Republicans are demanding.  They want to pass a law that if a woman and her doctor decide she needs an abortion for whatever reason she will be forced against her will to undergo an invasive procedure.  What it exactly is that procedure.  Here is a graphic picture.  


This law is an attack on women.  Period.  No woman should tolerate and no man who loves any woman should tolerate it.  

Roosevelt got it right-Listen to him

He warned us long ago.  We should listen to him today.  Roosevelt warned us that Republicans would profess their commitment to Social Security and other programs Americans love.  But, said Roosevelt, we should be careful.  The grass they grow with their professed belief in the social safety net might be just hiding a big, ugly snake.  Watch and learn below or at this link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SUZGkNAUSvY

Let’s enact a “Womanhood Amendment”

Republicans love amendments, personhood amendments to define when life begins, religious liberty amendments to prevent the evil Obama administration from forcing employers to insure preventive care, marriage amendments to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, and so on.  They usually argue that these amendments are needed to protect individuals from the tyranny of the state.  Well, here is an individual rights amendment I propose.  It call it the Womanhood Amendment.  It goes like this:

Womanhood Amendment:

Every woman resident in the United States shall have the sole right to determine to what use her body may be put regardless of any other law or statute to the contrary.

Now, that should be an individual rights amendment we can all get behind.

What do you say?

Understanding the stimulus

Here is the truth:  The stimulus worked.  Without it unemployment would have reached much higher levels and we would not be in recovery.

Rebecca Thiess at the Economic Policy Institute took at look at the impact of the stimulus on the three-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  She notes that the U.S. economy was in major trouble in the fourth quarter of 2008.  Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was declining at an annual rate of 8.9 percent.  Job losses were skyrocketing and unemployment was on its way to 12% or higher.

In February 2009, Obama and the Democrats passed the ARRA.  At that point, things began to change.  Slowly, much too slowly for many, the decline stopped or slowed and America began to recover.  Here are the facts:

• In the second quarter of 2009—the first full quarter after the stimulus was passed—GDP declined at a much slower pace (0.7 percent), and growth resumed in the third quarter;
• Job losses slowed dramatically throughout 2009 and the economy started adding jobs in early 2010; and
• Private sector layoffs, which had peaked in Feb. 2009, began a rapid decline and returned to pre-recession levels by early Feb. 2010.

So, what the Republicans say is not true.  The stimulus worked.  But, why didn’t it work better or faster?  Thiess cites an explanation Josh Bivens offered in the form of a metaphor.

 “The unemployment rate without the Recovery Act would have reached nearly 12%, not the 9% foreseen by the Obama administration. A good metaphor for this controversy is the temperature in a log cabin on a cold winter’s night. Say that the weather forecast is for the temperature to reach 30 degrees Fahrenheit. To stay warm, you decide to burn three logs in the fireplace. You do the math (and chemistry) and calculate that burning these three logs will generate enough heat to bring the inside of the cabin to 50 degrees, or 20 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature.

But the forecast is wrong—and instead temperatures plummet to 10 degrees outside and burning the logs only results in a cabin temperature of 30 degrees. Has log burning failed as a strategy to generate heat? Of course not. Has your estimate of the effectiveness of log burning been wildly wrong? Nope—it was exactly right—it added 20 degrees to the ambient temperature. The only lesson from this one is a simple one: since the weather turned out worse than expected, you need more logs.”

In short, the stimulus didn’t fail.  It did just what it was supposed to do.  The only problem with the stimulus is that few people realized in early 2009 just how bad economic conditions were, so when the Republicans fought to keep the stimulus under a trillion dollars (they wanted none at all), the Democrats ultimately gave in.  They accepted a smaller stimulus believing that it would probably be enough.   They agreed to put just three logs on the fire to warm the economy.  The economy really needed six or nine.  So, we didn’t freeze to death as we might have without the stimulus logs but we didn’t get toasty warm, fast as we had hoped.  The stimulus was enough to knock the chill off the economy.  Now the extremely cold economy seems to be warming.  We will get there.  The stimulus worked.  It would have worked faster and better if it had been larger.  And, it probably would have been larger accept for Republican opposition.

Read more here:

http://www.epi.org/blog/recovery-act-evidence-success-three-year-anniversary/

Republican attacks on women MUST stop NOW

We have another instance in which radical Republican state legislatures are seeking to deny women basic human rights.  This time it is the Republicans who control the Virginia state legislature. 

The Republican controlled Virginia state legislature is expected to pass and the conservative Republican governor is expected to sign a law that will require women seeking an abortion to undergo a procedure in which a vaginal ultrasonic probe is inserted in their body against their will in an effort to dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies. Republicans are hailing this as "an update to the state's existing informed consent laws using the most advanced medical technology available."

Virginia State Representative Todd Gilbert expressed what is obviously the viewpoint of most Republican legislators.  He diminished the gravity of a woman’s decision to have an abortion saying, "in the vast majority of these cases, these are matters of lifestyle convenience."

This is beyond disgusting. 

Read about this attack on Virginia women here:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/va-house-gop-muscles-abortion-curbs-15603949?page=2#.Tz7UkPGww4Y

Another forecasting model predicts Obama victory

A new presidential election forecasting model developed by Yahoo Labs economists Patrick Hummel and David Rothschild predicts that Obama will win the election with 303 electoral votes to 235 for his Republican opponent.  The model assumes:

•  Obama’s approval rating will stay the same between now and mid-June,
• Each of the 50 states will report personal income growth that is average for an election year, and
• Certain key indicators of state ideology will remain unchanged this year.

The models developers note that the model’s estimate “may be a conservative estimate for Obama, because January's economic indicators suggest that the states are likely to experience greater-than-average income growth in the first quarter.”

They also note that “a key finding of the model is that economic trends—whether things are getting better or worse than they were a month ago—are more meaningful than the level state of the economy. In other words, whether the unemployment rate is increasing or decreasing is more important than what the unemployment rate actually is.”

See the state-by-state projections below or at the link.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/obama-poised-win-2012-election-303-electoral-votes-202543583.html#more-id

American voters may be turning AGAINST Republicans

A new national poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner February 11-14 for Democracy Corps and Women’s voices is loaded with BAD NEWS for republicans. The behavior of Republicans in Congress since 2010 and on the campaign trail appears to have significantly damaged the Republican brand in the eyes of key voting groups—independents, seniors, and unmarried women.

Here is a sampling of the findings:

• The percentage of voters identifying themselves as Democrats is up 7% since just last November.
• Half of all voters now give the Republican party a negative rating due to a dramatic shift in the opinions of seniors and independents.  Both of these groups now view the Republican Party negatively.
• 68% of voters now say they DISAPPROVE of Republicans in Congress—a 22% jump in disapproval over the last year.  The change is driven largely by a shift in the opinions of suburban voters, seniors and independents from approval to disapproval.
• The majority of voters give Romney a NEGATIVE rating, including independents. Less than half of Republicans now rate Romney positively.  Rick Santorum performs only slightly better.
• Obama has made significant gains among unmarried women, younger voters and minorities, the so-called “Rising American Electorate.”  This group was important in the 2008 election but drifted away from Democrats in 2010.  They now appear to be returning to the Democratic Party driven largely by the resurgence of support among unmarried women for Democrats.  Democrats are also making significant gains among seniors but are still having some problem with re-engaging young voters and Hispanics at 2008 levels.

You can read more results from this poll by going to the following links:

http://www.democracycorps.com/strategy/2012/02/new-phase-and-shifting-balance/

http://www.democracycorps.com/wp-content/files/February-National-Memo.pdf

http://www.democracycorps.com/wp-content/files/February-National-FQ.pdf

http://www.democracycorps.com/wp-content/files/February-National-Graphs.pdf

More good news on jobs and the economy

Several pieces of good news about jobs and the economy have been released in the last few days:

• The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment benefits reached its lowest level since March 2008. 
• The business activity index of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank jumped from 7.2 to 10.2 on a sharp increased in factory orders and shipments.  Hours worked by existing employees increased indicating increased demand that, if sustained, should translate into additional hiring.
• The Commerce Department reported that housing starts rose 1.5% in January, beating economists’ estimates.

Jim Awad, managing director of Zephyr Management in New York said of the new numbers: “"Everything is stronger than expected. Barring any unforeseen problems from Europe it appears we're in a self-sustaining cycle of growth.”

Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania added "The numbers add to the belief that the economy is shifting gears. There is just no number that is giving us a whole lot of trouble, except for consumer spending."

This set of new numbers may signal that February will be another month of jobs gains with the possibility that the national unemployment rate will fall under the current 8.3% rate.  Let’s hope that is the case.

The improving economy/job picture is causing real problems for Republicans who bet the election on high unemployment and an economy in or near a second recession.  One of the reasons we are seeing Republicans latch on to the contraception/religious freedom controversy may be that they hope to shift the election debate away from jobs and the economy onto what they think will be a more winnable topic—religious freedom.  Democrats must make the argument about contraception, not religious freedom, if they are to avoid losing ground they are gaining from the positive job/economy news.

Read more here:

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-usa-economy-idUSTRE7BM0AB20120216