PoliticalDog101.com

jamesb101 — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:29:32 +0000

Here’s one guess …..

Or…

Could you call it a suggestion for the President’s handlers?…

Kevin Drum: “My guess: the flip-flopper charge probably won’t get much traction. It’s mostly a problem for conservatives, who don’t fully trust that Romney is one of them, but by the time summer rolls around they’re going to be his most fire-breathing supporters. They’ll have long since decided to forgive and forget, and independents won’t care that much in the first place as long as Romney seems halfway reasonable in his current incarnation. It’s possible that Obama can do both — Romney is a flip-flopper and a right-wing nutcase! — but if he has to choose, my guess is that he should forget about the flip-flopping and simply do everything he can to force Romney into the wingnut conservative camp. That’ll be his big weakness when Labor Day rolls around.”

Politicalwire….

This Post is from Politicaldog101.com….

Newt and Company get a little racist….

jamesb101 — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:22:42 +0000

First the kids cleaning their schools comment….

Now….. Running as low as fourth in New Hampshire polls…

Newton ‘Newt’ Gingrich comes out with THIS wiseassed crack….

The guy needs to go home…..

Rick Santorum seems to be NOT much better…..

Mentioning something about ‘people giving blacks money’……

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday he is willing to go before the NAACP and urge blacks to demand paychecks, not food stamps.

Gingrich told a town hall meeting at a senior center in Plymouth, N.H., that if the NAACP invites him to its annual convention this year, he’d go there and talk about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

He also said he’d pitch a new Social Security program aimed at helping young people, particularly African-American males, who he said get the smallest return on Social Security.

Gingrich routinely lambasts President Barack Obama as the “best food stamp president in American history.” He also has spoken previously about welcoming an invitation from the NAACP to speak and has been critical of GOP candidates who have not accepted such an invitation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had no immediate comment on Gingrich’s remarks. His campaign spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said the former Georgia congressman has often said the GOP needs to be inclusive of all Americans.

“He has said since he became a presidential candidate that any Republican should always accept an invitation to speak to the NAACP on any topic,” Hammond said.

Gingrich’s comments follow those by rival candidate Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania who said Sunday that he did not want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

Santorum’s comments were criticized by National Urban League President Marc H. Morial as pandering to racist elements within the GOP. Morial also said that 70 percent of people on food stamps are white. The Agriculture Department does not break down food stamp participation rates by race…..

More…

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One World Trade Center ….December 2011…..

jamesb101 — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:17:36 +0000

Photo from Wiki.….

For an excellent photo History of the construction of One Wotld Trade Center click Here.….

This Post from Politicaldog101.Com…..

A word or two about polling …

jamesb101 — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 23:11:25 +0000

by DemFromCT Follow @ Daily Kos….

Every few years as we get into the election season, we see more polls and much more commentary about the polls. So, from my vantage point of poll watching, I wanted to address a few things I see turning up with frequency in the many comments here. Most of this material is readily available on line, with some expert advice thrown in.

Are weekend polls accurate?

Gallup’s Presidential approval tracker (three day rolling average, MoE plus/minus 3) had had a mini-bump for Obama lately, and on one occasion when I posted on it, the question about whether a weekend Gallup was different than a weekday poll came up, as it has over the years. This story, looking at weekend bias, dates back to 2006:

Democrat Jim Webb has taken the lead over Sen. George Allen of Virginia, according to a pre-election poll released on Tuesday. Allen’s polling consultant rejected the latest results: “Any survey conducted Fridays and Saturdays, everybody knows they’re skewed toward Democrats.” Similar claims have surfaced in news reports about polling data since at least as far back as 2000. What’s so suspicious about weekend polls?…While it’s a common claim that weekend polls favor the Democrats, there isn’t much hard evidence to support that idea. One of the best studies of this question was conducted by two polling experts at ABC News. Gary Langer and Daniel Merkle looked at the data from ABC’s tracking polls for the last three presidential elections. They compared results from people reached on Sunday through Thursday with those reached on Friday and Saturday and found no difference. Among the Sunday-to-Thursday people polled in 2004, 49 percent supported Bush and 46 percent supported Kerry. Polls of the stay-at-home, Friday-to-Saturday crowd produced similar numbers—48 and 46.

Mark Blumenthal had posted on Gallup in 2008 (Day-of-Week Effect in Gallup Daily?) and at that time Gallup’s Jeff Jones responded:

The possibility of a day of the week effect has come up in relation to prior Gallup tracking data, such as for the 1996 and 2000 elections. We carefully examined those data for evidence of such an effect, and did not find anything to suggest a systematic effect.

Mark updated his thoughts for us:

I have not seen any studies showing solid evidence of a weekend effect that would counter the Langer-Merkle findings, but that doesn’t mean no such evidence exists, and it may say more about a lack of studies than a lack of evidence. It is possible that awhile interviews conducted over a weekend create no partisan skew, they do skew other important characteristics or attitudes in ways that pollsters’ standard demographic weighting fails to correct.—Mark Blumenthal

Is primary polling accurate?

Harry J. Enten

Stats guru Harry J. Enten(I love the name of the blog: margin of error) looked at this past week’s Iowa entries and liked what he saw:

The 12/29-30 Selzer & Co. poll found Mitt Romney leading with 24%, Rick Santorum in second with 21%, and Ron Paul in third with 18%. This poll was the only one to correctly forecast first, second, and third place. It was the most accurate in predicting the spread between Santorum and Paul, and second most accurate in estimating the spread between Romney and Santorum.Overall, the 12/29-30 Selzer & Co. poll was the “most accurate” Iowa poll employing ARG’s Martin, Traugott, and Kennedy measure of pollster accuracy. This is not to say that Selzer & Co.’s full four-day (12/27-30) sample should not also be scored. The fact is that it was published as the “main” poll, but I think it’s necessary to point out that the two-day sample was quite accurate.

The Santorum surge was not a surprise… we wrote about it based on the Selzer/Des Moines Register poll two day sample. That isn’t a pat on the back, it’s to make a point: the polling isn’t always right, but it usually is pretty good, and it’s often more accurate than our predictions of what voters will do in a given state based on our biases.And that means that those suggesting Romney can’t win South Carolina or that Santorum’s surge will carry the day because of the evangelical vote needs to look at the polls and see if that’s supported by the data.

Do we have all the data?

We never do. Charlie Cook’s made the point for some time that candidate-driven polling (at least the well-funded national candidates) often have fresher, more detailed and sometimes more accurate data than we have. That doesn’t mean you should accept on face value campaign released polls. That might be the bit of good news released to drive a story while they hold tight onto the large portion of bad news.

Nonetheless, at least pay attention to references to ‘internal polls’ and match them to what we know. In Iowa, there were such references to dropping Ron Paul and Gingrich numbers, which proved to be the case.

At the same time, most media outlets prefer to look only at their own polls, at least on the day of release, so remember to look at them all, weigh their track records, see who they polled, and remember to go back to basics (see 20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results.)

Do these things, and there’ll be a lot less surprises on election day.

This Post from Politicaldog101.Com…..

Hundreds of ideas on how the executive branch can create jobs without Congressional action…..

jamesb101 — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:29:54 +0000

byChris Bowers @Daily Kos…..

As the White House kicks off its national campaign to get Congress to pass modest job creation legislation, we are continuing our brainstorming sessionto develop a comprehensive list of ways the White House can create jobs and otherwise improve the national economy without any congressional action whatsoever. After all, even in the unlikely event that Congress passes meaningful legislation to create jobs, our economic crisis remains so acute that all available paths to recovery must be exhausted.So far, the Daily Kos community has submitted hundreds of ideas in the comments of our campaign kickoff post yesterday, and also through our online submission form. If you thought the executive branch had only limited options to improve the economy without Congress, you might change your mind after taking a look at what has been proposed.

Here is one idea:

Require all federal purchases down to pens and toilet seats be of products made in the USA by union labor.

There were a lot of variations on this call to buy American. Hiring American was one of them:

Any bases overseas… must have all services fulfilled by US personnel.

Another common plan was to end the wars, and then use the defense budget to spend more money in America:

Use the defense budget to pay for domestic transportation repairs, since the troops need highways and bridges. How are we going to move equipment around the country to meet defense needs if our bridges are crumbling?

It can certainly be argued that or power grid is susceptible to attack. Use the ample defense funds to upgrade our power grid with diversified solar and wind farms and a smart power distribution network.

There were also many proposals to use executive powers to expand investments into green jobs:

Use the EPA to crack down on CO2. That will get banks (sitting on $4 trillion in idle cash) to loan to utilities to invest in green jobs. Details.

Here is a particularly concrete example of what can be done to create green jobs:

Direct the federal power agencies, Bonneville and Tennessee Valley, to work with their electric utilities to develop a no-down-payment home weatherization and efficiency program with initial loan to be repaid on monthly utility bill.

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From Politicaldog101…..

10 Years after 9/11 2001….New York City and the World will remember…..

jamesb101 — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:24:11 +0000

It is with a heavy heart that I will get thru September 11, 2011…

For I knew personally some of the people who did not come home from that days events…

For that day 10 years ago my job was to comfort the children on the people who worked in New York City…

On that day my contribution was to assure those worried that their children were in a safe place….

I am happy to One World Trade Center rebuilt….

I spent passing time in the old one….

I pass on my prays to people who lost loved ones on that day in threelocations in America…

I pray for strength for the people who have to live with their loses…

And I hope that while some of us may complain about the coasts…

I can only hope that our Government and it’s actor will spare nothing to do what ever they can to make sure that

NOTHING

like this will EVER happen again….

Amen…..

The Dog…..

From the New York Times…..

By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL

New York City will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a ceremony at the World Trade Center site on Sunday, when the nation pauses to grieve for the dead and reflect on the decade since terrorists toppled the Twin Towers, damaged the Pentagon and crashed a jetliner in rural Pennsylvania.

President Barack Obama and his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, will be among the eight current or former elected officials to deliver readings at the ceremony, which is set to begin at 8:35 a.m. with the sound of bagpipes and drummers. Mr. Obama, the first sitting president to attend the annual ceremony, gave the green light earlier this year for the military mission that killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the deadliest foreign attack on American soil.

While most of the attention will focus on New York’s ceremony, there will also be events at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, plus many smaller observances in communities across the country, from a stair climb in Seattle to a 9/11 memorial dedication in Sarasota, Fla.

On Saturday in Shanksville, Pa., the 40 passengers and crew who fought back against their hijackers aboard Flight 93 before it crashed on Sept. 11 were honored for their heroism in a ceremony dedicating the first phase of a memorial at the nation’s newest national park, the Associated Press reported.

The hijackers intended to crash the plane in Washington but “never made it because of the determination and valor of the passengers and crew of Flight 93, that plane crashed in this field, less than 20 minutes by air” from the target, said Jon Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, according to the AP.

Vice President Joe Biden and former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were among those attending the Shanksville event, the AP said.

The 10th anniversary also marks the official opening of the National September 11 Memorial—twin reflecting pools that sit within the footprints of the Twin Towers and feature bronze panels on which the names of the dead are inscribed. A 9/11 museum is scheduled to open at the World Trade Center site next September.

“As we reflect back on the past, let us remember not only the agony and anguish of the attacks but how we channeled our pain into something positive and powerful,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday in a speech about the rebirth of Lower Manhattan. “Let us remember not only how the towers fell, but how we rose up—determined to defend our freedoms.”

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From Politicaldo101…..

Photo Source…theharrowgroup.com

Hurricane Irene moves thru Washington DC….

jamesb101 — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:27:17 +0000

From The Washington Post…. The leading edge of Hurricane Irene moved into the Washington region Saturday morning, several hours after the storm made landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina just after dawn. Beginning with gusting winds and light showers, the brunt of the storm was expected to pass through the area overnight and into Sunday morning. It reached land as a Category 1 hurricane, downgraded a notch from the greater force it gathered over the open Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center reported at 2 p.m. that Irene’s maximum sustained winds were 85 mph. It is expected to grind north over the coastal states on a course that will take it through Maine and eastern Canada before the arctic chill forces its warm moisture to make a right turn into the Atlantic. After days of warning, it took no one by surprise. From North Carolina through Nova Scotia, people had raided markets and liquor stores for provisions, hammered plywood into place, stockpiled ice, flashlights and candles in case power is lost, and tied down everything that might blow away in tropical-force winds. By Saturday morning, Ocean City officials said the unprecedented evacuation of more than 200,000 residents and visitors from the barrier island had been completed with near total compliance. More than 2,000 of the area’s foreign student workers had been bused to Baltimore. The last holdout — a 7-Eleven near 120th Street — closed its temporary plywood doors at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. Light traffic continued to flow across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge early Saturday afternoon, but wind speeds were approaching 30 mph, the point when authorities said they would ban house trailers, motorcycles and other vehicles affected by strong winds. They said the bridge will be closed to all traffic if sustained winds reach 60 mph. In Virginia, nearly 200,000 people were subject to forced evacuations, and 65,000 residents have lost power, with Hampton, Norfolk and Virginia Beach bearing most of the hurricane’s impact….. More….

From Politicaldog101.Com….

10 years in the making…The World Trade Center reconstruction moves on…..

jamesb101 — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:22:17 +0000

One World Trade Center is rising into the NYC sky….

The ‘pools’ outlining the footprint of the orignal buildings are working….

And the construction moves on…

Within the whole 11 acre site in lower Manhattan…

As this country does indeed….

Move on…

Michael Arad, designer of the Sept. 11 memorial in New York, pauses in front of the project in April. (Seth Wenig, Associated Press / April 7, 2011)

Michael Arad has taken on a lot of roles since 2004, when he beat out 5,200 others vying to design the memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the site of the fallen World Trade Center. He has been the architectural wunderkind emerging from obscurity to win the coveted job. He has been the stubborn outsider battling the powerful establishment to preserve his vision. He has been the crestfallen artist on the losing side of some of those squabbles. He has been the new father rejoicing in his growing family while immersed in the sorrow of those who lost their own loved ones 10 years ago.

Now, with the memorial nearly complete, he is the anonymous man in a hard hat, kneeling in the dirt, eyeing the lines, the lettering, the carefully carved corners and the rivulets of water, noticing tiny flaws that are invisible to most but infuriating to Arad.

“I’m the drill sergeant with the white glove,” Arad says with a laugh, trying to describe his latest role in advance of the formal unveiling of the memorial this Sept. 11. The creation, called “Reflecting Absence” and dominated by waterfalls flowing into the massive squares that once held the World Trade Center’s twin towers, opens to the public the following day.

Even as crowds begin strolling across the plaza to peer into the watery voids and to run their fingers over the names of victims carved into bronze parapets, construction cranes and heavy machinery will be grinding and hammering around them…..

More…..

From Politicaldog101.Com….

Latino’s…Like all the other immigrants that have come here…WILL change this place AND their children become Us…

jamesb101 — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:16:05 +0000

This piece is something I have pointed out here at the Dog consistently in the past….

It reminds us the just as the African’s (who where SHIPPED here in chains), Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles and other came here…

Set up in their own neighborhoods….

Spoke their own languages….

Ate their own foods…

Brought their own cultures….

Latinos’s will are doing the same…

But the 2nd, and 3rd generations of these people’s will become just American as Apple Pie and Baseball….

I would ask…

Why are we afraid of this?

I would remind everyone as the author does…

This same question and the anti-immigration feelings out there have been around for centuries in these United States of America…

This linked piece below focuses on Pennsylvania…

It sheds a spotlight on the growth in that state…

Indeed…

The regeneration that sprung up in the old rust belt of the NorthEast…..

We must embrace this…

For it IS what this country is…

And…

Has ALWAYS been…..

A place that takes the ‘tired and poor’…

A learns to growth and prosper with those that come here to provide this place with new blood…..

“Three generations,” declares James Smith, an immigration researcher at the RAND Corporation. “By the time you get to the third generation, you can’t distinguish between Americans and Hispanic immigrants. That’s how long it takes to look like an American.”

A bit of context proves useful here. In its 235-year history, the United States cycled through two distinct waves of immigration, and now stands in the midst of a third. The first, from 1840 to 1889, gave us things like Christmas trees and St. Patrick’s Day parades. The second wave, which my aunt belonged to, ran from roughly 1890 to the start of the First World War. During that time, a whopping 3.7 million Italians, most of them poor, Catholic, and otherwise undesirable, washed up in East Coast ports. Huddled masses of Austria-Hungarians, Russians, and Poles followed in comparable numbers.

Because the population of the U.S. was markedly smaller at that time, each second- and third-wave immigrant had a proportionally larger impact on mainstream culture than each immigrant does today. At the height of the second wave, there were 8.8 incoming immigrants for every 1,000 Americans. Now the rate looks more like 4.6 per every 1,000.

The sudden influx of foreigners startled settled Americans, says Garrett Epps, a professor of constitutional law who has studied historical immigration. In the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, Americans felt the same sense of suspicion toward Irish, German, and Italian immigrants that some feel toward Hispanics today. All three groups deviated from what Huntington identifies as the core “American creed,” the set of values that defined traditional American culture. Among them: Christian religious commitment, individualism, and the “duty to try to create a heaven on earth,” carried over by the pilgrims and their black-smocked ilk.

If those values sound foreign or antiquated to us now, we have first- and second-wave immigrants to thank. They drank beer, practiced other religions, and started their own schools and newspapers, often to the aggravation of their American-born neighbors. “Immigration was very much on people’s minds in the late 19th century,” Epps says. “All of the concerns about immigration that we have now were also present then.”

A century later, those concerns look unfounded. From generation to generation, early immigrants achieved higher standards of living, educational attainment, and English-language proficiency. They moved to the suburbs; their children went to college. But it’s not as if these people vanished, dissolving into a population that pre-existed them. After all, you can eat souvlaki, spaghetti, or sushi virtually anywhere in the country…..

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Ain’t it true?

EVERYONE here

Came from someone

From

Somewhere ELSE?

From Politicaldog101…..

Politicaldog101 completes its Second Year!

jamesb101 — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:43:31 +0000

Yea….

It’s been 730 days since the Politiocaldog101 started as a WordPress Blog!

What a journey……

From putting together the basics to running this self-hosted site…

It has been and continues to be a blast!

It has taken me further on the net then I ever thought this place would go….

Over 660,000 hits and still counting…..

And I am grateful for the regulars who come here just about everyday and comment, argue, post and help me be better….

I want to also thank Sebastian for SRS, wherever he is, for the theme help….

I’ve also made friends a few other bloggers that I visit regularly and feature….

I look forward to the upcoming Primaries and Presidential Election which we will be covering extensively here at the Dog….

Finally….. I want thank the wife for being patient with her husband pounding away on down stairs on the computer everyday while listening with one floppy ear to her…..

Thank You….

From the bottom of my heart to to tip of my wet nose…..

Keep it coming!

The Dog….