Saturday, November 03, 2012

Miami Herald headlines Republican poll favoring Romney ... by gimleteye

It is on days like this, where living in Florida is its own peculiar nightmare. The Herald first endorsed President Obama, now headlines on its front page a poll by a Republican pollster showing Romney up, above the margin of error.

In the meantime, Republicans who haven't voted might think about the margin of error in their own party. The GOP has been taken over by the crushing weight of special interest money. According to one report, $9 billion will be spent this election cycle on all political races, with 80 percent of that money coming from a host of coordinated, conservative Republican superPAC's, businesses, and Republican lobbying organizations like the Chamber of Commerce.

This tidal wave of money brooks no diversity of opinion, nuance, or policy difference. It has turned the United States into a support system for the extraordinarily wealthy whose main goal is to keep what they have during a time of unprecedented economic contraction, organized through massively manipulated media and message machinery.

I hope Florida turns Romney back. Were that to happen, it would deliver a message from the ground that it is time to fix what is wrong at the top. Click 'read more' for a recent piece by Timothy Egan that should resonate in a state that has more to lose than any other in the nation.


Nature Votes Last
By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

A catastrophic storm has no feelings, no fury, no compassion and certainly no political position. Hurricanes may sound like bridge partners at the Boca community center — Sandy, Irene and Katrina — until they land and become monsters. The mistake, perhaps, is trying to anthropomorphize them.

But that doesn’t mean that a fatal blow from Mother Nature will not alter the course of human nature. When the seas rose earlier this week, swamping the world’s greatest city and battering a helpless state, the turbulence of the elements washed away the sand castles of politics.

Climate change is to the Republican base what leprosy once was to healthy humans — untouchable and unmentionable. Their party is financed by people whose fortunes are dependent upon denying that humans have caused the earth’s weather patterns to change for the worse.

At the same time, Republicans have spent the last year trying to win an argument about the role of government as a helping hand. By now, most people know that Mitt Romney, in his base-pandering mode during the primaries, made the federal disaster agency FEMA sound like a costly nuisance, better off orphaned to the states or the private sector.

His party can get away with fact-denial — in global warming’s case — and win cable-television arguments about FEMA, so long as something like a major news event, e.g., reality, does not shatter the picture. That’s where the storm upset a somewhat predictable race.

Did global warming cause Sandy to be so massive, so destructive, so unfathomable? There’s no consensus on this specific storm. But virtually every reputable atmospheric scientist who is not tied by money to an oil or coal company says that this week’s storm is a picture of what’s to come, if not already here. Many of the world’s premier cities, New York foremost among them, are at the mercy of the rising seas that accompany a hotter earth. Record low levels of sea ice in the Arctic and record warm temperatures in the Atlantic were likely part of the brew that contributed to Sandy’s very high storm surge.

“There has been a series of extreme weather incidents,” said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, stating the obvious. “This is not a political statement. This is a factual statement. Anyone who says there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited Breezy Point in Queens, N. Y., after a fire incinerated over a hundred homes when Hurricane Sandy passed through the northeast.
President Obama has been silent on this issue of great import to his children, Sasha and Malia, and their children. He is afraid of those pockets of coal-mining, climate-change-denying voters in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. After the election, I suspect, he will be more vocal. A profile in courage he is not, but at least his party has some smart advocates for treating the patient before the meteorological malady kills it.

The other cherished idea of Republicans that was thrown to Sandy’s winds is the notion that people don’t need government in times of domestic trauma. Let the soup-can brigades, the church volunteers and the Red Cross handle it. When the full bill for New Jersey’s recovery comes due, no single state or private entity in the land will able to come close to paying for it. And that forces a basic question: do the other states, bound to the union of a single country, have a responsibility to pay for one that has been mortally wounded?

Ayn Rand is having her “Mad Men” revivalist moment in the Republican Party, led by social Darwinists like Paul Ryan. These people genuinely do believe that life is a battle between achievers and moochers, and that luck, good or bad, has little to do with it. Compassion is for wussies, and tax dollars from those at the top should not be used to help those who are struggling.

Of late, we’ve seen the “hate of all nature,” as one old-timer called the Dust Bowl, visit nearly every part of the United States. Texas was on fire for much of a year while its governor, Rick Perry, denied climate change and signed an official proclamation calling for a day of prayer for rain. The Midwest saw the worst drought in 70 years. Entire subdivisions in the Rockies were wiped out by wildfire.

In these precincts of extreme trauma, government haters became government lovers. In the reddest of Western counties after a big fire, in which many a home was saved by many a yellow-shirted hero, you always see these banners thanking the government for sending in rescuers with axes and shovels.

But over time, and with dismal repetition, will extreme natural disasters become like school shootings, with little thought given to the larger significance? Perhaps not yet. After the 1989 earthquake briefly halted the World Series, T-shirts soon appeared with these words: “Nature Bats Last.” In the election of 2012, it looks like nature votes last.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

One measure of consolation on today's Herald coverage is that noone reads the Herald or at least considers it credible in its coverage of this election- precisely because of bs like this story. Instead, the Herald should be all over the story of the long lines and disenfrachisement of Miami voters -- the working poor, minority, elderly who can't stand in line in the hot sun for 3,4 hours to vote. And how we got no help from our own Mayors Gimenez or Regalado to ask Gov Scott to extend early voting to Sunday. Shame on all of them.

Anonymous said...

Volunteers needed now thru election day to get out the vote for the president. Make calls from home, go to the polls, canvass door to door, take people to the polls. The only poll that counts is on election day.

Anonymous said...

Wall Street Journal has Obama up in Florida.

Anonymous said...

So who in the Herald is trying to throw this election for Romney? It's not just Caputo- the day before the Herald ran a story speculating the unemployment rate was going to go back up beyond 8 percent. It didn't. But that was the damaging headline.

Anonymous said...

We need entertainment, food and water at the polls today. Calling all progressive singers, dancers, drummers - come on down to keep the people happy. Let's lead in some singing- this is a civil rights issue- bring back the songs that led is through. We will prevail.

Anonymous said...


The Huffington Post shows all the Florida polls, most have Obama up. Shows an average of a tied race in Florida - highly dependent on turnout.

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2012-florida-president-romney-vs-obama?gem

Anonymous said...

My senior mom in Melbourne, FL just went thru her mail and is freaking out as she got an absentee ballot and never asked for one. She's a dem.

Anonymous said...

Duh first commenter if Romney is leading with voters aren't Romney supporters the ones being disenfranchised by long lines?
Typical libtard logic.

Anonymous said...

I met 2 young voters at the polls in south dade. Their family also received AB without asking for them. They didn't even have a clue as to how to get them or what to do about them.

The 5 hour line at the South Dade Government Center will be entertained by the Air Show as the planes fly over.

Who is taking care of the poll workers? They must be exhausted.

Anonymous said...

Gimleteye you give it away. You are connected to the Dem Party and you know the vote is not there for Barry as it was in 2008 so you have tried in numerous posts to dissuade Republican voters.
Get your dem friends out to vote for your guy. Independents have broken for Romney in double digits, but you already knew that and thus the charade.

Anonymous said...

Republican mayor Gimenez should stand up for his republic Cuban constituents who are being disenfranchised by long lines and ask for Sunday voting extension. If abuelitas and extended family can't vote Romney will lose! Help mr Gimenez- the future of the country is at stake!

Malagodi said...

Come on man, either your history or your Engish is bad.

"It (money) has turned the United States into a support system for the extraordinarily wealthy whose main goal is to keep what they have during a time of unprecedented economic contraction, organized through massively manipulated media and message machinery."

It has always been thus since the founding of the colonies as chartered companies of the British, Dutch and French monarchies. Or as Ornette Coleman has said, "What used to be never was."

Why do we perpetuate this myth? It only serves to maintain this false idea that it is one party is responsible for plantetary pollution and the persecution of the poor (not true) while the other party is responsible for state totalitarianism and persecution of the 'free' (not true either). Give me a break. The last time I looked the Democratic Party held as much sway over post WWII U.S. policies that have produced, until very recently, the highest energy consumption and pollution levels per capita in the world. And there is that little matter of U.S. imperialism. Remember something call Vietnam? Who was it who controlled the White House and Congress? The whole shithouse is stinking corrupt, and has been from the start.

I don't want Romney to win any more than you do. But this continued comic-book approach to social analysis is not helping anyone.

Someone recently asked me if I've decided who to vote for - Obama or Stein. My response: "I'm voting for the devil, because Jesus isn't in the game."

Geniusofdespair said...

8:02AM EDT November 3. 2012 - CLEVELAND -- Another poll gives President Obama a solid lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Ohio, the state that many observers believe could decide Tuesday's election.

Obama leads Romney by 51% to 45% in the Buckeye State, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll.

No Republican has ever won a presidential race without carrying Ohio; many Obama aides believe an Ohio win would seal re-election.

Both candidates plan Ohio appearances in the campaign's final 72 hours.

Another NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll shows a tight race in another swing state, Florida (and also probably another must-win state for Romney).

The president leads his Republican challenger 49%-47% in Florida, the poll says, but that is well within the margin of error.

Anonymous said...

Nate Silver's Five Thirty Eight analysis from Friday should back you away from the cliff a bit. 19 state polls from the swing states out on Friday and the President showing leads in all of them but one -- this one in Florida. Even right leaning Rasmussen (which overestimates to Romney by 2-3 points) is starting to show Obama leads or ties in these states. According to the analysis, unless all the polls are highly biased against Romney, it looks like the Presidnet wil be re-elected. His statistical model accounts for this and indicates that thereis only a 16 percent chance of said bias, thus a 16% chance of Romney winning the electoral college vote.

Anonymous said...

Let's pray that the citizens of Florida demonstrate they have a brain and vote for Romney. This is an election of choice between the real job creators and the communist. Barak Obama is the antichrist.

Anonymous said...

Just trying to save the country from the enormous aberration in the gene pool. For some reason, the Obama supporters are impaired. Someone must save them! Otherwise we'll run out of people to tax and pay for their support. Or we'll have no military when the soldiers leave when they realize their CIC is sacrificing them to Allah.

Anonymous said...

The one behind the "Mitt endorsement" is that GREAT HIALEAH CUBAN, Aminda Marques, the newspaper's Executive Editor who is a loyal Jeb Bush follower and friend. It's okay, though, we're gonna beat the hell out of the Republican scumbags, in this election... and then, we'll kick Rick Scott's behind out of office. Let's not forget, either, that he was elected thanks to the efforts of "putzes" like Michael Putney, who is also in love with Marco Rubio! And don't tell me that I can't criticize the Cubans because I happen to be Cuban, as well!

Anonymous said...

Gimlete - your recent posts about the presidential race have made me giggle and probably not the way you'd want them to. The house isn't going to change and the senate will probably remain the same. quite frankly it doesn't matter who wins the presidency, who endorses who, who spins what, etc. it will be two more years of the same old, same old unless Reid lets a younger Dem member take over, which he won't do.

I look forward to to more years of fillibusters, executive orders & czars (if obama wins) or in the alternative, the house will work with romney but reid won't.

The beat goes on no matter how much we all huff and puff. I'm just wondering what all these news outlets are going to do without the revenue from ALL of the campaigns all over the place. I'd venture about 50% will be in financial trouble very soon as they were before they became flush with cash.

Anonymous said...

Well then exec editor Marquez will run the Herald (further) into the ground encouraging biased reporting to favor Jeb! , and friends.

Anonymous said...

AYYYY Pleeze! I am a Cuban-American, and have no connections ever with Hialeah, nor its politics. I, (and my household), decided that Romney is our candidate of choice. Relax and let the best man win.

Anonymous said...

Friday’s polling should make it easy to discern why Mr. Obama has the Electoral College advantage. There were 22 polls of swing states published Friday. Of these, Mr. Obama led in 19 polls, and two showed a tie. Mitt Romney led in just one of the surveys, a Mason-Dixon poll of Florida.