• Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: December 19, 2012

    December 19, 2012 /

    Time Magazine Person of the Year

    These are my links for December 18th through December 19th:

    • A Bad Budget Deal – Higher taxes now for notional reform later is worse than nothing – It’s clear by now that the budget talks are drifting in a drearily familiar Washington direction: Tax and spending increases now, in return for the promise of spending cuts and tax and entitlement reform later. This is a bad deal for everyone except the politicians who want more money to spend.Consider the tax increase now being touted as a sign of “compromise.” Speaker John Boehner has moved from opposing higher tax rates to offering higher rates for incomes above $1 million a year. While that’s better than the scheduled increase on incomes above $200,000 a year (for singles), it would still put the GOP on record as endorsing a tax increase, in particular on small businesses that file individual returns.President Obama has countered with a ceiling of $400,000. If they compromise at $500,000, we are all supposed to thank the two sides for their reasonableness. Yet both parties will have declared that raising tax rates is no big economic deal. This will hurt the economy, and it further advances Mr. Obama’s political goal of separating the middle class from the affluent on tax policy.

      What about tax reform next year? A final judgment on this prospect depends on the fine print, but it’s already looking grim. The GOP has prepared the ground for a genuine tax reform, on the Simpson-Bowles model, that lowers rates in return for fewer deductions. In what is shaping up as this budget deal’s prototype, tax reform looks like it means both higher rates and fewer deductions.

      This isn’t reform. It’s another tax increase next year disguised as reform. The Fortune 500 CEOs who are lobbying Republicans don’t mind because they hope to get a cut in the corporate tax rate. But small businesses will be stuck with a huge immediate tax increase, at least until their owners can scramble to reorganize as corporations instead of Subchapter S companies or LLCs.

    • How Do We Know an ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban Would Not Have Stopped Adam Lanza? Because It Didn’t – Although Friday’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School has prompted renewed calls for reinstating the federal “assault weapon” ban, we know for a fact that such a law would not have stopped Adam Lanza or made his attack less deadly, because it didn’t. The rifle he used, a .223-caliber Bushmaster M4 carbine, was legal under Connecticut’s “assault weapon” ban, which is similar to the federal law that expired in 2004. Both laws, in addition to listing specifically prohibited models, cover semiautomatic rifles that accept detachable magazines and have at least two out of five features: 1) a folding or telescoping stock, 2) a pistol grip, 3) a bayonet mount, 4) a grenade launcher, and 5) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor. The configuration of the rifle used by Lanza, which his mother legally purchased and possessed in Connecticut, evidently was not covered by that definition.
    • Democrats Dismiss Boehner’s “Plan B” on Budget – With one eye on the clock and the other on the White House, House Speaker John Boehner introduced a “fiscal cliff” backup plan Tuesday that would only address taxes — an apparent attempt to pressure President Obama into moving Boehner’s way in deficit-reduction negotiations.“Plan B” would permanently extend current tax rates on those with annual incomes below $1 million, a concession by Boehner from his earlier opposition to any rate increase. The speaker insisted he was not walking away from the negotiating table, but said he wants to move faster to ensure that most Americans’ taxes won’t rise starting Jan. 1.
    • Benghazi review slams State Department on security – The leaders of an independent panel that blamed systematic State Department management and leadership failures for gross security lapses in the deadly Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya will explain their findings to Congress on Wednesday.The two most senior members of the Accountability Review Board are set to testify behind closed doors before the House and Senate foreign affairs committees on the classified findings of their harshly critical report.An unclassified version released late Tuesday said serious bureaucratic mismanagement was responsible for the inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.

      “Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the panel said.

      Despite those deficiencies, the board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.

      Wednesday’s classified testimony from the review board – retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen – will set the stage for open hearings the next day with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, who is in charge of policy, and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, who is in charge of management.

    • Inquiry Into Libya Attack Is Sharply Critical of State Department – An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticized the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and for relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound, according to a report by the panel made public on Tuesday night.
    • 2012 Person of the Year: Barack Obama, the President | TIME.com – Why of course. He won decisively RT @TIME Barack Obama is TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year | #POY2012
    • Resolutions: So Irresistible, So Hard to Keep – WSJ.com – RT @WSJ More than half of the 45 million smokers in the U.S. tried to quit in 2010, but < 10% of them managed to stop.
    • Sleep’s Surprising Effects on Hunger – WSJ.com – RT @WSJ Study: sleep deprivation triggers hormonal changes that can lead to overeating, weight gain.
    • Obama to Announce Gun Task Force – President Barack Obama will on Wednesday announce the first step on gun control following the Newtown school shootings: an interagency task force, led by Vice President Joe Biden, charged with guiding the administration’s continuing response.The announcement will be the third time in five days Obama has addressed the massacre that killed 20 first-graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. And it will follow a call on Friday for “meaningful action” and his Sunday pledge to use the White House to “engage” Americans to prevent mass shootings.
    • Magazine Clips, Background Checks Lead Gun Talk – All of a sudden a dam broke, and it’s OK for members of Congress to talk about guns. The discussion is civil and calm for now, and everyone hopes that means sanity will prevail when it comes to new firearms policies.“I think elected officials are thinking about trying a little experiment. They might try to get the policy right in the hopes that the politics will take care of themselves,” said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization run by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.In an incredibly divided Congress, it seems ridiculous to assume lawmakers would focus on policy before politics. (For Exhibit A of political gamesmanship, look at the back and forth on a fiscal-cliff deal on Tuesday.) But on guns, it turns out there is a lot of rational agreement among even gun enthusiasts about trying to protect innocent people from being killed by them.

      New rules being tossed around by lawmakers include banning high-capacity magazine clips, the kind that allow hundreds of rounds to be fired at a time, and tightening up background checks for gun purchases. Existing gun laws could also be enforced with greater regularity, such as compelling or enticing states to do a better job of reporting red flags like drug abuse or domestic violence to a national crime database.

    • New GOP polling firm goal: Catch up with Dems – The Republican polling community is about to get a shake-up.With the GOP still reeling from its defeats in the 2012 election, a new Republican polling firm is seeking to help the party bounce back with a fresh stream of data on the state of the electorate.The outfit, Harper Polling, launches this week with the goal of putting the party on parity with Democrats in the field of IVR polling – a term that stands for interactive voice response polling, commonly known as “robo-polling.”

      For several cycles now, Democrats have benefited from a high-volume, relatively inexpensive flow of survey data from the company Public Policy Polling, which takes hundreds of polls in any given cycle checking up on individual races and national issue debates. Some of those surveys are released to the public, while others are conducted for private purposes by Democratic campaigns and interest groups.

    • Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Digest for 2012-12-18 – Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Blog @ Flap Twitter Digest for 2012-12-18
    • Flap’s Blog @ Flap Twitter Daily Digest for 2012-12-18 – Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Blog @ Flap Twitter Daily Digest for 2012-12-18 #tcot
    • My Daily Twitter Digest for 2012-12-18 – Locum Tenens (Temporary) Dentist – Gregory Cole, D.D.S. – My Daily Twitter Digest for 2012-12-18
    • Behind the Curtain: Grand old white male party gets diversity memo – Republicans are in full panic mode about being the party of old, white, straight, conservative men for years to come — and struggling big time with how to change things.Under pressure from party leaders, most Republicans have chucked the anti-gay marriage, anti-illegal immigrant hostility — at least in public — that defined the party the past three elections. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans are privately warning conservatives to put a sock in it when it comes to arguments that turn off large swaths of voters, sources tell us. Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy is doing the same on the House side.
    • The Morning Flap: December 18, 2012 – Flap’s Blog – The Morning Flap: December 18, 2012 #tcot
    • Byron York: Anxiety rises as Americans face start of Obamacare | Mobile Washington Examiner – Anxiety rises as Americans face start of Obamacare #tcot
    • Log In – The New York Times – President Delivers a New Offer on the Fiscal Crisis to Boehner #tcot
  • Pinboard Links,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: March 1, 2012

    March 1, 2012 /

    These are my links for February 29th through March 1st:

  • Pinboard Links,  Polling,  President 2012,  The Morning Flap

    The Morning Flap: October 27, 2011

    October 27, 2011 /

    • Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993– The new result comes from Gallup’s Oct. 6-9 Crime poll, which also finds public support for personal gun rights at a high-water mark. Given this, the latest increase in self-reported gun ownership could reflect a change in Americans’ comfort with publicly stating that they have a gun as much as it reflects a real uptick in gun ownership.
    • The new result comes from Gallup’s Oct. 6-9 Crime poll, which also finds public support for personal gun rights at a high-water mark. Given this, the latest increase in self-reported gun ownership could reflect a change in Americans’ comfort with publicly stating that they have a gun as much as it reflects a real uptick in gun ownership.Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) are more likely than Democrats (including Democratic leaners) to say they have a gun in their household: 55% to 40%.
    • While sizable, this partisan gap is narrower than that seen in recent years, as Democrats’ self-reported gun ownership spiked to 40% this year.Republicans (including independents who lean Republican) are more likely than Democrats (including Democratic leaners) to say they have a gun in their household: 55% to 40%. While sizable, this partisan gap is narrower than that seen in recent years, as Democrats’ self-reported gun ownership spiked to 40% this year.
    • Polls: 12 House pickup chances for Democrats – New polls out Thursday of 12 House districts now held by Republicans in four states showcase some prime pickup opportunities for Democrats next year.
    • The House Majority PAC, which can raise unlimited money to support Democratic candidates with an independent expenditure campaign, commissioned Public Policy Polling to survey 12 districts where the redistricting process has been completed.
    • In every one, less than 50 percent of voters said they would like to see the incumbent Republican reelected next year. And a majority in all but one expressed a negative opinion of the Republicans in Congress.
    • Ali Lapp, executive director of House Majority PAC, argues that “Republican control of the House is in serious jeopardy.”
    • Redistricting in Arkansas, California, Illinois and Wisconsin – where PPP polled the dozen districts – could help Democrats.
    • Some Republicans who have not faced competitive races in years now face serious trouble. Illinois Rep. Tim Johnson, for example, has been drawn by the Democratic legislature into a treacherous district where just 33 percent of voters would like to reelect him, according to the new poll, while 53 percent would prefer someone else.
    • “Congressional Republicans have become very unpopular, very fast, across a very wide variety of districts and that’s going to make dozens of incumbent GOP members vulnerable for reelection next year,” PPP director Tom Jensen, a respected Democratic pollster, writes in a three-page memo.
    • Democrats face a very heavy lift to get the 25 seats they need to regain a majority. That kind of turnover is rare, and Republicans have solidified their holds on certain seats in states where they controlled the redistricting process. Historically, the kind of turnover from the last three election cycles is very rare, yet polls like these give Democrats confidence.
    • Which begs the question: At what point is he simply required to put his best foot forward in the Hawkeye State?
    • The CNN/TIME Magazine poll shows Romney with a statistically insignificant lead on businessman Herman Cain, 24 percent to 21 percent, and is one of two major polls this month to show Romney with a small lead in Iowa. (The other being an NBC/Marist College poll from early in the month, before Cain really picked up steam.)
    • Despite this, Romney has visited the state only three times this year and continues to dance around the concept of running a full-throated campaign in it. He skipped the Ames Straw Poll two months ago and, most recently, became the only major GOP presidential candidate who hasn’t sworn off Iowa (read: Jon Huntsman) to skip the state GOP’s Ronald Reagan Dinner.
    • Romney’s campaign is smartly lowering expectations in a state that will be tougher than the others for him and that he doesn’t necessarily need; after all, the CNN poll shows he’s got a great chance at winning basically any of the early states (he leads in all of them), and his chances are especially good in New Hampshire and Nevada, the latter which CNN didn’t poll but has shown large leads for Romney.
    • Is Perry dropping off the debating circuit? – It’s hard to believe that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would bug out of the debates, but that is what his campaign was hinting about yesterday. Politico reports: “Perry spokesman Mark Miner said the issue is using time wisely, and noted their campaign is not alone in that. ‘I think all the campaigns are expressing frustration right now,’ Miner told POLITICO. ‘We said we would do Michigan but the primaries are around the corner and you have to use your time accordingly.’?”
    • I am not aware of any other candidate thinking of fleeing the chance for free airtime to sell himself or herself to the American people. Should Perry back out after a series of awful debate outings, the message would plainly be: This is too hard for me.
    • Perry is big on sport metaphors and has said his low standing in the polls won’t send him home at halftime. But if he absents himself from the debates, especially the foreign policy debate on Nov. 15, the unmistakable message is that he really isn’t ready for prime-time.

    Enjoy your morning!

  • Guns,  Polling

    Poll Watch: 26% of Americans Favor a Legal Ban on Possession of Handguns – A Record Low

    October 26, 2011 /


    According to the latest Gallup Poll.

    A record-low 26% of Americans favor a legal ban on the possession of handguns in the United States other than by police and other authorized people. When Gallup first asked Americans this question in 1959, 60% favored banning handguns. But since 1975, the majority of Americans have opposed such a measure, with opposition around 70% in recent years.

    The results are based on Gallup’s annual Crime poll, conducted Oct. 6-9. This year’s poll finds support for a variety of gun-control measures at historical lows, including the ban on handguns, which is Gallup’s longest continuing gun-control trend.

    A ban on semiautomatic guns or assault rifles is NOT favored as well.

    For the first time, Gallup finds greater opposition to than support for a ban on semiautomatic guns or assault rifles, 53% to 43%. In the initial asking of this question in 1996, the numbers were nearly reversed, with 57% for and 42% against an assault rifle ban. Congress passed such a ban in 1994, but the law expired when Congress did not act to renew it in 2004. Around the time the law expired, Americans were about evenly divided in their views.

    The chart:

    Also, support to make gun laws more strict are at 43% vs. keeping gun laws the same polls at 44%. Only 11% favor less strict gun laws.

    What are the demographics of the polling?

    All key subgroups show less support for stricter gun laws, and for a ban on handguns, than they did 20 years ago. In 1991, 68% of Americans favored stricter gun laws and 43% favored a ban on handguns. Those percentages are 43% and 26%, respectively, today.

    Relatively few key subgroups favor stricter gun-control laws today, whereas in 1991, all did. Since then, Democrats’ views have shown less change, with a 10-point decline in the percentage favoring stricter laws. Republicans show a much larger decline of 35 points. In addition to Democrats, majorities of Eastern residents and those without guns in their household still favor stricter gun laws.

    The chart:

    And, the demographics for Americans who favor a ban on handguns.

    So, what does this all mean?

    Americans have shifted to a more pro-gun view on gun laws, particularly in recent years, with record-low support for a ban on handguns, an assault rifle ban, and stricter gun laws in general. This is the case even as high-profile incidents of gun violence continue in the United States, such as the January shootings at a meeting for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.

    The reasons for the shift do not appear related to reactions to the crime situation, as Gallup’s Crime poll shows no major shifts in the trends in Americans’ perceptions of crime, fear of crime, or reports of being victimized by crime in recent years. Nor does it appear to be tied to an increase in gun ownership, which has been around 40% since 2000, though it is a slightly higher 45% in this year’s update. The 2011 updates on these trends will appear on Gallup.com in the coming days.

    Perhaps the trends are a reflection of the American public’s acceptance of guns. In 2008, Gallup found widespread agreement with the idea that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to own guns. Americans may also be moving toward more libertarian views in some areas, one example of which is greater support for legalizing marijuana use. Diminished support for gun-control laws may also be tied to the lack of major gun-control legislation efforts in Congress in recent years.

  • Barack Obama,  Guns,  Hillary Clinton,  Mexico

    Video: The 90 Per Cent Myth of United States Guns in Mexico

    April 3, 2009 /
    Fox News Special Report on Mexican Guns:While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

    Talk about a government statistic that has been used to further an agenda.

    You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

    • Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
    • CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
    • California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”
    • William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that “there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”

    There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:

    It’s just not true.

    But, now, the ATF has clarified their statistic used by their own agency’s assisant director: “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”

    The problem is:

    “Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,” Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

    So, where do the guns come from?

    Not necessarly from the United States.

    Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

    The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

    These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.

    So, why are American politicians using this misleading 90 per cent statistic?

    The conspiratorial folks will say the Obama Administration is laying the groundwork to grab their guns.

    I say that the Obama administration must be watched closely when they use statistics to justify public policy changes.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

  • Day By Day,  Guns,  Second Amendment

    Day By Day by Chris Muir July 16, 2008

    July 16, 2008 /
    daybyday071608

    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    The folks who want to disassemble the second amendment will continue to try before sympathetic judges and courts.

    The fight to protect oneself will continue for decades with AS(S)inine regulations of guns and ammunition.

    In the meantime, there WILL be doubt for home and business intruders that there MAY very well be an assembled and loaded gun in the premises where they hiope to committ a crime. Then, there is always the “ILLEGAL” use of firearms – you know, like the California driver cell phone prohibition law – which nobody obeys.

    Previous:

    The Day By Day Archive

    Technorati Tags: , ,