If Romnesia means that I can forget the last four years.......Please give it me
When Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promptly criticized the security failures in Benghazi, the White House and its lapdog media jumped all over him for another "gaffe," for speaking out too promptly and too strongly. Prompt and strong action from the White House on Sept. 11 might have saved American lives, as well as America's reputation as a nation not to be messed with. Weakness and dithering and flying to Las Vegas the next day for celebrity fund-raising parties are somehow better?
This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." He added, "Under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama's future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" - $9 a gallon.
Yet the president now claims he's in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he's powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.
These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.
As mentioned above, in current Ohio polls, Democrats have a party-ID sample advantage of 6.3 points. In 2008, Democrats had a 5-point turnout advantage in Ohio. That means that while national polls have the turnout advantage down 2.6 points, in Ohio it has actually increased 1.3 points. It is almost impossible to conclude that while the nationwide party-ID advantage of Democrats has dropped since the wave election of 2008, Ohio has actually increased over the last four years.
If that’s not enough, the Ohio polls have actually become more Democratic since the post-DNC polls that gave Obama the significant bounce that led many pundits to declare Romney’s chances in Ohio DOA. Of all Ohio polls from September 7 to September 19, Obama held an average lead of 4.2 points, with a Democratic party-ID advantage of 5.7 points. Today Obama leads by 2.1 points, with a party-ID advantage of 6.3 points. In the last month, while Romney has had surges in polls all over the country, the polling in Ohio has actually found more Democrats even while Obama’s lead was cut in half.
The biggest explanation for this discrepancy appears to be the prevalence of early voting. Many Ohio polls state that more voters claim to have voted early than the county records show; this inflates the likely-voter pools, with Obama voters pushing the Democrats’ advantage up as a result. It is a big problem for pollsters — many respondents want to say the socially popular thing, which is that they have already voted. When voters say they have voted (unlike when respondents say they plan on voting), pollsters ask no follow-up questions to determine how likely it is that they are telling the truth. Respondents who say they have voted go straight into the likely-voter pool, even though it’s clear that the number of respondents who claim to have voted is much larger than the actual early-voter turnout, based on the county records. From this, it’s reasonable to conclude that Democrats’ party advantage may prove to be lower, which would ultimately cut
Obama’s lead in Ohio dramatically.
Chicago surpassed last year’s total of 435 homicides Monday when a man died after being shot, authorities said.
The victim was one of two people wounded in separate shootings that occurred just four blocks and half an hour apart Monday morning in the South Chicago neighborhood.
Three Franklin County residents face felony charges of voter fraud after the Board of Elections reported that they had voted more than once in a past election.
Each was indicted yesterday by a Franklin County grand jury on one count of illegal voting. They are accused of voting twice by casting absentee ballots under slightly different names.
Those indicted are:
• Dominique Atkins, 38, of 1532 Barnes Drive E. on the Northeast Side, who is accused of casting a second ballot on Oct. 25, 2010, under the name Dominque Atkins.
• Debbie L. Tingler, 50, of 533 Hunt Valley Dr., Reynoldsburg, who is accused of casting a second ballot on Feb. 27, 2008, under the name Deborah L. Tingler.
• Marian Wilson, 47, of 1922 Kendall Place, Grove City, who is accused of casting a second ballot on Sept. 29, 2010, under the name Marian Toles.
More...............On Thursday, the Teachers’ Retirement System announced its annual investment returns for fiscal year 2012. You may recall that it was predicting 8.5 percent returns.
So what kind of returns did it actually get? A meager 0.76 percent. For comparison, the S&P 500 grew 7.39 percent during fiscal year 2012, while the Dow Jones Industrial average grew 7.92 percent.
Of course, this isn’t the first time TRS investments have come in below expectations. Even before this year, the 5-year average rate of return was only 4.1 percent, and the 10-year average was just 6 percent. Even its long-term averages are below its projections.
And when investment returns come in under projections, it falls on taxpayers to make up the shortfall.
Ultimately, there are only two numbers that matter: the amount of money the pension fund will pay out for earned benefits, and the amount of money it has on hand. Between now and 2045, TRS will pay $376.5 billion to retired teachers. It has just $36.3 billion on hand. In order for these assets to cover future payouts, TRS would need to see average investment returns of more than 18.5 percent per year.
The simple fact is that TRS is broke. Under new accounting rules, TRS has less than 23 percent of the money it should have in the bank today in order to make its pension payments. The system doesn’t even have enough money on hand to pay out benefits to the people who have already retired. Pension experts and TRS’s own actuaries agree: the fund could soon be insolvent.
