Thursday Reads: Happy Animals, Dickish Theocrats, Jurassic Fleas, and ET’s
Posted: March 1, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, morning reads, religious extremists, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare | Tags: Darrell Issa, Davy Jones, dinosaurs, GOP convention delegates, happy animals, Jurrassic fleas, Michigan primary, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Super Tuesday, The Monkees, theocracy 85 CommentsGood Morning!!
I thought I’d start out with something upbeat. How about some photos of happy animals? Buzzfeed has 26 of them. Here are some of my favorities:
How can you not smile at those? Check out the rest at Buzzfeed, and don’t miss the joyful anteater!
Now let’s get to the news. I thought Michigan was a winner-take-all state, but I guess not. The Santorum campaign claims the result was really a tie, because Willard and Rick the Dick will each get 15 delegates from Michigan.
While there has been no final determination of who won how many delegates in Michigan on Tuesday, current results suggest both candidates won seven of the state’s 14 congressional districts, each of which award two delegates to the winner. In addition, Santorum adviser John Brabender said the state’s two at-large delegates are likely to be split between Romney and Santorum because the vote was so close.
So I guess it’s winner-take-all by district? I don’t understand the GOP delegate system at all.
“It’s highly likely this is is going to end up being a tie, based on the data that we have,” Brabender said. “I don’t know how you look at that as anything besides this being a strong showing for Rick Santorum and anything short of a disaster for Mitt Romney.
“If we can do this well in Romney’s home state, this bodes well for Super Tuesday.”
Romney won the popular vote in the state by about 3 percentage points, according to the latest tally.
The final delegate totals haven’t been determined yet, according to the WaPo article.
According to numbers whiz Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics, Odds of a Brokered Convention Are Increasing
We’re finally close enough to Super Tuesday to get a sense of how the overall delegate count might work out in the GOP primary. The end result: Assuming that none of the four candidates drops out of the race, it looks increasingly as if no one will be able to claim a majority of the delegates. The candidate with the best chance is Mitt Romney, but he probably wouldn’t be able to wrap up the nomination until May or even June. The other candidates will probably have to hope for a brokered convention.
Trende lays out the Super Tuesday math state by state. Check it out at the above link. Can you believe Super Tuesday is less than a week away? I can’t decide if I should vote on the Dem or Repub ballot. I guess I’ll decide at the last minute. I don’t think Elizabeth Warren has any real competition, but I’ll need to find out for sure.
Ed Kilgore had an interesting post yesterday at Political Animal. Rick Santorum lost the Catholic vote to Romney in Michigan 44-37. I guess Rick has the Bishops but not the rank and file Catholics who like to plan their families. Kilgore:
Immediately there was speculation that Rick’s visceral dissing of JFK’s church-state relations speech might have contributed significantly to this result, or had perhaps cost him Michigan altogether.
That was my initial reaction, too, until I started wondering: why did we all assume Santorum had an advantage among Catholics in the first place? …. as I and others have amply documented, the idea that Catholics are more conservative than Americans generally, even on “social issues,” is pretty much a myth. But you had to figure that the kind of Catholics who choose to vote in Republican primaries are pretty significantly correlated with “traditionalists” like Rick, right?
That’s actually not so clear at all. The last contest with exit polling by the networks was Florida. There Santorum won 13% of the overall vote, but just 10% of Catholics; Mitt Romney ran a bit better among Catholics than he did overall. Now maybe you could say Florida’s heavily Latino Catholic vote is atypical. What about South Carolina? There Santorum won 17% of the overall vote, but just 15% of Catholics. Again, Romney performed a bit better among Catholics than among voters generally.
It doesn’t really surprise me. I wonder why Kilgore didn’t break down the gender numbers? I’ll bet Catholic women didn’t care for Santorum’s act.
The New Civil Rights Movement blog has more interesting details on which population groups voted for Rick the Dick and which ones preferred Willard.
Speaking of dickish theocrats, Darrell Issa may have topped Rick the Dick Tuesday at the latest War on Women hearing in the House. From the estimable Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches:
One of the strangest moments at yesterday’s very strange hearing on whether a regulation duly promulgated under a law passed by Congress was “executive overreach” and an infringement of religious freedom was when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Not Catholic) asked to have the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae entered into the Congressional Record.
His point, obviously, upon questioning the now-ubiquitous Bishop William Lori of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was to show the authoritative (or rather, authoritarian) roots of the Catholic opposition to “artificialqui” contraception.
There it is now, part of the Congressional Record! A document few Catholics follow, and which provoked dissent from (believe it or not) American bishops when Pope Paul VI issued it in 1968.
I’m really starting to tire of bishops testifying before Congressional hearings and now we have quotes from Papal Encyclicals in the Congressional Record?! WTF?
Via Think Progress, disgusting misogynist pig Rush Limbaugh opened his bit yap yesterday and
called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student whom House Republicans wouldn’t let testify at a contraception hearing last week, a “slut” and a “prostitute” today, because, Limbaugh argued, she’s having “so much sex” she needs other people to pay for it:
LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
You can hear the clip at Media Matters if you are so inclined. I decided not to listen.
Also at Think Progress, check out Alyssa Rosenberg’s Pop Culture Guide to the War on Women.
In science news, an article in Nature reveals that Dinosaurs had giant fleas–about an inch long!
Female (left) and male fleas from the Jurrassic Period
Primitive fleas were built to sup on dinosaur blood in the Jurassic period, more than 150 million years ago. The potential host–parasite relationship has been uncovered thanks to a set of beautifully preserved fossils found in China.
Today, the varied group of parasitic insects known as fleas frequently infests mammals, birds and thankfully we have products like Comforits amazon to remedy those woes. But little is known about their origins. The flea fossil record consists mainly of modern-looking species from the past 65 million years, and the identity of possible fleas from the Cretaceous period (145 million to 65 million years ago) has been debated by experts. But Michael Engel, a palaeoentomologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and his colleagues have now extended the history of the parasites by at least 60 million years. Their work is published online today in Nature1.
Engel and his co-authors studied nine flea specimens from two sites: the 165-million-year-old Jurassic deposits in Daohugou and the 125-million-year-old Cretaceous strata at Huangbanjigou, both in China. The insects were not quite like fleas as we now know them. Whereas modern fleas range from 1 to 10 millimetres in length, the Jurassic and Cretaceous species were between 8 and 21 millimetres. “These were hefty insects as far as fleas are concerned,” says Engel.
If you’re more interested in futuristic science, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is going “live on the web.”
Announced at a technology conference in Los Angeles, the site Setilive.org will stream radio frequencies that are transmitted from the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Allen Telescope Array in Northern California.
Participants in the project, being run by Jillian Tarter of the Seti Institute’s Center for Seti Research, will be asked to search for signs of unusual activity in the hope the human brain can find things automated systems might miss.
“There are frequencies that our automated signal detection systems now ignore, because there are too many signals there,” Tartar told BBC News.
I think just about anyone can volunteer to help sort out unusual frequencies from radio and TV signals.
Finally, Davy Jones of the artificially created ’60s group The Monkees died yesterday of a heart attack at 66. From TMZ:
An official from the medical examiner’s office for Martin County, Florida confirmed with TMZ they received a call from Martin Memorial Hospital informing them that Jones had passed away.
We’re told Davy suffered the heart attack at a ranch near his Florida home, where he was visiting his horses. Davy began experiencing distress while he was sitting in his car, and that’s where a ranch hand found him.
The ranch hand told Sheriff’s detectives … the singer began to complain that he was not feeling well and was having trouble breathing. Paramedics were called and Jones was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. Authorities say there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.
Here’s one of the group’s classic bubblegum hits. RIP Davy Jones.
That’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Why is Rush Limbaugh still on the air?
Why is this asshole allowed to remain spouting his garbage day after day and never faces the consequences that others, who have made less egregious comments. is permitted to toss that bilge out on the airwaves without facing the same fate?
His rantings border on insanity. His homophobic, sexist comments are so extreme that it is unfathomable that the FCC or his sponsors have not interfered and yanked him from the airwaves.
Freedom is speech is a right guaranteed to the public but his comments have gone over the line of decency often enough that it is surprising that he remains on the air.
This man has recently signed a contract for a 40 million dollar payoff over a 4 year period. This in an of itself is obscene.
And the GOP rushes to seek anointment from this man whose psychotic outpourings are harmful.
I would hope that Sandra Fluke sues his butt off for defamation of character and bankrupts whoever pays this lunatic to spread his hate.
Interesting thing is someone made a video about him and his drug use and youtube pulled it do to threats, yet he can spew his deranged comments as it documented truths. Why Barbara Walters gives him the time of day I will never know.
Ratings, my dear. Simply ratings.
The same woman who declared The Kardashians as “interesting”.
I really hope she sues him for defamation!
hmm- according to wiki and wsj it’s a 400 million dollar contract for 8 eight years begun in 2008. That’s 50 mill a year to abuse us and we pay for him to do it.
http://roofingbird.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/sandra-fluke-revisited/
With the Blunt bill up for passage, a bill that would allow employers the ability to “pick and choose” insurance coverage for their employees based on “conscience” attributed to religious beliefs, Mitt did it again.
The supposed “front runner” for the GOP nomination was asked if he supported this odious bill. At first he said “no”.
But hours later, and am sure upon “reflection”, he issued a statement saying that he did.
We are so accustomed to Mittens “flipping and flopping” on every issue but this bill is BAD.
This man desires to be president so much that he is willing to say and do anything to get there. A determined liar, an empty vessel, a man who aptly describes “no there there”, is running to govern a populace that has no idea where he comes down on any issue.
It is sickening to behold. The best we can hope for is that come November the nation sends a strong message to this horrible GOP and sends them all packing.
These people are ruining this nation from top to bottom and once in power the odds are we will all live to regret it.
All right. Now you’ve done it. I’m going to have nightmares for a week, worrying about those GIANT FLEAS!
I wonder how far they could jump?
LOL! That’s a good question. The article said they couldn’t fly and they had to “highjack” their prey somehow. That could mean very high jumping.
Quixote,
Don’t worry, you support women, the BIG FLEAS are the females. They will love chirps, and not bite. 😆 Knowing you, you will secure your lab… 😉
/*Must remember to secure lab before hiding under table.*/
Don’t panic it was just me, looking for you 😉 Ah, you kill me… 😆 … come out shy scientist…I know you are in there… 😆
Our “beloved” GOP senator from MA, Scott Brown, has come out in favor of the Blunt bill.
Besides “channeling” Ted Kennedy for the voters of MA, he has declared that Teddy would also support these drastic measures to eliminate women’s healthcare accessibility along with granting employers the right to pick and choose the coverage for their employees.
If I have to drag my butt to the polls in election day to cast my vote for Elizabeth Warren I will gladly do so.
The defeat of this lightweight idiot is the only goal the citizens of this Commonwealth should focus on come November.
The same fool who voted to eliminate an extension at Christmas time to those relying on unemployment benefits and stood firmly with the GOP in opposition.
I doubt this state sent this fool to congress to stand tall with the opposition who firmly block any and all means to alleviate the misery so many have felt.
Teddy may have had his faults but at least the working class could look to him to support issues that we dealt with in a day to day struggle.
For Scott Brown to suggest that Ted Kennedy would favor his positions is outrageous.
I can’t understand why Scott Brown is leading Elizabeth Warren by 10 points in the latest poll. What’s your take on it, Pat?
Are you getting a lot of snow? We don’t have much, but there were huge trucks going by all night, I guess dropping sand and salt. They work me up several times. I haven’t gone out to see if it’s icy out there.
We only got about three inches but the roads are icy right now.
I think Brown may be enjoying a slight lead since the senate coverage here so far has been overshadowed by Mittens and Ricky.
My daughter in law is holding a tea for Warren in a few weeks to help raise money. I hope to attend.
That’s if gas hasn’t hit $5.00 a gallon by then. Fortunately my Focus gets great gas mileage on the highway which is a bonus in this day and age. A round trip from here to there and back again is about 180 miles.
I just got a breaking news e-mail from Politico saying that right wing publisher Andrew Breitbart has died of natural causes at age 43. What could he have died from? I want to say back karma, but that would be mean-spirited. Oh dear, I said it anyway.
NPR: Andrew Breitbart, Controversial Web Provocateur, Has Died
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/01/147718539/andrew-breitbart-controversial-web-provocateur-has-died
He died after midnight. How could it be “natural causes” at age 43?
I’m thinking it must have been a heart attack or stroke to be referred to as “natural causes”. I think they’re running with that to steer people away from speculation that it had anything to do with drugs.
I don’t consider a heart attack or stroke to be “natural causes.” Is that standard?
I don’t know, but I always thought “natural causes” meant that no outside-the-body force played a part. Of course, a heart attack or stroke, if that’s what it was, can be caused by outside-the-body forces.
I guess I was thinking that heart attacks and strokes are related to lifestyle and environmental issues. But you’re probably right. Jeeze, a heart attack at 43.
Well, as I search around, I’m realizing I wasn’t paying close enough attention to him while he was alive. He had some issues…
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/08/26/57997/breitbart-kennedy-twitter/
He could’ve had an aneurism. Although, he doesn’t seem like a lot of oxygen was ever circulating in his brain. He was a big fat loud angry man like Limbaugh.
Wow.
I had interaction with him on twitter…albeit short one, but surprisingly he was cordial to me. My first guess would be a heart attack, as he would get too worked up and his anger would come through, you could see it on his face when he would yell all kinds of things at people.
I believe he was married and had small children. May he find PEACE and Rest.
No way to tell what killed him until they do an autopsy and get drug screen results. It’s pretty unusual for a 43 year old to drop dead of a heart attack out of the blue.
He appeared pretty “stoked up” on something the night he attacked the OWS protesters.
It was suggested that he was fueled up on a lot of wine which prompted that screaming and yelling outbreak.
But it is also true that unbrideled hate can lead to some very serious physical issues as well.
And this guy was just chock full of it.
He was a hateful prick. I imagine his evil will live on after him through his internet sites and that’s too bad.
Does that make me a bad person? Screw it.
MSNBC says Andrew Breitbart died suddenly? Is that true? Anyone know?
I just posted it above. No one knows anymore than what is on his website so far.
I’ll hazard a guess as to cause of death: hubris. NPR just announced his death & mentioned his last book – Righteous Indignation – Excuse Me While I Save the World. Jeebus.
Someone should have told him to chill, as I do believe spewing that much anger, eventually gets internalized and eventually does the person in. I draw people (I think I am an artist …) and I am always reluctant to draw people with very angry lines…albeit I see more in the lines than the average person and do believe it is a map of the person and their state of being, the map of their life.
I am with Dak on meditating and finding inner peace…it is essential to ones survival.
WV,
There is some research to support this. “Type A” personalities who are hostile are more susceptible to heart disease. For him to have a heart attack at 43, there is probably something that runs in his family. I have a friend who actually had a heart attack in his 30s and had had two bypass surgeries by his late 40s, but it’s pretty unusual. My guess is genetics contributed.
My brother-in-law had his first heart attack when he was 37. Heart problems ran in the family. He survived the first but the second one at age 58 killed him–a sudden death attack. They said he was dead before he hit the ground. So, it can happen.
Yes, my grandfather died when he was 36 from thrombosis…massive heart attack. It does happen. LA Coroner is doing an autopsy: Andrew Breitbart’s death to be reviewed by L.A. County coroner – latimes.com
Not to change the subject, but when I was searching for info about Breitbart, I ran across an article saying Jan Berenstain died. So sad. I always loved those bears.
http://www.tmz.com/2012/02/27/jan-berenstain-dead-bears/#.T0-PkJhb0UU
Me too!
I truly loved reading those stories to my kids when they were little.
There was a great interview with her son on NPR yesterday afternoon. Here’s the transcript: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/28/147590615/jan-berenstain-co-creator-of-childrens-book-series-dies You can also listen to it at the same site.
Oh no. How sad.
I grew up reading those stories…that is so sad.
Dying at 43 is a tragedy.
That’s all I am prepared to say on behalf of Andrew Breitbart.
I thought he was in his 50s from his appearance.
I thought the same thing, BB. I was shocked to hear the news but even more shocked to hear his age. They had a clip bouncing around last week of Breitbart going off the deep end with an Occupy group, calling them rapists.
Maybe this is a cautionary tale about keeping your blood pressure down. He looked like a maniac on the tape. It’s a tragedy for his wife and family, of course. Fox News is in mourning.
Enough said.
If you watch the video clip of him screaming at the OWS protesters in DC or his speech at CPAC it’s pretty obvious that guy had some issues.
Breitbart’s father-in-law says that Breitbart was out walking around midnight when he collapsed. Someone saw him collapse and immediately called 911. TMZ is reporting that Breitbart suffered from heart problems last year.
Thanks. That’s interesting. Maybe it was a heart rhythm problem.
could be .
You know the awful thing about the vile bigotry of Those People? I just saw the article about Breitbart’s death and my first reaction was to smile. Bigotry warps everything.
I know when somebody dies it really isn’t about me, but, well, it warps that, too. And even on reflection, my only real feeling is schadenfreude. Sheesh.
Schadenfreude…that was sort of my feeling too. Does it make me a bad person? I don’t know but the guy was a hateful asshole, I wouldn’t say there is a joy in his death…but karma is a bitch…
Damn, that sounds cold…
Sorry, this guy made his living on lies and disengenuousness. He wallowed in hate. His mission was to destroy people.
He was not, as some from the Right are suggesting, a man of commitment to principles of his beliefs.
He was a shabby little excuse out to make a buck by damaging others for his own enrichment.
Too young to die, yes, but not a great loss to any cause.
A carbon copy of Rush Limbaugh.
I’m not shedding any tears over him, that’s for sure.
The Frothy One makes a statement re Breitbart’s death: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/01/santorum-breitbart-a-huge-loss-for-our-country/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
Drudge has a strange statement on his site:
Flashing each other? A sunny day on Venice beach? “He was in his mid 20’s. It was all there.” Sorry but this is strange…
I thought it was very odd, too. Almost too revealing. It was like the comments Karl Rove made about the time he first saw George W. Love at first sight type comment. Ummmmmm! Or the comment of Obama’s room mate. Just too weird, if you ask me. Not that there is anything wrong with ………
You know, now that you mention it, that does sound a lot like those other descriptions of first meetings between famous dudes.
That some how isn’t funny, more shocking really…
The Romney campaign has spend down most of its money fighting off Santorum. So far Romney hasn’t used any of his on money, but they’re apparently struggling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/mitt-romneys-millions-and-why-they-could-matter/2012/02/29/gIQAm0RJjR_blog.html
Charlie Pierce demands that Rick the Dick reveal which Penn State profs docked his grades for being conservative. Why is he dissing his alma mater?
I’ve had students who stated conservative views in their papers and I’ve always been careful to set that aside in grading them. I think most profs do the same. No one wants to be accused of unfair grading.
I heard that whine yesterday, BB. I immediately thought–gee, what a great excuse. My grades suffered because of my political bent. Santorum is shameless. As it turns out, people who knew him at the time said he wasn’t all that extreme at Penn State. Maybe, he’s fending off [a pre-emptive defense] over a less than stellar GPA.
Super Tuesday will be interesting. If Santorum can rack up some of these southern states and delegates, the race isn’t over and Romney will still be twisting in the wind.
As a biologist who discusses evolution (all the time) and has to grade student work for my sins, there’s another problem besides how good the profs are at refraining from bias.
Reality has a liberal slant. It’s impossible, for instance, to come up with a coherent creationist argument. I’ve had a few (very few) of those students who objected to being dinged because “But my beliefs!”
It’s impossible for them to understand that I don’t give a flying fig about their beliefs. It’s impossible for me not to flunk them for not getting evolution. So they don’t last long in class, which is a small mercy.
But then, apparently, they run for President….
Oh well, that’s different. I was talking about personal papers. If someone tried to argue against evolution in one of my psychology classes based on “beliefs,” I’d definitely have to set them straight. I wonder if that’s what Santorum was talking about. I assumed he just meant they objected to his political philosophy. He was a political science major, so that’s why I thought that.
😆 Oh, and qualified to give a ‘personal’ perspective on female reproduction!
I tried to teach them to avoid putting spin on data. I tell them that economists just do the if, then thing and it’s up to policy makers to decide if it’s good or bad. I don’t discount views from any range of the political spectrum, They just don’t belong in theory classes. My first lecture is on leaving out any view that’s not lead by data. Santorum just spews stuff that has no basis in reality. I imagine that’s where he got dinged. If you’re in a class with some one like me, I don’t care what your political bias is … I just want you to let the models and the data prove your points. I don’t care about philosophical meanderings. Save it for the humanities classes.
Santorum was in the humanities. He majored in political science, which is why I assumed he was claiming he was downgraded simply for talking about his political philosophy. Actually, he wasn’t even that conservative when he was in college, so the whole thing is probably a lie.
A bit off subject but still about Rick the Dick: Santorum Loses His Cool During Interview With Cincinnati Radio Station
He keeps blaming the media for bringing up contraception, but no one was talking about it until he said if he were in the White House he’d talk about how it hurts women, how immoral it is, etc. And he said he would immediately cut off all government funding for family planning. In the last debate, he never once talked about jobs. I don’t know what he expects.
Texas man killed over karaoke song choice
For a change of pace from Breitbart, here’s another death from last night. You have to read this to believe it. (video)
Senate kills controversial GOP plan to let employers opt out of health care coverage if they oppose it on moral grounds.
No surprises there. The Dems are trying to give the GOP a lot of rope to hang themselves and expand the gender and youth gaps.
It could work for them, if the Reuters story I posted is correct.
Senate Votes Down Contraception Amendment – Meghan McCarthy – NationalJournal.com
by a vote of 51 to 48
Reuters: 63 percent of voters back Obama birth control policy: poll
BB, I got a bit distracted, but I wanted to say I love the happy animals. That cat is great…almost looks like he is putting his finger to his mouth like Austin Powers.
I’m glad you noticed them. Be sure to go look at the rest. The alligator and the anteater are priceless!
I love the bulldog, but I am partial to them anyway. The rabbit on the carpet is great too. Yea, that alligator was fun.
There’s already a conspiracy theory that Obama had Breitbart killed.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/people-who-think-president-obama-killed-andrew-bre
Geez…Maybe if I cut and pasted Breibart’s head onto the alien autopsy pics it would add to the conspiracy.
Sorry, Breitbart…
Leave it to Matt Taibbi to properly eulogize the guy …
Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche
OMG! Taibbi has guts, I’ll give him that. He told the truth. That’s not appreciated these days–we always have to spin it.
The comment section on that piece is something to behold. As are the ludicrous charges that Breitbart was ‘Vince Fostered.’ The current group of so-called conservatives are truly twisted. I’m not an Obama fan but the hate and rage out there is off the charts.
I have come to respect Taibbi no end. He calls it like he sees it, no matter what. We need more of that!
One other thing. The level of insane hate and rage from the wingers has turned me into a reluctant Obama supporter, which I’ve never been before. That those nuts might actually win is just too horrible to contemplate.
Gee aren’t those level headed people? What whackos we have here now!
Gallup Builds The GOP Narrative
This story is worth a read.
So he’s saying that the books were cooked for Bush in 2004 just like in 2000? Wow, I missed that story. What he’s describing sounds just like what happened to Hillary in 2008 – everyone saying Obama was leading while she was winning primaries.
I’m probably hopelessly naive, but reading this post that you linked, my thoughts are that it’s all about ratings for the “news” programs. If one candidate is actually ahead and likely to stay comfortably ahead, what will all these talking heads have to talk about? Helping their kids with their homework? What they ate for lunch? I’m beginning to feel as if America is much closer politically to the old Soviet Union and China – propaganda being fed to us, telling us what Americans think. Okay, duly paranoid now. Thanks ralph.
The ratings angle is what I was thinking. If my memory serves, every time the race got dull in 2000, 2004 etc a Gallup poll would pop out of nowhere with the candidate numbers scrambled from everyone else. If you look at the list of polls at RealClearPolitics, Gallup is the only one with numbers like those. Every one else is diametrically opposite and they agree with each other. Gallup sucks!
Here are all the polls …
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/president_obama_vs_republican_candidates.html