Fair warning – Don’t click through if you don’t want to read something political in nature.
I’m sensitive to those that don’t want to read that sort of thing, hence the fair warning. Nothing bad here, just a curiosity and I’m wondering if other people in the USA are doing the same thing, so testing it on WUWT’s wide readership will likely help answer it.
I have seen upside down US flags twice now in my town. The first time I just thought it was self commentary, now seeing it a second time in a different part of town, I stopped along E. 5th Avenue to get this shot. I wonder, how many people across the United States are doing the same thing after November 6th? In case you don’t know, flying the flag upside down is a sign of distress or emergency. Flying at half staff is respect for the fallen in service of our country. Combined it makes quite a commentary on the Benghazi incident, the fallen soldiers and ambassador, and the election. Checking the Internet I find there are others doing the same thing now, such as this fellow in South Bend, Indiana. Then there’s the story about an upside down half-staff flag at McDonald’s which has angered a lot of veterans even though it was claimed to be a mistake.
The U.S. Flag code says in section 8:
The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
Some people consider it flag desecration such as is on par with burning it as political commentary.
I wonder though, if this sort of visual political commentary I’ve seen in my town is being quietly repeated elsewhere since many people now see the USA as being in distress?
another take-away is that there are innumerable petty demagogues striving for semiotic supremacy.
the rise of mental mystics might be labelled ‘pathological pundit syndrome’
dahun says:
Neither Bush nor Obama nor any U.S. President controls world oil prices. At best, they have a minor effect on these prices. And U.S. gas prices correlate essentially perfectly with world oil prices.
Because jobs are a lagging indicator in recessions. The U.S. economy has been growing since something like the middle of 2009…And, in fact, there has also been growth in the private sector job market since around the beginning of 2010. The stock market has recovered to near its pre-recession levels ( https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI ).
Unemployment, which is now about the same as when Obama took office, represents a huge hole that was rapidly being dug when Obama took office. Unfortunately, Obama did not have a magic wand that allowed him to instantly reverse an economy in free-fall and go from losing 800,000 private sector jobs per month to gaining jobs instantly. Rather, it took a few months to reduce those job losses to less extreme levels and about a year total until we were actually creating jobs again. ( http://www.blogforarizona.com/.a/6a00d8341bf80c53ef0168eb201fe4970c-500wi )
Some people apparently do not understand the concept of a derivative. If you want to specify the initial conditions at the beginning of Obama’s term, it is not enough to simply note what the “position” (unemployment) was. You also have to consider the “velocity”, i.e., the fact that the economy was shedding 800,000 private sector jobs per month and that the economy was rapidly contracting ( http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/jfrankel/blog/images/quarterly%20growth%20in%20GDP.jpg )
“Neither Bush nor Obama nor any U.S. President controls world oil prices.”
I would suggest that cutting leases in half, cutting production 40% would affect oil prices. I would also suggest that if an area with one trillion barrels of oil reserves were opened oil rices world wide would drop…especially within 4 yeras. I would also say that continuing the shale oil pipeline would drop oil prices. Presidents may have had little influence on oil prices. No one ever imagined a president that would conduct all out war on fossil fuels before as Obama is.
“…jobs are a lagging indicator in recessions.”
This is the longest recovery from a recession in history. Trying to defend Obama’s record is foolish.
“Unemployment, which is now about the same as when Obama took office, represents a huge hole that was rapidly being dug when Obama took office.”
…and unemployment will rise significantly shortly as Obama’s second term begins and he raises taxes, continues to print money as he puts the country one trillion dollars a year further into debt each year, continues his war on domestic energy and offers nothing but his same failed policies.
“Some people apparently do not understand the concept of a derivative.”
Some people don’t understand supply and demand. Obama’s policies have doubled energy prices. His policies help support dictators, despots and terrorists. His policies are a cruel tax which hits those who cannot afford it the most. His policies are putting the world in danger of war when the countries in the Middle East and Russia could be easily made irrelevant if the US became energy independent as it could easily be.
daveburton says:
Here are the job creation numbers for various Presidents: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_president_of_the_us_created_the_most_jobs Clinton created the most, more than Reagan did.
And, the job creation numbers for the entire G.W. Bush administration are less than 2 million jobs…and it is even worse if you look just at private sector jobs. By contrast, the Obama Administration has created 5 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years. Yes, the numbers for his whole term are not so great yet because of the fact that he entered office with an economy shedding 800,000 jobs per month. However, most Americans are intelligent enough to understand that a President can’t wave a magic wand and instantly stop the economic freefall we were in when Obama took office.
joelshore is as usual being an apologist for the despicable Barry Obama. And as usual joelshore is wrong — not the numerous other commentators here who dipute him. Note what happened starting with 0bama’s election. And it’s getting worse, not better. shore says: “Neither Bush nor Obama nor any U.S. President controls world oil prices” Wrong. When Clinton opened the strategic petroleum reserve in response to rising oil prices, oil prices plunged. The deluded joelshore is an economic illiterate who actually believes that Presidents do not affect oil prices. shore doesn’t even understand supply and demand curves.
0bama’s policies are the direct cause of the economy’s malaise. Those misguided policies wil only get worse.
obama’s policies have been a total failure. Only blinkered fools fail to see that.
daveburton,
Correct, and as usual joelshore is mendaciously misrepresenting the facts, by using the unreliable blog Wikipedia as an incredible source. shore says: “And, the job creation numbers for the entire G.W. Bush administration are less than 2 million jobs…and it is even worse if you look just at private sector jobs.”
Wrong as usual. I showed that job creation has fallen off a cliff starting when 0bama was first elected. 0bama’s policies are the central cause of the terrible employment situation. With the right policies unemployment would be far lower. 0bama’s policies are clearly at fault, and only blinkered economic illiterates fail to see that obvious fact.
joeldshore, those numbers are wrong. They count the Carter recession job losses against Reagan’s reforms, which is nonsense, since it predated them.
Note that Clinton inherited a healthy economy, and Reagan inherited a train wreck.
Moreover, Clinton had the huge advantage of a Republican Congress for 6 of his 8 years. Usually, the Party that dominates economic policy is the Party that controls 2 of 3 out of:
The U.S. House,
The U.S. Senate,
The U.S. Presidency
When the same Party controls all three, they dominate even more completely; and when the same Party controls all three and has a veto-proof Senate majority, as was true when Obama took office in 2009, the dominance is total. However, the details of the dynamics vary, of course; e.g., Reagan managed to forge a coalition with some conservative Democrats to get his three-phase tax cut program enacted, despite nominal Democrat control of Congress.
Look at the job and deficit numbers for Republican vs. Democrat dominance, and you’ll see that over the last 40 years Democrats have fared poorly, and Republicans much better.
dahun, exactly right. The sad thing is that joelshore knows that, but he doesn’t care about all the people being hurt. He’s got his tenure, so they can eat cake.
.
daveburton says:
“joeldshore, those numbers are wrong.”
Most everything joelshore posts is misinformation.
dahun says:
Actually, I understand supply and demand a lot better than you do. I understand that the worldwide recession in 2008 caused a much larger contraction in world demand for oil than any supposed decrease in world oil supplies due to Obama’s energy policies.
I also understand that oil is a fungible quantity and hence even the supposed Holy Grail of energy independence would not stop the price for gasoline from being determined by the world oil market. You might want to ponder the fact that Canada is a net exporter of oil and yet its gasoline prices are not lower than ours.
[Oh, and I also am not one of those people who feel that I am entitled to having low gasoline prices. I actually feel that I should be paying the full costs of the price of oil, including all of the hidden environmental costs, rather than having the price subsidized. This might be a very difficult concept for people like you, with your sense of entitlement, to understand.]
D Boehm says:
Wow…You not only make up facts about the economy and the climate…Now you even make up facts about me. Being a “lecturer” at a university is generally not a tenured position (and specifically is not at mine). And, in fact, my salary is less than half of what i was making when I was working in industry (until I was laid off during the Bush Great Recession and made the switch to academia). And, if I was voting strictly my own pocketbook, it would actually be arguable who I should vote for, since the large drop in salary (and the fact that I saved quite a bit when my salary was higher) means that my future financial situation may be determined largely by taxation policies on my income from dividends, capital gains, and interest (which I believe Romney’s tax plan called to group with dividends and capital gains for a lower tax rate). In that regard, I ought to favor policies of further reducing taxation on unearned income. I don’t because I don’t think that is fair, even though it may well benefit me.
joelshore says:
“…I was working in industry (until I was laid off …”
So joelshore couldn’t make it in the private sector, and had to take a job at half pay. And like 0bama, he blames Bush. What a dweeb.
The dweeb says: “Actually, I understand supply and demand a lot better than you do.”
Not hardly. joelshore does not understand that taking a trillion barels of oil out of the country’s future has an impact on prices. 0bama took away the right of Americans to get the benefit of all the oil in the red zone, and that is only offshore oil. It doesn’t count the underground takeaways. When there is less of something, prices rise. joelshore doesn’t believe that. No wonder he couldn’t make it in the private sector.
D Boehm says:
You may be aware that Kodak has not done very well over the past several years and is now in bankruptcy. In particular, they sold the intellectual property and laid off the workers for the entire area that I was working in. While you might generously imagine that I alone was the determinant of Kodak’s fate, I have no illusions about my small contributions to the overall financial status of Kodak in either direction.
[And, by the way, I don’t blame Bush for the fate of Kodak, but the fact is that the bottom dropped out of the economy at the time it did turns out not to have helped a company that was already in trouble due to highly disruptive technological changes in the imaging industry.]
I should also add that taking a job at half the pay rather than doing a more intensive search for another industry job (e.g., being more open to the possibility of relocation) is in part a conscious choice on my part.
What I believe is that oil is a fungible quantity and small changes in U.S. oil production are not the major determinant of the price of oil. That’s even leaving aside the issues of whether you are accurately reporting the Obama policies on oil (which I am quite sure you are not…but frankly there are only so many falsehoods I have the time and energy to correct).
Tucci78 says:
November 10, 2012 at 5:21 am
At 9:00 PM on 9 November, Gail Combs had written:
“There are people on this site who I disagree with on politics but who I respect greatly when it comes to science. Unfortunately Climate Science has gotten badly tangled up with politics and the corporations who want to make a buck by ripping off the tax payer. That has nothing to do with right/left politics….
I beg strenuously to differ. It has absolutely everything “to do with right/left politics,” and there is no way to argue otherwise unless one confuses the Republican Party with the “right” in American politics….
_______________________________________________
“Left”/”Right” politics has always been nothing more than a a dog & pony show for the masses. My point is there IS NO “Left”/”Right” There is only the Regulating Class otherwise known as the ruling elite and their suck-ups vs us their serfs. Capitalism, even in the USA, has been dead for a hundred years.
We out number them and as was painfully pointed out in the French Revolution, get the masses angry enough and you will lose your head. The elite took careful note of this and have been trying to devise a system that extracts the maximum amount of wealth and labor out of the serfs with the minimum amount of danger to themselves. By and large they are very successful. Mention them and you are a ‘Conspiracy Nut’, heck we do not even know WHO they are much less what they are up to.
The fact that Karl Marx was the darling of the Wall Street set is telling, as thecartoon by Robert Minor in St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1911) shows.
Experiments with ‘socialism’, a new mechanism to control the masses as religion’s hold diminished, were tried in various forms.
Communism fell flat on it’s face in the USSR but ‘socialism’ in the EU seemed to work so now they are trying something new called the The Third Way Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are adherents adherents of the “Third Way”.
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/centre-left-s-young-turks-seek-neo-conservative-inspiration/51890.aspx The politicians who led the brainstorming session in London hope that a cocktail of New Labour Third Way ideas that break some traditional taboos of the left, elements of the Nordic social democratic model and some continental experience will revive a centre-left vision.
Pascal Lamy is the director-general of the World Trade Organization. Global security and global social democracy: Internationalism once lay at the heart of the progressive movement, yet in recent years the idea appears to have lost its appeal for many social democrats. Responding to this trend Pascal Lamy argued to Policy Network that the globalisation of capitalism requires a response of equivalent ambition and boldness from social democrats. In this essay series key thinkers debate the challenge laid down by Lamy.
Capitalism? What Capitalism. As I said it is DEAD strangled to death by years of red tape and public education brainwashing, starved by Fractional Reserve Banking, but I will certainly grant you that the USA has been a terrific experiment. A “Camelot” for “one brief shining moment”
A question was posed about public figures suing for libel or slander. Basically the SCOTUS has said that the more public a figure you are, the more people can lie about you and not be sued for it. (that is the short version). So where a slander or libel law might protect me if the national enquirer or Billy Bob accuse me of being a known homosapien who’s sister is a thesbian, and I could sue for damages, Mitt and Barack (and Dr. J etc ) are all out of luck.
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
November 10, 2012 at 11:25 am
Don’t forget the European meddling in the Middle East that set up the current situation….
________________________________
Thank you you beat me to it.
Same with Vietnam
For the benefit of people who may be reading this who actually let facts influence their ideology rather than people like D Boehm whose facts are slave to his ideology, here is the opinion of an oil market analyst ( http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/aug/24/billboard/billboard-blames-obama-high-gas-prices/ ):
Hmmm…Apparently, I am in good company with oil market analysts in understanding the oil market, just like I am in good company with the climate scientists in understanding climate change. D Boehm, on the other hand, is alway in excellent company with his ideological breathren and in very poor company with fact, science, or reality.
D Böehm says:
November 10, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Here is another election oddity …NOT!
Elections have consequences: the unemployment rate is beginning to rise already.
___________________________________
I am not surprised. Small business accounts for about 50% of the jobs in the USA and Small firms accounted for 65 percent (or 9.8 million) of the 15 million net new jobs created between 1993 and 2009.
As the commenters put it “…There was such shock in our community the day after election, our TOTAL daily sales fell to the lowest in 15 years and they are not bouncing back this week. If you cannot run a business for profit why bother??”
And “…My wife’s employer has already announced they will drop helath insurance for all employees. It is cheaper for them to do that and pay the fine…”
And “..As a business owner I am building up my cash balances, holding off new equipment purchases, and I have shifted my work force to independent contractors where possible.
I have one final comment on the subject that came up here about the “47 %” who pay no Federal Income Taxes, as Hotrod points out, that is Federal Income Taxes. Let’s leave out those handful of usually rich people, who arrange their affairs (legally) to not OWE any FETs sometimes as a result of charitable deductions, but not always.
So the group I am talking about are low or no income persons, about whom, I make no judgement whatsoever. The argument is they are too poor to pay, as they need every penny they have.
So why is it that they need to keep every penny which they spend on “stuff”? Not my place to judge whether they need the stuff. If it is food clothing and shelter, well of course they do.
And stuff is expensive and getting moreso. Why is stuff so expensive ?
Well the guy(al) making the stuff, IS paying more than his(er) share of the taxes; well not really; nothing in the articles of incorporation of any company or business provides for paying ANY taxes to ANYBODY. So corporations don’t pay taxes. They COLLECT taxes for federal, state, and local governments who present them with the bill.
So they cut up the bill into little pieces, and they hand a piece to EVERY customer, in the form of a HIGHER PRICE for the item.
They also hand a piece of the bill to EVERY employee, in the form of lower salary or wages.
Then they give the remaining pieces to EVERY share or bond holder; the owners of the business, in the form of lower profits and dividends on their investment.
Well you get the picture. Businesses that provide all the stuff pay the taxes that aren’t paid by the buyers of the stuff. That is why the “poor” can’t afford to pay taxes. Everything they buy is inflated in price by the taxes the business collects for governments, and their take home pay is diminished by what their employer collects for the government as corporate taxes.
If taxes on business were eliminated, wages could rise, and prices would go down, and everybody could afford to pay Federal taxes.
Actually, I don’t think ANYBODY should pay Federal taxes; The Federal tax bill should be one sheet of paper (two sides), with a list of the 57 States, and the annual amount each State will pay.
I’ll let the Federal accountants and tax lawyers argue with the State accountants and tax lawyers about what each State should pay. Leave me out of it.
Well the Federal tax bill would need to be revised every ten years, after the decadal census, to readjust the proportions.
Well I don’t want to pay State taxes either; leave me out of that too. The State can sit down with the accountants and tax lawyers of the Counties, to decide what each County should pay in State taxes.
No need for any Goverment entity smaller than a County; they simply aren’t viable in modern complex times.
So the County needs a board of supervisors, or whatever they want to call them. I think 13 people is plenty; a jury plus one, so no ties (or abstensions).
So those 13 people are the only folks in the entire known universe, who I would allow to send me a tax bill. And not surprisingly, on election day, I want to be able to vote for MY slate of 13 supervisors; and of course every other voter would too. So all 13 would represent the county; not any enclave or local social club, or clique.
Ain’t going to happen of course. Perish the thought that tax payers should be allowed to vote for or against ANY individual, who has the power to tax them.
Taxes should be collected locally for local needs, and some passed up for regional needs, and then a little sent to the feds to pay for National defence. It makes no sense for the feds to be collecting taxes in the States to give money to the States.
It’s just like putting ten apples in a bag, and then removing one before you pay for the remaining nine.
But as they say, common sense, is not that common.
In June of 2010 the economy started to recover from the subprime mortagge crisis originating with Democrat ideology that demands everyone should be able to buy a home even if they cannot afford it. This recovery was derailed by Obama’s Stimulus spending, his war on coal and all domestic energy. The normal return from a recession was stopped dead in its tracks.
The Stimulus which promised a return to the employment numbers of the Bush presidency lost jobs overall while ballooning government jobs temporarily.
Obama claims this is the worst recession since the Great Depression. Carter handed Reagan double digit unemp[loyment and double digit inflation. Home mortgage rates were at a staggering 20% annual percentage rate. The Carter recession was the worst recession since the Depression. Reagan turned it around and created the longest peacetime boom in American history. Obama is bringing back Carter’s incompetence. Reagan never blamed Carter. He ignored Carter and went about the business of rebuilding the country and its respect around the world.
Never in history has a governemnt spent so much and had so little to show for it. Obama has spent on the levels of the WPA during Roosevelt’s time. Roosevelt had the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge and thousands of other bridges, roads, buildings and national parks to show for the money he spent…Obama has rich friends and little else to show for an additional $6 trillion in debt he has handed the American people.
There is nothing Obama has done to help recovery. All we get for a $16 trillion debt is ecuses and whinig about how he didn’t know how bad it was. We are headed over a fiscal cliff and Obama has his foot clamped down on the accelerator.
Abuse of the flag in contradiction to federal lawn as well as tradition is quite common. For example, it is illegal to fly the flag at night unless it is illuminated. It is also illegal to fly it in the rain or snow. An individual in my neighborhood flies a flag in his front yard at all times, night or day, rain or shine. So does the memorial to veterans in a local park. So does the local hospital. And the City Hall. And the police station.
Are people ignorant of the law, or are they just too lazy to put the flag up and take it down at sunrise and sunset? Perhaps they’ve never been a 1950s school custodian.
Putting a flag decal on your car is illegal, unless you remove it at sunset or when it starts raining. According to law, a flag may be placed on a car only under the following circusmstances: on a staff on the right-front fender during a parade or funeral. Note the many faded and peeling flag decals on vehicles in your town.
In a nearby city, after 9/11 local firemen demanded to fly the flag at the rear of their fire trucks on fire calls, so it could be seen waving in the wind as they sped to their duties. Those flags are now horribly blackened and tattered, yet they still fly (sort of). Is this disrespect or just self-reference?
Only the president can proclaim that the flag must fly at half-mast to honor the dead or for some other reason, and that only for a week at a time. At all other times, the flag must fly full-staff and above any other flag nearby. The local fire house flew their flag half-mast for a month after the death of Ronald Reagan. Nobody complained.
It is clear that most people who fly flags do so to exalt their own psychological definition. After all, they bought the flag, it’s theirs. Even if it is made, as are most, in Red China.
So much for the flag as a national symbol. Flying the flag is supposed to honor one’s relationship to the nation and one’s subservience to it. Nowadays it signifies self-indulgence, like everything else. The flag laws were written to discourage people from neglecting the flag, to always encourage mindful awareness of it. This element has surely been lost.
Steve Tabor,
Did you post under the wrong article? Your comment seems to fit the “Fly your Flag” article better. This is the comment section where everyone else disagrees with joelshore. That’s the overwhelming consensus, anyway. ☺
Steve, I was a flagboy in grammar school which meant my friend and I would show up 10 minutes early to go down to the custodian, get the flag and put it up. In return we get out ten minutes early to take it down, fold it properly and return it to the custodian. We could take it down, fold it and return it in record time.
We were told if we let the flag touch the ground, it would have to be burned. Once the flag was repalced due to wear and tear which led to a ceremony were the custodian, my friend and I stood with our hands over our hearts as the old flag was burned in the coal boiler. Times have changed. I am sure there are not many showing the flag the same respect.
An interesting article on the takers.
dahun: You show at least a little bit of promise compared to D. Boehm in that you at least acknowledge that there was this thing called the mortgage crisis which happened before Obama became President and led to a severe recession…although you have pretty crazy ideas about what caused it. Still I applaud you for at least trying to make your posts have at least a tenuous relationship with reality.
dahun says:
Do you even make an attempt to check your facts before you post such things? No, Carter did not hand Reagan double digit unemployment…Not even close. The unemployment rate averaged 7.1% in 1980 and 7.6% in 1981 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/business/us-unemployment-rate-history/ for the average yearly values for several years around that time and http://thedauntlessconservative.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/fredgraph-unrate-rr.png for the month-to-month variations). It wasn’t even rising when Reagan took over. It started rising in the latter part of 1981 and shot up above 10% in 1982, well after Reagan assumed the Presidency. And, when the economy was handed over from Carter to Reagan, we were not even in recession. There had been a short sharp economic downturn in early 1980 but then a sharp recovery in the next two quarters ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession ). Yes, there was high inflation and interest rates under Carter, but the recession was not one that Reagan inherited but rather one that some combination of his policies and Federal Reserve policies caused.
Oh…and here from Bloomberg ( http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNivTjr852TI ) is data on the 2008 recession, under the title “U.S. Recession Worst Since Great Depression, Revised Data Show”, including these relevant facts:
* It started in December 2007. (This is for D Boehm: Obama was sworn into office in January 2209.)
* Unemployment shot up 2.3% in 2008, the highest one-year jump since 1982 when Reagan was President. (Of course, it continued to rise significantly in 2009, not surprising since the economy was hemorrhaging 800,000 jobs per month at the end of 2008 / beginning of 2009.)
In 1980, Jimmy Carter’s last year in office, and when Reagan arrived, the vital economic statistics were: Interest Rate of 21%; Inflation, 13.5%; Unemployment 7% so his “Misery Index” stood at 20.5%.. http://jamesfconroy.com/?p=113
Unemployment was not in double digits, I stand corrected. I would, however, point out that the basic point that I made that Reagan inherited a far worse economy than Obama is 100% correct. It is also undeniable that at the end of his first term Reagan had rturned the economy around from a situation far worse than Obama inherited.
Obama has added $6 trillion to te debt and the country is in worse shape with higher unemployment, $716 billion stolen from Medicare, inflation at very high levels, more homes than ever facing foreclosure, etc., etc., etc..
As usual, I was right and joelshore was wrong: Hurricane Sandy made the crucial difference in the election:
15% of voters said Obama’s response to Sandy was the most important factor in their vote (and 73% of those went for Obama).
64% of all voters said Obama’s response to Sandy played a factor in their vote (and 62% of those went for Obama)*
That is more than enough votes to tilt this past election. Many more than enough. I still recall 0bama on every TV channel 24/7, from just before Sandy hit, until the election. Prior to Sandy Romney was 1 – 2 points ahead, and gradually increasing his lead. Sandy changed all that decisively. When 15% of all voters make their decision on election day, and state that 0bama’s scripted, 24/7 response was decisive, it provided more than enough votes to change the election.
0bama is nothing if not lucky. As they say, better to have good luck than good skill. Now 0bama can continue on his mission to wreck the U.S. economy — as he fully intends to do. We are on course to be the same as the hopeless EU serfs: ruled by an unaccountable bureaucracy and a scofflaw president, with an out of control EPA and an Attorney General who is an accessory to murder. Fun times ahead.
[*source for the figures above]
D Boehm: Far be it for me to try to convince you not the believe the fairy tales that help you sleep better at night and that will help to make sure you Republican apologists don’t deal with the real problems in your electoral appeal and have ever increasing trouble winning national elections.
But, there are a number of things that don’t add up with your version of events:
(1) What you want us to believe is that the FiveThirtyEight blog (and similarly for other respected poll aggregators) was magically able to get the right answer for the Presidential vote in all 50 states AND the Senate vote in all but one close election but that they were actually far off the mark most of the way and only got coinicidently close to the correct result because Sandy changed everything. Yeah…That sounds real plausible.
(2) The whole poll-denial movement arguing for only believing certain polls that leaned Romney’s way and “unskewing” the ones that didn’t relied on the proposition that the polls were oversampling people who self-identified as Democrats over those who self-identified as Republicans. However, the actual fact is that the exit polls showed that the polls showing this self-identification gap in those polls were in fact correctly reading the voting electorate.
(3) People saying that Sandy was important in their vote doesn’t mean that they changed their vote because of Sandy. What Sandy probably provided was a sort of confirmation to people who were already going to vote for Obama but who could now point to this as an example of his good leadership. And, sure, the fact that you had a Romney cheerleader like Governor Christie so happy with Obama’s leadership that he had to make a lukewarm statement about still supporting Romney for President probably didn’t hurt Obama…but if you think it made a difference of several points in the popular vote and/or would have flipped states in the electoral college enough to give Romney a win (which means Florida, Virginia, Ohio, plus another like Colorado), you are dreaming. [Oh, and by the way, Sandy apparently did depress turnout in the areas affected, meaning that it probably suppressed Obama’s national popular vote total a bit in that regard.]
(4) The stuff you read is always good for a laugh. That American Thinker piece certainly told you what you wanted to hear…e.g., they emphasize that Obama got only 50.4% of the vote rather than that he got 2.8% more than Romney. I’m sure…oh yeah… that they would be quick to point out that this is only a tiny bit less than the 50.7% share that Reagan got in 1980 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1980 ) What…They’re more interested instead in the 9.7% margin he had over Carter? Well…That’s strange! And, they emphasize the fact that Republicans kept most of their majority in the House but don’t note that this was not due to any dramatic win over the Dems in the popular vote for the House seats but rather due in large part to gerrymandered districts. (The best estimates that I have seen is that it was a virtual tie…if not a small Democratic edge…if you add up all the votes.)
But, hey, if the lesson that you want to take from this election is not to change a thing, then I won’t try to stop you.