JustOneMinute

Most Misleading Headline Ever?

In their ongoing effort to persuade the public to quit whinging about higher taxes the Dead Tree NY Times delivers a misleading headline for the record books:

Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than In The Reagan 80's

The text goes on to compare the total Federal, state and local tax burden in 1980 with that of 2010, which prompts a question - when did Reagan take office and launch his first round of tax cuts? 1981, yes? Surely the Times editors remember the timing of the Descent of Darkness.

So maybe a better headline would be "Taxes Lower than in the Carter Era", which would deliver a less surprising message and make a less compelling case that we are currently under-taxed.

I infer that the Times editors have realized their problem. Online, the current headline is:

Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in 1980

No kidding - most face a lower burden than in 1980, when everyone felt over-taxed.  We can spot the evolution (or is it intelligent design?) of their headline by way of the website URL (my emphasis):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/us/most-americans-face-lower-tax-burden-than-in-the-80s.html

Welcome back, Carter.

ERRATA: The CBO calculates the total Federal tax burden, including imputed corporate taxes. For the three lower quintiles of earners the Reagan years were not so great, tax-wise - the cut in the Federal income tax was roughly offset by the increase in the Social Security tax.

Finding the total Federal, state and local burden back to 1980 has me stumped just now, although this Tax Foundation report reaches back to 1991.

 

Back From The Cliff

The Politico reports on the emerging deal that will save us from the fiscal cliff. The gist - Republicans agree to tax hikes now and Democrats promise entitlement reform scheduled to kick in ten to twenty years down the road.

I sort of think Boehner should agree to this, just because it would be SOO cool to watch Obama, Pelosi and Reid ride into the signing ceremony on their unicorns. What a great Christmas treat for the kids!

Walk, Don't Run, To The Gym

Glenn linked to this WSJ story that just about gave me a heart attack:

One Running Shoe in the Grave

New Studies on Older Endurance Athletes Suggest the Fittest Reap Few Health Benefits

...

A fast-emerging body of scientific evidence points to a conclusion that’s unsettling, to say the least, for a lot of older athletes: Running can take a toll on the heart that essentially eliminates the benefits of exercise.

“Running too fast, too far and for too many years may speed one’s progress toward the finish line of life,” concludes an editorial to be published next month in the British journal Heart.

My marathoning days are lost in the mists of antiquity (and the Reagan tax cuts). And the WSJ coverage isn't really new news - Drs. O'Keefe and Lavine (two of the authors of this new paper) were mentioned last summer for an earlier paper issuing the same warning.

But we have some good news! In a glossier version of their earlier paper, the good doctors included some specific recommendations for fitness buffs:

Avoiding Exercise-Induced CV Damage
Suggestions for an exercise routine that will optimize heath, fitness and longevity without causing adverse cardiovascular structural and electrical remodeling:

• Avoid a daily routine of exhaustive strenuous exercise training for periods greater than one hour continuously. An ideal target might be not more than seven hours weekly of cumulative strenuous endurance ET.

• When doing exhaustive aerobic ET, take intermittent rest periods (even for a few minutes at an easier pace, such slowing down to walk in the middle of a run). This allows the cardiac output normalize temporarily, providing a ‘cardiac rest period’ when the chamber dimensions, blood pressure and pulse come down closer to baseline resting parameters before resuming strenuous exercise again.

• Accumulate a large amount of daily light-tomoderate physical activity, such as walking, gardening, housekeeping, etc. Avoid prolonged sitting. Walk intermittently throughout the day. Look for opportunities to take the stairs. Buy a pedometer and gradually try to build up to 10,000 steps per day.

• Once or twice weekly, perform high-intensity interval exercise training to improve or maintain peak aerobic fitness. This is more effective in improving overall fitness and peak aerobic capacity than is continuous aerobic exercise training, despite a much shorter total accumulated exercise time spent doing the interval workout.

• Incorporate cross training using stretching, for example, yoga, and strength training into the weekly exercise routine. This confers multi-faceted fitness and reduces the burden of cardiac work compared to a routine of daily long-distance endurance exercise training. 

• Avoid chronically competing in very long distance races, such as marathons, ultra-marathons, Ironman distance triathlons, 100-mile bicycle races, etc., especially after age 45 or 50.

• Individuals over 45 or 50 years of age should reduce the intensity and durations of endurance exercise training sessions, and allow more recovery time.

For a similar perspective, Mark Sisson of the Primal Blueprint railed against "chronic cardio" a while back.

So don't let the WSJ scare you - plenty of forms of exercise are great for your health. But maybe putting a marathon on your list of New Year's resolutions is not such a great idea.

PUSHBACK: It's full speed ahead at Runner's World.

PUMPING IRON: Here is a cohort study showing that muscular strength is inversely associated with mortality risk:

CONCLUSION:

Muscular strength is inversely and independently associated with death from all causes and cancer in men, even after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other potential confounders.

However, we aren't talking about Arnold Schwarzwenegger here among the ironworkers. Per this chart, to break into the top third on upper body strength a guy had to bench press 185 lbs. one time (on a Universal machine.)

Social Collapse At The Margin

Glenn links to this study noting the various "fiscal cliffs" faced by low income recipients of mens-tested Government aid. Why work, one wonders?

The Tax Policy Center looked at this problem last summer and reched a similar conclusion. However, they added a second question - why get married?

Marriage Penalties. Means testing and joint filing has resulted in hundreds of billions of
marriage penalties for low and middle income households. Essentially, when moderate-income couples marry, their marginal tax rate moves up from, say, 25 percent, to the 50 and 80 percent ranges shown above.

For instance, a moderate income male marrying a working mother with children can easily cause her to lose EITC, SNAP, Medicaid, and other benefits as well. Marriage penalties arise because of the combination of variable U.S. tax rates and joint, rather than individual, filing by married couples for benefits and taxes.

If graduated taxes were accompanied by individual filing or if all income and transfers were taxed at a flat rate, there would be no marriage penalties. The EITC, by the way, can provide both subsidies and penalties, and Social Security generally provides very large marriage bonuses.

Someone looking at our system from Mars would conclude that we don’t want moderate income families with children to marry, since we penalize them, but we do want older households (at ages when children are likely to be gone) to marry, since we subsidize them.  

Government assistance is an area where Obama could show Nixon-to-China leadership. And pigs might fly.

Hard Times On Sesame Street

Geez - first Big Bird became an unwitting star of the Presidential campaign, and now this troubling headline from the Times:

Is Grover Finally Over?

What'll we tell the kids?

Reagan's Regret, Reprised

After months of hectoring us about fiscal sanity and intransigent Republicans, the NY Times discovers inflexible Democrats:

Efforts to Curb Social Spending Face Resistance

By Robert Pear

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s re-election and Democratic gains in Congress were supposed to make it easier for the party to strike a deal with Republicans to resolve the year-end fiscal crisis by providing new leverage. But they could also make it harder as empowered Democrats, including some elected on liberal platforms, resist significant changes in entitlement programs like Social Securityand Medicare.

This should hardly be a surprise - Nancy Pelosi spent a year thinking she could reclaim the House by demonize entitlement cuts and defending Medicare.

So away we go. One reason Republicans have taken a hard line on trading tax hikes for spending cuts is their belief that Reagan was duped by the Democratic House in 1982 into accepting future spending cuts that never materialized. Current Republican thinkers and leaders remain confident that Washington is much more competent and diligent about raising taxes and collecting the revenue than it is about cutting spending. (The Doc Fix in Medicare is a classic example of legislated savings that, year by year, never actually materialize.)

And might such a trade of tax hikes today for spending cuts later (or never) happen in the run-up to the fiscal cliff? Sen. Richard Durbin gives us a hint as to where the rest of Obama's party is:

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) served on the Bowles-Simpson commission, and stunned Washington last year by becoming the only liberal to vote for its recommendations, including significant entitlement cuts.

Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, appeared to back away from that position in remarks set for delivery Tuesday morning at the Center for American Progress.

“Social Security doesn’t add a penny to the debt and should not be part of any deficit reduction talks. We can and must do what we can to ensure its solvency for another 75 years, but that is another topic for another time, “ Durbin will say, according to prepared remarks circulated by his office.

“Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Medicare and Medicaid, but those conversations should not be part of a plan to avert the fiscal cliff.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney has already taken up the Social Security line, per the Times:

While a potential change in calculating Social Security increases was part of the talks with Speaker John A. Boehner last year, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, made clear on Monday that the administration was not considering changes to the retirement program as part of the deficit talks.

“We should address the drivers of the deficit, and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit,” Mr. Carney said.

We are poised for a glorious final act. If the reporting follows the pattern set last summer during the debt talks and the collapsed Grand Bargain then the focus will be on Republican hardliners even though the Times recently admitted that Obama backpedaled from his own deal with Boehner after the Gang of Six chimed in with a more liberal deal.

That said, Matt Bai still blames Boehner for last summer and thinks the Congressional Democrats will line up behind lame duck Obama. I guess we will see soon enough.

Romney Edges Past McCain In Total Votes

Possibly overlooked in the holiday excitement - Mitt Rommey has passed John McCain in total votes. John Podhoretz had predicted this slow vote accretion right after the election, when pundits were putting up the black crepe and noting that McCain had gotten two million more votes than Romney.

That still leaves this Nov. 11 "analysis" by Timesfolks Kevin Sack and Sarah Wheaton as one more for the laughtrack:

In addition to losing both the popular and electoral votes for president, the Republicans lost nearly every swing state. Although the race was far closer than in 2008, Mr. Romney won two million fewer votes than Mr. McCain did against Mr. Obama that year.

Corrections? At the Paper of Broken Record? C'mon, every day is Turkey Day over there.

Here We Go Again

A 'Thrill of the open road' open thread. Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and the return trip.

Saturday Morning

Away we go.

Back To The Future On Taxes!

When is a tax increase not a tax increase? When we harken back to the Reagan era and introduce a 'bubble' bracket. The NY Times describes a plan that makes Democrats happy by rasing taxes on "the rich" (as measured by income, not wealth) and placates Republicans by leaving the top bracket untouched.

The simple dodge - phase out all the lower tax brakets as income rises above some threshold. That raises the effective tax rate (and the true marginal rate) without changing the top statutory rate.

But aides involved in the negotiations said they remained confident, in part because many of the ideas that could break the impasse were fleshed out during successive but fruitless deficit negotiations between the president and Mr. Boehner and between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, and during the deliberations of the Congressional “supercommittee” on deficit reduction formed during the 2011 impasse over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. One Republican aide involved in the current talks said both sides believe a deal can be reached before Christmas.

The supercommittee drafted a proposal that would have eliminated tax brackets lower than 35 percent for affluent families, taxing the first dollar of taxable earnings at the highest tax bracket. In the late 1980s, the tax code included a similar rule, which “clawed back” savings from lower tax rates for some rich families.

Under the existing tax code, the first $17,400 of adjusted gross income for a couple filing jointly is taxed at 10 percent. Above that level, up to $70,700, income is taxed at 15 percent. Income between $70,701 and $142,700 is taxed at 25 percent. Gross incomes up to $217,450 are taxed at 28 percent. The next bracket, 33 percent, ends at $388,350 for couples. The top bracket hits adjusted gross incomes only above $388,350.

All taxpayers get the advantage of the lower tax rates below the top threshold, whether they earn $40,000 or $40 million.

Taking those tax brackets as Gospel, and relying on Excel and Keurig, I infer that if the effective average rate on income of $435,800 is 35%, the marginal rate from $388,350 to 435,600 must be 100%. Ouch. If all the phase-outs are spread out from $388,350 to $1,000,000 then the marginal rate over that bracket is 40%. In that scenario, everyone with income over $1 million will have an average rate of 35%; all income over $1 million will be taxes at a marginal rate of 35%.

Back in the Reagan era, we had a bubble bracket where the maximum statutory rate was 28% but the effetive marginal rate at a lower income level was 33%, due to the phase-out of deductions.

If that 5% spread guides current thinking, the transitional phase-outs will end at $1 million. How much revenue that raises I have no idea.

And the politics of this intermediate high bracket are ludicrous for the Republicans. Obama wants to raise the top marginal rate on everyone above some threshold to 39.6% (Let's round that to 40% for purposes of this mini-tirade). The Republican counter will be to raise the top marginal rate to 40% on incomes from $400K to $1 million and then cut the rate back to 35%? That may protect large small-business owners, but only by throwing the smaller successful ones overboard.That makes no sense even if small businesses really are imperiled by higher taxes, which is a dubious claim if we can rely on this Treasury study (summarized by the lefty CBPP).

I will add that this bubble-headed thinking inspired the subsequent tax reforms of the early 90's - once the Republicans accepted the top marginal bracket if 33%, refusing to extend that to incomes above the phase-out level became politically untenable. Read Bush's lips.

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving all!

And if you are giving a thought to our troops, here is yet more evidence that we have the greatest military in the world.

The David Brooks All Stars

David Brooks tells us the young writers and thinkers that will lead the Republican Party out of the wilderness.

Whodunnit? Benghazi Talking Points Mysteriously Changed

The Administration talking points on Benghazi were edited to downplay the terror references, but by whom? In a nice display of synchronized finger-pointing, everyone involved says it was someone else.

Vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) also said on Fox News Sunday that Petraeus said the initial talking points were altered and that senior intelligence and security officials did not know who was behind the changes.

“At the hearing we had on Thursday and Friday, we had every leader of the intelligence community there, including folks from the State Department, the FBI, everybody there was asked, do you know who made these changes? And nobody knew,” Chambliss said.

“The only entity that reviewed the talking points that was not there was the White House. I don’t know whether what they said yesterday is exactly right or not. But, what I do know is that every member of the intelligence community says that references to al Qaeda were removed by somebody and they don’t know who. And references to attacks versus demonstrations were removed by somebody.”

Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) disagreed with Rogers and said allegations the White House changed the talking points were false. “So there was only one thing that was changed and I’ve checked into this, I believe it to be absolute fact and that was the word ‘consulate’ was changed to ‘mission,’” she said on the same program.

Although they risk offending their Silicon Valley supporters, Team Obama might want to consider blaming AutoCorrect.

Sunday Morning

Earthquakes in college football last night.

Saturday AM

Away we go.

Times See No Evil CEO Mark Thompson's Veil of Ignorance Continues To Unravel

The NY Times stuck with embattled former BBC chief Mark Thompson based on his assurances that despite thirty-three years at the BBC including eight at the helm he had never heard a whisper about BBC star Jimmy Savile's pedophilia.

Now the Times has documentation that his ignorance was not as complete as he had claimed. The ghastly facts and Thompson's creative defense:

A legal letter sent on behalf of Mark Thompson, the former director general of the BBC, raises questions about his assertions that he learned of accusations of sexual abuse against its longtime host Jimmy Savile only after leaving the corporation’s top job.

In the letter, sent 10 days before Mr. Thompson left the BBC in September, lawyers representing him and another executive threatened to sue The Sunday Times in London over contentions in an article it was preparing that they had been involved in killing a BBC investigation of Mr. Savile.

Interviews show that the letter included a summary of the alleged abuse, including the allegation that some abuse might have occurred at the BBC.

According to people who have reviewed the private letter, it recounted that the proposed article in The Sunday Times magazine would “look at a number of allegations regarding the behavior of the late television and radio presenter, specifically that he took advantage of a series of young women. Some of the alleged assaults took place on BBC premises.”

An aide to the former BBC chief said that although Mr. Thompson had orally authorized the sending of the letter, he had not known the details of its contents. “It’s not clear if he was shown it, but he doesn’t remember reading it,” said the aide, a personal adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give Mr. Thompson’s version of events. Mr. Thompson declined to comment.

So Thompson is going with the classic "I'll sue you if you say whatever it is you are saying, even though I have no idea what it is" defense.  Save it for the laugh track.

Timesman Matthew Purdy, who has the unhappy task of investigating the new Times boss, notes a bit of a problem with Thompson's claim of aggressive ignorance:

The timing and substance of the letter are significant because Mr. Thompson, who began work this week as president and chief executive of The New York Times Company, said in October that “during my time as director general of the BBC, I never heard any allegations or received any complaints about Jimmy Savile.”

That was his claim then, but... Thompson backed away from that denial in a subsequent letter reported by the Times (and mocked by yours truly); the evolving evasion was flagged in a story with a Purdy byline:

Mr. Thompson’s version of his role has shifted somewhat over the past 10 days.

In a statement released on Oct. 13, Mr. Thompson issued a blanket denial of any knowledge of the squelched BBC report. “I was not notified or briefed about the ‘Newsnight’ investigation,” he said, adding that “during my time as director general of the BBC, I never heard any allegations or received any complaints about Jimmy Savile.”

But on Tuesday, in a letter in response to Mr. Wilson, the Parliament member, Mr. Thompson appeared to adjust his answer slightly, saying, “I was never formally notified about the ‘Newsnight’ investigation and was not briefed about the allegations they were examining and to what extent, if at all, those allegations related to Savile’s work at the BBC.”

So let's note two things. First, Mark Thompson had a long career at the BBC prior to becoming director general; neither denial claims he maintained his full ignorance of Jimmy Savile's conduct prior to his final promotion.

And his modified second denial emphasizes formal briefings and reports, which is very British and very bureaucratic - if there is no memo, it never happened. The second denial cracks the door open to the possibility that Mr. Thompson was told of the Saville problem but not in a formal briefing (a heads-up in the washroom preserves deniability).

Well - the Times now has a CEO who doesn't reliably read his morning briefings and threatens to sue people without knowing why. Is this See No Evil CEO right for a news organization?

Benghazi - Yet Again With The Sept 15 CIA Talking Points

CBS News is the latest outlet for the famous Sept 15 CIA talking points which sorta kinda exonerate UN Ambassador Susan Rice and her Sunday talk show suicide:

CIA talking points for Susan Rice called Benghazi attack "spontaneously inspired" by protests

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - CBS News has obtained the CIA talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on Sept. 15 regarding the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, four days earlier. CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan says the talking points, which were also given to members of the House intelligence committee, make no reference to terrorism being a likely factor in the assault, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Rice, who was considered a likely nominee to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, has been attacked by Republican lawmakers for saying on "Face the Nation" (video) on Sept. 16 that all indications were the attack "began spontaneously" - suggesting it likely sprang from a protest against an anti-Muslim video found on the Internet. Protests of that nature had been seen in other Muslim nations in the days and weeks before the Benghazi attack.

The CIA's talking points read as follows:

"The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.

This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.

The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of US citizens."

If the key paragraph, which includes "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo" seems familiar, that is only because you have been following the story.

Eli Lake excerpted the CIA talking points back on Oct. 1:

Why did it take eight days for the administration to acknowledge the 9/11 attacks in Benghazi were acts of terrorism? An unclassified briefing document provides new clues, writes Eli Lake.

...

The talking points say, among other things, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

In addition, the briefing says this “assessment may change as additional information is collected” and that the “investigation is on-going.”

Evidently that didn't stick because WaPo dean David Ignatius was given the talking points for an Oct 19 column defending Susan Rice:

CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

And now CBS News makes three.

So Susan Rice wasn't lying, she was a useful patsy with no operational responsibility for the debacle.

And as a bonus conspiracy theory - the CIA was lying in its talking points because it had no desire to admit that the attackers may have been attempting to free militants held at an off-the-books CIA detention center. Team Obama was not in a hurry to promote this discovery either, so the Veil of Deceit was lowered by all. Just a guess, obviously. James Taranto offered similar dark speculations.

And left up in the air - presumably the CIA retained authority to detain captives temporarily pending a transfer to proper authorities. How long is "temporary", and might that be what was happening in Benghazi?

OOPS: From CNN, we are told that Gen. Petraeus had different talking points from Susan Rice. Also, gthe initial intel was confusing and Petraeus may have compounded the confusion in his first Congressional briefing:

Former CIA Director David Petraeus knew “almost immediately” after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi it was the work of Ansar Al-Sharia, a loosely-formed group that has some members sympathetic to Al Qaeda, according to a source who has spoken to him and is directly familiar with his analysis of the situation.

According to this source, Petraeus says the stream of intelligence from multiple sources, including video at the scene, indicated the group was behind the attack. But a separate stream of intelligence also emerged indicating ongoing riots in Cairo over an anti-Islamic film might have motivated the attacks.

The source says there were some 20 different intelligence reports indicating the Cairo film might be responsible. The CIA eventually disapproved all those reports, but not until after Petraeus’ initial briefings to Congress in which he discussed all possibilities, the source said. “All those other reports got disproved over time,” the source says Petraeus told him.

Petraeus also believes confusion has emerged over two separate intelligence questions. First, who was responsible, and second what was the motivation of the attackers.

Petraeus’ aim in testifying, the source said, is in part to clear up “a lot of misrepresentations of what he told Congress initially. He wants to clear it up.” Petraeus is expected to tell Congress he had no direct involvement in the talking points UN ambassador Susan Rice used in the days after the attack. Petraeus developed unclassified talking points that were approved by the intelligence community the source says. Rice’s talking points may have used some of that information but were separate from what Petraeus provided.

 

The First Pollster Delivers Some Democratic Math

First Pollster Barack Obama delivers the sort of math that he does as a Democrat to make himself feel better. From his press conference:

If there was one thing that everybody understood was a big difference between myself and Mr. Romney, it was when it comes to how we reduce our deficit, I argued for a balanced, responsible approach, and part of that included making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay a little bit more. 

I think every voter out there understood that that was an important debate, and the majority of voters agreed with me.  By the way, more voters agreed with me on this issue than voted for me.  So we’ve got a clear majority of the American people who recognize if we’re going to be serious about deficit reduction, we’ve got to do it in a balanced way.

That clear majority is a bit hazy. Two exit poll questions (CNN, Fox) worked addressed taxes and deficits. The first was this:

Should income tax rates:
	                         Total		 
Increase for all               13%		 
Increase only on income
 over $250,000                 47%	  
Not increase for anyone        35%	 

That is 60% in favor of higher taxes. 13% favor higher taxes on everyone and roughly 45-47% favor higher taxes on someone else (4% of respondents claimed to have income in excess of $250,000 and 42% of that group voted for Obama, so there may be some self-sacrifice in the 46% who want to tax "the rich").

However! Let's note that the question said nothing about devoting that tax increase to deficit reduction. The current version of Paul Krugman has been mocking deficit hawks for several years (back in 2003 when we had a weak economy and weak job growth the Bush deficits were scary and would lead to hyper-inflation, but that was then...).

So how many of the 60% of the folks who want to raise taxes are as unconcerned about the deficit as Paul Krugman and really want to see the new money go to an expansion of government services? There are some ardent libs out there after all, and plenty of economics textbooks dismiss the idea of raising taxes and cutting spending in order to stimulate the economy.

A second exit poll question tackles this:

Should taxes be raised to help cut the budget deficit?
	Total	
Yes	33%	 	 
No	63%    

Hmm. One might want to argue that people misunderstood the question and took it to mean "Should YOUR taxes be raised to help cut the deficit?". Maybe! But it seems equally plausible that, by connecting this answer to the 60% of tax-hikers unearthed in the previous question, we can infer that 33% want taxes raised to cut the deficit, 27% want taxes raised to pay for more goodies, and 35% don't want taxes raised at all. (The 35% opposed to a tax hike are joined by the 27% opposed to deficit reduction to get to roughly 63% opposed to raising taxes to cut the deficit.)

Which implies that Obama's statistics jockeys are back on the Choom Gang and his claim of majority support for his notion of raising taxes on "the rich" in order to cut the deficit must have been inspired by the legalizations in Colorado and Washington.

WHILE WE ARE CITING POLLS... 49% want to repeal some or all of ObamaCare; 18% like it "as is" and 26% want to expand it. Clearly there is a huge sentiment on favor of adjusting the law, yes? What is Obama waiting for?

The Mormon Financier Couldn't Connect

Andrew Kohut of Pew Research cautions that Republicans should reflect on problems with their messenger before re-tooling their message.

Taking A Longer View

We take a brief break from the Petraeus Follies to reflect on the International Energy Agency report predicting that the United States wil be the world's top oil producer by 2017 and a net energy exporter.

From the Times:

The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow between 35 and 46 percent from 2010 to 2035, depending on whether policies that have been proposed are put in place. Most of that growth will come from China, India and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly. The consequences are “potentially far-reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.

Dr. Birol noted, for example, that Middle Eastern oil once bound for the United States would probably be rerouted to China. American-mined coal, facing declining demand in its home market, is already heading to Europe and China instead.

What are the odds that the Chinese goverment (in whatever form) will rely on the US Navy to keep the Straits of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf open? And how might Japan feel about the US reducing its role in that region and letting China take over, or share, the security burden?

I don't even want to ask about how the Indian government will feel about any Chinese attempt to turn the Indian Ocean into a Chinese lake as they bring their oil home. But can the Chinese really tolerate a situation where their nation's lifeblood relies on the presence of the US and the forebearance of the Indians?

And let's not give short shrift to Israel, itself projected to become a notable oil producer. With less US interest in the region, where is their support?

I look to the day when I glance at a headline about Chinese troops landing in Iran and promptly turn to the sports section because nobody in North America cares.

Too Many Generals

You can't tell the generals without a scorecard as Gen. Petraeus (Ret.) is joined in scandal by Gen. John Allen. All this brass and... well, let's segue back to Benghazi and try to anticipate some possible Team Obama spin.

Suppose (*SUPPOSE*) this report holds up and the atack on the consulate and annex was an attempt to free some Libyan militants from an off-the-books CIA detention center (ostensibly barred by an Obama Executive Order.) Very embarrassing for the CIA. And it might explain the non-response from the Pentagon when the consulate was attacked - the CIA would have been delighted to get aerial support but having the US military put their muddy boots inside a non-existent non-allowed CIA detention center might have created some awkward moments.

And the CIA evaluation of the attacker's motives may have been skewed by their desire to keep their little secret:

A few days later, Petraeus testified in a closed session to Congress that the attack was due in large part to an anti-Islam video and a spontaneous uprising, according to reports from the hearing.

Congressional leaders say privately they believe they were lied to by Petraeus when he testified shortly after the attack.

And of course Susan Rice made her many statements on Sept 16 blaming the video, claiming to have relied on intelligence community talking points.

Implausible though it may seem, she may be telling the truth. Of course, the CIA's desire to cover up the attacker's real motives ran parallel to the Administration's desire to cover up the notion that an actual terrorist attack on the 9/11 anniversary had been missed.

GREAT MINDS RUN IN THE SAME CHANNEL (Fools think alike): James Taranto makes the same case more powerfully. Hmm - there is no way we are the only two people to whom this has ocurred. The Benghazi hearings may move the dial up to eleven.

TEMPORARY DETENTION, OR, WHAT'S A SPY TO DO? I assume the CIA has some right to hold prisoners briefly pending a transfer to the appropriate authorities. Who those authorities might be in Libya is an interesting question. And when does 'temporary' become long-term?

After Petraeus

David Sanger ruminates about possible new heads fot the CIA, and reminds us that we really have Moved On:

Several current and former officials of American intelligence agencies said they believed that Mr. Obama might move quickly to nominate Mr. Petraeus’s deputy, Michael J. Morell, as his replacement. That would put the agency’s most respected intelligence analyst at the head of the organization. Mr. Morell is of the “light touch” school, and clearly the favorite inside the headquarters of the agency in Langley, Va.

The president could also choose the man inside the White House who is considered by many to be overseeing the entire American intelligence infrastructure from his basement office in the West Wing of the White House: John O. Brennan, a retired C.I.A. operative who once headed the agency’s station in Saudi Arabia.

By all accounts, both Mr. Brennan and Mr. Morell have developed strong relationships with Mr. Obama over the past four years; both were central players in the operation to find and kill Osama bin Laden, and both have been at the core of the covert program to undermine Iran’s nuclear program.

Here is the plot twist:

Mr. Morell is a soft-spoken onetime intelligence analyst. He was President George W. Bush’s intelligence briefer, and he was omnipresent in the White House after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He frequently could be spotted at a Starbucks in Waco, Texas, near Mr. Bush’s ranch, sipping his coffee between briefings.

If Mr. Morell was omnipresent at the White House after 9/11/2001, then he was omnipresent prior to March 19, 2003, when the US led the invasion of Iraq. And now Obama is going to appoint to run the CIA the guy who helped Bush lie us into war? I'm shocked.

And needless, to say, this need not be exclusively about mssing WMDs; Brennan has baggage, too:

Mr. Brennan would be more controversial. He was considered for the job four years ago, when Mr. Obama was first elected. But he withdrew when some human rights advocates accused him — unfairly, he said — of supporting or tolerating the use of torture while he was a top aide to George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director from 1997 to 2004. Similar accusations have dogged many other agency veterans.

If that is a problem for Mr. Brennan then how does Bush's briefer escape any taint from missing WMDs, torture, secret prisons, or Gitmo? Once again I am reminded that I will never be smart enough to be a lefty. Nor could I succeed as a Times editor, since these points are not even raised.

Fun With Numbers

Folks who ought to know better stumble over the numbers behind Romney's defeat.

Times reporters Kevin Sack and Sarah Wheaton ponder the Republican coalition:

"Although the race was far closer than in 2008, Mr. Romney won two million fewer votes than Mr. McCain did against Mr. Obama that year. "

Count every vote! McCain's vote total *AS REPORTED* the day after the election was 56.9 million; by Nov 17 it had risen to 58.3 million and eventually settled at 59.9 million. Plenty of states take a while in counting all the votes.

The morning after the 2012 election Romney was credited with 57.4 million votes, exceeding McCain's initial total but trailing his final tally by 2.5 million. Less than a week later Romney's total has risen (at the Times) to 58.6 million, 1.3 million short of McCain's eventual total and ahead of McCain's interim total. (FWIW, CNN has Romney at 58,783,137 votes as of 11/12/2012 at high noon.)

The claim that Romney won "two million fewer" votes than McCain is already wrong; my guess is that Romney will eventually surpass McCain.

Maureen Dowd won't let reality interfere with her snark:

Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after all, resoundingly won the election of the country he was wooing.

Mitt Romney is the president of white male America.

Maybe the group can retreat to a man cave in a Whiter House, with mahogany paneling, brown leather Chesterfields, a moose head over the fireplace, an elevator for the presidential limo, and one of those men’s club signs on the phone that reads: “Telephone Tips: ‘Just Left,’ 25 cents; ‘On His Way,’ 50 cents; ‘Not here,’ $1; ‘Who?’ $5.”

In its delusional death spiral, the white male patriarchy was so hard core, so redolent of country clubs and Cadillacs, it made little effort not to alienate women. The election had the largest gender gap in the history of the Gallup poll, with Obama winning the vote of single women by 36 percentage points.

Hmm. As to its target audience, I think Ann Romney ws meant to reassure women that a guy who didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't curse, had stayed married to his high school sweetheart and was a good husband, father and provider maybe wasn't such an awful guy.

And did it work? Well, among white women, Mitt had roughly the same gender gap as that macho swaggering Texas cowboy, George Bush, back in 2004 against every woman's fave, John Kerry. Bush was the president of white women by 55-44 but won white men by 62-37, a gender gap of 7 percent; Romney is the president of white women by 56-42 and white men by 62-35, a gender gap of 7 percent.

Where Romney falls apart is in his appeal to ethnic women. CNN does not subdivide it here, but shows Bush losing non-white women by 24-75. That is despite Bush picking up 44 percent of the Hispanic vote (men and women) and 11 percent of the black vote.

Romney lost Hispanic women by 23-76 and black women by 3-96; compounding his difficulties, each segment was a larger share of the 2012 electorate. Further compouding his woe - in 2004, Bush's gender gap among non-whites was roughly 7 percent, equal to his white gender gap. Romney's gender gap among blacks was 9 percent and among Hispanics, 10 percent.

My impression is that Romney had a serious ethnic problem, not an unusual gender problem. But nothing can stand between Maureen and her fun. Her final stat - Obama winning the vote of single women by 36 percentage points - is especially unconvincing. Romney is president of married women, by 53-46. Obama swept single women by 67-31. However, my *guess* is that single women skew more towards blacks, Hispanics and the 18-29 year old demographics than the married women, so what looks like gender based strength may be driven by ethnicity.

(I should note that Romney won each white demographic sorted by age, but his margin among 18-29 year old whites was only 51-44. Assuming a 6 point gender gap as with the overall white group, Romney would be roughly tied with Obama among young white (and disproportionately single) women.

Well. As an older white woman Maureen is a bit of an outlier. On the other hand, Catholic went for Bush in 2004 and Obama this time, so Ms. Dowde has a demographic home there. Not to mention her spot as a big city, highly paid east coast lib.

Saturday AM

Let's have the traditional "David, we hardly knew ye" open thread.

ORCA: Romney The Manager Outmanaged (Just Killer-Whale Me Now)

For want of a nail... At Ace of Spades a furious Romey volunteer details the debacle with ORCA, Team Romney's whiz-bang, computerized, centrally run get-out-the-vote effort.

In happier days, i.e., three days before the election, Team Romey was boasting to PBS about ORCA:

For months now, the Romney campaign has been putting together a high-tech voter monitoring operation to use on Election Day that will identify which of their committed supporters have voted -- and then corral those who haven't.

They call it the Orca Project, named for the powerful killer whale. Why Orca? It seems the Orca is the greatest natural predator of the Narwhal, the name of the Obama campaign's top secret voter micro-targeting system.

Orca will deploy 34,000 operatives in key precincts tomorrow, linked by a smartphone "killer app" to 800 volunteers on the floor of TD Garden (formerly Boston Garden). The Romney campaign has tried to keep Orca under wraps until the past few days. But today, Romney for President Communications Director Gail Gitcho proudly described it for us. Watch the interview with Gitcho above.

"At 5 o'clock when the exit polls come out, we won't pay attention to that," Gitcho said Monday. "We will have had much more scientific information just based on the political operation we have set up."

They will access more scientific informaton unless the volunteers don't get their information packets or poll watcher credentials and the whole system is inaccessible (before crashing). Election Day is a heckuva of a day for the first test of a new system.

More at Twitchy; AllahP notes that the whiz-bang corporate manager had his hat handed to him by the whiz-bang community organizer.

This news also muddies the waters for the Deep Thinkers who are pondering a new direction for the Republican party, since Romney's result may represent a failure of management rather than message.

Well - lest you are having trouble settling into a Deep Blue Funk, consider this: even with our crypto-socialist President who hates capitalism the US economy is likely to recover somewhat. In which case, come 2016 the Democrats will very probably win the White House again as the party of Peace and Prosperity. OK, AL Gore couldn't quite manage that trick at the Electoral College level in 2000, but next time, the Dems will be the party of peace, prosperity, and pants-on, so their odds look pretty good.

And all becasue of an untested web app? ARGHHHH!

Reports Of Republican Turnout Demise Are Premature

Inshallah! John Podhoretz searches his memory and provides a highly plausible answer to a vexing question, to wit, where did the Republican voters go?

As I write, Mitt Romney has 57.4 million votes. John McCain ended up with 59.9 million. It’s a little noticed fact that in two weeks following every presidential election, votes continue to be reported…by the millions. As I recall, Barack Obama got something like four million more votes in the weeks after election day, while John McCain got two or three million. It’s likely that by Thanksgiving, the final vote tally will show Romney very close to or even slightly exceeding McCain’s total.

I have more confidence in Mr. Podhoretz's memory than I do in my own. However, trust but verify!

Wikipedia gives McCain's 2008 final vote total as 59.9 million.

However, this cool NY Times graphic had McCain at 58.3 million as of Dec. 9, 2008.

CNN had McCain at 58.3 million as of Nov 17. However!

Yahoo preserved a Q&A from right after the election, with an answer that linked to the CNN site above:

Electorial Votes:

Obama: 349
McCain: 163

Popular votes:

Obama : 64,639,738
McCain: 56,899,510

Source(s):

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results…

Given the Electoral totals I infer that North Carolina had not yet been called for Obama nor Missouri for McCain. Each man received about 2.1 million votes in NC, so McCain's total of 56.9 million must include some North Carolina votes (or else it would have jumped by 2.1 million to 59 million after N Car was called.)

So, if current reporting has Romney with 57.4 million popular votes, he is running a bit better than McCain's immediate post-election total. Wave the hangmen away from the Romney GOTV effort!

EXIT POLLS: Here are the WaPo and CNN versions of the exit polls.

The Era Of Big Government Is Over

Could it be that, election results notwithstanding, conservatives are making progress with their small government argument? Deep in the Times reporting of exit polls I find this nugget:

Significantly, the electorate’s view of the government’s role in the economy has shifted away from Mr. Obama’s call for a kind of public-private partnership, and toward Mr. Romney’s hands-off, free-market platform.

In November 2008, when the country was floundering in the worst recession since the Depression, Election Day surveys of voters found that 51 percent of them wanted government to do more to intervene while 43 percent said it was doing too many things better left to businesses. Now, after four years of government activism, those numbers have flipped.

Well, that is a pebble upon which we can build a new Republican majority. Ross Douthat has thoughts on that.

FWIW, Obama described his fantasy agenda to the Des Moines Register on October, although one questions whether he has earned anything like a mandate.

The New NORML

Jacob Sullum explains the consequences of recreational marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington. Left unmentioned - embittered Republicans in two states have a legal alternative to hitting the sauce.

Four More Years

The networks call Ohio and the election for Obama. Florida is still up in the air but looks like an Obama state as well. We keep a Republican House and a Democratic Senate. And all by a civilized hour!

Hmm - the Republican wave I was expecting is a bit smaller and later than I had hoped. That said, Drudge is flagging Romney's lead in the popular vote. What's the expression?  Turnabout is sauce for the gander.

 

The Big Night Is Upon Us

The first exit polls should be de-embargoed at 5 PM Eastern. DO remember 2004, when the early exit polls all pointed to Kerry, which made for a long and disappointing night for our friends on the left.

Election Day

I hope our long national freakout is ending; I fear it is just begining.

One Day More

Another day another destiny. Also, no power, television or internet. At this rate I will be watching the election in a sports bar and getting into fistfights with strangers. Grr.

Sunday Morning

The Sunday NY Times explains the apparent lack of a Pentagon response in Benghazi: the Quick Response Team was training in Croatia, the nearest AC-130 gunship was in Afghanistan, and a Delta team scrambled from North Carolina was too far away and too late. The good news? Obama was TOTALLY on it. The bad news? Expecting the Pentagon to respond quickly to trouble in the Med or the Middle East on a 9-11 anniversary is expecting too much. This will be a tough couple of days for the Times since they can't report anything but Admin spin on Benghazi and Staten Island until Wednesday.

Saturday Action

In a triumph of common sense the NYC. Marathon is cancelled.

Friday Jobs

We get the big jobs number shortly.

Thursday AM

This smart phone isn't smart enough to blog, but here we go.