Last Call For The Most Unskewed Poll Ever

The DC Examiner is touting this YouGov poll, which apparently finds that well over half of Democrats now regret voting for President Obama in 2012.

Over seven in 10 Obama voters, and 55 percent of Democrats, regret voting for President Obama's reelection in 2012, according to a new Economist/YouGov.com poll.

Conducted to test the media hype about a comeback by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the new poll found voters still uninspired by Romney, but also deeply dissatisfied with Obama who has so far failed to capitalize on his victory over 15 months ago.

The poll asked those who voted for Obama's reelection a simple question: “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?”

— Overall, 71 percent said yes, 26 percent no.

— 80 percent of whites said yes, 61 percent of blacks said no and 100 percent of Hispanics said yes.

— 84 percent of women said yes, and just 61 percent of men agreed.

— 55 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 71 percent of independents.

Still, given the choice of Obama versus Romney, Obama supporters said they would stick with their guy, 79 percent to 10 percent for Romney.

Do you really believe that 71% overall, 84% of women, and 100% of Latino voters of the 65 million total Americans who cast their vote for President Obama now "regret" that vote?  If that's true, he should have approval ratings lower than Bush 43 did at the bottom of his abyss.

In other words, he should be down in the single digits with the GOP in Congress.  Strangely, that's not the case.

It's almost like this poll is ridiculously suspect.

Battle Of The Billionaires

The GOP is so beholden now to ultra-wealthy billionaire donors in a post Citizens United America that the future of the party will apparently be determined by which faction of networks of super-rich donors can buy out the most Republican politicians:  the Koch Brothers Tea Party machine, Karl Rove's disgraced but still powerful Crossroads donor network, or the new dark money on the block, Wall Street mogul Paul Singer's pro-LGBTQ, pro-immigration group, the American Opportunity Alliance.

On its face, it in some ways resembles a much smaller-scale version of Charles and David Koch’s fabled network, which brings together hand-picked operatives and politicians twice a year at tony resorts to make presentations to dozens of rich conservatives. At the conclusion of the Koch seminars, as they’re called, donors commit massive sums into a pool of cash disseminated to various Koch-backed groups for seven- and eight-figure advertising and organizing campaigns that have made them a force in Republican politics rivaling the official party.

That doesn’t appear to be the goal of Singer and his donors. While many of them — including Singer himself — have attended the Koch seminars and also maintain their own independent spending groups, their approach with the American Opportunity Alliance is more donor-centric, focusing on comparing notes about one another’s political projects and funneling limited hard-money contributions effectively.

In other words, the AOA guys are all about coordinating donations for pet projects for the corporate wing of the GOP.  It's nothing personal, just business.  At our expense, of course.

Still, the list of big-name pols expected at the American Opportunity Alliance’s upcoming Colorado gathering highlights the influence that only a few big donors can command in the post-Citizens United era, when a small group of wealthy individuals can reorder elections with just a few huge checks. That new reality has shifted some of the power and control once maintained by the parties and their candidates to factions of major donors, like the libertarian-infused Koch network on the right or the Democracy Alliance club of major liberal donors on the left.

Of course, the Democracy Alliance has only a fraction of the money that the Kochs, the AOA, or Karl Rove's boys do.  So now there's three huge groups of GOP donors, throwing hundreds of millions at Republicans to buy out state and federal elections, and virtually no hope of stopping them, or even coming close to matching them in order to fight fire with fire.

2014 is not looking good for our side, folks.

Gotta Break A Few Eggs

Another tragic death of a black teenager, this time for the crime of being a passenger in the wrong car when a man decides he's going to stop people from egging his son's car by drawing and using his firearm.

An Arkansas man faces a murder charge for allegedly gunning down a car filled with teenagers who had wanted to play a prank on his son. One of the passengers, 15-year-old Adrian Broadway, died from a gunshot wound to the head on Saturday.

The teens said they were pranking Willie Noble’s son by covering his car with eggs and leaves, which is when Noble reportedly arrived with a shotgun. “Apparently Mr. Noble’s teenage son had done a prank on some of the kids that were inside the vehicle on Halloween Night,” Lieutenant Sidney Allen said. “As a result they were doing a retaliation prank and it ultimately had deadly results.” In addition to first degree murder, Noble has been charged with committing a terrorist act and five counts of aggravated assault.

“It was supposed to be a prank,” Kortazha Williams, who was in the car with Broadway, told KTHV. “We were supposed to get up right now, and we were supposed to laugh.”

Yes, because the correct response to "Dad, these kids are going to egg my car in payback for a prank I pulled on them last Halloween" is "OK son, lemme open fire on them."  Superior parenting skills there.

But firearms didn't contribute to this death, right to responsibly own a firearm is in the Bill of Rights, yadda yadda whatever you tell yourself when stuff like this happens, right gun advocates?

StupidiNews!

• Severe turbulence is being blamed for injuries to several passengers on a United flight from Denver to Billing, Montana on Monday evening.
• Tops on the agenda at this year's summit of North American leaders in Mexico: Canadian PM Steven Harper asking President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
• Multiple car bomb attacks are responsible for 24 deaths in Baghdad as violence against Shi'ites in the country is on the rise.
• A roof collapse at a South Korean resort has killed ten and injured dozens at a college party held in the complex's gym.
• The first casualty in the Comcast/Time Warner Cable proposed merger may be Nexflix's deal with TWC over providing the streaming service on settop boxes.