Science of Public Opinion Polling Hits Crisis of Accuracy

I've been thinking about this, considering all the polls we're seeing for the primaries.

At Reason, "Why Polls Don't Work."

'13 Hours' — New Benghazi Movie Reignites Debate Over Democrats' 'Stand-Down' Order (TRAILER)

The film opens tonight in the O.C., and I guess in late-night showings nationwide. Then general release tomorrow.

It's gonna be great!

At Politico, "New Benghazi movie reignites ‘stand-down’ order debate":

The creators of a new Hollywood blockbuster about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack are renewing the politically explosive allegation that commandos called to defend the U.S. compound were told to “stand down” — a claim Democrats say has no basis in fact.

With Michael Bay’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” set to premiere Thursday, the five surviving members of the six-man Benghazi security team have blitzed the airwaves to promote the film and renew their assertion that a top CIA officer delayed them from immediately answering State Department distress calls. Three even testified to the same before the House Select Committee on Benghazi last spring, several sources have confirmed to POLITICO.

“There is no sensationalism in that: We were told to ‘stand down,’” said former Special Forces Officer Kris Paronto, one of the CIA contractors who fought that night, in an interview with Politico. “Those words were used verbatim — 100 percent. … If the truth of it affects someone’s political career? Well, I’m sorry. It happens.”

Top Democrats on the Benghazi panel, however, said that’s more movie fantasy than reality.

“If the film portrays them as having ordered a stand-down, it’s clearly at odds with the facts,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose district includes Hollywood and who sits on the committee. “If the film portrays those who went to rescue people at the diplomatic facility as doing so in disregard of orders, that’s also plainly at odds with the facts. … It may make for good entertainment; it doesn’t make for a well-informed public.”

Lawmakers have grappled with the question of a stand-down order before, and several bipartisan reports on the attacks have found no evidence of such a command being passed down the chain. Moreover, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the CIA and the Defense Department have long dismissed the idea that anyone would have held back help.

But the renewed allegations have forced lawmakers to wrestle with the issue again, and Republicans in particular may find themselves in an awkward spot. If GOP members of the Benghazi panel dispute Paronto’s assertion, they could look like they’re disparaging Americans who fought and died in service of the country. But if they side with Paronto, investigators would directly contradict some big-name intelligence officials, including former CIA Director David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who say no one was ordered to stand down...

Or course the Dems gave the stand-down order. Just like they lied about the random anti-Muslim video that started it all. They'll do anything to win elections, even sacrifice American lives.

More.

#ObamaCare Employer Mandate Worse Than Feared

At IBD, "ObamaCare Employer Mandate Hurts Low-Wage Workers":

Yet another study purporting to show that ObamaCare hasn't caused many people to work fewer hours has set off another round of high fives among the law's boosters.

But they should hold their applause, because there's a strong case that ObamaCare's employer mandate is worse than its critics feared — though not necessarily for the reasons they expected.

While ObamaCare has clearly had a negative impact on work hours, which one serious flaw of the latest study — counting 29.5-hour workers as full-time — and other data limitations help to obscure, it's fair to say that the law hasn't curtailed full-time work in a big way. But that's because employers have figured out how to dodge liability by offering "affordable" coverage that costs much more than their modest-wage workers are likely to pay.

Gaming The System

This gaming of the system, which ObamaCare rules invite, has serious consequences. A few million full-time, modest-wage workers — and their spouses — have remained uninsured, with many liable for ObamaCare individual mandate penalties. Another roughly 1 million low-wage workers have opted for the kind of coverage that ObamaCare was supposed to do away with: skinny plans that won't cover hospitalization or surgery but will let them avoid a penalty.

Many other full-time, modest-wage workers are getting more comprehensive coverage via their employers — but with $5,000-plus deductibles that could easily torpedo their finances in a health emergency.

These are the direct effects of rules that deny full-time workers access to ObamaCare subsidies — and let employers escape a fine — if they offer bronze-level coverage costing a worker close to 10% of wage income for premiums alone. For a full-time worker earning $17,500, paying $1,670 for bronze coverage qualifies as "affordable." That's $1,000 more than someone at the same income level would have to pay for an exchange plan that caps total out-of-pocket expenses at about $550 in 2016.

Then there are the indirect effects of employer mandate rules that leave so many low-wage, full-time workers with coverage that is of little use...

Still more.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



Also at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES," and Theo Spark's, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Obama Cares."

Do You Suffer from Islamist Denial Syndrome?

From Doug Ross, at Director Blue:

RT @BiffSpackle "Do you suffer from Islamist Denial Syndrome?" https://t.co/MQjAqD9LcC pic.twitter.com/ILkQp8YOqV

— Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) January 9, 2016

Illegal Immigration Anti-Enforcement Protesters in New York City (VIDEO)

At Gothamist, "Eight Protesters Arrested at Pro-Immigration Demonstration In Manhattan."

That's a real inclusive message: "Fuck I.C.E."

Hugh Hewitt and S.E. Cupp: Obama's 'Divisive,' 'Disappointing...' (VIDEO)

Watch, via CNN, "Critics: Obama 'divisive,' 'disappointing...'"

Kimberly Corban, Rape Survivor Who Asked Obama Question at 'Guns in America' Town Hall, Gets Death Threats

Obama's America.

Rape Survivor Asks Obama: Why Can’t You See Gun Restrictions Make My Kids and I Less Safe? https://t.co/qymAoKobfQ pic.twitter.com/VrhciS60xH

— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) January 8, 2016

I was diagnosed w/ PTSD & depression after being raped. Should I not be able to protect myself and kids now? @seanhannity @FoxNews @DLoesch

— Kimberly Weeks (@notkimco) January 8, 2016

Death threats following being honest about my assault and views on gun control on natl tv are exactly why I carry. @CamAndCompany @FoxNews

— Kimberly Weeks (@notkimco) January 8, 2016

POTUS tells rape survivor having a gun could lead to a tragic accident [video] https://t.co/ezDtHkNQQs

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) January 8, 2016

UPDATE: I changed her last name to "Corban" at the headline. She was "Kimberly Weeks" last night on Twitter when I posted.

Grief, Tears, and Ideology

From Peter Wehner, at Commentary:

In our more honest moment[s], we will admit to ourselves, if not to others, that from time to time – perhaps unwittingly, perhaps unconsciously – we use human tragedies to advance our own political agendas. That doesn’t mean the sympathy we feel is false; it only means that our feelings are driven by multiple and often unstated factors...

He's awfully generous toward the Tear-Jerker-in-Chief.

But keep reading, FWIW.

Grief, Tears, and Ideology - by @Peter_Wehner - https://t.co/YYhrfM00uT pic.twitter.com/HLj8CCFaTx

— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) January 8, 2016

Taya Kyle Asks Obama Why We Don't Celebrate Lowest Crime Rates in Decades (VIDEO)

I didn't watch the town hall, for aforementioned reasons.

But I'm glad it wasn't all plants in attendance. Taya Kyle is an awesome American!

At CNN:

Handgun Sales Surge as Women Step-Up Purchases (VIDEO)

At Fox Business, "Handgun sales surging thanks to women."

And once again, here's Dana Loesch's book, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.

Inside the Garden of Political Town Hall Plants

From Michelle Malkin:

On Thursday, CNN will host a town hall with President Obama as part of his “final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy.” In addition to sitting down with liberal anchor Anderson Cooper, the network says Obama will “take questions from the audience.”

Uh-oh. Get out your best pruning shears and trowels. In an age of micromanaged partisan stagecraft and left-wing media enablers, there is no such thing as a spontaneous question.

CNN has a long history of allowing political plants to flourish in its public forums.

At the cable station’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas in 2007, moderator Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as “ordinary people, undecided voters.” But they later turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic director of political affairs, the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, and a far left anti-war activist who’d been quoted in newspapers lambasting Harry Reid for his failure to pull out of Iraq.

At a CNN/YouTube GOP debate two weeks later, the everyday, “undecided voters” whose questions were chosen included:

–A member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For Hillary Clinton Steering Committee.

–A young woman named “Journey” who questioned the candidates on abortion and whom CNN failed to properly identify as an outspoken John Edwards supporter.

–A supposed “Log Cabin Republican” who had declared his support for Obama on an Obama ’08 campaign blog.

–A supposedly unaffiliated “concerned mother” who was actually a staffer and prominent Pittsburgh union activist for the United Steelworkers — which had endorsed Edwards for president.

–A supposed “undecided” voter who urged Ron Paul to run as an independent, but who had already publicly declared his support for former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s Democratic presidential bid.

–A staffer for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; a former intern for Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and a former intern for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Once a manipulative gardener, always a manipulative gardener. During the push for Obamacare, Democrat plants spread like kudzu across town hall propaganda events. At White House “citizen town halls” in 2009, Team Obama hand-picked not-so-random “random” questioners who included:

–An operative for the Washington, D.C.-based Health Care for America Now, the K Street Astroturf outfit with a $40 million budget to lobby for government-run health care that directed its activists to “drown out” opponents at town hall meetings.

–An “unemployed” cancer patient who was actually working for the DNC’s Organizing for America and the Virginia Organizing Project, which coordinated lobbying trips and health care forums with HCAN.

–A Democrat National Committee member and community blogger at Organizing for America.

–The 11-year-old daughter of a coordinator of Massachusetts Women for Obama who had donated thousands of dollars to the campaign, as had her law firm employer.

Using young people as horticultural conduits to shape narratives wasn’t an Obama invention, of course. Last week, Hillary Clinton’s town hall events featured two children reading scripted questions on gender pay equity and guns. The campaign balked at accusations that they would exploit kids and manufacture questions...

I have no plans to watch tomorrow's stupid "town hall" on gun control, although perhaps I'll tune in for a couple of minutes to check out the plants, heh.

Still more.

Another Leftist Pushes the Example of 'Gun Control' in Australia, Which is the Go-To Model for Mass Confiscation of Citizens' Firearms

USA Today reporter Trevor Hughes made the case for buying a gun a couple of weeks back, "Voices: Why I decided to buy a handgun."

Well, it turns out that Susan Miller, a colleague at USA Today, wasn't pleased that Mr. Hughes deigned to escape from the Democrat-leftist gun control plantation.

Here's Ms. Miller's piece, and I quote the de rigueur reference to the Australian gun "buy-back." See, "Voices: More guns are simply not the answer":

Australia instituted stricter gun laws in 1996, including a major buyback that reduced firearms in the country by 20%, and since then the nation has had no mass shootings, Lankford notes. “No country in the world seems to have figured out a way to have a large number of firearms and not have public mass shootings happen,” he says.

Nancy Lanza, the mother of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, was an enthusiastic gun owner who took her unbalanced son to shooting ranges. Did the fact that Nancy Lanza had an arsenal in her house save her from her gun-wielding son? No. Perhaps if she didn’t have that arsenal, and she hadn’t taken him to shooting ranges, the result would have been very much different...

That's it. That's it right there. Leftists simply do not believe citizens should be able to own firearms. If they didn't own firearms, the thinking goes, we wouldn't have mass shootings.

The sheer stupidity in this boggles the mind. Remember, there are too many variables in the gun debate to make any kind of predictions on what will stop massacres. All of this rests on "perhaps." Perhaps if Ms. Lanza hadn't taken her son to a shooting range? Hell, perhaps if Ms. Lanza never had Adam in the first place! Yes, that's it, just abort everyone and we'll certainly prevent more mass shootings. Pregnancy will become criminal, abortions mandatory, and eventually the remainder of the human race will be wiped out through death by attrition. People are a cancer on the planet, so that's obviously the plan. Yay progs!

Obama Tightens Rules for Gun Dealers — Which Will Do Little Other Than Allow Him to Duck the Real Questions

From Fordham Law Professor Nicholas Johnson, at the Wall Street Journal, "A Glittery Gun-Control Distraction":

On Tuesday President Obama announced that he would take executive action to expand the definition of a “firearms dealer.” The intent is to require more people who sell guns to first obtain a federal license—which obliges them to perform background checks on buyers. Unnoticed is that this action, taken under the banner of “common sense” gun control to make Americans safer, reverses a Clinton administration gun-control policy that also was supposed to make us safer.

The story begins with the 1968 Gun Control Act, which is the foundation of the current federal gun regulation. It requires, among other things, that commercial sellers of firearms obtain a federal firearms license or “FFL.” Regulators in the early 1970s, like the Obama administration today, pressed the gun-control agenda through aggressive interpretations of the 1968 law.

Those prosecutions targeted hobbyists and collectors who sold a few guns at gun shows. One collector who sold three firearms over a period of two years had his gun collection seized and was prosecuted in 1972 for dealing without license. Many prudent and fearful gun owners responded by obtaining federal firearm licenses, even though they did not have storefronts or retail operations.

By the 1990s, the gun control mantra had changed. The claim became that it was a problem to have so many federally licensed gun dealers around, and that “kitchen table gun dealers” constituted a hazard. A claim often heard was that the U.S. had more gun dealers than gas stations. No one explained why the laws and penalties against illegal trading might work differently for “kitchen table dealers,” and there was no empirical support for the idea that these individuals were less trustworthy than the people who ran gun stores. But that did not get in the way.

As a plum to gun-control groups, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms under Bill Clinton responded in 1994. The ATF changed the requirements for who could obtain a federal license for the retail sale of firearms (by, for instance, mandating actual storefront operations). The antigun Violence Policy Center celebrated the results in a 2007 policy paper that said the number of licensed dealers “has dropped 79 percent—from 245,628 in 1994 to 50,630.”

Now President Obama proposes moving the furniture around again. The ATF’s new guidance on the matter says that storefronts are irrelevant: “it does not matter if sales are conducted out of your home, at gun shows, flea markets, through the internet, or by other means.” The agency also emphasizes that “courts have upheld convictions for dealing without a license when as few as two firearms were sold.”

We’re coming full circle, back around to the policies of 1972. Prudent hobbyists and collectors, fearing that they might face prosecution under the new, broader definition of a gun dealer, will apply for federal firearms licenses. The impact on gun crime, which is already dramatically down since the 1970s, will be negligible...

Well, of course. None of this is about reducing crime rates and saving lives. If it were we'd be keeping prisoners behind bars and making it easier for everyday citizens to keep and bear arms. It's about pushing the collectivist agenda, which is mired in sick left-wing hypocrisy.

But keep reading.

And don't forget to pick up Dana Loesch's book, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.

With $6,000 Deductibles, Carlsbad Woman Cancels Health Insurance, Will Pay #ObamaCare Tax (VIDEO)

She's not a libertarian crusader or anything either. She doing what she has to do to save money, and would be happy for single payer to come along.

Actually, this was the Democrat plan all along. Destroy the private health insurance model in an Cloward-Piven push to flood the rolls, bring the collectivist revolution, and take over the healthcare system in a final socialist putsch.

At ABC 10 News San Diego, "Big risk: Why this woman canceled her health insurance."

Here's Nightline's Report on Obama's Controversial Gun-Grabbing Executive Orders (VIDEO)

All the left can do is play on emotion.

It's really kind of pathetic. We're stuck with the Crybaby-in-Chief for another year.

Watch, via ABC News:

Obama Wipes Away Crocodile Tears During Call for New Gun Confiscation Measures (VIDEO)

At this point, it's all for show.

Even CNN's Kate Bolduan asked panelists if it wasn't all optics by now.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Obama announces crackdown on gun purchases, but it illustrates limits of his office."



More, at Twitchy, "'Enough to make you physically sick': Media lapdogs swoon over weepy gun grabber Obama," and "'Straw men shortage'? Tears of a clown prince: So, what REALLY makes Obama cry?"

ISIS Weapons Engineers Develop Self-Driving 'Suicide Bomber' Car for Mass-Casualty Terror Attacks (VIDEO)

And that's not all they're developing.

According to Sky News, ISIS "scientists have stunned western weapons experts by producing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles."

Watch, "Exclusive: Inside an Islamic State Terror Weapons Lab."

'We have a President who's not asleep at the wheel, he's not at the wheel at all, he's somewhere else...'

The inimitable Charles Krauthammer, hammers President Obama's delusional and meaningless (and probably unconstitutional) executive orders on gun control.

Watch, from today's All-Star Panel at Fox News, "Charles Krauthammer on Obama's Executive Action on Gun Control."

Dana Loesch Fisks Obama's Executive Orders on Gun Control (VIDEO)

At Dana's blog, "A Thorough Fisking of Obama’s Executive Orders on Gun Control."

And on Hannity's last night: