'Scientific' model projects Obama victory

The Signal -- a Yahoo! blog using an engine that "combines powerful scientific algorithms with multiple, real-time and historical data sources to generate predictions" -- says Obama will win 303 electoral votes to the Republican candidate's 235.

"Campaigns and candidates matter, and elections are dynamic events with more variables than could ever reasonably be distilled in an equation," adds The Signal. "But based on a real-time prediction engine that we have created with Yahoo! scientists, the data suggest a likely second-term for the current presidents."

Also note that The Signal projects Obama winning three states with less than 51% of the vote: Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire. Should those three states -- and their 35 electoral votes -- shift to the GOP, the Republican candidate would win 270-268.

From The Signal:

We have examined the last ten presidential cycles and found that the Yahoo! model would have correctly predicted the winner in 88 percent of the 500 individual state elections, with an margin of error of just under 3 percentage points for our estimated vote share.

(We exclude Washington, D.C. in the model and assume it will definitely go for the Democratic candidate.)

This makes these predictions appreciably more accurate than the next best model for forecasting the Electoral College by the end of the second quarter of the election year. Furthermore, they are more accurate than polls until just after the conventions.

Using the Yahoo! model, given plausible economic and political trends, Barack Obama's reelection likelihood looks good for Democrats.

We assume that the president's approval rating stays the same between now and mid-June, each of the 50 states reports personal income growth that is average for an election year, and certain key indicators of state ideology remain unchanged this year. In this case, our model predicts that Barack Obama will carry 303 electoral votes this fall, 33 more than needed for victory.

To hedge our bets a bit, however, please note that our model predicts probabilities of victory, and that many states in both the Republican and Obama camps are nearly toss-ups.

CBO: 8%-plus unemployment into 2014

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting unemployment of more than 8% throughout this election year and into 2014.

According to the CBO:

"The rate of unemployment in the United States has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making the past three years the longest stretch of high unemployment in this country since the Great Depression."

It added:

"CBO projects that the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent until 2014. The share of unemployed people who have been looking for work for more than six months -- referred to as the long-term unemployed -- topped 40 percent in December 2009 and has remained above that level ever since."

Republicans are citing the new CBO report as an indictment of Obama's economic policies:

"Today, there's no denying the fact that his stimulus policies not only failed, they made things worse," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Read More Here

Real Unemployment Is 15 Percent According To CBO

The Congressional Budget Office released a report Thursday that showed real unemployment in America at 15 percent for the month of January, a figure considerably higher than the White House’s oft-cited 8.3 percent figure that does not include part-time workers seeking full-time work or those who have given up hope of finding a job altogether.

From the CBO:

Many people would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks, or are working part-time but would prefer full-time work. If those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent.

Furthermore, the CBO reported:

The United States is experiencing the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression with no end in sight through 2014.

The CBO reports that the Obama Economy has created an unprecedentedly high rate of long-term unemployment, which the CBO defines as a person who has been seeking work for over 26 months.

Over 40 percent of people who are currently unemployed have been out of work for more than half a year, as compared with about one-quarter during the 1981–1982 recession. The extent of long-term unemployment is much greater than would be expected on the basis of its historical relationship with the overall unemployment rate.

Read More Here

Hating Tim Tebow

By Matt Barber

I grew up in Denver and am admittedly biased. I’m a Denver Broncos fanatic. In the Mile High City, the Broncos are more than just a football team; they’re an institution.

Everybody loves a comeback. Former Broncos quarterback John Elway — one of the greatest QBs in NFL history — had comebacks in his DNA. Since he retired in 1999 after back-to-back Super Bowl wins, Denver fans have been jonesing for that regular shot of adrenaline Elway provided week in, week out.

Enter Tim Tebow. In the category of, “Holy cow, can he actually do it?” no Broncos QB since Elway has delivered like Tebow has. He feels familiar. This is what Broncos fans expect. We don’t do steady. We prefer up and down, high and low until that improbable rocket launch to victory in the final seconds of the game.

Will Tebow end up an NFL great like John Elway? That remains to be seen. Opinions are all over the place. But what is certain is that Tim Tebow is more than just a sports phenomenon. He’s a cultural phenomenon.

For starters, Tebow’s very existence is somehow controversial. He’s a walking pro-life testimonial. He’s been pulling off comebacks since before he was born. Pam Tebow, Tim’s mother, courageously chose to carry baby Tim to term despite doctors’ recommendations that she abort him.

You may recall that before Tim went pro, the Christian group, Focus on the Family, commissioned an innocuous TV ad that ran during the 2010 Saints-Colts Super Bowl game. It briefly told the story of the Tebows’ pre-natal struggle. The word “abortion” was never even uttered, but a positive portrayal of childbearing was all it took.

And so began the left’s hate affair with Tim Tebow. Radical feminist groups, media-types and liberal pundits alike lost their collective noodle even before the ad ran.

Erin Mattson, vice president of The National Organization for Women (NOW), told ABC News that Tim’s story of survival was “really quite offensive. … This ad is hate masquerading as love!” she barked. Tim wasn’t dismembered alive and scraped in pieces from his mother’s womb, you see.

The New York-based Women’s Media Center launched a failed censorship petition drive to pull the ad, framing it as an “attack on choice.” Get it? Pam Tebow chose alright; she just happened to make the wrong “choice,” and dared to share about it publicly.

But as a Denver Bronco, Tim Tebow’s profile has grown exponentially. So too has the left’s hatred for him.

This is due in large part to his very open Christian faith. After each game, Tim begins by thanking God: “First and foremost, I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

And who hasn’t heard of “Tebowing,” wherein one drops to a knee in prayer?

Then there’s Tim’s favorite Bible verse, John 3:16, which he’s known to wear painted in black swaths under each eye. After the Broncos’ recent electrifying playoff win against the Pittsburgh Steelers in overtime, John 3:16 was reportedly the most popular search term on the Internet.

Remarkably, during the game Tebow passed for precisely 316 yards and averaged 31.6 yards per completed pass. The television viewing audience for the last 15 minutes of the game was 31.6 percent. This only added to the mystique.

So big was the story, in fact, that major news outlets like CNN ran the text of John 3:16 in its entirety: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”


The attention that Tebow’s bold Christian faith has drawn to the Gospel message has secular “progressives” and other God-deniers tied in knots.

American Atheists, a New Jersey-based group that promotes religious cleansing from the public sphere, says that Tebow is “full of cr*p.”

“Tebow takes religion and injects it into the mix and divides the fan base,” complained David Silverman, the group’s president.

“[Religion] injects the divisive force into football,” he continued (because, absent religion, football is just a touchy-feely snuggle fest). “Why in the world are we talking about religion when we are talking about football?” he demanded.

Of course, Tim Tebow is merely doing what Jesus asks of his followers: “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32)

The problem is that secular “progressives” don’t want Christ acknowledged before anyone, period; and they endeavor to shut down or mock anybody who tries.

During the Broncos’ regular season loss to the Buffalo Bills, for instance, “progressive” troglodyte and pseudo-intellectual funnyman Bill Maher tweeted about the game, encapsulating the left’s visceral hatred for Tim Tebow in 140 characters or less: “Wow, Jesus just [expletive deleted] #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.’”

Jesus addressed the Bill Mahers of the world — past, present and future — on more than one occasion. In John 15:18-20, for instance, He reminds His followers: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”

Those who belong to the world do indeed hate Tim Tebow. He stands for much of what our postmodern popular culture despises: sexual purity within the bonds of natural marriage, the sanctity of human life, selflessness, personal charity, humility and much, much more.

I mean, Tim Tebow has never even been arrested for drug possession or sexual assault, for crying out loud. We simply can’t allow children this kind of role model.

So, does God care about who wins NFL football games? Probably not. Does he care about those who play, watch and love football? Unquestionably.

Win or lose, no matter what happens with the rest of the Denver Broncos football season, one thing is for sure: people will keep talking about Tim Tebow. And when people are talking about Tim Tebow, they can’t help but talk about the profound faith that drives him both on and off the field.

In the meantime: Go Broncos!

(First published at Daily Caller)

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action .

SCOTUS delivers knockout to White House

Wednesday the United States Supreme Court delivered a knockout blow to the White House in the cause of religious liberty.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court swatted away the government’s claim that the Lutheran Church did not have the right to fire a “minister of religion” who, after six years of Lutheran religious training had been commissioned as a minister, upon election by her congregation.

The fired minister -- who also taught secular subjects -- claimed discrimination in employment. The Obama administration, always looking for opportunities to undermine the bedrock of First Amendment religious liberty, eagerly agreed.

There was just one big problem standing in the way of the government's plan: the U.S. Constitution. For a long time American courts have recognized the existence of a "ministerial exemption" which keeps government’s hands off the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers or clergy.

Here, in this case, the Department of Justice had the nerve to not only challenge the exemption’s application but also its very existence.

But, Chief Justice Roberts pushed back hard, telling the government essentially to butt out:

“Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs. By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the free exercise clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the establishment clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions.”

Citing well-known legal precedent dating as far back as Reconstruction, the court made it clear that it is not up to the government to contradict a faith’s determination as to who should -- and should not -- be performing religious functions.

The Supreme Court clearly announced Wednesday that the First Amendment itself gives special recognition to the rights of religious organizations and rejected the government’s view that the Religion Clauses of the Constitution don’t apply to religious organizations’ freedom to select their own ministers, priests, rabbis and imams.

The Court also took aim at Plaintiff’s Cheryl Perich’s claims for back pay finding that such relief would operate as an unconstitutional penalty against a religious institution for terminating an unwanted minister and exercising its constitutional right to make decisions about internal church governance. Unfortunately, the federal government has become expert in imposing penalties for practicing one’s faith.

Read More Here: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/11/supreme-court-delivers-knockout-punch-to-white-house/#ixzz1jDGerJc8

Appeals Court Upholds Order Blocking OK Sharia Law Ban

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling released Tuesday, affirmed an order by a district court judge in 2010 that prevented the voter-approved state constitutional amendment from taking effect. The ruling also allows a Muslim community leader in Oklahoma City to continue his legal challenge of the law’s constitutionality.

The measure, known as State Question 755, was approved with 70% of the vote in 2010. The amendment would bar courts from considering the legal precepts of other nations or cultures.

“Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or sharia law,” the law reads.

The appellate court opinion pointed out that proponents of the law admitted to not knowing of a single instance in which an Oklahoma court applied sharia law or the legal precepts of other countries


Read More Here: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oklahoma-sharia-20120111,0,570388.story

U.S. Debt Now Larger Than Whole Economy

The amount owed by the federal government to its creditors, combined with IOUs to government retirement and other schemes, now stands at $15.23 trillion. The government estimated the value of goods and services produced by the economy in a year at $15.17 trillion as of September.

According to long-term forecasts, debt will carry on growing faster than the economy, which would need to expand by at least 6 percent per year to keep pace.

Read More Here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084353/Size-U-S-debt-entire-economy--15-23-TRILLION.html

Poll: Obama's Re-election Is Americas’ Top Fear

According to a new Washington Whispers poll, many voters aren’t forgetting what they dislike about Obama and want him out office.

In the New Year’s poll, when asked what news event they fear most about 2012, Americans by a margin of two-to-one said Obama’s reelection. Only 16 percent said they fear the Democrat won’t win a second term, while 33 percent said they fear four more years.

In results backed up by other polls, older Americans and those earning $75,000 or more are especially worried about the president getting a second term, according to the poll done by Synovate eNation.

The poll of younger Americans, 18-24, said just 28 percent of those voters said they feared Obama winning in November.

Read More Here: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/01/09/poll-americans-2-1-fear-obamas-reelection?s_cid=rss:washington-whispers:poll-americans-2-1-fear-obamas-reelection

List of Gitmo Detainees Obama Plans to Release in Deal with Talibums

According to Washington Post writer Marc A. Theissen President Obama is reportedly planning to release Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay detention center.

The Obama administration is allegedly considering the release of these senior Taliban leaders as part of a deal to bring the militant Islamist group to engage in peace talks.

According to Theissen, if Obama does in fact proceed with the release, he will do “tremendous harm” to U.S. national security “and to his prospects for reelection this fall.”

Theissen writes:

To understand why, consider the individuals White House is considering setting free. Last year WikiLeaks released a trove of documents it dubbed the “Gitmo Files” with assessments of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees — including the five Taliban leaders reportedly under consideration for release.

Read More Here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-let-these-taliban-leaders-loose/2012/01/09/gIQAeLIWlP_story.html

U.S. Most Armed Country (with 90 guns per 100 people)

Reuters is reporting that U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.


About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.

India had the world's second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people.


Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of country's overall civilian gun arsenals.

On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.

"Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons -- these images are certainly misleading," Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause said.



"Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income," he told a Geneva news conference.

Read More Here:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828

"Civilian holdings of weapons worldwide are much larger than we previously believed," Krause said, attributing the increase largely to better research and more data on weapon distribution networks.