Middle class self-identification has plummeted under Obama says Gallup's CEO: The lives of 25 million adults have "crashed"

The average of those identifying as middle class under eight years of George Bush was 61%.

In 2015 that's fallen to 51%.

Story here.

Gallup: When fooling half the people all the time is good enough

50% of Americans still say Obama deserves little or no blame for the country's CURRENT economic troubles. 64% still blame Bush outright or somewhat.

Gallup, here.

Paul Ryan mistakenly thinks Donald Trump exists to serve Congress' agenda when it's the other way around

Big spending establishment Speaker Paul Ryan voted for Cromnibus

Here:

House Republicans are helping shape that Republican vision by offering a bold policy agenda, by offering a better way ahead. Donald Trump can help us make it a reality.

If Americans wanted Congress' agenda the Congress would have a higher approval rating than 18%.

Trump's rating by contrast is 33% in May. 

Rush Limbaugh thinks Trump's too unpopular to win, but forgets how unpopular Reagan was in 1980

Gallup presidential polls 1980

Composite of polls by John Sides

Reagan sweeps with 90% of the electoral college vote

Trump's net favorable rating surges 340% from 5 to 22 since February 29th, Cruz up 62% from 13 to 21, Kasich up just 12%

Gallup, here.

Gallup says Tea Party support hits low of 17%, peak support was in November 2010 at 32%

Polling results here.

Americans are gay propaganda victims, overestimating LGBT population by at least six times

Gallup reports here:

"The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans' 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population. These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year."

Americans believe the most important problem facing the country involves representation, but don't say it quite that way

Dissatisfaction with the government, Congress and politicians took first place in a January Gallup poll. This includes dissatisfaction with poor leadership, corruption and abuse of power.

Perhaps if someone explained how too much power is concentrated there in too few hands the American people might be persuaded that more representatives with smaller districts might help solve the problem of our oligarchical Congress and improve its responsiveness to the people.

Results here.







h/t Laura Ingraham

New Gallup Poll of 20,000 Estimates ObamaCare Has Fallen Far Short Of Insuring The Uninsured

The story is here:

Overall, 11.8% of U.S. adults say they got a new health insurance policy in 2014. One-third of this group, or 4% nationally, say they did not have insurance in 2013. Another 7.5% got a new policy this year that replaced a previous policy. The rest either did not respond or were uncertain about their previous insurance status.

The key figure is the 4% who are newly insured in 2014, which most likely represents Americans' response to the individual mandate requirement the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This estimate of the newly insured broadly aligns with the reduction Gallup has seen in the national uninsured rate from 2013 to the first days of April 2014. However, the calculation of the newly insured does not take into account those who may have been insured in 2013 but not in 2014.

The ACA envisioned that the new healthcare exchanges would be the main place where uninsured Americans would get their insurance this year, but it appears that a sizable segment of the newly insured Americans used another mechanism. These sources presumably include employee policies, Medicaid, and other private policies not arranged through exchanges.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the adult population is presently about 247 million, 11.8% with new insurance in 2014 is 29 million adults.

If 33% of them had no insurance in 2013 (or 4% of the adult population), that's about only 9.6 million to 9.9 million newly insured who weren't previously, leaving 20 million uninsured yet to sign up. Estimates of the total uninsured previously had been widely estimated at 30-40 million Americans.

If the whole point of ObamaCare was to provide insurance to those who didn't have it or couldn't get it, so far ObamaCare is therefore not much of a success, especially since it has caused an upheaval for everyone else who has had insurance, which Obama told us we could keep if we liked it.

Replacement policies going to an additional 7.5% of the adult population who were previously insured means 18.5 million people have had to replace their insurance or wanted to replace their insurance because of ObamaCare, three times as many as the 6 million widely reported to have had their policies canceled because of ObamaCare late in 2013.

That leaves less than a million in the category who were uncertain about their previous insurance status.

It remains to be seen how many saying they have new insurance simply signed up for Medicaid because they didn't qualify for a health insurance subsidy because their income was too low. In Michigan a family of three that doesn't make at least $20,000 a year typically gets forced into Medicaid under ObamaCare if that family wants coverage and hopes to avoid a "tax" for failing to obtain coverage.

Evidently even such a family could avoid the tax, and Medicaid, by making a "hardship" claim.

h/t Chris

Sink Sunk In FL 13 By Libertarian Spoiler In Low Turnout Special Election Where Fixing ObamaCare Got No Traction

Flashback to November 2010 when Eric Cantor already said he wanted to keep the good parts of ObamaCare and not repeal the thing outright. Eric Cantor never saw the Republican blowout in 2010 as a resounding verdict against ObamaCare, even though the Republican sweep of the House was history making. Newsmax reported Cantor's remarks here.

Today, repeal of ObamaCare is much more appealing than keeping it as is, by almost 2:1 in December polling by Gallup, here. Those who want to scale it back or expand it somehow to fix it are evenly divided in the polling data and together represent 40% of those polled. The polling overall, however, is negative on ObamaCare by 52% to 37%.

The narrowly won Florida 13 District seat this week by a Republican was a test of the Democrat strategy of running on a platform of fixing ObamaCare. It didn't work.

Politico reports here:

Democrats had hoped that defeating Jolly would show that they could beat the GOP’s anti-Obamacare offensive. Sink had embraced the national Democratic Party’s “fix it, don’t repeal it” mantra, which candidates across the country are expected to adopt this year.

Election results at 10 News WTSP here show that a libertarian spoiled the race for the Democrat Alex Sink. Usually libertarians ruin elections for Republicans, not Democrats. The libertarian strongly supported marriage equality and liberalization of marijuana laws.

Turnout was low in the narrowly Republican majority district where older voters weren't particularly engaged by ObamaCare, as reported separately, here.

Uh Oh, A Lot More Than The 1% DON'T Worry About The Economy

Gallup, here.

Incidentally, precisely 59% of American wage earners in 2012 made less than $35,000 per year. You need to make about $80,000 to reach the top 11%.

59% Of American Adults Sympathize With The Main Goal Of Communism, And 83% Of Democrats Do

The goal? Wealth redistribution.

Gallup. April 2013. Here.

Garbage in, K-12 . . . garbage out forevermore.

No wonder upper class self-identification is down a whopping 29% under the leader. 

Just 6% Think Immigration Reform Is Our Number One Issue

"barking up the wrong tree"

So reported Bloomberg a week ago, here:

In a June 1-4 Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans named either the economy or employment and jobs as the No. 1 issue facing the U.S., while 6 percent said immigration topped their list of concerns.

Jim Cramer Sucks: Vanguard's Total Market Index Vaults To 41.02

Up 147% since the March 2009 low of about 16.60.

Don't forget, Jim Cramer told you on NBC, the Obama network, the Monday morning after TARP was signed the previous Friday in early October 2008, to sell if you needed your money in five years.

His statement materially contributed to more panic selling and the market lows. Within weeks the market plunged even though TARP was supposed to restore confidence.  By the following April the percentage of the public claiming to own stocks had fallen a full five percentage points from the previous April before the crisis began, according to Gallup, an unprecedented decline of confidence. And the decline has continued another full five percentage points since then.

Let's look at the lows by year as reported by Vanguard, remembering that on Friday, October 3, 2008 VTSMX, a proxy for the total market, closed at 26.62, before Cramer opened his big yap:

Nov. 20, 2008 = 18.00 (a decline of 32% from October 6 when Cramer said "sell"; thanks Jim)

Mar.  9, 2009 = 16.43 (over 38% down after Cramer opened his yap; what's another 6 points, huh?)

Jul. 2, 2010 = 25.36 (this low is already back up to within less than 5% of the pre-Cramer level)

Oct. 3, 2011 = 27.16 (this low for the year firmly 2% above the pre-Cramer level)

Jan. 4, 2012 = 31.75 (this low for the year almost 20% above the pre-Cramer level).

In other words, you had all your money back in three years to the date, despite the damage Cramer caused.

But what if he had just shut up? And what if we just hadn't listened?

Looks Like An Awful Lot Of People Stupidly Took Jim Cramer's Advice In 2008

The percentage of the population claiming stock market ownership plunged dramatically between April 2008 and April 2009 by five points, and has continued to decline by more than a point per year since then as of April 2013.

Jim Cramer told everyone to sell in October 2008 on NBC's Today Show after the panic of September, saying to do so "if you needed your money in five years". Well, if you had just left your money in the market, you'd be sitting pretty right now, four and a half years later. Since March 2009 the broad market is up over 140%, and since October 2008 to March 2013 your real rate of return in the S&P500 index has been +11.88% annually.

Gallup has the story and graph here.

American investing behavior over the long haul is a contrary indicator.

OK, So Just 3.4% Of Americans Are Freaks Of Nature

I'm glad we finally cleared that up. The part that worries me is the 4.4% who refused to answer . . . or don't know.

Gallup reports, here.

Jeffrey Lord Doubts This Race Is Close

In The American Spectator, here:

After the election, Ed Rollins ran into the Washington Post's blunt-speaking editor Ben Bradlee and "harassed" Bradlee "about his paper's lousy polling methodology."

Bradlee's "unrepentant" response?

"Tough sh…t, Rollins, I'm glad it cost you plenty. It's my in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign."

Got that? ...

How does one explain a president who, like Jimmy Carter in 1980, is increasingly seen as a disaster in both economic and foreign policy? How does a President Obama, with a Gallup job approval rating currently at 49% -- down a full 20% from 2009 -- mysteriously win the day in all these polls?

How does this happen?

Can you say "in-kind contribution"?

Better Off? The Uninsured Rate Has Climbed 16 Percent Under Obama.

Data and discussion here.

The Congress Fails To Represent The People, Say 90 Percent Of Americans

Congressional approval in August is down to 10 percent, according to Gallup, here, tying the all-time low.

No wonder. How could one person effectively speak for an average constituency of over 700,000 Americans? Do you know your Congressman? Does he know you?

It wasn't meant to be this way.

The fiercest disagreements over the Constitution's ratification were over whether a Congressman would be able to speak for 30,000 Americans, or 15,000 as the anti-federalists wanted. The advocates of 30,000 won, but the line in the Constitution was inartfully written, looking backward to that debate more than forward to the consequence:

"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand . . .."

And so census followed census, and the Congress grew in size as the population did, decade upon decade, following the principle of one per thirty thousand.

Americans today don't realize how the Congress of the United States offended against this arrangement not until the 1920s. It was a naked power grab, fixing the number of representatives at the then current 435.

The Constitution had said nothing, they eagerly pointed out in those days, about one for more than thirty thousand, only that, say, one for 15,000 was too many. The scientific inspectors of language didn't care about the intent and the custom, only about the new opportunity. Dispensing with the census, however, which was the basis for apportioning representation, was a bridge too far.

But the example had consequences. Not long after FDR in his admiration of foreign dictators overturned another custom laid down in the founding era by the father of the country, George Washington, by running for a third term. There was nothing to prevent it. If one branch of government could grasp for more power, so could another. The imperial designs of the presidency have been with us ever since. 

The best way to fix the Congress isn't to elect a new one of a different political party. It's to dilute the power it has concentrated into its few hands by flooding the place with the roughly 10,267 representatives the constitution calls for. This should be done by constitutional amendment, after the same manner in which the 22nd explicitly enshrined Washington's example into law in 1951, restricting the president to two terms.

The Constitution isn't perfect. If it were it wouldn't be amendable. Strict constructionism is fine as far as it goes, until it runs up against the need for explicit construction.

We used to complain to the British that we had taxation without representation.

Now we have representation without representation.

It's time we changed that.

Backward, countrymen, to the future!

Conservatives Outnumber Liberals 2 To 1: If Only They Knew What That Meant

and sigmas aren't what they used to be at Cambridge

So Gallup, in January, here:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

In America you can be whatever you want to be, even if you're not what you say you are.

You know, like the Baptist preacher down the street who fancies himself a Greek scholar but misspells the English on his road sign.