BloggeRhythms

Fox News' Shannon Bream, Matt Dean and The Associated Press report more bad news for the POTUS.  Yesterday, a federal appeals court upheld a federal judge's injunction preventing the blocking of deportation of an estimated 5 million people illegally living in the United States. 

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans further dims the prospect of implementation of the executive action before Obama leaves office in 2017. Appeals over the injunction could take months. 

While “Republicans had criticized the plan as an illegal executive overreach when Obama announced it last November,” twenty-six states also challenged the plan in court." 

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group, urged an immediate Supreme Court appeal, saying in a news release.: “The most directly impacted are the 5 million U.S. citizen children whose parents would be eligible for temporary relief from deportation.” 

“The Justice Department said in a statement that it disagreed with the court's ruling, claiming that Obama's action would "allow DHS to bring greater accountability to our immigration system by prioritizing the removal of the worst offenders, not people who have long ties to the United States and who are raising American children." The statement did not specify what the department's next steps would be.” 

However, while the arguments rage on, what never seems to get mentioned by the administration is that although the “illegals” may be facing hardships, they blatantly broke the nation’s laws. Which means that while crying and bemoaning their problems now, they should have considered that in the first place and either stayed wherever they came from or entered legally. Like millions upon millions of others before them who are rightfully upstanding citizens now.

In another ongoing topic often mentioned here, Giovanni Russonello @nytimes.com titled his column today: “Poll Watch: Overseas Elections Offer Warnings for U.S. Pollsters”

 

Mr. Russonello writes: “Pre-election polls in numerous countries this year have widely missed their marks, often by underestimating support for candidates on the ideological fringes. The polling failures in countries like Britain, Poland and Israel point to technical issues that could well foreshadow polling problems in the United States, many analysts believe.” 

John Curtice, president of the British Polling Council and professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow said, “The industry has a collective failure problem.” Partly as a result of changing methodologies, “It’s now a mix of random-digit dialing — that is, telephone polls — and Internet-based polls based on recruited panels.” Both of which present potential problems. 

The pollsters dilemma recalls one of the most famous polling story’s of all. The  1948 election between Thomas Dewey and Harry Truman, with data researched @math.upenn.edu. 

At the time, Gallup conducted a poll with a sample size of about 3250 under the following, precise conditions: 

“Each individual in the sample was interviewed in person by a professional interviewer to minimize nonresponse bias, and each interviewer was given a very detailed set of quotas to meet. For example, an interviewer could have been given the following quotas: seven white males under 40 living in a rural area, five black males under 40 living in a rural area, six black females under 40 living in a rural area, etc. Other than meeting these quotas the ultimate choice of who was interviewed was left to each interviewer.” 

“Based on the results of this poll, Gallup predicted a victory for Dewey, the Republican candidate. The predicted breakdown of the vote was 50% for Dewey, 44% for Truman, and 6% for third-party candidates Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace.” 

However: “The actual results of the election turned out to be almost exactly reversed: 50% for Truman, 45% for Dewey, and 5% for third-party candidates.” 

While Truman's victory was a great surprise to the nation as a whole, the Chicago Tribune was so convinced of Dewey's victory that it went to press on its early edition for November 4, 1948 with the headline "Dewey defeats Truman" 

The Tribune’s blunder led to Truman's famous retort "Ain't the way I heard it.,” while the picture of Truman holding a copy of the Tribune aloft has become part of national folklore. 

As the university concluded regarding the 1948 event, and which should surely be borne in mind by voters today: “To pollsters and statisticians, the results of this election were a clear indication that as a method for selecting a representative sample, quota sampling can have some serious flaws.” And one would certainly have to assume that Mitt Romney would certainly agree with that, too. Because as a general rule, poll results aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Which brings us to today’s update on Bill Clinton’s wife.  

Rachael Bade @politico.com writes that: “Even as Hillary Clinton tries to put questions about her private email server behind her, the FBI has stepped up inquiries into the security of the former Secretary of State's home-made email system, and how aides communicated over email, POLITICO has learned. 

“The FBI’s recent moves suggest that its inquiry could have evolved from the preliminary fact-finding stage that the agency launches when it receives a credible referral, according to former FBI and DOJ officials interviewed by POLITICO.” 

Adding some impact to the story, Tom Fuentes, former assistant director of the FBI, is quoted as saying: “This sounds to me like it’s more than a preliminary inquiry; it sounds like a full-blown investigation. When you have this amount of resources going into it …. I think it’s at the investigative level.” 

Now, reading the preceding one would have to assume that there may be some very serious charges pending for Bill’s wife, whereas a former FBI director certainly should know what he’s talking about. Yet, one has to remember that the story comes from Politico, about which in 2011 and 2012, The Daily Caller, Mediaite, and Breitbart.com, each published stories saying that Politico.com has a liberal bias. 

So, here we have a case where Politico, while trying to sound impartial, might actually be setting readers up for what they might truly expect to occur. An FBI decision absolving Bill’s wife of any misdoing as Secretary of State. 

Nonetheless, if the worst actually occurs, and there’s culpability on her part, that would lead to the ongoing question: Joe Biden, Mayor Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, and Starbuck’s chairman and CEO, Howard Schultz, are you reading this?   

That's it for today folks. 

Adios