It’s amazing how the libs and conservatives can see the same thing and interpret that ‘thing’ so differently. Wishful thinking? Partially. Self-deception? That, too. What are we talking about? The Iowa Senate race.
Yesterday, an article appeared on Drudge. The headline read, POLL SHOCK: Dems now have 51% chance of holding Senate. According to the Washington Post, the Iowa Senate race 'leans' left towards democrat candidate Bruce Braley. The article states that two weeks ago, Joni Ernst led Braley.
The Washington Post says,
* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.
The Washington Post’s own poll has Joni Ernst leading Braley 59% to 41% and they say the state is ‘leaning’ left to Braley. FOXNews ran an article about the same Iowa race using another poll. Their poll, too, had Ernst well out in front by 6 percentage points. The astounding item in all this is that the Washington Post poll has Ernst further ahead than the FOXNews/Quinnipiac University poll. Both sides see the same fact, Joni Ernst is well out in front, and both sides report that fact oppositely.
I believe the dems are grasping at straws. It is common knowledge that the closer we approach the election, the tighter the races appear. To the dems, Ernst dropping from 72% to 59%, according to their poll, means Ernst is losing.
FOX just reports that Ernst continues to poll higher than Braley by 6%. That, my friends, is the difference between FOX and the Main Stream Media. The MSM filters all news through their bias, FOX just reports the facts as they are.
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Have you heard about the new Form 4473? What is the Form 4473? It’s the form you must complete to buy a firearm through a federally licensed dealer. What has been changed? The new form requires the buyer to state his race and ethnicity. The Obama administration changed the form, quietly, without little fanfare—until it hit the dealers.
ATF policy irks dealers, risks privacy intrusion, racial profiling: critics
The Obama administration quietly has been forcing new gun buyers to declare their race and ethnicity, a policy change that critics say provides little law enforcement value while creating the risk of privacy intrusions and racial profiling.
With little fanfare, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2012 amended its Form 4473 — the transactional record the government requires gun purchasers and sellers to fill out when buying a firearm — to identify buyers as either Hispanic, Latino or not. Then a buyer must check his or her race: Indian, Asian, black, Pacific Islander or white.
The amendment is causing a headache for gun retailers, as each box needs to be checked off or else it’s an ATF violation — severe enough for the government to shut a business down. Many times people skip over the Hispanic/Latino box and only check their race, or vice versa — both of which are federal errors that can be held against the dealer.
Requiring the race and ethnic information of gun buyers is not required by federal law and provides little law enforcement value, legal experts say. And gun industry officials worry about how the information is being used and whether it constitutes an unnecessary intrusion on privacy.
“This issue concerns me deeply because, first, it’s offensive, and, secondly, there’s no need for it,” said Evan Nappen, a private practice firearms lawyer in New Jersey. “If there’s no need for an amendment, then there’s usually a political reason for the change. What this indicates is it was done for political reasons, not law enforcement reasons.”
ATF said the change came about because it needed to update its forms to comply with an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reporting standard put into effect during the Clinton administration. The ATF declined to comment on why race and ethnicity information are needed in the first place or what they are used for. On its prior 4473 forms, the bureau had been collecting race data.
The BATFE is blaming Bill Clinton for this change. It’s strange that for eight years of the Bush Administration and four years of the Obama Administration, the BATFE saw no need to change the Form 4473. I don’t believe their excuse.
“OMB’s race and ethnicity standards require agencies to ask both race and ethnicity in a specific manner (as done on [Form 4473]), and agencies may not ask for one without asking for the other,” wrote Elizabeth Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the ATF, in an emailed response to The Washington Times. She did not say why the agency suddenly made the change in response to a rule that was more than a decade old.
For ATF to ask for a purchaser’s race and ethnicity is not specifically authorized under federal statute, and since a government-issued photo ID — like a driver’s license — and a background check are already required by law to purchase a gun, the ethnicity/race boxes aren’t there for identification reasons, Mr. Nappen said.
“There is nothing [in ATF or OMB’s website links addressing the change in policy] that supports the requirement that ATF collect race-based information. The OMB guidance merely describes what categories of race should look like if information is collected,” Laura Murphy, the American Civil Liberties Union director for legislative affairs in Washington, said in an emailed statement.
In addition, Mrs. Murphy notes, the OMB guidance was supposed to be implemented by 2003; there’s no information given why ATF decided to make this change almost a decade later, she said.
“If there is a civil rights enforcement reason for the ATF to collect this data, I have not heard that explanation from ATF or any other federal agency,” said Mrs. Murphy.
Both the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza — the nation’s largest national Hispanic civil rights group — declined comment. — The Washington Times.
The column continues at the Washington Times website. You can read the entire column here.
There is no justification, nor federal requirement for Obama to collect this information. Why are they? What purpose does it server? Perhaps, just to intimidate those who want to buy a weapon.
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If you like single-malt Scots whisky, you may see prices going up if Scotland votes to secede from the United Kingdom.
Scotch drinkers might want to brace themselves if Scots vote to secede from the United Kingdom and, consequently, the European Union Thursday.
Among the likely outcomes would be higher prices for Americans and others who import the brown elixir from secession saddled producers with rising costs.
Scotch whiskey, commonly referred to as Scotch and spelled without the “e” in Great Britain, is a tightly regulated spirit that can only come from oak casks that have matured for at least three years in Scotland. Exports are a giant piece of business for the Scotch industry, which says it ships 40 bottles overseas each second, while Scotch accounts for a quarter of U.K.’s food and drink exports.
The prospect of a Scotch trade interruption alone is enough to rattle the industry.
David Frost, the chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association in Edinburgh, said “any regulatory divergence between Scotland and the rest of the U.K. may increase costs to business,” according to his group’s annual review in May.
And Frost isn’t just bluffing. In the European Union, Scotch producers can export the stuff tariff-free to the region, and the geographical indication of “Scotch Whisky” is protected by E.U. law. Only 109 distilleries are licensed to produce Scotch, according to the association.
“But even a temporary interruption of E.U. membership involving exclusion from the single market or the customs union, if this were a consequence of independence, would be damaging and difficult to manage,” Frost wrote in the annual review.
I guess all you Scotch drinkers will have to switch to Bourbon.
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