The misses finally did it, she cleaned her closet. I’ll bet she’s sore today but she had to do something as that’s just who she is. so after years of procrastination, she did it. It took her the whole day and I think she still has some things strewn around the upstairs, but the closet looks great. I’m sure she’ll be wearing a bunch of new (or old) things we haven’t seen for years, as they’ve been lost in the abyss known as her closet. Next up will be the upstairs guest bedroom.
The boys had a good day at school and played as soon as they arrived home as they have no homework on Friday’s. They also stayed up until 11pm watching tv. They promised to go to bed earlier but you know how that goes. Mom and I had fell asleep but thankfully woke up at 11 to get them both upstairs.
If you’ve been following the story of the 10 year old girl abducted while walking 3 blocks to school, they found her body. What kind of sick person would do this. Now we have some predator living here they have to catch. They say she must have been followed as whoever took her only had 3 minutes or so to grab her. She must have been stalked or followed. We are very sad and disillusioned with life in the city when these things happen. I know this kind of stuff can happen anywhere but it seems less common in the smaller towns in the mountains. We’re seriously contemplating moving out of Denver in a few years or so.
Yesterday my buddy Rik spent the entire day with us until around 7pm when his wife finally was out of surgery. She was in for 10 hours! They spent the night at the hospital and today will move into a hotel in Cherry Creek for 3 days until they have a post op appointment on Monday before heading back up to Vail. For those of you wondering, yes this was cosmetic surgery, but still surgery.
My hunting buddy shot an antelope yesterday morning down in southeastern Colorado. He’ll process it today (chop it up!) and the oldest and I will probably go help him.
Both dogs are at my feet and it’s pitch black outside. Everyone is still sleeping so I think I’ll run to the gym. Hope everyone is well, take care and have a great day.
Tom says:
Harry J Enten
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 October 2012 08.38 EDT
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Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Democratic President Barack Obama debating in Denver, Colorado. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty
It’s fairly clear that Mitt Romney “won†Wednesday night’s debate against President Obama. Not only did he win a CNN insta-poll by a record breaking 67% to 25% margin, but the press is also giving him a huge win. So what does all of this mean for the race for president?
Romney gains on an increasingly vulnerable Obama, but the president still leads.
First, general election debates are not primary debates. If you took a polling chart of the 2012 Republican primary, it would look like a w’s and m’s. Candidate preferences were so flexible that Herman Cain – a man never elected to political office who would leave the campaign because of a sexual harassment charge – led the contest a year ago. The reason Cain took the lead was because he looked good in the debates. When policy differences are small, as they are in primaries, personality matters.
Personality isn’t anywhere near as important in general elections. Voters can decide on the issues because there are true substantive differences. That’s why most voters have already locked in their choice. President Obama has seemingly held a small, but consistent lead most of this election.
We cannot expect that this or any one debate will turn an Obama edge into a large Romney lead. Romney is down by about 3 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics average. Only 5% of the electorate is truly undecided. Most of these undecided voters weren’t watching the debate and probably won’t make their choice until election day.
Second, history tells us that debates probably matter under certain circumstances. Thomas Holbrook crunched the numbers since 1988 and found that the margin between the two leading candidates changed by an average of about 4 percentage points between before the first and after the last debate. The margin between Romney and Obama was less than that heading into Wednesday night’s debate.
Now, it’s awfully difficult to figure out whether it’s a debate that is moving polling data or some other event(s) over the course of the debates season. Obama, for instance, gained ground over John McCain in 2008 partly because of the debates, but more because of a financial crisis from which we still haven’t fully recovered.
Candidates seem to gain when they were already gaining before the debate or when they are underperforming the “fundamentalsâ€. Bush picked up steam in the 1988 debates – ,continuing his rise pre-debates. Bob Dole was vastly underperforming the fundamentals in 1996: he should have been showing behind, but not by 20 points. So, it was not a huge surprise that his polling numbers improved after the debates.
That’s why I think Mitt Romney will make up some ground. Though the 5% of undecided voters may be unreachable, there’s another 5% of “soft†support. Many of these had been leaning towards Obama or saying they were “undecided†since the conventions: Obama’s one-time 1.5-point edge among likely voters doubled or even close to tripled at times during the last few weeks. Those voters are likely to come home to Romney. If they don’t, they likely never will.
Romney’s also underperforming Jacob Montgomery et al’s ensemble forecast from all the fundamental models. These models take into everything from the economy to incumbency to primary season performance. The ensemble has Romney losing, but only by 0.6 percentage points.
Another plus for Romney is that he looked to have been picking up a little steam before the debates began. Obama’s lead in the Real Clear average has shrunk from a lead close to 4.5 points back down to 3.
Third, underlying voter sentiment may not change, but enthusiasm probably will and that could change polls. You can go on Twitter and see dejection among many Democrats. Many likely voter models rely upon some level of voter interest or enthusiasm in the election. During the 2000 campaign, Gallup’s likely voter model went absolutely bonkers because of enthusiasm differences. One day, Republican enthusiasm was up because of the debates and the next, Democratic excitement went through the roof.
The registered voter numbers, however, didn’t move anywhere near as much. With Republicans potentially gaining back the enthusiasm edge they held earlier in the cycle, don’t be surprised if an already ridiculously wide likely/registered voter gap actually expands.
Fourth, and most importantly, any president whose approval rating is less than his disapproval rating remains vulnerable. This, folks, is a key point and remains tied to point four. If you read Real Clear Politics, you’ll notice that many polls that ask about the president’s approval are among adults or registered voters. Those polls are fine when enthusiasm ratings between Democrats and Republicans are near equal. They are not an accurate representation of the electorate if Republicans make a surprisingly large share of the voters come November.
I would not be surprised if a likely voter model average at this point had Obama’s approval rating below his disapproval, given the large likely voter/registered voter gap. That’s a problem for Obama because no president has won re-election with an approval rating below 50% among the voting (a smaller group than adult) electorate.
The question, then, is whether or not Romney can yank up his favorable rating above his unfavorable. If he can’t, Obama’s going to win. You don’t trade in the bad steak that doesn’t make you ill for a bad steak that may give you food poisoning. If Romney can present himself as a viable alternative, then a lot of us might be surprised by the final result.
At this point, however, my belief is that we’ll return somewhere close to where we were before the conventions: a small Obama lead of about 1.5 points. There just aren’t that many minds that Romney can change at this point. Democrats can also take heart that Republican excitement eventually rebounded a few weeks following President Bush’s 2004 debate debacle.
Still, my confidence in an Obama victory is at least somewhat shaken right now. Obama’s lead is probably not big enough for him to play the super-cautious game he did on Wednesday.