Presidents Message November 2012: Fill & Download for Free

It's pretty clear that President Obama "can" be beat. The best predictor for what an incumbent President will receive as a percentage of the vote is typically his approval rating (For more on this, see Nate Silver's good write-up on the topic here: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/approval-ratings-and-re-election-odds/). The most recent average of polls has President Obama's approval rating at 47 percent with 48 percent disapproving.This is right on the bubble of being reelected or not, with the obvious caveat that a lot can happen in the coming year. If he is going to lose, watch for his approval rating to slip below the 48/49 range. Don't be fooled by match-up poll numbers showing the President with a lead but large numbers of undecideds; they usually break for the challenger at the end if they haven't committed to the already-known quantity of the incumbent. This is because in reelection campaigns, people typically think about the voting decision in a two step process:Is the current President doing a good job and do I want him to continue? If yes, they vote for him, if no, they ask:Is the other candidate a credible alternative? If yes they vote for the challenger, if no, they vote for the incumbent, or they don't vote.The question of "how" is a separate issue. President Obama is still the prohibitive favorite as the incumbent in the race, but here are the four "M"s that I would watch and think about as you look at the race over the coming year:Message: The campaign will be fought out on the economy, and I would predict the Republican message will end up being something along the lines of "If I can't get the economy moving in 4 years, you should fire me too." This implicitly gives voters the permission to vote him out (see step one above) and neatly sidesteps the question of blame to focus on the future. It is still unclear what the President's message will be and how his record will look next year, but based on recent comments by Alexrod and Gibbs it seems to be moving toward "President Obama has done a good job under difficult circumstances, and this race will be a choice (PS: you're not going to like the other option)" (see step two above). The success of this message will probably depend on…Money: If the economy continues in its current trajectory, the most likely path to victory for the President will be to negatively define his opponent. This will take money, and if the President is significantly out-raising his opponent in the general, that would facilitate this strategy. There has been a lot of discussion about the President potentially raising a billion dollars for his reelection. That would certainly help in the places where it matters…Map: There are about 12 swing states where the election will be decided (NV, FL, MI, NC, CO, OH, NM, PA, WI, VA, IA, NH) and it is more important how the President is doing in these states. The latest swing state poll by USA Today has Obama 47/Romney 48 in these states. (See: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-01-27/swing-states-poll/52871890/1) In particular, I am watching PA closely. The math gets harder if the President loses there, and his polling in the state has been surprisingly mediocre. And of course all this is in the context of…Meconomic growth: Projections by the Federal Reserve estimate that the unemployment rate will be about the same as it is now (8.2-8.6%) next year. (See: http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcprojtabl20120125.htm) This would be the highest rate since FDR, and will make reelection more difficult for the President, even though we are actually experiencing growth consistent with the Rogoff-Reinhart projections of the time it should take to recover from a financial crisis. (See here for more: http://www.nber.org/~wbuiter/cr1.pdf) All the political arguments above are ultimately subject to the economic facts on the ground as voters perceive them in November 2012.Note: I have updated this answer based on more recent data (Jan 2012), though I believe the analysis from earlier still holds.

President Barack Obama had a bit of a fondness for publishing op-eds:“Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement” (The Washington Post, January 2016)“Opinion | Barack Obama: Guns Are Our Shared Responsibility” (The New York Times, January 2016)“President Obama: Our fight against violent extremism - Los Angeles Times” (Los Angeles Times, February 2015)“Op-ed by President Obama: President Obama Reflects on the Impact of Title IX” (Newsweek, June 2012)“President Barack Obama: My vision for America” (CNN online, November 2012)“President Obama: Medicine’s next step” (The Boston Globe, July 2016)“Barack Obama: Self-driving, yes, but also safe” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 2016)“Exclusive: President Barack Obama Says, "This Is What a Feminist Looks Like"” (Glamour, August 2016)He even made appearances in foreign papers:“Barack Obama: As your friend, let me say that the EU makes Britain even greater” (The Telegraph (UK), April 2016)“Op-Ed by President Obama and Chancellor Merkel: The Future of Transatlantic Relations” (Wirtschaftswoche (Germany), November 2016)What’s notable about President Obama’s op-ed proclivities is that they ramp up in the second-half of 2016, pretty much after constant election coverage drowned out whatever appearances he might have been inclined to make on television. Op-eds became the preferred way for him to get his message out and cut through the noise.

This was an extremely interesting case so please read to the end before you take away any message from this answer.In 2012, a French research group published a paper "Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize" in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology with the horrific pictures above and a damning conclusion[1], summarized by CBSNews:Mice who were fed either a diet of Monsanto's genetically modified maize sprayed with Roundup - the company's brand of weed killer - or drank water with levels of Roundup similar to what is found in U.S. tap water were much more likely to die and at an earlier age, in addition to other health problems.The study involved 200 albino Sprague-Dawley rats - 100 hundred females, 100 males. The rats where then divided into groups of 10.Six of the groups were fed varied diets with genetically modified products. Six groups - three male and three female - were fed Monsanto GM maize with Roundup weed killer consisting of 11 percent of their diet, 22 percent or 33 percent. Six other groups were given Monsanto GM maize in the same percentage amounts, but had no Roundup sprayed on them. Another six groups were given Roundup weed killer in their water similar to the levels found in U.S. tap water.The remaining two groups acted as control groups and were fed non-genetically modified maize and water without Roundup weed killer.The results showed that female rats were two to three times more likely to die than the control group. Fifty percent of the males and 70 percent of the females eating Monsanto GM maize died earlier compared to 30 percent of males and 20 percent of females not eating genetically modified products. Female rats seemed to be more negatively affected by genetically modified corn diets whether it was sprayed with Roundup or not.The paper contradicted many previous studies on the negative food safety impacts of GMO food and was such a bombshell that French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said that, if the results are confirmed, the government would press for a Europe-wide ban on the maize and The European Commission led an investigation to assess the study. In late September 2012, Russia temporarily suspended importing GM corn as a result of the study and in November 2012, Kenya banned all GM crops. Austria’s minister for agriculture and the environment called on the European Commission to review its approval process for GM foods.But there were a couple of note-worthy and strange things about the study. The chief author of the paper was Gilles-Éric Séralini, who was also the president of the scientific advisory board of the Committee of Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering , which opposes GM food. When he held a press conference to announce the findings, he required journalists to sign a confidentiality agreement which forbade them from consulting with other scientists.Years before, he had already published controversial papers pointing out the health risks of GMO that were criticized for poor statistical methods or unsubstantiated conclusions.In the study, the rats that ate more GM corn did not get as sick as those that ate less. The choice of rats was also extremely problematic because Sprague Dawley rats are known for their propensity to develop tumors unless they receive a controlled diet. With 10 rats in each group, the sample size was also too small to establish statistical power. The pictures of the tumors were accused of being misleading because the absence of tumors in the control group was never explicitly shown.The paper triggered a storm of criticisms and was eventually retracted after Seralini refused to withdraw it. Scientists and regulatory agencies that looked closely at the paper concluded that its design was flawed and the findings too weak statistically[2]. Despite the widespread condemnation, the paper didn’t die without a lot of kicking and screaming. Seralini released a book and a documentary about the study. The paper was republished in 2014 in another journal but not all of the raw data was released.It is important to remember that as a scientific matter, the safety of GMO is no longer controversial. The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all declared that there’s no good evidence GMOs are unsafe. Hundreds of studies back up that conclusion.Yet, just like the notorious paper linking vaccines and autism, this paper has caused long term damage even after it was retracted. It was part of a fear-mongering campaign full of errors and fraud. This excellent Slate article traces the long history of anti-GMO campaigns. The Misleading War on GMOs: The Food Is Safe. The Rhetoric Is Dangerous.This is an area where expert opinion diverges sharply with the general public. Pew surveys found that “Other factors – including people’s education and general level of science knowledge –are only modestly linked with beliefs about the health effects of GM foods. Democrats and Republicans hold similar views on the effects of eating GM foods.”GMO is an area where science has become extremely politicized and polarized. The skepticism comes from people’s concerns about the motives of research scientists, who are often perceived to be associated with Monsanto and the food industry. I suspect there’s also the fear and unease with ‘playing God’ and ‘unnatural’ products.In 2016, 109 Nobel laureates signed onto a scathing letter to Greenpeace urging them to rethink their longstanding opposition to GMOs, which is scientifically baseless and potentially harmful to poor people in the developing world.The United Nations Food & Agriculture Program has noted that global production of food, feed and fiber will need approximately to double by 2050 to meet the demands of a growing global population. Organizations opposed to modern plant breeding, with Greenpeace at their lead, have repeatedly denied these facts and opposed biotechnological innovations in agriculture. They have misrepresented their risks, benefits, and impacts, and supported the criminal destruction of approved field trials and research projects.…Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world. Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk. VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 - 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.WE CALL UPON GREENPEACE to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general;WE CALL UPON GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD to reject Greenpeace's campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general; and to do everything in their power to oppose Greenpeace's actions and accelerate the access of farmers to all the tools of modern biology, especially seeds improved through biotechnology. Opposition based on emotion and dogma contradicted by data must be stopped.How many poor people in the world must die before we consider this a "crime against humanity"?So no, the mutations in the GMO corn did not create the monstrous rats. A willingness to mislead and bend facts to pursue a political agenda did.Footnotes[1] Study says genetically modified corn causes tumors, but other scientists skeptical about research[2] Séralini affair - Wikipedia