Marc Comtois

The Cluttering of the Artistic Mind

By Marc Comtois | October 6, 2012 |

I found Camille Paglia’s piece in the Wall Street Journal about modern-day art interesting and thought provoking: What has sapped artistic creativity and innovation in the arts? Two major causes can be identified, one relating to an expansion of form and the other to a contraction of ideology. Painting was the prestige genre in the…

Losers Make Excuses

By Marc Comtois | October 5, 2012 |

Yuval Levin explains why liberals and Obama supporters have coalesced around the narrative that Romney won the 1st debate because he lied (and had a secret cheat-hanky…and altitude). They can’t conceive of any other way the conservative strawman they created could’ve won. This is, first and foremost, an instance of something that a lot of…

Insight into Narrative Building With Polls

By Marc Comtois | October 5, 2012 |

I got this release (PDF) about post Presidential debate research from The Winston Group. Included in it is an analysis of a debate focus group put together by left-leaning Democracy Corps. Democracy Corps conducted a post-debate discussion with 45 swing voters in Denver, which included 16 unmarried women. According to their analysis this group contained…

Getting Past Cicilline Spin on Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization

By Marc Comtois | October 5, 2012 |

This afternoon, WPRO’s Dan Yorke has taken the Doherty campaign to task (again, hey, it’s a day that ends in “y”) for not being clear on why Doherty supposedly opposes the Violence Against Women Act that is currently stalled in Congress. In truth, there are two versions of the act and Doherty supports the House…

Obama’s Economic Claims Debunked

By Marc Comtois | October 5, 2012 |

John Merline at Investor’s Business Daily put together the below chart to help explain the economic myths being told by the President (read the whole thing).

WPRI Poll Confirms RI Blueness

By Marc Comtois | October 3, 2012 |

I know, dog bites man. The WPRI Poll–particularly with regards to the Presidential race and the approval ratings for President Obama–simply confirm what we know to be true. Democrats are the majority party in the state and they march in lockstep more than either Republicans or (by definition, I suppose) Independents. WPRI sampled 501 voters…

Playing with the WPRI Poll: Doherty/Cicilline Raw Numbers

By Marc Comtois | October 2, 2012 |

Danger, math ahead. I confirmed with Ted Nesi that the WPRI poll breakdown for the 1st Congressional district was 45% Democrat, 40% Independent and 12% Republican. So, I thought I’d delve deeper into the Doherty/Cicilline poll numbers because I thought it could tell me something interesting about District 1 independent voters. It also gave me…

Playing with the WPRI Poll: Doherty/Cicilline

By Marc Comtois | October 2, 2012 |

The latest WPRI poll (story here) offers some interesting and somewhat confusing numbers regarding the Cicilline/Doherty race. First, we know that the majority of RI voters are either Democrats or Democrat-leaning unaffiliated (ie; independent) voters. Hence, we shouldn’t be surprised that David Cicilline leads Brendan Doherty 44% to 37.6% with 10% undecided and 6.4% for…

Study Provides Positive PR Opportunity for Providence

By Marc Comtois | October 1, 2012 |

There’s always bad news to talk about around here–fish in a barrel. So when good stuff comes down the pike, we’ve got to be able to take advantage of it. KPMG recently did an international survey and analysis (PDF) of business tax costs around the world. Part of the survey included a ranking of U.S.…

Brien Claims Primary Opponent Violated the Hatch Act

By Marc Comtois | September 27, 2012 |

According to Ian Donnis (via Twitter UPDATE: Ian has more), Rep. Jon Brien is claiming his primary opponent, “was ineligible due to a Hatch Act violation” because “Stephen Casey works for a fire department that gets federal funding.” Without having heard the specific claims, here is what the Hatch Act says, according to a Federal…