U.S. politics isolation tank

[WriterDom]

Please link to a Rasmussen poll result showing that Obama had a job approval rating of 65%. I hope you can appreciate my skepticism on this. I doubt if even Jesus ever had a 65% approval rating via Rasmussen.

You speak of "Blacks, gays, and hard core liberals " as if they constitute a population that is to be reviled for their stupidity. Think about that for a moment.

And if the "MTV crowd" is losing interest in the President, it's because his policies are too centrist for their taste. But that doesn't fit your little Rushian worldview, does it?

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...a_administration/obama_approval_index_history

It was over 60 at a while. Rasmussen has been the about the best poll out there as far as results go. I don't know why you have such a bug up your ass about them. Post your senate predictions in a couple of weeks and we'll see how they stack up with Rasmussen.

Ruishian world view. That's about as funny as noncombat troops. Or government spending holding unemployment below 8 percent. And don't ask don't tell about closing Gitmo. Single payer system. Hell I'd be pissed if I were on the left too.

Go read a Newsweek poll. You'll feel better.

 

[midwestyankee]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...a_administration/obama_approval_index_history

It was over 60 at a while. Rasmussen has been the about the best poll out there as far as results go. I don't know why you have such a bug up your ass about them. Post your senate predictions in a couple of weeks and we'll see how they stack up with Rasmussen.

Ruishian world view. That's about as funny as noncombat troops. Or government spending holding unemployment below 8 percent. And don't ask don't tell about closing Gitmo. Single payer system. Hell I'd be pissed if I were on the left too.

Go read a Newsweek poll. You'll feel better.

Fascinating. I then did some further digging around and found this article by Nate Silver, in which he analyzes the house effect in Rasmussen polls: which is to boost Republicans by about 6 points more than all other pollsters. So either Rasmussen is the only pollster getting it right or he's the one who's getting it most wrong.

 

[rosco rathbone]

They're trying to cram cramdown down our throats!

http://www.benzinga.com/general/10/10/524394/time-for-a-moratorium-on-mortgage-fraud

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/draconian-measures-by-digby-this.html

 

[rosco rathbone]

"4. Give purported mortgage holders 30 days to produce the original notes; if they cannot find them, hand the homes over to the owner-occupants—free and clear of debt."


Stop the madness!

 

[midwestyankee]

"4. Give purported mortgage holders 30 days to produce the original notes; if they cannot find them, hand the homes over to the owner-occupants—free and clear of debt."


Stop the madness!

Rosco, forgive me if I'm not reading you correctly, but whose side are you on here?

 

[WriterDom]

Fascinating. I then did some further digging around and found this article by Nate Silver, in which he analyzes the house effect in Rasmussen polls: which is to boost Republicans by about 6 points more than all other pollsters. So either Rasmussen is the only pollster getting it right or he's the one who's getting it most wrong.

And there is this. Yeah, from their website but either they called it for Christie or not. Facts are facts.

In 2009, while most firms showed New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine with a modest lead in his reelection bid, Rasmussen Reports consistently showed challenger Chris Christie ahead and eventually matched his margin of victory. That New Jersey race, combined with our earlier track record, led liberal columnist Mickey Kaus to declare, “If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the prestigious N.Y. Times, go with Rasmussen!”

In 2010, Rasmussen Reports was the first to show Republican Scott Brown had a chance to defeat Martha Coakley in a Massachusetts Senate race. Just after Brown's upset win, the influential Washington publication The Politico wrote, “The overwhelming conventional wisdom in both parties … was that Martha Coakley was a lock. It's hard to recall a single poll changing the mood of a race quite that dramatically." A study by Boston University and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism about how the Massachusetts Senate race was covered in the media concluded “That (Rasmussen) poll, perhaps more than anything else, signaled that a possible upset was brewing and galvanized both the media and political worlds” and “In the two weeks after the Rasmussen poll, media coverage (of the race)coverage picked up frantically.” The New York Times Magazine opened a March 14 cover story with a scene highlighting the impact of that poll in an internal White House meeting involving President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Rosco, forgive me if I'm not reading you correctly, but whose side are you on here?

"Stop the madness" means "as if!".

I'm an Obama-voting, NRA-card carrying, New Deal Democrat.

I'd have all the fraudsters swinging from the mizzen yardarm and their accomplices in irons.

 

[midwestyankee]

And there is this. Yeah, from their website but either they called it for Christie or not. Facts are facts.

In 2009, while most firms showed New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine with a modest lead in his reelection bid, Rasmussen Reports consistently showed challenger Chris Christie ahead and eventually matched his margin of victory. That New Jersey race, combined with our earlier track record, led liberal columnist Mickey Kaus to declare, “If you have a choice between Rasmussen and, say, the prestigious N.Y. Times, go with Rasmussen!”

In 2010, Rasmussen Reports was the first to show Republican Scott Brown had a chance to defeat Martha Coakley in a Massachusetts Senate race. Just after Brown's upset win, the influential Washington publication The Politico wrote, “The overwhelming conventional wisdom in both parties … was that Martha Coakley was a lock. It's hard to recall a single poll changing the mood of a race quite that dramatically." A study by Boston University and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism about how the Massachusetts Senate race was covered in the media concluded “That (Rasmussen) poll, perhaps more than anything else, signaled that a possible upset was brewing and galvanized both the media and political worlds” and “In the two weeks after the Rasmussen poll, media coverage (of the race)coverage picked up frantically.” The New York Times Magazine opened a March 14 cover story with a scene highlighting the impact of that poll in an internal White House meeting involving President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Where you see "accuracy" I see bias that helped change the direction of a race through aggressive publication of the Rasmussen polling results. After all, everyone wants to back a winner.

 

[midwestyankee]

Got a chuckle out of this: Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama.

 

[Keroin]

Here's something I find puzzling about US politics that maybe someone can answer for me. What is the fixation with popularity? Seems I am always hearing, in the news, about the President's "popularity rating" or somesuch. I mean, logic tells me that not every decision is going to make people happy and some of the decisions that do make people happy aren't the right ones, in the big picture.

Even when Dubya's popularity rating was at an all time high, I still thought he was a total fuckwad.

And even if Obama's rating is low right now, I still think he's a far better leader than his predecessor ever was. He can speak in complete, intelligible sentences, for starters.

It's very strange to me.

 

[WriterDom]

After all, everyone wants to back a winner.

For you maybe. Here it is a forgone conclusion. We ran the last of the long time local democrats out two years ago. With the exception of the sheriff who is a democrat. First democrat I voted for since Sam Nunn.

You'd be surprised at the at the people here who vote democrat because that's how their pappy and grandpappy and great grandpappy voted and by gawd they aren't going to change.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Here's something I find puzzling about US politics that maybe someone can answer for me. What is the fixation with popularity? Seems I am always hearing, in the news, about the President's "popularity rating" or somesuch. I mean, logic tells me that not every decision is going to make people happy and some of the decisions that do make people happy aren't the right ones, in the big picture.

Even when Dubya's popularity rating was at an all time high, I still thought he was a total fuckwad.

And even if Obama's rating is low right now, I still think he's a far better leader than his predecessor ever was. He can speak in complete, intelligible sentences, for starters.

It's very strange to me.

Popularity rating is just shorthand for people who answered 'I approve of the job the POTUS is doing" in some poll or other.

 

[WriterDom]

Here's something I find puzzling about US politics that maybe someone can answer for me. What is the fixation with popularity? Seems I am always hearing, in the news, about the President's "popularity rating" or somesuch. I mean, logic tells me that not every decision is going to make people happy and some of the decisions that do make people happy aren't the right ones, in the big picture.

Even when Dubya's popularity rating was at an all time high, I still thought he was a total fuckwad.

And even if Obama's rating is low right now, I still think he's a far better leader than his predecessor ever was. He can speak in complete, intelligible sentences, for starters.

It's very strange to me.

It became fashionable after President Bush was reelected to a second term. Rationalization and redirection of bitterness.

A second term is something we won't have to worry about with this new guy unless he starts shitting gold cufflinks pretty soon. He'll be Jimmy Carter with a glass of Whine on the side.

 

[JMohegan]

This conversation is so fucking depressing. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a mental image of fatcat bankers, defense contractors, and media executives - laughing their asses off while we're at each others' throats?

Obama's approval ratings are way down. Not quite as low as Reagan's were, during the period in his tenure when the economy sucked, but they're getting there. It's not a surprise, it's the economy. What else would we expect?

Personally I'm a hell of lot more worried about basic economic indicators than I am about approval polling for the President. And like Rosco, I'm hell pissed that the crooks and incompetents who caused the financial crisis/housing clusterfuck of historic proportions are wandering around unprosecuted.

 

[rosco rathbone]

This conversation is so fucking depressing. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a mental image of fatcat bankers, defense contractors, and media executives - laughing their asses off while we're at each others' throats?

Obama's approval ratings are way down. Not quite as low as Reagan's were, during the period in his tenure when the economy sucked, but they're getting there. It's not a surprise, it's the economy. What else would we expect?

Personally I'm a hell of lot more worried about basic economic indicators than I am about approval polling for the President. And like Rosco, I'm hell pissed that the crooks and incompetents who caused the financial crisis/housing clusterfuck of historic proportions are wandering around unprosecuted.

Today while talking down Park Ave, looking for Park Ave Liquor, which is on Madison, it turns out, I was thinking to myself:

"Can you imagine the high fiving and endzone dancing going on in the corporate boardrooms and country clubs and law offices this country is run out of? A genuine populist uprising: in support of the libertarian corporate right."

 

[JMohegan]

It became fashionable after President Bush was reelected to a second term.

What became fashionable after Nov. '04?

Here are approval ratings since Truman:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html

 

[rosco rathbone]

What became fashionable after Nov. '04?

Here are approval ratings since Truman:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html

Clinton's looks like the only one that didn't follow the general pattern of starting high and ending low.

 

[teknight]

Here's something I find puzzling about US politics that maybe someone can answer for me. What is the fixation with popularity?
.

As an outsider, I think it has to do with the media's fascination for numbers, in part, and it goes to whether the person will get reelected.
Ultimately, the media's a very short term thing: yesterday's news might well not have happened, as long as news exists today. If some of that news has to be drummed up, why not? And numbers can't lie (esp. when a lot of people are numerically illiterate. Say what you will, but stats is a difficult topic.)

 

[JMohegan]

Today while talking down Park Ave, looking for Park Ave Liquor, which is on Madison, it turns out, I was thinking to myself:

"Can you imagine the high fiving and endzone dancing going on in the corporate boardrooms and country clubs and law offices this country is run out of? A genuine populist uprising: in support of the libertarian corporate right."

So fucking depressing.

And here we thought laissez-faire's rep was irrefutably destroyed, in the fall of 2008.

So many Joe the Plumbers out there. Jesus Christ.

 

[JMohegan]

Clinton's looks like the only one that didn't follow the general pattern of starting high and ending low.

'90s boom beats blowjob scandal, I guess.

 

[rosco rathbone]

So fucking depressing.

And here we thought laissez-faire's rep was irrefutably destroyed, in the fall of 2008.

So many Joe the Plumbers out there. Jesus Christ.

I';m not so sure that the final chapter has been written on laissez faire. We are in the eye of the storm.
I'm just waiting and seeing.

 

[teknight]

So fucking depressing.

And here we thought laissez-faire's rep was irrefutably destroyed, in the fall of 2008.

So many Joe the Plumbers out there. Jesus Christ.

But isn't laissez-faire quintessentially American? Small gov't, self determination, don't tread me, don't tell me what to do, I know better, it's my right, pursuit of happiness -and all that ethos?

Not saying it's right, but, for all the above, it can't die.

 

[Keroin]

What became fashionable after Nov. '04?

Here are approval ratings since Truman:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html

Interesting.

 

[rosco rathbone]

This is a trip.

I've been thinking about the Biblical "Year of Jubilee" ever since 2008.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...out-personal-debt-minister-jonasson-says.html

 

[midwestyankee]

"Stop the madness" means "as if!".

I'm an Obama-voting, NRA-card carrying, New Deal Democrat.

I'd have all the fraudsters swinging from the mizzen yardarm and their accomplices in irons.

Is there a lower yardarm so the rats can have their way with the rotting corpses?