OBAMA'S "JOB APPROVAL" RATING.

If you thought the news media and polling organizations were made up of a collection of incompetents and village idiots (and most people think exactly that) you can now find affirmation of that and their new lows of journalistic stupidity and incompetence with the release of Barack Obama's job approval rating.

Think about that. Barack Obama was sworn in on January 20th and the news media is now giving us his Presidential job approval numbers.

This is finally proof positive that both those who conduct polls and those in the news media who report them are not just incompetent and a collection of village idiots but that they have truly lost their minds.

It is hard to fathom that someone, anyone, would conduct a Presidential job approval poll after Obama has been on the job for only 3 days especially since it takes 3 days to conduct the poll and assimilate the data in the first place. That means the poll reflect how people feel Obama has been handling the job of President based on the fact that he didn't fall down the steps of the Capitol after the Inauguration..

The one valuable thing that comes out of this is that those who conducted the job approval poll as well as any news organizations that have reported it can now be considred to have their credibility shredded since no remotely intelligent news organization would even consider reporting an Obama job approval rating 3 days after being sworn in. This should finally bring the news media's job approval rating down to where it belongs -- zero.

A few days ago the New York Times announced (because they had to announce it) that they were borrowing $250 million from a Mexican businessman named Carlos Slim at 14% interest. The fact that they have to borrow the money at all says a lot about the state of journalism at the New York Times and the state of journalism in general. The fact that they had to go to Carlos Slim to borrow it and borrow at 14% interest tells you even more. But after the release of Obama's job approval rating and the news media's reporting it, I wouldn't be surprised if Slim isn't thinking that 14% wasn't enough for the risk he's taking.

NOTE: For those who care, the approval rating culprit was Rassmussen. This was the poll that during the Democratic primary showed Obama winning in California by 1. Clinton won by 15 making Rassmussen's margin of error 16. Rassmussen missed consistently going way beyond the margin of error many times during the primaries and was one of the most unreliable polls cited along with Newsweek and Gallup.

Rassmussen himself was interviewed on Fox News about his poll and listening to him and the interviewer was truly like watching the blind leading the blind.

Rassmussen pointed out that before the Inauguration, his polling showed that conservatives gave Obama a 56% approval rating but right after the Inauguration the polling showed that conservative approval dropped to below 40%. Even though there could be no logical reason for an approval rating to drop 16 points in 24 hours before a President even takes office, rather than question the possibility that just maybe there was something seriously wrong with Rassmussen's methodology, the Fox interviewer marveled that conservatives could inexplicably change their minds about Obama so fast. Instead of questioning the validity of the polling data she instead asked what the reasons might be that could cause conservatives to change their minds like that. Rassmussen of course answered with the kind of nonsensical possible reasons that belonged in Through The Looking Glass.

Obama's job approval ratings may sink for valid reasons. So far everything he has done has been implementing either Democratic party positions held for the last eight years like reversing the Bush position on climate change and giving California a waiver on emissions controls or listening to and implementing ideas from advisors like Biden, Clinton, Franks and others with regards to foreign policy and the economy.

Eventually Obama's lifelong political strategy of trying to play both sides of the fence isn't going to work and he is going to get himself in trouble. Usually when you try and please everyone for political reasons you end up pleasing no one and it may be that he will get himself in trouble with everyone. But for now, even the decision to poll a job approval rating with less than a week in office shows that so far, one thing that hasn't changed in Wshington is the utter stupidity of the news media.