Sunday, January 25, 2009

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.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is apparent that our new President must constantly affirm to himself both his power among his peers (I won!) and his adulation from his fans (Do you still like me?), so I fully expect that we will see many, many more polls in the days immediately to come.

Gee, I wish someone would ask me what I think of the job he is doing so far!

Anonymous said...

My only hope is that NYT, WaPo, LAT and all will go down and down HARD this year. Yes, people will lose jobs but it is past time for these news orgs to fall. The news are all fake now. It is all propaganda news today.

Unknown said...

Obama didn't fall down the steps, but he did screw up his oath.

There is no difference anymore between the news pages of the New York Times and The Washington Post, and the blatantly partisan outlets like DailyKos and Huffington Post. It's time for the old gray lady to lay down her pen - it's disappointing that she has to do it in shame.

Anonymous said...

GRAND,

IT WAS JOHN ROBERTS THAT MESSED UP NOT PRESIDENT OBAMA!!!

Anonymous said...

What you write is spot on, but it's not such good news for Obama anyway as during the transition, Gallup said Obama was polling at 83 percent -- so Obama has already dropped 15 points.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17902.html

Anonymous said...

The only problem I see with the newspapers failing is that more and more Americans will get there news from TV- and I don't even want to go there- I have never heard so much "news" reported that had not yet even taken place as I did in the primary and then general election.
The problem Marc is that these morons who report what the polls say- the pretty much tell people what is going to happen.
When I worked on Hillary's campaign and spoke w/many voters towards the end, they were saying "why bother to vote... I saw on the news that Obama has already won...". This was so frustrating- trying to get people to understand that "news" isn't "news" until it has happened.
As far as I can see, these television commentators are nothing more than a bunch of Kreskins, telling people what will be...i.e. Obama will be the next Lincoln/Roosevelt/Kennedy.
They also report with such subjectivity- I am floored every time I listen. When I hear a "reporter" use terms like "flawlessly", "perfect", "cool and collected" I want to scream!!
So- my hope is- along with the newspapers- I would love to see the loud mouth commentators on the unemployment lines too.
Your name sake of this site must be whirling in his grave-

And p.s. to Nola- you need to go back and look at the footage of the inauguration- it was Obama that stepped on Roberts' words- 4 words in- Obama made the first mistake- he is human- it is OK to admit that he made a mistake.

Anonymous said...

SUE,

IT'S YOU THAT NEEDS TO GO BACK.
ROBERTS EVEN APOLOGIZED!!!

Anonymous said...

I saw the movie Frost/Nixon yesterday. I liked it and was reminded all about Watergate (many of you out there probably were not even born at the time). Watergate was the biggest deal around for a long time, the mother-lode of corruption coming out of the republican party the likes of which we had not seen. But seeing it yesterday, it all seemed so banal, so nothing compared to the corruption of today. With Bush stealing the election in 2000 and now the corruption of the democratic party in selecting not electing Obama in 2008, it did not seem as big of a deal as it was then. It was fortunate that there were responsible investigative journalists like Woodward and Bernstein to expose it all. In 2008, however, there was no responsible journalism coming from the main stream media and people who did speak the truth were not given prime time and the vile corruption was not exposed and became a non-entity.

Nixon's famous line in the Frost interview was "When the president does it, it's not illegal". I felt like changing it to say: When Obama and the DNC does it, it's not illegal, no matter what it is. Even to lying about where Mr. Obama was born. If he was born, let us say, in Kenya (hypothetically speaking), and because of complex circumstances he is not really eligible under our present constitution to be president, IT IS NOT ILLEGAL, since Obama is the one doing it. The election 2008 was the most devious, most corrupt because there was literally no oversight and the American people have yet to understand it all. Even in 2000, most people knew Bush stole the election even while those who opposed it could do nothing about it as the Supreme Court was in on the fix. In 2008 the newspapers, radio, television and others were all in on the fix to make sure Obama was president, and those of us who opposed him could do nothing about it and still can't, as no one will tell our story. The massive lies and cover-up perpetrated by the DNC and Obama & Co. makes Watergate pale in comparison.

Mr. Nixon admitted during the Frost interview that he let the American people down. No such admissions will be forthcoming from Mr. Obama or his crew. The democratic party has definitely not done America proud.

BBF said...

Thanks for the article on the phony approval rating poll. I thought it was a bit suspicious.....but those so-called high 3 day ratings are all over the Internet and in many of the MSM papers..with no questions asked. Really depressing.

Anonymous said...

Another fantastic laugh/cry piece! Thank you. Your blog saves my sanity.

Anna

Anonymous said...

P.S. Nola, please stop screaming. Many of us feel very emotional, passionate, frustrated. You can just make your point like everyone else.

Anna

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to watch his approval ratings now, now that he watered down his stimulus package, added tax cuts to it and still didn't get one Republican to vote for it?
How is that for reaching across the aisle for bipartisan support?
Had he not pontificated to all of us how he was going to wrap his arms around everyone and we were all going to be on one big unity train- this wouldn't be so ridiculous.
But don't forget how Obama promised everyone everything.
And now that he can't keep those promises, one would expect approval ratings to continue to drop like a stone.

BBF said...

I think the stimulus package might have gotten a few Republican votes if they hadn't heard from the Minority Leader that buried in the bill was a 4.5 or 5.2 billion award which might go to the group ACORN (who campaigned for Obama and is still under investigation for voter fraud). The Websites which are still so in love with Obama...are declaring this is absolutely not true...so I guess it comes to ..who do you believe. I tend to believe the Republicans on this one.

Anonymous said...

Anna,

Again , You are correct. No need for me to shout.

Peace