Saturday, December 10, 2005

Bush approval increases within the margin of error; media overstates gains ... again

Bush approval increases within the margin of error; media overstates gains ... again

On December 8, CNN mentioned a new CBS-New York Times poll showing a slight increase in President Bush's approval ratings no fewer than seven times: on American Morning (three times); Your World Today; Live From ... ; The Situation Room; and Lou Dobbs Tonight.

During the December 8 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dobbs exclaimed:

[A] new opinion poll shows President Bush's approval rating has bounced back now from historic lows, and bounced back strongly. The main reason appears to be that voters are feeling more optimistic about the direction of the economy.

In fact, the CBS-New York Times poll showed a five-point increase in Bush's approval rating, all the way up to a still-anemic 40 percent. The increase is made even less impressive by the fact that the previous CBS-NYT poll was conducted more than a month ago, and (most importantly) by the fact that the increase was within the poll's margin of error. Still, CNN couldn't resist the effort to tout yet another purported Bush "rebound." Nor could NBC's Today, where host Matt Lauer made the increase sound as dramatic as possible: "up 5 points from just last month"; neither he nor Chris Matthews acknowledged that the increase was within the margin of error.

Media Matters - "Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

Friday, December 09, 2005

FictionPress.Com Profile : lawnorder

Juice! Life after the Oil Crash

30 years after the 2007 Oil Crash society is very different than today's luxury and amenity ridden reality. This novel shows a pessimistic scenario of life after the world runs out of cheap Oil

FictionPress.Com Profile : lawnorder

Daily Kos: "Incompetent Design" theory

"Incompetent Design" theory
by kos
Thu Dec 08, 2005 at 01:14:18 PM CST

I love the theory of Incompetent Design:

Don Wise, professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation's foremost proponent of ID. No, Wise isn't getting ready to testify on behalf of the school board in Dover, PA. Rather, he advocates for a different version of the acronym: "incompetent design."

Wise cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence [...]

The thing that perhaps is closest to all of us is our own skeleton, and there are certainly all kinds of stupidity in our design. No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us.

All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.

Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn't count accurately above 20?

Look at the bones in your face. They're the same as the other mammals' but they're just squashed and contorted by jamming the jaw into a face with your brain expanding over it, so the potential drainage system in there is so convoluted that no plumber would admit to having done it!
So is this evolution or is this plain stupid design?

Daily Kos: "Incompetent Design" theory

Monday, December 05, 2005

IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT -- EVER? - Yahoo! News

When Yahoo has this as most e-mailed... Of course it has been obvious for quite some time to us "moonbat liberals" who have the curious habit of actually living in a reality based world-- law

The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. ...about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- ... 338 said they believed Bush was failing... Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan. This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:
# He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
# He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
# He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
# He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
# He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
# He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
# He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
# He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime...
Quite an indictment..


PARIS -- ...Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. ... He had a great deal to do with the United States becoming a continental nation -- "Manifest Destiny," war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three separate times.

But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

... Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

# He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

# He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

# He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

# He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

# He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (
Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

# He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

# He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

# He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.
IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT -- EVER? - Yahoo! News