Polls! Who doesn’t love polls? Everyone loves a poll, they are such a treat. Poll Santa has a new bag of poll presents for all 600 million Americans, or, for the 300 million of you who turn out to be complete schizophrenics when asked your opinions about things like Obama’s jobs bill. Bloomberg: “A majority of Americans don’t believe President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan will help lower the unemployment rate,” and something along the lines of, “more people hate him than ever before.” Five seconds later, from Reuters: “President Barack Obama’s approval rating got a small lift after he unveiled a jobs plan last week, keeping him ahead of all potential Republican rivals in the 2012 election.” GAH, WHICH IS IT??
Okay, we will read further down to solve this mystery.
Bloomberg:
By a margin of 51 percent to 40 percent, Americans doubt the package of tax cuts and spending proposals intended to jumpstart job creation that Obama submitted to Congress this week will bring down the 9.1 percent jobless rate. That sentiment undermines one of the core arguments the president is making on the job act’s behalf in a nationwide campaign to build public support.
So, everyone hates Obama and his stupid economic plan.
Reuters?
The percentage of Americans who view Obama’s performance favorably edged up to 47 percent in the poll conducted September 8-12. The president, a Democrat, unveiled his $447 billion job creation proposal on September 8.
Obama’s approval rating was 45 percent in August and has hovered between 43 and 51 percent for more than a year.
So, a majority of people hate Obama’s jobs bill, which is why his approval rating is back up. America is an insane asylum. [Bloomberg/Reuters]
{ 165 comments }
I was afore it for was I begainst it.
Reports show continuing decline in Obama's opinion of America.
You know who also loves a poll?
Sarah Palin?
I think she spells it "pole."
Hah hah, I'm just kidding, everyone knows Sarah Palin can't spell.
Blanche DuBois?
Strippers?
Don't make me miss 'em. Almost 17 months stripper free, my longest run ever (since my first time at a strip bar, April, 2002).
Paultards? http://www.facebook.com/RonPaulPolls
These chicks?
Oh wait, you said poll. My bad.
So wait, Jesus wasn't Polish?
What next? Stripping off one's underpants for Jesus? Jesus would be fucking appalled at the sight of all that FUPA, ladies!
Pierre Curie?
I love you for that. Radium humour , nothing like it.
Herb Cain's campaign staff?
Hitler?
Ran'em down in 1939. Downright hated them during the Warsaw uprising.
I didn't say what he liked 'em for…
HEY! That's MY line, dammit!
Thomas Dewey?
Anderson Cooper?
… he lives in an old firehouse, jeesh.
NASCAR?
The Chilean Model?
Santa Claus?
Gallup? Zogby?
Nate Silver?
Marcus Bachmann
Ding ding… we have a wiener (not Anthony)!!!
Vlad the impaler?
But seriously, isn't this question just more poll-mongering. And you know who else loved poll-mongering?
Not GWBush.
Hmm … not Hitler, fershure.
OK, I give up. Who?
That's easy. Marcus Bachmann, right?
Oh, you said poll. Er … Hitler?
Well, if you can put a tax on it and keep the darkies from voting, then pretty much any Republican.
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.
At first I didn't notice the "like" there and thought this was a Bachmann joke.
Sheer Bedlam.
I think this type of article strongly underestimates the intellectual depth of the American Electorate. These rugged individ… Hey, look, Lindsay Lohan is drunk again!
is she?!?!?!
America won't be happy until she's dead.
Egad, yet another poll-ish joke.
America is now a submarine with a screen door.
I once knew a crazy lady who argued that a screen would keep water out of a submarine. It's likely that she was one of the respondents.
Derp? Derp.
Q: How do you make a poll irrelevant?
A: Take another poll!
Poll-ease!!!!
Is that a new lube?
Did you hear about the poll-ish guy who stole a tower made up of plastic sippy tubes? He wanted to take a straw poll!
I feel strongly both ways.
Me neither!
I felt that way only in college, my "experimental" phase..
I couldn't agree more.
Or could I?
That's what she said.
Sorry, you set me up for it. The bitch set me up!
Most Americans also don't believe in evolution but do believe in free market competition, i.e. 'survival of the fittest', which is the same thing as evolution.
They're not so good with logic, either, so knock it off with your gotcha comments.
Social Darwinism in its triumphant return! The Poors are destitute because they won't lift themselves up by their bootstraps. The Unhealthies/Uninsureds are sick because they won't drive the sickness out with positive thinking. The Illegals are aliens because they're brown.
Is there anything this theory can't explain?
Tides, apparently.
Natural selection acts on populations, not individuals. In terms that you understand — dipshits will die.
What's so bad about a whole country that swings both ways?
Polymorphous perversity libel!
"It must be hard to be bi-sexual. Imagine wanting to fuck everyone you meet"
-The Great George Carlin-
"But it's easier to get a date on Saturday night."
–the once-revered Woody Allen
It's nice not to be restricted to the gay OR the straight side of the tent. Beautiful, fuckable people come in every shade of colour and every gender possibility.
So true. So distracting. Sometimes I ask myself what the world would be like if we worried as much about eye color as we do about sexual inclination or skin color. “Did you hear what that hazel-eyed bastard said?” Or as in Gulliver’s Travels, where the Big Endians and Little Endians fought endless wars over how to open a soft-boiled egg.
"Beavis, you don't know what bisexual means? It means you've got two schlongs!"
—Butthead
I've never had the slightest urge to fuck most of the people I meet, although when I do get the urge to fuck someone, I find their gender utterly irrelevant to my enjoyment of their person.
You got your pit in my pendulum!
Just pay attention to whose pendulum is in your pit.
Sex on a Hoveround is overrated.
I'd really like to know.
A recent poll revealed that 53% of Americans don't know "Who Has What?"
80% of polled Americans say they need less nuance and more black-and-white. 70% say Kortney needs to pull that cucumber out of wherever she's stuck it, 'cause it's a poor waste of food when a good dildo is the best medicine. Or whatever.
97% say Bring Back TV's Frank!
& Joel! He's much better than Mike.
I'll drink a 100 proof to that!
80% of polled Americans say they need less nuance and more black-and-white.
The Top 2% just said,"More White!"
Putting aside the fact that 80% (at least) of those who responded couldn't tell you even the vague outlines of O's plan, the problem with these kinds of polls is that sentiment hasn't firmed up. Some of his bump may just be a response to his passive/silent behavior in the recent past.
And the Gallup poll says we favor it by 45% to 32%. . . http://goo.gl/CAZMV
Yes I am a pollster, I don't just play one on TV.
Aren't the people who respond to these polls either (1) the only people who still use a landline, or (2) the only people without caller ID and/or so lonely that they'll take any call during dinner?
Like so much else in life it depends.
Gallup is a good pollster (but don't tell them I said so) they use both land lines and cellphone approximately proportionate to their existence in the US. I suspect Reuters does the same (neither Reuters or Bloomberg had much of a methodology statement that I saw in my quick perusal – bad pollsters, bad). Good pollsters call the same number multiple times at multiple different times and do the best they can to get hard to reach individuals – people under 30 especially males. Then they weight the respondents back to the population at hand (voters or general population, typically).
Robo-polls I pretty much dismiss out of hand for reasons someone else mentioned.
Tee-Hee
"Poles"
Whoa, it seems that Obama's uncle's blood alcohol level is higher than his nephew's approval rating.
C'mon, Barry's way above 0.10%
It's like, "does my butt look big in these jeans?' There's no good answer.
Of course there is, darling! Just go, "Mmm, your butt looks deliCIOUS!" Then reach over, grab said butt, and chomp on it.
Guaranteed reduction in frequency of question. Although can't guarantee that lots of horizontal samba won't ensue.
In related news, polls show that approximately 137% of all statistics are pulled out of people's asses.
You must work for Fox News with that kinda math on your side.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/fox-news-still-b...
Fuckin'.
Duh!
I love the number of people that answered Not Likely At All
Incoherent thoughts expressed in incoherent language, result in incoherent poll results. This is proof that today, we are all, literally, drunken paultards with a .31 blood aclohol content.
The people who created the polls were probably drunk, too.
What Obama does might not matter anyway, now that the the GOP-controlled state legislature here in Pennsylvania is trying to rig our electoral college votes to go more to the Republican candidate regardless of who wins the state (who has been the Democrat since 1992):
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/state/...
If other Dem-leaning states with similar geography and gerrymandered congressional districts follow suit, the Republicans can guarantee winning the Presidency for the foreseeable future regardless of who actually gets the most votes.
And then they'll get rid of that pesky amendment that allows direct election of Senators by the unwashed.
well that's depressing.
also, i thought harrisburg was flooded? i ask b/c i spent a miserable year traveling to harrisburg on a weekly basis and developed a bit of a fondness for state subsidized alcohol.
For what it's worth, a talk-down from Salon:
http://www.salon.com/news/2012_elections/index.ht...
The opinions of the ignorant on topics they no nothing about, didn't Wittgenstein say something about the value of such "information?"
Apropos of which, you know who else read Wittgenstein?
Not Hitler. He only stole the family's possessions.
W, when he wasn't too busy reading Camus?
Curely, that's just the way they pronounce "Shamu" in the Bush dialect..
Well, to be fair to W, I don't find it hard to believe that he would have read and enjoyed L'étranger immensely. At least the part where the central character shoots an Arab for no reason at all.
(And maybe also the part where the murder trial hinges more on whether or not the defendant cried during his mother's funeral than any actual evidence.)
Sarah Palin would read him if he would just Tweet.
100% of americans know that this bill will be killed in the House by Republicans because The POTUS is black.
(This is an unscientifical poll that Baconz took using the cross section of all the people around while I was alone my office with the door closed.)
Where's an intern when you need one?
Bill Clinton? Is that you?
Just what we need, another fucking poll.
At least this one agrees with me… so it must be right…
Hate to point out the obvious, but the problem with polls is that the "Average American" is a complete idiot who's been failing the reading comprehension class for decades now. That's why different polls show different results based on how the question is being asked and how pollsters are able to tweak the results to match their analysis.
Most of the instant political polls are conducted among people who answer on land-line phones. Most of the people I know who use those would all have the same response to every question. "WHAT?? Huh. I can't hear you. Did you say Obama or Osama? HENGGH?"
Oh, was that YOU who called? Sorry.
Must remember to turn the damn volume up on that fucking phone, I swear.
I've always thought these polls should include some factual questions of varying difficulty, like where does bacon come from, who is the VP, who is the Sec. of State, and who is head of the CIA? Then you could sort the results based on people's knowledge. "Of the people who know Hillary Clinton is the Sec. of State, 80% approve of Obama's jobs bill."
It's all in the questions. I just filled out a survey that had no option for "neutral" or "no opinion" or "undecided". One could only agree or disagree. So I'm guessing that the polled feel that cutting taxes even further is not likely to create any more jobs than it has in the past at the same time that they feel that Obama actually sounded sort of Democratic, at least for two or three sentences. Let's redo that approval poll when he caves to the Republicans and see how it works out.
Q: Which of the following (utterly ridiculous and wrongheaded) statements do you most agree with….
Poll results: "53% of Americans agree that…"
Don't like the results of a survey?
Have Rasmussen create a special Robo call survey just for you!
(pssst, robo call surveys are bullshit because they only call landline numbers which trend to an older demographic which oddly enough, trends to a more conservative demographic…which is why Rasmussen polls are always 10 points higher favoring a Conservative viewpoint)
http://www.pulseopinionresearch.com/About-Us https://www.pulseopinionresearch.com/Surveys
This episode of lucidity is kind of disturbing. Please get back off your meds!
Sorry about that.
I'll take this moment to say I'm with ANAL: America Needs Another Lithium.
Poll numbers go up, poll numbers go down. You can't explain that.
Everytime I get polled I ask them where do I send the bill. I then explain that I charge $10 per question and I don't answer anything until the check clears.
America is an insane asylum
You are just noticing?
So?!?
How am I supposed to know how I feel about stuff if I can't just glance at some random poll and go,"Oh yeah… that's how I feel."
Kirsten I must commend you on your choice of accompanying pic, demonstrating the cross-pollinating tendencies of statistical fact to "mingle" with personal opinion, such that the power of suggestion leads to all manner of murky entanglement.
80% of those polled are still waiting with mouths agape for that trickle-down.
Yeah right …. as if 20% of them got some trickle down.
(Getting pissed on by Republicans doesn't count.)
I believe this place is turning more and more like The Onion's "American Voices" every damn day.
obama is a democrat, you say? tell me more, reuters!
52% of Americans think so, according to the latest poll.
Poll results are inconclusive on that one.
I'm tired of hearing that meme.
Here's a different one that you might enjoy: http://candorville.com/
Like Faye Dunaway in Chinatown (She's my sister, she's my daughter, she's my sister…) America needs a good smack in the face.
Theodore Sturgeon said it best:
95% of everything is crap.
I bellied up to the bar and asked for a rusty snail, shaken, not stirred, hold the grunion. I had to yell, Gill is hard of herring. The band was playing a hot tuna by Tommy Dorsal and his Orchestra, "Salmon Chanted Evening." The stage was surrounded by screaming groupers, probably there to see the bass player.
WHY do you waste your time lawyering, dood, when you could be delighting with your writing?
Not my work, thats stolen from Kip Adotta.
Great. This is what happens when you don't have a TV, you miss out on all the pop culture references.
I'm off to find out more about Kip Adotta.
95% of everything is
crap.carp.What percentage of those registered voters who were polled were complete and utter idiots?
I know!! 100%
All of them Katie.
OT: Nothing on ABC's documentary last night featuring Jackie Bouvier-Kennedy-Onassis's drunk-dials to history? Among the juicy revelations: Jack told her about Hoover's tapes of MLK's "parties"; she thought female supporters of Adlai Stevenson instead of her husband were afraid of sex; Mamie Eisenhower was a mean old bitch who deliberately tried to bust her Ceasarian stitches; and America hated her for speaking French, until America loved her for speaking French, although she thought virtually all French people were awful. It was just like watching "Mad Men" with a smug sense of historical superiority!
She always sounded pretty clueless when she spoke. But maybe she was always sedated. Most First Ladies should be, the current one excepted.
It was just like watching "Mad Men" with a smug sense of
historicalhysterical superiority!FIFY. NNTT.
Although you did forget to mention as how the pretty-face-with-vagina-attached fashion maven opined as how Indira Gandhi was a bitter, bitter woman. Like anybody gives a shit about what some piece of fluff whose sole achievement in life was marrying rich guys and pushing sprog out her vagina thinks about anything.
Well, I wouldn't go anywhere near that far.
We like predictability. So much so, that the single most predictable movie ever — Titanic — is second in all-time receipts.
I think we need a poll to find out which flavor of Doritios rocks the most!
All of them, Katie.
44% thinks polls suck ass. 57% thinks polls should eat shit and die. (Numbers do not add to 100% cuz mathematics duh)
Do these pollsters ever consider that as unlikely as I am to say I approve of Barry's performance, there is no way in hell I'd ever vote for the alternative?
That wouldn't give the pundits a chance to spin disapproval of Obama's debt ceiling handling to 'Americans want less government regulation and more of their benefits to go directly to banker's offshore accounts.'
If 50% of Americans have poles, and 50% of Americans like poles – what's the problem…always nice to get a dick joke in when dealing with dicks.
In a related poll, honey badger don't give a shit.
Honeybadger is a badass,
This poll makes perfect sense and can be filed neatly under 'work sets you free,' and 'freedom is slavery.' America was founded on Christian principals, the ill and infirm can go fuck themselves, corporate executives shouldn't have to pay taxes, teachers are destroying this country's economy…IT'S ALL TOTALLY RATIONAL!
You can't mix strippers and cross-country skiers. It's like apples and oranges.
America is insane and the asylums have been shut down so the rich can keep their tax cuts.
Ninety-five percent of Earth's inhabitants believe that President Obama is doing a great job, and will be easily elected in a landslide, according to a new poll by MSNBC.
Ninety-nine percent of the world's population hates President Obama and think that he will lose re-election in 2012, according to a new poll by Fox News.
That about sums up polls, all of which mean absolutely nothing.
Rueters = fairly normal people
Bloomberg = wealthy a**holes, who want their tax breaks on corporate jets, or something like that
Clear now?
O/T: Last Saturday's NYT crossword puzzle had three adjacent down answers that were
PALIN
ATONAL
DINGBAT
Damn, I love Will Shortz.
100% of the people writing this message think polls are dumb.
personally i would like nate silver to be president.
weigh the options, someone you can live with or ugh…
All your base hates Obama!!
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/14/7...
Or maybe not.
YES!! Thank you. I needed that.
What I fear the very most is that we won't be able to tell when we've officially switched from a nominal democracy to a full-out idiocracy.
You know, here we are arguing over evolution and hundreds-of-millions of 8th graders in China, yesterday, did calculus.
Once upon a time WE built offshore oil drilling platforms and tankers. These days, only Sweden and Korea build them. Once upon a time we built the fastest supercomputer in the world. In recent years, China has built the fastest supercomputers in the world. Once upon a time the entire computer industry was manufactured right here. Today the chips are made in Malaysia and the boxes assembled in China.
The empire is already broken and crumbling, and our moronic politicians are quarrelling over the contents of other womens' uteri and whether we should teach about some mythical sky-fairy in our schools.
Sounds like you're down on the ol' U-S-A. It's still only Sept. 15th!!!! Why are you forgetting our great country on the VERY WEEK of the 10th anniversary of the 11th of Sept the very DAY which proved we were BETTER than anyone else!!!!!
USA LIBEL!!!!
Who HATES polls??? Germans!
Polls don't count for shit: 95% of of those who saw "Midnight Express" thought the young actor soon-to-be-Sheriff Joe R. Piehole should have received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the Jail Commandant.
Sometimes I wonder if you're just foolin' me again. Other times, I know.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio never starred in that movie.
Comments on this entry are closed.