Tue, Nov 3rd - 5:57PM

Here is one that came out lately from CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/03/obama.poll/

This is a good discussion of what CNN fails to mention about these numbers that is really more newsworthy then their not so delicate Pro-Obama spinning:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/03/cnn-poll-54-disapprove-of-obama-economic-performance/

If you were to believe CNN, everything is getting better for Obama and You Should Get On Board before the Train Leaves The Station.  The drastic swings in his popularity towards the loosing side is not newsworthy in their eyes.  I am sorry, but the train has already gone, and if you were on board, you are taking a looooong trip to nowhere, and Obama is nowhere on that fantasy train.  Some of the CNN staffers, who believe their own drivel, might be there with you, so you are at least likely to be able to take it out on them if you finally get mad enough to loose your temper over what they did to you...

Another thing that was brought out in critiquing this poll is that party demographics were not addressed.  Neither were the distributions by sex or race.  (although this critique did not point that out)  If you know anything about polling, bringing more of a group that is likely to be more favorable to the possition you are trying to support will skew your results away from reality quite quickly.  Women favor everything about Obama at about a 3 to 2 ratio on the average.  Democrats, almost 4 to 1 for him, at least mildly -- if not enthusiastically.  African Americans are about 17 to 3 pro-Obama, no matter what.  There is very little differentiation in that particular group.  In others, specific items cause great changes in the level of the support, depending upon the issue being addressed.  But for African Americans, that is not very much the case.  The Economy, the War in Iraq, the Health Care Bill, His Nobel Peace Prize, all the other issues score in a very narow band, at least acccording to those Polls that are willing to divulge that information.

I am very suspsicious of CNN's 'spectacular' news.  If they had bothered to mention the obviously newsworthy information, I might be more generous.  However, this strikes me as more PR work than real journalistic reporting.  And CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR (and the list goes on) want *more* Government money than they already get so that they can tell you whatever they want to without worring about loosing their viewership and their jobs. Oh yes.  They are businesses that have been 'on the take' (well, NPR and some others are truely not for profit) to a small extent for quite some time.  They feel left out with the latest handouts from Uncle Sam, though...

I really expect that CNN deliberately withheld the demographic breakout, not because it would protect any privacy, but because the sample was so badly skewed that a high school teacher in statistics would likely use it as a very bad example of what a polling sample should look like in relation to the population that it is supposed to represent.  I expect at least 10% extra African American Democrat Women are in this poll.  So it likely tells us nothing about reality, but CNN does not care about that.  They are not about reality in news, but favorable liberal spin...

In Truth,

Mel