Factchecking the Factchecker
Washington Post “fact-checker” Michael Dobbs gives Dennis Kucinich “three Pinnochios” for his assertion last week: “More people in this country have seen UFOs than, I think, approve of George Bush’s presidency.”
Writes Dobbs: “Just for the record, according to a pre-Halloween Associated Press poll, 14 per cent of Americans say they have seen a UFO. The president’s current approval rating is currently hovering around 34 per cent.”
But had Kucinich said that more people in this country believe in UFOs than approve of Bush’s presidency, he would have been correct. According to that AP poll, 34 percent of Americans believe in UFOs (the same percentage who say they believe in ghosts). That’s compared to 31 percent in the latest AP poll who approve of the job Bush is doing.
The crazification factor explains most statistical insanity.
I don’t see what’s crazy about believing in the existence of unidentified flying objects.
Radar operators would be out of a job if they didn’t believe in UFOs.
Poor Dennis got caught with that one, he tried to explain the difference between something you see in the air but cannot identify and a bleeping blooping Class IV Warp Cruiser from Slorktron VII…but then he distracted himself by wondering (for the millionth time) how such a weird shriveled bridge troll like himself landed such a hot wife.
It has taken years of effort and a lot of hard work, but George W. Bush can finally claim “Mission Accomplished”: By at least one measure, the president is now more intensely disliked than Richard Nixon ever was.
In a Gallup poll released this week, 50 percent of Americans say they “strongly disapprove” of the job Bush is doing as president. That’s the highest strong-disapproval number Gallup has ever seen, besting by two percentage points the 48 percent of Americans who said they “strongly disapproved” of Nixon’s job performance in February 1974.
Nixon resigned six months later.
Based on a Gallup chart, it appears that something like 15 percent of Americans still “strongly approve” of Bush’s job performance. Roughly twice as many Americans believe in astrology.
What’s batshit crazy to me is that pollsters can still go out and find 31% of Americans approving of this president. That’s gotta be generated mainly by partisans who’d approve of their party’s president even if he got caught stabbing a 3-month old baby boy while his penis was in its mouth on live TV.
While this is all very funny to joke about, let’s keep things in perspective here: Congress’s approval rating is down to 19%, which would probably mean 12% more baby killing would be needed for them.
But that Congressional approval is kinda misleading. If you look at Democratic approval in Congress it’s higher than Republican approval - but not by much. You really need to check out the polls where people are asked why they don’t approve. Most of the Democratic disapproval actually is coming from Democrats and Independants who want us the hell out of Iraq and want Bush’s administration much more thoroughly investigated.
The overwhelming drift is that the Republican goose is cooked with the public.
What’s harder to explain is how Clinton (and the same holds true for Obama and Edwards) and Guiliani are in a dead heat when the public is asked who’d they’d support in a general election.
Maybe folks just aren’t paying attention but the same geniuses who brought us Iraq and the imperial Presidency are firmly backing up Guiliani. He’s the neocon candidate. If Clinton’s smart enough to point this out and make it stick, at risk of alienating some of her support in Florida (pro-Israeli one issue voters), then she can’t lose. But right now? I don’t get it. Even the “generic” national presidential polls have broadly twice as much support for a no name Democrat as a no name Republican.
That’s why I kinda ignore polls that ask about preferences without names. They typically don’t reflect how people will actually vote when names, personalities, media spin, etc. is attached. And people in the end are going to vote for who they like the most, at least those not so strongly attached to a party they will always vote for that party’s candidate.
I sometimes think we really are an abberation on boards like this - we read and discuss far more in terms of the details of what’s going on than a lot of people in the country, who just go with their tiny bit of what they see on TV.
The National Press Club is hosting a discussion on “UFO Close Encounters” on Monday:
http://npc.press.org/calendar/calendarday.cfm?whatday=12&&whatyear=2007&&whatmonth=11
The panel:
Fify Symington, Former Gov.
Ridrego Bravo, Captain Pilot Aviation Army Chile
John Callahan, Chief Of Accidents and Investigations FAA (Ret.)
Dr, Anthony Choy, Founder 2001 OIFAA, Peruvian Air Force
Jean Claude Deboc, Capitan Air France (Ret)
Charles Halt. Col USAF (Ret.) Former Dir. Inspection Directorat DOD I.G
General Parviz Jafari, Iranien Airlines (Ret)
Trig Johnston Northwest Airlines Captain (Ret.)
Jim Penniston TSgt USAF (Ret.)
Dr. Claude Poher, Centre National d’Etudes Spartiales, founder French GEPAN
Nick Pope Ministry of Defense, UK, 1985 -2006
Dr. Jean-Claude Rabes, Central National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, 1963-08
Commandante Oscar Santa Maria, Péruvien Air Force (Ret)