Conservative leaders claim unprecedented media bias

[George Gervin's Afro]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/26/conservative-leaders-claim-unprecedented-media-bias-this-election-cycle/

Conservative leaders claim unprecedented media bias this election cycle
Published September 26, 2012
FoxNews.com

Two-dozen conservative activists and media personalities on Tuesday urged members of their respective groups to switch off the "biased news media," claiming in an open letter that establishment media are "out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda."

Though these groups frequently complain about a left-leaning media bias, they claimed in the letter that the political slant this cycle is unprecedented.

"In the quarter century since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called 'news' media to decide the outcome of an election," wrote Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, and other conservative leaders.

They ticked off a litany of grievances against the news media, saying they've been "shamefully smearing" Mitt Romney over the course of the election.

Among their charges were that the media have painted conservative ideas as "extreme;" downplayed the "horrendous economic conditions" in the country; focused more on shortcomings in Romney's business background than in Obama's record as president; been "pouncing" on missteps by conservatives while "suppressing" gaffes by Vice President Biden; and been "deliberately covering up embarrassing government failures and scandals, including the Solyndra debacle, Fast & Furious, and national security leaks."

According to NewsBusters, part of MRC, the letter was directed at the heads of ABC News, NBC News, CBS News and CNN.

"We the undersigned -- representing millions of Americans from our respective organizations -- are now publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6," they wrote.

Network representatives have not yet responded to a request for comment.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/26/conservative-leaders-claim-unprecedented-media-bias-this-election-cycle/#ixzz27b6vuAMj


I am not a rocket scientist but, are they telling their conservative brethren to not watch the biased media? Do these people watch anything other than Fox already?


For the record I think Brent Bozo is a hoot!

[RandomGuy]

Defintion of liberal media bias:


"Anything bad said about any conservative cause or person, no matter how cogent, truthful, or factual it is."

By that definition, a shitty candidate like Romney will see a lot of "bias".

"Boo-hoo, not everybody is mindlessly parroting our preferred narrative"

GMAFB.

[Homeland Security]

How long do they think that can hold that narrative? If the polls say Obama is going to win by 4, and he wins by 4 after weeks of their saying the polls are lying and biased, what's the excuse going to be?

If inexplicably the polls start moving towards Romney two weeks before the election, I'll give this meme some credibility, but otherwise it sounds about the same as what I heard in 2008.

[LnGrrrR]

Have you seen the "Unskewed Polls" website? That shit is hilarious.

[CosmicCowboy]

Have you seen the "Unskewed Polls" website? That shit is hilarious.

I looked at those numbers and went WTF?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Open Letter to the Biased News Media:

This election year, so much of the broadcast networks, their cable counterparts, and the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda. To put it bluntly: you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to pre-determine the outcome. In the quarter century since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called “news” media to decide the outcome of an election.

A free and balanced media are crucial to the health of this country. It is your duty as journalists – as outlined in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics – to “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting,” while simultaneously “seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.”

There is a reason why the media are viewed with such disdain by the American public, as evidenced by every recent poll on the issue.

You have breached the public trust by willfully turning a blind eye to the government’s public policy failures, both domestic and foreign, while openly and shamefully smearing Gov. Mitt Romney. You are:

• Painting conservative ideas as extreme, while refusing to report the disastrous consequences of liberal programs enacted since 2008.

• Submerging the truly horrendous economic conditions America is facing and focusing only on minor political issues.

• Characterizing conservatives as cruel budget “slashers” instead of responsible officials trying to avoid a debt catastrophe.

• Focusing on alleged shortcomings in Romney’s business record instead of Obama’s record as the chief executive, whose policies contributed to a failed economy.

• Deliberately covering up embarrassing government failures and scandals, including the Solyndra debacle, Fast & Furious, and national security leaks which have put American lives in jeopardy.

• Pouncing on real and perceived missteps by conservatives, portraying them as bumbling incompetents, while suppressing embarrassing and incendiary remarks made by Vice President Joe Biden to prevent him from becoming a liability.

• Portraying conservative opposition to tax hikes as an impediment to deficit reduction while failing to highlight how liberal tax increase policies will cause massive damage to the economy and cause the deficit to explode.

• “Fact-checking” conservatives in order to discredit their arguments while regularly refusing to "fact-check" liberals who are distorting the truth.

We the undersigned – representing millions of Americans from our respective organizations – are now publicly urging our members to seek out alternative sources of political news in order to make an intelligent, well-informed decision on November 6.

It is time the American people turn you who are offending off, once and for all. You have betrayed their trust.

Sincerely,

L. Brent Bozell, III
President
Media Research Center

Co-Signed:
Gary Bauer
President
Campaign for American Values

Kenneth Blackwell
Hon.J. Kenneth Blackwell
Former, U.S. ambassador
U.N. Human Rights Commission

Morton Blackwell,
Chairman
The Weyrich Lunch

David Bozell
Executive Director
For America

Brian Brown
President
National Organization for Marriage

Al Cardenas
Chairman
American Conservative Union

Colin Hanna
President
Let Freedom Ring

Laura Ingraham
National Radio Host

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
FreedomWorks

Amy Kremer
Chairman
Tea Party Express

Curt Levey
Committee for Justice

Mark Levin
Author and National Radio Host

Rush Limbaugh
National Radio Host

Jenny Beth Martin
Co-Founder
Tea Party Patriots

Ed Meese III
Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy,
Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies
Heritage Foundation

Mike Needham
Chief Executive Officer
Heritage Action

Karl Otteson
U. S. Federation of Small Businesses Inc

William Pascoe
Executive Vice President
Citizens for the Republic

Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council

Alfred S. Regnery
Paul Revere Project

Mathew D. Staver
Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

Richard Viguerie
Chairman
Conservative HQ.com

[RandomGuy]

I am not a rocket scientist but, are they telling their conservative brethren to not watch the biased media? Do these people watch anything other than Fox already?


For the record I think Brent Bozo is a hoot!


"suppressing" gaffes by Vice President Biden; and been "deliberately covering up embarrassing government failures and scandals, including the Solyndra debacle, Fast & Furious, and national security leaks."

"Covering up" is defined as

"Not endlessly reporting bad things about Democrats at the expense of other news coverage"

Because, as we all know, nothing else in the world ever happens besides bad things Democrats do.

[scott]

TBH, when a candidate is as bad as Mitt Romney, it would be biased of the media to NOT point it out.

[RandomGuy]

"boo-hoo, not everybody is mindlessly parroting our preferred narrative"





nailed it.

[Homeland Security]

If you're a Romney supporter, your hopes lie in blacks staying home on Election Day. Try to convince yourself that they care about gay marriage. Try to convince yourself that they care about jobs. Try to convince yourself that if Obama repealed the 13th Amendment that the final thing blacks would do before the chains went back on wouldn't be to cast that ballot for Obama. Try to convince yourself that if Obama personally killed a black woman's children she would stay home rather than vote for him "with reservations."

74% white -- 14% black -- 8% Hispanic -- 4% other... that's your 2012 turnout. Try to convince yourself rural evangelicals are going to turn out for a Mormon... that working class whites give a shit about politics anymore... that GOP pleas to deny the inevitable mean anything.

14% black @ 95% Obama/4% Romney = 13.3% Obama, 0.6% Romney
8% Hispanic @ 66% Obama/33% Romney = 5.3% Obama, 2.6% Romney
4% other @ 60% Obama/39% Romney = 2.4% Obama, 1.6% Romney

That's 20.7% for Obama, 4.8% Romney before the first white gets counted.

If Romney wins the white vote 60-39, he still narrowly loses the popular vote 49.5%-49.2%. Convince yourself that somehow black turnout in Ohio and Virgina won't be decisive, that Hispanics in Colorado don't put that state out of play, or that somehow magically the Jews in Florida of all people are going to save Romney.

Plus, take into account that this is the closest a Republican candidate will ever come to winning ever again.

Do you feel disenfranchised now? Consider asserting your will by other means besides the ballot box. Consider violence.

[LnGrrrR]

I looked at those numbers and went WTF?

You should check their "methodology". It's pretty hilarious.

[TeyshaBlue]

I am not a rocket scientist but, are they telling their conservative brethren to not watch the biased media? Do these people watch anything other than Fox already?


For the record I think Brent Bozo is a hoot!

You mean you're not really a rocket scientist?!! :depressed

[Winehole23]

Plus, take into account that this is the closest a Republican candidate will ever come to winning ever again.I could see Jeb Bush winning in 2016.

Do you feel disenfranchised now? Consider asserting your will by other means besides the ballot box. Consider violence.

http://wobblybloggy.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/hobby-horse21.jpg

[DarrinS]

People that think the MSM doesn't treat Obama with kid gloves are delusional.

[Winehole23]

that's loserish, crybaby talk. maybe you should take up arms.

[Homeland Security]

I could see Jeb Bush winning in 2016.
Thought experiment: let's have the Democrats nominate Julian Castro in 2016 against Jeb Bush.

Middle-of-the-road white voters: Ugh, anoher Bush. This Castro guy isn't even qualified -- never been more than a mayor. Fuck it, I'm buying more ammo.
Hispanics: First Hispanic President!
Blacks: Barack says Castro is awesome. But he's not black. Maybe I'll vote.

Projected demographic:

72% white-13% black-11% Hispanic-4% other.

Whites: 58-41 Bush
Blacks 95-5 Castro
Hispanics 72-27 Castro
Other 58-41 Castro

Castro 52%, Bush 47%

[Winehole23]

where do you get those splits? just curious about your insight into future voting patterns.

[mavs>spurs]

^it's just kool aid man having fun under another troll after he got outed as being Extra Stout

[CosmicCowboy]

^it's just kool aid man having fun under another troll after he got outed as being Extra Stout

no fucking way that's koolaid man.

[mavs>spurs]

yeah dude, DMC already did his detective work and pretty much outed him. you don't post in the nba forum that's why you're late to the party but it's common knowledge now.

[CosmicCowboy]

yeah dude, DMC already did his detective work and pretty much outed him. you don't post in the nba forum that's why you're late to the party but it's common knowledge now.

Damn.

Koolaids posts are always just lame as shit and Homeland Security is just constant articulate comedy gold. It's just hard to believe.

[mavs>spurs]

he's just some creative loser with a lot of time on his hands..he's a friend of the ellis' that's why he gets away with his shit

[Clipper Nation]

This coming from the people who alternated between ignoring and savagely mocking Ron Paul.... between Faux News and AM radio, neocons have no room to cry about media bias, tbh....

[DarrinS]

people who alternated between ignoring and savagely mocking Ron Paul

But Ron Paul fans are especially unbiased when it comes to Dr. Paul.

More like cult followers.

[Homeland Security]

he's just some creative loser with a lot of time on his hands..he's a friend of the ellis' that's why he gets away with his shit

I AM NOT KOOLAID!!!! He's a different person. But he lives in my head and I let him use the computer sometimes.

[Homeland Security]

And I don't know the Ellises personally but I think timvp gives me a wide berth because he might be slightly afraid of me. That or he's already outed me to the FBI.

[Homeland Security]

where do you get those splits? just curious about your insight into future voting patterns.

2008 was 73-14-9-4. White turnout was slightly depressed while other groups were up. Blacks were up like 30%, for obvious reasons.

2010 was 78-10-8-4. Lower turnout across all groups obviously for a midterm election, but high motivation among tea party whites.

2012 may have less of that rah-rah enthusiasm among Obama voters, but he's done a good job stirring up hate, so in place of enthusiasm they have seething determination.

Tea party whites are every bit as motivated as 2010, but they turned out in 2008 too and it did little good. Working class whites are checking out of the political process and nothing this cycle is going to change that. Mitt Romney doesn't get anyone excited, and anti-Obama sentiment only motivates the people who were going to vote anyway.

Giving you 74-14-8-4 means I acknowledge a slight rollback from the 2008 Democrat peak. I even bump white GOP support from McCain's 55% to 60% for Romney. But it's not enough to turn 2008's 7-point deficit into a GOP win. It just makes it close.

Going forward to future elections, the country isn't getting any whiter, white voters aren't going to get any more motivated than they are now, and if Democrats nominate a Hispanic, there's a mother lode of new voters out there for them. Hispanics turn out something like 30% less than Anglos right now because they aren't politically engaged. The opportunity to vote for a Hispanic will deliver a large number of new, low-information voters.

The GOP could try to nominate somebody like Rubio, and probably would win a significant chunk of the Latino vote that way, maybe even a majority, but that would be offset by extremely low turnout from the nativist white base so at best it would be a wash.

[baseline bum]

People that think the MSM doesn't treat Obama with kid gloves are delusional.

Clear Channel and Fox baby him?

[cheguevara]

thb they already lost the game and looking forward to 2016 by riling up their diminishing base.

thankfully for them their voter suppresion laws will make it a close election and their plans to suppress more voters and get billions from corps by 2016 will keep them competitive in the game.

plus it'll be their turn at the presidency. LMAO thinking this is a real democracy

[Homeland Security]

thb they already lost the game and looking forward to 2016 by riling up their diminishing base.

thankfully for them their voter suppresion laws will make it a close election and their plans to suppress more voters and get billions from corps by 2016 will keep them competitive in the game.

plus it'll be their turn at the presidency. LMAO thinking this is a real democracy
I don't think the voter-ID laws are going to suppress a significant number of voters by 2016. That's four years for community organizers to reach out and help people get ID cards if they don't already have them.

The corps hedge their bets against who they think is going to win. Structurally, that is set up for the Dems for the foreseeable future. The GOP will do well in congressional elections, especially midterm ones, for a while, because their diminishing base will continue to turn out. However, in a high-turnout Presidential election, as long as the Dems nominate someone who motivates nonwhites to turn out it will be tough for them to lose.

But that's OK, because the financial meltdown is inevitable no matter who gets elected, so if it comes after a solid 16-20 years of Democrats holding the White House, the narrative post-collapse just writes itself. :)

[ploto]

Romney just makes it easy.

[clambake]

is "jihadist fist bump" a form of media bias?

[rascal]

It is going to be a good election night watching Obama win in a landslide.

[rascal]

I don't see how conservatives can complain about the media when Fox news and Conservative talk radio is media.

[Homeland Security]

2004: Democrats complain about "skewed" polls seemingly showing massive unprecedented Republican base turnout propelling Bush narrowly to re-election. That can't be true! It doesn't make sense! Independents prefer Kerry!

Yeah, turned out the polls had the pulse of the electorate.

[Clipper Nation]

But Ron Paul fans are especially unbiased when it comes to Dr. Paul.

More like cult followers.

I'd say the real cult followers are the ones who vote straight-ticket Dem or Repug based off bullshit rationales like "strategy," "lesser of two evils," "My parents always voted for this party," etc....

[boutons_deux]

People that think the MSM doesn't treat Obama with kid gloves are delusional.

Yeah, in great contrast to how MSM ripped dubya shreds for 8 years by MSM, including stopping him from lying USA into Iraq-for-oil.

[ElNono]

Wait for it - Romney's media rebound (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler-romney-chances-media-20120927,0,3191534.story)

[Wild Cobra]

Does anyone think the majority of the media isn't liberal bias?

Why didn't the media make a stink about the Russian Fleet backdrop when honoring veterans at the DNC.

If the RNC did the same thing, the media would never let them live it down.

Anyone disagree?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, et al all carried it when it happened two weeks ago.

Thing was no one cared.

Maybe the reason why the GOP is getting such bad press is because the party of Mitt Romney and Grover Norquist just sucks nowadays.

[DarrinS]

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/09/23/americans-turn-on-msm-what-does-it-mean/

Excerpt




If the president were a conservative Republican rather than a liberal Democrat, I have little doubt that much of the legacy press would be focused more on what is wrong with America. There would be more negative reporting about the economy, more criticism of policy failures and many more withering comparisons between promise and performance. The contrast between a rising stock market and poor jobs performance that the press now doesn’t think of blaming on President Obama would be reported as demonstrating a systemic bias in favor of the rich and the powerful if George W. Bush were in the White House. The catastrophic decline in African-American net worth during the last four years would, if we had a Republican president, be presented in the press as illustrating the racial indifference or even the racism of the administration. As it is, it is just an unfortunate reality, not worth much publicity and telling us nothing about the intentions or competence of the people in charge.

The current state of the Middle East would be reported as illustrating the complete collapse of American foreign policy—if Bush were in the White House. The criticism of drone strikes and Guantanamo that is now mostly confined to the far left would be mainstream conventional wisdom, and the current unrest in the Middle East would be depicted as a response to American militarism. The in and out surge in Afghanistan would be mercilessly exposed as a strategic flop, reflecting the naive incompetence of an inexperienced president out of his depth. The SEALS rather than the White House would be getting the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, and there would be more questions about whether killing him and then bragging endlessly and tastelessly about it was a contributing factor to the current unrest. Political cartoons of Cheney spiking the football would be everywhere. It’s also likely we would have heard much more about how killing Osama was strategically unimportant as he had become an increasingly symbolic figure and there would have been a lot of detailed and focused analysis of how the foolish concentration on bin Laden led the clueless Bush administration to neglect the rise of new and potentially much more dangerous Islamist groups in places like Mali. The Libyan war would be widely denounced as an unconstitutional act of neocon militarism, with much more attention paid to the civilian casualties during the war, the chaos that followed, and the destabilizing effects on the neighborhood. The White House fumbling around the Benghazi murders would be treated like a major scandal and dominate the news for at least a couple of weeks.

If Bush were in the White House, the Middle East would be a horrible disaster, and it would all be America’s fault.

[mouse]

Defintion of liberal media bias:


"Anything bad said about any conservative cause or person, no matter how cogent, truthful, or factual it is."

By that definition, a shitty candidate like Romney will see a lot of "bias".

"Boo-hoo, not everybody is mindlessly parroting our preferred narrative"

GMAFB.

I agree with this statement ^ after all wasn't it back in the Bush era when the Left complain about the Bias media they were called out as a bunch of butthurt whiners?

[mouse]

Does anyone think the majority of the media isn't liberal bias?

Why didn't the media make a stink about the Russian Fleet backdrop when honoring veterans at the DNC.

If the RNC did the same thing, the media would never let them live it down.

Anyone disagree?

That is a good point. I can't stand double standards no matter what party is involved.

[Wild Cobra]

ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, et al all carried it when it happened two weeks ago.

Thing was no one cared.

Maybe the reason why the GOP is getting such bad press is because the party of Mitt Romney and Grover Norquist just sucks nowadays.
I agree nobody cares.

It wasn't a republican.

Liberals/Democrats are heartless shitheads who would have cared if it was the RNC, but ignore it since it was the DNC.

Conservatives/Republicans have better things to do, and aren't as much the bullying type.

[George Gervin's Afro]

maybe the boy cried wolf one too many times and now no one will listen..

[Wild Cobra]

maybe the boy cried wolf one too many times and now no one will listen..

We see things quite a bit different. Don't we.

[Homeland Security]

I went back and looked at the numbers last night... there is something to these allegations of poll-rigging.

The national partisan ID differential is going to be D+2 or +3 this cycle as opposed to D+7 in 2008. These polls that have D+9, D+13 or whatever can't justify those differentials. The Obama "surge" over the past couple of weeks has been entirely the result of changes in the polls' modeled voter demographics. Poll responses have changed very little.

Right now I have the projected popular vote Obama 50.5%, Romney 48.7%. Obama is up 0.2% in the past two weeks. Based upon the margin of error, that change is not statistically significant.

D+9 etc. skews can't be explained by what's happening on the ground. If those numbers were real, we'd see absentee application numbers like what we saw in 2008. That isn't happening. The Obama campaign's internals show D+2 or +3 like what I'm showing. The media folks who are reporting these partisan skews are familiar with what the Obama internals are showing.

As best I can figure, this is probably what the GOP is saying it is -- an attempt to discourage marginal Romney voters by setting the narrative that his loss is inevitable and there's no point in turning out. The race is close enough that a few thousand votes here or there in a close state could make the difference. However, I'm not seeing any evidence that it's working -- very little has changed in the past two weeks.

But to be clear -- the skews are NOT hiding a Romney lead. He really is behind.

[Homeland Security]

I'll leave it to the reader to figure out what I think ought to be done to members of media organizations that intentionally tamper with poll results to impact the outcome of a race.

[Winehole23]

you know that pollsters have changed their voter demographic modeling, how?

not doubting, just, I have no information on this.

also, how do you know what "Obama internals" show and where can I get that info in real time?

[Homeland Security]

you know that pollsters have changed their voter demographic modeling, how?

not doubting, just, I have no information on this.

also, how do you know what "Obama internals" show and where can I get that info in real time?

You can read the crosstabs. The polling outfits take the raw responses and weight them based upon a predicted likely voter demographic by partisan ID, gender, race, age, income level, etc. So if your actual results have the same number of R's and D's but your likely voter model says 30% more D's will turn out than R's, then you take your raw results and turn every 1 vote for Obama into 1.3 votes.

Democrats vote ~90% for Obama, Republicans vote ~90% for Romney, and Romney leads by ~5 points among independents. That has changed very little over the past several months; all the shifts in the polls come from how the polling outfits change the demographic map into which they fit the raw data.

So take my projection of 37D-34R-29I.
Obama gets 37%*91% + 34%*9% + 29%*47% = 50.5%
Romney gets 37%*8% + 34%*90% + 29%*52% = 48.7%

Take one of these media polls with 41D-32R-27I with the same percentages.
Obama gets 41%*91% + 32%*9% + 27%*47% = 53.0%
Romney gets 41%*8% + 32%*90% + 27%*52% = 46.1%

The responses can be exactly the same; the only difference is the adjustment the polling outfit makes based upon the projected demographic they assume. That's a 5-point swing based on nothing more than the chosen model.

The point is that in 2008 the turnout was 39D-32R-29I. That was a Democratic wave election, and it's very unlikely that turnout is going to be even more favorable to the Democrats this time. 41D-32R-27I is not realistic, and nobody on the up-and-up would use that model. There's even one showing 52D-37R-11I. It's ridiculous. Anyone using these kinds of partisan ID breakdowns is not releasing a serious poll but rather is skewing the poll to yield the result they want to report. These are Soviet Union tactics.

There's another trick to keep the partisan-ID gap down but skew the results, and that's to run the independent number very low. when you do that, the partisan-ID gap basically is identical to the margin. There's one that used a 46D-41R-13I model.

I have a very reasonable model that matches the facts on the ground. None of these media polls match the facts on the ground. Obama has a slight but steady lead, and nothing Romney is doing is cutting into it.

The Obama internal info obviously isn't published but in my world I have access to some of it.

[Winehole23]

I don't guess it's possible recent trends in the polls have anything to do with an incompetent campaign and a haughty, out of touch candidate that Americans like less, the more they see of him?

nah. you're right. it's way more likely all the polls decided to put their thumb on the scale for Obama at the same time, creating an air of inevitability by exaggerating Obama's slight edge over Romney.

[Winehole23]

my totally PFA hypothesis about the trend of the polls is that Romney is losing and the polls reflect it.

[Winehole23]

like Kerry in 2004

[ElNono]

This is where poll aggregation has it's value. Single polls (rigged or not) won't make that much of a dent when you aggregate them with other polls and account for their own past error margins and biases.

Whoever claims "I have the right model" when it comes to poll adjustments is full of shit. That's how you get Rasmussen to pretty much always lean on the red team side and other pollsters on the blue team side.

[BradLohaus]

Journalists and Democrats
A study shows that journalists are nine times more likely to support a Democrat than a Republican.

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

The Media Research Center supports the idea that journalists favor Democrats. Here are a few bullet points from the MRC:

•Journalists Picked Carter over Reagan: In 1982, scholars at California State University at Los Angeles asked reporters from the fifty largest newspapers for whom they voted in 1980. The breakdown: 51 percent cast a ballot for President Jimmy Carter and another 24 percent chose independent candidate (and liberal Republican Congressman) John Anderson. Only 25 percent picked conservative Ronald Reagan, who won 51 percent of the public’s vote that year.
•Journalists Picked Mondale over Reagan: In 1985, the Los Angeles Times polled news and editorial staffers at newspapers around the country, weighting the sample so that newspapers with large circulations were more heavily represented. Once again, pollsters discovered a heavy Democratic skew. When asked how they voted in the 1984 election, more than twice as many chose liberal Walter Mondale (58 percent) over the conservative incumbent Ronald Reagan (26 percent), even as the country picked Reagan in a 59 to 41 percent landslide.
•Huge Majorities for Dukakis and Clinton: In 2001, Stanley Rothman and Amy E. Black updated the Media Elite’s survey of journalists, and learned that reporters continued to select Democrats. “Three-quarters of elite journalists (76.1 percent)…voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988, and even larger percentages (91.3 percent)…cast ballots for Bill Clinton in 1992,â€�<
•Nine Out of Ten Reporters Voted for Clinton: Rothman and Black’s survey closely matched a Freedom Forum poll of Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, which found
89 percent had voted for Clinton in the 1992 election, compared with seven percent for President Bush and two percent for Ross Perot. “In no state or region, among no race or class, did support for Clinton predominate more lopsidedly than among this sample of 139 journalists who either cover Congress or head a Washington bureau,�
•Nationwide, a 3-to-1 Liberal Advantage: When the Los Angeles Times polled journalists around the country in 1985, 55 percent were willing to call themselves liberal, far outstripping the 17 percent who said they were conservative.
•Becoming Even More Liberal: In 1992, Weaver and Wilhoit conducted another national survey of journalists, and noticed the group had moved farther to the left. Writing in the Fall 1992 Media Studies Journal, they pointed out that 47 percent of journalists now said they were “liberal,â€� while only 22 percent labeled themselves as “conservative.â€�
•Six Times as Many Liberals as Conservatives: The Freedom Forum’s 1996 poll of Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents found 61 percent labeled themselves as “liberalâ€� or “liberal to moderate,â€� compared with only nine percent who chose either “conservativeâ€� or “moderate to conservative.â€�
Here is the full study from 2004.

Is this even a question? Yes Fox News cheers for the right... but MSNBC puts Fox News to shame when it comes to bias. When you take the media as a whole it's not even close. Has anybody ever known anyone from the journalism department of a university? They would all lie, cheat and steal to get Gore and Kerry elected back then. To elect a black Democrat president? You could probably add kill to that list.

[Homeland Security]

I don't guess it's possible recent trends in the polls have anything to do with an incompetent campaign and a haughty, out of touch candidate that Americans like less, the more they see of him?

nah. you're right. it's way more likely all the polls decided to put their thumb on the scale for Obama at the same time, creating an air of inevitability by exaggerating Obama's slight edge over Romney.
I have data, you don't, motherfucker.

If Obama's really up by 6 or 7 points, he should be leading among independents just like he did in 2008. Especially if the issue is Romney's personal likability, He should be getting hammered among those voters, not leading by 5.

If Democrats really have a +9 advantage, then it should be a foregone conclusion that they're going to retake the House by a wide margin.

If Democrats really have a +9 advantage, there wouldn't be a discussion that Republican retaking the Senate is "unlikely;" rather it should be whether Democrats can get back to 60 seats.

But these journalist bastards aren't very smart and don't cover all their bases. The contradictions are glaring.

There's a reason I advocate rounding up all these people and killing them in cold blood. I know they collude to put their thumb on the scales. I know in the debates the moderators feed the Democrat the questions ahead of time and help him script replies. I know they've taken freedom of the press and shit all over it. The motherfuckers need to pay for their treason.

[Homeland Security]

This is where poll aggregation has it's value. Single polls (rigged or not) won't make that much of a dent when you aggregate them with other polls and account for their own past error margins and biases.

Whoever claims "I have the right model" when it comes to poll adjustments is full of shit. That's how you get Rasmussen to pretty much always lean on the red team side and other pollsters on the blue team side.

Poll aggregation is statistically invalid. It propagates errors rather than compensating for them.

[Drachen]

I agree nobody cares.

It wasn't a republican.

Liberals/Democrats are heartless shitheads who would have cared if it was the RNC, but ignore it since it was the DNC.

Conservatives/Republicans have better things to do, and aren't as much the bullying type.

No, they said "no one cares" not "democrats don't care"

[ElNono]

Poll aggregation is statistically invalid. It propagates errors rather than compensating for them.

Incorrect. Only if you're aggregating without an historical look. Poll aggregations have their own compensation methodology, but unlike single polls, it's not limited to a single polling outfit, or the alleged demographics of the cycle. A good example is FiveThirtyEight, which has been nailing things remarkably well for the last few elections.

Is their methodology foolproof? Unlikely. Have they done fairly better than your average pollster? Sure thing.

[Th'Pusher]

I went back and looked at the numbers last night... there is something to these allegations of poll-rigging.

The national partisan ID differential is going to be D+2 or +3 this cycle as opposed to D+7 in 2008. These polls that have D+9, D+13 or whatever can't justify those differentials. The Obama "surge" over the past couple of weeks has been entirely the result of changes in the polls' modeled voter demographics. Poll responses have changed very little.

Right now I have the projected popular vote Obama 50.5%, Romney 48.7%. Obama is up 0.2% in the past two weeks. Based upon the margin of error, that change is not statistically significant.

D+9 etc. skews can't be explained by what's happening on the ground. If those numbers were real, we'd see absentee application numbers like what we saw in 2008. That isn't happening. The Obama campaign's internals show D+2 or +3 like what I'm showing. The media folks who are reporting these partisan skews are familiar with what the Obama internals are showing.

As best I can figure, this is probably what the GOP is saying it is -- an attempt to discourage marginal Romney voters by setting the narrative that his loss is inevitable and there's no point in turning out. The race is close enough that a few thousand votes here or there in a close state could make the difference. However, I'm not seeing any evidence that it's working -- very little has changed in the past two weeks.

But to be clear -- the skews are NOT hiding a Romney lead. He really is behind.
:lol HS reads dickmorris.com

[boutons_deux]

6 Conservatives Desperately Trying to Convince Themselves the Polls Are Wrong


Erick Erickson

Erickson, Editor-in-Chief of RedState.com and CNN political contributor, accuses [7] the media of a “confirmation bias” that makes them conform their data to what they want: “The polls are confirming what the press thinks and that they have a larger than 2008 Democratic turnout is of no consequence to them.”

John McLaughlin

The Republican pollster [8] explains the poll conspiracy: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want.”

Hugh Hewitt

Radio host Hugh Hewitt thinks the CBS/Quinnipiac/NYT poll is “junk” [9], choosing instead to focus on Rasmussen and Gallup’s daily polls, which have Obama leading by a smaller margin. These polls, he says, amounts to [10] “lots of evidence this morning that their campaign is in terrific shape.”

Dick Morris

Tea Party icon Dick Morris insists if the election were held today Romney would win by “4 or 5 points,” carrying Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania — leading Sean Hannity to exclaim, “Oh, come on!” Morris later declares, “The polling this year is the worst it’s ever been.”

Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL)

Mack’s Senate campaign manager dismissed [11] polls finding him behind in the Florida race, saying, “A variety of polls commissioned by the media have attempted to paint the Florida Senate race in a light that is simply not accurate.”

Bret Baier/Fox News

Bret Baier hosts a segment [12] warning how “the fine print” of polls could skew data because of oversampling, which Business Insider attributes [13] to higher voter registration among Democrats.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/6-conservatives-desperately-trying-convince-themselves-polls-are-wrong

[Homeland Security]

:lol HS reads dickmorris.com

Dick Morris says Romney is winning. This is incorrect. He also over-relies on Rasmussen, who has a more realistic demographic but a shaky sampling methodology.

None of you really give a shit about data. You give a shit about following a narrative that validates your worldview. When the shit hits the fan, and Team Red tells you it's Team Blue's fault so let's kill 'em and vice versa, you'll readily fall into line.

[boutons_deux]

Top Gecko Adviser: ‘Some Of These Polls Have Been Called Into Question’

:lol :lol

As nearly every major public opinion poll puts President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney, conservative pundits’ new favorite accusation is that the polls are biased because the media is oversampling Democrats. On Thursday, Romney’s senior adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, repeated this line on Fox News to explain why the polls couldn’t be trusted:

FEHRNSTROM: Some of these polls have been called into question because they assume a higher Democratic turnout in 2012 than we experienced in 2008. I don’t know of any campaign operative or political scientist in the country who thinks Democrats are going to show up in the same number as they did four years ago.

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/09/27/920301/top-romney-adviser-some-of-these-polls-have-been-called-into-question/

Repugs in general are not the reality-based party. They make up shit and sell it to their ignorant, faith-based wankers, creating their own reality.

[Homeland Security]

Incorrect. Only if you're aggregating without an historical look. Poll aggregations have their own compensation methodology, but unlike single polls, it's not limited to a single polling outfit, or the alleged demographics of the cycle. A good example is FiveThirtyEight, which has been nailing things remarkably well for the last few elections.

Is their methodology foolproof? Unlikely. Have they done fairly better than your average pollster? Sure thing.

RCP takes the arithmetic average of the polls. There is no "historical look."

538 has a very fancy-looking methodology, which, when you look at it, consists of Nate Silver subjectively choosing which polls have more weight, and what the "fundamentals" of a given state are. It's a statistical Rube Goldberg machine. He retains his credibility because two weeks out from the election he throws all that shit out and apes other polls.

[Homeland Security]

Starting the week of October 22, the media polls will begin an abrupt shift toward whatever the final result is going to be. They will say something like "the race is tightening!" or "voters having second thoughts!" Bullshit. They're just going to take their thumb off the scales and report the real numbers I'm giving you now:

Popular vote: Obama between 50-51%, Romney between 48-49%
Electoral college: Obama 284, Romey 252, Paul 2 (faithless electors)

[ElNono]

538 has a very fancy-looking methodology, which, when you look at it, consists of Nate Silver subjectively choosing which polls have more weight, and what the "fundamentals" of a given state are. It's a statistical Rube Goldberg machine. He retains his credibility because two weeks out from the election he throws all that shit out and apes other polls.

What do you have?

[Homeland Security]

What do you have?
Come back on November 7th and look at the post directly above yours.

Look at the result, the sudden "tightening" in the polls, and the timing of that tightening.

[ElNono]

Come back on November 7th and look at the post directly above yours.

Look at the result, the sudden "tightening" in the polls, and the timing of that tightening.

Will do :tu

[George Gervin's Afro]

Study: Networks seized on Romney's hidden-camera remark, downplayed Obama's
Published September 27, 2012
FoxNews.com

The big three broadcast networks devoted dozens of stories last week to Mitt Romney's supposed "47 percent" gaffe but gave just a fraction of that air time to covering an audio tape of controversial remarks by President Obama, according to the Media Research Center.

The MRC examined how much total air time each story got last week and found coverage of the Romney remarks overpowered coverage of the Obama remarks by a 13-1 ratio.

The center found that ABC, CBS and NBC - on their evening and morning shows -- spent 88 minutes and 42 total stories on Romney. They spent six and a half minutes and eight stories on Obama.

The Obama quote purportedly was from a 1998 conference at Loyola University. In an audio recording posted online, the young Obama could be heard telling the audience he believes there has been "a propaganda campaign against the possibility of government action and its efficacy."

"I think that what we're going to have to do is somehow resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective at all," Obama said. "I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot."

The Romney campaign tried to draw attention to that clip after Democrats had hammered him over hidden-camera footage of remarks he made to donors in May about people who don't pay taxes.

He said: "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. ... "There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."

Romney said that, as a presidential candidate, he didn't have to "worry about those people."

The Media Research Center estimated that if the coverage of each was compared starting with when the Obama recording emerged last Tuesday night, the coverage of Romney still outpaces that of Obama by a 10-1 ratio.

"The double-standard within just one week of the news cycle is staggering," the center wrote in its analysis.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/27/study-networks-seized-on-romney-hidden-camera-remark-downplayed-obama/?intcmp=trending#ixzz27h2YDAKn

Am I the only one who feels that a video of remarks made 7 months before a presidential election have much more weight than comments made 14 yrs prior. Am I wrong?

[Th'Pusher]

Starting the week of October 22, the media polls will begin an abrupt shift toward whatever the final result is going to be. They will say something like "the race is tightening!" or "voters having second thoughts!" Bullshit. They're just going to take their thumb off the scales and report the real numbers I'm giving you now:

Popular vote: Obama between 50-51%, Romney between 48-49%
Electoral college: Obama 284, Romey 252, Paul 2 (faithless electors)

If they are going to take their thumb off the scale on 10/22, what are the pollsters gaining by putting their thumb on the scale now? What if they discourage Obama voters from donating now as they think he has win wrapped up?

[Homeland Security]

Am I the only one who feels that a video of remarks made 7 months before a presidential election have much more weight than comments made 14 yrs prior. Am I wrong?
I don't understand the controversy on the Obama side. To whom is it a surprise that Democrats believe in redistribution? "Left-wing politician supports typical left-wing policies." Ooh, scandal!

[Th'Pusher]

I don't understand the controversy on the Obama side. To whom is it a surprise that Democrats believe in redistribution? "Left-wing politician supports typical left-wing policies." Ooh, scandal!

Redistribution has long been entrenched in our tax code and has had support from conservities and liberals alike. That's why Romney makes me laugh...as if redistribution is some new thing Obama has introduced.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Redistribution has long been entrenched in our tax code and has had support from conservities and liberals alike. That's why Romney makes me laugh...as if redistribution is some new thing Obama has introduced.

Frank Luntz is hard at work..!

[Homeland Security]

If they are going to take their thumb off the scale on 10/22, what are the pollsters gaining by putting their thumb on the scale now? What if they discourage Obama voters from donating now as they think he has win wrapped up?
A margin of less than 2% is pretty close. If you're the campaign and you have those numbers, they're probably inside the margin of error, so you have less than 95% confidence that you're ahead, and much less than that that your lead is secure. At 284 projected electoral votes, getting careless and letting either Ohio or a combination of a couple other states (e.g. Virginia + 1 more) get away could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. So tactics to protect that lead, such as discouraging the marginal voters for the other guy, make sense.

Two weeks is long enough to square up the polls to reality and maintain credibility, but short enough that the low-information marginal voters don't catch up to the news cycle.

The people who do the nickel-and-dime donations to the Obama campaign are more likely, not less likely, to donate when they think they see Obama striding out to a significant lead. Surely you've heard of the concept of bandwagon-jumping.

[Homeland Security]

Redistribution has long been entrenched in our tax code and has had support from conservities and liberals alike. That's why Romney makes me laugh...as if redistribution is some new thing Obama has introduced.
Yeah, I mean, is somebody proposing to do away with the EITC? Federal grants? Need-based scholarships? The whole concept of a progressive tax code? Etc., etc., etc. My plan calls for killing 2 million white liberals, but even I believe in some level of redistribution. Heck, redistributing the wealth of the people killed to the poor is a central part of my plan!

[boutons_deux]

"remarks made 7 months before a presidential election have much more weight than comments made 14 yrs prior"

Jon Stewart showed how Fox Repug network said Romney's May comments were meaningless, irrelevant because they were SO OLD, then trashed Barry for his comments of 14 years ago. Or "14 Mays ago" :lol Stewart crushes.

[ElNono]

I think this is likely to happen too:


Wait for it - Romney's media rebound (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabler-romney-chances-media-20120927,0,3191534.story)

A runaway win won't make media as much money as a perceived close contest, IMO. Barring some major Romneybot comment, I suspect the "comeback" narrative will come around when the debates start...

[Homeland Security]

I think this is likely to happen too:



A runaway win won't make media as much money as a perceived close contest, IMO. Barring some major Romneybot comment, I suspect the "comeback" narrative will come around when the debates start...
Makes perfect sense. Romney starts a "comeback," entirely fabricated by the media, just like his current "doldrums" are, as a ready explanation for why the poll margins start narrowing to reflect the actual result.

[LnGrrrR]

HS is starting to sound like whottt :lol

[ElNono]

HS is starting to sound like whottt :lol

What do you mean "starting"? :lol

[RandomGuy]

I don't understand the controversy on the Obama side. To whom is it a surprise that Democrats believe in redistribution? "Left-wing politician supports typical left-wing policies." Ooh, scandal!

He was merely talking about shifting resources between government levels, not individuals.

[RandomGuy]

Poll aggregation is statistically invalid. It propagates errors rather than compensating for them.

Correct.

[RandomGuy]

None of you really give a shit about data. You give a shit about following a narrative that validates your worldview.

I would beg to differ. I care a great deal about data.

You did, however, not seem to consider the possibility that the poll shifting was simple coincidence. Improbable, but quite possible.

Flip enough coins and you will get strings of heads/tails. That doesn't mean the coin is rigged.

Better to look at trends than any one weeks results.

[hitmanyr2k]

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/09/23/americans-turn-on-msm-what-does-it-mean/


If the president were a conservative Republican rather than a liberal Democrat, I have little doubt that much of the legacy press would be focused more on what is wrong with America. There would be more negative reporting about the economy, more criticism of policy failures and many more withering comparisons between promise and performance. The contrast between a rising stock market and poor jobs performance that the press now doesn’t think of blaming on President Obama would be reported as demonstrating a systemic bias in favor of the rich and the powerful if George W. Bush were in the White House. The catastrophic decline in African-American net worth during the last four years would, if we had a Republican president, be presented in the press as illustrating the racial indifference or even the racism of the administration. As it is, it is just an unfortunate reality, not worth much publicity and telling us nothing about the intentions or competence of the people in charge.

The current state of the Middle East would be reported as illustrating the complete collapse of American foreign policy—if Bush were in the White House. The criticism of drone strikes and Guantanamo that is now mostly confined to the far left would be mainstream conventional wisdom, and the current unrest in the Middle East would be depicted as a response to American militarism. The in and out surge in Afghanistan would be mercilessly exposed as a strategic flop, reflecting the naive incompetence of an inexperienced president out of his depth. The SEALS rather than the White House would be getting the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, and there would be more questions about whether killing him and then bragging endlessly and tastelessly about it was a contributing factor to the current unrest. Political cartoons of Cheney spiking the football would be everywhere. It’s also likely we would have heard much more about how killing Osama was strategically unimportant as he had become an increasingly symbolic figure and there would have been a lot of detailed and focused analysis of how the foolish concentration on bin Laden led the clueless Bush administration to neglect the rise of new and potentially much more dangerous Islamist groups in places like Mali. The Libyan war would be widely denounced as an unconstitutional act of neocon militarism, with much more attention paid to the civilian casualties during the war, the chaos that followed, and the destabilizing effects on the neighborhood. The White House fumbling around the Benghazi murders would be treated like a major scandal and dominate the news for at least a couple of weeks.

If Bush were in the White House, the Middle East would be a horrible disaster, and it would all be America’s fault.
Excerpt


What the fuck is this crybaby bullshit?!? Conservatives play victim so much it's laughable. I can't believe this shit was even written. George Bush got away with so much crap in his first term it was unbelievable...especially when it came to foreign policy. And then that MF got re-elected on top of that :lol What more do they want? It's like no one remembers what the hell happened back then.

In this political climate today can you imagine if the Obama administration did this in his first 4 years?

- Voluntarily rush into a 2nd war based on crap intelligence and fear-mongering to the American people scaring them to death with the thought of nuclear mushroom clouds ad nauseum.

- Blow up Iraq (killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process).

- Prematurely have a grandiose "Mission Accomplished" photo op on an aircraft carrier.

- Stupidly tell the enemy "bring it on" (which they did) from the comfort of the white house while troops are in harm's way on foreign territory.

- Dismiss the mastermind who planned the 9/11 attacks as an afterthought.

- Make the American taxpayers foot the bill to pay for rebuilding the country we stupidly blew up.

- Give no-bid contracts to his buddies so they can make money hand over fist from his dumbass war, never mind the billions that went missing from fraud and waste.

- And to top it all off use some accounting tricks so the cost of these wars don't count on the books. Because "conservatives" cared so much about deficits back then :lol

Can you imagine if Obama did all that during his first term? The shit-storm that would come down on his head would be tenfold of what Bush got.

[Homeland Security]

What the fuck is this crybaby bullshit?!? Conservatives play victim so much it's laughable. I can't believe this shit was even written.
Walter Russell Mead is a moderate Democrat, and the crust he picked out of his eyes when he woke up this morning knows more about global affairs than you do.

[RandomGuy]

What the fuck is this crybaby bullshit?!?

As much as it pains me to admit that DarrinS might actually have posted something worthwhile, I tended to agree with a fair part of what was there.

If Fox "news" wasn't so good at shooting its credibility in the foot with moderates and independents, we might have a more appropriate level of oversight of the presidency. As it is, they fawn slavishly over Republicans, and the right-wing talking point du jour, because that is what drives ratings. If they weren't so obviously devoted to toeing the line, and provided some decent, actually fair opposing views occasionally, we would all be better off.

It took him about six years to start getting things right, but Bush's presidency towards the end didn't suck *that* bad, unforgivable fuck ups in Iraq notwithstanding.

[hitmanyr2k]

Walter Russell Mead is a moderate Democrat, and the crust he picked out of his eyes when he woke up this morning knows more about global affairs than you do.

Don't give a fuck what he knows or who he is. It's absolute idiocy to use the Bush administration as some kind of would-be victim of the media after the crap they pulled. They got off much easier than Obama considering the way they fucked this country and made some of the dumbest mistakes in judgment I've ever seen.

[Winehole23]

There's a reason I advocate rounding up all these people and killing them in cold blood. I know they collude to put their thumb on the scales. I know in the debates the moderators feed the Democrat the questions ahead of time and help him script replies. I know they've taken freedom of the press and shit all over it. The motherfuckers need to pay for their treason.the media usually picks one to whack and when they do, the crybabies on the other side are stirred to paranoid, homicidal rage.

I doubt you minded much when it happened to Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

[boutons_deux]

"conservative leaders" denying reality (they do it best) and whining about a polling/media conspiracy to make their Gecko look like a loser (that he really is).

dubya/dickhead, McLiar/pitbull bitch, Gecko/Ryan, the creme de la creme of conservative civilization.

[boutons_deux]

Nate gives Gecko today a 16% chance of winning


Sept. 26: Could 2012 Be Like 2008?

"If the election were held today, the FiveThirtyEight statistical model shows President Obama favored in all but two of the states he won in 2008."

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

[cheguevara]

El Che has to agree that there is blatant bias against the Republicans. I don't think it has anything to do with the Neocons. The Neocons have gove to the shadows, but are still controlling the party, but still, this has to do with a hidden agenda by the media to keep positive about Obama. I guess he is in a superstar level that gives them ratings, that is the only reason I can think why the media would make him their darling.

the way Obama admin handled the murder of the ambassador even outperformed W's Katrina handling. that is coming from a neutral source such as yours truly. Obama should have been crucified for this, and Hilary with him. What a fuckup of gargantuan proportions. Having an ambassador in Lybia of all places, with NOBODY to guard him. and then waiting weeks to call it "terrorism" is laughable :lol and then Hilary's girl to tell a journalist to go fuck himself for questioning the fuckup is just the icing of the cake.

these motherfuckers in the white house are as cocky as the worst of the neocons.

Romney should be leading by double digits. but none of the above takes away from the fact that Mitch Romney is one stupid motherfucker and one of the worst candidates in the history of civilization :pctoss

what a fuckup of a pair of candidates. dumb and dummer, itchy and scratchy, blood in blood out. I want my money back, I don;t think those clows are worth the trouble of voting

[cheguevara]

and to think 1.5 billion dollars was burned on these pair of clowns. are you fucking kidding me

[Clipper Nation]

A runaway win won't make media as much money as a perceived close contest, IMO. Barring some major Romneybot comment, I suspect the "comeback" narrative will come around when the debates start...
They already tried the "comeback" shit at least three times with Newt this year, didn't work out for them tbh....

[boutons_deux]

and to think 1.5 billion dollars was burned on these pair of clowns. are you fucking kidding me

one dollar on your Randian divinities Paul & Son is wasted.

[Homeland Security]

the media usually picks one to whack and when they do, the crybabies on the other side are stirred to paranoid, homicidal rage.

I doubt you minded much when it happened to Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.
Kerry's the only one whose candidacy falls in the present era of politics, since everything changed after the 2000 election.

No, I wasn't happy with Bush's re-election in 2004. That was the beginning of my disillusionment with the American political system and my values I'd had up to that date. I didn't vote in that election.

I hated Bush's second term. To me the nadir was that fucking circus with that vegetable lady in Florida where you had the fucking Senate Majority Leader diagnosing her mental state via video and every Christian in this country screaming for ex post facto laws to "save the life" of somebody who had in effect had been dead for years. Then after that failed, there was absolutely zero effort to change the law that everybody supposedly thought was so unjust. All conservatives' blathering about the Constitution and the rule of law was revealed to be complete bullshit in that episode. They don't believe in those things any more than the left does, and socially conservative Christians are the worst of all in that regard. That started a little seed of cognitive dissonance in my head sugesting that the supposed Christian faith of Americans is really a bunch of cultural bullshit, culminating in my conclusion that religious faith itself is all bullshit useful for nothing more than manipulating people to believe that whatever those in power want to do is the will of God (Gott mit uns!).

For just a brief time after concluding that the ideology of the right was complete bullshit, I thought, hey, might as well give the left a chance. I feel tremendous self-hate for that decision. The right is totally worthless, the left has negative value. The constitutional system is dead and buried, might as well let it all come crashing down and build something new on top of the rubble.

[Homeland Security]

the media usually picks one to whack and when they do, the crybabies on the other side are stirred to paranoid, homicidal rage.

I doubt you minded much when it happened to Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.
My previous sharing aside, I seem to remember in 2004 CBS News used a clumsily forged document about George W. Bush's National Guard service to smear him, and held firm for a while until right-wing bloggers proved beyond a doubt that it had been produced on Microsoft Word. After that, they tried to claim it was "fake, but true."

Does that comport with your claim that the media was out to get Kerry?

[CosmicCowboy]

Kerry's the only one whose candidacy falls in the present era of politics, since everything changed after the 2000 election.

No, I wasn't happy with Bush's re-election in 2004. That was the beginning of my disillusionment with the American political system and my values I'd had up to that date. I didn't vote in that election.

I hated Bush's second term. To me the nadir was that fucking circus with that vegetable lady in Florida where you had the fucking Senate Majority Leader diagnosing her mental state via video and every Christian in this country screaming for ex post facto laws to "save the life" of somebody who had in effect had been dead for years. Then after that failed, there was absolutely zero effort to change the law that everybody supposedly thought was so unjust. All conservatives' blathering about the Constitution and the rule of law was revealed to be complete bullshit in that episode. They don't believe in those things any more than the left does, and socially conservative Christians are the worst of all in that regard. That started a little seed of cognitive dissonance in my head sugesting that the supposed Christian faith of Americans is really a bunch of cultural bullshit, culminating in my conclusion that religious faith itself is all bullshit useful for nothing more than manipulating people to believe that whatever those in power want to do is the will of God (Gott mit uns!).

For just a brief time after concluding that the ideology of the right was complete bullshit, I thought, hey, might as well give the left a chance. I feel tremendous self-hate for that decision. The right is totally worthless, the left has negative value. The constitutional system is dead and buried, might as well let it all come crashing down and build something new on top of the rubble.

It's actually crossed my mind that we may all get put on the real watch list for reading these posts...:lol

[boutons_deux]

Another Great GOP Myth: No, Polls Did NOT Show Carter Beating Reagan in 1980

oday, we even observe Ross Douthat at The New York Times embracing the notion that one big reason Romney is trailing is the media's "horse race" coverage--you know, it's showing that he is trailing. Funny, right-wingers never complained about that until now, even though such coverage has dominated campaign coverage for decades.

But apart from this, the major claim of the past weeks has been this old saw: Hey, all the polls gave Carter a win over Reagan in 1980! And look what happened there! So Romney is in okay shape and if not will surge at the end, like St. Ronald.

Well, there are several possible responses to this:

1) Polling methods have, by all accounts, improved quite a bit since then, as proven in countless races, including presidential. 2) Also by all accounts, voters today are much more partisan and locked-in (partly because of their media choices) than they were in 1980, and less likely to bolt a candidate. 3) Reagan had a unique opportunity that Mitt will miss this year. There was only one presidential debate that year--and, believe it or not, it look place on October 28, little more than a week before Election Day. (One has to wonder which White House genius scheduled that one.) Reagan did very well in the debate, promoting a late surge. Not to mention: American hostages still held in Tehran. 4) Carter's approval rating was about 30% while Obama's is close to 50%.

But let's also consider 5) and that is: The all-the-pollsters-were-wrong meme is actually false to begin with. See this article and graph, which show that contrary to myth, Reagan actually led in tracking polls for most of the final months of the campaign. Yet you will hear or read every day that Reagan charged from "far behind," according to the polls, to win, just like Romney can (will) do.

Let's consider the most prominent poll of all. It's true that Gallup's final pre-debate poll showed a sinking Carter up by 3% -- but a few days later its polling gave Reagan a 3% edge before Election Day. Of course, he won by more than that, but then again, Gallup does not poll ON Election Day.

Also: Even before the debate, two of the other leading polls at the time: AP and Harris/ABC, gave Reagan the lead. After the debate, they showed Reagan with a 5% margin. In fact, virtually every leading poll gave Reagan at least a 1% lead two or three days before the election, and many gave him a wider edge.

So, yes, this notion of the world being shocked by a Reagan win in 1980 is simply nonsense. I remember my only surprise at the time was that the GOP did so well in Senate races. Now I haven't seen such a panic among Republican since Upton Sinclair was nearly elected governor of California in 1934. And in that case, Sinclair was a real socialist--not an imagined one.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/170230/another-great-gop-myth-no-polls-did-not-show-carter-beating-reagan-1980#

[Winehole23]

My previous sharing aside, I seem to remember in 2004 CBS News used a clumsily forged document about George W. Bush's National Guard service to smear him, and held firm for a while until right-wing bloggers proved beyond a doubt that it had been produced on Microsoft Word. After that, they tried to claim it was "fake, but true."

Does that comport with your claim that the media was out to get Kerry?I think so. all candidates are pinatas. swiftboating and the flip flop meme stuck. the national guard meme didn't. not all shit sticks to the wall.

[boutons_deux]

Nate Silver: The Polls Aren’t Wrong
In 2008, Nate Silver built a near-perfect model for analyzing the polls at his web site Fivethirtyeight.com. Silver called Obama over McCain in March — and ultimately nailed 49 of 50 states, got every Senate race right and predicted the popular vote within a percentage point. That’s the kind of predictive power we all dream of when we fill out NCAA tournament brackets or a lottery ticket. The New York Times added his blog (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) to its site soon after the election. The numbers geek started a bidding war.

In his new book, “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t,” (http://www.amazon.com/dp/159420411X/?tag=saloncom08-20) Silver tries to explain the secret to getting things right — and finds that it often turns on blind ideology and overconfidence. (He’s gotten things wrong himself; in the book, Silver admits that his much-touted baseball statistical analysis system, called PECOTA, actually fared worse than the collective wisdom of the old-school pro scouts, much-maligned in the “Moneyball” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball) era. Hey, he still totally got Dustin Pedroia right.)

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/nate-silver-polls-arent-wrong

[Winehole23]

A National Journal analysis of recent polling results across 11 states considered battlegrounds shows that in most of them, Obama is running considerably better than he is nationally among white women without a college education. Obama’s gains with these so-called “waitress moms” are especially pronounced in heartland battlegrounds like Iowa (http://nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/why-obama-is-leading-in-swing-states-20121001#), Ohio (http://nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/why-obama-is-leading-in-swing-states-20121001#), and Wisconsin (http://nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/why-obama-is-leading-in-swing-states-20121001#).


http://cdn-media.nationaljournal.com/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=22423&format=skybox
GRAPHIC: Obama's Battleground Boost (http://nationaljournal.com/obama-s-battleground-boost-20121001)
Combined with his continued support among other elements of his “coalition of the ascendant,” including young people, minorities, and college-educated women, these advances among blue-collar women have been enough to propel Obama to the lead over Republican Mitt Romney in the most recent public surveys in all 11 states (albeit in some cases within the polls’ margins of error).


Democrats say blue-collar women have been the principal, and most receptive, target for their extended ad barrage portraying Romney as a plutocrat who is blind, if not indifferent, to the struggles of average families.
“Advertising matters, and a lot of the advertising is aimed at that group,” said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who is advising the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA. “That’s certainly been our No. 1 priority.”


Garin earlier this year described the movement of blue-collar women in battleground states toward Obama as “the demographic development of the summer” and the Obama campaign has tracked the same shift. A Republican strategist familiar with the Romney campaign’s thinking agreed that Obama’s improving position among these economically strained, often culturally conservative women has keyed his rise in most battleground states. “The sheer weight of their advertising, and the shows they targeted that advertising on, it is [aimed at] lower-income, white, working women,” the GOP strategist said. “They are being pounded with this stuff.”

http://nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/why-obama-is-leading-in-swing-states-20121001#

[Wild Cobra]

LOL...

Waitress Moms.

Good name for them.

many of them probably make $40k+ in tips they don't claim for taxes, so they don't care if tax rates go up. They just get earned income credit on their minimum wage jobs!

[Winehole23]

this sort of casual contempt for hard working Americans is one reason why Romney is trailing so badly in this demographic, tbh.

[TeyshaBlue]

LOL...

Waitress Moms.

Good name for them.

many of them probably make $40k+ in tips they don't claim for taxes, so they don't care if tax rates go up. They just get earned income credit on their minimum wage jobs!

The vast majority of waitresses do not make $40k in tips. Those that do, do so in restaurants that track the shit out of tipping for reporting purposes.
Marge at Joe's Diner who pockets that $1.25 in tips ain't making 40 large. But, she's likely not reporting the pittance she is taking in.

[TeyshaBlue]

this sort of casual contempt for hard working Americans is one reason why Romney is trailing so badly in this demographic, tbh.

yup.

[Drachen]

The vast majority of waitresses do not make $40k in tips. Those that do, do so in restaurants that track the shit out of tipping for reporting purposes.
Marge at Joe's Diner who pockets that $1.25 in tips ain't making 40 large. But, she's likely not reporting the pittance she is taking in.

This. Basically, the only places that don't at least casually track your tips are the IHOPs and lower of the world. I will tell you from experience, I didn't approach an earnings level which could come close to 20k working at IHOP, much less 40k.

edit: casual tracking of tips means that they take your sales and multiply it by some amount (15%, 18%, 21%), then report that amount for the amount you received in tips for you.

[ElNono]

Untaxed $40k in tips? Man, I'm in the wrong business...

[Winehole23]

WC: legal eagle, professor of macroeconomics, career counselor.

[Wild Cobra]

The vast majority of waitresses do not make $40k in tips. Those that do, do so in restaurants that track the shit out of tipping for reporting purposes.
Marge at Joe's Diner who pockets that $1.25 in tips ain't making 40 large. But, she's likely not reporting the pittance she is taking in.
Yes, this is true. I forget that there are other states and different types of places. I seldom eat out, but when I do, i go to the nicer places. I'm seldom paying just the $50 range for two with tipping. I go to places that the waiters and waitresses are doing well. Now $40k is high as I think about it, but I'll bet it's still about $15k+ in the above average places, for those who work full time.

[Wild Cobra]

LOL...

IHOP...

Haven't been to one of them for several years.

[RandomGuy]

LOL...

Waitress Moms.

Good name for them.

many of them probably make $40k+ in tips they don't claim for taxes, so they don't care if tax rates go up. They just get earned income credit on their minimum wage jobs!

This would be a good example of how conservatives run their own internal "narratives" and visualizations to use the emotional side of their moral brains over the logical dispassionate side when making policy decisions. Assuming one can take WC troll at his word, a tenuous assumption.

[TeyshaBlue]

This would be a good example of how conservatives run their own internal "narratives" and visualizations to use the emotional side of their moral brains over the logical dispassionate side when making policy decisions. Assuming one can take WC troll at his word, a tenuous assumption.

This would be a good example of tautological forumlation. Good job.

[RandomGuy]

This would be a good example of tautological forumlation. Good job.

um... okay. How exactly is it a tautology?

G2y8Sx4B2Sk

[boutons_deux]

wait staff averaging $40K/year. right-wing fantasy.

http://ledgerlink.monster.com/training/articles/102-irs-going-after-underreported-tips-at-restaurants

IRS going after wait staff and restaurants, but letting Gecko and his 1%ers stash $100Bs off shore.

[RandomGuy]

This would be a good example of tautological forumlation. Good job.

Let me expand a bit to be clearer:

WC in this case is running a visual narrative, picturing at some level some waitress or group of them raking in money and then not paying taxes. This is triggering the moralistic emotional side, just as boutons does when picturing the 1%.

Cost/benefit analysis of actual data goes out the window when one starts those narratives. No one mentions that the 1% are paying an ever larger share of running the government. (for a lot of complex reasons) That is the dispassionate logical side.

[TeyshaBlue]

um... okay. How exactly is it a tautology?

G2y8Sx4B2Sk

Fucking love that movie.:toast


conservatives run their own internal "narratives" and visualizations to use the emotional side of their moral brains over the logical dispassionate side when making policy decisions.

Your approach allows all of your answers to be correct.

Except, not all conservatives run this little fantasy narrative of yours.

[TeyshaBlue]

Let me expand a bit to be clearer:

WC in this case is running a visual narrative, picturing at some level some waitress or group of them raking in money and then not paying taxes. This is triggering the moralistic emotional side, just as boutons does when picturing the 1%.

Cost/benefit analysis of actual data goes out the window when one starts those narratives. No one mentions that the 1% are paying an ever larger share of running the government. (for a lot of complex reasons) That is the dispassionate logical side.

Good. You're refining it. WC<> all conservatives with functioning brainpans. Nor is it an exclusively conservative phenomena.

[boutons_deux]

"No one mentions that the 1% are paying an ever larger share of running the government"

because they have an EVERY GIGANTICALLY LARGER SHARE of national income, even while paying lower tax rates than many in the 99%.

[Wild Cobra]

LOL...

Still talking about it after my post #110...

[RandomGuy]

Fucking love that movie.:toast



Your approach allows all of your answers to be correct.

Except, not all conservatives run this little fantasy narrative of yours.

No, not all. But I find that the scientific explanation seems to fit the tendency of self-identified conservatives to be very judgmental about people they don't like. I think that mental picture is the part driving the process of a lot of welfare bashing and policy by anecdote.

[TeyshaBlue]

No, not all. But I find that the scientific explanation seems to fit the tendency of people to be very judgmental about people they don't like. I think that mental picture is the part driving the process of a lot of welfare bashing and policy by anecdote.

fify

[Winehole23]

The Meanstream Media (http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/the-meanstream-media.html)

http://dailydish.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e2017c3308e5d5970b-pi
Pew has a new study (http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/winning_media_campaign_2012) regarding the tone of the media's coverage of the presidential candidates. Benjy Sarlin digs in (http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/pew-study-2012-campaign-coverage-overwhlemingly-negative-for-both-sides.php):

Both Obama and Romney received overwhelmingly negative treatment in the press over the general election, according to Pew. From Aug. 27 to Oct. 21, a period that encompassed both conventions and three out of four debates, just 19 percent of stories about Obama were “favorable” in tone versus 30 percent that were “unfavorable. For Romney the ratio was 15 percent favorable to 38 percent unfavorable.

The gap between those numbers is largely accounted for by Obama’s relative frontrunner status for much of the observed period. For stories that didn’t concern the horse race aspect of the campaign, the two received near identical (if still negative) coverage: 15 percent positive to 32 percent negative for Obama verus 14 percent positive and 32 percent negative for Romney.


Dylan Byers looks (http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/pew-msnbc-more-negative-than-fox-148088.html) at the cable news wars:


From August 27 through October 21, 71 percent of MSNBC's coverage of Mitt Romney this year was negative, far outperforming Fox News's negative coverage of President Barack Obama, which came in at 46 percent… The negative-to-positive ratio on MSNBC was roughly 23-to-1; the negative-to-positive ratio on Fox News was 8-to-1.


Alex Fitzpatrick notes (http://mashable.com/2012/11/02/social-media-negative-politics/) that social media coverage was more negative than traditional media coverage:


[The study] found that the conversation on social media “has been relentlessly negative and relatively unmoved by campaign events that have shifted the mainstream narrative” compared to mainstream media election coverage. How bad is it? Across Twitter, Facebook and blogs, neither Obama nor Romney had a single week of more positive than negative chatter.


The tone of the blogosphere is illustrated in the above chart.


http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/