Just relax

I love this picture, and cannot wait for the 2012 campaigns to kick into high gear.

Let's not forget her response to the State of the Union on behalf of the Tea Party...

Global warming is not real

(via Gawker.com)

A study conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org was released last week and revealed interesting findings about the level of misinformation among news watchers. 

In most cases increased exposure to news sources decreased misinformation, but in some cases certain news sources on some issues, higher levels of exposure increased misinformation.  The survey respondents were asked twelve political questions.  The news sources included news publications, network TV news broadcasts, public broadcasting (NPR or PBS), Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.  The daily viewing habits of the respondents for each source varied from never watch, rarely watch, watch once a week, watch two to three times a week, and watch daily.

Most striking of the results was that daily viewers of Fox News were significantly more likely to believe the following:

• most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses
• most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit
• the economy is getting worse
• most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring
• the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
• their own income taxes have gone up
• the auto bailout only occurred under Obama
• when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it
• it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States

According to the study the effects increased incrementally with increasing levels of exposure and were not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it.

Lamestream media

Liberal or Conservative?

I'd like to perform a regressional analysis on these statistics:

Paging Jefferson Smith

Yesterday the new GOP House and Senate leadership provided an assessment of the midterm elections and the Republican landslide victory during a press conference on Capitol Hill.

“We're determined to stop the agenda Americans have rejected and to turn the ship around. We'll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront them when they don't,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “This election yesterday was clearly a referendum on the administration and the Democratic majority here in the Congress. Ignoring the voters and their wishes, as you could see during the entire two-year period, produces predictable results.”

The GOP made historic gains in the House on Tuesday, with a net gain of 60 seats, and the leadership has said they are going to follow the will of the voters by cutting spending and taxes. 

In 2008 the voters put their support behind the Democrat’s agenda which included health care reform, cap-and-trade legislation and a stimulus package, among other things. Put into perspective, the 21 seat Republican majority seems less drastic when compared to the 81 seat majority the Democrats held before the midterms. 

In January of 2009, just two months after the presidential election, the 111^th Congress set to work on an $800 billion stimulus package.  A Pew survey showed that 57% of Americans felt that the stimulus package was a good idea, only 22% opposed it.  Yet, the Republicans voted as a block against the package.

On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell touched on the health care legislation passed earlier this year. “The health care bill in my view is, sort of, a metaphor for the government excess that we witnessed over the last two years,” McConnell said.

Though President Obama’s health care legislation was not as widely accepted as the stimulus package but at the time of passage more Americans favored (48%) the overhaul, than those who opposed it (31%).  Again, nearly every Republican opposed the bill.

The Republican's change of heart and strategy is puzzling, but less so considering McConnell’s statement to the National Journal last week when he said, “"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

"The time to go along and get along is over," Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), the chairman of the House Republican Conference said. "House Republicans know that.”

The GOP’s leadership’s rhetoric is troubling.  It’s not only an obstructionist approach to lawmaking, but one that ignores the needs and wishes of the American people in the pursuit of power.  This may be the cold, hard reality of politics, but the idealist in me likes to hope there are still some Jefferson Smith’s in Washington.



(Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)