The Nature of Things

Remember a couple of weeks ago, before the presidential debate, when all the political polls, even the very right-wing ones like Fox News and Rasmussen, showed President Obama leading in the race? This had been the case for several weeks and the right-wingers were going crazy! "The polls are biased!" they cried. "They are weighted in favor of Obama!" "The pollsters are asking the wrong questions!" "They are interviewing the wrong people - too many Democrats, too many people with cell phones!" Now, there's been almost a complete turnaround in the polls. Nearly all of them either show Romney leading or basically tied with President Obama. And what do we hear from all those whiners about bias in polling? Crickets. They are all too busy chortling about what a terrible debater President Obama is and how Super Mitt is headed for victory! You don't think the whiners could have possibly been insincere in their critique of pollsters, do you? You d...

The polling organization Public Policy Polling has been busy in Mississippi and Alabama ahead of this week's Republican primary there. What they have found is that there is a virtual tie among Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney . That's probably bad news for Gingrich since this should be his natural territory. The poll-takers have been asking questions besides candidate preference, as well, and some of their findings are really interesting, if not particularly shocking for those of us who lived a good portion of our lives there. On questions involving President Obama's religion and the respondent's belief about evolution, this is what they found. Alabama Republican Primary voters: Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim, or are you not sure? Christian:  14 Muslim:  45 Not sure:  41 Do you believe in evolution, or not? Believe in evolution:  26 Do not:  60 Not sure:  13 Mississippi Republican Primary voters: Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian ...

As the so-called Super Congress gets to work on a budgeting agreement, one has to wonder if they will pay any attention at all to the opinions of the vast majority of Americans.  The plain, old, every-day Congress didn't, and since these guys are all members of that Congress, even if they are now called "Super", the prospects don't seem very positive.  Still, I suppose we can hope. There is no excuse for them to wonder what Americans think about this issue.  All the poll-takers have been busily asking the questions for almost a year:  How should the debt problem be solved?  By raising taxes?  By cutting spending?  By a combination of the two?  By an astonishing majority, Americans in every single poll even the one by right-winger Rasmussen, prefer that taxes be raised or that there be a combination of raised taxes and spending cuts.  Here's a chart that outlines the findings. Click on chart to see a larger image. You can see that the averag...