Believing Polls? Hardly.

I was reading today about how polls are taken.  Most of them require land phone lines and people who are willing to answer the call, and the questions.  I don't answer when I get a call (I know my mother doesn't either).  It makes me wonder just who does.

Then there is the writing of the poll questions.  They can be skewed to solicit certain kinds of responses.  After all, they are multiple choice so the choices can be whatever the poll taker wants the results to show.

Think how you would answer the old standard, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"  What if your possible responses were:  1) Recently    2) Maybe next week   3) Not yet.

The pollster could therefore state that almost all respondents were beaters, but some had stopped and a small percentage would be stopping soon.  Hardly realistic, but an accurate representation of the poll results.

Since most polls are media related, it is little wonder that they run liberal.  That's why I'm skeptical of their results.

Obama and fiscal cliffs

I don't know if anyone much reads this, but it makes me feel better to put it out there.  Obviously, there are some political cartoonists whose work I enjoy.  I'm sharing a few of those today.

I have wondered if President Obama really had an idea what his policies were doing to regular people.  I know he considers himself far about the average citizen.

He makes noises in speeches about how Congress wouldn't work with him.  Even his own party couldn't support some of his ideas, and he has never offered a budget that Congress could take seriously.

I think we are in for a bad ride, and if President Obama gets reelected, our country is in some very deep trouble.

Media spin

The Mainstream Media is trying hard to make sure Barack Obama wins the 2012 election.  There is very little written or spoken on the major networks that is not glowing about him.  On the other hand, the microscope never wavers from Mitt Romney.  Things he says--no matter what the subject--are dissected, criticized, and enlarged for days.  President Obama can say whatever, even things that are proven false or misleading and he is almost never called on it.  He's golden.

Mitt Romney can say nothing that is positively reported by the major networks or national press.

Kathleen Parker provided an excellent example from a couple of months ago:

 I left out her entertaining account of how that make-believe strategy session may have sounded.

Romney said he would repeal Obamacare because he has always says that.  How would the pundits have described his speech if he had modified it to fit what he thought his audience wanted to hear?  They would have pilloried him as a deceiver.

I'll conclude with more of Kathleen Parker's words about the use of the word Obamacare:

I agree.

One more example from the newspaper today:

It's not just me who has noticed.

I forgot that I'd saved an article written by Charles Krauthammer, who explains this same idea in a very clear and erudite way.  This is not the entire piece, just the paragraphs I thought were the most revealing.

Business and Obama

President Obama has had few real jobs.  He was a professor for a short time, but I know of no other real jobs.  Being a Senator or Representative is supposed to be a public service job, but it is not full time (unless you count all the time spent working to get reelected).  Community Organizing is not a job one sees advertised in the classifieds.  If he has actually worked somewhere else, no one talks about it.

So, admittedly, he knows nothing about the difficulties and rewards of creating and maintaining a business--accounts payable, receivable, capital, tax accounting, personnel, materials, organization, etc.

Even ignorance is no excuse, these same entrepreneurs paid the taxes that made everything possible.  Many of them probably worked on some of these things too.

This last comic really sums it up.  

Thinking about the next two months

I'm glad the Conventions are over, but if you watched you saw there was little doubt about the mainstream media's liberal bias.  I suppose that if you lean far left yourself, you likely thought everything was fair and normal.  The "talking heads" that felt the need to tell us what we just heard picked apart all the speakers at the Republican Convention and waxed poetic about those at the Democratic Convention.  

If the media were trying to be really fair, talking to Al Sharpton after the RNC would be countered by Rush Limbaugh at the DNC.  That would be equal treatment.

I only hope that the next two months will go quickly.  I have read that many people now get a lot of their information from the Internet and/or social media.  Maybe that is partly because they realize that most of the regular media are viewing the election from just one angle, one restrictive prospective.

I hope people will read, study, and investigate before voting.  Those who just believe the sound bites (many of which will be misleading or deceptive) are the people I worry about.

Now that Mitt Romney has chosen his running mate, there is a whole new level of venom coming from the extreme left and the Obama camp.  Senator Ryan is going to do so many awful things that no one could possibly want him as vice president.  With help from the mainstream media, misleading and false information will abound.

Yes, Senator Ryan was bold and brave enough to offer a budget plan for the entitlement budget disaster that is looming.  Has President Obama offered anything?  Harry Reid?  Not really.  President Obama's only plan is to tax the "rich" more and offer possible, pretend savings that not even his own budget office believes will happen and would not stop us from falling off the fiscal cliff we are heading for.

We need to listen, consider facts, figure out ways to solve the problems, not just cross our fingers and assume things will be okay.

There just are not enough taxpayers to keep his ideas of endless money possible.  Repeated borrowing and printing money are like using credit irresponsibly.  It catches up and bankruptcy follows.  A bankrupt government helps no one.