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Results of Recent PollsThis poll ran from June 15 to 21, 2009.
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted from June 12 to 15, 2009, shows that 56 percent of Americans approve of President Barack Obama's performance, down from 61 percent percent in April. President Obama's job approval rating fell to 58% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from June 16-18, a new low for Obama in Gallup tracking. This poll ran from June 15 to 21, 2009.
Donna Barrett, the president and CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., writing at the Newspaper Association of America web site on April 29, 2009. Barrett wrote: "Enough already. Partial facts and misinformation about newspapers are distorting the view for everyone, including readers and advertisers. Let's set the record straight: Newspapers still enjoy considerable readership and deliver strong results for advertisers. More Americans read printed newspapers than own dogs. More Americans read printed newspapers than watch the Super Bowl. Newspapers and their Web sites reach a larger audience than ever before. The crisis facing newspapers is not an audience problem. It is a revenue problem. Newspapers deliver vital information to communities, as they have since this country was settled. But something has to pay for all of that news. Advertising has traditionally supported the valuable content provided by newspapers. Two developments have devastated that revenue. The first is the recession. Newspapers are no different than television, radio, Internet, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and all businesses that rely on other businesses for money from advertising and promotion. The recession has led to a significant decrease in ad spending. Everyone is hurting. Newspapers just talk about it more. Free Internet sites such as Craigslist are the other factor. These sites siphon off considerable classified advertising. It is tough to compete against free, and free doesn't pay for journalists." This poll ran from June 8 to 14, 2009.
Robert G. Picard, a professor of media economics at Jonkoping University in Sweden, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, and the author and editor of 23 books, including "The Economics and Financing of Media Companies." The comment is from the opinion article "Why journalists deserve low pay" published by the Christian Science Monitor on May 19, 2009. Picard wrote: "Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted. "Actually, journalists deserve low pay. "Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren\'t creating much value these days. "Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models." Picard added: "To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to provide immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped away by contemporary communication developments. Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge, determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay. "Until journalists can redefine the value of their labor above this level, they deserve low pay. Well-paying employment requires that workers possess unique skills, abilities, and knowledge. It also requires that the labor must be non-commoditized. Unfortunately, journalistic labor has become commoditized. Most journalists share the same skills sets and the same approaches to stories, seek out the same sources, ask similar questions, and produce relatively similar stories. This interchangeability is one reason why salaries for average journalists are relatively low and why columnists, cartoonists, and journalists with special expertise (such as finance reporters) get higher wages." This poll ran from June 1 to 7, 2009.
Automotive historian Bob Elton, quoted in the article "Can "Government Motors" succeed where GM failed?" published by Reuters on May 31, 2009. The article cites "fundamental problems" with General Motors: "GM, which has posted $88 billion of losses since the start of 2005, has too many plants, too many workers and too many dealerships to be comfortable with a dramatic decline in sales. The automaker also has more than 3,000 parts suppliers, many of which have strained balance sheets and may require financial support because of extensive production cuts by GM and Chrysler since the start of the year. "I don't think they're going to be successful in answering the fundamental problems of this company -- they are addressing the financial issues, but not the business issues," said Stuart Hirshfield, a bankruptcy lawyer with the Mintz Levin law firm. Under the restructuring, GM wants to reduce the number of U.S. plants to 31 by 2012, from 47 facilities now. It has also promised a new small car investment to the United Auto Workers union. "Although they have made significant progress on the cost side, the product side and the manufacturing footprint are still long-term challenges," Fitch Ratings managing director Mark Oline said. To fund GM's restructuring, the U.S. government already plans to provide to another $40 billion, on top of $19.4 billion already provided in emergency funds. The total cost could quickly rise if GM falters, analysts caution. "I think this is going to be Obama's Vietnam," said automotive historian Bob Elton. "Every time he turns around, there goes another $20 billion." This poll ran from May 24 to 31, 2009.
Adam Sternbergh, from the article "Spam Haiku: Why 60 percent of Twitterers quit," published in the May 17, 2009 edition of New York magazine. Sternbergh wrote: "It’s likely you’d no sooner heard of Twitter than you learned that Ashton Kutcher was already using it. So was Anderson Cooper. Suddenly, every gnarled politician in D.C. was sending out “tweets” (instant group messages) to their “followers.” (I’m by no means an early adopter, but when John McCain beats me to a new gizmo, I worry.) Even Oprah is tweeting, prompting the Times to announce, “Twittermania has only begun.” "But one nagging question lingers: Just what is it good for? The implications of hive-mind citizen reporting are interesting, certainly. And it can work as a real-time search engine. But otherwise, being pestered by a constant stream of people’s thoughts sounds to me less like a communications breakthrough than a form of torture devised by Philip K. Dick. "Recently, Nielsen reported that 60 percent of people who use Twitter once fail to return the following month. (At a similar stage of its growth, Facebook only lost about 20 percent.) In response to this report, one online commenter argued that new users simply don’t get that Twitter is perfect for “involving your brand in relevant conversations.” Eureka! Maybe this explains why so many writers, pundits, politicians, and celebs tweet, even as the rest of America shrugs. After all, those are exactly the types to think that (a) their every stray thought is publishable poetry and (b) it’s crucial to constantly insert their name—their brand—into the conversation. "Which brings us back to Dan Baum. As it turned out, he had not only a story to tell but a product to sell: his book Nine Lives. A gossip site called Baum’s confessional “a watershed moment for Twitter, and storytelling in general,” and it’s true that a few of his updates achieved a koanlike beauty (e.g., David Remnick’s final dismissal: “?‘That’s not possible,’ he said, and that was that”). But reading this entire tale on Twitter was like reading a novel, line by line, inside a thousand fortune cookies. Not ideal for storytelling, no, but man, what a fantastic gimmick. "That’s Twitter: A tool to mass-blast the public with whatever message you choose, whether you’re promoting your book or yourself. This practice used to have a different name: spam. But “tweeting” sounds much more cuddly than, say, “shilling,” and Twitter’s a much cuter name than Wiki-spam." This poll ran from May 11 to 17, 2009.
Deborah Armstrong, senior VP of sales and marketing at Mediaspace Solutions, a company that places newspaper advertising. Quoted in the article "Higher ad-to-edit ratio not a good thing," published in the July 2008 issue of Editor & Publisher magazine. Armstrong said: "Newspapers are the most trusted news medium. That sense of trust helps your ad when readers see it." This poll ran from May 4 to 10, 2009.
Casino developer and operator Steve Wynn, talking with Charlie Rose on the CBS Television Network program 60 Minutes from April 12, 2009. Wynn has recently opened a new Las Vegas casino called the Encore. At age 67 he is a living legend in the gambling business, having built the Mirage and Bellagio casinos. He sold the Bellagio and Mirage Resorts in 2000, pocketing more than $600 million. Born Steve Weinberg, Wynn grew up in the gambling business. His father, Michael Wynnn, was a compulsive gambler who owned a string of bingo parlors. When Steve was 10, his father took him to Las Vegas for the first time. Wynn told Rose: "My father had a terrible problem with gambling. He was a guy that enjoyed that activity so much that he lost control of it." When Wynn was an infant, his father changed the family name from Weinberg to Wynn. Michael Wynn died during heart surgery at age 47, leaving the family with a gambling debt of $350,000. Steve Wynn took over the family business, made a success of it, and paid back the money his father owed. Wynn told Rose the only way to win in a casino is to own one, "unless you're very lucky." Rose asked Wynn if he had ever known a gambler who went to Las Vegas, won big and walked away. "Never," Wynn replied. This poll ran from April 27 to May 3, 2009.
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press published the results of a study about how concerned Americans are for the future of newspapers on March 12, 2009, titled "Stop the Presses? Many Americans Wouldn't Care a Lot if Local Papers Folded." They reported: "As many newspapers struggle to stay economically viable, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community "a lot." Even fewer (33%) say they would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available. "Not unexpectedly, those who get local news regularly from newspapers are much more likely than those who read them less often to see the potential shutdown of a local paper as a significant loss. More than half of regular newspaper readers (56%) say that if the local newspaper they read most often no longer published -- either in print or online -- it would hurt the civic life of the community a lot; an almost identical percentage (55%) says they would personally miss reading the paper a lot if it were no longer available." This poll ran from April 20 to 26, 2009.
Susan Boyle is a 47 year-old woman from Blackburn, Scotland who auditioned for the TV show Britain\'s Got Talent on April 11, 2009. Britain\'s Got Talent is a British amateur talent competition owned by Simon Cowell. The show is similar to American Idol, where Cowell also appears as a talent judge. Before her performance, Ms. Boyle said that she has never been married, never been kissed and lives with her cat Pebbles. The unassuming, plain-speaking and plainly dressed woman was greeted on stage by a mix of skepticism and discomfort from the audience and judges alike. She then sang I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables to wild applause and a standing ovation, with the judges tripping over themselves and each other to praise her performance. Judge Simon Cowell called her singing "extraordinary." Fellow judge Piers Morgan said her "stunning" performance was "the biggest surprise I\'ve had in three years of this show." Before her performance, Ms. Boyle was unemployed. She sings in the choir of a local church and has lived alone in her childhood home since the death of her 91-year-old mother two years ago. On April 17, Ms. Boyle appeared on CNN\'s Larry King Live, where she sang My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. Ms. Boyle has also been invited to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Major news media around the world have described her extraordinary and very sudden rise to fame. At the end of the day on Sunday, April 19, 2009, the two YouTube videos showing her performance had been viewed more than 40 million times. Ms. Boyle will do a record for Simon Cowell\'s record label.
This poll ran from April 13 to 19, 2009.
News Corporation Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, speaking on April 2, 2009 at the Cable Show, the cable industry's largest annual gathering, in Washington, D.C. Dow Jones Newswires reported: "As for the woes of the newspapers and other media businesses, Murdoch said the proliferation of content available online for free is breaking the industry's business models. "Nobody is making money with free content on the web except search," said Murdoch, noting the trend is particularly worrisome in the newspaper publishing, where News Corp. owns a variety of assets. "People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's going to have to change." News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire. Murdoch predicted that his chief U.S. rival in newspapers, the New York Times Co. (NYT), will have to charge online for access to its flagship newspaper. "The inventory of display advertising on the web is doubling every year," said Murdoch. "They're never going to make money on an advertising model to replace what they're losing." The Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp., has maintained a successful online subscription business for years, but the New York Times has been unsuccessful with its efforts to charge readers for Web access." This poll ran from April 6 to 12, 2009.
In the article "Obama Walks a Fine Line," published in the Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2009, writer Gerald F. Seib argues that General Motors is not too big to fail. Seib wrote: "There will be some explaining to do on the left about why at least one auto maker -- Chrysler -- is being forced into bankruptcy, and another threatened with the same, while financial firms such as American International Group get whatever help is needed to stay solvent. "I'm somewhat troubled again by the constant different treatment of auto companies and their employees and the treatment of some of those good-hearted people such as AIG and all those financial companies that have money showered upon them," said Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who is generally upbeat about the plan. "There are, of course, good reasons for disparate treatment of the financial and auto sectors. As important as GM and Chrysler are to the American economy, their demise wouldn't pose the same kind of systemic risk that would come with the demise of a giant financial institution entangled with customers and long-term contracts rippling across the globe. Big as GM is, it probably isn't too big to fail. "More subtly, the public fuming over the rescue of financial firms is precisely why the administration probably couldn't do a flat-out bailout of GM and Chrysler even if it wanted to. Writing a big check to tide over the two auto makers for a while would have been the far easier path. But there is too much anger, and too little money, lying down that path now. "These companies -- and this industry -- must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state," Mr. Obama declared in announcing his plan. This poll ran from March 26 to April 5, 2009.
Gabriel Sherman, from the article "The Magazine Isn't Dying," posted on March 17, 2009 at The Big Money web site, a service of Slate. Sherman wrote about the shutdown of Best Life, describing the magazine as "a relic from a bygone era." He added: "The news of Best Life's demise came on the same day that American Express Publishing announced it was folding Travel+Leisure Golf, an 11-year-old spinoff of its venerable travel title. Taken together, the latest magazine failures signaled to many publishing observers that magazines — long thought to be partly insulated from the digital forces battering the newspaper industry — are locked in their own death spiral. For evidence, they point out that since last March, more than two dozen major magazines have folded. "But a closer look at the types of magazines that have closed reveals a more nuanced and, in many respects, hopeful portrait of the magazine business. According to a list compiled by Advertising Age, titles that have shut down in the past year come from the shelter, technology, travel, luxury, and teen categories. The reason for each category's challenges are obvious, from a meltdown in the housing sector to teenagers' wholesale abandonment of print for Facebook and Twitter. "Yet the general conclusion that many extrapolate from these recent shutdowns is wrong. It's not that magazines are dying; it's that magazines that were created solely for advertising or market-share purposes are. New magazine titles often fail from a combination of bad timing, bad thinking, and a bad choice of brands to extend. Put simply, there are too many mediocre magazines (as anyone who gazes at the newsstand at Barnes and Nobles would conclude)." This poll ran from March 17 to 25, 2009.
On March 3, 2009, NBC News (MSNBC) reported that President Obama's popularity rating "is at an all-time high." Mark Murray wrote: "Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he's doing in the White House." This poll ran from March 2 to 16, 2009.
Paul Starr, Stuart professor of communications and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and the author most recently of "Freedom's Power" (Basic Books). In the article "Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)," published in The New Republic on March 4, 2009, Starr wrote: "News coverage is not all that newspapers have given us. They have lent the public a powerful means of leverage over the state, and this leverage is now at risk. If we take seriously the notion of newspapers as a fourth estate or a fourth branch of government, the end of the age of newspapers implies a change in our political system itself. Newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both government and business. If we are to avoid a new era of corruption, we are going to have to summon that power in other ways. Our new technologies do not retire our old responsibilities." This poll ran from February 23 to March 1, 2009.
Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management at Google, from his post "From the height of this place" on the Official Google Blog on February 16, 2009. Rosenberg wrote: "Publishing used to be constrained by physical limitations. You had to have a printing press and a distribution network, or a transmitter, to publish to any sort of critical mass, so broadcasting was the norm. No more. Today, most publishing is done by users for users, one-to-one or one-to-many (think of Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube). Free speech is no longer just a right granted by law, but one imbued by technology. "The era of information being more powerful when hoarded has also passed. As our economist Hal Varian has noted, in the early days of the Web every document had at the bottom, "Copyright 1997. Do not redistribute." Now those same documents have at the bottom, "Copyright 2009. Click here to send to your friends." Sharing, not guarding information, has become the golden standard on the web, so not only can anyone publish, but virtually everyone does. This is both good and bad news. No one argues the value of free speech, but the vast majority of stuff we find on the web is useless. The clamor of junk threatens to drown out voices of quality." This poll ran from February 16 to 22, 2009.
Jim Skinner, the CEO of McDonald's, quoted in the article "At McDonald's, the Happiest Meal Is Hot Profits" by Andrew Martin, published in the January 10, 2009 edition of the New York Times. Martin wrote: " It wasn't too long ago that McDonald's, vilified as making people fat, was written off as irrelevant. Now, six years into a rebound spawned by more appealing food and a less aggressive expansion, McDonald's seems to have won over some of its most hardened skeptics. The chain has managed to sustain its momentum even as the economy and the restaurant industry as a whole are struggling. Month after month, McDonald's has surprised analysts by posting stronger-than-expected sales in the United States and abroad." This poll ran from February 9 to 15, 2009.
On February 5, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Kellogg's will no longer use the services of Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. Marketing experts have estimated that Phelps could draw $100 million in endorsement deals. The AP wrote: "Kellogg Co. said Thursday that it will drop its endorsement deal with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps following his acknowledgment he inhaled from a marijuana pipe. The 23-year-old swimming star has apologized for his "regrettable" behavior and "bad judgment" after a photo appeared Sunday in the British tabloid News of the World that showed Phelps inhaling from a marijuana pipe. Most of his major sponsors, such as Visa Inc., Speedo, luxury Swiss watchmaker Omega and sports beverage PureSport's maker Human Performance Labs, stood by the athlete following the news, even if they didn't condone his behavior. But Battle Creek, Mich.-based cereal and snack maker Kellogg said Phelps's behavior is "not consistent with the image of Kellogg." This poll ran from February 2 to 8, 2009.
Journalist Walter Mossberg, who writes the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal. He began working for the Journal in 1970 and covered American and international affairs until he changed his focus to reviewing personal technology in 1991. Mossberg's reasoning behind writing the column was that "...All the columns at the time were geeks writing for geeks. The tone was invariably very condescending toward normal people. Either you were a dummy or you became a techie." Mossberg's debut column began: "Personal computers are too hard to use, and it's not your fault." Walter Mossberg has been called "a champion of the technology to befuddled Everyman" and "the most powerful arbiter of consumer tastes in the computer world today" by Newsweek Magazine, "the most influential computer journalist", by Time Magazine and Brill's Content Magazine considers him to be one of the 25 most influential people in the US news media. In 1999 Mossberg received the Loeb Award For Commentary for his Personal Technology column. This poll ran from January 26 to February 1, 2009.
Simon Dumenco, from the article "How the Big Gulp Approach to News Makes Readers Scram" published in Advertising Age magazine on January 19, 2009. His mention of "the Trib" refers to the recent change at the Chicago Tribune from a broadsheet to a tabloid format for newsstand buyers: "The Trib move just underscores what newspaper executives still don't get: They're in the business of producing a product that makes millions of consumers feel bad about themselves. The brutal reality here is really about content, not form. As much as newspapers think they've evolved over the years -- adding colorful infographics and flufftastic lifestyle coverage -- the problem is that they still produce information in a way that makes people feel unhappy. I'm not talking about ain't-the-news-depressing unhappy. I'm talking unhappy as in readers thinking, basically, I just can't handle that much information; I'm already overwhelmed! I don't have time for this in my life! I can't keep up! Chances are, if you subscribe to a newspaper and don't have a pre-modern life of leisure, your newspaper actually makes you feel bad too, if you think about it. Issues pile up, often largely unread. You think frequently about the dead-tree obscenity of it all, particularly on Sundays, when the first thing you do is peel off section after section you know you'll never read. But even the sections you do want to read you often can't get through. As for individual pieces -- well, a handful of star reporters and a columnist or two might more or less consistently deliver enlightenment, but time and time again you probably find yourself quitting pieces after the first few paragraphs, or somehow getting all the way through them and then thinking, "That wasn't worth my time." That surely happens frequently, too, if you have a habit of reading newspaper content online -- more so, actually, because content written in classic J-school-taught "pyramid style" can seem all the more lumbering and flabby amidst the milieu of crisply written blog posts and zippy data points." This poll ran from January 19 to 25, 2009.
Martin Luther King Jr., quoted by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Colin Powell in the article "Let\'s Renew America Together," published in the Wall Street Journal on January 17, 2009. Referring to the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, Powell wrote: Next week marks a fresh start for our nation. Whatever one's political leanings, each presidential inauguration is an opportunity for Americans to renew the energy required to deal with the challenges we face -- never more so than when the challenges we face are without precedent. Over the course of their transition, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden have spoken with confidence and acted with competence. They\'ve unveiled their plans for governing -- plans that recognize it will require federal money to solve our economic problems at home, and diplomatic and military skill to meet our obligations abroad. But they also realize an equally important truth. While government has a role to play in restoring the American dream at home and rekindling the dream that is America abroad, there are limits to its ability to restore our sense of purpose as a nation. That task falls to us. Particularly in hard times like these, we are charged with living up to our shared responsibility to one another. My experience is that in times of need, the American people recognize that when one of our fellow citizens is suffering, those of us with the power to ease or eliminate that suffering should come forward. This is not a time to retreat to our homes and wait until it's safe to emerge. It is the time to give more, to step forward and serve our fellow citizens, and to reach into the reservoir of this nation's unrivaled capacity for good. That's why, at this moment of great purpose, Mr. Obama has chosen the eve of his inauguration to launch "Renew America Together," his call for all Americans to make an ongoing commitment to better the lives of others in their communities and their country. It's fitting that he will do this on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day when we honor the legacy of a man who lived his life in service to others and believed that "everybody can be great, because anybody can serve." This poll ran from January 12 to 18, 2009.
The title of an opinion article written by George E. Bisharat, a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The article, subtitled "Hamas\'s violations are no justification for Israel's actions," was published in the Wall Street Journal on January 10, 2009. Bisharat wrote: "Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel's acts. "The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an "armed attack" from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them -- as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable -- to launch wars of aggression. That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting." This poll ran from January 3 to 11, 2009.
Meg James, from the article "U.S. households watch more than 8 hours of TV a day," published on November 25, 2008 in the Los Angeles Times. James wrote: Television viewing is on the rise despite competition from video games, iPods and the Internet. The U.S. is a nation of even bigger couch potatoes than previously realized. Nielsen Co. left little doubt Monday when it reported that television use is at an all-time high in the U.S., with home TVs turned on for an average of 8 hours, 18 minutes a day. A decade ago, American households watched an average of 7 hours, 15 minutes a day. Television continued to be the screen of choice despite increasing competition from computers. During the third quarter -- when the Olympic Games and presidential debates were broadcast -- American individuals watched more than 142 hours of TV a month, which was five hours more than in the same period in 2007, or an increase of 4%, according to Nielsen. That comes out to more than 4 1/2 hours a day. (By comparison, the typical American gets only 6 hours, 40 minutes of sleep per night, according to a 2008 poll by the National Sleep Foundation.) The firm's findings might seem counterintuitive because many experts predicted that the Internet would take a big bite out of people's TV time. "While new media technologies have offered new entertainment options -- from the Internet, mobile phones and iPods -- television viewing has actually gone up," said David Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS Corp. "Viewing levels continue to climb." This poll ran from December 20, 2008 to January 2, 2009.
In 1897, Virginia Hanlon sent a letter to the editor of The New York Sun:
"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. On September 21, 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church of The Sun replied: "VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. This poll ran from December 15 to 19, 2008.
On Sunday, December 14, 2008, the Reuters news agency reported that a government bailout of the American auto industry may not happen for some time, if it happens at all: "Lawmakers making the rounds on U.S. television networks on Sunday said they expect the administration to act soon to ward off a collapse of the U.S. auto industry, which could lead to millions of job losses and inflict even greater pain on the recession-mired U.S. economy. Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said on CBS' "Face The Nation" the Treasury Department has been talking this weekend with automakers about their balance sheets. "I don't think they yet know what they're going to do," said Corker, who added that he spoke with White House officials Sunday morning. He offered no further details. Corker tried to assemble a compromise plan for U.S. senators that ultimately failed late Thursday due to disagreements over workers' pay and benefits. Bush said last week his administration would consider using part of the Treasury's $700 billion bailout package for financial institutions to keep the Big 3 U.S. automakers going over the short term as they sought lasting solutions. United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, the top labor union official, said on CNN's "Late Edition" that his organization was in discussions with the administration but has been given no sense of timing of any relief. "We've not been given any indication of that at all," he said. Some prominent Republican lawmakers oppose bailing out GM, Chrysler and Ford, criticizing them for making inefficient cars that not enough Americans want to buy." On December 19, 2008 President George W. Bush commited $17.4 billion in government money to provide General Motors and Chrysler with cash they say they need to continue operating during the coming year. This poll ran from December 4 to 14, 2008.
On November 14, 2008, the University of Maryland released the results of a study of television viewing habits, titled "Study: Channeling Unhappiness, In Good and Bad Economic Times." COLLEGE PARK, Md. - A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as "very happy" spend more time reading and socializing. The study appears in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research. Analyzing 30-years worth of national data from time use studies and a continuing series of social attitude surveys, the Maryland researchers report that spending time watching television may contribute to viewers' happiness in the moment, with less positive effects in the long run. "TV doesn't really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does," says University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson, the study co-author and a pioneer in time use studies. "It's more passive and may provide escape - especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise." Unhappy people watch 30 percent more hours of TV a day than very happy people, according to Robinson's report, which was recently published in the journal Social Indicators Research. This poll ran from November 24 to December 3, 2008.
In Lima Peru on November 23, 2008, attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on his last scheduled foreign trip, President George W. Bush offered world leaders some advice about the unfolding financial crisis: "Resist the temptation to overcorrect by imposing regulations that would stifle innovation and choke off growth." Bush said while the crisis shows "there are times when government intervention is essential," he believes it should only be temporary. He added: "I think we should focus our efforts on three great forces for economic growth -- free markets, free trade and free people." This poll ran from November 17 to 23, 2008.
Jan Egeland, from his new book "A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity." Egeland was the United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from June 2003 to December 2006. In that role he worked to resolve conflicts in Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan, and was involved in relief efforts following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, among other natural disasters. Reviewing Egeland's book in the June 26, 2008 edition of The New York Review of Books, Brian Urquhart wrote: "Egeland is convinced that the condition of most people in the world is getting better, and that with the help of international organizations the improvement can be steadily extended. Millions have received relief and even improved security as wars ended. He writes that we now have the technology and the institutions to end "the massive suffering that is taking place on our watch," although he adds that "we are only on the first leg of a long marathon toward coherent and predictable multilateral action for all vulnerable communities." This poll ran from November 8 to 16, 2008.
Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co., quoted by Kate Gibson of the financial news web site MarketWatch on June 26, 2008. Hogan said: "General Motors is going to go out of business, at least according to Goldman Sachs." On Friday, November 7, 2008, General Motors Corporation reported a third-quarter loss of $2.5 billion and warned that it might not have sufficient cash flow to continue operating in 2009. "There just aren't a whole lot of options left for GM," Erich Merkle, auto analyst at Crowe Horwath LLP, said. "The company probably won't survive without federal intervention. The question for our government is whether it's cheaper for taxpayers to keep the industry alive or to let them go under." In late September, the U.S. government approved $25 billion in loans to American car manufacturers, to help them produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. But auto industry executives are pressing for more financial aid. GM has joined with Ford Motor Company, Chrysler and the United Auto Workers union in asking for a U.S. government rescue package of $10 billion or more. Backers say it is needed to keep the industry from collapse. U.S. auto sales plunged to 25-year lows in October. Since the beginning of 2008, GM shares have lost 82% of their value. They closed Friday at $4.36, down 44 cents for the day. This poll ran from November 3 to 7, 2008.
James Carville, a political commentator and Democratic party strategist. He said: "The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic operative instead of a Republican was because there were more Democrats that didn't have a clue than there were Republicans." Born October 25, 1944, Carville is a former U.S. Marine, political consultant and commentator. Known as the Ragin' Cajun, Carville was the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Carville co-hosted the CNN program Crossfire until its final broadcast in June 2005. Now he hosts a weekly program on XM Radio titled 60/20 Sports with Luke Russert, son of Tim Russert (host of NBC's Meet The Press until his death in 2008). Carville is married to Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. This poll ran from October 27 to November 2, 2008.
This poll ran from October 20 to 26, 2008.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, from the article "In Final Months in Office, Bush Is Burdened but Still Confident," published in the October 10, 2008 edition of The New York Times. Stolberg was referring to President George W. Bush's view that the United States is fortunate that he is president during the worldwide financial crisis now unfolding. Stolberg wrote: "George W. Bush began his presidency with the worst terrorist attack on American soil and he is ending it with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In between, he confronted a hurricane that nearly wiped New Orleans off the map as his administration showed ineptitude in its response. "Now, as he spends his last months in office trying to avert a global economic collapse, Mr. Bush has been telling people privately that it's a good thing he's in charge. "He said that if it was going to happen at all, he was glad it was happening under his presidency, because he had a good group of people in D.C. working for him," Dru Van Steenberg, one of several small-business owners who met with Mr. Bush in San Antonio earlier this week. The president expressed the same sentiment, others said, during a similar private session in Chantilly, Va., the next day." This poll ran from October 13 to 19, 2008.
With the presidential election less than a month away, the race between Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama remains close. On Tuesday, October 7 2008, Obama and McCain debated before 80 undecided voters and a national television audience in a town-hall setting at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The debate came with an average of polls giving Obama an edge in the race to succeed President George W. Bush. McCain was trailing his Democratic challenger by nearly six percentage points in the latest average of polls from RealClear Politics. Calling the current financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression, Obama said it was "a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years" that McCain supported. Obama called for aiding homeowners and middle-class tax cuts to help Americans reeling from the crisis. McCain said the government should help Americans stay in their homes and also repeated his calls for energy independence and not raising taxes. The last presidential debate between Obama and McCain was held October 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Topics were the economy and domestic policy. This poll ran from October 6 to 12, 2008.
Kathleen Parker, a nationally syndicated columnist with conservative views, from the article "Palin Problem: She's out of her league," published in the Washington Post and National Review on September 26, 2008. Parker wrote: "As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion. "Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan's president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?) "And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she's had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively). "Finally, Palin's narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain's running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother. "Palin didn't make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. "It was fun while it lasted. "Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. "No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted." This poll ran from September 29 to October 5, 2008.
President George W. Bush, from a statement released by the White House on September 28, 2008 in response to the agreement by congressional leaders on a $700 billion rescue package for the financial industry. The president said: "Today, a bipartisan group of members of Congress, working with my administration, reached agreement on economic rescue legislation that is urgently needed to address a crisis in our financial system that threatens the entire U.S. economy. I appreciate the leadership shown by members on both sides of the aisle, who came together to write a very good bill." This poll ran from September 22 to 28, 2008.
The "Upfront" section of eWeek magazine from June 16, 2008, reported that "The majority of people who contact Congress do not believe lawmakers are interested in what they have to say. Nevertheless, driven by online advocacy campaigns, people are writing to their lawmakers in record numbers. "According to a new report by the Congressional Management Foundation, almost half of voting-age Americans -- 44 percent -- contacted a U.S. senator or representative sometime in the past five years. Among the Internet users who sent a message to Congress, 84 percent were asked to do so by a third party such as an advocacy group. "Just four years ago, a similar survey showed only 18 percent of voting-age Americans had contacted their lawmakers. "We found the Internet has contributed to millions more people learning about, and joining in, policy debates that used to be conducted by those operating inside the Beltway," said Beverly Bell, executive director of the nonprofit CMF. "These people are politically aware and politically active, and communicating with them should be a priority for every member of Congress." "But it's not. Why? It's really hard for any lawmaker's staff to deal with, say, the millions of emails that arrived this morning. All say the same thing -- they all demand the same vote for or against an issue. Even the CMF admits, "the constituent expectation for on-demand, online information can place a strain on many congressional offices already struggling with resource limitations and communications strategies designed for old media." "In summary, the same technology that empowers millions to mass email form letters to lawmakers also drives members of Congress to mass email boilerplate responses to constituents in return." This poll ran from September 8 to 21, 2008.
The latest polls of the presidential race between Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama show the race to be very close. The CNN poll of August 29-31, 2008 gave Obama a 1 point lead (Obama 49%, McCain 48%), and the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of August 15-18 showed Obama with a 3 point lead (Obama 45%, McCain 42%). However, the USA Today/Gallup poll of September 5-7 gave McCain a 10 point advantage (McCain 54%, Obama 44%). The CBS News poll of September 1-3 said that the race is a tie (Obama 42%, McCain 42%). This poll ran from September 1 to 7, 2008.
Rex Nutting, Washington bureau chief of the MarketWatch web site, from the article "Why McCain would be a mediocre president," published online on August 7, 2008. Arguing that Senator John McCain does not have the right stuff to be the next president, Nutting wrote: "Here are some reasons why McCain would be a mediocre president. "Like the current occupant of the White House, McCain got his first career breaks from the connections and money of his family, not from hard work. "The son and grandson of Navy admirals, he attended Annapolis where he did poorly. Nevertheless, he was commissioned as a pilot, where he performed poorly, crashing three planes before he failed to evade a North Vietnamese missile that destroyed his plane. McCain spent more than five years in a prison camp. "After his release, McCain knew his weak military record meant he'd never make admiral, so he turned his sights to a career in politics. With the help of his new wife's wealth, his new father-in-law's business connections and some powerful friends had made as a lobbyist for the Navy, he was elected in 1982 to a Congress in a district that he didn't reside in until the day the seat opened up. A few years later, he succeeded Barry Goldwater as a senator. "McCain hasn't accomplished much in the Senate. Even his own campaign doesn't trumpet his successes, probably because the few victories he's had still rankle Republicans. "His campaign finance law failed to significantly reduce the role of money in politics. He failed to get a big tobacco bill through the Senate. He's failed to change the way Congress spends money; his bill to give the president a line-item veto was declared unconstitutional, and the system of pork and earmarks continues unabated. He failed to reform the immigration system. "Every senator who runs for president misses votes back in Washington, so it's no surprise that McCain and all the others who ran in the primaries have missed a lot of votes in the past year. But between the beginning of 2005 and mid-2007, no senator missed more roll-call votes than McCain did, except Tim Johnson, who was recovering from a near-fatal brain aneurysm. "McCain says he doesn't understand the economy. He's demonstrated that he doesn't understand the workings of Social Security, or the political history of the Middle East. He doesn't know who our enemies are. He says he wants to reduce global warming, but then proposes ideas that would stimulate -- not reduce -- demand for fossil fuels." This poll ran from August 25 to 31, 2008.
Attributed to President George W. Bush in the Associated Press article "Bush blames Dems for high gasoline prices," subtitled "President again calls for expanded offshore drilling." The story, published on August 24, 2008 and datelined Crawford, Texas, began: "President Bush on Saturday blamed the Democratic-led Congress for the high cost of gasoline and renewed his call for expanded offshore drilling to increase U.S. oil supplies." "To reduce pressure on prices, we need to increase the supply of oil, especially oil produced here at home," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Congress left for the August recess without a solution to fuel prices. In a bid to force a vote on offshore drilling, Republicans blocked Democratic proposals to use the nation's petroleum reserves, curb oil speculation and require oil companies to drill on already leased federal lands." Bush added: "This Congress has been one of the most unproductive on record. They've failed to address the challenge of high gas prices. They need to send me a bill next month that I can sign so we can bring relief to drivers, small business owners, farmers and ranchers and every American affected by high prices at the pump." This poll ran from August 18 to 24, 2008.
On July 18, 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle ran the story "George W. Bush Sewage Plant plan is on ballot" by staff writer Marisa Lagos. Lagos reported: "San Francisco voters will be asked to decide whether to name a city sewage plant in honor of President Bush, after a satiric measure qualified for the November ballot Thursday. "Backers of the measure, who for several months circulated a petition to place the measure on the ballot, turned in more than 12,000 signatures on July 7, said organizer Brian McConnell. The Department of Elections on Thursday informed those supporters, the self-proclaimed Presidential Memorial Commission, that they had enough valid signatures - a minimum of 7,168 registered San Francisco voters - to qualify for the November ballot. "The measure, if passed, would rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. McConnell said the intent is to remember the Bush administration and what the group sees as the president's mistakes, including the war in Iraq." Lagos added that "A White House spokeswoman, when asked about the measure several weeks ago, refused to comment." |
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