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Smart Stars   Sexy Stars   Honest Stars  | Below are the results of previous Mondo Stars polls covering politicians, newsmakers and celebrities. 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." This poll ran from August 11 to 17, 2008.
From the article "Meat of the matter" by Jim Motavalli, published in the July 30, 2008 issue of Metro Times Detroit. Arguing that Americans should eat less meat because of the environmental impacts of raising cows, sheep and other livestock for human consumption, along with the negative health effects of a diet high in saturated fat, Motavalli writes: "In the United States, Most people grow up eating meat and seeing others doing the same. The message that "meat is good and necessary for health" is routinely reinforced through advertising and the cultural signals we're sent at school, work and church. Vegetarianism is regularly depicted as a fringe choice for "health faddists." The government reinforces this message with meat featured prominently in its food pyramids." He adds: "It turns out that nearly every aspect of the huge international meat trade has an environmental or health consequence, with global warming at the top of the list. If you never thought that eating meat was an environmental (and by extension, political) issue, now is the time to rethink that position." This poll ran from August 4 to 10, 2008.
Most of the recent polls of the presidential race between Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama show Obama holding a small lead. The CNN poll of July 27-29, 2008 gave Obama a 7 point lead (Obama 51%, McCain 44%), and the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of July 18-21 showed Obama with a 6 point lead (Obama 47%, McCain 41%). However, the Fox News Channel poll of July 22-23 showed them in a virtual dead heat (Obama 41%, McCain 40%) and the USA Today/Gallup poll of July 25-27 gave McCain a 4 point advantage (McCain 49%, Obama 45%). This poll ran from July 21 to 28, 2008.
Former Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), a former top economic advisor to presidential candidate Senator John McCain, from an interview with the Washington Times on July 9, 2008. Patrice Hill of the Washington Times wrote: "Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank, said he expects Mr. McCain to inherit a sluggish economy if he wins the presidency, weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline. "You\'ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet." "We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said. "We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years. Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy's problems is one reason people have lost confidence. Various surveys show that consumer confidence has fallen precipitously this year to the lowest levels in two to three decades, with most analysts attributing that to record high gasoline prices over $4 a gallon and big drops in the value of homes, which are consumers' biggest assets. "Misery sells newspapers," Mr. Gramm said. "Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day." This poll ran from July 21 to 28, 2008.
Stuart Layne, the publisher of the free newspaper Metro Boston in Boston, Massachusetts. In November 2007, Metro Boston announced that it had surpassed the Boston Herald and become Boston's second-largest daily newspaper, with an average circulation of almost 187,000, according to the Certified Audit of Circulations (CAC). Layne wrote that "The increase in circulation validates what we have seen around the globe, that the free daily newspaper model is the future of the industry. People are consuming the news very differently than previous generations, and these numbers are proof the newspaper landscape in Boston has changed." This poll ran from July 14 to 20, 2008.
Frank Rich, from the op-ed article "The Real-Life '24' of Summer 2008," published in the New York Times on July 13, 2008. Referring to President George W. Bush, Rich wrote: "Mr. Bush's 2005 proclamation that "we do not torture" was long ago revealed as a lie. Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated detainee abuse for the Army, concluded that "there is no longer any doubt" that "war crimes were committed." Ms. Mayer uncovered another damning verdict: Red Cross investigators flatly told the C.I.A. last year that America was practicing torture and vulnerable to war-crimes charges. "Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints. Scapegoating the rotten apples at the bottom of the military's barrel may not be a slam-dunk escape route from accountability anymore. "No wonder the former Rumsfeld capo, Douglas Feith, is trying to discredit a damaging interview he gave to the British lawyer Philippe Sands for another recent and essential book on what happened, "Torture Team." After Mr. Sands previewed his findings in the May issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. Feith protested he had been misquoted — apparently forgetting that Mr. Sands had taped the interview. Mr. Feith and Mr. Sands are scheduled to square off in a House hearing this Tuesday." This poll ran from July 3 to 13, 2008.
On July 1, 2008, Starbucks Corp. announced that it would close 600 stores, many of them less than two years old, leaving a network of about 6,600 company-run stores in the US, and more than 4,000 licensed outlets in locations such as airports, bookstores and supermarkets. Worldwide, the company has 15,012 stores in 44 countries. In the story "Struggling Starbucks’ woes could get worse," published on July 2, 2008 at the MSNBC web site, Allison Linn wrote: "Standing in front of industry analysts two years ago, Starbucks executives gleefully proclaimed that the coffee chain's rapid-fire expansion was so successful, it could even support two outlets in one building. Not only that, executives bragged, but the brand was so strong it could be used to sell everything from Scrabble boards to breakfast sandwiches. "Company executives now freely admit that such thinking is largely to blame for the woes that led to Tuesday’s announcement that Starbucks will close 600 U.S. stores and eliminate thousands of jobs. The coffee giant's missteps have come at a spectacularly bad time, hitting as the economic slump deepens and consumers are seeing their discretionary spending eaten up by rising gas prices and grocery bills. "If economic woes continue, things could go from bad to worse for Starbucks. Some customers might decide that high-end coffee is no longer an affordable luxury at all, while others might increasingly turn to cheaper alternatives offered by McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts — companies that have taken aim at troubled Starbucks." Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington in 1971 by three college friends - Zev Siegl, Gordon Bowker and Gerald Baldwin. They had the support of Alfred Peet, who had founded Peet's coffee in Berkeley, California in 1966. Peet was orignally from Holland, where he was a coffee roaster. Peet taught the Starbucks founders about coffee roasting, and during their first year in business he roasted coffee beans for them. Howard Schulz entered the picture in 1982, when he was a young marketing manager for a Swedish kitchen equipment company. Schulz became a partner at Starbucks, and in 1987 he arranged financing to acquire the company from the founders and became the CEO of Starbucks. Schulz believed in giving Starbucks customers a unique experience. He thought that the baristas should recognize customer and greet them by name. The baristas should also know each customer's regular order and start preparing it right away. After Schulz arrived, Starbucks employees were trained how to make coffee, and they learned how to remember customer names. In 1992 Starbucks went public with an initial public offering of 2.1 million shares. The company had 125 stores and 2,000 employees. In 2006, Starbucks had total sales of $6.3 billion and profits of almost $500 million, ranking third among all food services companies behind McDonald's and Yum Brands. This poll ran from June 30 to July 2, 2008.
President George W. Bush, from a White House interview with the web sites Politico and Yahoo News — a president's first for an online audience - conducted on May 13, 2008. Asked why he hasn't been golfing in recent years, and if it is related to Iraq, Bush said: "Yes, it really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as - to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal." In the Politico story "Bush warns of Iraq disaster," Politico writer Mike Allen writes that Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights. “I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, 'It's just not worth it anymore to do.'" This poll ran from June 23 to 29, 2008.
Gwen Knapp, from the front-page article "A golfing genius takes a dumb step" published in the June 19, 2008 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. Knapp wrote: "Tiger Woods is an idiot. A mesmerizing, peerless, incandescent idiot. "If he'd used his head at all, he would never have entered the U.S. Open last week with a double stress fracture and a torn ligament in his left leg. Woods marched 21 miles over the longest layout in Open history, playing five rounds and 24 hours of spellbinding golf, repeatedly wincing before he could plant a ritual smooch on the side of the coveted trophy Monday afternoon. Then, two days later, he had to kiss the rest of his season goodbye. "He announced Wednesday that he would undergo his second knee surgery in less than three months. The first, to clear out damaged cartilage, appeared to be the cause of his many grimaces during the Open. But Woods was keeping secrets. The joint had far more serious damage, a torn anterior cruciate ligament, and rehabilitation exercises from the cartilage operation had damaged a bone in his lower leg. "Under the circumstances, a wiser man would have traded that one Open trophy for a healthier leg and the chance to win a less strenuous major, the PGA, this summer. Or, if necessary, he would have given up both the Open and the entire summer for safer passage into next year's majors and the ever-scintillating possibility of golf's first single-season Grand Slam. The wise man would never have jeopardized his entire future to play a single event." This poll ran from June 16 to 22, 2008.
From the article "Study: Americans use Net to look beyond sound bite" by Anick Jesdanun of the Associated Press, published on June 15, 2008. Arguing that Americans have mixed views about the role of the Internet in politics, Jesdanun wrote: "Sixty percent of Internet users fear that misinformation and propaganda are widespread online and that too many other voters are trusting that information. And only 28 percent believe the Internet helps them feel more personally connected to the candidate they support. "The telephone study of 2,251 adults, including 1,553 Internet users, was conducted April 8 to May 11 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points." This poll ran from June 9 to 15, 2008.
On June 3, 2008, Senator Barack Obama won enough primary votes to secure the Democratic party nomination for the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign. After defeating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama became the first African-American presidential nominee in U.S. history. In February 2008, Senator John McCain won the primary race to become the Republican party candidate for president, following the withdrawal of Mitt Romney from the contest. This poll ran from June 2 to 8, 2008.
Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, from the op-ed article "Truth or consequences," published on May 30, 2008. Friedman, who owns a Toyota Prius and is a big believer in hybrid and electric-powered cars, wrote: "The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. "At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of non-hybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion." This poll ran from May 27 to June 1, 2008.
Senator Barack Obama, speaking of Senator John McCain and President George W. Bush on May 7, 2008 when the Gary Post-Tribune ran an Associated Press story about the Democratic party primaries titled "Hillary takes flagging campaign to West Virginia." The article included the following: "Senator Barack Obama, addressing supporters in North Carolina Tuesday night, pivoted away from his contest with Senator Hillary Clinton and made a general election appeal that singled out his biography and his call for a new brand of politics. Still, his message also had a partisan pitch. “This primary season may not be over, but when it is, we will have to remember who we are as Democrats... because we all agree that at this defining moment in history — a moment when we're facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril — we can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term,” he said. This poll ran from May 19 to 26, 2008.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, an unsuccessful contender for the 2008 Republican party nomination for president, speaking on the CNN program "American Morning" on May 7, 2008. Speaking about Senator Barack Obama, Romney said: "He can read a prompter very well and energize a crowd, but he has not accomplished anything during his life in terms of legislation or leading an enterprise or making a business work or a city work or a state work. He really has very little experience, and, you know, the presidency of the United States is not an internship, and I honestly believe that you're going to see America choose somebody who has been tested and proven who has been able to demonstrate time and again that he understands how to make the economy work, he understands how our military works, he understands the needs of the country and the heart and passion of the American people." In October 2007, while speaking at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, Romney embarassed himself when he accused Obama of "calling on radicals, jihadists of all different types, to come together in Iraq." Romney apparently was referring to an audiotape aired on Monday, October 22, 2007, in which a speaker believed to be terrorist Osama bin Laden called for insurgents in Iraq to unite and avoid divisions. This poll ran from May 12 to 18, 2008.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released on May 5, 2008 found that 94% of respondents expect they will have to pay $4 a gallon for gasoline sometime this year - and 78% said they figure it will hit $5. According to motorist group AAA, the national average price for gasoline was $3.61 at the end of April. CNN Money reported that "Consumers' fears that they will have to pay more have intensified. A year ago, 79% thought gas would cost $4 by the end of 2007 and only 28% feared $5 gas." Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy said that the national average price of gasoline would hit a high of $3.60 in 2008. But gas prices have already surpassed that forecast well before the typical peak in gasoline prices in June, leading some analysts to raise their forecasts to above $4. Stephen Schork, editor of energy industry newsletter The Schork Report, said that "For gas prices to come down significantly, we'll have to see a material depreciation in the value of crude, but with prices hitting $120, it doesn't look like that's happening any time soon." This poll ran from May 5 to 11, 2008.
From the op-ed article "Indiana, go with Obama" published in the May 4, 2008 edition of the Chicago Tribune. In endorsing Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton for the Indiana Democratic Party presidential primary to be held on May 6, the Tribune editorial staff wrote: "Look what we've seen from Hillary Clinton's campaign in recent weeks. Her embellishments about the purported danger of a 1996 trip to Bosnia. Bill Clinton's statement that the Obama campaign "played the race card on me"—and Clinton's later, laughable denial that he had used those words. We've seen a campaign that has sought to tear down its opponent and pander to voters. The Clinton campaign is playing just the kind of politics that Americans say they detest. "We need a president who can forge consensus and compromise among ideological foes. Barack Obama is that kind of Democrat; Hillary Clinton is not." This poll ran from April 28 to May 4, 2008.
Ahmad Ghoreishi, professor emeritus in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. As reported by Ryan Morgan in the article "World watches presidential contest," published in the April 11, 2008 issue of the Boulder Daily Camera, Ghoreishi said of Senator Barack Obama: "The world is fascinated by him -- by a first-generation black man running for president. When it comes down to it, the vast majority of people don't think Americans will do it -- once they're in the voting booth, they won't vote for a black man." This poll ran from April 21 to 27, 2008.
At a U.S. Senate hearing in 2004, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that "there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never be used." And in an interview on BBC Radio Four in February 2008, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said "How close does the threat have to be? How severe can the infliction of pain be? I don\'t think these are easy questions at all... But I certainly know you can\'t come in smugly and with great self-satisfaction and say, "Oh, it\'s torture and therefore it\'s no good." This poll ran from April 14 to 20, 2008.
On May 6, 2005, Matthew Felling spoke with Kai Ryssdal on the NPR News program "Marketplace" about the continuing decline in newspaper circulation. Felling is the media director at The Center for Media and Public Affairs. "I don't mean to sound Panglossian, but I'm surprised that circulation figures didn't fall more steeply," said Felling about the continuing decline in newspaper readership. "By giving away their product free online to anyone with an Internet connection, newspapers are, in effect, bootlegging themselves into a corner." This poll ran from April 7 to 13, 2008.
Clay Evans, from the "Insight" section of the Boulder Daily Camera on April 6, 2008. In an op-ed titled "No news will be bad news," he writes: "We're now wading into a future where the only information we receive is from people who agree with us, or some guy outside a grocery store handing us a petition. Or not at all. "But here's a little secret: Chances are good that when you do a Google search on current events, most of the "content" you pull up will have come from newspapers. And as newspapers gradually collapse and readers and advertisers flee, there's simply going to be less reliable news out there." This poll ran from March 31 to April 6, 2008.
We have asked this question about President George W. Bush many times before. The last time was July 23 to 29, 2007. This poll ran from March 24 to 30, 2008.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander of American troops in Iraq, as quoted by David S. Cloud in the article "Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is \'a Nightmare\'" from the October 13, 2007 edition of The New York Times. Cloud writes: "In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the George W. Bush administration's handling of the war "incompetent" and said the result was "a nightmare with no end in sight." "Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan" and denounced the current addition of American forces as a "desperate" move that would not achieve long-term stability. "After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism," General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va. "He is the most senior war commander of a string of retired officers who have harshly criticized the administration's conduct of the war. While much of the previous condemnation has been focused on the role of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, General Sanchez's was an unusually broad attack on the overall course of the war." This poll ran from March 17 to 23, 2008.
Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson, from the new book "Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis." in the Sunday New York Times on March 16, 2008, Harry Hurt III wrote that "Here is the very pressing issue the book addresses: "The United States is seemingly addicted to spending more than it takes in," the authors assert. With a staggering national debt, and expenses that will only grow as more baby boomers retire, they warn, "today's problems will seem like a fender bender compared to the economic train wreck the country will face if we don't get the nation's finances under control." Scott Bittle is the executive editor of the web site Public Agenda Online, and Jean Johnson is the executive vice president and founder of the site. Bittle and Johnson note that the United States government has amassed a debt that now exceeds $9 trillion, with over $2 trillion owed to foreign banks and other international investors. China alone holds $420 billion, based on figures from the 2006 budget. This poll ran from March 10 to 16, 2008.
Zhang Qingli, the Tibet region Chinese Communist Party secretary. Zhang did not say how the Dalai Lama was trying to sabotage the Games. Repoting from Beijing on Saturday, March 8 2008, Anita Chang of the Associated Press wrote that "Chinese officials accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, of trying to sabotage this summer's Beijing Olympics, suggesting Friday they are prepared to take harsh measures against any group causing instability in the Himalayan region. "The ruling Communist Party routinely accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to undermine Chinese authority by pushing for independence for Tibet, although he says he wants meaninful autonomy for the region, not independence." This poll ran from March 3 to 9, 2008.
Paul Krugman, from the op-ed article "Socialist Plot," published in the August 28, 2007 edition of The New York Times. Krugman wrote: "The truth is that there's no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care. It’s just a matter of historical accident that we think of access to free K-12 education as a basic right, but consider having the government pay children's medical bills "welfare," with all the negative connotations that go with that term. "We offer free education, and don't worry about middle-class families getting benefits they don’t need, because that’s the only way to ensure that every child gets an education — and giving every child a fair chance is the American way. And we should guarantee health care to every child, for the same reason." This poll ran from February 25 to March 2, 2008.
As of February 24, 2008, Senator Hillary Clinton trails Illinois Senator Barack Obama in delegates to the national convention that will pick the Democratic candidate for the November 2008 U.S. presidential election. A number of observers, including Reuters, have said that Clinton needs to win both of the March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio to stay in the race. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has conceded that this is true. The Democratic party national convention will be held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 to 28, 2008. This poll ran from February 18 to 24, 2008.
David Plouffe, campaign manager of the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama. Plouffe was quoted by Hope Yen of the Associated Press in the article "Clinton advisor changes stance on delegates," published on February 17, 2008. Referring to the attempt by the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton to win Democratic party delegates in the state of Florida, Plouffe said "The Clinton campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics that could undermine Democrats' ability to win the general election." This poll ran from February 11 to 17, 2008.
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) speaking on December 16, 2007. In the article "President lacks tech awareness," published in the February 4, 2008 issue of eWeek magazine, Roy Mark wrote that "Dodd vowed to filibuster any bill granting immunity to the carriers. "For the last six years, the telecom companies have been spying on their customers without warrants," Dodd said. Writing about the renewal of FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), Mark added that "The carriers contend they relied on existing federal, state and local laws, as well as assurances from the highest level of government, to provide customer telephone and e-mail records -- often without a warrant or subpoena -- to the government." "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the co-lead counsel in the nearly 40 pending lawsuits against the major telephone carriers, contends the carriers broke the law by providing the National Security Agency with the full content of billions of e-mail messages, text messages and VOIP (voice over IP) calls." This poll ran from February 4 to 10, 2008.
From the article "Microsoft Makes Grab for Yahoo" by Kevin J. Delaney, Robert A. Guth and Matthew Karnitschnig in the February 2, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal. On Thursday, January 31, 2008, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo Inc. The writers noted that "Microsoft believes that buying Yahoo is essential for gaining ground on Google. In his letter to Yahoo's board, (Microsoft President) Mr. Ballmer said the online-advertising market is "incrasingly dominated by one player" -- a clear reference to Google. The combination with Yahoo will "accelerate our path forward," Ballmer said in an interview Friday." They added that "For Microsoft, the move is an acknowledgement that its expensive foray into online services is failing, or at least not moving fast enough." This poll ran from January 28 to February 3, 2008.
Senator John McCain, from an interview with Beliefnet.com on October 5, 2007. McCain said "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." Writing in the New York Times on October 7, Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek magazine, commented on the question of the Constitution: "The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated "in the year of our Lord 1787." Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed." This poll ran from January 21 to 27, 2008.
National Public Radio reported that "on January 15, 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that meat and milk from cloned animals are safe to eat. Critics immediately denounced the FDA's conclusions, saying the agency ignored the ethical problems with cloning. "Cloning creates a genetic copy of an animal, so making clones of a cow that produces an amazing amount of milk, for example, could be quite lucrative. Several companies are trying to make a business out of cloning; those animals could then be used for breeding. "FDA scientists studied the chemical composition of meat and milk from clones and decided that it's identical to what's on the market already. The European Food Safety Authority, in a draft report last week, came to a similar conclusion. "But opponents of cloning pointed to other data in the report, showing that the cloning process creates many animals that cannot survive. Also, many clones are unnaturally large when they're born, which can harm their surrogate mothers. But FDA officials say their job is just to look at food safety, not ethics." This poll ran from January 14 to 20, 2008.
From a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, released on October 29, 2007. Titled "The Invisible Primary - Invisible No Longer," the study portrays the political press as a hidebound institution out of touch with the desires of citizens. Among the findings: -- Stories focused more on fundraising and polls than on where candidates stood on the issues, despite a public demand for more attention to the policies, views and records of the candidates. -- The public's attention to campaign news is higher now than it was at similar points in the past two elections, but that interest is only shared by less than one in four people. -- Five candidates — Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republicans Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain — received more than half the coverage. Elizabeth Edwards, the cancer-stricken wife of Democrat John Edwards, received almost as much media attention as her husband. -- Democrats, overall, got more coverage — and more positive ink and airtime — than Republicans. The report analyzed 1,742 articles about the presidential contest that appeared from January through May 2007 in 48 news outlets including print, online, network TV, cable and radio news and talk shows. This poll ran from January 7 to 13, 2008.
Marc Bekoff, Professor of Ecology and and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, from a letter to the editor published in the Boulder Daily Camera on December 31, 2007. Bekoff was commenting on the events of December 27, 2007 at the San Francisco Zoo, when a 300-pound Siberian tiger named Tatiana escaped from its enclosure, which is surrounded by a 15-foot-wide moat and 20-foot-high walls. The tiger killed a 17-year-old and mauled two others before being shot and killed by police officers.
Bekoff wrote: "These innocent victims suffered because large carnivores simply do not belong in zoos, and neither should these sentient and emotional beings be shipped here and there as if they were couches. Tigers and other animals have a point of view on what happens to them, and they don't like being treated as if they are inanimate objects. So it's not all surprising that at some point when they regain their freedom they do what's natural to them. The aren't bad or evil; they're highly evolved natural-born killers who don't like being imprisoned. When will zoos learn this lesson?" This poll ran from December 27, 2007 to January 6, 2008.
Jennifer Kwan, from the Reuters story "Entertaining TV programs make you eat, study finds," published on June 3, 2007. Kwan wrote that "People eat more when they are glued to the television, and the more entertaining the program, the more they eat." Dr. Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, aid that "It seems that distracted brains do not notice what the mouth is doing." Hirsch explored the impact of smell, taste and eating behaviors while watching TV by measuring potato chip consumption. Forty-five volunteers ate as many chips as they wanted during five-minute intervals over three-week periods while they watched monologues by late-night talk show hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno. Hirsch found people ate an average of 44 percent more chips while watching Letterman and 42 percent more while viewing Leno, than when they did not watch TV. According to Hirsch, "If you can concentrate on how the food tastes you'll eat less because you'll feel full faster." He said that "many studies have linked obesity to watching television and that link is likely due to inactivity." But he also believes that entertaining TV shows contribute to the problem. "If you want to lose weight, turn off the television or watch something boring," he added. This poll ran from December 17 to 26, 2007.
On Monday December 2, 2007, radio personality Don Imus returned to the radio airwaves. In April of 2007, CBS Radio fired Imus from his radio program following a week of uproar over his derogatory comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. "There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society," CBS Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. Imus' new show on WABC in New York includes two black comedians, Tony Powell and Karith Foster, and he promised to open up a dialogue on race relations on the program. He began his initial broadcast on the Citadel Broadcasting station by confronting the issue that got him booted from CBS Radio last spring, when he referred to the NCAA runner-up squad as “nappy-headed hos.” He apologized again and said, “no one else will say anything else on my program that will make anyone think that I didn't deserve a second chance.” Imus also said, “the program is not going to change. Dick Cheney is still a war criminal, Hillary Clinton is still Satan and I'm back on the radio.” This poll ran from December 10 to 16, 2007.
Ben Stein, in the article "Lessons From the Pits of Travel and Investment" in the December 9, 2007 edition of The New York Times, wrote: "A famous Chinese philosopher famously said, "There is no calamity greater that lavish desires." My own life is a sort of parable of national life. I spend way too much money, although it's pennies by Wall Street standards. I think like a big baby: if I want it, it's mine." This poll ran from December 3 to 9, 2007.
President George W. Bush, speaking on November 11, 2007 at a Veterans Day ceremony at American Legion Post 121 in Waco, Texas, honoring American soldiers who have died in Iraq. Bush said "your loved ones served a cause that is good and just and noble. And as their commander in chief, I make you this promise: Their sacrifice will not be in vain." He added that "The enemies who attacked us six years ago want to strike our country again, and next time they hope to kill Americans on a scale that will make 9/11 pale in comparison." This poll ran from November 26 to December 2, 2007.
Peter McGraw, an associate professor of business at the University of Colorado. He was quoted in the article "Gift cards take a swipe at holiday shopping dollars" by Ryan Morgan in the November 25, 2007 edition of the Boulder Daily Camera. McGraw said "From an economic standpoint, the best gift is money because you know best how to maximize your utility. But there's a problem with that because giving money suggests that it isn't a thoughtful gift. Giving a gift card solves some of that problem." Morgan wrote that "Archstone Consulting, a Connecticut company, estimated that spending on gift cards could hit $35 billion this holiday season." This poll ran from November 19 to 25, 2007.
Paul McLeary from the story "VNR Redux" published at the Columbia Journalism Review web site on October 12, 2007. The subtitle of the story is "Anyone surprised that local TV keeps airing fake news?" MCLeary writes: "Seems our old friend, the Video News Release, is back—or more likely, never left us in the first place. The Center for Media and Democracy dug up three recent cases where a single television station passed VNRs as legit news reports. "In case you've forgotten, VNRs are television news spots prepared by corporations or public agencies, that are then presented as straight news by TV news outlets who conveniently fail to disclose the fact that these things are blatant PR. "VNRs were first dragged into public consciousness back in 2004, when CJR helped expose Karen Ryan — a PR flack paid by the government to anchor fake news stories promoting the Medicare law and its supposed benefits. The VNRs were sent out to local affiliates across the county on CNN’s video wire and played as “news” on stations that didn't inform viewers that they were watching government propaganda from the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue has popped up intermittently since then, but things have been quiet on the VNR front. Until now. "The Center for Media and Democracy reported yesterday that WGTU-TV 29 in Traverse City, Michigan has recently aired three of these corporate commercials. They include: "An entire, pre-packaged VNR funded by the financial company Capital One, without disclosure; an entire, pre-packaged VNR funded by the communications company Harris Corporation, without disclosure; and an entire, pre-packaged VNR funded by the farm equipment company John Deere. In this case, the original VNR contained brief, on-screen and verbal notifications of the sponsor. By playing the entire VNR, WGTU provided "passive disclosure" to its viewers." This poll ran from November 11 to 18, 2007.
Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, from his book "The Price of Liberty," a history of how America has paid for its wars since 1776. The book was published on May 1, 2007. Hormats writes: "In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries, Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes — and nonessential programs have been cut — to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families." Hormats also quotes George Washington from his celebrated Farewell Address, in which he warned against "ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burdens we ourselves ought to bear." This poll ran from November 5 to 11, 2007.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking on October 30, 2007 at the Democratic presidential candidates debate in Philadelphia. Clinton was asked about a plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in New York State. She at first defended the idea, then suggested she was against it, and when pressed for a direct answer by moderator Tim Russert, accused him of playing "gotcha."
When asked if she supports the plan of Governor Eliot Spitzer in New York State, Clinton said "You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha. It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George W. Bush has failed." This poll ran from October 29 to November 4, 2007.
From a report by the National Petroleum Council (NPC) released on July 18, 2007. The Council was charged by President George W. Bush and US Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman with studying the energy sector of the United States. The report urged that fuel economy be improved "at the maximum rate possible." According to the NPC web site, the purpose of the NPC is "solely to represent the views of the oil and natural gas industries in advising, informing, and making recommendations to the Secretary of Energy with respect to any matter relating to oil and natural gas." This poll ran from October 22 to 28, 2007.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, from his new book "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World." The book was published on September 17, 2007. "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows," Greenspan, 81, writes in the book, arguing that the attention given by developed nations to the political situation in the Middle East is directly tied to oil security. "Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy," he writes. Greenspan clarified his remarks in an interview with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post in September 2007, telling the newspaper "I was not saying that that's the administration\'s motive. I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?,' I would say it was essential." He said that in his discussions with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, "I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive." This poll ran from October 15 to 21, 2007.
Al Gore, from a speech at the National Sierra Club Convention on September 9, 2005. On October 12, 2007, Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). On October 13, 2007, William Neikirk wrote in the Chicago Tribune that "the former vice president said he would donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, an advocacy group he helped found." The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the prize was awarded to Gore and the IPCC for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." The IPCC, which shares the prize with Gore, is a United Nations-sponsored group of about 2,500 scientists from around the world. The IPCC gathers the peer-reviewed work of thousands of scientists into a coherent picture of climate change. In 2007 the group issued its fourth assessment of the state of knowledge on climate change. It stated that the evidence supporting climate change is "unequivocal" and that the change is "very likely" caused by human activity. This poll ran from October 8 to 14, 2007.
We have asked this poll question about President George W. Bush twice before -- in May 2006 and summer 2002. This poll ran from October 1 to 7, 2007.
Jim Rapoza, chief technology analyst at eWEEK magazine, from the story "More Web 2.0 fun?" in the June 11, 2007 issue of eWEEK. Rapoza suggested that you should be suspicious of anyone who tells you that privacy is dead. He wrote: "I care deeply about my privacy. Just because I'm free with certain details about my life doesn't mean that I want there to be giant databases out there that can combine all my data into a disturbingly detailed picture of my life that any company (or identity thief) could then use against me. "It also doesn't mean that I want to make it possible for governments or corporate identities to be able to track me through RFID, cell phones or identity cards no matter where I go." This poll ran from September 20 to 30, 2007.
From the article "Did McDonald's Give In to Temptation?" by Andrew Martin in the July 22, 2007 edition of The New York Times. Martin writes that "the number of people who are overweight or obese has increased sharply since the early 1980s, and during that period, portion sizes have increased greatly." Marion Nestle and Lisa R. Young, who are nutritionists at New York University, reported that portion sizes offered by fast-food chains are two to five times larger than when first introduced. While McDonald's dropped its Supersize menu in 2004, it has recently introduced a 42-ounce soft drink called the Hugo, which contains about 410 calories. The drink competes with the Big Gulp at 7-Eleven, and with giant sandwiches like the BK Stacker from Burger King, which contains 4 hamburger patties. Martin concludes that "the problem with bigger portions has been well documented. They are undoubtedly good deals. But put simply, if people are offered more food, they eat it." This poll ran from September 10 to 19, 2007.
Caroline Fredrickson, from the op-ed article "Congress should leave TV decisions with parents," published in the August 20, 2007 edition of the Buffalo News. Fredrickson is director of the American Civil Liberties Union\'s Washington legislative office. She wrote: "ACLU members strongly believe that the government should not replace parents as decision-makers in America's living rooms. There are some things the government does well, but deciding what is aired, and when, on television is not one of them. Parents already have many tools to protect their children, including blocking programs and channels, changing the channel, or (my personal favorite) turning off the television. "The ACLU is not blind to the issue at hand. We can see why some parents are upset about what they see on television. We believe that a compelling case has been made for media literacy education. Congress may choose to play a role in educating parents on the dangers of overexposure to media. But government focus should then be on providing those educational opportunities, not encouraging government to replace America's parents as the primary decisionmakers in their own homes. Government should not parent the parents. "Our concern is that imposing standards for television programming would be unconstitutional and damage important values that define America: the right to a free and open media, the right to free speech and the right of parents to control the upbringing of their children." This poll ran from September 3 to 9, 2007.
Julian Friedland, from the op-ed article "Opinion: Journalism's new economics" published in the August 15, 2007 edition of the Denver Post. Friedland teaches philosophy and business ethics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He wrote: "What passes for news in this brave new media world is less cold hard facts and more opinion and soothsaying. Television "news" programs reveal precious few facts on the actual issues. Instead, discussants provide titillating predictions on which politicians and parties are likely to win. It's cheap and thrilling content, which has the advantage of alienating few advertisers while viewers are soothed by a veneer of fairness (however fake) representing two sides of a debate. This pattern hurts us all. The media's primary mission is to inform, not entertain. Their rights are granted so they may elevate and educate by informing us of what are often difficult, nuanced and unwelcome truths. As it stands, this public mission is being forsaken in the name of private profit. It thus stands starkly before us as a modern market failure. But there is a solution. Media represent an essential service like education and infrastructure. As such, media need to be protected from the corrupting influence of private interest, which has finally grown so massive as to exert a crushing grip on journalistic independence. If we look to Europe we can see media independence there is protected by public funds. Take the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is mostly funded by taxes, permitting it to hold every corporation and government's feet to the fire. In France, two out of the three major networks receive no more than 40 percent of their operational funds from ads. The rest come from taxes. On our end, we have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), but its budget pales in comparison to the BBC, which has bureaus all over the world. The CPB, which funds both PBS and NPR, has a yearly budget of only $480 million compared to $3.2 billion for the BBC. Still, PBS is widely considered our most trusted news service. Again, this is no coincidence." This poll ran from August 26 to September 2, 2007.
From the op-ed article "The War as We Saw It," published in the August 19, 2007 edition of the New York Times. The article was written by 7 American soldiers at the end of a 15-month deployment in Iraq. They are Army Specialist Buddhika Jayamaha, Sergeant Wesley D. Smith, Sergeant Jeremy Roebuck, Sergeant Omar Mora, Sergeant Edward Sandmeier, Staff Sergeant Yance T. Gray and Staff Sergeant Jeremy A. Murphy. They wrote: "In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food." "In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal. "Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities. "We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through." This poll ran from August 20 to 26, 2007.
From "Terrorism, Part II," posted on August 9, 2007 by Steven D. Levitt at the Freakonomics blog hosted by the New York Times. Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the author (with Stephen J. Dubner) of the best-selling book Freakonomics. Levitt wrote: "There are two possible interpretations of our current situation vis-à-vis terrorism. One view is the following: the main reason we aren't currently being decimated by terrorists is that the government's anti-terror efforts have been successful. The alternative interpretation is that the terror risk just isn't that high and we are greatly overspending on fighting it, or at least appearing to fight it. "My guess is that the second scenario — the terrorism threat just isn't that great — is the more likely one. Which, if you think about it, is the optimistic view of the world. But that probably still makes me a moron, a traitor, or both." Levitt's closing comment about being a moron or a traitor (or both) was prompted by a slew of negative email he received after a related post in which he suggested some ideas terrorists might use to attack the United States. That post was titled "If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?" This poll ran from August 13 to 19, 2007.
In the article "Sending Back The Doctor's Bill," published in the July 29, 2007 issue of The New York Times, Alex Berenson writes that "Prescription drugs cost, on average, 30 percent to 50 percent more in the United States that in Europe. But the difference in doctors' salaries is far larger. "Doctors in the United States earn two to three times as much as they do in other industrialized countries. Surveys by medical-pratice management groups show that American doctors make an average of $200,000 to $300,000 a year. Primary care doctors and pediatricians make less, between $125,000 and $200,000, but in specialties like radiology, physicians can take home $400,000 or more. "In Europe, however, doctors made $60,000 to $120,000 in 2002, according to a survey sponsored by the British government in 2004." This poll ran from August 6 to 12, 2007.
From the article "Made (badly) in China" by Oliver August, published in the July 29. 2007 issue of The Los Angeles Times. August is a former Beijing bureau chief for the Times of London. August writes that "the reason so many Chinese products sold in American malls are faulty is not a lack of regulation, but corruption." "Only now that (Beijing) has been embarrassed by the export of the problem is it taking note. Last week, Zheng Xiaoyu, a former food and drug safety watchdog, was executed after being found guilty of corruption and dereliction of duty." Zheng had confessed to accepting gifts and bribes from eight drug companies that sought special favors. He received a car, a villa, furniture, cash and corporate stock. In all, he and his family accepted gifts valued at more than $850,000. In China, the average worker earns less than $2,000 a year. August concludes that "the system of governance that has allowed people like Zheng to break the rules until they become a nuisance will stay in place. It has worked well for Beijing. And it has worked well for American consumers who have enjoyed low-cost Chinese products. Until now." This poll ran from July 30 to August 5, 2007.
On July 24, 2007, The Associated Press reported that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig will attempt to attend the game when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's career home run record, saying the star was "innocent until proven guilty. "Throughout this season, I have watched Barry Bonds' pursuit of the home run record. Now that he is on the verge of tying the record, the time has come to announce that I will make every attempt to attend the record-setting moment," Selig said in a statement. "Out of respect for the tradition of this game, the magnitude of the record, and the fact that all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty, I will attend Barry Bonds' next games to observe his potential tying and breaking of the home run record, subject to my commitments to the Hall of Fame this weekend." Bonds, who has been dogged for years by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs, began Tuesday with 753 homers, two shy of the record. The former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, Selig has been friends for years with Aaron, who began his career with the Milwaukee Braves and ended it with the Brewers. This poll ran from July 23 to 29, 2007.
This poll ran from July 16 to 22, 2007.
Bruce Fein, the deputy attorney general of the United States under President Ronald Reagan, from his post "Impeach Cheney," posted at Slate.com on June 27, 2007. Fein wrote: "President George W. Bush outsourced the lion's share of his presidency to Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Cheney has made the most of it. Since 9/11, he has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president's commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism." Fein concluded that "In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law." This poll ran from July 9 to 15, 2007.
Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of corporate affairs, as quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in the article "Selling Wal-Mart: Can the company co-opt liberals?" in the April 2, 2007 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Before joining Wal-Mart, Dach was an executive at Edelman Public Relations, and has been a senior advisor to the presidential campaigns of Democrats Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. He also worked for the National Audubon Society and the Environmental Defense Fund. According to the company, full-time hourly workers make an average of $10.51 an hour at Wal-Mart. However, the group Wake Up Wal-Mart believes that after part-time workers are factored in, the true average is less than $9.00 an hour. In contrast, Costco pays an average wage of $17.46 an hour. In 2006, Wal-Mart had revenues of over $315 billion, and profits of about $11 billion. This poll ran from July 2 to 8, 2007.
Pope Benedict XVI, speaking on June 9, 2007 during a visit to the Vatican by President George W. Bush. This was the president's first meeting with the pope, who has lamented the "continual slaughter" in Iraq. The two talked for 35 minutes. Terence Hunt of the Associated Press wrote that "President Bush, denounced by tens of thousands of anti-American protestors on the streets of Rome, defended his humanitarian record Saturday to Pope Benedict XVI." After the meeting, Bush said "I was talking to a very smart, very loving man. I was in awe and it was a moving experience." This poll ran from June 11 to 20, 2007.
Senator Hillary Clinton, speaking during a televised debate on June 3, 2007 with John Edwards and Senator Barack Obama, two of her rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Writing in the New York Times, Michael Cooper and Patrick Healy wrote that "Mrs. Clinton, who has tried to minimize her differences with her rivals on commander-in-chief issues, bluntly disagreed with a main rival, former Senator John Edwards, who had just said that the administration's so-called war on terror was little more than a slogan." The campaign of Senator Barack Obama sent supporters and reporters a memorandum on June 4 titled "America Is Not Safer Since 9/11," which cited research from the State Department and other groups that described terrorism as an accelerating threat. Cooper and Healy added that "The question of whether the nation is safer than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks is debated passionately among policy makers and security experts. A survey of more than 100 foreign policy experts, conducted in February by Foreign Policy magazine, for instance, found that three-quarters believed that the United States was losing the war on terror." This poll ran from May 21 to 28, 2007.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaking on April 19. 2007. Reid said he had told President George W. Bush on the preceding day that he thought the war in Iraq could not be won through military force, although he said the U.S. could still pursue political, economic and diplomatic means to bring peace to Iraq. Reid said "I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and -- you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -- this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday." Republican politicians condemned Reid\'s assessment of the situation. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said "I can't begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost." Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said "Our troops won the war clearly, cleanly and quickly. But now they are stuck in a civil war and the only solution is a political and diplomatic compromise. And there is no soldier who can get that done." This poll ran from April 30 to May 6, 2007.
Keith Olbermann, who names the three "worst people in the world" each night on the MSNBC cable news program Countdown With Keith Olbermann. Olbermann selected Rush Limbaugh on March 5, 2007, saying "comedian Rush Limbaugh, pointing out that since ancestors of Al Sharpton were slaves and ancestors of Senator Barack Obama were slaveowners, quoting (Limbaugh) again, 'could we not say that if Obama wins the Democratic nomination and then wins the presidency, he will own Al Sharpton?'" Olbermann added: "No, actually, we couldn't say that. But we could say that any lingering doubt about this is at an end: Rush Limbaugh is a racist." This poll ran from April 10 to 16, 2007.
Gregg and Evan Spiridellis of JibJab, writing about the making of their latest satirical short video, What We Call The News which stars, among others, President George W. Bush. This poll ran from March 26 to April 1, 2007.
Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah and a Democrat, speaking at a rally in Salt Lake City on Monday, March 19 2007 marking the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Referring to President George W. Bush, he said "Let impeachment be the first step toward national reconciliation — and toward penance for the outrages committed in our nation's name." As reported in the story "In Utah, an Opponent of the 'Culture of Obedience'" by Kirk Johnson in the March 22, 2007 edition of the New York Times, Anderson is a 55-year-old lapsed Mormon and former civil litigator. The article states that "He has presented his constitutional argument against Mr. Bush's presidency in speeches from the Washington Legislature to peace rallies in Washington, D.C., making him a favorite punching bag of conservative talk show hosts and bloggers well beyond his home state. He went on Bill O\'Reilly's show on Fox News on Tuesday, for example, and Mr. O\'Reilly promptly called him "a kook." "Mr. Anderson cheerfully conceded in an interview in his office that he had no hope whatsoever of a statewide political future in Utah because people outside Salt Lake City — who are far more likely to be conservative, Republican and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — are likely to hate him. But in what has been a trademark of his seven years in office, he can seem equally disdainful of those who disdain him. "There's a real resistance to change and an almost pathological devotion to leaders simply because they're leaders," Anderson said, in describing fellow Utahans who do not share his views and who in large numbers support the president (and gave him 72 percent of their vote in 2004). "There's a dangerous culture of obedience throughout much of this country that's worse in Utah than anywhere." This poll ran from March 12 to 19, 2007.
Keith Olbermann, from a "special comment" on the MSNBC cable news program Countdown With Keith Olbermann on January 3, 2007. Speaking of the Iraq war and addressing his comments to President George W. Bush, Olbermann said "It has succeeded, Mr. Bush, in enabling you to deaden the collective mind of this country to the pointlessness of endless war, against the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. "It has gotten many of us used to the idea — the virtual 'white noise' — of conflict far away, of the deaths of young Americans, of vague 'sacrifice' for some fluid cause, too complicated to be interpreted except in terms of the very important-sounding but ultimately meaningless phrase 'the war on terror.' "And the war's second accomplishment — your second accomplishment, sir — is to have taken money out of the pockets of every American, even out of the pockets of the dead soldiers on the battlefield, and their families, and to have given that money to the war profiteers." This poll ran from February 25 to March 4, 2007.
Speaking on February 13, 2007, South Carolina state Senator Robert Ford said that he seriously doubts Senator Barack Obama can win the 2008 US presidential election. According to Ford, "Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose - because he's black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything." Ford also said that "the media made this guy bigger than life. This guy isn't tested and they made him a rock star." Ford was widely criticized for his comments and later apologized. Obama, speaking at Claflin University on February 17, Obama said "At every turn in our history, there's been somebody who said we can't. Some people said we can't do this, we can't do that, so we shouldn't even try. If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and commitment and ideas, then I'm here to tell you, 'Yes we can.'" This poll ran from February 16 to 25, 2007.
The Academy Award for best motion picture of 2006 will be presented on Sunday, February 25 2007 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California. And the nominees are: Babel (directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu), The Departed (directed by Martin Scorsese), Letters from Iwo Jima (directed by Clint Eastwood), Little Miss Sunshine (directed by Jonathan Dayton) and The Queen (directed by Stephen Frears). This poll ran from January 17 to 25, 2007.
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for President George H. W. Bush, quoted by Ron Suskind in the article "Without a Doubt" in the October 17, 2004 edition of the New York Times. Speaking of President George W. Bush, Bartlett said that "he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts. He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can't run the world on faith." This poll ran from January 1 to 10, 2007.
Learn more about Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. This poll ran from November 26 to December 4, 2006.
From the article "Voter doubts surface over Clinton" in the July 16, 2006 edition of The Washington Post. In discussing the prospects of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to become the next president of the United States, writer Lois Romano argued that many liberal Democrats have ambivalent perceptions of Clinton. She also stated that some political analysts believe female politicians must work harder than men to succeed. This poll ran from November 14 to 25, 2006.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and Vietnam war hero, speaking at a Washington Press Club Foundation congressional dinner in early 2003. McCain said "Washington is a Hollywood for ugly people. Hollywood is a Washington for the simpleminded." This poll ran from October 21 to November 5, 2006.
AOL conducted a poll of 1,213 adults by telephone between July 21 and 27 2006 to determine their average knowledge of pop culture and current events. The results indicate that respondents knew more about fictional characters than real ones. Only 24 percent of those surveyed could name even two Supreme Court justices but 77 percent could name two of Snow White's seven dwarves. And, while 73 percent of respondents could list the Three Stooges, only 42 percent could name the three branches of the American government. |
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