Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Signaling he's decided on new troop levels for the Afghanistan war, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he intends to "finish the job" on his watch and destroy terrorist networks in the region. The president said he would reveal his decision on how many additional soldiers to deploy to Afghanistan after Thanksgiving. The White House is aiming for an announcement by Obama either Tuesday or Wednesday in a national address. Congressional hearings will quickly follow. Military officials and others have been expecting Obama to settle on a middle-ground option that would deploy an eventual 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces...

It's mostly about "process" now - strategies to get the health care reform monstrosity through the senate, into conference with the House, and then the vote for final passage. In Majority Leader Reid's favor; momentum. His beg-borrow-steal-bribe strategy to get the votes simply to kick off debate on the bill in the senate may spell trouble later as Byron York writing in the Examiner asks the question, "Why was it so hard for Democrats to even start health care debate?" "My vote to move forward on this important debate should in no way be construed by the supporters of this...

According to a new Climate Confidence Monitor survey released today, support for action on climate change is plummeting in Canada. Just 26% of Canadians consider global warming among their chief concerns, down from 34% in 2008. Concern in the U.S. is even lower - just 18% , down from 26% in 2008. The UK's level of concern is the lowest of all, a mere 15%, down from 26% in 2008. Worldwide, the drop in concern over climate change has also dropped by 8 percentage points, from 42% to 34%...

There's a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill about a new health care memo, by strategist/communicator Frank Luntz, which is filled with advice for opponents of the Democrats' reform legislation. The memo analyzes the public's concerns that national health care will result in lower quality care at higher cost, with an out-of-control deficit to boot, and Luntz recommends language to help critics make the case against the legislation more effectively. For example, he suggests opponents would be better off avoiding the phrase public option; calling it the government option is better. The new memo updates a similar analysis Luntz wrote...

President Obama's push for health care reform during the third quarter of 2009 has seriously damaged his public standing, according to new data from the Gallup Daily tracking poll. His job approval rating dropped nine points from the second to the third quarter, from 62 percent to 53 percent. The nine-point second-to-third quarter drop is the highest Gallup has ever measured for an incumbent president during his first year in office, and among the highest quarter-to-quarter drops measured for any president at any point: "Obama's 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any...

Granted, the information comes from a poll with subjective questions, but Gallup released a couple of polls early this week concerning the perception of the waste at the federal government level and over-regulation of business. Perception is reality, and I argue their is now a consensus.

Support for President Obama’s overhaul of the American health-care system is dropping because he’s not doing enough to “sell” the effort, according to a growing number of liberal voices. The public is deeply sympathetic to what Obama and Democrats want to do; the task for them is simply to instruct the unknowing masses on what is best for them (see Andrew Mitchell’s commentary here). In fact, the problem with Obama’s effort isn’t a failure to communicate; it is his inability to refute health-care facts and figures that, as they become more salient, are undermining his effort.

Americans have not lost hope in society despite all the bad news out there. The Gallup polling organization's annual update on public confidence in institutions, published last month, is a useful snapshot of the United States as the people view it. This picture shows a country quite different from what is portrayed through the lens of the mass media or the entertainment industry.

IN the polling hierarchy, the least signif icant data measure is a president's per sonal popularity. Here, President Obama excels, with most polls showing him in the high 60s. Next comes his job approval, significant but not necessarily predictive. Obama's approval, in the Rasmussen Poll, has now dipped to 51 percent, one point less than his 2008 vote share of 52 percent. In past polls, most voters registering disapproval for the president had voted for Sen. John McCain. Now, Obama's starting to lose people who backed him last November. But the true predictive measurement is a chief executive's and his...

Public Opinion on Jong Woon Uniformly Negative By Jiro Ishimaru, Representative of the Osaka office of Asia Press [2009-07-02 15:53 ] Jiro Ishimaru, who has been collecting news material along the North Korea-China frontier for more than a decade, visited the border regions again in mid-June. He met with nine North Koreans who were heading back to North Korea after concluding their private business. Ishimaru, the Representative of the Osaka office of "Asia Press,” subsequently wrote up what the North Koreans had told him, specifically about their view of Kim Jong Woon’s succession and the latest complications following the apparent...

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have two articles in today’s papers that tell essentially the same story. The headline from the Times is “Poll Finds Unease With Obama on Key Issues.” It’s followed by this: A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found that support for his plans to overhaul health care, rescue the auto industry and close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, falls well below his job approval ratings.

What are we to make of the new poll that supposedly shows a decline in American support for Israel? According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the survey was conducted by the Israel Project and the results were leaked by someone who obtained the data immediately after polling last week. Reportedly, the poll shows a precipitous drop in the number of those who call themselves supporters of Israel, with 44 percent believing the United States should support Israel as opposed to 69 percent last year

Many years ago, political scientists came up with a theory that elites lead public opinion. And on some issues, they clearly do. But on some issues, they don't. Two examples of the latter phenomenon are conspicuous at a time when Barack Obama enjoys the approval of more than 60 percent of Americans and Democrats have won thumping majorities in two elections in a row. One is global warming. The other is gun control. On both issues, the elites of academe, the media and big business have been solidly on one side for years. But on both, the American public has...

I've been suffering under the wrong paradigm for decades. All this time I thought what mattered was "reality." How wrong I've been. Somewhere in the transition from trying to wade through the CBO's analysis of President Obama's budget and putting it aside to read some James Thurber, I had an epiphany. Before my epiphany, if you had asked me about some problem or policy, I would have tried to analyze it -- asking, or even answering, what I thought were pertinent questions. Say we were talking health care. I would have looked up what we spend on it, life expectancies,...

Progressive Power Surge by: Heather Latham, April 06, 2009 The American public opinion has changed from conservative to progressive, according to a study put out by the Center for American Progress (CAP). The study included a survey of forty statements—twenty characterized as “conservative” and another twenty “progressive.” Participants were to rank how much they agreed with each statement. The range of responses was from zero to ten, with zero being strongly disagree, five neutral, and ten strongly agree. John Halpin, CAP Senior Fellow and co-Director of the Progressive Studies Program at CAP, explained this study at a recent event there....

...It started a week before the inauguration President-elect Barack Obama privately delivered a pre-inauguration veto threat to fellow Democrats saying they would not deny him use of the remaining $350 billion in federal bailout funds. Source. Then Congress began flexing its muscles to show the incoming President the extent of congressional power. Diane Fienstein dissed both the President-elect and her Senate leadership, while Harry Reid made a point of reminding reporters the he does not report to the president. Americans strongly oppose the presidents first two executive orders, allowing federal funding for overseas abortions and closing Guantanamo, according to a...

Less than a week before its October term is set to begin, the US Supreme Court became a spectacle of sound and fury on Wednesday over a landmark decision handed down three months ago declaring that the death penalty for child rapists is cruel and unusual punishment. At issue was whether the high court would revisit the landmark 5-to-4 decision after revelations last summer that contradicted the majority justices' conclusion that a "national consensus" had emerged against the death penalty for the rape of a child. The June 25 decision said only six states had laws authorizing capital punishment for...

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight -- simply prohibited -- even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens. The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- the premiere organization for surveying international public opinion -- released a new survey a couple of weeks ago regarding public opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including opinion among American citizens, and this is what it found: A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that...

Wars of Ideas and THE War of Ideas Authored by Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria, II. Added June 12, 2008 Type: Monograph 62 Pages   Cost: Free The author discusses several types of wars of ideas in an effort to achieve a better understanding of what wars of ideas are. That knowledge, in turn, can help inform strategy. It is important to note, for instance, that because ideas are interpreted subjectively, it is not likely that opposing parties will "win" each other over by means of an ideational campaign alone. Hence, physical events, whether intended or incidental, typically play determining...

The country is frustrated. Democrats say Americans want change from Bush administration policies. That much of the country was also frustrated when Democrats were in charge apparently has escaped them. A new Washington Post-ABC News Poll finds that nearly three-quarters of those surveyed believe the country is on the wrong track. They are deeply pessimistic about the future and dissatisfied with Washington’s corrosive political environment. The public believes most politicians are out for themselves and not the people. They also think most politicians say and do the bidding of their respective polarizing groups and rarely say what they mean, or...

Results from an unprecedented public opinion poll of the Afghan people taken by Environics Research couldn’t have come at a worse time for Canadian Liberal leader Stephane Dion, NDP chief Jack Layton, and all others in Canada calling for our troops to leave Afghanistan post-haste.....

THE war in Iraq is the single most important continuing news issue right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That’s why when a finding about the war in a New York Times poll could not be easily explained, the paper went back and did another poll on the very same subject. It turns out the poll had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News Poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared with two months ago. The Times and...

A crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky. Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour. The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare's birthplace in Warwickshire on Saturday. [snip]

Americans’ support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. But two-thirds of those polled said the United States should reduce its forces in Iraq, or remove them altogether. Support for the invasion had been...

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein says the public emotion surging around efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration policy is the greatest she has seen since her 1992 election. The Democrat said the topic hasn't translated into the 30,000-plus phone calls to her office that would mean "something is really going on" in the nation?s most populous state, but the enthusiasm of opinion is fervent. "We're dealing with an issue about which people have very strong, very deeply set views," Mrs. Feinstein said. She said most of the nearly 8,000 calls her office has fielded have been "very hostile and very negative"...

ASSOCIATED PRESSPeople think the Democratic-led Congress is doing just as dreary a job as President Bush after four months of bitter political standoffs that have made little progress on Iraq and on a host of domestic issues.     An AP-Ipsos poll also found that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is more popular than the president and her colleagues on Capitol Hill, though she faces a gender gap in which significantly more women than men support her.     The survey found just 35 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job, down five percentage points in a month. That gives lawmakers the same...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday he believes President Bush's low approval ratings are hurting the GOP yet won't affect the party's 2008 nominee. "I don't think there's any doubt that when the president's polling numbers are low that it harms the Republican Party in general, but I think that when it comes election time that the overwhelming majority of Americans will choose their candidate on the basis of that individual candidate's qualifications, vision and record," McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press. The president's numbers have fallen largely because of his stewardship of the Iraq war....

The latest NEWSWEEK poll shows that 91 percent of American adults surveyed believe in God—and nearly half reject the theory of evolution. Also, Americans on John Edwards and the Senate's goal for troop withdrawal A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents...

Tension between government by experts (intellectuals, bureaucrats, and independent legislators) and the voice of the people (expressed in elections and opinion polls) complicates politics in our Federal republic. Relying too heavily on opinion polls or elections is a short road to disaster when the government must determine critical policies that involve intricate financial knowledge, broad knowledge of history, economics, and foreign affairs. The general populace can be too easily misled by propaganda and ignorance of the subject. But looking exclusively to an expert elite opens the path to tyranny, as the history of socialist collectivism demonstrates. Intellectual cadres, working through...

'Listen more' is world's message to US A BBC international opinion poll suggests there is widespread disquiet about the United States' role in Iraq and its other foreign policy priorities. The BBC's Jonathan Marcus analyses the results. The Bush administration's toppling of Saddam Hussein has had several profound and unintended consequences. One has been the way in which the destruction of both the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, and of Iraq's military machine, have opened the way for the rise of Iran as a major regional player. Another crucial but less tangible problem - as this opinion poll commissioned by the...

When the issue of having the federal government negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies for the Medicare Part D program comes up later this week in Congress, it will be another example of an idea that seems to poll well and appears to enjoy a great deal of public support. However an in depth look at public opinion shows that once the American people understand the possible implications of negotiating the cost of prescription drug prices, public opinion changes significantly and voters become very skeptical of the idea and the implications for public health. Penn, Schoen, and Berland, a...

Nancy Pelosi makes me cringe. Is something wrong with her, or me? Pelosi, our first female speaker of the House, grandmother, mother of five (four in five years), has been all over TV this weekend with that wide-eyed, runaway bride thing going. She’s wearing her bright red pantsuit (an Armani, you think?). She’s smiling too wide, ear to ear, like it was just fantastic to get her head handed to her in her very first act as a supposed bipartisan, squeaky clean speaker: trying to settle an old vendetta by foisting on America as majority leader John Murtha - the...

They like us. They really like us. Of course, not all of them are the smartest pigs in the pipeline. Our valentine from the Lower 48 -- 152 pages of survey results from a poll conducted last spring -- indicates that Outsiders think mostly good thoughts when they think about Alaska. It also indicates they're confused on certain aspects of life in the 49th state. When asked to play a word-association game, a handful of the 1,500 respondents said the first thing that comes to mind when they hear "Alaska'' is "50th state.'' Sorry, Hawaii. Guess that makes you a...

    The national media is a power-hungry institution. It maintains its power to determine what is important in American politics and government by making dupes of the American public. The "duping" occurs though media opinion polling.     To preserve their agenda power, the mainstream media have an ace in the hole: opinion polls. By asking the right questions of the public, the media can validate the legitimacy of their agenda focus by claiming the public has a similar view.     What is the mainstream media's favored agenda focus? They have long devoted disproportionate interest to political conflict, scandal, horse races and bad news....

WASHINGTON, June 13 — As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among people in some countries closely allied with the United States, a new opinion poll has found. Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent said they had a positive opinion, down from 41 percent last year, according to the survey. It was done in 15 nations, including the United States, this spring by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include...

Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans approve of the way that George W. Bush is performing his role as President. Fifty-seven percent (57%) disapprove. Those figures include 20% of Americans who Strongly Approve and 40% who Strongly Disapprove. Overall, the President earns Approval from 46% of men and 39% of women. . . . . . . The President did not receive a bounce from the news of al-Zarqawi’s death. Rasmussen Reports tracking data shows that 41% of Americans now believe the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror while 30% believe the terrorists are winning. The survey...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of the American general public and American opinion leaders - Should the US take a more active role in Cross Strait relations? Interestingly enough, the American general public and the American Opinion Leaders were about equal, with 44% saying the US should be more active. Just over half (52%) of the opinion leaders said, "no!", and just under half (47%) of the general public said, "no!" The majority opinion is for the US to mind its own business. One in ten persons in the...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of American opinion leaders - Americans were asked - What are the most admirable traits of the Chinese and their culture? 9. One in 25 people said the Chinese are friendly - 4% (uh, perhaps they should smile more?) 8. Intelligent - 7%. This one surprised me. Most of my Chinese friends are ten times smarter than I. 7. Disciplined - 8% When it's time, it's time. 6. The Food! - 9% - Nearly one in ten Americans think the Chinese have the market...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of the American general public and American opinion leaders - Is Hong Kong better or worse since the 1997 handover? About one in five of the general public think it is better (I wonder how many of them have been there....) whereas one in six of the opinion leaders thought Hong Kong was better off. However....one in three of the general public thought that Hong Kong was worse off now and nearly half of all opinion leaders (46%) thought Hong Kong has gone downhill....

There is no denying the fact that America is politically divided today. Some say we are more divided than ever in history, though we have not yet reached a second civil war level of division. Most believe we are divided right down the middle, based upon recent election cycle returns in which only a couple percentage points separate the victor from the loser. Most blame polarizing politicians or extreme rhetoric for our divide, but only that extreme rhetoric or polarizing political figure from across the aisle. For the most part, we are divided between America’s political left and right. Though...

Survey: Russians consider the Kremlin's stance on HAMAS to be unconstructive The majority of those polled by the radio station of "Echo of Moscow" view unfavorably Russia's support of the Palestinian government, which consists of Hamas member. "Echo of Moscow" conducted flash poll of its listeners during its "Richochet" program. Sixty-five percent of respondents believe Russia's position on Hamas is unconstructive. Thirty-five percent support the Kremlin's postion. The survey took 5 minutes to conduct and received 2542 responses (telephone calls). The survey was conducted 24 hours after President Putin's press conference at which he stated that Russia never recognized Hamas...

If the 2008 presidential election were held today, Republican Rudy Giuliani would beat Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton according to a nationwide poll conducted by Canisius College. Of the 455 respondents who volunteered an answer regarding the 2008 match-up, Giuliani received 54 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 38 percent. Michael V. Haselswerdt, PhD, professor of political science at Canisius and co-director of the poll, notes “Clinton loses among voters in the red states, which is no surprise, but Giuliani breaks even in the blue states.” The Canisius poll also shows that only 27 percent of Americans think the nation is...

Have you ever read poll results and wished they'd put the question differently? Or offered different answers? Or asked an entirely different question? Well, now you can do something about it. Newswise — Future Brief, a free Internet publication designed to keep the public abreast of trends in society, science, and security, is offering the public the opportunity to create their own poll questions. Those selected will be put to the American people in professional polls implemented by Zogby International, one of America's leading opinion research organizations. Zogby will take polls on each question in the same manner as it...

KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany -- For the first time since German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced early elections in May, the Christian Democrats/Christian Socialists and coalition partner Free Democrats have lost their majority in the polls. If elections were held Sunday, the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Leftist Union would get as many votes as the opposition, a new poll has found.

The old media is on the ropes. Newspaper circulations are at an all time low and still slipping. Network news is having trouble competing with PBS for ratings, having lost many of their viewers to cable news, notably - the much hated and loved Fox. Once respected news journals like Time and Newsweek now share rack space with other sensationalized headline merchants like The Globe and The Enquirer, which sell better because their headlines are more reliable. Even the household term old media itself describes the fading glory of a once mainstream news establishment turned tabloid rag, now permanently engaged...

"The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet. The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at http://www.yuluncn.com. That's the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he's started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China. Mr....

BEIJING – China has formed a special force of undercover online commentators to try to sway public opinion on controversial issues on the Internet, a newspaper said on Thursday. A special force of online commentators had already been operating in Suqian city in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu since April, the Southern Weekend said. Their job was to defend the government when negative comments appeared on Internet bulletin boards and chatrooms, the weekly quoted local officials as saying. Suqian city's propaganda department recruited the commentators from among government officials, the weekly said, adding that they must 'understand (government) policies,...

SO many Americans apparently now see journalists as self-interested, careerist and unprofessional that perhaps it would make sense for media executives to call up another group of bosses who once faced fundamental questions about their product: the makers of Tylenol in the 1980's. After all, Johnson & Johnson proved that credibility, not to mention market share, could be regained after scandal - in its case, a series of deaths caused by cyanide-laced capsules some 20 years ago. Part of the strategy was to portray the company as a victim in its own right. "We expressed genuine regret and took the...

SYDNEY, March 28 - As the point person in the Bush administration's campaign to improve America's image in the world, Karen Hughes may face a more difficult challenge than she imagined and discover that she will have to travel far beyond the Middle East. A poll released Monday in Australia, long known for friendly relations with Americans, found that only 58 percent of the population had a positive view of the United States. That put the United States behind China (69 percent positive), and not even in the overall Top 10 countries, regions or groups that Australians respect. They have...

MOSCOW, March 28 (RIA Novosti) - At the moment, 54% of Russians approve of the governor appointment system (by regional legislatures following the president's recommendations) proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thirty-nine percent disagree. In September 2004, after Putin put forward the initiative, 38% of respondents backed this proposal (partially or in full), and 48% disapproved of it. This is the information of the all-Russian Public Opinion Center, which conducted a representative survey of 1,600 Russian citizens in 100 cities and towns in 40 regions, territories and republics on March 13-14 and March 19-21. The statistic error does not exceed...