Free Republic

“There are three kinds of lies,” Mark Twain famously observed. “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” You already know that the government's published statistics are not trustworthy. Federal agencies have shifted methodologies over the years, making it hard to compare data sets. In economic modeling, there is a concept called “GIGO” — garbage in, garbage out. And what we have been seeing does seem like a lot of garbage. Then, the number-crunchers perform adjustments, do other kinds of syntheses, and make revisions to that data. A good case could be made that government data has been politicized, too, and some methodologies...

In just a couple of days it will be three years since the January 6 United States Capitol attack.Ahead of our 'Jan 6' debate on Saturday, it feels apt to take a step back to try and capture an overview of the state of trust in institutions in the United States.As Statista's Anna Fleck detail below, based on data collected by Gallup in June 2023, of the institutions selected, only the military and small businesses saw a great deal or a fair amount of trust in them from a majority of U.S. respondents.This is at odds with Congress, which saw...

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) claimed that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) kicking Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and himself off the Intelligence Committee would ultimately bring “distrust” to the intelligence community that shares classified information with them. Schiff, who has already started to fundraise off of being blocked from the Intel Committee, led a press conference on Wednesday flanked by Swalwell and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), criticizing McCarthy’s decision. He stated:

Some occupations have a better reputation for honesty than others. As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, Gallup examines the issue in a reoccurring poll showing that nurses are the most trusted professionals in the United States, followed by doctors and pharmacists.They have actually topped the ranking for two decades and were regarded as highly honest and ethical by 79 percent of respondents in 2022, down from a coronavirus high of 89 percent in 2020.You will find more infographics at StatistaOther than the healthcare sector, trusted professionals in the eyes of Americans also come from the fields of teaching, the judiciary and...

The 2020–2022 pandemic split parties and ideologues, separated friend from friend and family members from family members. Neighbors were dangerous, and strangers even more so: the invisible enemy stalking our lands overturned every other concern in life: The conflicts it spurred replaced bonds of affection with fear and hatred. More than ever, we need calm and level-headed thinkers, honest and willing to admit past errors, with eyes wide open for the corruption of industry or government itself. In other words, we need as little politics as humanly possible. As I wrote in a previous piece: we need “people without a...

President Joe Biden blamed law enforcement for fueling “distrust” in minority communities in his proclamation declaring Peace Officers Memorial Day and “Police Week.” Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15, honors all of the fallen law enforcement officers, as well as Police Week to remember all of the sacrifices from officials and their families across the country.

The polls from the major networks and universities promised a blue wave. President Trump was down by at least 10 points nationally, and by nearly that much or more in the major swing states. The few pollsters, including Trafalgar, who got 2016 and 2018 right and called 2020 a close race, were widely ridiculed.Nate Silver, a leftwing poll analyst, was chief among the critics. Silver gave former Vice President Joe Biden a nearly 70 percent chance of winning Florida.Immediately on Election Day, turnout looked good for the GOP. Trump won Florida decisively and by 8:30 p.m. Central Time, and made...

<p>No, it’s not the progressives. Many on the left are true cop-haters from the get go. A prime example of how the left detest police (unless they become victims of a crime and squeal like the cowards they are) occurred during the recent Ontario election campaign. Gurrant Singh, brother of federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, was a star candidate for the NDP. It was revealed he once carried a sign in a demonstration that read “F**K the POLICE.” Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath saw nothing wrong with that. Neither did the rest of her radical caucus.</p>

In one of the last segments on Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Brian Stelter spent nearly four and half minutes whining about the public, specifically Trump supporters, who don’t believe the news media. “If you don't believe the ‘media,’ then you probably don't believe that the Trump administration has had a dysfunctional few months,” he chided at the start of the segment. “If you don't believe the ‘media,’ you might not believe Russia's meddling in last year's election is a very big deal.” Stelter admitted that the distrust in media started long before President Trump, but he rested its current...

Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward said Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton email scandal isn’t about Trump, but that it is “about her” and that there are questions of distrust. ... what the e-mails tell us .. one where Hillary Clinton’s chief speechwriter sent to Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff in the State Department saying, oh, Hillary’s changing her position on the Keystone pipeline, and let’s leak that so she won’t have to say it herself publicly. Now, this is this culture of concealment, the failure to have straight talk ... this isn’t just about Trump, it’s about her....

President Obama recently made a speech in which he said that the world is safer than it's ever been. He also said the economy is doing well, as he painted a rosy picture of America's future. But this is the same man who told us we could keep our doctor, when we couldn’t, the same man who wouldn't even try to mount a military response to the slaughter in Benghazi and stood by while his Secretary of State and her State Department blamed a YouTube video as the cause of the uprising. So, I believe this election will come down...

Nothing from her campaign, nothing on Facebook, nothing on Twitter, and no response to media queries to Hillary Clinton about the expose’ video showing the Planned Parenthood abortion business selling the body parts of aborted babies.

Late last night the Washington Post broke a story about a connection between White House aides and the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal. When the scandal broke two years ago, the White House denied involvement or knowing about the details of what happened. The Post story proves otherwise and provides evidence a White House volunteer officially checked a prostitute into his hotel room in Cartagena, Colombia. The report also details threats made against the Inspector General, who was asked to delay the release of embarrassing and damaging information about the connection between the White House and the scandal until after...

The Associated Press, in partnership with GfK, a German market research firm, jointly released a poll. No big deal there, as people release polls every hour or two, especially in election season. But this one was considered unusual, because it revealed a truth that scared the American Left to their very core: Americans don’t appear to trust government to solve their problems anymore. As with every poll, interpretation is dependent on whether we trust the questions to have been asked objectively (we don’t), whether the respondents were given a comprehensive and clear array of possible answers to choose (they never...

Fewer Americans closely following political news now than in previous election years WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004. The record distrust in the media, based on a survey conducted Sept. 6-9, 2012, also means that negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for...

Whaaaaat? The American public is growing increasingly suspicious that they're being fed a steady stream of waffle by a media establishment that does everything within its power to not only play up Romney's "gaffes," but to tell us in advance exactly how we should feel about them and to steamroll over President Obama's failures, all while more or less glossing over the disastrous goings-on of the world at large? What is the world coming to! From Gallup: Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass...

Danielle, who is my right hand assistant that manages my life, pointed out to me that born on today which is called “Pi Day” in most math classes was none other than Albert Einstein (March 14th, 1879 – April 18th, 1955). While he taught in Princeton, I was far too young to have ever met him. Although his IQ score was 160, there are many others who score much higher in different fields. Yet the key to Einstein’s mind lies not in his theory of Relativity, but in his Five Maxims for Achieving Excellence. 1. Imagination is more important than...

It looks like President Barack Obama has a lot of work to do if he wants to regain the support of his party’s liberal wing. Leftists express concern that he will abandon their views on Social Security in exchange for support from Republicans in Congress on raising the debt ceiling, The Hill reports. The worry intensified after Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., (pictured) told NBC Sunday, “I will not vote for the debt ceiling increase until I see a plan in place that will deal with our long-term debt obligation starting with Social Security, a real bipartisan effort to make sure...

Thursday September 30, 2010 Poll Finds Record Majority of Americans Distrust Mainstream Media By Peter J. SmithWASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new Gallup poll shows that a record majority of Americans have little to no trust in mainstream media to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly.” Nearly half cited “liberal bias” in the media, which ranked only slightly higher than the U.S. Congress in public confidence levels.Gallup reports that 57 percent of those polled for their annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 13-16, 2010, said their “confidence and trust” in mass media – newspapers, television, and...

On February 14, CNN aired both segments of its special series “Black in America,” and used the opportunity to perpetuate a harmful racial myth. In the first installment, reporter Soledad O’Brien took viewers to Project Brotherhood, a clinic in the south side of Chicago offering free medical care and advice to its black residents. “We are seeing an increasing amount of men with resources, who are just reluctant to access services elsewhere,” Dr. Pete Thomas, a clinic doctor told O’Brien. “Why the reluctance? Dr. Thomas says black men are afraid of being exploited – a fear caused by history and...