More bias

Brian Williams opened up tonight's Republican debate with a shot at President Bush by claiming more people blame Bush and Republicans for the current economic situation. This is a form of bias where news agencies pay for polls and then use them as if they are news. Polls are not news, they are a measure of opinion and depending on how they are conducted may or may not be of any real value at all. It is a common practice to conduct polls by news agencies and then report on their own polls as if it is big news, this is not a practice exclusive to NBC or MSNBC they all do it, it is ridiculous when they all do it not just when when Brian Williams does it. I only point it out because Williams chose to open a debate that is supposed to be about the future and what candidates will do in the future by taking shots at the past.

I did some searching for the source of this assertion by Williams since he did not cite his source. Not surprisingly it appears that his information comes form a June poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal. Similar questions were also asked in August. I guess it is fine to open a debate by taking shots at someone who has been out of office for over three years and in some fairness Brian Williams did point out that most people also do not believe President Obama had put the right polices in place to fix the problem. The thing is, isn't the later the point right now? George bush is not running, George Bush has been out of office for 3 years. Obama is running and has been in office for the last three years. People think Obama has not done the right things to fix the mess. that is of course if we want to assume the poll is even relevant or that Brian Williams represented the data completely and accurately. By now it should not surprise you that I am going to tell you he did neither.

First of all it is not relevant at all. It is a poll conducted by his own news organization and it is just an opinion poll which we will dissect more in a bit. I looked through several NBC/WSJ polls and found this question has appeared in some form or another over more than one poll and guess which way the numbers are moving? No mention of that at all so just to mention it out of context of the poll data itself makes it irrelevant.

Other data in the June 2011 poll and data from July and August also from the NBC/WSJ pools show a rise in the number of people who disapprove of the job that President Obama is doing, believe the country is on the wrong track, and disapprove of his handling of the economy. All of these items are directly related to someone who is running for President, not someone who was President 3 years ago. Brian Williams made a reference as I mentioned to that fact that many people also believe Obama is not implementing the right policies to fix the economy but what he did not mention is that it is now up to 73% believe we are on the wrong track up form 62% in the poll Williams did reference.

Also lets look at the numbers, in the old poll 14% blamed only Bush and 10% blamed only Obama which is what I think the Williams comment refereed to but all this really means is 24% of the respondents are political partisan hacks responding dishonestly or they are stupid. Frankly why do we care about partisan hacks and stupid people when we are in serious circumstances and if you are serious you tune into a debate it should be to evaluate the men and women running for office currently not what happened 3 years ago? In addition 33% of people think Bush was "mainly" responsible compared to 22% who think Obama was "mainly" responsible.

So here is 55% of their respondents who don't have a clue what happened leading up to the financial collapse and are gullible enough to think the President can be mainly responsible for policies and programs that predated him and many of which were designed and implemented by Congress and members of Congress who by they way are still in office while President bush again is not! To the extend that government is responsible for the mess at all it is simply absurd to think that either President Bush or President Obama can be fully or mainly responsible for the situation so why report on absurdity?

Now lets get into the real meat of the problem. While the August poll did not publish the data in the same way they did have one question that was similar. The question was if the current economic situation is one Obama inherited or or one his policies are mostly re4sponsible for and that number is 56% inherited to 33% caused by Obama Policies but that number had changed from June when it was 62% inherited and 25% caused by Obama's policies. That might be significant if you are going to mention these polls right?

Another question that was asked but not mentioned was are Obama's polices helping or hurting. 23% say helping, 37% say hurting. That also might be significant if we are going to play this game right?

Since the debate was at the Regan library another way of putting all of this would be to ask you to think about what the numbers say. Do more people think they are better off now than they were 4 years ago? I think what the numbers in NBC's own polls are showing is that more people think they are not better off.

There simply was no reason for NBC to cherry pick their own polls for data they can use to bash President Bush and Republicans while ignoring data in the same polls that shows more and more people are becoming dissatisfied with the direction the sitting President has taking our country in. Whoever the Republican nominee ends up being will not be running against George W Bush although they are running against someone who has left a lot of Bush policies in place he is not George W Bush. We had that election already or at least it was painted that way but frankly even John McCain was not George W Bush, not at all.... far more moderate than the squishy moderate Bush.

I find it interesting that some people, including whoever writes for Brian Williams' teleprompter cannot resist trying to run against Bush again but it is petty and it is biased.