It seems like the Dems will be taking both houses of Congress.

[Drake Tungsten]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238

It's good to see that The Note still believes in the myth of the liberal media.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe

Given Ogie's track record I'ld say we have a winner.

[Odin]

WaPo: Independent Voters Favor Democrats by 2 to 1 in Poll

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102300766.html

Independent Voters Favor Democrats by 2 to 1 in Poll

Iraq War Cited Most Often As Top Issue for Elections

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 24, 2006; A01

Two weeks before the midterm elections, Republicans are losing the battle for independent voters, who now strongly favor Democrats on Iraq and other major issues facing the country and overwhelmingly prefer to see them take over the House in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The new poll underscores how much of a drag the war threatens to be on Republican candidates in competitive races. With debate underway in Washington about possible course changes in Iraq, Americans cite the war as the most important issue in determining their vote next month more often than any other issue, and those who do favor Democrats over Republicans by 76 percent to 21 percent.

Independents are poised to play a pivotal role in next month's elections because Democrats and Republicans are basically united behind candidates of their own parties. Ninety-five percent of Democrats said they will support Democratic candidates for the House, while slightly fewer Republicans, 88 percent, said they plan to vote for their party's candidates.

The independent voters surveyed said they plan to support Democratic candidates over Republicans by roughly 2 to 1 -- 59 percent to 31 percent -- the largest margin in any Post-ABC News poll this year. Forty-five percent said it would be good if Democrats recaptured the House majority, while 10 percent said it would not be. The rest said it would not matter.

The poll also found that independents are highly pessimistic about the Iraq war and the overall state of the country. Just 23 percent said the country is heading in the right direction, compared with 75 percent who said things have gotten off track. Only a quarter of independents approve of the job Congress has done this year. Only a third say the Iraq war is worth fighting. A month before the 2004 election, independents were almost evenly split on that question.

Independent voters may strongly favor Democrats, but their vote appears motivated more by dissatisfaction with Republicans than by enthusiasm for the opposition party. About half of those independents who said they plan to vote Democratic in their district said they are doing so primarily to vote against the Republican candidate rather than to affirmatively support the Democratic candidate. Just 22 percent of independents voting for Democrats are doing so "very enthusiastically."

Among the electorate as a whole, the poll highlighted how the political climate continues to favor Democrats. President Bush's approval rating among all Americans stood at 37 percent. Two weeks ago he was at 39 percent, and in September he was at 42 percent. By more than 2 to 1, Americans disapprove of the way Congress has been doing its job.

The generic vote for the House -- a question that asks people which party they favor in their district but that does not match actual candidates against one another -- remained strongly in the Democrats' favor, 54 percent to 41 percent.

These national numbers do not translate directly into predictions of whether Democrats will gain the 15 House seats or six Senate seats they need to take control of those chambers. But an analysis of the findings sheds light on why Republicans are now deeply worried about losing their House majority and why the Senate is in play as well.

The poll showed that Democrats not only have a significant advantage in blue states -- those won in the 2004 presidential race by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) -- but also have a narrow advantage in Bush-backing red states, which helps to explain why the number of GOP-held seats that appear competitive has increased recently.

Iraq is cited most frequently as the most important issue in the midterm elections. Two weeks ago, 26 percent of those surveyed cited the war as the single most important issue determining their vote in November, compared with 23 percent who cited the economy and 14 percent who said terrorism. In the new poll, 27 percent said Iraq, 19 percent cited the economy and 14 percent said terrorism.

Independents are almost as likely as Democrats to cite Iraq as the single most important issue in the campaign. Both groups are twice as likely as Republicans to single out the war when asked about the election's top issues.

Independents do not limit their criticism of the war's handling to the president. Fifty-five percent of independents said congressional Republicans deserve a "great deal" or a "good amount" of the blame for problems in Iraq. Fewer, 36 percent, give congressional Republicans credit for helping prevent terrorist attacks against the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush agreed last week with a commentator's suggestion that a recent surge in violence in Iraq could be equivalent to the 1968 Tet Offensive, which marked a turning point in U.S. public support for the Vietnam War. But the percentage of Americans who believe that Iraq could be another Vietnam is no higher, at 45 percent, than it was in June.

Four in 10 Americans said the war is not worth fighting, and three in four said the war has damaged the United States' image in the rest of the world. Not quite half of those surveyed said that overall, the war has helped to improve the lives of the Iraqi people, a sharp decline since June, when roughly seven in 10 believed it had.

The small decline in the economy's ranking as a top voting issue comes at a time when Americans are increasingly upbeat about the state of the national economy. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said the economy is "good" or "excellent," a sharp jump over the past two weeks and the highest since Bush took office.

But Republicans appear to be getting little tangible benefit from the growing economic optimism, which has come amid declining gasoline prices and a record high in the Dow Jones industrial average. Those who cite the economy as the most important issue favor Democrats by 18 percentage points, 57 percent to 39 percent.

One reason is that only a quarter of those surveyed said they are getting ahead financially. About the same number said they are falling behind. Most, however, said they are just able to maintain their standard of living. Republicans have an advantage only among those who say their financial condition is improving.

Among those voting primarily on Iraq, Democrats hold a sizable lead, 76 percent to 21 percent, in voting intentions. Democrats also are favored by voters who cite health care as their most important issue, while those voting on terrorism or immigration strongly favor Republicans.

Voters also continue to trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with the war, the economy, North Korea and ethics in government. On terrorism, the two parties are at parity.

But independents, the key swing voter group, strongly trust the Democrats on all of those issues by margins ranging from 14 percentage points on terrorism to 23 points on Iraq and North Korea and 26 points on ethics in government.

The growing independent support for Democratic House candidates represents a significant shift in attitudes since the 2004 election, when Democrats held only a slim advantage. In winning reelection, Bush narrowly lost the independent vote, 50 percent to 48 percent, and in the vote for the House, independents split 50 to 46 for Democratic candidates.

One important question that will affect the outcome of the elections is who shows up to vote. More Democrats than Republicans, 32 percent vs. 24 percent, said they are "very closely" following the campaign, and Democrats are more likely to be very enthusiastic about voting. Independents show less enthusiasm about this election than do Democrats or Republicans.

Almost three in five respondents said this congressional election is more important than past congressional elections. A higher percentage of Democrats said this election has more significance than did Republicans or independents.

Both parties are making extraordinary efforts to turn out their voters in November. Twenty-nine percent of registered voters said they had been contacted by one party or the other for their votes, and three in 10 of those said they had been contacted by advocates for both parties.

Republicans appear to be doing a better job of contacting independents. In the poll, 45 percent of those independents who said they had been contacted said they were urged to vote for Republicans, while 17 percent said they were urged to vote for Democrats. The rest said they were contacted by both sides.

The Post-ABC News poll findings are based on telephone interviews with 1,200 adults conducted Thursday through Sunday. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Fox has been absolutely pro-Republican this election. To the point that they're virtually cheer leading.

What else is new? When Bush was slipping in 2004, Fox "journalists" were saying "How can Bush get back his popularity?" , rather than mention why Americans were losing favor.

[Drake Tungsten]

Damn, what is Mark Halperin doing? He's going to ruin everything!

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/10/25/video-big-media-is-too-liberal-abc-news-honcho-tells-oreilly/

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238

It's good to see that The Note still believes in the myth of the liberal media.

That's because The Note is run by a hard core right-winger.

[Drake Tungsten]

Yeah, the same hard-core right-winger who wrote a memo in 2004 calling for the media to be less even-handed in its coverage of Bush and Kerry, to Kerry's benefit...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Given poll after poll lindicates that members of themedia are at least 5 times more liberal than conservative. Latest Pew poll came in at 34% liberal 7% conservative. Prior to that numbers wer 50+% to barely over 10 since the 70's.

or perhaps there is the candid admission by Thomas Edsall (former editor of the WaPo)

Which is irrelevant because they police themselves to a great extent. The two most important factors in determining political content are the publishers and the sources. The sources are overwhelmingly right or center-right. Publishers, on the other hand, mainly want to please advertisers, and so sensationalist stories which are thought to driver audiences are sought over stories which might offend them.

That isn't to say the media is objective. They are very pro-whomever-is-in-power, unless they seem weakened, and then they go after them like sharks. Up until Katrina, the media basically cleaned the floor in front of Bush's steps with their tongues. Once he seemed vulnerable because of the destruction of NOLA, they attacked. It was the same with Clinton, and Poppa Bush, and Reagan, and so on.

One thing that's interesting, I find, is that right-wing media criticism is taken much more seriously by the SCLM (so-called liberal media) than left-wing criticism, even though left-wing critiques are more thorough and fact-filled than right-wing ones.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Yeah, the same hard-core right-winger who wrote a memo in 2004 calling for the media to be less even-handed in its coverage of Bush and Kerry, to Kerry's benefit...

Remember, this is all relative to che.

[chequita guevara]

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by Sikander




Remember this is Poly, not DU. You sound like the most virulent Clinton hater a decade ago. There's plenty to hate the Repugs for without reaching so much. The Foley thing is bad on a small scale (ie his district if he hadn't resigned), but hardly rises to a national issue even if there was a significant coverup by the leadership.

Excuse me, but everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. The final issue keeping Bush afloat was Monica's dress, or as a fundie once told me, at least they're not fornicators.



9/11 was the most lethal terrorist attack in world history.
(2700 Americans Dead)

Katrina was America's second worst natural disaster (or first).
(Do they even know how many bodies are in the Gulf of Mexico?)

The 2005 storms made it obvious to even junkies he's been lying about global warming (i've had 3 initiate conversations on it with me.)

Iraq was is a quagmire that Generals warned us against.
(2800 Dead)

Bush has done more to attack the Constition than any President.

No President has tried to repeal judicail review, which has been intact since Article 39 of the
Magna Carta

We now have no-knock warrants, the first time in Anglo-American law since the 13th Century

Gas prices have doubled

He's cancelled our adhernce to The Geneva Convention

American's outside the country can be bugged without a warrant (The same might be true if the phone line passes through an Indian Reservation.

==========================================

To the fundies, the worst thing is to be caught with a boy!

[realpolitic]

Don't count the Repubs out, they're throwing out registrations in record numbers, their machines count the vote, and they can send in Homeland Security, like they did in Warren County Ohio in 2004 to "supervise" the count.

[Dinner]

I'm not counting them out and we most certainly need new laws and regulations to insure that everyone can have confidence in the vote. The laws inacted by the Republican Governor of New Mexico seem like an excellent place to start; no paperless voting to insure the ability to recount, making all vote counting positions completely nonpartisan and open to public scrutiny, requirements providing for fairness in the distribution of polling station, etc..

Doing that would go a long way towards eliminating the claims, real or imagined, that dishonesty is involved in the election process.

[chequita guevara]

I'm perfectly willing to believe they will steal the election if they lose.

[Dinner]

This is pretty low down and dirty. The House Human Rights Campaign, the organization which degraced former Congressmen Foley work for when he headed the body to investigating the abuse and explotation of childen, has fired the page who released the e-mails which proved Foley was a sexual preditor preying upon 16 year old male pages. The action was supposedly taken by the Republicans which controlled the organization.

Foley Email Leak Linked To HRC Employee

(Washington) The Human Rights Campaign has fired what it describes only as a "low level' worker after that person admitted being behind the release of sexual emails sent by former Congressman Mark Foley to former House pages.

An HRC spokesperson confirmed to 365Gay.com that the employee had been fired for "misusing" the organization's computer system. The worker's involvement became known earlier this week and he was let go the same day.

Copies of the emails sent by Foley were sent to several newspapers in the summer, but none of the papers, including the Miami Herald, picked up on them. After the emails were posted on stopsexpredators.blogspot.com ABC news began to probe into them.

After ABC began running stories the rest of the media followed, resulting in both a criminal probe of Foley and a House ethics committee investigation.

But the person who posted the emails was a mystery until this week.

The House committee has now heard from most of the players in the scandal except from Foley himself who is in a rehab clinic for alcohol abuse. It is unlikely committee members will hear from the ex-Congressman. The key issue in the investigation is when Republicans first learned of his behavior, what was done, and what can done to prevent similar situations in the future.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz) said he first learned of inappropriate emails sent to pages by Foley several years ago and had confronted the Congressman but Kolbe has not been asked to testify before the committee. [I wonder why. Could it be they don't want to find out the truth? - Oerdin]

Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House GOP campaign chairman Tom Reynolds of New York have said they heard about emails last spring and talked to House Speaker Dennis Hastert about Foley, but Hastert says he does not recall the conversations.

Foley abruptly resigned Sept. 29 after the first of the emails was made public.

The scandal has rocked the GOP less than two weeks before the midterm election with some Republicans and conservative Christians groups blaming Foley's behavior and the the subsequent alleged coverup on a "cabal" of homosexuals working for Congress.

Earlier this week a so-called ex-gay group said that Foley did not need alcohol rehab, but instead should undergo "sexual reorientation".

The organization, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, specially honed-in on Foley's statements that he suggest his behavior was the result of having been sexually abused by a priest as a child.

"Like Mr. Foley, many were taken advantage of sexually by adults when they were young teenagers," said Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX).

"They never had a chance to fulfill their heterosexual potential and often feel guilty or at fault. But there is an alternative to unwanted same-sex attractions. No one is born gay. Thousands of ex-gay men and women have overcome their same-sex attraction. Sexual reorientation therapies and ex-gay ministries provide a safe place to talk about the painful past and receive help in overcoming unwanted same-sex attractions."

So-called sexual reorientation has been discredited by major mental health groups including the American Psychiatric Association.

The guy who exposed a habitual sexual preditor got fired because it embarassed the Republican Party. Disgusting. Party of family values indeed.

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/10/102606foley.htm