@Foxfyre,
Well, we've all waited three months and he hasn't pooped so much as a single rainbow. So we're kinda bummed, ya know?
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:In fairness to Obama he does enjoy a high approval rating among his disciples, but he has extremely high unfavorables among everybody else--far more than other Presidents at this point in a new administation.
Didn't you recently post a poll comparing presidents that showed that both Democrats and independents rated Obama one percentage point higher than Bush at this point in a new administration? Didn't the poll you posted show that only Republicans rated Obama far worse than Democrats had rated Bush?
@old europe,
I dunno. It's possible depending on what poll I posted. Perhaps you would care to look for it and post it again? If it is the last poll I recall posting though, it was to illustrate that President Obama has been the most polarizing President with the widest margin of extremes at least since polls have been conducted.
@cicerone imposter,
CI, is this another senior moment? What is wrong with my math?
@maporsche,
Show us how you made the calculation?
@maporsche,
Very likely a typo, maporsche. Here:
maporsche wrote:his disapproval rating is up 233%....
I thought that was funny....
@cicerone imposter,
He was at 12%, now he's at 26%.
12% * 233% = 26%
Is that wrong (besides some rounding)?
@maporsche,
I see. I thought you were talking about percentage points rather than representing the change between percentage points as a percentage.
An interesting concept.
@old europe,
old europe wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:Perhaps you would care to look for it and post it again?
Sure:
Yup, that's the poll I remembered and it illustrated Pew's assessment of the comparisons that Obama is the most polarizing figure ever elected to the Presidency. You might want to go back and read that article and actually look at the graph you re-posted here along with what it actually illustrates.
You might want to notice that President Bush's approval rating wasn't much less at this juncture--this is pre-9/11 of course--and that both Carter and Nixon's approval ratings were higher, both of whom ended deep in the cellar at the end.
But of course you only picked the part that would reinforce what you wish to say here, and you are ignoring everything else in that Pew poll.
@maporsche,
maporsche wrote:
He was at 12%, now he's at 26%.
12% * 233% = 26%
Is that wrong (besides some rounding)?
It's not wrong but the stats you presented are a little skewed. When the disapproval is so low to begin, it's easy to see huge rises in percentage difference when the actual percentage rises are low.
For example, if Obama was at 5% disapproval, and that rose to 20%, you could easily claim that his disapproval numbers had risen
400%!
But that's not really representative of the reality of the situation, which is: his disapproval numbers are still very low, and heavily skewed towards Republicans.
Cycloptichorn
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:But of course you only picked the part that would reinforce what you wish to say here, and you are ignoring everything else in that Pew poll.
Right. I commented on that other stuff right after you posted the original article.
I posted it here because these statements from your posts clearly contradict each other:
Foxfyre wrote:In fairness to Obama he does enjoy a high approval rating among his disciples, but he has extremely high unfavorables among everybody else--far more than other Presidents at this point in a new administation.
@old europe,
No, they don't contradict each other. They are speaking to a different point being made--a distinction you frequently have problems with--but otherwise are saying exactly the same thing.
JUSTICE
Impeach Judge Bybee
Last week, President Obama released four Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos that had authorized torture. "In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail -- like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears," The New York Times writes. The earliest memo, from 2002, was signed by Jay Bybee, then an Assistant Attorney General and now a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bybee's memo provided "a legal authorization for a laundry list of proposed C.I.A. interrogation techniques," including waterboarding. The techniques Bybee approved are illegal by U.S. statute and an international treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory. Bybee attempted to give legal cover to illegal acts, and thus broke the ethical, professional, and legal standards that govern lawyers. For this, Judge Jay Bybee should be impeached. The Progress Report has launched a campaign to persuade the House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment hearings against Bybee. Already, more than 3,000 of you have taken action. Join our effort to convince the committee to launch hearings.
WHAT BYBEE APPROVED: "n the finest legalese" and with "grotesque, lawyerly logic," Bybee wrote 40 pages of justification for treatment that clearly constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." He approved a method called "walling," which entailed slamming a detainee against a wall. Bybee claimed that "any pain experienced is not of the intensity associated with serious physical injury." He also gave a thumbs up to slapping a detainee's face as long as the interrogator took off any rings. "The facial slap does not produce pain that is difficult to endure," he insisted. And feel free to place detainees in stress positions, Bybee said: these "simply involve forcing the subject to remain in uncomfortable positions." Most notoriously, Bybee declared that waterboarding -- a technique perfected during the Spanish Inquisition that the United States later prosecuted Japanese officers for conducting against U.S. POWs -- was both legal and safe. "The waterboard…inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever," Bybee claimed. He said that U.S. law bans only techniques that cause "pain and suffering," a phrase "best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of 'pain' as distinguished from 'suffering.'" Since waterboarding causes no "pain," Bybee declares it legal. In fact, he wrote, even one separates "pain" from "suffering," waterboarding would still be acceptable: "The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering."
HOW TO IMPEACH BYBEE: The Progress Report is asking readers to sign a petition to be sent to the House Judiciary Committee, urging it to hold hearings on Bybee. After the hearings, the Committee would draw up articles of impeachment, and pass them with a simple majority vote. From there, the articles move to the full House, which can also approve them with a simple majority. The House sends two "managers" to serve as prosecutors in the impeachment trial, conducted in the Senate if a majority agrees to move forward. It takes 67 Senators to convict -- and a conviction would remove Bybee from the bench. Calling for his impeachment in January, Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote, "[Bybee's] impeachment is not a prelude to a sweeping political vendetta. It focuses on a very particular problem: Jay Bybee may serve for decades on one of the highest courts in the land. Is his continued service consistent with his role in the systematic perpetration of war crimes?" The New York Times called for Bybee's impeachment this weekend, writing that the "memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution." "His flagrant contempt for the rule of law is utterly inconsistent with his judicial position and speaks directly to his competency to function in that office," stated the Center for Constitutional Rights. "He ought to be impeached," House Judiciary Committee member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told the Huffington Post yesterday. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law. "Senate Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) agreed that impeachment is "certainly possible." "The idea of the author of one of these memos sitting on the federal bench makes a farce of the whole legal system," wrote the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Matthew Yglesias.
A PATH TO ACCOUNTABILITY: In 2003, Bybee was nominated by President Bush and approved by the Senate to sit on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. During his confirmation hearing, Bybee refused to answer questions, citing executive privilege at least 20 separate times. "If the Senate had known the truth, it would have rejected him," Ackerman wrote. Launching the impeachment process would force Bybee to finally answer questions. And with the Obama administration hesitant to launch prosecutions of any kind, an impeachment hearing might be the closest thing Americans get to a full accounting of Bush's torture program. Indeed, when pressed yesterday on why Obama was refusing to hold Bush administration lawyers who authored the torture memos "accountable," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated simply, "The president is focused on looking forward. That's why." Looking forward, however, "it is simply obvious that, if there is no accountability when wrongdoing is exposed, future violations will not be deterred," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said yesterday. * * *
--americanprogressaction.org
@Foxfyre,
But, the part that you wrote, which OE bolded, isn't true. Obama does not have the highest unfavorables with 'everyone else.' Just with Republicans. That is indicative of nothing wrong on his part at all.
It is not Obama who is the 'most polarizing,' it is Republicans who vote down those they don't like far more than Dems or independents do. You are an intensely negative bunch.
Cycloptichorn
@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
It is not Obama who is the 'most polarizing,'
But, that isn't true.
PrezBO and his hate filled, supper negative supporters are definitely the most polarizing group in the US.
@Cycloptichorn,
The Pew Poll showed approval and disapproval ratings for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. All Republicans don't disapprove of Obama, all Demorats don't approve, and the Independents are a a mixed bag. The Pew Poll was to illustrate the polarization ideologically and that's what the grid indicates. The RCP and Rasmussen polls also look at it ideologically and also generally.
All seem to be arriving at pretty much the same results however.
The fact is, Obama does enjoy high approval ratings at this time. ALL presidents do.
The fact is, the bloom is coming off the rose and Obama may or may not ever see such high approval ratings again. That is generally the way it goes for most Presidents.
Make of that what you will, but bragging about Obama's high approval ratings at three months into his Presidency is fine, but to dismiss or pretend that those ratings aren't slipping or that his unfavorables aren't rising is simply tunnel vision to the extreme.
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:No, they don't contradict each other. They are speaking to a different point being made--a distinction you frequently have problems with--but otherwise are saying exactly the same thing.
I have a hard time believing that you don't see the contradiction in your statement and the numbers you have posted.
On the one hand, you claim that Obama enjoys high job approval ratings only among Democrats, "but he has
extremely high unfavorables among everybody else--far more than other Presidents at this point in a new administation[sic]."
On the other hand, the actual numbers you posted earlier show not only that job approval ratings among Independents are marginally higher for Obama than for Bush, they also show that the current job approval numbers for Independents are quite a bit higher than 50%. That's pretty much the opposite of "extremely high unfavorables" in anybody's book.
I don't know why you find this so hard to acknowledge.
@old europe,
old europe wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:No, they don't contradict each other. They are speaking to a different point being made--a distinction you frequently have problems with--but otherwise are saying exactly the same thing.
I have a hard time believing that you don't see the contradiction in your statement and the numbers you have posted.
On the one hand, you claim that Obama enjoys high job approval ratings only among Democrats, "but he has
extremely high unfavorables among everybody else--far more than other Presidents at this point in a new administation[sic]."
On the other hand, the actual numbers you posted earlier show not only that job approval ratings among Independents are marginally higher for Obama than for Bush, they also show that the current job approval numbers for Independents are quite a bit higher than 50%. That's pretty much the opposite of "extremely high unfavorables" in anybody's book.
I don't know why you find this so hard to acknowledge.
Where did I say that Obama enjoys high approval ratings among Democrats?
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:
old europe wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:No, they don't contradict each other. They are speaking to a different point being made--a distinction you frequently have problems with--but otherwise are saying exactly the same thing.
I have a hard time believing that you don't see the contradiction in your statement and the numbers you have posted.
On the one hand, you claim that Obama enjoys high job approval ratings only among Democrats, "but he has
extremely high unfavorables among everybody else--far more than other Presidents at this point in a new administation[sic]."
On the other hand, the actual numbers you posted earlier show not only that job approval ratings among Independents are marginally higher for Obama than for Bush, they also show that the current job approval numbers for Independents are quite a bit higher than 50%. That's pretty much the opposite of "extremely high unfavorables" in anybody's book.
I don't know why you find this so hard to acknowledge.
Where did I say that Obama enjoys high approval ratings among Democrats?
Okay. I'm done arguing.
Go ahead and claim that a 57% approval rating among Independents doesn't contradict your claim that Obama has "extremely high unfavorables among everybody else".
Go ahead and claim that by "everybody else", you were not actually referring to
everybody else except for Democrats.
