NUMBOLOGY PREMISE #102
When the numbers are most in your favor, exaggerate them even further. Numbers not in your favor shall be diminished or ignored.
President’s Job Ratings Fall to Lowest Point of His Presidency
Social Security seen as the top issue to address by U.S. adults
The last month has not been a good one for President Bush and the
Republicans. Most people have opposed the President’s proposals for reforming
Social Security and most were unhappy with the positions taken by Republicans in
the Terri Schiavo case. The result is that the president’s job ratings have
fallen to 44 percent positive, 56 percent negative, the worst numbers of his
presidency, and a drop from 48 percent positive, 51 percent negative in February
(and 50% positive, 49% negative last November).
FROM THE HARRIS POLL
FROM MAHABLOG: Just Like Homemade
Jonathan Landay reports for Knight Ridder:
The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
Let's pause for a moment of quiet reflection. Really; it's good for your blood pressure. Take deep breaths. Go to the Happy Place. No, wait; the Bush Administration lives in the Happy Place. Maybe you'd better stay here.
You may remember that last year the Bushies had to revise the report after the first edition was found to have "undercounted" (wink, nudge) the actual number of terrorist incidents.
The Knight Ridder report says that the Bushies blocked the report because they believe it to be inaccurate. It included incidents that may not have been terrorist incidents, they say. Others point out that the data did not include attacks on American troops in Iraq, which are considered to be "terrorist attacks" when the Bushies make speeches about them.
Landay continues,
The State Department published "Patterns of Global Terrorism" under a law that requires it to submit to the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a country-by-country terrorism assessment by April 30 each year.
A declassified version of the report has been made public since 1986 in the form of a glossy booklet, even though there was no legal requirement to produce one.
The senior State Department official said a report on global terrorism would be sent this year to lawmakers and made available to the public in place of "Patterns of Global Terrorism," but that it wouldn't contain statistical data.
No statistical data, but I'll bet there'll be action photos of President Bush--strutting around in a flight jacket, cutting brush, swimming the Yangtze River.
But the U.S. intelligence officials said Rice's office decided to eliminate "Patterns of Global Terrorism" when the counterterrorism center declined to use alternative methodology that would have reported fewer significant attacks.
The officials said they interpreted Rice's action as an attempt to avoid releasing statistics that would contradict the administration's claims that it's winning the war against terrorism.
I don't know why they're worried. Data doesn't matter any more, you know. All Karl has to do is arrange for the National Review or Wall Street Journal to publish an op ed saying that everything in Iraq is just fine and all the America haters were wrong, and actual facts can then be dismissed.
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