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Chris Matthews cites a recent Gallup poll in the beginning of the segment—Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group—which shows those who would describe their political views as conservative at 40%, moderate 36% and liberal 20%. He goes on to take this leap about just what that poll means later in the segment which Bob Herbert rightly calls him on.

Matthews: There’s a big disconnect here in the polling and I’m looking at the NBC poll, we’re going to have it more here tonight, I’ve looked at the Gallup numbers—here’s the disconnect—the Republican Party is a lousy brand name right now. It is way down below one in five, but on every issue from semi-automatic weapons to traditional values to abortion to every…regulation of business…

Buchanan: Immigrants…

Matthews: …every issue the country is lurching to the right in ideological terms at the same time as the base of the Republican brand. How do you explain that Rob?

Herbert: Are you saying the country’s lurching to the right?

Matthews: On every issue—look at the Gallup polls.

Herbert: I completely disagree with you on that.

Matthews: Ugghh…

Herbert: You’re giving too much credence to this poll. Pat just said a moment ago…

Matthews: Why don’t you look at the polls?

Herbert: …that the Republicans can unite behind all these issues for the off year elections—they can’t even—they haven’t even been able to unite in this upstate Congressional district in the Congressional election that’s coming up next week. You’ve got Republicans lining up behind the Conservative Party candidate who’s putting the knives in the back of the Republican candidate. So where’s the unity?

Never one to let logic get in the way of his preconceived notion Matthews asks if this means the conservatives are more “powerful than ever” if they’re the spoilers in Republican elections. Herbert reminds him that turning the Republican Party hard to the right is not good for them winning elections nationally. Earlier in the segment he also reminded Matthews that Republicans are not leading in a related poll about who Americans trust to run the country.

Of course Pat Buchanan, ever the staunch Sarah Palin fan-boy thinks the party needs more ideological purity and goes on to call the Republican candidate from NY-23 a liberal. As Herbert notes, Buchanan's got a pretty strange notion of who should be called a liberal these days. I would imagine the false memes continually put out by or MSM has a lot to do with people's perception of whether they are liberal or conservative or not, as was reflected in that poll. When people continually hear unions bashed and liberal treated as though it were some sort of dirty word, it's little wonder they might shy from the label.

A poll that appeared on Facebook which asked if President Obama should be murdered was pulled and now the U.S. Secret Service is investigating.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating an online survey that asked whether people thought President Barack Obama should be assassinated, officials said Monday.

The poll, posted Saturday on Facebook, was taken off the popular social networking site quickly after company officials were alerted to its existence. But, like any threat against the president, Secret Service agents are taking no chances.

"We are aware of it and we will take the appropriate investigative steps," said Darrin Blackford, a Secret Service spokesman. "We take of these things seriously."

The poll asked respondents "Should Obama be killed?" The choices: No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.

The question was not created by Facebook, but by an independent person using an add-on application that has been suspended from the site.

President Obama will never allow himself to comment on this hatred, but this is serious stuff. If a poll like this was discovered when Bush was in office, it would be FOX News' number one story for weeks and weeks and would probably end up on Meet the Press in a roundtable discussion that would go something like: Should President Bush be worried? And are left-wingers fomenting this hate? I think the Secret Service has its hands full, that's for sure.

The Mudflats: The real story behind the "rogue" in Palin's new book

digby: The right may be confused but they are thrilled to be wallowing in their domestic paranoia once again.

Pam's House Blend: Facebook poll - "Should Obama be killed?"

Taylor Marsh: In Iraq, General Ray Odierno and Ambassador Christopher Hill are at loggerheads

The Peking Duck: World Bank Head: The dollar will lose its place to the euro and reninbi

The Satirical Political Report: Forget Chicago as Host City. here's what Obama should really pitch to the IOC

My good friend Digby finished 5th in a Villager poll on who influences what we discuss.

NationalJournal.com's panel of top political bloggers was asked to join in the survey of National Journal and The Atlantic Wire about which columnists, bloggers and television or radio commentators most helped to shape their opinion or worldview. No one received votes from both the left and right; of the 63 people named in total, only 23 appeared on more than one of the 22 combined ballots.

Related coverage: See how National Journal's panel of 375 Political and Congressional Insiders responded.

LEFT-LEANING Total points

Paul Krugman 23

Rachel Maddow 16

Frank Rich 13

Bill Moyers 11

Digby 9

RIGHT-LEANING Total points
Charles Krauthammer 27

Rush Limbaugh 24

Mark Steyn 18

Jonah Goldberg 11

Eugene Volokh 9

UPDATE: As a side note, I used to be on the National Journal's voting list, but didn't have time to vote on all their polls so I didn't cast a vote or her total would have been higher. She is the best and the brightest writer we have in the liberal blogosphere and even if you do not agree with all her takes you can be sure that she's always thought provoking. Bravo Digby.

One constant theme which needs dealing with is the idea that the country is more conservative than liberal and that centrists are needed to hold off horrible conservative things from happening.

More than that, this is an argument for oligarchy. What I see is that the majority of people, in poll after poll, want single payer. A huge majority want the public option, yet odds are decent you won't even get that.

When people talk of left-center coalitions the center part include a large number of Senators (like Diane Feinstein) who won't do what the majority of their constituents want them to do. At this point centrist = captured by monied interests.

Odds are if Obama wanted single payer, the House could pass it. It'd be close, but they could get it done. The House is the more representative body of the two bodies, the Senate is deliberately retrograde.

When I look at the US what I see is a banana republic, because it doesn't act like a democracy. I see people who think that the Senate, or even the House, actually does what the American people want. Again and again, Congress does things that the majority disagree with. In 2006 the Dems were elected to end the war in Iraq, for example, and refused to do so (though again, the House at least went through the motion, the Senate didn't even make an effort). Oh, Congress will sometimes do what the majority want—when that's what it was going to do anyway.

The plan to fix this is simple enough and always has been.

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What more needs to be said? Here's the poll.

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The right-wing media have been aghast at the unpleasant realities being reported about all those shouters and disruptors at town-hall forums -- namely, that their anger is being ginned up by corporate interests using right-wing populists to derail their political opponents; and that their ranks are riddled with extremists.

And to the extent that the critics of these protesters try to portray the scenes as purely a product of corporate machinations, they have a point. There is real anger out there, and the anti-reform interests are successfully tapping into it.

But the anger they're tapping into is not a new thing; in fact, it's been around a long time. It's a larger anger at the federal government, stoked (as we've seen in the health-care debate) by a combination of real grievances and a pathological belief in explanations for those grievances that are provably untrue, wrapped in paranoid conspiracy theories about government officials and a conspiracist view of history.

In the 1990s, they called themselves militias or "Patriots." Nowadays, they're organizing around the so-called "tea parties" and now the health-care town halls. These are the wellspring of the anger at these meetings -- but this faction has a long history of being motivated by anger anyway.

This is not to downplay the vital role behind the scenes being played by ostensibly mainstream conservative operations, fueled by corporate money. Adele Stan at AlterNet has a thoroughly devastating expose of the machinations behind the protests, beginning with Dick Armey's FreedomWorks operation all the way down to the Birther nutcases who are bubbling up at these shows.

Indeed, Stan gets what the rest of the media are missing: Not only are business and conservative interests ginning up these protests, but they're doing so by empowering far-right extremists from the fringe.

We've been reporting steadily on this phenomenon as it's been happening. Perhaps the best signifier of this empowerment and energizing of the far right on the behalf of the mainstream right is the fact that every single right-wing extremist organization and forum -- ranging from far-right hate groups and white supremacists, such as Stormfront.org, to "Patriot"/militia organizations such as the Militia of Montana and the Constitution Party, to Bircherite conspiracists like Ron Paul and his followers -- are avidly advocating involvement in the "tea parties" and the health-care protests.

And these folks, frankly, are beginning to talk openly of armed revolt. This is something that used to be relegated strictly to the fringes of the far right; now, it's being openly discussed at WorldNetDaily,, which ran a poll with the following headline:

SOMETHING IN THE AIR
Is America on the verge of revolution?

The results:

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I'm shocked it's this high really.

A new PPIC Poll in California shows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) job approval rating dropped to a new low of 28%.

The last time a California governor's approval rating was that low was in 2003 when then-Gov. Gray Davis faced a recall election and was in a budget standoff with the Legislature.
A record-low 14% of Californians believe the state is headed in the right direction.

Can we find out who the 14% are that believe CA is headed in the right direction.
Atrios reminds us about the media obbsession over Arnold.

It's important to remember just how large a role our Village media had in promoting Arnold back in the day.

I wonder how many people that wanted to change the constitution so the Terminator could run for president now are birthers.

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July 23, 2009 BBC World

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"Mr. Independent" Lou Dobbs continues to show us he's nothing but a Republican tool. His poll question for the evening:

Are you concerned that President Obama seems compelled to continue to apologize for the United States wherever he travels?

Why don't you take our new CNN/ Lou Dobbs poll:

He calls her a racist too. Keep it up guys.

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad....

This is just disgusting. In a new Quinnipiac Poll, Americans favor the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor: 52-24.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds that a majority of Americans approve of President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

With Obama's Supreme Court Justice pick still pending approval by the Senate, the national survey found that 54 percent support the pick and 24 percent disapprove, with 22 percent undecided. The poll surveyed 1, 438 registered voters nationwide.

Jon Perr has more on the revolting behavior of the far right.

Back in 1995, Newt Gingrich famously concluded menstruation rendered women unfit for combat roles in the military. Now just two days after Gingrich branded Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor "racist," convicted Watergate felon and right-wing radio host G. Gordon Liddy agreed that both of Newt's arguments disqualify Sotomayor. Period.

After echoing Tom Tancredo's slander that the National Council of La Raza to which Sotomayor belongs is a "Latino KKK," Liddy Thursday recycled Gingrich's theory of menstrual disqualification:

"Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

If that pathetic formula sounds familiar, it should. As the New York Times recounted 14 years ago, Newt suggested menstruation should keep women out of essential roles in the American military, if not off the bench:...read on

With Republicans like Liddy,Tancredo, Rush and Newt---conservatives are right where they should be. In the tank...

He actually said that:

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

So you African-Americans? According to Byron York, you don't actually count. My buddy and former C&L contributer Steve Benen:

For crying out loud, what the hell does that mean, exactly? I read the rest of the piece, hoping to see York explain why the president's seemingly popular positions are exaggerated or inflated. Why, in other words, these positions "appear" more popular "than they actually are."

But all the piece tells me is that African Americans tend to support Obama in greater numbers than white Americans.

The problem, of course, is that damn phrase "than they actually are." York argues that we can see polls gauging public opinion, but if we want to really understand the popularity of the president's positions, and not be fooled by "appearances," then we have to exclude black people.

There's really no other credible way to read this. York effectively argues that black people shouldn't count. We can look at polls measuring the attitudes of Americans, but if we want to see the truth -- appreciate the numbers as "they actually are" -- then it's best if we focus our attention on white people, and only white people.

I swear the next thing York will suggest is calling for polling companies to consider African-Americans as only 3/5th a person to more accurately reflect reality. I'm sure you can find the historical precedence for it if you try really hard.

You stay classy, Byron.

Dave N: This is actually a not-uncommon species of eliminationist rhetoric, since these kinds of discussions are essentially exercises in imagining the world with a whole class of people effectively excised.

As Adam Serwer observes: "This is another example of a really bizarre genre of conservative writing, which I call 'If Only Those People Weren't Here.'"

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough thinks it's a mistake to abandon President Bush's harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding that many consider to be torture. Scarborough points to a Washington Post poll that says about half of Americans support the use of torture in some cases.

Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski notes that Obama administration officials say that intelligence can be gathered without using torture. "What Robert Gibbs is saying on 'Meet the Press' yesterday, was that they don't know whether other means may be able to get the same information," she said.

"I'm not. Go ahead. Take that chance," scoffed Scarborough. "Sometimes you have a reason to be fearful," he said. "There is irrational fear and then rational fear. If you live in a neighborhood where people's homes get broken into and people get shot and killed at night and their items get stolen, and you're fearful that may happen to you, that's not irrational. That is fear and you will support a stronger police presence in your home. If this country got attacked the way it did on September 11th, 2001, it is not irrational for Americans to fear it might happen again when you have al Qaeda wanting to do nothing but kill all of us, destroy our cities."

AOL used my post called...

Barack Obama highlights quick action and Oversight for his new stimulus package

...for the basis of their poll question. As I wrote in the post:

I hope Obama's love affair with bipartisanship will come to an end very soon. Not because I don't think it's a good idea to have both sides working together, but because Conservatives are incapable of doing just that. They do not want Obama to succeed because it will weaken their grip on American politics for years to come at the expense of average Americans just trying to get by.

It's about ideology for them and not about the healing that our country is in desperate need of. I think Obama will soon feel their un-partisan wrath sooner rather than later and hopefully it will snap him out of any thought he had that he could work with Conservatives, no matter how "centrist" he goes.

I doubt they will want to improve the latest Congressional polling numbers...

This USA Today/Gallup poll is just plain dumb. By using vague wording, they push the idea that consumers will buy cars from bankrupt auto companies - but that's misleading.

Jack Nerad, market analyst for car-shopping site KBB.com, says concerns about warranties and parts still would dissuade buyers. "People will say they will consider a lot of things, but when it gets right down to actually putting their money on the line … it narrows pretty significantly."

The cars themselves aren't even the problem. What will happen is, if the automakers go bankrupt and don't pay their outstanding bills, the manufacturers of OEM and after-market parts will go under, too.

And who's going to buy a car that you can't fix?