Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be limited to senior citizens. Over the past couple of months, the Chamber of Commerce has taken great pains to misinform small businesses about what the Affordable Care Act does for them, too. But out of nearly 700 seniors quizzed about what health-care reform meant for them, not one was able to get all of the answers right.

A recent National Council on Aging poll conducted between July 9 - July 12, 2010 yielded some pretty startling statistics.

• 21% of respondents said they were "very familiar" with the law, and an additional 64% said they were "somewhat familiar" with it. Of those, 60% said they were satisfied that the information they received was accurate and reliable.
• Yet, when asked if the new law would result in future cuts to their basic medicare benefits, 55% of the "very familiar" group answered "Yes", as did 47% of the "somewhat familiar" group.
• 62% of the "very familiar" group said they believed the new law would increase the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years, with 57% of the "somewhat familiar" group concurring.
• Half of those "very familiar" with the law believes it does not improve the quality of care for beneficiaries with chronic illnesses, and 46% believe Medicare payments to doctors will be cut.
• Remarkably, only 52% of the seniors "very familiar" with the law agreed that uninsured Americans will be covered and younger people would have extra protections.

I would love to know how many of those claiming to be "very familiar" with the law watch Fox News. I would put money on it being more than half. Reading these results made me want to go out and scream from a tall building "This is why we can't have nice things!!!!".

Fortunately, NCOA is a little more measured than me. They've created materials to help seniors understand the law and what their benefits are under the law. Now we need to get out there and help them understand it, because seniors' health is as important a feature of the new law as coverage of the uninsured.

Oh, and maybe we should get them to turn off Fox News for awhile, too.

There's a basic economic reality that escapes politicians in election years: It takes money in consumers' hands to buy things which then creates demand for more things to be made which then creates jobs which put money in the pockets of consumers which they use to buy things.

In other words, if people don't have money, they won't spend money. Seems simple enough.

But it's an election year, which means the deficit hawks have swooped down upon our politicians and stolen their brains (and, evidently, their ability to read).

Huffington Post reports on a recent survey conducted by the National Unemployment Law Project. The results aren't a huge surprise: 74% of respondents believe extensions to unemployment insurance and COBRA subsidies take priority over deficit reduction.

Three-quarters of registered voters think Congress should forget about the deficit and preserve extended unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for laid-off workers, according to a new poll commissioned by the National Employment Law Project.

Citing deficit concerns, Democrats in both chambers of Congress have said it's time to start thinking about how to wrap up the extended unemployment benefits put in place to fight the recession. But 74 percent of people surveyed said they agreed with the statement that "it is too early to start cutting back benefits and health coverage for workers who lost their jobs."

Let's think through what happens when those '99ers' don't have their unemployment check. Do they rush right out to the local McDonald's and get a counter job? Well, no. Not that they wouldn't if they could, but because they are unlikely to be hired, particularly if their experience is in a different area or they are over age 50. Depending on their skills, self-employment might be an option, but only if they have the means to live while building an income stream.

And then there's the COBRA subsidy, which should be extended for the unemployed until the subsidies available to insureds under health care reform kick in. Losing that will simply cause more medical bankruptcies, more deaths, and more poverty.

This is not the time for Congress to kick the floor out from under the unemployed. We neither asked for, nor did we invite being laid off, downsized, or merged out of existence. We are not lazy, bloodsucking maggots intent on undermining the American way of life. We are real people with real children and real concerns who also happen to vote.

That voting thing is going to be really important in November. Don't be fooled by the press meme about incumbent hate. Incumbents who stand up for the people will be re-elected. Those who don't, won't.

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Glenn Beck devoted a long rant last night to his contention that the U.S. Census Bureau shouldn't be counting what he blithely calls "illegal aliens" -- i.e., undocumented immigrants.

But his argument -- that we shouldn't be counting people who can't vote -- doesn't merely cut against the undocumented. It cuts against all immigrants -- who, by definition, are also already non-citizens.

Moreover, the Census Bureau isn't charged with accurately counting the number of citizens living within the United States -- it's charged with counting the entire population.

What Beck wants Census to do -- that is, to exclude non-citizens from its count -- is in direct violation of its charter, which is to count the population whole:

The Census Bureau does not ask about legal (migrant) status of respondents in any of its survey and census programs. As examples, in the decennial census, the American Community Survey, and Current Population Survey as there is no legislative mandate to collect this information. Given the success of Census 2000 in counting nearly every person residing in the United States, we expect that unauthorized migrants were included among people who indicated that the United States was their usual place of residence on the survey date. The foreign-born population includes naturalized U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, temporary migrants (e.g., foreign students), humanitarian migrants (e.g., refugees), and unauthorized migrants (people illegally present in the United States).

Beck would have the Census omit not just unauthorized migrants, but also lawful permanent residents, humanitarian migrants, and foreign-born residents here legally.

Of course, he's arguing for this because he believes counting the undocumented will give the eeeeevil SEIU more power in its quest for total global domination or something like that. You have to watch the video to get it all, and even then it never quite holds together, much less make sense.

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.

CNN/ Opinion Research Corporation poll out tonight shows a double-digit jump in support for the reform plan among viewers. Great results, Mr. President. Way to go!

Interviews with 427 adult Americans who watched the presidential speech conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on September 9, 2009. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Survey respondents were first interviewed as part of a random national sample on September 5-8, 2009. In those interviews, respondents indicated they planned to watch tonight's speech and were willing to be re-interviewed after the speech.

Some questions were asked of each respondent both in the pre-speech questionnaire on September 5-8 and on tonight's questionnaire. Where applicable, results for tonight's respondents from both the pre-speech survey and the post-speech survey are reported.

18% of the respondents who participated in tonight's survey identified themselves as Republicans, 45% identified themselves as Democrats, and 37% identified themselves as Independents.

About one in seven people who watched the speech changed their minds on Obama's health care plan. "Going into the speech, a bare majority of his audience — 53 percent — favored his proposals. Immediately after the speech, that figure rose to 67 percent," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "But the real question is whether those conversions will last. Bill Clinton got similar numbers after his 1993 address to Congress, but five months later a majority of the country no longer supported his plan."

Fifty-six percent of people questioned say they had a very positive reaction to the speech, with 21 percent indicating they had a somewhat positive reaction and a equal amount suggesting they had a negative reaction. The 56 percent who said they had a very positive reaction is lower than the 68 percent of speech watchers who had a similar reaction to the president's first address to a joint session of Congress in February.

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You surprised? Gee, me neither!

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care.

Gee, New York Times, do you think the paradox might be that even if they like their insurance (and by that, they usually mean their doctor and the ease of use), they also know their insurance can be yanked if they ever get really sick?

That paradox was skillfully exploited by opponents of the last failed attempt at overhauling the health system, during former President Bill Clinton’s first term. Sixteen years later, it underscores the tricky task facing lawmakers and President Obama as they try to address the health system’s substantial problems without igniting fears that people could lose what they like.

Across a number of questions, the poll detected substantial support for a greater government role in health care, a position generally identified with the Democratic Party. When asked which party was more likely to improve health care, only 18 percent of respondents said the Republicans, compared with 57 percent who picked the Democrats. Even one of four Republicans said the Democrats would do better.

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

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Comedy gold at the TV and Radio Correspondents Dinner.

"That's odd. I wonder why there's a cardboard cut out of Mitt Romney behind me."

Actually, that's the funniest part. That should tell you something.

The History News Network (HNN) conducted an unscientific poll of professional historians to compare their sense of George W. Bush's presidency to that of contemporary public opinion. The poll's flaws notwithstanding, Bush didn't do very well.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

At least two of those who ranked the current president in the 31-41 ranking made it clear that they placed him next-to-last, with only James Buchanan, in their view, being worse. “He is easily one of the 10-worst of all time and—if the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities matter—then probably in the bottom five, alongside Buchanan, Johnson, Fillmore, and Pierce,” wrote another historian.

Bush probably would have done even worse, but some historians thought it best to wait for hindsight. One told HNN, “It is a bit too early to judge whether Bush's presidency is the worst ever, though it certainly has a shot to take the title. Without a doubt, it is among the worst.”

Glenn Greenwald pointed to some interesting data from the latest WaPo/ABC poll that shouldn’t be overlooked. Poll respondents were asked which political party they trusted to do a better job on various issues:

* The economy: Dems led Republicans, 52% to 33%

* Immigration: Dems led Republicans, 40% to 37%

* Iraq: Dems led Republicans, 48% to 34%

* The budget deficit: Dems led Republicans, 52% to 31%

* Taxes: Dems led Republicans, 48% to 40%

* The U.S. campaign against terrorism: Dems led Republicans, 44% to 37%

* Health care: Dems led Republicans, 56% to 29%

First, these aren’t cherry-picked to make Dems look good; these were all of the issues polled. Republicans trailed in every category.

Second, in almost every instance, matters are getting worse for the GOP, not better. Especially on the question regarding terrorism, this was the worst Republicans have done on the issue since the WaPo began polling on the question after 9/11. Given that this is supposed to be the party’s signature issue, it’s not at all a good sign.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (.pdf) includes most of the predictable numbers — Bush is unpopular, Americans are uneasy about the economy, etc. — but respondents were also asked which party they trusted more to handle various policy issues.

The Dems enjoy huge, double-digit advantages on every domestic issue, but when asked which party is more trustworthy on dealing with the “war on terrorism,” it was the only question on which Americans were divided right down the middle — 29% said Dems, 29% said Republicans, 20% said both, and 18% said neither.

In and of itself, that’s not particularly surprising, but the trend is noteworthy. In October 2002, the GOP enjoyed a 36-point advantage on this question. But end of 2003, it had slipped to a 26-point lead. In early 2004, it slipped a few more points, and in late 2004, a few more still. By last fall, the Republicans led Dems on the question by 10 points, and now the GOP advantage has disappeared altogether.

How long, do you suppose, will the media continue to report that Republicans still enjoy far more public trust on terrorism than Dems?