Today (Saturday) there are stories in numerous papers based on an AP-Ipsos poll just released. Typical of the lot is an article in the New York Post, whose lede and third paragraphs are here:

Dissatisfied with the nation's direction, Americans are leaning toward wanting a change in which political party leads Congress - preferring that Democrats take control, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Democrats are favored over Republicans 49 percent to 36 percent.

President Bush's job approval remains low - 40 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll, with only one-third saying the country is headed in the right direction. Bush also remains low on his handling of Iraq, where violence against Iraqis and U.S. troops has been surging.

This and other results in this poll would be bad to very bad news for the Bush Administration, if the poll were statistically accurate. It is not. The poll is stacked in most of its demographics to favor pro-Democrat results.

At one of those "indy-media" sites the hard Left hosts (and who's leftier than San Francisco?), the socialist "peace" freaks of Code Pink plan to protest Hillary Clinton as she has a comfortable chat with former NBC "Today" and "Dateline" anchor Jane Pauley:

On Saturday January 28th Senator Hillary Clinton of New York will sit down with Jane Pauley at The Bar Association of San Francisco Special Benefit Event at the Masonic Center. While using San Francisco as a backdrop for Clinton's re-election campaign, the event is an opportunity for Bay Area Democrats to dish-out $75.00 - $300.00 to attend at 7:00pm no-host reception followed by an evening of political image makeover chit-chat with Pauley and Clinton.

It's always curious when liberal-media types start hailing the brilliance of conservatives when their arguments line up with liberal wishes. Since the Jack Abramoff plea, both Newt Gingrich and National Review Online have suggested it would be nice for House Republicans to find a Majority Leader with a more reformist image. To MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, these people are suddenly brilliant and impressive, as he declared in a "Today" pundit segment on Friday. MRC's Scott Whitlock took it down yesterday.

"Well, Newt Gingrich isn't, maybe, the most popular guy in the country. But he is ruthlessly brilliant. And he knows that this is the time to nail this guy. And he's going out and said, let's get rid of Delay, now. And you've got the National Review, the historically conservative, very impressive magazine all these years for the conservative movement, started by Bill Buckley. That's come out now and called for him to get out of the way. I think the big casualty here, to the delight of the liberals and chagrin of the people who helped build the Republican majorities, Tom Delay looks like victim number one here. I'm not sure the party's going to be the victim by next November. Because one of the great ironies of politics is that when you get the body out of the way, the party that suffered the loss doesn't seem to look so bad."

Lefty media critics often assert that because large corporations control much of the media, that makes the press more likely to be biased toward economic conservatism. It's a laughable belief since study after study done by MRC and others show the media favor higher taxes and more regulation of business. The truth is that most large companies don't much care about politics. They can and do switch hit regularly.

The latest nail in the coffin in the myth of media economic conservatism comes from China where it appears that Microsoft's MSN Spaces program has implemented a system that automatically stops bloggers from posting entries with prohibited words like Tibet, Falun Gong, etc. Similar steps have been implemented by other Chinese blog hosting providers. Rebecca MacKinnon has an extensive posting on the matter replete with screenshots and other information.