It seems the closer we get to Election Day, the more polls we’re going to be subjected to that over-sample Democrats. The latest entrant comes from Newsweek (hat tip to Stop The ACLU). In this one, 24 percent more Democrats were surveyed than Republicans.

Frankly, I have no interest in sharing any of the results from this survey, for if a polling agency can’t create a sample that accurately reflects the electorate, why should anybody care about the data it produces?

Maybe more importantly, why would a news organization pay for such results? After all, there are now 300 million people in America. It shouldn’t be hard to find equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats to answer questions, especially when the total sample is only 1,000.

In this instance, as reported by Reuters:

If you've ever wondered who it is that seems to be getting polled, or how come questions always seem to understate support for Republicans and conservatives, read this posting from Freeper "MHT" which tells of his encounter with a pollster:

Twenty-five years after registering to vote, I finally got polled by a national news group. And, as usual, Rush was right. However, there are a few things which I want to share.

1. The interviewer really wanted to talk to me. I was on another call and told them to call me back in 10 minutes. They did, indicating to me that they are having difficulty reaching people who wish to talk to them.

2. The questions were phrased in a very subtle way that focused on an anti-Bush agenda. For example, "Do you think that Bush is responsible for the situation in Iraq?" That's a yes/no question. They could have made it multiple choice. At best, Bush gets a 50% chance of being blamed for Iraq instead of insurgents, radical Islam, outside funding, etc.

Washington Post political editor John F. Harris, yes, the one who thinks criticizing any Clinton policy today is an annoying "distraction," did the weekly Live Talk at Newsweek's website last week, and after the usual hum of liberal questions, he grew snippy at a conservative one:

Anonymous: "There is no liberal equivalent of the Fox News Channel, or Rush Limbaugh, or the Drudge Report." My question to you is what do you think CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, etc., are--conservative mouthpieces? What makes them any better than Fox?

(AP) London, March 2, 1867: Karl Marx, a rising star among centrist economists, announced today the publication of the first volume of his treatise, 'Das Kapital'.

OK, perhaps I exaggerate a tad. But is there any man of the left that the MSM is unwilling to cast as a "centrist" or moderate, particularly when he is seen as a potential Democratic presidential nominee?

The Associated Press offers a perfect case in point this evening. This article reports Barack Obama's acknowledgement on today's Meet The Press that, earlier protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, he is indeed contemplating a run for the presidency. Writes the AP:

"In recent weeks, his political stock has been rising as a potentially viable centrist candidate for president." [emphasis added]

The New Republic’s senior editor Jonathan Chait wrote an interesting op-ed on Sunday determined to prove that President Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 haven’t resulted in increased tax revenues (hat tip to Dave Pierre), while also attempting to make the case that tax hikes are better fiscal policy. The article’s title was “Bush’s Silly Budget Logic,” which is quite apropos given the fuzzy math and distorted recollection of history employed by the author: “There's no dispute among economists. Conservative, moderate or liberal, every credentialed economist agrees that the Bush tax cuts caused revenues to drop.”

Really? Well, let’s look at some of the facts first, shall we? For instance, according to the historical tables supplied by the Office of Management and Budget, tax receipts in FY 2003 were $1.783 trillion. The most recent estimate for FY 2006 is $2.402 trillion, a 35 percent increase. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, not for Chait who chose to represent an incomplete and misleading picture to his readers:

This is a truly shocking revelation by the New York Times ombudsman Byrone Calame (hat tip to Michelle Malkin). In a column published Sunday, Calame – the Times' “public editor” – has reversed a previous position of his concerning the Times June 23 article about secret international banking surveillance designed to uncover the sources of terrorist funding. Now, Calame thinks it was a mistake for the Times to reveal the existence of this program (emphasis mine throughout):

After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.

Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.

This is quite a reversal for Calame who wrote at the time:

Will someone please explain to me the MSM's standards for airing graphic footage?

At the time of 9-11 itself, the MSM apparently made a collective decision that it wouldn't show any of the graphic evidence of the horror that had been visited on thousands of our fellow citizens. No pictures of victims. No close-ups of the poor souls who chose to jump rather than being consumed by the flames. Even years later, there was somber MSM discussion, as here and here, as to whether movies like 'World Trade Center' or 'Flight 93' had come too soon.

Those of us that study the economy and how it is reported by the drive-by media are constantly amazed by how those covering financial issues continually misrepresent statistics to advance their agenda. No finer recent example has occurred than on “The Chris Matthews Show” Sunday when the host bemoaned new highs set by the Dow Jones Industrial Average last week as not accurately reflecting what is going on in the economy.

In his final segment, Matthews actually had the nerve to state, “Eighty percent of the workforce finds their paycheck barely keeping up with inflation.” In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics just this past Wednesday released data indicating that the average American's real wage after adjusting for inflation has risen by 2.2 percent since September 2005 as reported by NewsBusters.

Matthews also referenced a recent Wall Street Journal poll suggesting:

In his “New Rules” segment on Friday night’s “Real Time”, host Bill Maher strongly attacked some of America’s leading conservatives, as well as right-wing think tanks for having been so wrong in their predictions about the Iraq war. Yet, in his rant against such entities and their inability to accurately forecast the future, Maher didn’t mention one liberal or left-leaning group that has been just as wrong about events crucial to Americans, including those that have been disseminating consistently bearish views about the economy in the midst of 20 straight quarters of growth (video to follow).

Maher began his screed:

Congressman Harold Ford, running for the Senate in Tennessee, just received free publicity that most candidates can only dream about. With only a couple of weeks to go until the election, he made the cover of Newsweek.

"Not Your Daddy's Democrats" it says next to Mr. Ford's flattering photo, and the accompanying article strongly suggests that Harold Ford is at least a moderate and possibly even a conservative. Yes, the party of Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi has opened a huge tent and today's Democratic candidates - like Mr. Ford - are far from liberal. Or are they?

Once you get past the article's points about Harold Ford appealing to Christians and opposing gay marriage and partial-birth abortion, you learn: "According to Congressional Quarterly, Ford supported his party upwards of 85 percent of the time in most years since Bush took office." Yes, it took more than 20 paragraphs into the lengthy article, but finally it's acknowledged that maybe Mr. Ford isn't all that far away from Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi after all.

In an example of a disturbing pattern previously reported by NewsBusters, another conservative blogger has been banned by the video portal YouTube. In this instance, the banished party is none other than our friend at Ms Underestimated, who posted the following screen capture at her website on Saturday:

This notice came within 48 hours of Ms U posting the following screen capture at her blog of a new “inappropriate content” flag concerning "hate speech" now in effect at YouTube as reported by NewsBusters Friday:

Another one bites the dust in the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa.  Check out this from the Quad Cities newspaper.

In Friday's Best of the Web Today column, Opinion Journal's James Taranto displayed how a major American metropolitan newspaper shows they can be soft on fire-bombing terrorism -- if it seems devoted to a fierce love of trees and turkeys.

"Jennifer Kolar and Lacey Phillabaum seem unlikely criminals," declares an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Well-educated young women passionate about environmental causes, they share a love of the outdoors and similar backgrounds.

Then we get some background on them. Both attended the same high school in Spokane, Wash. Phillabaum was "bright, outspoken, sometimes in-your-face but never dull." Kolar, who studies science, "had the makings of a good scientist, her adviser said, but her heart seemed elsewhere."

On last night's Fox News Watch, Cal Thomas offered assessments of the way in which the independence of two of his fellow conservative commentators is viewed. While acknowledging that the two top-rated talkers have recently chided the administration, he suggested there is a perception that, by and large, the pair lack political autonomy.

In the context of a discussion of President Bush's efforts to shore up support among conservative radio talk show personalities, Thomas stated:

"Even Rush Limbaugh, who is seen as being in the pocket of the administration, has been critical of Republicans not being more like Republicans."

In what looks to be a rather misleading piece of information, reporter Jeanne Cummings of the Wall Street Journal has an article touting the fiscal responsibility of Democrats when it comes to campaign finance management, but the facts don't seem to support that case.

via Three Sources it appears that DailyKos, among others, are picking up the theme, perhaps as a way to assure voters that Liberals aren't the poor fiscal managers and tax and spend legislators history has proved them to be.

If you scroll down at the WSJ link you'll find a prominently featured pie chart which actually suggests Democrats have kept operational expenses down. The chart does lend that impression, as it relies on raw expenditure dollar amounts, but everyone, especially the Wall Street Journal should know that those numbers can't be analyzed as raw data. They need to be looked at as percentages of the gross number of dollars raised.