Chat Away

President Obama with Rachel Robinson (Pete Souza)

42

Text of remarks here

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In July, Rachel Robinson will be ……. 91. Incredible.

First Lady Michelle Obama speaks alongside actors Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman as she welcomes high school and college students from across the country for a workshop with the cast and crew of the film 42

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‘obama is the gop’s worst nightmare’ (updated)

Brynja Hammer smiles at President Barack Obama during a visit to the Oval Office on her eighth birthday, August 21, 2009. Byrnja’s father Mike is spokesman for the National Security Council. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Politicususa: Republicans’ … only hope for defeating President Obama short of an act of God is to drive up his negatives, but a new AP/GfK poll shows that not only are Obama’s approval ratings remaining steady at 53%, but an incredible 84% said that the president is a very likable person.

The numbers in the AP/GfK poll show an electorate that is still not happy with the direction that country is going …. but something very interesting happens when you look at Obama’s approval numbers. They aren’t going down. Obama’s job approval rating is still at 53% which is where it has been since January….

….The one point that emerged from this poll is that America really, really likes Barack Obama. When asked to evaluate how well Obama understands the big issues facing America, 68% believed that he understood them at least somewhat well. 60% believed that Obama understands the problems of ordinary Americans. 61% believed that he will keep America safe, and 59% thought that he understands their problems. 57% called Obama a strong leader, and most tellingly a whopping 84% said Obama is a likable person.

It is tough for a lot of people to get 84% of their friends and family to call them likable, much less the entire country. Needless to say, these are not the numbers of a future one term president.

….Until the jobs all come back and there is a chicken in every pot, Obama will still hover around 50%, but even that small majority would be more than enough easily defeat any of the slugs that the GOP may be forced to run against him in 2012.

…For the Republicans, 2012 has turned into a Nightmare on K Street. One, two, Obama’s coming for you.

Full article here

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Ah, I was relieved to see this on Media Matters today because when I read AP’s own report on their own poll last night I thought my eyesight must have been failing me. As Media Matters put it: “.. how badly does the press not want to focus on Obama’s solid approval ratings? So badly that even the AP buried the lede in reporting on its own poll.”

It’s true! In their very own report on their very own poll, AP simply mentioned in the third paragraph of five that “in the AP-GfK poll over the past month, Obama’s approval rating has held steady around 50 percent”.

Around 50 percent? You have to actually go to the AP-Gkf website and open up a PDF to discover that the figure is 53!

Back to Media Matters: “The AP can’t even be bothered to spell out Obama’s approval rating in the latest AP poll. (It’s 53 percent. But the AP goes with “around 50 percent.”) And no, that’s not even the lede. Instead, Americans souring on the economy is the lede. But I guarantee you if the AP poll had the president’s approval rating dropping to 42 percent, the way the Quinnipiac poll did, the AP would have hyped that in the headline and the AP poll would be making headlines today.”

You couldn’t make this stuff up!

“Shh! New AP Poll Has Obama Approval Rating At 53% – “There’s no need to distract the press regarding the latest findings from the AP-GfK poll. Y’know, the one that has Obama’s approval rating at a robust 53 percent.

Don’t distract the Beltway press corps, let alone the right-wing blogosphere, because they’re still obsessing over yesterday’s Quinnipiac poll that had Obama down to a 42 percent approval rating. Those results, as we noted, were instantly dubbed to be very important.

It’s true the Quinnipiac poll didn’t really resemble many other reputable survey results issued this month. And it’s true virtually every other poll measuring Obama’s approval rating in March found him hovering around the 50 percent mark. But that didn’t matter. The Quinnipiac findings were news and the AP’s are not. Why? Because good news for Obama isn’t really news.

So shh, please don’t wake the press and disturb them with news of the latest AP finding. Please don’t interrupt their fascination with the 42 percent approval finding when a new poll has Obama more than ten points higher than that.”

‘when one bad poll for obama = big news’

MediaMatters: A new poll from Quinnipiac University is making headlines this week. Why? Because it shows Obama’s approval rating at a low point of 42 percent. And when a single poll (and possibly outlier) shows Obama’s approval rating going down, that’s news!

News organizations all agree: The Quinnipiac poll is a big deal. But for context, here’s a look at all the Obama approval rating polling results currently listed at PollingReport.com, for the month of March:

CBS: 49%
CNN: 51%
Fox: 49:%
CNN: 50%
ABC/Washington Post: 51%
Allstate/National Journal: 49%
Bloomberg: 51%
Ipsos/Reuters: 49%

And here’s a very recent result, not listed by PollingReport.com:

Gallup: 49% (see today’s poll)

For the month of March, Obama’s approval rating has been quite consistent (average: 50%), just as it’s been for nearly the last 18 months. But when the Quinnipiac poll came out and broke with that trend, and broke with the trend in a negative direction, suddenly that single poll was big news.

Thank you for the link majii 😉

no one’s interested in the state of the union, you know

…well, apart from the 42 million Americans who watched it last night (figures just released). Thirty-one million watched the President’s Tucson speech.