Tuesday, July 17, 2007

New Harry Potter Book

Looks like it is already out, on the internet, anyway. It's available for download using Bittorrent, if you know where to find it.

Spoiler-







Harry doesn't die, but Ron does.


Never read any of them, but I have enjoyed the movies.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

A Historic Milestone

Bush Equals Nixon's Highest Disapproval
by: Chris Bowers
Tue Jul 10, 2007 at 10:24:35 AM EDT

The Roper Center at the University of Connecticut is an excellent archive for poll junkies, featuring polling archives that go back much further than Polling Report (not that polling report isn't great). the coup de grace (I hope I spelled that right) at the Roper Center is their archive of every public, presidential approval poll ever conducted via telephone. It even dates back to the 1930's where you can review FDR's approval ratings from August, 1937 forward.

The reason I bring up this archive is because today Bush reached a historic milestone. His current disapproval rating in the latest Gallup poll, 66%, equals Richard Nixon's highest Gallup disapproval rating of 66%, registered the week before he resigned from office. Back then, Gallup was the only organization conducting presidential approval polls, and thus the Gallup poll is always taken as the gold standard for historical comparisons. this figure also puts Bush only 1% away from the all-time highest disapproval, set by Harry Truman in early January, 1952.

Here is a chart featuring the all-time worst Gallup poll results for every president over the past 70 years:
President Low Approval High Disapproval High Margin
Bush 2 29 66 -37
Clinton 36 50 -14
Bush 1 29 60 -31
Reagan 35 56 -21
Carter 28 59 -31
Ford 39 45 -6
Nixon 24 66 -42
Johnson 35 52 -16
Kennedy 56 30 +26
Eisenhower 48 36 +12
Truman 22 65 -43
FDR 48 43 +5

Note that I mentioned above how Truman's highest disapproval was 67%, but here it is listed as 65%. This is because, for the purposes of this table, I took the single poll for each President that resulted in the lowest overall approval / disapproval margin. Truman's overall worst gap was -45, but it did not come from a single poll. Nxon's overall worst gap was -43, but it did not come from a single poll.

Bush is the Republican's Jimmy Carter. For the next 30 years all Dems will have to say is, "Do you really want to go back to the bad old days of Bush?". There are 22 Republican seats up in the Senate this coming election...can you say 60 seat majority? America, there ARE brighter and better days coming!

Sunday, July 08, 2007