Once Upon A Time

When Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America few were aware the New York Times was lying to us about the Soviet Union since the 1930’s.  Americans thought Russia would drop hydrogen bombs on us and prosecute a land war from 10,000 miles when many were driving ox carts and starving in crop failures.  Bad roads ate their Zims, Tatraplans and Yugos.  Polling was done to sell weapons, bomb shelters and programs based on national gullibility.  “Man in space?”  Well duh!!!  The elected ruling class created the fine arts of panic power politics and teaching  science and engineering myths.

Madison Avenue invented the “focus group” with participants thinking groups were meant to relate what they knew, but they were really used to learn what they would swallow.  “Mad Men” is a documentary film.  The biggest polling clients are political parties and the game is: “What will they go for and gulp?” 

Recent Obama for America, campaign disclosure forms show the President’s minions spent $2,639,265.72 on polling for June 2012, a record, and you can bet the competition for that money was fierce.

If you think polling organizations play straight seeking the truth of the electorate you are naïve.  Money poisons the well.  These folks know when they deal with a naive, inexperienced, arrogant, terminal egotist writing the checks they had better tell him what he wants to hear.  These organizations are tripping over themselves to give Democrats good news when there is none.

The American people know the unemployment rate is far more than 8.2%. They are hoping it's only two times that, but would not be shocked to hear it is three times the official figure.  It is actually 22%.

Bill O’Reilly’s “folks” know well inflation is not 3% per the Department of Commerce with their “bale of jute” indices.  How many heads of lettuce, sacks of potatoes, pounds of hamburger and loaves of bread do you have buy to know food inflation this year alone is 20%.  The gas pump?  Don’t ask.  A neighbor sold her home for $250,000 in a “distress” sale.  She paid $449,500 in 2006, a 45% loss; typical for America today.

When a pollster asks if you like the President you do not want to be thought a racist so you say “Yes.” 

“Robo-polling” pioneered by Scott Rasmussen could be more accurate, but pollsters using it profile people and assemble lists to produce outcomes they need to snag candidate money.  I was robo-called by them four times in the ten months before the 2010 mid-terms.  No way was that random. The second call questions were more about me than anything.  I have not been called since.  I guess they don’t need a “reliable conservative.”


Three weeks before the election they will do honest polling to keep their reputations intact.

You don’t have to read tea leaves, I-Ching or dead cat entrails to see the Democrats are looking at a big fall and not the season of that name.  They are listening to a lot of stuff that should begin, “Once Upon A Time.”

Adrian Vance