Ruling their world, out of their balloon knots

The Broder-gene is embedded deeply in Mark Halperin...along with a sizeable, okay, predominant streak of shallowness and fraudulence. When is the New York Times giving him Kristol's column-space anyway?

It all started with Mark Halperin's brief note in Time Magazine...which stated "Poll: Obama Approval Rating Drops". It goes on to say that Obama's job approval level is 64%, "down from a pre-Inauguration high of 83%".

Chris Matthews on MSNBC and Anderson Cooper on CNN jumped on this information and promptly repeated it on each of their shows on Friday. What’s the problem? It combines information from two different polls that ask different questions and reaches an unsupported and erroneous conclusion.

The earlier poll asked about approval for how Obama was handling the "transition" the other, the later on his presidential job approval for the period January 30 to February 1.

However, his job approval for the week of January 21-23, his first three days is office was ... 68%.

Stupidity and shallow thinking rules the day in the beltway...as always. Hence, I predict Morning Joe will be off on this tangent within its first 15 minutes this morning.

(photo from here)

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]