It turns out people get angry when they aren’t finding remunerative work.  Item!

75% of potential voters are at least vaguely paying attention to something or other about government?  I suppose that may actually be an improvement.

Well, if the MSM can’t even fill out a news hour without fluff pieces about squirrels on miniature surfboards, I suppose it’s unrealistic to expect more from pollsters.

p.s. Voltron would kick Optimus Prime’s ass.

I think the next question should be about whether people want the government to keep its hands off Medicare.

“Next up, a poll on whether people think that fun is entertaining.”

...I bet if they asked that question at least 25% or more would disagree…and at least 10% wouldn’t know how they felt about it…

Rasmussen finds that when asked “Some weather we’re having huh?” 85% say “Yep”,  10% say “Emmhmm” and 5% say “you can say that again.”

Talk about trolling.  “Good evening, sir or madam.  Can you please tell me how angry you are with the government right now?”

#3 Was there ever a Voltron episode that didn’t end with a Deus Ex Machina? So yeah…

Yeah, I’m displeased with the government, but I doubt it’s for the same reasons as John P. Teabagger. Useless poll.

Oh my no, the stupidest poll Rasmussen has done lately is this one.  You figure out if you’re a “populist” or a member of the “political class” by answering the following questions:

Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more – the American people or America’s political leaders?

Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?

Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

IOW, does Big Gubmint suck, or does it REALLY suck?  Do you love America, or are you a commie elitist America hater? 

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ideology/55_of_americans_are_populist_7_support_the_political_class

Shockingly, 55% of Americans are “populist” while 7% support the “political class”.

Can we all just agree that Rasmussen polls give real political polling a bad name?  Once you start asking questions as vague as that then you’re bound to get painfully vague polling information which is effectively useless.  How about we start asking people if you hate conservatives or Rush Limbaugh & Sarah Palin? 

On top of it, the question doesn’t differentiate the federal government (which is currently controlled by democrats with a conservative supreme court) from the state and local governments (which are currently run by whatever local party.)  I know they want to paint this whole 2010 election as a referendum on whether a black man can really be president but whatever happened to representatives representing the people?

Talk about trolling.  “Good evening, sir or madam.  Can you please tell me how angry you are with the government right now?”

In other news, polls indicate that 92% of Americans get pissed off at stupid polling questions.

It’s a great newsmaker, you have to admit.
“Americans angry!  Americans no like government!  Americans SMASH!”

Every political party and special interest group gets to point to it and cry, “See we were right!”  CNN can postulate for days on what exactly the poll really means about how real Americans feel on stuff, without ever coming to a conclusion beyond how they’re all really lovin’ those Saints.  *canned laughter*  And who doesn’t love a bit of righteous indignation?  Finally, I can tell people how I really feel by answering a poll.  Yeah!  That’ll show those people that I’m upset with what I really think.

Huh.  Summer of ‘86 I was deep into Masters of the Universe and didn’t really have much of an awareness of either Transformers or Voltron.

What?  Relevant to the post?  Erm, um, you know that thing that some people do that other people find irritating?  That really cheeses me off!  Yeah!

And that popular movie?  Lots of people like it!  Who’da thunk?

Which Voltron? I was partial to the one with the lions, even though the plots were really dumb.  Probably because it was a cartoon with a girl who actually DID things which made my daughter happy.  My son was all Ninja Turtles all the time a couple of years later.

So, are we unhappy about what they are doing or what they aren’t in DC?  I don’t suppose they bothered to ask for any kind of detail….

and yet, nitwits like sarah palin would attempt to convince you that the “people” know best. ok, in her case that might well be true.

i kind of like to think (yeah, i know, whatever was i thinking?) that the people i elect to represent me are, at least a little bit, smarter than i. clearly, i’ve been disappointed many, many times. polls like this explain why idiots get elected; the electorate is, well, stupid.

The plots for Voltron didn’t make sense because the episodes were edited together from 3 separate series, with an English script written after the fact. Kind of like this poll.

You know, I’m hearing a lot of stuff about “angry conservatives” right now (just read this at HuffPo literally 2 seconds before coming over here) and I have to say: WTF? Does anyone not remember when liberals were criticized for being “too angry” before the 2004 election? Anyone remember all the pontificating and pundit-bashing of Democrats who were declared “too angry”??

Hello?? Can anyone dig into the memory hole please?

How can you say that mulitple polls by a reputable polling company showing an increase in people’s anger at the government’s policies means nothing. 

Did Martha Coakley have an advisor that gave her similar advice?

By the way, ‘fun is entertaining’ is a statement that can be deduced from the definition of fun. The rising anger at government policies over the last year in a sample of the population cannot be deduced from the definition of ‘anger’ - it contains additional information.

Oneuniverse, it means nothing, because the cause of the anger and the specific target of it is undetermined. Pam’s anger at the slowness of addressing DADT /= Joe Teaparty’s anger at the “death panels” that don’t exist /= my fairly conservative parents’ anger that the government is NOT making Medicare type plans available for their children.

If a survey showed 99% of teens were angry at their parents, we wouldn’t know which kids had abusive parents, and which ones were just normal angry teens. If a survey showed 80% of people like going to the beach, we wouldn’t know which beaches need litter control.

Samantha, your objection is that we don’t know the details of who is angry at which policies, and yet the poll definitely contains some information - there’s a world of difference between, say 25% being angry and 75% being angry. If

Imagine being the owner of a company, or a manager of a public service - a poll of clients shows that 75% are angry with your outfit.

The poll was insufficiently detailed (a fair criticism of the poll) to know who was angry about what.

Do you :
a) Acknowledge the existence of the anger, and try to find out more about the causes, or
b) Ignore the poll and say “this poll tells me nothing.”

oneuniverse = sarcasm/reading comprehension deficiency

Mark = factual deficiency

Well that was fun.

By the way Mark, I got the attempt at sarcasm, I just thought it fell flat.

Additionally, there were polls during Bush’s administration, tracking national levels of anger at the administration and its policies. It seemed like real factual information then, and it’s still the case now. Perhaps you only like facts when they make you feel better.

From #25: “Additionally, there were polls during Bush’s administration, tracking national levels of anger at the administration and its policies.”

And, even back then when I was indeed quite angry at the Bush administration, I comprehended that these polls didn’t really tell me very much, since they lacked any concrete data about what folks were angry about. Even back then, I understood that such anger might be
1. anger at neoconservative policies from a left perspective
2. anger that Bush wasn’t attacking enough people or being “conservative enough”
3. anger that really had nothing to do with what was going on in Washington

Such polls were useless back then and they are useless now.

Atheist, polls normally give a breakdown of results by the participants’ self-indentified political affiliation (if any). That includes the Rasmussen poll under discussion (89% of Republicans, 61% of Democrats, and 78% of those with affiliation to neither party felt anger at goverment policies, etc.). That allows one to differentiate to some extent between the different possibilities eg. Democrats were unlikely to be angry at Bush for being insufficiently conservative.

Also, the Rasmussen report linked to in this article includes information about multiple polls which cover the questions of which areas of government policy have approval, and which don’t. Put the information together, and you may get a better idea of the different areas generating the anger.