It's interesting watching the Villagers try to figure out what the teabaggers are, both on TV and in print, because they refuse to either admit the truth or are afraid to voice their true feelings.

An interesting online poll is going on right now on the Fox News website. What it shows is quite interesting to me, since Fox News created the Tea Party movement in order to undermine President Obama and his agenda. At this point almost 200K people have voted and the results surprised me because it seems they don't need much psycho-babble talk to figure out what is quite evident to anyone who is not afraid to voice an honest opinion about them.

How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist."
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And the survey says:

Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 79% (156,751 votes)

With Tom Tancredo and WND's Joseph Farah, nativist right wingers at their core having major speaking rolls in the Tea Party Convention before Palin took the stage last weekend, it looks like it cemented their opinions. I know it's an online poll, but when these appear on the Fox website they usually are skewered to the hard right. Well, even the conservative audience that Ailes caters to isn't fooled by the punditocracy.

Markos Moulitsas joins Keith Olbermann to defend his Daily KOS/Research 2000 poll against the attacks of Bill O'Reilly. As Markos and Keith note apparently Bill-O and his buddies at ClusterFox aren't too happy about having a mirror put up to their face.

Keith and Markos Moulitsas discuss the Republicans absolute refusal to cooperate with the Democrats on anything and the latest numbers from this poll done by Kos' research company -- The 2010 Comprehensive Daily Kos/Research 2000 Poll of Self-Identified Republicans:

MOULITSAS: Well, what we found with this poll—and we‘re releasing it tomorrow at around noon Eastern Time, and this is a nonpartisan independent pollster—is that about 1/3 of Republicans are what to be characterized as sane, about 1/3 think Obama was born in the United States, about 1/3 don‘t think Obama should be impeached. We‘re talking impeachment here, without a hint of scandal.

About 1/3 believe that sex education should be taught in schools and so on. I mean, this is a fairly comprehensive poll.

And the other 2/3 either are completely insane or just aren‘t sure. I mean, 1/3 think that maybe we ought to debate whether Obama was born in the United States; 1/3 think that maybe ACORN stole the 2008 election. I mean, it‘s pretty, pretty crazy stuff. And I think a lot of this is driven by FOX News and Rush Limbaugh and this incredible, reality-bending, ultimate media machine that the right has.

The results are nothing short of startling. Read on...

I agree. The numbers are pretty startling. You can check out the entire results here.

John Amato:

Ezra Klein has more:

About 39 percent of Republicans think Obama should be impeached, and 29 percent aren't sure. This might be because 63 percent think he's a socialist, and only 42 percent think he was born in the United States.

More than 50 percent of Republicans think Sarah Palin is better qualified than Barack Obama to be president. About 24 percent believe Obama wants the terrorists to win, and 21 percent think Acorn stole the 2008 election (55 percent aren't sure). A solid 31 percent think Obama is "a racist who hates white people" and -- the coup de grace -- 23 percent think their state should secede from the United States.

Republicans think Palin is more qualified than Obama. What a hoot. But my favorite is that about a quarter of them want to secede from the US. Do us a favor and move on that one.

Transcript via MSNBC below the fold.

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It would be nice to see a few more segments like this one where gasbag Bill Bennett gets some push back on his empty rhetoric for once instead of steam rolling over Donna Brazile or whoever they have him up against. From CNN's State of the Union, the panel is asked what went wrong in the Massachusetts Senate race and Martha Coakley's pollster Celinda Lake says the Democrats need to produce on jobs and Wall Street reform and get some things done or the Republicans are going to continue to seize on their "change" message.

When Bill Bennett tries to claim that the voters of Massachusetts didn't like what was in the health care bill and that the President has moved too far to the left, Lake and Brazile do a pretty good job of knocking down his talking points.

KING: He's not a rhetorical dynamo, but Mitch McConnell has been pretty disciplined in keeping the Republicans together, has he not? I know you're a Democrat, but as somebody who has to organize, he get points?

BRAZILE: For being an obstructionist? Absolutely. For not giving the American people any alternatives? When President Obama took the oath of office, we were hemorrhaging 20,000 jobs a day. Now no one is satisfied with 85 -- losing 85,000 jobs and now -- in the past month. But the truth is, s that the president inherited an economy that was on the brink. And with the policies that he has put forward, this economy is now moving along.

I agree that the president needs to go back to the basics. He needs to go back to the campaigning mode, not the campaign itself, but he promised the American people change. He promised to bring us together, to heal this country, and to move us forward.

And what we have seen from the Republicans is no agenda, no alternative. Yes, you benefited from a political environment that is anti-incumbent. It is bad out there. But I do believe at the end of the day that the Republicans need to put up. We need to vet the Republican policies once they put them forward. And they need to be held accountable for those policies. They had a free pass in 2009.

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Someone want to explain to me just where in this poll it says that the voters of Massachusetts wanted Brown to work with Democrats "to get Republican ideas into legislation". Papermoon at Daily KOS has a nice breakdown of that poll which flies in the face of Schieffer's hackery here--New Poll Explains Massachusetts.

Of course Schieffer can't help himself and has to get his little shot in on the blogs as well, saying politicians shouldn't be listening to the "fringes". Well Bob, it looks like "the fringe" at the Great Orange Satan is doing a better job of breaking down that poll than you are. And given the Democrats accepted 180 amendments from the Republicans on the health care bill and didn't get a single vote for them, just what else does Schieffer think they should do to show they'll work with the other side? Just another example of someone pretending to be a journalist while pushing Republican talking points.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally today, figuring out what Scott Brown's victory meant has set off a fiercer debate than trying to divine the meaning of the Book of Job. We were all certain it meant something profound, we just weren't sure what. Well, a Washington Post poll yesterday provided some clues. Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts voters thought the country had gone off course and the big part of them voted for Brown. That's pretty simple actually.

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The president's first year in office has come to an end, so it's time for new polling to commence. His health-care bill is still stuck in limbo and he's been under siege by conservatives and Fox News the whole time -- all of which has put his favorables down at their lowest point.

But yesterday, Fox News released a new poll which had some interesting results. (It was done by Opinion Dynamics Corp., so there's that too.)

The poll does say that voters want a change in 2012, but the hypothetical head-to-head match ups are quite revealing.

In hypothetical head-to-head matchups, President Obama tops each of the Republican candidates tested.

By 47 percent to 35 percent Obama bests former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The president has an even wider edge over former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (55 percent to 31 percent), and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (53 percent to 29 percent).

Finally, twice as many people say they would vote for Obama (48 percent) as would back a candidate from the Tea Party movement (23 percent).

Even with Fox actively trying to undermine the President, he still destroys the field of candidates at the top of the GOP's list.

Mitt Romney is the closest, but is down by 12 points.

Sarah Palin just came off of an incredible PR blitz with her new book tour and still is down 24 points.

Newt Gingrich and his ever-changing marriages and religions is down by 24 points.

Tea Partiers are down by 25 points.

I'm surprised by these numbers, even if it's a Fox News poll, but it shows that he's still in a decent position as he moves forward. The administration needs to come out swinging in 2010 and going after Wall Street is a good idea, but health care remains a major problem that must be addressed.

How time is flashing before our eyes.

Countdown's Worst Persons for Jan. 4, 2009 with winner Brent Bozell.

Ignoring his past remarks, Bozell says "if" Limbaugh said liberals "want to kill people," "[i]t would be the end of his career"

In a December 31 Newsmax article, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell is quoted as saying that if Rush Limbaugh said liberals "want to kill people," then "[i]t would be the end of his career." But Limbaugh has made numerous remarks of the sort, including declaring that "It's the American Left that wants you to die" and that the Democratic Party is "obsessed with your death."

Runners up Scott Rasmussen and The Politico.

Politico fails to fact-check Rasmussen’s claim that he ‘has never been a campaign pollster or consultant.’

Reporting on criticisms of right-leaning pollster Scott Rasmussen, Politico presented as fact his official bio as “an independent pollster” who “has never been a campaign pollster or consultant.” The article quotes Rasmussen’s critics, but fails to question his supposed independence.

And Gretchen Carlson.

Gretchen Carlson Promotes Bogus Bertha Lewis White House Visit Story On Fox & Friends

Gretchen Carlson is a graduate of Stanford where, one assumes, she learned that information must be properly sourced and vetted before it is used in a report. Thus, one has to question why former Miss America pushed a discredited Andrew Breitbart report which claimed that ACORN’s CEO, Bertha Lewis, recently visited the White House. Fox Nation ran with the smear for three days before taking it down*. But today, pretty in pink Gretchen reported that “ACORN's chief Bertha Lewis got an inside look at the White House just days before those explosive undercover tapes about ACORN were released. Could her relationship with the First Family affect the way the administration ended up viewing those tapes?” Ah, the “explosive” tapes that resulted in a Congressional Committee concluding that ACORN hasn’t violated any federal regulations in the last five years. Gretchen didn’t mention that little detail.

Washington's (and the complicit media) obsession with the Christmas Day underpants bomber and the need to not only find blame, but to demand reactions to "make us safe" made me realize that we collectively have become the five year old who needs his parents to scare away the monsters from under his bed at night. How else can you explain the fear behind the Fox poll showing a majority of respondees wanting to waterboard Abdulmutallab?

It's ludicrous to think that there is any system that could offer us *perfect* security. Forcing us to stay seated for the last hour of a flight? What's to say the next bombing attempt won't be during take-off, or even in a crowded terminal prior to boarding? Richard Reed forced us to remove our shoes; will we now have to strip naked, thanks to Abdulmutallab? And how do we enforce this from foreign airports, since Abdulmutallab boarded a flight in Amsterdam? Or maybe it won't be airline-related at all. Lex at Scholars & Rogues:

What i don’t understand is the idea that Americans are entitled to perfect security. Here we are (and for the record, all the troops stationed everywhere in the world are you and i) crashing around the globe and blowing shit up, yet those of us in God’s country should face no threat. And for the most part, we don’t face any threat. Nobody’s bombed any of the weddings i’ve been to over the last few years. I’ve never thought, “I don’t think i should go downtown, because somebody might suicide bomb where i shop.” I’m convinced that the Canadians will launch their plan for world domination any day, by invading the social and evolutionary cul-de-sac of America where i live. But as of yet i have not had to contend with RCAF close air support in the neighborhood.

Still here we are, gripped by fear and willing to submit to whatever the organs say is necessary to protect us.[..]

I’m not being glib nor am i underplaying all those “very real dangers” that we face in the post-9/11 world. I’m saying that if we don’t want to live with the dangers then we might want to stop provoking them. I’m saying that there is no such thing as perfect safety and security; you are going to die someday and you probably won’t go to heaven. And i’m saying that our government consistently overplays any actual threats (and their probability) in order to control us through fear.

The intent of terrorism is, by definition, to terrorize. If we have reached the point where we can no longer have anything on our laps or use the restroom during the last hour of a flight, then the terrorists have succeeded in doing just what they had hoped.

I still have to--on occasion--chase out the scary monsters from under my little one's bed. I do this by mocking them: I've told her that they can't stand the smell of my perfume, because they know I am a ferociously protective mama and much scarier than any of them could hope to be. So I spray a little bit of my cologne around her room and she feels better, knowing that familiar scent will keep the monsters away. I acknowledge the fear, but minimize its importance. I would much rather not have my government be the parent who focuses on the scary monster so much that it becomes bigger and scarier than anything that could fight it.

Is it so difficult to not be treated like a five year old?

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Bill O'Reilly decided to bring in Fox's newest big-name hire, John Stossel, to help buck up his annual pledge drive in the War on Christmas.

And Stossel -- who is no innocent in the ways of ideological reporting himself -- actually seemed embarrassed by it all -- mainly because O'Reilly was stooping to the lowest reporting methods possible to make his point.

Namely, he was citing as somehow authoritative ("I trust the folks") an online poll from an outfit called "StandForChristmas.com". Stossel briefly mentions that it actually was run by another group, and O'Reilly talks over him and emphasizes that it's "StandForChristmas."

Of course, "StandForChristmas" is actually run by the religious-right cranks at James Dobson's Focus on the Family. So there's an obvious bias built into the poll and its potential viewers in the first place. And then to treat the results of any open online poll as meaningful in any real sense is just palpable nonsense.

Stossel obviously understands this, and mostly tries to work his way around O'Reilly's insistence that the poll means something by just repeating its results.

But the whole thing goes completely off the rails and into another universe when O'Reilly tries to claim that corporate chiefs telling their employees what to say is "just fascist":

O'Reilly: But my point is, that I thought it was fascist -- fascism, which offends a libertarian like you -- for a CEO or a store manager to tell their employees, 'You better not say Merry Christmas' -- even though the reason we're selling stuff is because of Christmas. Isn't that fascism?

Stossel: No, it's ownership. He built the business, if he says, 'Stand on your head and sing when people come in,' you don't have to work there, you can quit, it's his business.

You realize from exchanges like this just how long it's been since Bill O'Reilly has had anything even remotely like a real job. Because in most people's real jobs -- especially in the retail biz -- employees are instructed all the time in exactly the kinds of things they're supposed to say. That's not fascist, it's just business.

Indeed, Bill O'Reilly has himself on numerous occasions demanded that people in various positions be fired for saying things he believes reflect badly on their employers -- remember his attacks on Rosie O'Donnell? Guess that makes him a fascist, by his own definition.

What would Christmas be without a warm cup of Bill O'Reilly hypocrisy?

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Chris Matthews cites a recent poll from Public Policy Polling which found that 52% of Republicans think ACORN stole the 2008 Presidential Election for President Obama...and he's shocked!...shocked I tell you to hear that Republicans might actually believe that.

Gee Chris...where would Republicans ever get an idea like that from?

I can't imagine.

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Chris Matthews cites a recent Gallup poll in the beginning of the segment—Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group—which shows those who would describe their political views as conservative at 40%, moderate 36% and liberal 20%. He goes on to take this leap about just what that poll means later in the segment which Bob Herbert rightly calls him on.

Matthews: There’s a big disconnect here in the polling and I’m looking at the NBC poll, we’re going to have it more here tonight, I’ve looked at the Gallup numbers—here’s the disconnect—the Republican Party is a lousy brand name right now. It is way down below one in five, but on every issue from semi-automatic weapons to traditional values to abortion to every…regulation of business…

Buchanan: Immigrants…

Matthews: …every issue the country is lurching to the right in ideological terms at the same time as the base of the Republican brand. How do you explain that Rob?

Herbert: Are you saying the country’s lurching to the right?

Matthews: On every issue—look at the Gallup polls.

Herbert: I completely disagree with you on that.

Matthews: Ugghh…

Herbert: You’re giving too much credence to this poll. Pat just said a moment ago…

Matthews: Why don’t you look at the polls?

Herbert: …that the Republicans can unite behind all these issues for the off year elections—they can’t even—they haven’t even been able to unite in this upstate Congressional district in the Congressional election that’s coming up next week. You’ve got Republicans lining up behind the Conservative Party candidate who’s putting the knives in the back of the Republican candidate. So where’s the unity?

Never one to let logic get in the way of his preconceived notion Matthews asks if this means the conservatives are more “powerful than ever” if they’re the spoilers in Republican elections. Herbert reminds him that turning the Republican Party hard to the right is not good for them winning elections nationally. Earlier in the segment he also reminded Matthews that Republicans are not leading in a related poll about who Americans trust to run the country.

Of course Pat Buchanan, ever the staunch Sarah Palin fan-boy thinks the party needs more ideological purity and goes on to call the Republican candidate from NY-23 a liberal. As Herbert notes, Buchanan's got a pretty strange notion of who should be called a liberal these days. I would imagine the false memes continually put out by or MSM has a lot to do with people's perception of whether they are liberal or conservative or not, as was reflected in that poll. When people continually hear unions bashed and liberal treated as though it were some sort of dirty word, it's little wonder they might shy from the label.

A poll that appeared on Facebook which asked if President Obama should be murdered was pulled and now the U.S. Secret Service is investigating.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating an online survey that asked whether people thought President Barack Obama should be assassinated, officials said Monday.

The poll, posted Saturday on Facebook, was taken off the popular social networking site quickly after company officials were alerted to its existence. But, like any threat against the president, Secret Service agents are taking no chances.

"We are aware of it and we will take the appropriate investigative steps," said Darrin Blackford, a Secret Service spokesman. "We take of these things seriously."

The poll asked respondents "Should Obama be killed?" The choices: No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.

The question was not created by Facebook, but by an independent person using an add-on application that has been suspended from the site.

President Obama will never allow himself to comment on this hatred, but this is serious stuff. If a poll like this was discovered when Bush was in office, it would be FOX News' number one story for weeks and weeks and would probably end up on Meet the Press in a roundtable discussion that would go something like: Should President Bush be worried? And are left-wingers fomenting this hate? I think the Secret Service has its hands full, that's for sure.

The Mudflats: The real story behind the "rogue" in Palin's new book

digby: The right may be confused but they are thrilled to be wallowing in their domestic paranoia once again.

Pam's House Blend: Facebook poll - "Should Obama be killed?"

Taylor Marsh: In Iraq, General Ray Odierno and Ambassador Christopher Hill are at loggerheads

The Peking Duck: World Bank Head: The dollar will lose its place to the euro and reninbi

The Satirical Political Report: Forget Chicago as Host City. here's what Obama should really pitch to the IOC

My good friend Digby finished 5th in a Villager poll on who influences what we discuss.

NationalJournal.com's panel of top political bloggers was asked to join in the survey of National Journal and The Atlantic Wire about which columnists, bloggers and television or radio commentators most helped to shape their opinion or worldview. No one received votes from both the left and right; of the 63 people named in total, only 23 appeared on more than one of the 22 combined ballots.

Related coverage: See how National Journal's panel of 375 Political and Congressional Insiders responded.

LEFT-LEANING Total points

Paul Krugman 23

Rachel Maddow 16

Frank Rich 13

Bill Moyers 11

Digby 9

RIGHT-LEANING Total points
Charles Krauthammer 27

Rush Limbaugh 24

Mark Steyn 18

Jonah Goldberg 11

Eugene Volokh 9

UPDATE: As a side note, I used to be on the National Journal's voting list, but didn't have time to vote on all their polls so I didn't cast a vote or her total would have been higher. She is the best and the brightest writer we have in the liberal blogosphere and even if you do not agree with all her takes you can be sure that she's always thought provoking. Bravo Digby.

One constant theme which needs dealing with is the idea that the country is more conservative than liberal and that centrists are needed to hold off horrible conservative things from happening.

More than that, this is an argument for oligarchy. What I see is that the majority of people, in poll after poll, want single payer. A huge majority want the public option, yet odds are decent you won't even get that.

When people talk of left-center coalitions the center part include a large number of Senators (like Diane Feinstein) who won't do what the majority of their constituents want them to do. At this point centrist = captured by monied interests.

Odds are if Obama wanted single payer, the House could pass it. It'd be close, but they could get it done. The House is the more representative body of the two bodies, the Senate is deliberately retrograde.

When I look at the US what I see is a banana republic, because it doesn't act like a democracy. I see people who think that the Senate, or even the House, actually does what the American people want. Again and again, Congress does things that the majority disagree with. In 2006 the Dems were elected to end the war in Iraq, for example, and refused to do so (though again, the House at least went through the motion, the Senate didn't even make an effort). Oh, Congress will sometimes do what the majority want—when that's what it was going to do anyway.

The plan to fix this is simple enough and always has been.

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