Glenn Greenwald on Karl Rove ...

[meegbear]

The actual column is titled 'Various items'. I am only posting the first item, but the others are a good read as well. -- meegbear

In The Wall St. Journal today, Karl Rove -- for obvious reasons -- warns that polls are profoundly unreliable and mocks those who, in the past, have been wrong in relying on them to predict election outcomes. Rove singles out for derision a group of "academics gathered by the American Political Science Association at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington on Aug. 31, 2000 to make forecasts (and) declared that Al Gore would be the winner" because "their models told them so," and Bob Shrum who, in 2004, was so sure of a win that he called Kerry and addressed him as "President Kerry."

In mocking poll-dependent errors, Rove forgot to mention one of the most notorious episodes, from late October, 2006, which occurred during an interview Rove gave to NPR correspondent Robert Siegel, when Rove vigorously disputed that "public polls and analysis (are) predicting a Republican loss in November":

SIEGEL: We are in the home stretch though and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about...

ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias or anything like that, you're just making a comment, right?

SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you are looking at.

ROVE: No, you are not, no you're not, no you're not, you're not. . . . Like the poll today that showing Corker's ahead in Tennessee or the poll showing Allen is pulling away in the Virginia Senate race. . . .

I'm looking at all of these Robert and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math.

SIEGEL: I don't know if we're entitled to a different math but your...

ROVE: I said THE math.

In that election, the Republicans suffered one of the most crushing losses in the last 60 years. I wonder why Rove forgot to include that in his column, losing the Senate and (by a large margin) the House. And note how Rove accused Siegel of being "biased" -- all because Siegel pointed to polls overwhelmingly predicting a Republican loss. As so many things do, that exchange bolsters Stephen Colbert's observation that "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

<snip>

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/10/30/various_items/

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Rove really has a lot of balls, referring to an election that they STOLE. NT

[YOY]

2. There has to be a way to jail this man.

He is at the root of the problem. He has dumbed everything down for the value voters. He has abbetted and enabled criminal behavior. He has lied to congress.

[JHB]

3. "Mathiness"

THE Math. Math with pressure applied.