Hittokiri's Hara-Kiri Forum

That last square of this one got me good, definite LOL.

Subject: Fw: They walk amoung us
I know these are dumb, but still, I laughed--hope you do too.

--- On

'Millionaire' Contestant Makes Worst Use Of Lifelines Ever



NEW YORK - Idaho  resident Kathy Evans brought humiliation to her friends and family Tuesday when she set a new standard for stupidity with her appearance on the popular  TV show, 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.'

It seems that Evans, a  32-year-old wife and mother of two, got stuck on the first question, and  proceeded to make what fans of the show are dubbing 'the absolute worst use of  lifelines ever.'
After being introduced to the show's host Meredith Vieira,  Evans assured her that she was ready to play, whereupon she was posed with an  extremely easy $100 question. The question was: 'Which of the following is the largest?'

A) A Peanut
B) An Elephant
C) The Moon
D) Hey, who  you calling large?

Immediately Mrs. Evans was struck with an all consuming panic as she realized that this was a question to which she did not  readily know the answer.
'Hmm, oh boy, that's a toughie,' said Evans, as Vieira did her level best to hide her disbelief and disgust. 'I mean, I'm sure  I've heard of some of these things before, but I have no idea how large they would be.'
Evans made the decision to use the first of her three lifelines, the 50/50. Answers A and D were removed, leaving her to decide which was  bigger, an elephant or the moon. However, faced with an incredibly easy question, Evans still remained unsure.
'Oh! It removed the two I was leaning towards!' exclaimed Evans. 'Darn. I think I better phone a friend.'
Using the second of her two lifelines on the first question, Mrs.  Evans asked to be connected with her friend Betsy, who is an office  assistant.
'Hi Betsy! How are you? This is Kathy! I'm on TV!' said Evans,  wasting the first seven seconds of her call. 'Ok, I got an important question.  Which of the following is the largest? B, an elephant, or C, the moon. 15  seconds hun.'
Betsy quickly replied that the answer was C, the moon. Evans  proceeded to argue with her friend for the remaining ten seconds.
'Come on Betsy, are you sure?' said Evans. 'How sure are you? Duh, that can't be  it.'
To everyone's astonishment, the moronic Evans declined to take her friend's advice and pick 'The Moon.'
'I just don't know if I can trust Betsy. She's not all that bright. So I think I'd like to ask the audience,'  said Evans.
Asked to vote on the correct answer, the audience returned 98%  in favor of answer C, 'The Moon.' Having used up all her lifelines, Evans then  made the dumbest choice of her life.
'Wow, seems like everybody is against what I'm thinking,' said the too-stupid-to-live Evans. 'But you know, sometimes you just got to go with your gut. So, let's see... For which is larger, an elephant or the moon, I'm going to have to go with B, an elephant.  Final answer.'
Evans sat before the dumbfounded audience, the only one  waiting with bated breath, and was told that she was wrong, and that the  answer was in fact, C, 'The Moon.'

Caution...they walk among us!

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Some guy bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying: 'Free to good home. You want it, you take it.' For three days the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it.  He eventually decided that people were too un-trusting of this deal. 

It looked too good to be true, so he changed the sign to read: 'Fridge for sale $50.'  

The next day someone stole it!

***They walk amongst us!***

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*One  day I was walking down the beach with some friends when someone  shouted....'Look at that dead bird!' Someone looked up at the sky and  said...'where?'

***They walk among  us!!***

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While looking at a house, my brother  asked the estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, 'Does the sun rise in the north?' When my brother explained that the sun rises in the east, and has for sometime, she shook her head and said, 'Oh, I don't keep up with that  stuff'

***They Walk Among  Us!!***

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My colleague and I were eating our lunch in our cafeteria, when we overheard one of the administrative assistants talking about the sunburn she got on her weekend drive to the beach. She drove down in a convertible, but 'didn't think she'd get sunburned because the car was moving'.

***They Walk Among  Us!!!!***

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My sister has a lifesaving tool in her car it's designed to cut through a seat belt if she gets trapped She keeps it in the trunk.

***They Walk Among  Us!!!!!***

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I was hanging out with a friend  when we saw a woman with a nose ring attached to an earring by a chain. My  friend said, 'Wouldn't the chain rip out every time she turned her head?' I  had to explain that a person's nose and ear remain the same distance apart no matter which way the head is turned...

***They Walk Among Us!!!!!!! ***

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I couldn't find my luggage at the airport baggage area. So I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags never showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because she was a trained professional and I was in good hands. 'Now,' she asked me, 'Has your plane arrived yet?'...
(I work with professionals like this.)

***They Walk Among  Us!!!!!!!!***

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While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before responding. 'Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't  think I'm hungry enough to eat 6 pieces.

***Yep, They Walk Among Us, too.!!!!!!!!

Sadly, not  only do they walk among us, they also reproduce !!!!

Regardless of who you are, what creed you belong to, or where you are in this universe, I offer you this simple universal message on this night.

Peace



We as a humanity clash and make this world disturbed, but on this night much of the world pulls together, and from a day marred in hate and war a peaceful and solemn night is born.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

So images from the shoe throwing incident have become rather popular. So I feel I have to share these with everyone here. Most of these are from the Political Cartoons group on LJ, one is from the Pokemon group on LJ.






http://pics.livejournal.com/jellomarx/pic/0000zk4f/> you'll have to click to see this one, this one is seriously LOL



the next one doesn't have Bush in it, but it is still relevant, from Azumanga

Certainly the story of the journalist throwing his shoes at soon be be former president Bush has been an interesting story. Today I caught some analysis of the footage by a translator, towards the end of the scene while the man is being pinned to the ground, the translator noted that Iraqi officials were saying to turn off the camera, but at the same to American officials were saying not to turn off the cameras. This makes me wonder, was this a planned publicity stunt? I myself am skeptical of such an idea, however the possibility that Bush is trying to end his term with some sympathy is just kind of sticking with me.

This is an update from Anime News Network about a man who is facing 20 years in prison because he was in possession of supposedly obscene manga.


20 Years in Prison for Buying a Manga by Carl Horn, Dec 11th 2008

A while back Carl Gustav Horn, manga editor at Dark Horse, contacted us about the ongoing case of Christopher Handley. As you may know, Handley currently faces up to 20 years in prison for the possession of allegedly obscene manga. Carl was concerned about the ramifications of Handley's case, not just on Handley himself, but on all of us. I think his concern is a very legitimate one, the case against Handley could set a precedent that will affect a lot of collectors and consumers of illustrated and animated material.

After a bit of discussion, Carl was invited to write an editorial on the subject that would be posted on ANN. Shortly thereafter Jason Thompson, author of the Manga: The Complete Guide, expressed his interest in also addressing the subject. I don't think very many people would disagree when I say that Carl and Jason are two of the most respected individuals in the North American manga industry. If I could choose any two people in the world to write an editorial for Anime News Network on this subject, it would be Carl and Jason.

And that's just what I present to you today, Carl and Jason's thoughts on this case, and how you can make a difference.

-Christopher Macdonald

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20 Years in Prison for Buying a Manga Don't Let it Happen: Donate to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Today
by Carl Horn

In less than two months, starting on February 2, 2009, a court case will begin in Iowa. The defendant, Christopher Handley, is facing as much as 20 years in prison for the charge against him. This is, as we say on the intarwebs: serious business. Twenty years? They must claim he did something really bad. Something really bad to someone, right?

Actually, he just ordered some manga from Japan. And...that's all he did.

Some of these manga contain images that are supposedly—according to the prosecutor—"obscene." But we'll put aside what kind of images they are claimed to be for the moment, because that isn't being decided anywhere but in this court case. And although we can debate it, there's no practical point in doing so here—because debating their content on ANN won't, and can't affect the outcome.

Maybe there are certain types of manga you'd never read or buy. Maybe you've got strong feelings about some kinds of manga, and you don't think they're right. In fact, you're pretty sure you don't even have anything like that in your collection.

But again, the problem is, if Christopher Handley loses this case, that will no longer be for you to debate, or decide. Picture someone else deciding.

In fact, picture people from four different state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies deciding—deciding by coming into your house, today, with a search warrant. Picture them doing that while you're standing right there, while your neighbors are wondering about all the police cars outside, going through your entire collection of manga, artbooks and anime—packing them up, carting them off for inspection. Wait a minute—do they say all of them contain "obscene" content? Oh, by no means. They're saying only a few of them do. And not even the entire manga among those few. Just some drawings in them, here and there.

Picture being handcuffed and booked and told you may now go to prison for twenty years...over some drawings in your manga, here and there.

What's just been described isn't some drama that exists only in flames on the net, and it's not fear mongering—some nightmare scenario that might someday happen in reality. It already has happened in reality, to a manga fan in America named Christopher Handley. It's still happening to him right now, as he prepares for this case. And now here's the real question.

Do you think it's right? I'm not talking about the drawings in the manga. I mean, regardless of how you feel about the manga itself, do you think it's right that someone, anyone, should be sent to prison, merely for possessing drawings in a manga?

And if you don't think it's right, are you going to try and help? To try and make sure it doesn't happen—to him or anyone else?

Talking and debating the issue won't help now. It really won't. But there is something you can do—and should do—today, to help. Support the people who are helping to defend Christopher Handley in court: the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund—the CBLDF. http://www.cbldf.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=2

My friend Jason Thompson and I decided to ask ANN to post our editorials on this case for two reasons. First, we've both been in the U.S. manga industry for a long time—Jason started editing manga in 1995, with Battle Arena Toshinden and I started in 1997 with Neon Genesis Evangelion. We worked together on PULP, the first English-language seinen manga anthology magazine. Jason later became the first editor of the English Shonen Jump; today he is the manga editor for Otaku USA magazine, and last year, through Del Rey, he released the first comprehensive survey of all English-language manga to date, Manga: The Complete Guide. My own record isn't as nearly accomplished as Jason's, but I have had the honor of working for both of the oldest manga publishers in the U.S., Viz and Dark Horse.

The second reason is—because we're manga fans who also happen to have a foot in the comics industry—we know about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and the good work it's doing. Jason is a comics creator himself, whereas Dark Horse is known as much for its original comics as it is for its manga. The CBLDF, as its name implies, has worked since the 1980s to supply specialist legal support, including counsel and expert witnesses, for comics-related First Amendment issues. In the past, they've defended artists and retailers, again with an emphasis on comic books. Look at their web site, and you'll see it's mostly references and testimonials related to American comics.

But they got involved in the Christopher Handley case because it's the first time a prosecution has been brought against someone merely for buying a comic. It happens to be a Japanese comic in this case—it's a manga fan who's been prosecuted. The CBLDF sees the importance of that. But do we? The CBLDF is coming to the support of a manga fan; are we manga fans doing what we can to support the CBLDF?

Look at Neil Gaiman, a board member of the CBLDF, who's been very active in fundraising support for this case. He has creative connections to manga and anime, having worked with Yoshitaka Amano and on the dub of Princess Mononoke. But he's primarily known as a creator of English-language comics and prose. In fact, Neil Gaiman isn't American, but he moved here in part because—despite cases like this, and despite the need for the CBLDF—freedom of speech is more strongly fought for in the U.S. than in his native country, the United Kingdom. He discusses this eloquently, and why he defends the right not to be arrested and not to be sent to prison for reading certain kinds of manga, on the December 1st entry of his journal, at journal.neilgaiman.com/.

Not to start humming "The Star-Spangled Banner" or anything, but it makes us proud that ours is a country that artists like Neil Gaiman can still come to in search of freedom—and to help fight for that freedom. To be manga editors, as Jason and I are, is to bring manga to America. We both know and work with Japanese publishers and creators. We don't want to tell them that America, a land whose fans—meaning you—have gotten so into manga in the past few years—creating new hope for the industry in Japan—has now become the land where fans can be put behind bars... for reading manga.

As American manga fans, as people who have worked all these years to promote their amazing art form in America, we would be ashamed to tell them that had become true. Far more ashamed than we could ever be, of anything in any manga—all of which are fake, by the way. Just drawings on paper.

So we aren't just going to express concern and disbelief over this case. We aren't just going to have sympathy for this situation and hope it turns out for the best. Before we do any of that—and before you do any of that—take action, and support the CBLDF. Hopefully this case will be won. If not, there will be an appeal which must be won. In any case, the CBLDF has already spent a lot of money to defend this manga fan—money that so far, has come largely not from the manga fan community itself, for whom it means the most, but from comics fans.

We manga fans need to do better for the CBLDF. We know many manga fans are still in school, and don't have a lot of money. Consider, then, at least a minimum donation of $10.00. Why at least ten dollars? It's the average price of a manga in the U.S... and symbolic of the mere act of buying manga that has brought this court case on. If you can "fill up more of the shelf," so to speak, as Jason and I have, please do so, and donate more.

ANN is the net's premier English-language anime and manga news web site, meaning that it is read in many countries throughout the world, but this appeal to support the CBLDF is made especially to American manga fans. Because this case is being tried in an American court—and, being a federal indictment, is being brought in the name of the American people. If you say, no, that's not true, you never wanted this, you don't think it's right, you're against it—but you do nothing—you will, unfortunately, be supporting this injustice by default. Dramatic words—but the real melodrama here hasn't been brought by us, and not by Christopher Handley, but by those who want to put someone in prison for 20 years for reading manga. And if that isn't injustice, well—that word has no meaning, I guess.

Jason and I wish it wasn't necessary to have written these editorials, and despite calling for you to support the CBLDF, it wasn't you who made the necessity—again, it was those who brought this court case. If what we say comes off as preachy, we apologize. The asking for donations part, that's always a little awkward. But hopefully you don't see it that way, because you want to do something about this, too. Just like people go looking for a fight in real life, people go looking for drama on the net. We didn't go looking for drama, and we would prefer that there wasn't any.

But because of real life, the drama is here. Let's put it to good use for a change.

We both work in the industry. Make no mistake, a successful prosecution in this case will have its chilling effect on the industry as a whole. Remember, the facts at issue are, from a legal perspective, not over certain kinds of manga as such, but over certain kinds of images and scenes in a manga. By the same token, manga that aren't considered "that kind" at all, would nevertheless receive close scrutiny for images and scenes that might be risky.

What's a "risky" scene? Well, if there's a chance of going to prison merely for reading it, let alone for publishing it or selling it, risky may turn out to have a pretty broad definition. This would mean increased censorship, or deciding not to bring a series over at all. And if you say, in that case, you'll simply go ahead and order it straight from Japan, then—

Right. Exactly.

Don't worry, don't get mad, and don't get upset, before you go donate to the defense right now at http://www.cbldf.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=2. Because if that's how you feel about this cruel and pointless case, you'll feel better knowing that you're trying to do something about it. Please do it now.

Sincerely yours,
Carl Horn
Dark Horse Comics

Whether or not you think or feel that companies should or shouldn't use the phrase "merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays", this post deal with sticking to your guns.

I recently noticed the Walmart ads that deal with parents wanting to give their kids a merry Christmas and using the catch phrase "Christmas costs less at WalMart". I find this rather hypocritical of Wal-mart to use the word Christmas in its ads, when its employees aren't allowed to say "Merry Christmas".  They can't have it both ways, either they should use it, or they shouldn't.

on a seperate note, although I am an agnostic, I find it rather disgusting that Walmart does use the phrase "Christmas costs less at Walmart", this stems from the idea that Christmas isn't the exchage of presents, it is a day, unless the Earth stands still, a person can't take Christmas away (from bad kids for example), Christmas can't be late (as if the chimpunks weren't annoying enough already), this applies to any holiday.

A friend on LJ recently posted a post detailing 12 people he knows in the way of 12 days of Christmas. So I figured I would follow suit and do one for the bloggers I know here. This is in no particular order. Enjoy

12 Andreberniers  fast is really a tongue twister
11 Stylegals "Palin around "
10 Hacksaws sawing
  9 SSabols singing
08,Katiebaby
  7 CaseyJones laughing
  6 Polarbears swimming

  5 Hybrids Talking
 
 4 Girlscouts scouting
  3 Dprins dripping?
  2 much Freedomfree
   and only one Bill Martin

I'm not a "Trekie" but I got a kick out of this.

Thanksgiving Divorce

A man in Jacksonville calls his son in San Diego two days before Thanksgiving and says, "I hate to ruin   your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing. Forty-five years of misery is enough.
  "Pop, what are you talking about?" the son screams. We can't stand the sight of each other any   longer,"  the father says. "We're sick of each other, and I'm sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Denver and tell her."

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. "Like heck they're getting divorced,"  she shouts, "I'll take care of this,"

She calls Jacksonville immediately, and screams at her father, "You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm ca lling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?" and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. "Okay," he says, "they're coming for Thanksgiving and paying their own way." 

Once again this is from the political cartoons group on LJ

I found this recipe online on Wednesday , since then, I have made this cheesecake 3 time already. For this I found that is was worth the investment in a springform pan, I got one at k-mart for 10 dollars, it is absolutely worth it.

Crust:
 1 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 stick melted salted butter

Filling:
3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1 (15-ounce) can pureed pumpkin
3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon  ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

For crust:

In medium bowl, combine crumbs, sugar and cinnamon. Add melted butter. Press down flat into a 9-inch springform pan. Set aside.

For filling:

Beat cream cheese until smooth. Add pumpkin puree, eggs, egg yolk, sour cream, sugar and the spices. Add flour and vanilla. Beat together until well combined.

Pour into crust. Spread out evenly and place oven for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and let sit for 15 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 hours.

from Wall Street Journal

Zogby’s Misleading Poll of Obama Voters

During a campaign, pollsters can build credibility by forecasting election results accurately. Afterward, they can build revenue by using that credibility to attract private clients. These private surveys often have an agenda, and their numbers can’t be tested against an objective standard, such as votes. Such surveys can test pollsters’ standards of conduct.

Zogby International recently conducted a survey for a critic of president-elect Barack Obama and then, together with the sponsor, interpreted the numbers from the survey in a misleading fashion.

John Zogby, the president and chief executive of Zogby International, released a statement on his Web site Tuesday that defended the poll in the face of heavy criticism from bloggers and some media organizations, saying, “We stand by the results [of] our survey work on behalf of [author and former talk show host] John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. … We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that’s exactly what we did.”

But on Wednesday, Zogby told me he was on a book tour* when the contract was reached and when the survey was conducted, and wouldn’t have approved the poll in the form it took, or a press release posted on his firm’s Web site. “This was not Zogby International’s finest hour,” he said. “Something, somehow, fell through the cracks.” He said he would review the incident with his staff on Friday to determine what went wrong. Nonetheless, Zogby stood by the results of the poll themselves. “There is valuable information in this poll,” he said.

The survey’s sponsor, Ziegler, has created a Web site called How Obama Got Elected that says the Democratic senator’s victory was made possible by the news media, which failed to inform voters of Obama’s shortcomings and those of his running mate, Joe Biden. The survey was meant to bolster that argument, also to be presented in a documentary by Ziegler, “Media Malpractice…How Obama Got Elected.”

To conduct the survey, Ziegler turned to Zogby, a firm that has had some success in presidential-election polling but also has conducted some questionable sponsored surveys. Zogby posed 12 questions to 512 Obama voters last week, then ran the results this week on its site with the sub-headline “Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden.”

The press release highlighted that at least 80% of Obama voters knew that Palin had a pregnant teenage daughter and was the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe, and that McCain was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. Meanwhile, more than 80% didn’t know unflattering facts about Obama, such as his successful efforts to have opponents removed from the ballot in his first political race and his comments that critics have interpreted to mean his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry.

Here’s an alternative way of presenting the findings that’s at least as valid. There were 10 questions that were meant to be answered with the name of one of the candidates. Five of them covered events that had surfaced in the three months before the election: McCain’s inability to say how many homes he owned; Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter; Palin’s wardrobe budget; Obama’s intent to redistribute wealth; and Biden’s comment that Obama would be tested by an international crisis. On those questions, more than half of Obama voters correctly identified the involved candidate (the percentage for the last question was lowest, at 53.3%; on the others, it was in the 80s).

The other five questions covered events or comments during the primary or from decades ago, including Obama’s first campaign and a Biden presidential bid in 1987 done in by charges of plagiarism in law school and on the campaign trail. On four of these questions, the correct answer was chosen more frequently than the other three candidates combined, but many voters — on some questions, most — were unsure. On three questions, fewer than 25% of respondents got the right answer, prompting Ziegler to tell Fox News “that a group of monkeys if they had been guessing would have done better than Obama voters” on those questions, not because Obama voters were unintelligent but because they were misinformed.

On the fifth question about older events, “Which candidate said their policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket?”, more voters named McCain than Obama. However, Obama’s cited comments — made in January in a meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board — referred to bankrupting new coal plants, not the industry. He was speaking about a cap-and-trade system for emissions, something that McCain also has supported.

“We wrote ‘likely’ because of that very caveat,” Ziegler told me. “We had to simplify it, and I stand by the simplification of the question.”

Noting the dated Biden plagiarism question, Ann Selzer, a pollster in Des Moines, said, “It’s not at all surprising Obama supporters do not know this fact. I would guess a similar number of McCain supporters do not know this fact.”

Ziegler agreed that people may have done worst on questions referring to older events. “I think that that’s true, and I think that’s part of the reason there was a disparity there,” he said. “It also goes to the point that the news media ignored the history of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.” When asked why he didn’t include questions referring to unfavorable aspects of McCain’s and Palin’s distant past, he said, “I felt that these were the best 12 for what I was trying to accomplish.”

Ziegler told Fox News that he spent about $13,000 on the poll and on a related short film, both of which will be used in his documentary. On Fox, he challenged liberals to sponsor a similar poll of McCain supporters. He told me he was sure McCain backers would do better: “They got their information from a completely different type of media, one that was not totally in the tank for Barack Obama.”

Zogby said he wouldn’t have approved the poll without including McCain supporters. “A more honest poll would have been conducted had we also focused on McCain people,” he said. He added that some of the questions weren’t worded fairly.

(On Thursday, Politico reported that Ziegler contacted Zogby this week to repeat the poll with McCain supporters but was rebuffed by the polling firm. John Zogby said he would want to formulate the questions and have either an objective sponsor or a pair of sponsors, one from the left and one from the right. Ziegler responded, “This didn’t fall through any ‘cracks,’ they just got scared. … there was nothing wrong with the original poll.” After publication of this post, Ziegler wrote a comment objecting to the headline.)

One of the other two poll questions referred to Tina Fey’s send-up of Palin — “Which candidate said they could see Russia from their house?” — rather than Palin herself; none of the four candidates was the right answer. The other question asked, simply, whether respondents could name which party controlled Congress before this month’s election. Just 43% correctly responded that the Democrats did, with 21% answering neither or saying they were unsure. Fox’s Sean Hannity called that “frightening,” but it may have said less about Obama voters’ knowledge than about all voters’ knowledge; just 53% of all respondents, from both parties, got a similar question right in a Pew poll in May that I wrote about last month.

Apart from the exclusion of McCain supporters and whether the poll’s questions were representative of overall campaign knowledge, the poll didn’t demonstrate that the news media favored Obama, or that any media distortions “got Obama elected.” No questions addressed how voters got their information or how the answers to the questions influenced their vote. It may well be that supporters of each candidate gravitate toward media that downplay the shortcomings of their own candidates and highlight those of opponents — or simply that they retain knowledge that conforms with their world view.

As the Washington Times aptly put it, the poll “essentially revealed that [Obama] voters remembered good stuff about the president-elect and bad stuff about Sen. John McCain’s campaign.”

“Maybe one of the questions this should raise is to what extent the mainstream media has the power to reach the average voter,” Ziegler said. Nonetheless, he said he was confident the media won Obama the election. “Would Obama have won without the media being in the tank for him? No. He would never have won the nomination. He is completely a media creation.”

Zogby’s record includes some electoral-forecasting success and some controversy. In 2000, Zogby was among the more accurate national pollsters. In 2004, the firm incorrectly forecast the race for Sen. John Kerry on Election Day. This year, as I noted in a column earlier this month, Zogby was among the top pollsters in state polls, though it also whiffed badly on the California Democratic primary.

Between elections, Zogby has conducted research for online-gambling advocates that the head of a polling professional association told me was “loaded and biased,” and started a survey about voters’ concerns of potential corruption in a Hillary Clinton White House with the statement “Some people believe that the Bill Clinton administration was corrupt.”

Though Zogby has defended those surveys, he also admits that at times bad polls get through the firm’s safeguards. For instance, a 2001 poll sponsored by a liberal Web site told respondents that a candidate for a White House position had “pleaded guilty to the crime of lying to Congress,” then asked, “Do you think that someone who admitted to deceiving Congress should or should not be appointed to a top level White House position?” Not surprisingly, three-quarters of respondents said no. After Opinion Journal’s James Taranto criticized the question as “misleading and tendentious,” Zogby said, “I quickly backed off and apologized. It was a terrible question. It was wrong. These things do happen. We would like to believe they happen very rarely.”

Further reading: The poll was not, as election forecaster and Obama supporter Nate Silver originally called it, a “push poll,” because it was not an attempt to influence respondents by faking opinion research, as former pollster Mark Blumenthal explained on his blog. Blumenthal nonetheless agreed with Silver’s other criticisms, writing, “Describing his biased, leading questions as a legitimate test of knowledge is hugely misleading, at best.” Silver posted the transcript of his heated interview with Ziegler. Ziegler responded to his critics and to Zogby’s decision not to conduct the same poll with McCain voters.

*This blog post originally and incorrectly stated that John Zogby was on vacation when this poll was conducted. He was on a book tour.

Without having even taken the oath of office yet, Obama has already managed to stimulate the American economy. Liberal-fearing right wings afraid to lose their guns, have driven gun sales up 8-10% since Obama was elected president.

I say, excellent job Obama, lol

buy Ruger and Smith & Wesson, lol

I slide through the wasteland that's my world
My hunger takes your life, preyed on to keep me alive, yeah
Mercy's all that you need, mercy's empty in me

Can't you feel the poison rising out of the morning and into the night
You can feel my strength destroy you straight to the heart from the venomous bite

That's right I shed my skin tonight but my fangs are hard to hide
And you know that you're going to die, yeah
Mercy's all that you need, mercy's empty in me

Can't you feel the poison rising out of the morning and clear through the night
You can feel my strength destroy you straight to the heart from the venomous bite

I can't regret, can't escape decisions made for me, no control
Fire that burns but never dies, wrapped around I'll bury my fangs inside

Making my way through the night you're still in my sight
You're runnin' away cuz ya know you can't hide
My instincts are cold blooded hate; to you I'm the bearer of fate
Wrong place and now the wrong time, now terror is all that you'll find

Can't you feel the poison rising, straight to the heart of the venomous bite...

Cant you feel the poison rising, out of the morning and clear through the night
You can feel my strength destroy you straight to the heart from the venomous bite

I can't regret, can't escape decisions made for me, no control
Fire that burns but never dies, wrapped around I'll bury my fangs inside

Stay inside tonight - you're out there all alone
Vanish from my sites - venomous control
You won't make it right- my appetite has grown
Lost the final fight - no love will be shown

Stay inside tonight - you're out there all alone
Vanish from my sites - venomous control
You can't make it right - my appetite has grown
Lost the final fight - no love will be shown