Matthews still "amazed" Bush is unpopular
Discussing a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing that just 39 percent of respondents expressed "positive" feelings toward President Bush, compared with 50 percent who expressed "negative" feelings, Chris Mathews stated: "I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy."
On the March 15 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews was incredulous and "amazed" when confronted with a March 10-13 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showing that just 39 percent of respondents expressed "positive" feelings toward President Bush, compared with 50 percent who expressed "negative" feelings. In a discussion of the poll, Mathews admitted, "I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy."
As Media Matters for America has noted (here and here), Matthews has repeatedly inflated Bush's likeability ratings. Appearing on the March 1 edition of NBC's Today, Matthews falsely suggested that until a new CBS News poll indicated otherwise, Bush had personal likeability numbers "going for him." In fact, Bush's favorability ratings have been low for some time; they were low when Matthews said in November 2005 that "Everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left."
From the March 15 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:
MATTHEWS: I always thought Bush was more popular than his policies. I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this. Bush is not popular. I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy. Thirty-nine percent like him. Are you surprised? Does that fit with the world you walk in?
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"I always thought Bush was more popular than his policies. I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this. Bush is not popular. I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy. Thirty-nine percent like him. Are you surprised? Does that fit with the world you walk in?"
Chris doesn't get it. Almost no one actually knows the president personally so all you have to go on is his policies. His policies are terrible for the vast, vast majority of the country and they are starting to realize it which is why he is not popular anymore. Many of us knew this a few years ago because we were paying attention with no help from media people like Chris Matthews who is basically a paid cheerleader for this administration.
Cant think of Bush without seeing the codpiece moment on the Aircraft carrier and going all wiggly in the knees.
Unless you're a millionaire, a fundamentalist whacko, or a defense contractor, what has this president done for you? He's either grossly incompetent or malevolently greedy and self serving...what's to like?
Do you not suppose Matthews has accumulated sufficient wealth at this point to want to preserve the tax cuts and elminate the tax on his investment wealth that would only occur if the estate tax is not killed? There is no doubt in my mind that this is the reason neither of our Senators nor my Congressman in East Tennessee will even respond to my letters asking them to state for the record - preferably in public communications including the Congressman's monthly newsletter - how many and what percentage of their constituents would actually see an estate tax assessed on the death of themselves or anyone in their family: it is because they (the Congressmen) are among the group to reap the benefits that nearly all of their constituents must pay for through increased tax dollars on the smaller earnings of those working class constitutents.
Matthews has lost all objectivity. He has been bought off by the right by inflated speaking fees that are really bribes. And I want to know how much support the right pledged to Matthews' brother's bid for elected office. Hardball is now a cesspool of right-wing sleaze. If the program's activities are not illegal they are certainly putrid. I no longer watch Hardball or any other program on MSNBC except for Keith O's Countdown.
Gravity?
Bright shiny objects?
I honestly wonder what else is "amazing" to Chris
Gravity?
Bright shiny objects? - temphandle brag7loom / Thursday March 16, 2006 06:19:13 PM EST ------------------------------------------
ROFLMAO
I remember when Bush Sr. thought that super market optical scanners were really amazing, confirming his membership with the elite. And people in this country actually think Bush a regular kind of guy you could sit down to have a beer with (39% anyway)! LOL! He wouldn't even know how to open the damn thing! Wow! These bottle openers are simply amazing! I wonder what world the guy walks in who invented these things!
The ability to open a beer is the one thing I am confident this president is able to do.
Of course, he might kill 100,000 innocent Iraqis in the process, but hey - that's how he rolls....
Idiot.
...fit with the world 50% of Americans walk in, yes. This is an utterly asinine diatribe. For the 39% who like Bush, these poll results are unbelievable, for the rest, they aren't; that's true of any opinion poll. Get over it for Christ's sake, Chris!
This reminds me of how Rush Limbaugh used to rant during the Clinton years about polls that showed support for Clinton. "Where do they find these people?" Well, obviously among the 99.999% of American's you don't know, Rush.
Even the 39% don't like him. They've just bought into the idea that you have to pretend to love the President during a war he declared, legal or not.
Guess not everyone feels as "humble" as you do around Bush, or thinks he's as "wise as Atticus Finch" . . .
Pull your head out of your rear, wipe off that brown stuff, and join reality.
Make sure you're sitting down first.
and yet you keep making the same mistake. Maybe that's what you find so dreamy about bush: he keeps being wrong too.
Again... this guy is such an obsequious fraud! The above comments sum it up.
If you happen to read this I'm most definitely NOT surprised. Not even close to the world I walk in. Just so we're clear on this, I don't consider myself a "whack job" and I don't come anywhere near "sort of liking" this abomination of a chief executive.
Bush hasn't changed. What has changed is that the Rove propaganda/marketing machine has been less and less able to pull the wool over America's eyes regarding the neocon's desastrous policies. How many times can Bush land on an aircraft carrier, have staged conversations with hand-picked audiences.. ? The Rove machine with Fox's help have all they can handle with the disastrous Iraq war, Bush's lack of response to Hurricane Katrina, the Dubai mess... It doesn't stop. The public that liked Bush was in love with the image of Bush that the Rove machine tried to portray, not Bush. The rest of the Bush supporters are in it for the money.
Probably because my world is REAL.
I'm only guessing, but I think your world is somewhere between the outer limits and the twilight zone.
I got a good laugh out of your response. Matthews probably wouldn't get it even if Rod Serling were standing next to him telling him he is already in the Twilight Zone.
Matthews is a complete and utter empty talking head who masquerades as a journalist.
Submitted for your approval Chris Matthews, a third rate pundit with a third rate show. A small man with small ideas. What we and Mr. Mathews are about to discover is that he just took a wrong turn down a one-way dead end street that leads directly to ... The Bush Zone.
I don't dislike Bush. I don't KNOW the guy. So it's NOT the man I dislike--just 99% of his policies&decisions. [Don't bother asking me what 1% I agree with...it will only take THIS thread Off Topic]
That Matthews would even wonder WHY people who are obviously unhappy with Bush's "leadership" don't have "positive" feelings for the guy just shows how out of touch he is.
What WE are witnessing ought to make every concerned citizen WHO cherishes the unobstructed right to have a clear and objective perspective concerning the dissemination of news, and commentaries QUESTION the likes of 'Chrissie' when it comes to his "softball" platitudes which border on an almost adolescent co-dependency in praising the PREZ.......... Because after all, He's a Regular Guy.
This is the great subterfuge of the great pretender. Bush is neither a working stiff OR defined by any measure of objectivity, a popular Chief Executive. Matthews in his heart of hearts know this and this incontestible fact distresses him because he also knows that the only Bush supporters of today consist of his far-right base........... The Pat Robertson's and Jerry Falwells with their brain-dead minions. Alas, The Red States are now metamorphising into a deep purple......... indicating the swing voters are wakening up to confont their fears and beginning to see clearly that THEY were duped into supporting what future historians will conclude as likely the most corrupt, imbecilic and ill-deserving administration in history.
This 'I just don't get it' rant is just a measure to not add any critical analysis to the events of the day. 'Chrissie' would do US all a favor by moving his sorry behind over to the Rudolph Murdoch station of Prostituted Jounalism, Fox News. He would at least not have to pretend anymore and quit the charade of claiming his 'Hardball Show' as authentic.
Who knows, He might even confront his own demons as FAUST had to!!!!!!!!!!!!!
or "liked" bush. i think he's a smarmy little smartass with a smirky little grin. and he thinks god has appointed him to run this country. but he convinced enough people to buy his act.
"I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this."
Somebody write that down. Matthews said something smart.
"Does that fit with the world you walk in?"
If Matthews finds Bush lovers everywhere he goes, he's more swaddled than the prez.
Portray Matthews as a Liberal? He is far from it with these quotes.
It's the Organized Right that characterizes ALL mainstream media as left wing. That's the directive from Grover & Karl: wherever there is an absence of conservative bias, paint it as Liberal. That thought process became a contagion and now anyone who isn't blogging in their boxers is automatically considered a liberal.
I am sure that Matthews, to his dozens of followers, is considered a Liberal who has some common sense.
Umm, I'd have to say...yeah!
The below-mentioned hyperbole is an example of the non-critical analysis offered up by Matthews subsequent to the invasion of Iraq. It reveals a non-scholarly and now currently-refuted, "Gee, isn't War just great?"
" One of the most gleeful commentators on network television was MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews. "We're all neo-cons now," he crowed on April 9, 2003, hours after a Saddam Hussein statue tumbled in Baghdad.
Weeks later, Matthews was still at it, making categorical declarations: "We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."
Simplistic was more like it. And, in the rush of stateside enthusiasm for war on Iraq, centrist pundits like Matthews -- apt to sway with the prevailing wind -- were hardly inclined to buck the jingoistic storm.
[link to www.counterpunch.org]
Notice the absolute irrational and jingoistic tripe which is manifestly designed to appeal to emotion, ya know the lizard brain of our cerebral consciousness versus what veterans of a previous war roughly his age knew all too well. Bush is amacho HERO, a Real Guy, one of US. Why, even the women are dancing in the streets.
"The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high." – Sen. J. William Fulbright (Ark.)
Sorry Chrissie, We are not so easily duped and are not all NEOCONS now. Been there, done that.
Chris just can't get past his own feelings for Bush and see him as the majority of the country and world does. Love is blind.
I work in a hotel that is used by business people, mostly conservative and I hear all kinds of things. They don't like Bush, either.
It only slightly changes the point you're trying to make, but it's pretty clear (to me at least) that Tweety says "I'm amazed, but 50 percent of the people don't like him..."
Is this the same Chris Matthews who tore Michelle Malkin a new one over the Switfboat Liars? Apparently they got to him, somehow. These can't possibly be the honest opinions of a thinking person. I think we'll find, years from now, that many of these "Journalists" have been literally bought by the Rove propaganda machine. They've already caught two of them red-handed; is it that much of a stretch to believe that they are paying off most of these guys to lie for Puddinhead George?
He got his check, all right.
And Tweety, for the record: Yup, it sure does fit the world I walk in. Then again, you people don't even live in the same Universe that I do. I've always wondered: Does the sun shine 24-7 in your world?
I stopped watching Matthews awhile back. He does not report or even discuss the NEWS. He PROPOSES the news . No matter what travesty Bushco has visited on the American people that day it is always,"How bout that Hillary, she's a ....fill in the blank".
It's clear this guy hasn't a clue as to how actual citizens feel. What damage an idiot with a microphone and a blinding ego can do to democracy.
MATTHEWS: "I always thought Bush was more popular than his policies. I keep saying it, and I keep being wrong on this. Bush is not popular. I'm amazed when 50 percent of the people don't like him -- just don't like this guy. Thirty-nine percent like him. Are you surprised? Does that fit with the world you walk in?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is just weird on so many levels. Who is he posing the "Does it fit with the world you walk in?" question to? Maybe he's rightly assumed that most Liberals and Moderates have tuned out his show and he’s concluded that probably most of the people who watch his show now is comprised of mainly hardcore cultish Bush worshippers like himself . I guess the question is for them.
most people don't like liars who rationalize behavior that damages and even kills people on a wholesale level. Yes Clinton lied: about an affair. People may not approve of that but at least they can understand. Lying about the pre-text for war is morally reprehensible. Especially when you based much of your rationale for wanting the job of President as restoring "honor and integrity" in the White House.
Aside from the fact that Matthews has once again revealed that he is self-important dunce, there is no foul here. In fact, he's admitting that he's flummoxed. Shouldn't we be encouraging this sort of thing?
Bush gave the country turd after steamy turd and told everyone it was gold. Liberals have always gotten it. But now the independants, libertarians and true conservatives have finally started to notice the smell.
always stick together. They never throw water balloons at each other unless they're naked and horny.
I just sent a letter to Hardball and listed a few reasons why 50% of people polled don't like Bush. If you think Matthews is AMAZED at those numbers think how AMAZED we are that he can be such an imbecile and still draw a paycheck.