No Runny Eggs

If you don’t, or even if you do, the Unreal one has them. For the record, I’m taking 30-50 deaths and over 50 shootings between yesterday through the end of September, and I’ll probably be low.

I sure seem to have picked up your attention. So, what did I get right or wrong (as your persuasion may be)?

Comments are open, but I do ask that you don’t fudge too much; I seem to remember some joker who thought using a Quaker Oats e-mail address was cute.

I decided to do some rough analysis of the Gallup Confidence in Institutions poll mentioned below, and we are becoming far more cynical across the board. First, I decided to average out the confidence among the “core” institutions asked about most of the years the survey was around (biannual 1973-1983, annual 1984-present). This includes church/organized religion (in every survey), the military (in every survey except 1973), the Supreme Court (in every survey), banks (in every survey since 1979), public schools (in every survey except 1975), newspapers (in every survey except 1975 and 1977), Congress (in every survey except 1987), organized labor (in every survey except 1989), the Presidency (in every survey since 1991), TV news (in since 1993) and big business (in every survey except 1987 and 1989). I did that to avoid some “one-year-wonders”, like Wall Street, power utilities and small business, as well as items that are at best moderately related to the early years such as the medical system as a whole, HMOs and the police (all added in 1993 or later). Let’s trace the decline of confidence, from the “most-confident” year to the “least-confident” year (note; except as noted, the years listed include at least 9 of the 11 categories outlined above):

1975 – 47.8% (this includes includes 6 of the 11 categories)
1979 – 47.8% (a bit lower than 1975, but rounding makes it look like a tie)
1977 – 47.6% (includes only 7 categories)
1987 – 47.4% (includes only 7 categories)
1989 – 46.3% (includes only 6 categories)
1985 – 46.1%
1991 – 45.3%
1986 – 45.2%
1988 – 44.8%
1984 – 43.7%
1973 – 43.6% (includes only 7 categories)
2003 – 42.8% (the best year that includes all 11 categories)
2004 – 42.3%
2002 – 42.0%
2001 – 41.5%
1998 – 41.3%
1990 and 1999 – 41.3% (this is a tie)
1990 and 2000 – 40.8% (this is another tie)
1981 – 40.0%
1997 – 39.9%
1993 – 38.9%
1996 – 38.7%
1995 – 38.5%
2005 – 38.4%
1992 – 37.3%
2006 – 36.9%
1994 – 36.4%
2007 – 31.3%

There’s a few things that do jump out, but they’re too much to discuss in the main post. Do notice where 2007 is, and by what margin.

Next, let’s take a look at the individual categories:

– The Supreme Court, public schools, newspapers, Congress, TV news, organized labor, the Presidency, the medical system as a whole (in since 1993), and big business (tied with 2006) all had their worst years ever.
– Religion, police (in since 1993) and HMOs (in since 1999) posted their 2nd-worst performances ever, with the police tying its 1994 and 2000 performances and HMOs tying their 2001 and 2006 performances (religion did worse in 2002, police did worse in 1993, and HMOs did worse in 2002).
– The justice system (in since 1993) tied with 1996 and 1997 for its 3rd-worst performance (it did worse in 1994).
– Banks, which is still below its historic 44.8% average, does manage to stay out of the bottom 5.
– The military does still beat its historic 65.7% confidence average.

I don’t know where to begin, so pipe up if you have an idea. Oh, this will replace Open Thread Thursday this week.

If you’re either a night owl or an early bird, you may have heard me reference the 2007 Gallup Confidence in Institutions poll. The 2007 analysis is now up, and my suspicion of a cynical trend is right. First, the full 2007 numbers of those having a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence:
– The military, down to 69% from 73% in 2006
– Small business, a “new” institution debuting at 59%
– The police, down to 54% from 58%
– Church/organized religion, down to 46% from 52%
– Banks, down to 41% from 49%
– SCOTUS, down to 34% from 40%
– Public schools, down to 33% from 37%
– The medical system, down to 31% from 38%
– The Presidency, down to 25% from 33%
– Television news, down to 23% from 31%
– Newspapers, down to 22% from 30%
– The criminal justice system, down to 19% from 25%
– Organized labor, down to 19% from 24%
– Big business, unchanged from 2006 at 18%
– HMOs, unchanged from 2006 at 15%
– Congress, down to 14% from 19%

Next, something they didn’t do this year, but did last year, the full history of the trend:

Damn, but I thought the DhimmiRATs were supposed to fix everything. I mean, they run Congress, run the media, run the unions, and run the schools; yet those institutions took some of the hardest hits.

Now that Google Reader can find the WTMJ feeds, my biggest complaint about Charlie’s and Jeff’s feeds is that their posts do not display any kind of description beyond the title. Well, after looking through both the TV end’s various RSS feeds and Bill Michaels’ feed, I figured out it’s not just the software, because they’re pushing through one-sentence descriptions. While it’s true that, unlike WordPress, that excerpt isn’t automatically generated, it sure looks like an option.

‘Tisn’t an issue with me because SharpReader can ignore simple excerpts and open up the whole page for me just like it would be in Internet Explorer, but those that use, say, Google Reader don’t have that option.