CBS/NYTimes Poll: Bush's Approval Rating Now at Negative Sixty-Six Bazillion

At least that's what you'd imagine it must be were you to canvass their headlines for the past four years. According to NYTimes' headlines, Bush's poll numbers are always sinking, month after month after month. Their headlines almost never indicate an uptick for Bush.

But of course Bush's numbers go up about half the time; that's why his current job approval rate is not, as of yet, negative eleventy-thousand percent. The NYTimes just prefers shielding its sensitive, dispirited liberal readers from such ugly truths.

But that's been true for years. What's new today is that Mickey Kaus not only catches Adam "Spinster" Nagourney burying the lede -- that Bush is back tied with, or even ahead of, Kerry, having been eight points behind a month ago. One would think that Kerry falling seven points would be headline-worthy.

Oh, wait. That's not a new practice either. The Times has done this too many times to count. The Times flagrantly and consistently ignores the big obvious news in a poll if it favors Republicans to look "more deeply" into decidedly-secondary questions that might seem to favor Democrats.

Remember: The New York Times' poll actually correctly predicted the Republican triumph of 2002, but Adam Nagourney buried that lead and all but contradicted it in his desire/need to find something favorable, or at least netural, towards the Democrats. The headline the Times chose to run with on that day -- rather than "Republicans Poised to Make Historic Gains in Election" -- was something like "30% of non-lipstick lesbians have stopped wearing truckers' hats because they feel such hats signal an affinity towards conservative politics."

No, what's really new is that Kaus catches the Times dissembling -- that's polite language for "lying its ass off" -- about the poll. The headline says, "Bush's Rating Falls to Its Lowest Point, New Survey Finds."

That must be true, right? They wouldn't actually lie in their headline, now would they?

Well. You'll just have to see, won't you?

Update: Soxblog had this story first, and I think I actually like Sox's take better than Kaus'.