Conflicting AP Poll Reports: Americans Optimistic, Gloomy

AP poll: Americans Optimistic for 2007

By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 30, 7:22 PM ET

Seventy-two percent of Americans feel good about what 2007 will bring for the country, and an even larger 89 percent are optimistic about the new year for themselves and their families, according to the poll.

That fits with a long-term trend suggesting that Americans are generally an optimistic lot. Polling over recent decades is replete with optimism, and with a tendency for people to feel more positively about their own situations than that of the country overall.

Poll: Americans See Gloom, Doom in 2007

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer 12/31, 8:36 am

Another terrorist attack, a warmer planet, death and destruction from a natural disaster. These are among Americans' grim predictions for the United States in 2007.

Six in 10 people think the U.S. will be the victim of another terrorist attack next year, more than five years after the Sept. 11 assault on New York and Washington. An identical percentage think it is likely that bad guys will unleash a biological or nuclear weapon elsewhere in the world.

There is plenty of gloom to accompany all of that doom.

Seventy percent of Americans predict another major natural disaster within the United States and an equal percentage expect worsening global warming. Fewer than one-third of people, or 29 percent, think it is likely that the U.S. will withdraw its troops from Iraq.

The problem is that the mainstream media has become so ideologically driven that facts are simply collected to support predetermined conclusions. The other day my son asked me to see one news organization's photos of the year. I told him that I bet that there would be one of Palestinian victims of Israelis, which, of course, there was.

(Hat tip: Dan Friedman)