Fox News seems not to understand the meaning of common figures of speech. It’s another way that they manifest their departure from the real world that the rest of us inhabit.

For instance, in a posting today on Fox Nation, they reported the results of a poll conducted by CNN with a headline declaring that “Obama Takes a Dive on Guns, Immigration, Deficit.” Ordinarily Fox would not give any credence to a poll by the socialist apparatchiks at CNN, but since they managed to spin this negatively for the President they have a new found regard for the network.

The actual results of the poll are mixed from the President’s perspective. However, the key finding is that Obama’s approval rating went up 4% (to 51%) while his disapproval went down 3% – a seven percent swing in Obama’s favor. If that’s taking a dive, we should all jump in.

To be fair, the Fox headline did specify three issues as having dived, so let’s take a look at those. On immigration it would be fair to say that Obama’s handling of the matter suffered somewhat with approval/disapproval percentages declining to 44/50 from 51/43. However on guns, the numbers hardly budged from 46% approval in January to 45% today. And on the deficit the numbers ticked down slightly from 41% to 38%. On guns and the deficit, the shifts were both within the margin of error which means that there was no shift at all from a statistical perspective.

It is notable that, while Obama’s numbers were lower than they were in the previous poll (taken the week before the inauguration when traditionally polls spike up), they were higher than at any other time for the past year. That suggests an upward trending that was merely interrupted by an abnormally high reading in January.

So the President’s numbers were essentially stagnant on the deficit and guns; they were notably improved overall; and that is what the Fox Nationalists consider a dive. Not reported at all by Fox is that approval for Republicans in Congress is a pitiful 25% with 73% disapproving. The President’s approval is a full 26 points higher. He must be terribly disappointed, poor fella.