Oh, okay, Poet. I hear ya. Let's talk about 'real stuff.'
"Heck!!!" <snicker>> Why the "heck" <snicker> not??
What would you like to 'discuss?'
How about POLLS?????
Ya UP for it?
Here's something to get you 'started:'
newmassmedia.com
I'll 'stand by' for your 'unemotional' and 'unbiased' ... therefore 'helpful,' analysis, okay?
The World This Week:
Poll-ish Jokes
Is Arthur Andersen tallying poll numbers too?
By Alan Bisbort
Published 07/18/02
Am I the only one who, when it comes to polls, feels
like he's on LSD? Take Bush's "approval rating"
...please. Despite a recession, despite undefined
"war" that is slowly becoming a Vietnam-like
quagmire, despite a USA Patriot Act that is the first
step to a Gestapo takeover, despite a bloated defense
budget at a time when all other aspects of the
national budget are strip-mined, despite revelations
that every member of his Cabinet with the exception
of Colin Powell is a corrupt, lying corporate lapdog,
Bush's "approval ratings" are consistently high.
Surely, the pollsters are not talking to any black
people or any poor people or any people who can't
afford health insurance or prescription medicine.
Surely, anyone who has seen their stock money
disappear into the pockets of Bush's CEO pals,
anyone with a 401 (K) plan, anyone who cares about
the environment, anyone who is pro-choice, anyone
against war and capital punishment is not going to
"approve" of the president's job. Do polls ever
indicate how many people hang up in the face of the pollster who calls? (Answer: No).
Perhaps an interesting and surely more telling poll would be one that gives a political
snapshot of people most likely to stay on the line when a pollster calls.
The question begged by Bush's barely scathed approval ratings is this: Who are these
blocs of people sitting beside their TVs, telephones and computer terminals voting en
masse at the first signal from their fellow travelers? More simply: Have you ever
known anyone contacted by a political pollster? Me neither. I've known plenty of
people who've been called for jury duty. I've even met a couple people who've won
lottery payouts and casino jackpots. But I've never met anyone who has been polled.
Ever. Speaking of specious polls, check out the one conducted by Fox News called
"Bush Confronts Corporate Cheats," (thanks to Eric at Hamster.com). By its title alone,
it is tilted in Bush's favor. As most Wall Street pundits, including conservative Lou
Dobbs, insisted after Bush's speech, his meaningless gesture did not confront tax
cheats at all, but undermined desperately needed reform. And yet, here's Fox's poll
question. "Do you approve of the president's plan to crack down on corporate
cheats?" They are already taking it as fact that the plan will "crack down" (it won't),
and they've worded the question so that to answer "No" means you're in favor of
corporate cheats. It is the equivalent of asking -- from the opposite political
perspective: "Would you vote for Bush today if you knew that, despite having
enough intelligence to prevent it, he would allow a terrorist attacks to occur on
American soil, killing 3,000 American civilians?"
Naturally, Fox's poll results were 89 percent "Yes," 6 percent "No." A recent Advocate
poll, on the other hand, found that viewers who depend on Fox for their news are
either conservative (89 percent) or insane (6 percent). As Harry O'Neill, veteran
pollster with Roper Starch Worldwide, has said, "Every poll is commissioned for a
reason, either to gather information or to advance a cause or point of view. Instant
polls include only viewers, not the whole public. In addition, they include only those
viewers who can be reached quickly, since there is no time for callbacks. The result is
a biased, unreliable sample. And polls released on a particular issue or piece of
pending legislation may be intended to sway public opinion or to legitimate a
company's point of view."
Here's another example, found on the religious site, Ecclesiastic Commonwealth
Community (www.ecclesia.org). Their poll question was, "More than six months has
passed since the 9-11 disaster. Whom do you honestly believe actually caused and
was the major force behind the destruction of the World Trade Center?" After 5,682
votes, the results broke down as: Osama bin Laden (4.4 percent) 250 votes; American
militias (0.3 percent) 18; White House (21.9 percent) 1243; Pentagon (1.1 percent) 65;
The Taliban and al-Qaida (18.2 percent) 1035 votes; Sadaam Hussein (Iraq) (3.9
percent) 224; New World Order (48.0 percent) 2728; other (2.1 percent) 119. And yet,
two hours later, the results took a dramatic turn. All of the categories were up
anywhere from 11 percent to 34 percent, but the "Taliban/al-Qaida" category zoomed
251 percent, garnering 2,600 votes. When alerted of this surge, the site discovered that
the poll had been "hacked" via "an AOL server near Langley, Virginia. He got in by
using a Java script we haven't seen before."
If the CIA is hacking a tiny religious site to skew poll results the way they want, what
sort of hacking is going on with the ubiquitous polls that are trumpeted nightly on the
mainstre
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