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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (51681)	9/29/2006 10:56:18 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Dude, I think you got him. :-)

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (51681)	10/3/2006 12:25:12 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

NC State Poll: Americans Unwilling to Pay Future Costs of Iraq Oct. 2, 2006 Despite President Bush’s recent series of speeches tying the Iraq war to the broader campaign against terrorism, the results of a new survey out of North Carolina State University suggest that Americans are skeptical of this linkage and appear unwilling to pay the future human and material costs of the war. These results come from a recent national public opinion poll conducted by assistant professor Michael D. Cobb and associate professor William A. Boettcher III, both from the Department of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State. The poll was designed by the Institute for Southern Studies and by the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State. The survey reveals that opposition to the war is tied to perceptions of the current U.S. goal in Iraq. Only 25 percent of respondents view Iraq as “the central front in the war against terrorism.” Indeed, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s framing of Iraq – that the United States is “promoting democracy in Iraq and the Middle East” – is almost as widely held at 24 percent. Even more troubling for the administration is the fact that 30 percent (a plurality) of respondents indicated that the United States is in Iraq to “ensure access to oil,” while an additional 15 percent of respondents volunteered their own explanation, usually tied to administration “incompetence” or “greed.” Growing opposition to the war is most evident in answers to questions about respondents’ willingness to accept the future human and material costs of the ongoing counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq. When asked to provide “an acceptable number of U.S. military deaths” in Iraq, 61 percent of respondents said zero. A second version of the question asked about acceptable casualties to prevent “Iraq from sliding into a civil war”; again a large majority of respondents – 59 percent – indicated zero. When asked later in the survey how much more money the United States should “spend in order to complete the mission in Iraq,” 55 percent of respondents said no additional dollars should be spent. These views are undoubtedly related to the fact that 57 percent of respondents felt that the United States “should have stayed out” of Iraq and that respondents were split 50-50 on whether U.S. efforts in Iraq would succeed or fail. Frustration with the war is further reflected in the fact that only 23 percent of respondents indicated that U.S. troops in Iraq should be “maintained at the current level.” A plurality of Americans – 27 percent – now advocate the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, while a combined 31 percent of Americans want the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to be decreased “some” or “a lot.” Only 19 percent of respondents want U.S. troop levels “increased a lot” or “increased some.” The poll was administered by Knowledge Networks, Inc., included 1,342 respondents, and was conducted from Sept. 19-26. The margin of sampling error for the national sample is plus or minus 2.7 percent. news.ncsu.edu

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (51681)	10/3/2006 1:19:14 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

"I mean averages are a bad way to measure anything. In terms of wages, two men each make $10000 which is sup par for a family of 4; a third man makes $500k way above par. The mean between the three is $173k suggesting an affluent community when its not." Gee. While technically correct, your argument is irrelevant. I wasn't talking about average incomes across a widely divergent population, but rather average hourly wages of production and non-supervisory workers within specific industries YOU claimed were high or low-paying. Such nonsense......you are so full of fluffernutter, you would be a huge hit at a girl scouts' campfire sleepover. I never once discussed or specified any workers within a particular industry. This is a discussion that took place purely in your own head. And that's the problem here........you are making it up as you go along and refusing to deal with the issue at hand: the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor. You neither substantiated that claim when you made it nor offered up data of your own to contradict mine when asked directly to do so after you claimed mine somehow didn't matter. The truth is I have given you tons of supporting data many posts ago. Data that clearly shows upper incomes getting a bigger and bigger slice of the total pie over the past 20 years. Nothing you have said has changed that position. Instead, you have made every attempt to divert the conversation into another arena where you believe you can make a more plausible argument. And one last comment has to be about "the truth".....something the right badly lacks these days. Whether its the war in Iraq or the right's response to Katrina or the seduction of a page, very little truth comes from the mouthpieces on the right. So why should I expect better from you. In fact, I don't. And the three recommendations for Oeconomicus's post.......you people are no better than the politicians who ignored Foley's follies with the pages. You shold be ashamed...........