Pushing The Poll Limits

I've always stated that public opinion polls are nothing more than data manifested from a person's "feelings" on any given issue during any given news cycle. The later is the most prominent factor in this, as the modern cable news outlets are either taping into what is happening in Wisconsin from a pure visceral level or they are blandly reporting on it.

Cable news programs hosted by the likes of O'Donnell, Maddow, Schultz, Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly are all opinion programs - Well, the first three will state without equivocation that they are opinion programs - but the fact still remains that a lot of people base their standpoints on another person's opinion. What I would have like to have seen from the NYT/CBS sample data regarding Unions in America is where they get their news from - particularly the MSNBC/Fox"News" split.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air tries to crunch the numbers:

First, the partisan split in the sample gave a ten-point advantage to Democrats. Their sample for this poll had a D/R/I split of 36/26/31, an absurd sample for political polling. In December, Rasmussen’s general-population survey put Republicans ahead, 36.0% to 34.7% for Democrats.

I'm trying to figure out why Morrissey considers this an "absurd" sample, as the modern American Right have been claiming that the "independent" voter in America is against things like public sector unions. By their own metric, the NYT/CBS poll looked at responses from a larger Independent set than Republican; and only 5 percentage points separate the I's from the D's. Moreover, since the modern American Right insists that "independents" vote largely along the same lines at Republicans, this actually puts the Democrats at a 21% disadvantage.

But then again, I'm just going by what people like Morrissey have been claiming.

While Ed does go on to harp about the percentage of Union employees that were polled, there's some data that he is ignoring; chief of which is as follows:

- A majority of those polled claim their political alignment to be more Moderate or Conservative.

- A majority are not supporters of the Tea Bagger movement while approximately an average of 17% claim no affiliation or opinions of the group.

- The split between the lower and upper age ranges are negligible, as is household income and highest educational level earned.

But Morrissey's final statement at least hints that he knows he just splitting hairs with this one:

The gaps in the results are wide enough that these issues by themselves might not have swung them to the opposite. However, at least the magnitude of the results can certainly be questioned in a poll this flawed.

Flawed in the sense that he isn't being given what he expected? I would largely say yes, as Morrissey is want to denounce any poll that isn't conducted by Rassmussen - who only polls "likely voters" and uses a methodology that only contacts people with "land line" service. Talk about flawed.

But the larger point goes back to the fact that a poll is never going to show you precisely how a person is going to act, simply how they feel at that particular moment in time based off the way they process the information they have available to them, which is primarily from Cable news outlets.

And speaking of ridiculous polls being pushed by the modern American Right, check this out. It's touted as the "real Tea Party Straw Poll".

Highschool Locker Questioning

I was immediately invaded with the image of two girls after chemistry class standing next to their lockers when one says to the other, "O! M! G! Lisa! What's up the you and Sarah?!"



While Couric's framing of the question was leaned heavily towards the amateur, the intent was at least clear enough that I could divine what she wanted Murkowski to answer. And her answer was, from my perspective at least, a perfect example of what Sarah Palin most certainly is not.

I won't go so far as to say that Sarah isn't "curious", but she most certainly isn't so on an intellectual level that would be a benefit to her in that particular leadership position. One has to be able to ask the tough questions about how your decisions on policy are going to have a broader impact on the country, not just your personal q-score. The later is what Palin is more concerned in - why do you think she quit as Governor of Alaska?

Context Free Conservativism

The righteous indignation of Sarah Palin was on full display while in the warm confines of the Fox"News" studios and Chris Wallace's program.



Here's the back story:

Sarah Palin is out for blood (again) this time against an Alaska CBS affiliate. She's accusing the station's reporters of conspiring against Joe Miller, calling them "bastards" and suggesting that the initials CBS stand for "Corrupt Bastards Club." The station is strongly defending itself, though, calling her claims entirely unfounded.

Palin, Miller, and their supporters are basing their accusations on a snippet of audio they leaked to Andrew Breitbart's website Big Government. The audio is weak, and it's hard to suss out the context, but what you can hear sounds like KTVA reporters facetiously explaining how to turn a story into a sensation: specifically, jesting about finding a child molester who's voting Republican and tarring Miller by association. The conversation took place after one of the reporters left a message for a Miller spokesperson, but accidentally failed to hang up.

It's a veritable conservative trifecta of outrage.

Let's take a listen to the audio:



Clearly, whomever is involved in this conversation did mention "child molesters", but there is no indication that these people are planning on concocting a story to attack Miller or are just being snarky. Naturally, conservatives are insisting that the former is true, and that "context" has nothing to do with it:

KTVA’s explanation is absurd. What possible context can they put around the suggestion that they start looking for child molesters at a political rally in order to exploit that for their television coverage? That’s a “potential what-if scenario”? Is this a suggestion that came up in strategy sessions when discussing a McAdams campaign rally?

The only absolution KTVA could have possibly had was showing that this conversation didn’t take place among their staff, but was left on the voicemail by some other people or organization. Even if KTVA approached coverage of every political event in this manner, it would be an embarrassment. In this case, it shows a strong bias against Miller and gives a window into the editorial direction at KTVA.

Next up: will CBS management take action against their affiliate?

Considering how the modern conservative movement approaches Democratic candidates, I'm really wondering if this is the argument that Ed Morrissey is wanting to present.

But let's look at the definition of the word "context":

–noun
1.
the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.
2.
the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone could divine any sort of context from the garbled audio that Andrew Brietbart's Big Journalism is peddling as the latest narrative puzzle piece designed to distract conservative voters.

In addition to Palin's complete lack of understand of who context works, she also seems to be unable to differentiate between the letters "S" and "C":

Apparently, college graduate Former Half-Gov Illiterata McAirHead thinks the letter C is the same as the letter S. CBS cleverly stands for “Corrupt Bastards Club” in her brain-deficient little unschooled world.

Palin, along with virtually every conservative in America, relies heavily on blaming the messenger rather than tackling the message - whatever it may be at the time. Her claims against CBS tend to fall more than a little flat when one considers the fact that KTVA is owned by the Alaska Broadcasting Co.:

KTVA News is owned by the Alaska Broadcasting Co., not CBS. No CBS staffers were involved and CBS has no knowledge of and no comment on these allegations.

Joe Miller has created enough problems on his own, so I'm not seeing how this trumped up accusation is going to improve his chances of winning against Murkowski. The GOP was already distancing themselves from Miller prior to this latest attempt to slander any media outlet that isn't Fox.

ABC's Jonathan Karl reports: A high-level GOP source tells me that party leaders have essentially given up on Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller and are now banking on a victory by write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski as the best bet for Republicans to keep the Alaska Senate seat.

Murkowski defied party leaders by running a write-in campaign after she lost the Republican primary last month. But with Miller's campaign faltering, the source tells me that Republican leaders are now worried that Democrat Scott McAdams has a shot of winning and that Murkowski may be the only way to stop him.

This will be nothing more than a launching pad from where people like Palin, Breitbart, and Miller can unleash boiler plate rhetoric and continue to portray themselves as perpetual victims and that would never engage in pushing fabricated stories about political candidates.

Look What I Can Do!!!!

(m)Ann Coulter's on air antics and inane ramblings remind me of the Stewart character from Mad TV. She never answers a question directly, never does what she's asked, and don't even think about questioning her or getting to close to her. And the two are the greatest attention-whores ever. The sad part is, Coulter is a real person



On Hannity and Colmes, (m)Ann wasn't so much pimping her latest bundle of sophomoric nonsense as she was complaining about being a "victim". Interestingly enough, her book is about victimhood. Gee, how ironic.

*****For some reason, the Fox"News" embed isn't working. So, check out the great coverage from Newshounds for boths parts of the interview and further insight.*****

The best part of the whole interview is when Ann talks about how the left "hate" marriage and Colmes said "If you love marriage, you'd be married by now, wouldn't you?”. Classic.

Coulter was falling all over herself when speaking to Harry Smith on CBS - who, btw, did a far better job at letting Coulter what he really thought:


Watch CBS Videos Online

I don't think she was prepared for most of what Smith said to her.

Then, there was the inevitable interview with NBC.

While Matt Lauer made a rather poor attempt at holding Coulter's cloven-hoof to the fire, he honestly tried to validate her ham-fisted commentary about "single-motherhood".

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm still trying to wrap my head around Coulter's assertion that Matt Drudge is somehow a shining example of journalistic integrity. Perhaps the one, and only, reason that his site has never had to retract anything is that the only people that give him any creedance, and shread of validity, are people like (m)Ann Coulter.

The one thing that people should take away from this, in yet another line of seemingly endless Coulter manufactured controversies, is that she needs the alleged "liberal press" that she so loves to loathe. It is her, not her detractors, that is the "victim" in this sociopolitical obsurd theatre.

(m)Ann Coulter will never be able to address issues from a rational perspective. She won't be able to listen to the world because she is Narcisus' daughter - so in love with her own voice, so enamoured with her fucking hair, that she won't hear or see what people outside her limited sphere of undertanding actually go through in their life.

Her next book would be aptly titled "Look At Me! : How Major Networks Fall For The Same Schtick Year After Year."

Something About This Doesn't Seem Right

This story is starting to make a run around the conservative blogs, but I have some relevant questions regarding how the authorities are getting and distributing their information:

Man Dead, Large Amount Of Possible Cyanide Found


DENVER (CBS4) ― It has the makings of international intrigue. Less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention a man has been found dead in a Denver hotel room with a container of what authorities initially suspect to be the deadly poison cyanide.

Adding to the intrigue is that the dead man, Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, 29, appears to be from outside the U.S. No passport was found on Dirie, who is believed to have entered the country from Canada.

A large container of a white powdery substance was found in the man's room on the fourth floor of The Burnsley Hotel at 10th Avenue and Grant Street.

Tests are now being done by the Denver Police Crime Lab to determine exactly what the substance is. The tests could take days.

More here.

The statement that he "appears to be from outside the US" is most likely ham-fisted TV-reporter lingo for "his probalby an Arab, but I can't say for sure, so I'll just say this".

But, if he has no passport, how do they know. Did they get his name from another form of ID that he had?

And, as far as the "powder" is concerned, how are authorities so certain it was cyanide?

How do they know he came in through Canada? Is there video surveillance of this? Did he leave some kind of trail? Was he photographed at all? Was it bread crums?

And, "appears to have died from something other than the substance"? Wow, this CBS guy is top-notch.

I mean, how fucking vague can you get.

This is how fear is generated through the media. They are so wrapped-up in this notion that any "powder" could be Anthrax, or Cyanide, or Ricin, that those words come spilling out of their mouths before there is any confirmation.

The shoddy reportage aside, be on the lookout for conservative bloggers and other right-wing media to spin this story into something that it is more than likely not.