www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_04/008661.php
On Friday, Jon Landay had a piece on the latest Iran bamboozlement out of the Bush administration. The State Department's top arms control guy, Robert Joseph, says "We are very close to that point of no return" on Iran's nuclear weapons program. Remember though, in last gig at the NSC, Bob Joseph was the guy charged with browbeating the CIA into letting the president use the Niger-uranium story in his 2003 state of the union address, even though Agency officials told him and other White House officials repeatedly that there was nothing to it. Just no reason to take anything Bob Joseph says even remotely seriously on this question.
PERMALINK Since Bush took office 63 months ago, the Standard and Poors 500 index is actually down, the US dollar is down against the currencies of our major trading partners, the deficit has grown enormously, and a smaller percentage of Americans of working age are holding full-time jobs.
PERMALINK Surely they will follow up with something along the line of "actually, no hijackers on 9/11 were of Iraqi descent. Does this make you feel better or worse about the war in Iraq?" Does this make you feel better or worse about the Administration's close ties to the Saudi government."
PERMALINK "After accounting for inflation, the stock market increase of 3 percent counts as 'staying about the same,' and is much, much lower than the levels recorded during the presidency of Hillary Clinton's husband. Does that make you feel better, worse, or about the same towards our CEO president?"
Kevin Drum is afraid of actual facts - doesn't like info on the unemployment rate (objective), the DOW (objective), growth in jobs (objective), disposable income (objective).
PERMALINK Maxwell, you can't judge over all of Bush's tenure. You can only look at the last X months, where "X" is where the news is good. C'mon -- someone is getting hundreds of millions a year. And at some point, some measure of unemployment has gone down.
Tax relief is responsible for half of the increase in real per capita income since 2000. Real household wealth is currently $49 trillion, or 54 times disposable income, above the long-run average ratio of 48 Increased wealth reflects primarily gains in the values of homes and equities rather than personal saving, which remains low." html) First off, is this an average or a median disposable income, because growth in average income reflects largely the gains of the wealthy CEO "workers" rather than hourly workers. But, for the benefit of the doubt, call it average hourly wages are up for the year. Note that it is after-tax disposable income, so perhaps the question should be, "Knowing that the US Govt. is incurring massive debt to raise your income by 29% something that raises your confidence in our economy, or lowers it?"
PERMALINK What, you just noticed polls have biases based on wording? Tell me Kevin, is this the first poll you have been inspired to track down yourself instead of having to have me or someone else drop in a link to the original document? After a large number of posts here quoting columnists and economists one after the other, all showing the obscure mathematical reasons why the economy sucks despite all the statistics, somebody goes out there and makes the point that it's about perception, and that people have been fed negative news, and you don't like it. Note that the approval rating from this poll has been widely touted across the country. In point of fact, polls are made and broken by phrasing, and if you look at some of them, answers sometimes contradict each other, even in the same poll. Did question 8 bother anybody else as much as it bothered me?
PERMALINK To me, the most telling (and saddest) was question 43: Do you think the United States will eventually have to take military action against Iran. "have to take military action" - doesn't that feel like the American people have already given-up in the fact that we have a say in what our country does in our names? I guess we'll have to go to war - that's the only option that I'm seeing on FOX News... Sounds like Bush can drive the country to hell in a schoolbus, and a good number of us would just sit and quietly bitch to our neighbor about the heat.
PERMALINK Er, am I the only one worried about the responses to #8? I mean, is it really good that a majority of Republicans, a majority of Democrats, and a plurality of independents think the US military should be free of civilian control?
PERMALINK As far as question 10 is concerned: I have rarely heard the word "illegal" mentioned in any speech on the issue given by a Democrat, although that is the root of the entire issue.
PERMALINK Kevin, as you are fond of saying, you are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts. Unless it was a democrat in office, in which case you'd call it biased again. To be clear, I want Bush impeached and thrown out of office. But I grow tired of everyone's "bias of convenience" posts. Ryan and the "delicate" avoidance of his Republican affiliation was a pretty egregious example of bias.
PERMALINK I find it funny how being opposed to cherry picking misleading statistics is portrayed by the trolls as being afraid of facts. Does some one have a good link to actual inflation adjusted data on whether these assertions are accurate? Other possible questions: In fact, "the vast majority of American incomes have not kept up with inflation for the past six years." Does knowing this make you feel better or worse about the nations economy or doesn't it make any difference? Does knowing this make you feel better or worse about the nations economy or doesn't it make any difference? ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story /03-27-2006/0004327169&EDATE= Did Fox polls include statements about the stock market when it was falling or have similar questions during the Clinton admiinistration? They also could include the "fact" that based upon historical averages, the stock market has significantly underperformed. I wonder if in their polls last year did they include: In fact family income declined by 23 percent after adjustment for inflation in 2004. Does knowing this make you feel better or worse about the nations economy or doesn't it make any difference?
In fact, George W Bush was appointed by God to lead the most perfect nation on Earth against the forces of tyranny, despair and liberalism. Does knowing this make you feel better or worse about "voting" for Bush for President and relying on Fox News for all of your information, or doesn't it make any difference?
in fact, Cheney uses "in fact" all the time along with "frankly" "the fact is" and other BS. I have never, in fact, read a paragraph from him that didn't include many "in facts."
PERMALINK Real tbrosz and (the good) fake tbrosz have now fully merged into one seamless entity. If I dutifully read the e-mail addy only to discover that the real one keeps doing better parodies of himself than the fake one does, why bother even checking?
Do you think illegal immigrants from Mexico should be given special treatment and allowed to jump in front of immigrants from other countries that want to come to the United States legally, or not?" Can anyone point to any serious consideration of any policy that seeks to treat Mexicans who have illegally entered the country, over everybody else, including those following the rules just because they are not Mexicans? Please give me a link and a sponsor so I can laugh at them. There is no such policy seriously under consideration, and there is no plausible and legitimate reason to even ask such a complete strawman of a question. It at least implies an attempt to link discrimination and racism to the issue of immigration reforms by asking about special privileges for Mexicans that no one is actually proposing. Who out there is plotting to give such special privileges to illegal Mexicans?
Are you surprised that polling outcomes are effected by how you phrase the question? Do you think that someone who doesn't know if the stock market has gone up or down in the last year or who doesn't know if the employment rate is going up or down has anything of value to say about how the economy is doing? If John Kerr...
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