Some number stuff on Iraq and Bush
 

As always with complex survey questionaires, information can only be gained from such polls when one does not pick single items, but sees the whole of it.

http://people-press.org/reports/disp...3?ReportID=272
http://people-press.org/reports/disp...3?ReportID=271

Just to make Sixpack a happy reader again :)

And our survey says...!

I am not that surprised of the Iraq poll, people are getting fed up.

As for George Bush well it’s his last term in office, not much I can add.

Yeah for term limits! :D

Re: Some number stuff on Iraq and Bush
 

Sniffing the dirty laundry again Skybird?....the glass is half full it's half empty....what's the point of your post but to point out the obvious...polls are worthless measurements since people are swayed like the wind.....or a bird on the wind even....Skybirds.

A single poll might not be terribly useful, but what he posted was a link to a series of polls conducted over time and showing a clear trend. When you look at the trend you can see that while yes, the public's views are shifting, it is shifting more and more in the same direction. Note that there is no "sway", opinions are not changing back and forth but in only one direction (south).

Perhaps you simply discounted the poll without even looking at (in which case why respond to a thread if you haven't read its contents?).

"Notably, men ages 50 and older who have not served in the military have become much less confident that the U.S. will succeed in Iraq. Fewer than half (45%) now say the U.S. is likely to achieve its goals, compared with 62% in December. By contrast, opinions among older male veterans have remained stable."

This part amused me.

I don't know where you live but I live in the USA so I hear this crap every single day dude.I work for a communications company.You say no sway....and are looking at it over a 3 yr period now.....people are short sighted and live in the day of fast food and expect some miracle to happen in Iraq ...like can we "Super Size" freedom...and when the order is not up right away then we turn into aholes and abandon our leaders and the ones we were trying to help....our selves and others....I hope not.


Polls ....you listen to the polls....if you base your life on polls and the world around you I feel sorry for you...Most of the time most of the people are wrong....you go follow them.

Well dude, I live in what's called a democracy where we abide by such antiquated notions as "the will of the people" and all that. We elect our leaders who in turn are accountable to we, the people, who also pay their salaries through our tax dollars. We the people can appreciate when our government, having some inside knowledge we are not privy to (national secrets and all that) and consequently has to make a choice the leaves us puzzled, or is unpopular. That is one thing.

However, when our government makes a grave and unpopular decision, where the facts are well known in advance, but are manipulated by our leaders to drum up support for an agenda that serves neither the national security, the well being of the nation, nor that of its individual citizens, but instead only a self-serving agenda beholden and benefitting an elite few, then a democracy would vote no confidence in this government and it'd be no more. The will of the people will have prevailed.

When that doesn't happen, when the government continues to manipulate the news and the public's perceptions through both overt and covert propoganda, and dismisses the will of the people as "mere polls" which show an ever increasing discord with the government's obstinate policy, then there is no democracy.

This is the way of the dictatorship, where "mere polls" and the will of the people are not what matters but the will of the goverment and the personality cult it builds up of its leader.

The democratic obligation of dismissing a goverment, through a vote of no confidence or whatever other (legal) means available, when it no longer governs in accordance with the will of the people is not "abandoning your leaders", for it is they who have abandoned you.

Since some guys cannot help themselves any better than to question the methodology:

http://people-press.org/reports/disp...p3?PageID=1042
For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For results based on form 1 (N=710) and form 2 (N=695) the sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

does not work much different with scientific examinations, only their confidence level may be set to a tougher criterion.

And this:
http://people-press.org/reports/methodology.php3

Scandium is right. the single values, the single point of time is not the important thing. The trend over a time period is the valuable information to gain from such polls.

But I admit, with regard to my very special friendship with my ol' buddy George, this finding had it's special charm for me: "The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent,"and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar." :lol: :-j

I wonder what I will do once he is no longer in office. Maybe he really should get a third trial. Term, I mean. Damn constitution.

Yup, George Bush's popularity is falling. We all knew that.

Skybird: no one has questioned the methods. I'm positively surprised about this. Few things anger me more than when people are dismissing polls because 'This poll can't be representative, no one asked me.' The statisticians know what they are doing.

It is George jr.'s last term in office. Maybe we can consider us lucky his term soon will be over, but I'm not really sure. I'm not supporting his actions while in office, but perhaps he can act unpopular because he doesn't have to worry about a re-election. The 'maximum two term' policy might be flawed.

On another hand, popularity is a bad measurement of how well a politician is doing. The population is easily swayed. IMO, democracy can be summed up in two quotes

"The majority is always wrong, the minority is seldom right."
- Henrik Ibsen

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
- Winston Churchill

The meaning of the general population, is, as said, a bad measurement of anything, but when it comes to politics, it is the only measurement that works.

The circle of journalism.

TV news anchor reports: 'the war in Iraq is going terribly and the Bush administration has failed.

The next day a poll of 600 people is taken: how to you believe the war is going?

Answer of citizen, illegal migrant, resident alien or foreign national: ummm I think it's going terrible oh ya Bush sucks.

TV news anchor report: In todays news the current poll indicates most Americans think the war in Iraq is going terribly and Bush's popularity is at an all time low.

Lather rinse and repeat

Any catholics here ?

http://www.bush2004.com/images/bush_halo.gif

Bush is near Villepin's level, if the latter declared war on Iraq to free it from the Americans and re-install Saddam on power he could get his ratings back up. But don't be fooled, for the French to win he'd have to make a deal with Bush, and if Bush could jump out of Iraq he would also solve his problems and probably get his ratings up again too, so Bush would sign the deal.

Everybody wins.

Except the French.

Recall at the beginning of the war that the only two countries Bush could armtwist (and these two didn't seem to need much arm twisting) into committing blood and treasure were Britain and Australia. Later a couple other countries briefly sent small numbers of troops (Poland for instance) but the rest of the "Coalition of the Willing" was that in little more than name only.

However, the UN wouldn't go along, there were mass protests around the world, the worldview held of Bush (and the image of the Americans who were tarnished by the association) sunk to that of Saddan Hussein (who at least was incapable of, let alone actively plotting, a war of aggression backed up with the world's largest inventory of WMD), and we witnessed the first ever, in history, alignment of historic arch enemies France-Russia-Germany.

Its been 3 years since now, and counting, with no end in sight and the worst fears of the day, as shouted by the rest of the world into America's deaf ear, have been realized: there were no WMD in Iraq, thus the rationale behind the war has proven false; its cost thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars with no end in sight; there is no "democracy" in Iraq, which rather hovers somewhere between civil war and an emergent Islamic theocracy; and we now have a new and fertile breeding ground for the next generation of battle hardened terorrists.

Sorry, nobody else is stupid enough to want any part of that mess. Even the American people have lost their appetite for it; despite being initially for it (though only after they were against it).

Reinstalling Saddam would change nothing as you can't put the Genie back into the bottle now.

How can people say this based on media reports??? The reports from the troops in the field say they are kicking the insurgent (should be changed to terrorist - insurgent is a favorable word) butt all over the place and call for increased troop levels!!! As always, a war should be fought and controlled by the military, not by the politicians. Bush made the right move diplomaticlaly, but made the wrong move after the fact in trying to control the war and discounting his generals calls for increased troop levels.

Crap, it has got to be tough at the top! Everything you do is scrutinized, even by me!

-S

PS. maybe the answer to future conflict is to turn all control over to the generals to fight the war. A lot of that has already happened, but still, the numbers of troops were not called by the generals, but by Rumsfield. Problem - the genereal who called for more troops was dismissed. Solution - re-instate him!

Strange. As far as I stumbled over them, comments by troops in the field, or veterans that had returned, and that were questoned on their evaluation anonymously and not in front of a camera, said exactly the opposite. Since over a year. And in the last 18 months I must have linked to 1 or 2 anonymous polls amonst troops in Iraq with results indicating that their morale and understanding why they should stay is slowly but constantly decreasing. And lastly: operation swarmer, a wonderful effort to polish George's image again - but so far a strike into empty space only. Some weapon supplies, some arrest, that'S all. A little bit too minor for an operation of this scale. must have something to do with this thing they call asymmetrical warfare. Next time they better hold a maneuver inside the Oval Office, it's easier to organioze and serves the same purpose.

But let's hunker down with familiar illusions some longer, makes us feel warm and comfortable. :up:

What more can you expect when the guy doesn’t go out and defend his views, and the far left goes after him with a baseball bat every day?

Yeah its not like he doesn't give the left ammo or anything... you know, like spending 1/3rd of his presidency either on vacation or at one of his vacation retreats (Camp David, "the ranch", etc) while the country he's supposedly running has been at war with two countries... or the massive tax cuts while again, spending hundreds of billions waging war on two countries (because as everyone knows its only the troops who have to make sacrifices during a time of war while everyone else should support them by... shopping)... or the dismissing of anyone in his administration or the military who dares to voice an opinion different from his own (like the General who insisted at least 300,000 troops would be needed for a war with Iraq) as well as public opinion (mere "polls")... and I could go and on but what's the point? The American people are already only too aware of how inept this President is. The consolation is he only has less than two years to go in office so there shouldn't be too many more things for him to screw up.

I wonder if his wealthy family will be sentenced to pay compensation for the mess this guy has created, and will have to give up their wealth for that, hand it to the state and the national community, at least his family's wealth is George's wealth as well, right? Every normal citizen would be held responsible in a comparable way - to compensate for incompetence and damage done by paying for the repair of the mess one has created.

But that is only a dream. There is no justice, on their level, and no compensation and of course no penalty.