Oftentimes I despair over the quality of reasoning one finds on the typical op-ed page. But then I read this, and I am reminded of how bad things could be.
Update. I forgot to mention this somewhat related matter. I actually for the first time in my life got polled for a presidential election. Aside from approve/disapprove questions regarding our current leader, the computer voice asked all sorts of questions about the current candidates. When it got to Obama, it asked at least four questions about William Ayers, including this one: "What roll will William Ayers play in an Obama administration?" Not sure what the sense of that was.
Not sure what the sense of that was.
Sometimes words are not used to make sense or logic but to just put a ‘boogie-man in the reader’s/listener’s ear’ — In this case, “William Ayers will play a role in an Obama administration.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/info/2703.html
“FRONTLINE presents a spirited and revealing biography of Lee Atwater,
the charming, Machiavellian godfather of modern, take-no-prisoners
Republican political campaigns.”
Another example of how logic and truth do not matter (and I wish I had NOT clicked on that link you provided as I feel like I have been smeared with dog-doo having done so) — some people just need to see a few words strung together and they will believe no matter what those words are if those words happen to reinforce their current belief system (“He who believeth in me…”).
And some people know this and deliberatly spread lies.
I think I’ll just play World of Warcraft from now until the election is over.
mccain-aide-gave-reporters-inc.php
Change the dashes to underscores to fix the posted link. (It’s due to WP translations.)
I received a call from a political pollster back in July. It began normally enough but when the question was asked, who had I voted for in the primary, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I began to suspect that this was not an unbiased, objective survey.
The next question that tipped me off was a question about whether I had seen John McCain’s “Summer of Love” add which begins with hippies doing what hippies do then segways into McCain in a Vietnamese prison camp, and so on. There was not a corresponding question about any of Barack Obama’s ads.
Then, the kicker where the pollster brought up John McCain’s policies in favor of more nuclear power, opening new locations to oil drilling, etcetera and contrasting it to Barack Obama’s opposition to nuclear power, drilling in ANWR, etcetera.
“Is this a Republican sponsored survey?”
“I’m not allowed to say who sponsors the survey.”
“If you can’t tell me who you represent then I don’t intend to continue. I am hearing a definite bias in the survey. That last question was very leading and is clearly biased in favor of John McCain.”
“Well, we’re almost done.”
“Even so. I’m not going to continue this if I have no confidence in the objectiveness of the survey. If you were an unbiased source, you wouldn’t have a problem with letting me know why you represent.”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Which only reinforces my impression that this is a biased survey and the answers I give will not be accurately represented when analyzed and presented.”
I should have asked to speak with her supervisor but, in all honesty, wasn’t entertained enough to want to prolong it.
Hey Ga,
Thanks for dropping by. Keep in mind Jon Swift is, as the name suggests, satire.
If you suspect it is biased it’s probably a “push-poll.” Those guys are getting increasingly savvy and subtle nowadays. I think because I’m nonaffiliated and active politically I get a few of them every election. This time I got 3. My policy is to keep them on the phone as long as possible so that I tie up a resource that cannot be used to call on anyone else. I also answer their questions in ways that make no sense and skew their data.
But don’t mistake this for an information gathering poll – it is intended to influence voter opinion, not to measure it.