No, actually, I didn’t read the poll. Basically, I think polls like this are crap, but that’s another thread. What I was referring to was the OP’s characterizations. Here:
I could have crafted a similar poll aimed at liberals asking if they thought that Bush hated black people, if Bush knew before hand that 9/11 was going to happen and perhaps had a hand in it, if Bush was a fundamentalist Christian who was going to put prayer in schools and make abortion illegal, and all manner of other questions. What do you suppose the results would have been? Think half of self identified liberals would have said that, yeah, he hates black folks? That he knew about 9/11 before hand? That he actually set it up and played it through? That he was going to push through prayer in school and outlaw abortion? I’m fairly confident that I could craft a poll that would push the buttons of liberals and make them look equally ridiculous…or even a poll to American’s (or any other countries citizens…how about a poll of Germans asking if the US was responsible for 9/11, say?) in general that would do the same. It’s all in how you ask the question, and what response you allow.
If you want to get all hot and bothered about this and think that American’s are getting stupider…well, knock yourselves out. Personally, I think that American’s are as stupid as they have ever been, especially where religion and politics are concerned. What I find amusing is the fact that conservatives think liberals are stupid (and evil), and liberals think the same things about conservatives.
The poll that indicated Fox News is the most trusted news source was not biased but the one that shows Pubs are morons is biased. We know this because Fox News is trustworthy and Pubs aren’t morons. Why are all you liberals denying the facts? It’s as plain as a pikestaff.
After Katrina a lot of people might have thought that. Or at least it wasn’t as big a deal.
Too broad. He did know that Bin Laden [was] Determined to Strike Within US.
He did appoint very conservative SCOTUS judges.
The questions were very straight forward. Don’t you see how these questions aren’t at all the same? All of the ones you asked are plausible. Obama wanting the US to fail isn’t.
It is the height of intellectual laziness to assume that both sides are equally bad. Right now, the right has some queer ideas. It’s not bad to call them out on it.
Sez who? Why would you question one but give another a pass? Or vice versa?
Uhuh.
Again…uhuh.
And if Obama has the chance to appoint SCOTUS judges, will they be conservatives as well? Will the right be correct in their ranting that Obama’s master plan of taking their guns away be a rational position for them to take? What will the polls say?
Again, I didn’t read the questions from the poll…I was responding to the quoted part of the OP. However, based on the answers I’m seeing, I think the fix was in. Here’s the thing…people who craft polls know all about human psychology. If you REALLY want to get good data from a poll you give a wide range of possible answers (strongly favor, favor, neutral, disfavor, strongly disfavor, etc) and you do multiple polls. Perhaps that’s what these folks did…admittedly, again, I didn’t read it. But I have my doubts.
Well, I’m intellectually lazy…no argument from me there. But it’s the height of partisan dishonesty to point at the mote in the other guys eye without acknowledging your own. Certainly when they spew crazy stuff (such as that mentioned in the OP) it’s only right to call them on it. But one needs to acknowledge that while on THIS subject the other side might be nutters, on another the nutbar shifts to point at one’s own, and trying to claim that ‘reality’ has a bias that favors one’s side is just another way of tattooing a sign on one’s forehead saying ‘partisan tool’.
Well, a person is just as much a partisan tool if they throw out the “both sides are equally bad regardless of the facts at hand” diversion anytime that person’s own side looks bad.
Sometimes, facts are facts. Evolution happened. Anthropogenic climate change is happening. Obama was born in the USA and is an American citizen. It’s revolting to ban people from teaching just because they’re gay. Simply because one side says one thing and the other disagrees doesn’t mean the answer is somewhere in between.
And yeah, of course there are lots of Democrats who believe stupid things. But, do you seriously believe that if a Democratic partisan collected a list of incredibly stupid things Republican officials (defined as governors, House reps, or people higher) have said and a Republican did the same for Democratic officials, the competition would be close in the slightest? Hell, even statements from Southern Republicans alone would swamp Democrats nationwide.
Though in all fairness, if you excluded the South, you’d probably have rough parity in partisan stupidity.
The fact that you find aspects of this thread utterly confusing does not grant you liberty to insult other posters while it is in the Great Debates forum.
The trouble with that one is “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the US”. How many people would take that briefing as a yes to that question? I wouldn’t, but most people aren’t as reasonable as me.
It is an indisputable fact that Bush knew bin Laden would attack the US. Saying that Bush knew an attack was coming is not the same as saying he was in on it.
Yopu won’t find anything comparable to the birth garbage or secret Muslim bullshit, or using fucking Genesis as a science book. Seriously, 77% of you people think that Genesis should be taught as scientific fact. Democrats can’t touch something like that.
Why go to the expense of tracking down Republicans when there’s already a freely available list of them? I mean, they might have been solicited online or something, but what’s the point?
Now, for the record I believe telephone polls are nearly as self-selecting as internet polls - I mean, if you don’t want to participate, you hang up.
That’s the problem with these polls. You want to express hatred of “their guy” but you’ve only got one question: Did Bush cause 9/11? So you give the only answer you can that will reflect poorly on Bush. You say he caused it. Of course, you have to do some mental gymnastics to get from “received a briefing and ranked it’s credibility lower than he should have” to “Bush caused/wanted 9/11” but you’re willing to do that just to take a swipe at the other guy.
It’s exactly comparable to “Is Obama a citizen?” Well, you don’t want to say that their side was right, so you have to give “your side’s” answer and try to do some more gymnastics to make it sound plausible. “Well, yeah, he was born in the US, but his father’s a Kenyan muslim and he lived outside the US, so he’s just barely a citizen, so I’ll say he’s not.”
Same goes for “Does Obama/Bush hate white/black people?”
I wish I had something on the web to cite, but all I have are some vague notes from a 2008 “Parties and Elections” course where we looked at things like this. What I do know is that if you stir in some debatable, I-respect-your-intelligence questions like “Does Obama have the best plan for health care reform?” and the ones I mentioned previously, you don’t get as many stupid answers to the are-you-a-newt questions. Sometimes I wonder what the results would be if they added “Seriously, honestly, do you believe…” to the beginning of the survey question, but I don’t think anyone did that study yet.
Can someone help find a cite for the study I mentioned? Where they ask silly questions in one survey and silly-serious questions in another and compared them? I have no idea what the author or title were.
Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com comments on this but not that the poll is flawed (and if it was flawed he is definitely the guy who would gleefully point it out). Rather he comments on what this means.
