Teabagging.

[jAQUAN]

There have been all kinds of alternatives proposed. Do you really believe that there hasn't? A lot of the protesters were angry about Bush increasing spending also.

I don't mean to suggest I've heard the counter proposal and disagree with it. I have breaking news fatigue and glaze over these days on such topics. Fox News is my new comedy central. They aren't a conservative base, they just say and do stupid sh*t for ratings. CNN should stand for Covert News Network because I swear they are hiding meaningful informative content in there somewhere between Anderson Cooper practicing his blue-steel and counting twitter followers.

To be honest, for the moment, as an American, I really don't give a sh*t what the people who broke it think we should do about it. It reminds me of a bunch of truckers standing around trying to figure how to get a big rig un-stuck from under an overpass with cutting torches when they should be listening to the guy who just wants to let a little air out from the tires.

My statement represents my emerging curiosity if the republicans have made their decision yet: sanity or Hannity?

[Loyal Rogue]

LOL. Rasmussenreports is to polls what FOX is to "news".

Gotta love their loaded questions.
It's like asking someone if they would like to have a broken leg and a healthy mother, or a healthy leg and a dead mother, and then concluding that most people actually want to have their legs broken.


At least Rasmussen's advertisers know the score...

The Republicans had plenty of alternatives, like that alternative "budget" plan that didn't have any numbers in it. lol

Step 1: Collect underpants at Tea Party
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Economy fixed

Actually their alternatives plans are pretty much to keep doing the same thing Bush has done for the last 8 years.
It's kind of like the drunk that just smashed his car into a tree trying to tell the ambulance driver to move over and let him drive himself to the hospital.

[FlashLackey]

I don't mean to suggest I've heard the counter proposal and disagree with it. I have breaking news fatigue and glaze over these days on such topics.

...

To be honest, for the moment, as an American, I really don't give a sh*t what the people who broke it think we should do about it.

I hear you on the news fatigue. I've had that as well for a while.

What makes you think that Republicans are the ones that "broke it"? Assuming that we agree that the "broken" part of the system is the credit and housing markets, do you believe that Democrats had no role there? I agree that Bush is responsible for allowing that to happen on his watch. But, if it happened due to things that Democrats were pushing for (and Republicans were pushing against), what sense does it make to dismiss views that oppose Democrats?

Also, as noted, a lot of the protesters were angry with Bush. Republicans are not always in line with conservative values, a la Bush allowing spending to increase as it did. However, if that is the complaint about Bush, how is a party that has, in 100 days, helped quadruple the deficit, an improvement?

LOL. Rasmussenreports is to polls what FOX is to "news".

Didn't we go over this once before where you claimed the same thing and then linked to a "legit" polling source. Only for us all to find out that that polling source, in fact, weighted Rasmussen favorably in their results and the author wrote favorably of their methods?

Wasn't that this site: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...ings-v311.html

The one that consistently shows Rasmussen as one of the least likely of all polls to introduce pollster error (as shown in the above article).

Gotta love their loaded questions.
It's like asking someone if they would like to have a broken leg and a healthy mother, or a healthy leg and a dead mother, and then concluding that most people actually want to have their legs broken.

Yes. I can see how "Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of the tea party protests?" is a loaded question.

[Loyal Rogue]

Would you like to see the plan include more tax cuts and less government spending, more government spending and less tax cuts, or would you rather see the plan pass pretty much as it is today?

Tying more tax cuts to "less government spending" is as about a loaded question as you can get.

Ditto for

Would it be a good idea to set up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies?

How skewed is that?!?
I wonder how it would have affected the results if they had phrased the question as, "Would it be a good idea to set up a government health insurance company to cover patients unable to afford private health insurance premiums?"

Any credibility rasmussenreports may have previously held goes out the window with this kind of phrasing.
At least their advertisers know where to find their target market besides FOX now, eh?

As for fivethirtyeight.com, I don't remember claiming they were a legit polling source or authority?
If I did then I was wrong and I'll be the first to say it.
538 is a blog by Nate Silver, a baseball statistician who was good at crunching numbers and predicting political race outcomes and then was not so hot at predicting Oscar winners.

[CristiSearching]

How did you enjoy the party ?

[FlashLackey]

Tying more tax cuts to "less government spending" is as about a loaded question as you can get.

How does that make it a loaded question? A lot of people were calling for a different plan that included more tax cuts and less spending than the bill had. The goal of the poll was to find out how many of those people there were.

In other words, how (specifically) did that phrasing interfere with an accurate measurement of how many people wanted a plan with more tax cuts and less government spending versus those who supported the plan as-is or with less tax cuts and more spending?

How skewed is that?!?
I wonder how it would have affected the results if they had phrased the question as, "Would it be a good idea to set up a government health insurance company to cover patients unable to afford private health insurance premiums?"

It's not skewed at all. Your misunderstanding seems to be based on the idea that getting a number one way or the other is like a football game that someone is trying to win on the issue. If the phrasing were to be changed to what you suggest, it would simply be a different poll with a different meaning.

As worded, the Rasmussen poll measures whether or not competition with private industry is a good reason. Your wording would measure whether or not covering patients who can't afford it is a good reason. Neither attempts to justify the entire concept or rule each other out. They just offer more specific perspective on what people are thinking, beyond simple "are you for or against" type phrasing.

Any credibility rasmussenreports may have previously held goes out the window with this kind of phrasing.

Even if there was something objectionable about some phrasing in regard to a desired measurement on one question, it would not follow that all of their other questions and methods are wrong.

The funny thing about polls is that, in the political ones, they can be graded for accuracy after an election. In fact, that is exactly what Nate Silver has done in order to determine which polls should be weighted more heavily. As noted, Rasmussen has consistently ranked amongst the most accurate polling institutions in the nation.

As for fivethirtyeight.com, I don't remember claiming they were a legit polling source or authority?
If I did then I was wrong and I'll be the first to say it.
538 is a blog by Nate Silver, a baseball statistician who was good at crunching numbers and predicting political race outcomes and then was not so hot at predicting Oscar winners.

Right. He was good at predicting political race outcomes because, in part, he weighted Rasmussen as being more accurate than other polls.

For what it's worth, your characterization of his site was that it is a wet dream.

[Loyal Rogue]

For what it's worth, your characterization of his site was that it is a wet dream.

Oh, I forgot to share this site: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
If you are into election polls, stats, and projections, this guy's site is a wet dream.
You could spend weeks on there going thru all the info he's compiled.

Hmmm, quite a bit different than the words you used earlier. LOL
Thanks for digging that up. Now I don't have to wonder if you mischaracterized my statements or not.

[FlashLackey]

I'll take your use of the winking emoticon to mean that you are joking.

Given that the context of that post and your insistence here has been that something is wrong with Rasmussen while you shared a link that demonstrates the accuracy of Rasmussen and called it a wet dream.

Usually, when people call things wet dreams, it means that it's positive. Did you mean it in a negative sense, like you have to change the sheets?

[Loyal Rogue]

I'll take your use of the winking emoticon to mean that you are joking.

Whoooosh!

No, it meant sarcasm.
Maybe you should reread the wet dream comment... in context this time.
Shouldn't be too difficult considering it's in plain english. Just don't strain yourself racking your brain this time looking for a cutesy way of twisting it to fit your agenda and just read the words as they're written.

No matter what his opinion of rasmussen was, which I never agreed with, it doesn't affect the fact that the phrasing of some of their questions are so blatantly leading and "loaded" that it makes it impossible to take them seriously or trust their results.
I fully expect them to start using the "Fair and Balanced" slogan in their banner soon.

[FlashLackey]

Unless you've gone back and edited it, the context of that post was clear enough and as I described. You had just finished a point about something being off about Rasmussen and had thought to come back and add a link about the wet dream of a polling site that happened to also support the fact that Rasmussen is amongst the most accurate polling institutions in the nation. In other words, it completely contradicts the context that you specifically wrote then and now. Nothing cute about it. Simply a matter of fact.

Are you seriously trying to argue that you were really saying, "Something is wrong about Rasmussens results. But, here's an amazing polling site for you to check out. I forgot to mention that it strongly suggests that nothing is wrong with Rasmussens results."

His "opinion" on Rasmussen is based on the observable fact that they are consistently more accurate than other polls. Inconvenient for your desire to dismiss them out of hand, I know. But, it is what it is.

And again, if their phrases are loaded, it should be easy for you to explain which parts of a single sentence are problematic and how they would affect the result. But, you have yet to do so. All you can talk about are the ads on the page. Ironically, all that seems to suggest is that conservatives rely on more accurate polls than liberals do.

[Loyal Rogue]

Epic fail.

Here's the exact words again:

Oh, I forgot to share this site: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
If you are into election polls, stats, and projections, this guy's site is a wet dream.
You could spend weeks on there going thru all the info he's compiled.

The only reference I made to this site being a wet dream is in the amount of raw stats and info compiled in one place and how long it would take you to wade through it all if that was your thing.
I didn't say anything about agreeing with his opinions or him being an authority on polling methods.

As for rasmussenreports' phrasing, I believe I've clearly demonstrated to everyone who isn't trying to push a partisan agenda how skewed the questions are using examples above.

[FlashLackey]

The only reference I made to this site being a wet dream is in the amount of raw stats and info compiled in one place and how long it would take you to wade through it all if that was your thing.
I didn't say anything about agreeing with his opinions or him being an authority on polling methods.

lol. Are you seriously quoting yourself out of context? Earlier in that same post, the part that you have left out here, you were talking about how something was wrong with Rasmussen.

Anyway, ok LR. Sure. What you really meant to say was that his site is a wet dream... except for the part that completely contradicts what you just wrote. That part isn't a wet dream. It's something that only crazy conservatives buy into. The rest, it's orgasmic.

Riiiiiiiight.

As for rasmussenreports' phrasing, I believe I've clearly demonstrated to everyone who isn't trying to push a partisan agenda how skewed the questions are using examples above.

You haven't demonstrated anything. You posted a couple of questions and asserted that they were loaded questions without any demonstration or explanation of why. But, I do agree that people who share your views seem to have a tendency to accept incomplete arguments as being true when it makes them feel better.

[gerbick]

"Round and round... what comes around goes around..." - RATT

Seriously. Y'all are entertaining almost as much as Subway and I were.

Lord I miss him.

[FlashLackey]

I like to think that we produce grade A nerd-war material. Though, the .999... == 1 battle is difficult to top.

What's up with Subway anyway? Anyone talk to him? Is he really still mad about whatever it was?