Crazyjeeper
NickGyver
8% is a margin of error?
'Kinell, I'm not going to ask you to measure my carpets.
More like 2 or 3% on each stat.
8% is a margin of error?
'Kinell, I'm not going to ask you to measure my carpets.
You haven't had mathematics and statistics explained to you very well, have you?
Hrrr, I dun need no book lernin
EDIT: Anyways, yes I do have a statistical and mathematical background, and a pretty good one for a political science student.
Oh you do. You really do.
But not as good as you think. Then again, political science - the art of spinning numbers and hoping someone doesn't notice.
The margin of error is applied to the percentage of the overall responses, not to each individual response. If I survey 100 people, give them two options and my margin of error is 3%, that doesn't mean, as you have just argued, that I lose 6 responses, or that I magically have gained 6 responses.
This is utterly basic stuff.
Have you not heard of the "birthers"? Even Ann Coulter thinks they're crazy :lol:. They're a handful of nutcases who think that Obama is not US born. I very much doubt that something as huge as that would have slipped by the Clinton or McCain campaigns.A friend sent me this 5 year old article today.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040627142700/eastandard.net/headlines/news26060403.htm
Anyone seen it? Know anything about it?
Have you not heard of the "birthers"? Even Ann Coulter thinks they're crazy :lol:. They're a handful of nutcases who think that Obama is not US born. I very much doubt that something as huge as that would have slipped by the Clinton or McCain campaigns.
It?s not exactly a bloody horse head left in the bed overnight, but Fox News has sent a message it?s ready to play hardball with the White House Communications Director who says she?s going to treat Fox News ?the way we treat an opponent? and not like an ordinary cable network. (See Toby Harnden?s post, ?Barack Obama?s Silly Obsession with Fox News?.)
Anita Dunn went on one of the Sunday talk shows last weekend to fulminate about Fox, calling it ?a wing of the Republican Party? and ?not a news organization in the sense that CNN is a news organization.? By Thursday, researchers for Fox?s very popular Glenn Beck Show had unearthed video of Dunn giving an inspirational address last June to an audience of high school students in which she quotes from one of her ?favorite political philosophers?, one of the ?two people she turns to most?, who turns out to be Mao Tse-tung. By Friday, the clip had gone as viral as can be. (To watch clip, go to about 4:00 to get past Beck?s introduction and see Dunn?s speech.)
[YOUTUBE]pYOfNB2igdk[/YOUTUBE]
Voice brimming with emotion, Dunn says:
In 1947, when Mao Tse Tung was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai?shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, ?How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?? And Mao Tse Tung said, you know, ?You fight your war, and I?ll fight mine.?
She then asks the youngsters to ?think about that for a second? and draw the conclusion that ?You don?t have to accept other?s definition of how to do things?You don?t have to let external definitions define you internally? You figure out what?s right for you. Everybody has their own path.?
How very profound
I?m not one of those shrieking ?There?s a Maoist lose in the White House!? I grew up in one of the most left-wing cities in America, Ann Arbor, Michigan, surrounded by actual, declared Maoists ? people who would pull The Little Red Book out of the breast pocket of their denim bib coveralls, and wave them around during demonstrations, so I should know what a real, or even just a summer semester Maoist looks like. Mostly, I agree with a friend who says ?I know. She was using the reference in a sort of ?Aren?t-I-cute-and-kinda-eccentric-and-actually-really-ballsy-at-the-same-time-Lefty-librarian,wannabee-Vietcong-warrior-way.
But I also agree with him that ?she wasn?t speaking about Johnny Apple Seed? here. It?s really not cool to make cute little jokes about the outreness of combining Mao and Mother Teresa in an inspirational lecture. And why do you need Mao to make such a bland, Hallmark cards-ish point? Aren?t there plenty of people who?ve said something inspirational about ?going your own way?? Like that Thoreau guy. Remember him? Didn?t he say something about ?marching to a different drummer??
It?s not outrageous, just kind of embarrassing for the White House, and all too indicative of how many pin-head old Lefties swept in with this administration.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/s...ita-dunn-is-exposed-as-a-fan-of-chairman-mao/
Treat one section of the press like an opponent? I mean really.....
October 18, 2009
Rahm Emanuel offers more bad media criticism
After the firestorm of media blowback that greeted Anita Dunn's declaration of war on Fox News last Sunday, you might think a little caution would be used before the administration played media critic again.
But there was Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, essentially making the same bad argument in an appearance Sunday on CNN's John King's "State of the Union" that the White House is righteous in trying to ostracize Fox because Fox is not a "news network" -- it's an "arm" of the Republican Party, to quote Dunn.
As many problems as I have with Fox News, I am fundamentally opposed to any administration trying to bully any part of the press into submission.
But beyond that, what about the obvious intellectual bankruptcy of the White House argument? Is MSNBC a "real news network"? The highly-partisan, pro-administration channel doesn't even cover the news on weekends. It runs prison documentaries instead -- something I have also complained long and loud about. But that's okay, I guess, because they what -- are an arm of the part the White house controls?
Here is the exchange Sunday between John King and Emanuel. King asks a clear question, and Emanuel gives him a bad answer. That's because Emanuel has a bad argument he is trying to make.
KING: I'm trying to get behind the curtain and understand why your White
House has decided that it is in its interest to have this, boom, with
our rival, FOX News. Anita Dunn, one of your staff, calls it the -- the
communications director, the wing of the Republican Party. Why?
EMANUEL: Well, no, it's not so much a conflict with FOX News. But unlike
-- I suppose, the way to look at it and the way we -- the president
looks at it and we look at it, is, it is not a news organization so much
as it has a perspective. And that's a different take. And more
importantly, does not have -- the CNNs and others in the world basically
be led and following FOX, as if that -- what they're trying to do is a
legitimate news organization in the sense of both sides and a sense of
value (ph) opinion.
As muddy as his words and his thinking are, there is a clear attempt by Emanuel to cut Fox from the herd: "it's not so much a news organization as...." He is also trying to link the other news channels to CNN and distinguish them from Fox. Among the "others" would be MSNBC, no?
I am not even go to take on his silly suggestion that the White House is attacking Fox because it fears the rest of the media will be led into temptation and sin by the success of Fox. At least, that is what he seems to be saying. (And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from all evil, amen, Mr. Emanuel, please.)
Outside of Lou Dobbs, CNN does offer a model worthy of emulation when it comes to emphasizing fact-based journalism rather than opinion. I have written that story repeatedly. Fox is not CNN, that's for sure.
But it is no worse than MSNBC, and it has been performing an all-important function in serving as watchdog of the White House.
And I repeat what I said last week: We should all be concerned about any administration trying to do to anyone in the press what this one is trying to do to Fox. This is the bad stuff of which Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were made when it came to trying to bully the press.
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2009/10/rahm_emanuel_fox_news_white_ho.html
As many problems as I have with Fox News, I am fundamentally opposed to any administration trying to bully any part of the press into submission.
That the White House Communications Director would say something like what she said about a cable news network is quite disturbing. Treat one section of the press like an opponent? I mean really.....
While Fox is more about bullshit editorializing than actual news coverage, it's stupid to pick a fight like that. All the conservative pundits are just going to eat this up.
I would have never thought FOX News would be the underdog in a fight for once. Must be all that Bush-era backlash coming through to the top.
And you wonder why nobody trusts the news media anymore? The fourth estate does have a responsibility to keep the government at tabs as their watchdog, but knuckle-dragging fights like this are completely pointless. Dunn should be fired as a Communications Director who has to deal with THE MEDIA.