Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22
Remember, this poll does not necessarily include the Tea Partiers who may not identify as Republicans anymore.
Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?
Yes 53
No 14
Not Sure 33
I guess being intelligent is not a qualification for President.
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19
Absolutely unbelievable and just so, so sad.
Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18
Nope. Sorry.
How do liberals even try to attract Republican votes in this environment?
Please share widely!
to learn how those 2000, self-identified Republicans classified themselves. By that, where along the Republican continuum they see themselves – tea partiers, birthers, fiscal conservatives, social moderates but fiscal conservatives, Easterners, Southerners, Westerners, rural, urban, levels of education, earning levels. I’m trying to understand the makeup of the person who would have these opinions, or better yet, be susceptible to memes that create these perceptions.
There seems to be a larger and larger group which is registering as “Ind” or “Unenrolled”. There is also a larger and larger group who, regardless of which party for which they are registered, will not identify as being a Republican nor as a Democrat.
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p>What I’d like to know is (i) how they found this group, and (ii) what percentage of people who they called actually self-identified as a Republican.
To see democrats take the same poll. After all, there is “The Throbbing Patriot” or whatever the name is. The dude who thought the special election was on Wednesday.I am sure there is room for President Obama in the Socialist Party.
We’ll be happy to commission it — it was done by the same pollster we’ve used a couple of times. But we’ll need your financial support. This poll probably cost around $10,000 (total guess, but probably not too far off). If you’re interested in donating to BMG, I’ll be happy to supply the necessary info!
Your hyperbole is based on bad data. I know far too many Republicans and we have very candid and honest conversations about issues (which we can’t publish here) and in NO WAY does that poll represent these right-wingers whom I know.
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p>I consider myself more of a moderate than a far-right Republican and here is how I would HONESTY answer. (I say honestly since you all l know I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think of me so why should I not be honest)…
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p>
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p>In addition, I would guess almost every single Republican I know would answer the same to all of these.
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p>Bad poll!
Anyone who thinks Obama is a socialist either has their head completely up their ass or does not know what socialism means.
As long as I get the order, get my commission, enjoy my life, my kids, my wife, my toys and now enjoy political victories… you can call me names all day long. I will laugh on the way to the bank everyday.
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p>Although I am a little nervous… I just bought a ton (nice pun) of US Steel “X” at $44.25 on Friday. Could be great or …
Many liberals on the website are also successful and want the best for their families and their country. The problem with your attitude is that you assume that we begrudge people success, have little knowledge of the business world, the stock market, etc. It’s so childishly one-dimensional yet indicative of those little stereotypes that you carry around with you.
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p>Now excuse me, I have to go cash my welfare check, go down to the bodega with my food stamps and WIC coupons, and give the remainder of my cash to ACORN.
We could be the model for bipartisanship. I keep extended my hand but getting the “clenched fist” back.
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p>We agree!
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p>I appreciate there are successful liberals here (probably good capitalist) and can fully believe that “all” here want the best for their families.
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p>We DISagree!
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p>I do feel like liberals here begrudge and want “punishment” for successful people. They want to”share” success from the successful to the non-succesful people and I don’t think that is right.
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p>We agree!
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p>I do think that people here have lot of knowledge from the business world but I think many times they are wrong about it. Plenty of people are knowledgeable about the stock market and lose their shirts. It’s on subjective issues that I disagree.
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p>We DISagree!
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p>Liberals may genuflect when Paul Krugman utters a few words but there are many economists who believe him to be wrong. So I can criticize following his “economic” direction but still believe you are economically literate. I had a Fluids Dynamics teacher who was a genius but I wouldn’t want him working on the plumbing in my house. There’s “theory” and then thee is “reality”.
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p>We agree!
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p>
Let’s not talk about the Democratic base in this thread…
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p>We DISagree!
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p>I’m sure if you truly are in sales and you have a quota, you are hard working and know that to be rewarded you have to work and get results. You are on a plan that rewards self motivated, self reliant people and not some sort of “communist commission plan” where all sales people get the same reward no matter how they perform. I want life to work that way too. Reward the performers. Even with the whole Bank Bailout fiasco… I wanted the losers to fail. And regarding bank bonuses… I have no problem with over-performers getting giant bonus checks. Why should we penalize great performers who blow away their goals because there are poor performers mixed in. Fire the bad performers and replace them… don’t withhold bonuses for the “stars”.
I understand that my success has a lot to do with the way I was raised and the educational opportunities afforded to me. Most people do not have these opportunities, and this is especially true if you come from poor circumstances, or are a minority. Just look around at most salespeople-they’re white men. You can’t tell me this is solely based on merit.
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p>And if you actually read Paul Krugman books, you wouldn’t be so quick to disparage him. Get back to me when you’ve read Nouriel Roubini, Dean Baker, and Joseph Stieglitz. Both Stieglitz and Krugman have won Nobel Prizes and are well-respected economists. Just because Fox Business Channel doesn’t agree with them doesn’t make them wrong.
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p>Honestly, you say your a successful salesperson but you futz away your day on the opposition’s website when you could be out in front of customers closing business. if you worked for me, I would probably look for a hungrier, younger salesperson to replace you. It seems that you take your position in life for granted.
đŸ˜‰
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p>
Now we can laugh.
A or B truth table:
0+0=0
1+0=1
0+1=1
1+1=1
JohnD says:
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p>So you have honest conversations, just not here? Why should anyone bother listening to you, then?
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p>Bob and David are right — your posts are comic gold.
is your contorted depiction of what he wrote. He didn’t write or imply his conversations here aren’t honest, just that the honest conversations he has elsewhere can’t be published here.
Yours is the spaghetti logic, not his.
Thanks!
I think they drink cheery Kool-Aid here. You sound like a reasonable person let me ask you…
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p>
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p>PS As I recently told Christopher, be careful of appearing sympathetic to me on BMG, it is a recipe for trouble. They will turn on you like hyenas… beyond tribal here I’m afraid.
Yes I have problems with the results and no, the Republicans with whom I associate are well educated and worldly enough to know this is some kind of “feel good proof” to the Democrats that we’re all toothless, ignorant, and too stupid to know what’s in our own best interest.
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p>I mostly gave up posting here when kbusch began commenting on my grammar and not my points.
And I never will, not matter how many times he tries to illicit a response from me. I’m done.
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p>I suggest you stay here for awhile and engage with people. There are some good discussions and if you ignore the loony lefties I find a very informative crowd. Some have a great sense of humor (some don’t) and others light the banter.
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p>Try it for while and just ignore the KBusch types (there are a few of them) and enjoy the majority who make it fun.
You may not have directly responded to KBusch, but you’ve given him dozens of zeros; made an equal number of comments about his posts, but not directly in response; and written a creepily high number of comments about him. You might as well be clamping your hands over your ears and chanting “I’m not listening to KBusch.”
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p>It’s incredibly juvenile. I was going to say “shockingly” but childish behavior on your part no longer shocks me.
A spelling and grammer checker would do both of you a world of good.
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p>Illicit, indeed!
More accurate to say: I haven’t clicked the reply button. You’ve quoted me a lot and mentioned me a lot.
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p>In the real world, that would seem to count as replying.
My three most recent replies to you, lodger, were all respectful and substantive. They are
. The last one
was a compliment. Was that the grammatical correction that drove you away?
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p>Really?
You’re questioning lodger’s victimhood. There’s no bigger insult in wingnut circles.
Belittle him. You folks go by “If it ain’t left, it ain’t right (correct, for you dimwits).
There HAS to be something up with this poll. I just can’t believe these results.
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p>Only 160 out of 2000 Republicans believe that openly gay individuals should be teachers?
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p>I pray it’s not something I don’t want to believe.
If they support the liberal agenda (in this case demonized the GOP) then they are valid. If not, then they are worthless. Watch and learn the trend here.
Certainly there may be posters on the site who do that (just as they do on RMG), but it is just as unfair to generalize all of BMG.
I will amend my remarks to be about most Democrats here, but not all.
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p>As I said, read the posts here when polls are mentioned. You will see the blind partisan slant I refer to above. Don’t believe me, see for yourself. And point out cases where I am wrong. As you see from my title above, I admit to being wrong when it happens as opposed to the elitists here who cannot stomach mouthing the words “not true I was wrong”!
I don’t know if it has any “real” significance other than giving feedback to people on their posts (relevancy, content, attitude…). Some here abuse it including me but for the most part it does provide good feedback. The real problem with it can be the “collusional” misuse of the system where you simply target an individual whom you don’t want to hear from which I would charge amounts to a PERSONAL ATTACK. This method of ranking, IMO, should be banned from BMG as it goes against the freedom of speech we hold so dear to us in America. A true way of determining the “validity” of a rating is to read the post and then ask yourself “how would any reasonable person rate this?”. I have written remarks which clearly should be deleted due to “anger” or “impulse” or personal attacks… It’s been a learning process for me. I have also ranked comments as ZERO when they didn’t deserve it, usually because I am trying to “get someone back”. Recently a blogger here said something like “children, stop this foolishness…” and I have ceased any ZERO rankings. Others want to continue the schoolyard fight.
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p>But you will notice that often my remarks get a ZERO from the same 3 or 4 individuals here and my comments clearly are NOT worthy of deletion. Check their names and you will see the mission they are on, silencing of comments which they do not want to hear. These same people would probably have stood out in ZERO degree weather in the rain protesting for my rights to be heard a few years ago but now like so many liberals, they only want free speech for speech they agree with.
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p>Don’t be swayed by this group, they have an agenda against me. I too have an agenda, but it is an ideological agenda and not a personal one.
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p>You gave me a “4” saying my comment “needs work”… good. You can also see 4 other BMGers gave it a ZERO, do you think it deserved a ZERO? Watch for this pattern.
You spent weeks systematically zeroing every post from me, KBusch, and kirth. No “getting someone back” involved. Just petty nastiness.
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p>Please stop playing the victim.
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p>For the record, I’m not one of the people zeroing JohnD. This is just another futile attempt to correct one of his lies.
To be both persecutor and victim. I think they rearranged the constitution or something. C’mon folks we can top nine zeros for this!
As you can easily verify, I’m not one of the people zeroing JohnD.
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p>You, on the other hand, seem to be following JohnD’s example and zeroing people you disagree with. It seems like a monumental undertaking.
He must have a lot of time on his hands. I wouldn’t want a salesguy like JohnD on my team-he seems to have a lot of down time that he uses to troll Democratic websites, so I question his work ethic. đŸ™‚
Yes you. You seem to have a pretty nasty habit of rating comments yourself.
Go check my ratings and check other peoples. I may start a diary and list my ratings over the last 2 weeks. The numbers are quite “telling”. There may be more than 1 zealot out there…
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p>Have a nice day,
JohnD
I looked. You went back and uprated me. Hilarious!
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p>Here’s the evidence:
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p>
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p>And that’s just the first page.
Too much time on your hands…
He challenge me to go look, I went and looked. It took all of 5 seconds.
In the last week… I have received 96 ZEROS;
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p>
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p>
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p>
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p>
is a whole ‘nother community’s he’s-crazy-and-inflammatory-and-should-behave-like-an-adult.
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p>That’s what they say.
How do I behave like an adult?
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p>Crazy? Why, because I care about causes? Because I am crazy enough to disagree with positions here?
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p>Inflammatory? I don’t keep count but do you want me to record how many times people attack me vs. me attacking someone else?
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p>I quoted Obama earlier about the “extend hand… clenched fist” remark. But let’s “you and me” start it. Shall we promise to not be crazy and/or inflammatory” to each other? I can live with that arrangement and it could even result in good dialogue. As Howie Mandel says…”Deal or no deal?
I like crazy. Crazy creates lots of new ideas, ways of thinking of things.
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p>But look JohnD, it’s not a coincidence that the ‘0’ “fights” are JohnD v. many-BMGers (or billxi v. many-BMGers). So, what does that tell us? Maybe JohnD is getting bullied unfairly. Or, maybe JohnD goes around looking for it, incites it, and even revels in it.
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p>
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p>
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p>
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p>
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p>
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p>Every single one of those quotes is of you throwing a bomb, in this thread. You attribute your perception of a personal trait for one or two or three posters on every (non billxi) user of BMG. You do it over and over again. It’s tiresome.
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p>You also have a knack of behaving like my four year old niece. She runs around and annoys everyone in the room — pokes, pulls, pushes, takes toys, the works. As soon as any child holds firm, or any adult calls her on it, she throws a fit, sure that she’s being persecuted. You’ve done this, and more than once.
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p>Here’s the thing — you’re capable of both self-deprecating humor and telling a good joke. You’re also capable of rational, careful analysis and commentary. Unfortunately, that comes rarely. Instead, we get the “chip on shoulder” JohnD, the “BMG conspiracy” JohnD, the tl;dr JohnD, etc. If you want to get people to share your point of view, you’ve got to convince them with facts or positive emotion, not with fist banging or finger pointing. My perception is that you do a lot of the latter, and it’s just gotten awfully tiresome for more than a few BMG posters. So please — you’ve got valuable things to offer… just give out less cruft.
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p>I don’t know if I’m helping or making things worse to be honest… =shrugs=
Most of the “bombs” I throw are not bombs but feelings which a truly have. Yes, of course, some o them are twinks devised to inspire a response from people which may not be a bad thing. I won’t defend my remarks in this thread because I don’t think you want that.
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p>Look at this diary giving the impression that Republicans on the whole are represented by this poll. It’s absurd. If a poll came out describing Democrats in as loony of a manner, I would puke all over it too.
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p>But I do believe that polls on BMG are “dismissed” as partisan or rhetorical or “asked the wrong” question if the outcome does not suit BMGers. While an aberrant poll like this appears to be adopted as gospel.
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p>I dont’ run away from being critiqued, sometimes I even embrace it. What I do get “piqued” about is the inconsistency I see and endure on BMG. I am NOT being persecuted nor am I complaining about it. I am pointing out some facts.
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p>I’ll try to reduce the cruft in my arguments but …
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p>You have helped and thanks for being honest without being snarky.
Multiple people (including several you profess to hate) have questioned this poll.
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p>Get down off the cross.
Have you embarked on a mission to comment on every remark I post?
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p>As I said, the opposite of love is ambivalence. I am completely ambivalent to you. Do you “love” me or are you somewhere in between?
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p>Have a good life and go haunt someone else.
Your comment is especially funny knowing you’ve rated EVERY post I’ve made for the last month.
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p>You’ve used the “ambivalence” line several times before. Last time you followed it up by calling me mentally ill. Time before you called me “she” for a week…
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p>’nuf said?
I gave you all the same constructive remarks almost two years ago.
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p>They are no longer constructive remarks.
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p>They are futile remarks.
Here’s poor John D giving me a zero for the following comment:
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p>I could collect a bunch of his other righteous zeroings of my comments, to preserve them before he changes or deletes them, but one example ought to be enough. He abused the ratings system by giving a few of us multiple zeros; now he’s complaining when we return the favor. For the record, I have not zeroed all of his comments during any period, the way he did to mine. I chose comments that were trolling or insulting, or otherwise a waste of bandwidth. He buttered his bread; he can eat it.
I think the term I hear on BMG is “those pesky facts”. I just compiled any ZERo I got over the last week and thems were the totals. Sorry if your 10 ZEROS annoys you.
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p>From this day forward, if I EVER give you a “righteous” ZERO, you get back to me and I’ll eat all the crow you want… then I’ll EAT IT!
That you went back and changed ratings given before posting your “facts” says everything people need to know about you.
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p>At the risk of becoming a broken record: you zeroed every comment from me, kbusch, kirth and others for over a week. Now you’re complaining about getting zeros and suggesting people should have their accounts closed.
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p>If that’s not playing victim, I don’t know what is.
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p>What’s next, a fun round of why won’t you stop hitting yourself?
I gave you two zeros, both for the same post (one for the original, one for a repaste). Both contain a direct personal attack on me. No “truce” involved.
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p>It’s hard to give a comparison count since you went back and changed ratings, but on the 18th-20th alone you gave me twenty seven zeroes.
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p>Everybody else pales in comparison.
Who else wrote 57 comments in one week? Anyone?
I’m proud of that. Grow a sense of humor folks.
your sense of humor tends to be the intellectual equivalent of igniting farts.
…taking a dump in the middle of the living room. Same difference, I suppose.
My humor is too esoteric for you folks. I’ll try to dumb it down for you.
…and sad, all at the same time.
–JohnD
It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not — just whether you can get the accusation to stick or sound ominous.
republicans are a sliver of the population.
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p>I doubt IND and DEM voters would agree — but it goes to show how vigilant glbt voters and their allies have to be about glbt civil rights. This is why so many spoke up so loudly when MassEquality was having its ‘should we still exist’ discussion period, soon after we won the marriage equality fight at the ConCon several years ago.
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p>It is very easy, though ignorant and disingenous, for bigots to scream “the kids, the kids!” when it comes to glbt issues… and they’ve shown the ability to, unfortunately, be able to use the claim to win on numerous occasions now when we’re not ready for the charge… but it’s absolute bullshit and/or paranoid delusions. I couldn’t explain it any better than this:
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p>
The GOP has been actively courting social conservatives for years. Scott Brown, for example, voted 3 times against gay marriage and has made disparaging comments about gay parents (Cheryl Jaques to be specific). That side was heavily downplayed in the election, but a quick look at the MassResistance and Mass Family Institute pages should remind you that both organizations identify as Republican.
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p>If you read RMG, you should remember the brouhaha when Jennifer Nassour announced they were going to focus on economic rather than social issues. And, of course, the response to Baker picking Tisei.
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p>Not to mention the GOP platform’s opposition to gay marriage and civil unions or any other marriage equivalent.
Since the respondents were self-identified, any chance some Dems took the pool and then deliberately gave the worst possible answers? Maybe they should have polled registered Republicans or people who voted in the last GOP primary. Also, I believe Rachel Maddow will be giving this quite a bit of play on her show tonight, so stay tuned.
It’s the other side that tends to ‘freep’ online polls and that has organized astroturf companies that write letters to the editor, etc. Not that I’m NOT saying the left and middle doesn’t play the game, I’m saying that the right is more organized about it.
And yes, Democrats don’t need astroturf companies to dictate letters to the editor, etc. They have Unions for that.
Kos doesn’t administer polls. Funds them yes. Administers them, not so much.
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p>Second point: unions are by definition not astroturf. They are not shells run by PR organizations.
The leadership has no clue what the rank-and-file are thinking.
That most Republicans may not have heard of Daily Kos and therefore wouldn’t have a bias towards it. Apparently, there is a really popular conservative blog called Breitbart.com that receives millions upon millions of unique visitors a month, but I was in the dark! (Thanks NPR!)
I’m not sure of these results. Part of me doesn’t want to believe them, because I think (and hope) that there are still some rational Republicans out there. Because extremist elements have overtaken the party, maybe this is truly reflective of those who self-identify as Republicans, as a lot of the former moderate Republicans now identify themselves as Independents.
The editors keep billxi and JohnD around because they’re easily discredited. The personal attacks and downrating are just part of the package.
so what made my comment about Dems possibly infiltrating the poll “worthless”? It was just a thought.
I think you know me by now (although we should meet for a coffee some day).
Even if someone thinks your comments are WORTHLESS, doesn’t that deserve a “3” meaning WORTHLESS?
…you’ll see one person giving me zeros, over and over and over. Hint: that would be you, JohnD.
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p>Stop playing the victim.
It was completely and utterly fact free. Pure speculation with not even a modicum of evidence to back it up.
It ended with a question mark; I never pretended in this case to have evidence. I just wondered if anybody else had that idea.
as infiltration. Its not an “invasion or anything”. I just enjoy tweaking pollsters. Of both sides. I got a little upset when my 4 yo nephew answered a first polling question correctly. The next question was about abortion.
This has come full spectrum for me and is now hilarious.
At first blush, the idea that there are that many Republicans who think that Obama should be impeached seemed a bit far fetched. But then I remembererd that I think that three of the past five Republican presidents should have been impeached. Nixon for Watergate, Reagan for Iran-Contra (he should have been hanged for treason for selling weapons to Iran), and Bush for lying about WMD. The rest of the questions do seem far fetched, though.
http://www.projectcensored.org/
http://www.google.com/search?h…
Legislation in secret via emergency hyperbole
Nazi Gestapo style hate crime advancement
Administrations focus on the advancement of globalism at US expense.
Failure to investigate 911, end the wars, prosecute or end torture.
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p>Now on the sexually deviant issue. If the Illuminati controlled social engineering propaganda delivery system had not shoved said sexually deviant behavior down everybody’s throats for the past ten years I might be inclined to live and let live and be OK about two people getting marriage rights. BUT I know it does not stop there you also insist on shoving a ball gag in my mouth with Nazi inspired hate crimes thought police PC crap.
Pre-kindergarten sexual orientation class and the state must indoctrinate your children early. Not for me.
is down!
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p>Good heavens! Activate the Emergency Hyperbole!
Acccck!
What is it man? What’s wrong?
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p>Sir, it’s the sexually deviant behavior down his throat.
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p>Get your ball gags on, everyone!
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p>Too late, sir – the Nazi Gestapo style hate crimes are advancing! They have the Illuminati controlled social engineering propaganda delivery system! Look out! Here comes a wave of Nazi inspired hate crimes thought police PC crap!
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p>We’re done for!
That made absolutely no sense.
Why were so few northeast Republicans polled?
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p>Somehow this unbiased poll managed to only get to 217 self identified Republicans in the liberal North East(DC, ME, VT, NY, MD, PA, CT, DE, MA, NH, RI, WV, NJ) yet managed to poll 846 self identified Republicans in the conservative south (FL, NC, SC, AL, MS, GA, VA, TN, KY, LA, AR, TX).
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p>For the sake of completeness: 437 from the Midwest were polled, and 503 from the west were polled.
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p>Addionally, 70% of the responders were age 45 and above, only 9% under 30 years old. This may be reflective of the actual make up of the Republican party….but it seems suspicious to me.
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p>Do you really think that by continuing to manipulate data to make the Republicans look “crazy”, you are going to win independent hearts and minds?
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p>We are smarter than that
63% of respondents were over the age of 45. Additionally, the under 30’s were spot on at 9%. Therefore, the 30 – 45 must be represented with 21% in this poll(compared to 28% in the PPP poll). Would that 7% REALLY have swung the results? That would be speculation, but math tells me no.
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p>Why is it illogical to poll 11% from the northeast? (and consequently, 22% from the midwest, 25% from the west, and 42% from the south?) I can’t find any crosstabs for region, but have you? Are you making your claims based off of the methodology of another polling firm, or your desire to prove a point?
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p>I don’t have the answers to your questions, but, with
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p>you jumped from asking questions to passing judgment on the questions you hadn’t received answers to.
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p>Can you prove the data was manipulated?
Um..
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p>If the northeast is ‘liberal’ then there will, by definition, be LESS Republicans. If the south is ‘conservative’, by definition there will be MORE republicans. Simple math.
Please check out the survey. You’ll find they called people based on random variations of the last four digits of their telephone numbers.
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p>In other words, the polling firm decided from which area code and exchange the pool would be selected…after that it was “random”.
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p>Thanks for clarifying that the age deomgraphic was representative of the actual Republican party. That removes that as an issue.
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p>It seems to me though…..that this was not an unbiased poll of Republicans, just as many have suspected.
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p>If it seems too good to be true…..it probably is.
Check this out: if you split it out by gender, age, or geography, the numbers stay the same. It’s actually pretty odd…
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p>Nate Silver wrote about it on 538. McGOP: The Virtues and Vices of Sameness.
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p>Check out the article, and notice how regardless of question asked, there’s incredibly little difference in the percent answering yes or no as a function of gender, age, skin color, or region of the country.
You can believe whatever you want. Even though several of the commenters on this blog have said they find it hard to believe, and even though it flies in the face of our collective experience….just believe it.
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p>If I called 200 People in the Manhattan Financial District telephone exchange, and 100 of them self identified as Democrats, and I asked them if they thought that workers on wall street should be punished, do you think the result would be indicative of the Democrats viewpoint overall? Next I generate random numbers for the telephone exchange in Boston’s Financial District. Is that response going to reflect the overall consensus of the party? The sex, age, or skin color wouldn’t matter.
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p>If we are going to make any progress in either direction, right or left, we need to question “facts” that fly in the face of our experience. We need to get around, beyond the hype and start talking seriously.
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p>Perhaps I have a closed mind. I just looked at the poll results posted here and thought that it seemed unreal. I looked further to try and understand how my understanding of people could be so far off the mark. When I saw how the polling was done, I thought I had my answer.
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p>If I don’t have my answer, I wonder why 9% of registered Republicans (according to CNN exit polloing)voted for Obama? I mean according to the poll only 8% of Republicans favor openly gay teachers. Does this mean that 1% of Republicans held their noses and voted for Obama even though they were so bigoted that felt as if (or weren’t sure if)openly gay people should be teachers?
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p>Let’s get past the non-sense
You’re not separating different criticisms. You don’t like it, so you’re throwing everything against the wall, knowing that at least one thing should stick.
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p>You don’t trust the outcome, so you asked some questions. The wrong questions, as it turns out… they don’t support your thesis. Let’s recap:
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p>petr answered your question, to a large extent. The fact is, it’s harder to find self-identified Republicans in the Northeast, so it would have taken far more phone calls to drive n upward. As I point out, it wouldn’t really matter because, for self-identified Republicans, geography is irrelevant — they answered the questions “Yes” at almost exactly the same rate regardless of location.
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p>Again, it wouldn’t have mattered — you could re-weigh the sample any way you want w.r.t. geography, and you won’t get a substantially different result.
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p>Did you even read the 538 article I linked to? If so, what do you think of it. If not, then why am I wasting my time arguing with a kitchen table?
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p>Apparently, only some of us.
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p>The question you fail to ask that I asked above is:
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p>What percent of those called in each region self-identified as Republican?
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p>My hunch is twofold:
1. Many people who lean conservative won’t self-identify with the Republican brand, it’s so damaged. This could cover people with libertarian, tea-bag, or more moderate viewpoints.
2. The “saner” Republicans are also the ones not willing to answer questions in a survey for whatever reason. If there’s a sample bias in the refusals, you may be getting skewed data.
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p>So I agree — the results look a bit funny. I wrote that in the second response to the blog entry. I disagree with your suggestion as to why they look funny — the statistics simply don’t corroborate your theory one bit. To use your example above…
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p>If I called 200 People in the Manhattan Financial District telephone exchange, and 100 of them self identified as Democrats, and I asked them if they thought that workers on wall street should be punished, do you think the result would be indicative of the Democrats viewpoint overall?
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p>Answer: it depends. What if you then also called 200 people in Iowa corn country and 60 of then self identified as Democrats, and they agreed with the same percentage as the NYCers? What if then you called 200 people in the Dallas/Ft Worth suburbs and 75 self identified as Democrats, and they agreed with the same percentage as the NYCers and the Cornhuskers? What if you then called 200 people in San Francisco and 173 self identified as Democrats, and they too agreed with the same percentage as the NYCers and Cornhuskers and Texans? Would you argue that not enough people in Dallas were called?
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p>Turns out that you would, because that’s the argument you’re making about under-sampling the Northeast. Calling another 1000 people in the Northeast won’t change the percentage points by more than a smidge one way or the other because the numbers are quite stable.
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p>This poll shows that crazy people are statistically identically crazy across the range of questions. Crazy northerners aren’t crazy in a different way than midwesterners; crazy old people aren’t crazy in a substantially different way than crazy youngsters. If you’re a wingnut, than regardless of age, location, gender, or skin color, you’re very likely to believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama, and that openly gay men and women be not allowed to teach in public schools. It’s roughly a toss up as to whether or not you believe that Obama should be impeached or was born in the US, or that the pill is abortion. What we don’t know from the data on this thread is: just how many wingnuts of this persuasion are there, and where do they live?
I am interested in the “yes-no-i don’t know” format.
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p>Would a Likert scale–strongly agree, strongly disagree–be more precise? Then you would know the degree of belief involved in these opinions? Big sample, but good questions?
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p>There’s no questino that the GOP has been increasingly dedicated to misinforming voters and preventing them from thinking. Still, I’m less concerned about the collective stupidity the GOP has foisted on America for the last 40 years than the fact that as a country, we’re too stupid to be able to do anything about it.
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p>I know Republicans who are not stupid or addicted to being stupid; however, I can’t say the same for movement conservatives who have done more to destroy America than any single group since the Confederacy.
Most combine the likert scale results into to “agree-disagree” format anyway.
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p>While I prefer the likert scale method, it is only effective with certain questions and I’m not sure these polarizing issues work well on that kind of scale as there really isn’t that much wiggle room in regards to opinion.
A Daily Kos commissioned poll? Is this newsworthy, or even a legitimate point of discussion, given our current circumstances? Fundamentally, we ALL have to figure out a way to get our economy back and running. This has two benefits: people making money and profits pay taxes on same, and you have less demand on government for relief. No other solution. If you think the answer is everyone working for the government, you haven’t quite figured out how all of this gets paid for.
The economy is expected to grow but grow slowly. So slowly that there will be very, very gradual improvement in the unemployment rate. We have too many unemployed Americans, so that’s a problem. The rate’s going to stay high for too long.
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p>The Democrats should really be doing something to rein in unemployment. First choice: more and better stimulus spending, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.
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p>Should the Republicans gain more seats, it’s likely that we’ll see an anti-stimulus all for the sake of the deficit reduction — that coupled with a Colorado Springs approach to government.
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p>So understanding the politics turns out to be key to getting the economy moving again. The more Republicans the more likely we get to relive the glory days of end of the Hoover Administration.
I’d argue the reverse: we haven’t seen this “stimulus” money flow in to stimulate jobs (except for this plethora of new mileage signs every 2/10ths of a mile on highways around the Commmonwealth) as the money hasn’t been spent. I’m more afraid of the faux Huey Long mentality down in DC.
The recent budget submitted by Obama has some “assumptions” which if wrong could make this deficit much bigger.
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p>Do you think unemployment will be down to 9.2 nationally?
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p>Not everyone thinks this budget is well grounded…
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In fact the stimulus has been beneficial with respect to employment. It has just not been beneficial enough.
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p>Generally, U.S. policy seems to be on track for repeating mistakes other countries have made under these conditions. Maybe Japan won’t be the only country to lose a decade.
JohnD and billxi should just take their balls and go home.
Don’t work too hard. Someone will buy your Girl Scout cookies.
and really should be removed.
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p>BMG is no place for misogyny.