The evidence is right before your eyes, people.

Look at the sum total of all the polls. They are all over the place. There is no way any of these pollsters are getting within 3% of the actual opinion of Americans 19 times out of 20 -- which is what all the statistical qualifiers & fine print are supposed to ensure.

The whole house-of-cards of polling is that IF YOUR SAMPLE IS ACTUALLY RANDOM, then there is a sample size that you can calculate that is quite small that should get you polling results within 3% of the actual underlying situation of the population as whole.

But if that were actually occurring, we wouldn't need to be making "polls of polls" because the outliers would be apparent -- 19 out of 20 polls would be coming in, in a tight band that would make it clear what the trend line is.

Unfortunately, there is not sufficient random-ness in a phone poll of 600 or 800 people. There are 3% who don't have phones. Their opinions may be different. There are at least 30% who keep their message machines on constantly or are screening their calls, their opinions may be different. There are around 20% who will answer the call, but then refuse to participate in a poll, any poll. Their opinions may be different. The key question is how many calls these pollsters have to make to get their 800 completed calls -- it's probably 4 to 5 thousand or even more.

This can be confirmed by anyone working any type of phone bank anywhere. I've done it for both politics and money, you need to make 4 to 8 calls to have one conversation -- and even then 5 to 10% of your respondents are pretty much _non compus mentis_.

Their samples are not sufficiently random to actually produce the 3% margin of error they claim, and the results we see in our graphs of polls of polls show it -- results are coming in in a band of plus-or-minus 8 to 10%, not a band of plus or minus 2 or 3 %. Look at your graphs -- it's all right there before your eyes.

If the media was doing its job, each of these pollster clowns would have to be reporting the total number of call they had to make to get 800 completed questionnaires. But then everyone would realize how ridiculous the cult of polling in the age of cell phones and message machines has become.

It's very simple. Because of the sampling problems, the actual margin of error in most of these polls is at least 3 times the stated margin of error. They claim 3 -- it's really 9 or 10. They claim 2.6 -- it's really plus or minus 8 points or more.

Check the archives. Read statistical theory. How many times do I have to tell you this stuff ??

Posted at September 24, 2008 12:56 PM in response to ABC/Wash Post: Obama at 52% (9 Point Lead): Neither Gore Nor Kerry Ever Broke Above 50%

Jonze assumes that these various senators and dignitaries are being called as character witnesses, that's not at all clear from the stories I can find. Can we get some sort of clarification/explanation?

Maybe the use of these Senators and dignitaries as character witnesses is their strategy/tactic, yet of course there are several other possibilities: witnesses of fact (that Stevens didn't do anything illegal), or perhaps witnesses to be impugned in an "everybody-was doing-it" muckfest defense. And of course various witnesses could be being called for different reasons.

One would hope that Leahy and Kennedy, at least, would be intelligent enough not to give Teddy a character reference.

Inouye may once have been a smart man, yet in his Republican senility phase he is probably stupid enough to actually vouch for Stevens' character ... I guess it's better than the alternative that Hawai'i is corrupt for people with D's after their names, but it sure seems like there is a lot of work to be done over there in bringing actual small-d democracy to the state.

Posted at September 22, 2008 2:47 PM in response to Ted Stevens' Trial Begins with Jury Selection

Dear Friends,

You really are making me sad and pessimistic.

You show good spirit in pushing back at the obvious troll who spouts nonsense, yet I get the feeling in too many comments that we the people cannot have any effect on the almighty media, and we must wait for one of them to become "fair," and otherwise conduct ourselves as subjects who must accept whatever the almighty media give out.

They've made it really hard for us push back with the intensity we need to show, yet now is the time to show it, it's 50 days and counting !! The broadcasters have moved most of their facilities to suburbs, so it's harder to gather and deploy a crowd against them, they assiduously hide themselves from complaints, some states have laws against secondary boycotts.

Yet we absolutely need to be picketing their facilities, coming up to and, as people feel it necessary, beyond the edge of legality in our confrontations of their employees, and their advertisers. They shouldn't be able to send their mobile broadcast vans out without gathering an angry crowd.

They are almighty billion-$$ corporations that own lots of lawyers and politicians, but in the end they are businesses, and they will change IF WE CAN AFFECT THEIR REVENUES. Their revenues come from advertising. If we can only affect their revenues by 2 or 3%, they'll shrug it off, the ultimate payoff of ownign politicians is higher.

If we can affect their revenues by 7-9%, it'll be marginal, they'll fight us with every trick in the book to demonize our names with their audience.

But if we can make the business climate so toxic for their advertisers, that their revenues decline by 15%, and they understand that the decline is because a large minority of citizens regard their media corporations as only slightly less evil than the Devil himself, they will change.

If we understand that REALITY IS MALLEABLE, that our actions and inactions have consequences, that we are citizens who need to defend ourselves and not consumer slugs who have take whatever the businesses are handing out, if we understand that if we lose this election WE WILL PROBABLY LOSE FREE ELECTIONS AND FAIR JUDGES AND UN-EVIL POLITICIANS -- FOREVER -- if we can understand these things, we will find a way to stop wanking around the blogs and act !!

This is it kiddies, if we haven't already lost all our rights irrevocably, this election is the crux.
The absolute freaking end of the land of the brave and the home of the free. And yes, the lousy lazy Democrats are a big part of the problem too, let your elected D. congress-critters know.

Temporarily in the next 50 days, letters to your local print outlets demonizing the broadcasters and narrowcasters for their atrocious standards of 'coverage,' their attitudes, and nonsense over the last year, may be a very good tactic even if that print outlet is also generally piggish. They do tend to print letters in proportion to general feelings, so if we can make this a general feeling, while playing the tactic of enlisting the fear that the print media have of the video media and working on some of the fault lines within the "journalism" industry, it will get printed and out there.

Posted at September 13, 2008 10:35 PM in response to Explain to me please

Well Thank you, Reed.

You could take it to the next step or two, rdf is quite right that the pretense of neutrality is a sour joke that only idiots believe.

Yet I still say Thank You, Reed, because all day yesterday as I scurried around in my relatively low-paid but union job trying to fake a performance on all the tasks management will never give us the hours to really accomplish, I was saying to myself ..."At what point can we say that the MSM is the greatest obstacle to democracy in America?"

For me, that point was somewhere back before the infamous night of Nov. 7, 2000 ... yet I am so glad to wake up today and see Reed's words here.

Now the rest of it up to us. PUSH BACK.

Spread the word that rdf is spreading. Unplug your friends TV sets, cut their cable if you have to. Smash the windows of businesses that advertise on the MSM (and let them know why). Call the advertiser's national headquarters over and over over, call the media companies over and over and over (or write postal mail, email is useless), scream at your D. congress-critters to get some real reforms going, and especially write letters to your local print media (even if they're just as bad, they might eventually print it because of their loss of market share to the broadcasters and narrow-casters).

If we let McCain win and the MSM spread its crap[ unchallenged, America will never be free and prosperous again, I really believe that.

Spread the word, the broadcast media are the greatest obstacle to democracy, freedom and prosperity in America, and the greatest obstacle to a better future for the world as whole.

Posted at September 13, 2008 10:56 AM in response to Democracy and Media

Well Thank you, Reed.

You could take it to the next step or two, rdf is quite right that the pretense of neutrality is a sour joke that only idiots believe.

Yet I still say Thank You, Reed, because all day yesterday as I scurried around in my relatively low-paid but union job trying to fake a performance on all the tasks management will never give us the hours to really accomplish, I was saying to myself ..."At what point can we say that the MSM is the greatest obstacle to democracy in America?"

For me, that point was somewhere back before the infamous night of Nov. 7, 2000 ... yet I am so glad to wake up today and see Reed's words here.

Now the rest of it up to us. PUSH BACK.

Spread the word that rdf is spreading. Unplug your friends TV sets, cut their cable if you have to. Smash the windows of businesses that advertise on the MSM (and let them know why). Call the advertiser's national headquarters over and over over, call the media companies over and over and over (or write postal mail, email is useless), scream at your D. congress-critters to get some real reforms going, and especially write letters to your local print media (even if they're just as bad, they might eventually print it because of their loss of market share to the broadcasters and narrow-casters).

If we let McCain win and the MSM spread its crap[ unchallenged, America will never be free and prosperous again, I really believe that.

Spread the word, the broadcast media are the greatest obstacle to democracy, freedom and prosperity in America, and the greatest obstacle to a better future for the world as whole.

Posted at September 13, 2008 10:53 AM in response to Democracy and Media

Remember, if they are caught by sunlight, they turn to stone.

Posted at September 9, 2008 12:36 AM in response to Palin: North by Northwest

So I hope that by the miracle of getting JohnW, o2u and z2v to agree,

you will all be making out large checks to Media Matters for America, encouraging all your friends -- well in the cases of JohnW and z2v and other kind readers anyway, we know 02u wouldn't go into any of that "friendship" nonsense -- to do the same, and doing all you can do to increase the social networking of the corporate media rejection network to ultimately bring these poisonous clowns of the corporate media down.

Posted at September 8, 2008 10:32 PM in response to Palin: North by Northwest

In the first sentence, that "legislative counsel" must really be legislative council. He's the head of a committee of legislators, he's not head of the legislative branch's legal representation.

Well Ok maybe you did mean that he was head of the legislature's legal representation and that is the department responsible for this investigation.

Either way it could be made more clear with a few minute's editing.

Posted at September 8, 2008 10:19 PM in response to AP: French to Remain As Probe Chief

Without offering anything like food to a bridge-dwelling creature,

It can safely be predicted right now that the mainstream media will indeed SAY that Palin performed well in the debate, and as they do, bloviate endlessly on one or two things she supposedly did right (or Biden supposedly did wrong) while ignoring 99% of the rest of the debate and 99% of the actual policy issues brought up by the debate, almost always focusing on matters of image, style and perception.

That's what they always do. That's why those of us who actually have interesting lives ignore them, except that every four years we have to take account of the fact that the Presidential race is greatly hampered from being an actual public process because some large percentage of the public gets their information from these poisonous clowns of the corporate/mass media.

The one and only thing that will really change things is for the millions of us who understand that the mass media are sold-out clowns who endanger our children's freedom and prosperity is to really join together, ideally beind the organization that already exists and is doing the best darn job they can to lead the challenge, Media Matters for America, and FIERCELY OPPOSE these so-called "media" in both business and politics.

If we really had 10 million people who were basically following the same leadership to really go after the advertisers that support this media, and make life so uncomfortable to those advertisers with rumor campaigns and boycotts and grass-roots phone-the-company-HQ campaigns, to the point that the mass media ad revenues declined by 15%, THESE CORPORATIONS WOULD CHANGE.

We also need to have our ten million voices doing the longer term work of getting Democratic officeholders who will not look to the media from fear or for favors, and who will be able to say, 'our present media are of negative value to our children's freedom and prosperity and it needs to change.' This will further accelerate the needed change among the poisonous clowns we know as "the traditional/corporate/mass media," that group that is currently our major obstacle to electing better candidates in America.

Please re-post this widely, maybe we can begin to make a difference now when we need to.

Posted at September 8, 2008 6:47 PM in response to Palin: North by Northwest

If hundreds of thousands of Progressives were actually united in a effective network or other organization,

instead of just mentally wanking off and whining at each other in that form of the Democratic Party Circular Firing Squad that is sometimes called "the netroots" (and I include myself and my daily 3-5 hour internet fix in this criticism),

they could begin the phone and protest campaign that would go after the national advertisers that support the Negative-Value-To-The-Planet mass media.

When their advertising revenue is affected by 15% or more, the networks will be able to react with significantly better coverage. It's not rocket science. It's putting our energy to work in a focused manner, as opposed to the disorganized, "every progressive for themself," Brownian motion that we seem to prefer.

Posted at August 27, 2008 9:06 PM in response to Ask a Stupid Question