Independent Voters holding country hostage again

[Nbadan]

If the GOP is lucky enough to win the House in November, they can thank the independent voter...

....independent voters are generally less informed and more likely to fall for political propaganda from wing-nut sources as this graph shows...

http://people-press.org/reports/images/658-5.png

Of course, more informed voters know that the stimulus package kept the economy from collapse and was not meant to solve the unemployment problem which must be addressed by its own stimulus package...

...if independent voters throw the House to the GOP it will be because they have fallen for the political spin, not based on facts....

http://people-press.org/reports/images/658-7.png

Independents are more conservative and believe Republicans can do a better at improving the job situation (which they created and while they're opposing every stimulus bill), reducing the deficit (which they blew threw the roof) and managing the federal government (which they want to eliminate)?

Still, given the first chart, it goes without saying that if Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents vote, Democrats will win.

[Galileo]

You are hopelessly imprisoned within the false, two-party matrix.

[Winehole23]

Still, given the first chart, it goes without saying that if Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents vote, Democrats will win. First of all, what makes you think they will vote in the first place (disillusionment is real) and secondly, you do know all politics is local, right?

How can a national poll be considered a good predictor of localized outcomes?

[Winehole23]

I ain't no TeyshaBlue, but for me your interpretation of the data fails at delivery, Dan.

[Winehole23]

The banner characterizes independent voters as holding the country hostage. These are the same voters who elected Obama.

Now that independent voters feel a little different about it, they're "holding America hostage."

[Winehole23]

All that really means in essence is that independents will decide the election this time, just like they did the last one.

[Winehole23]

Sour grapes, much?

[Nbadan]

First of all, what makes you think they will vote in the first place (disillusionment is real) and secondly, you do know all politics is local, right?

How can a national poll be considered a good predictor of localized outcomes?

These polls reflect the mood of the country, however, as I've posted before, the Obama administration is not responsible for a majority of the debt that has been run up under Obama...these were costs that were coming anyway because of policy that was created by the bush administration and the do-nothing GOP congress...

[Nbadan]

I ain't no TeyshaBlue, but for me your interpretation of the data fails at delivery, Dan.

Teyshablue has yet to prove he is an authority on anything....maybe after he's posted here a few years and has a track record of calling things straight, then he can be judged on that...

[Nbadan]

The banner characterizes independent voters as holding the country hostage. These are the same voters who elected Obama.

Now that independent voters feel a little different about it, they're "holding America hostage."

These are the same independent voters who don't know who really rung up the debt, who let lobbyist write their own legislation, who let an administration deceive us into needless war and re-elected him anyway...excuse me if I have no confidence in 'the independent voter'...

[Winehole23]

Teyshablue has yet to prove he is an authority on anything....maybe after he's posted here a few years and has a track record of calling things straight, then he can be judged on that...He seems to have a passing familiarity with the minutiae of polling data/questionaires.

Sorry. On this sort of thing TB has miles more cred than you, Dan.

[Winehole23]

These are the same independent voters who don't know who really rung up the debt, who let lobbyist write their own legislation, who let an administration deceive us into needless war and re-elected him anyway...excuse me if I have no confidence in 'the independent voter'...Relax. It's not required.

Put em down all you want. That's cool with me, Dan. :tu

[Winehole23]

...these were costs that were coming anyway because of policy that was created by the bush administration and the do-nothing GOP congress...Putting it all on Bush is bullshit.

30 years of deficits, debt, asset bubbles and countercyclical policy were an input too, as well as the innovation in financial products and banking spearheaded by Summers and Rudin under Bill Clinton.

[jack sommerset]

Dems are also turning on Obama.

[Winehole23]

If true, Obama deserves it.

[Nbadan]

He seems to have a passing familiarity with the minutiae of polling data/questionaires.

Sorry. On this sort of thing TB has miles more cred than you, Dan.

BFD ...he can read polling data...no offense to Teysha but he needs to stick his neck out every once and a while and get a track record...Darrin is an ass-hat extraordinaire but at least he has an opinion...I can respect that...

[Nbadan]

Putting it all on Bush is bullshit.

30 years of deficits, debt, asset bubbles and countercyclical policy were an input too, as well as the innovation in financial products and banking spearheaded by Summers and Rudin under Bill Clinton.

I'm just making the point that the debt added by Obama is minuscule unless it is added to the mountain of debt and unfunded liabilities left from the bush Administration...

[Winehole23]

If Obama had been elected at some time in history not coinciding with an epochal financial panic, things would have been much different, true. But he was not, and the additions to the debt and the national deficit during Obama's administration have been in no meaningful sense minuscule.

What happened or didn't happen in some alternate universe does not justify what Obama is doing in this one.

[Wild Cobra]

If Obama had been elected at some time in history not coinciding with an epochal financial panic, things would have been much different, true. But he was not, and the additions to the debt and the national deficit during Obama's administration have been in no meaningful sense minuscule.
Yes. Before we got to this point of ever increasing deficits, the public was less concerned and less aware of the harm our government does.

What happened or didn't happen in some alternate universe does not justify what Obama is doing in this one.
Wow...

We agree on this one.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm just making the point that the debt added by Obama is minuscule unless it is added to the mountain of debt and unfunded liabilities left from the bush Administration...
What about the mountain of unfunded liabilities left by past administrations in the way of social programs? Was that Bush's fault too?

[word]

There is no such thing as a voter or voting block 'holding the country hostage'.

You may as well say, democracy is 'holding the country hostage'.

What 'people' can't deal with, is admitting they are the problem. We like government spending and programs, and low taxes. The proverbial 'free lunch'.

In a democracy, the people are free to make really ...bad.....decisions.

[Spurminator]

BFD ...he can read polling data...no offense to Teysha but he needs to stick his neck out every once and a while and get a track record...Darrin is an ass-hat extraordinaire but at least he has an opinion...I can respect that...

That's because this is all a game to you. Nobody else is interested in keeping scores. The intellectual honesty of most posters on this board can be determined within a few posts, not a few years.

How's that Military Draft coming along by the way? lol track record.

[MannyIsGod]

NBADan has always had illusions of grandeur. This is nothing new.

The only reason he thinks they're holding the country hostage is because they're not electing people he approves of this time around. The truth is the independent voter is fickle as shit and Obama and the dems used that to their benifit in the past. That the idiots made the better choice (IMO) that time around doesn't change that they're still idiots.

We're trapped between the rock of the ideologues and the (not so) hard place of the fickle ignorant. Yay democracy.

[TeyshaBlue]

BFD ...he can read polling data...no offense to Teysha but he needs to stick his neck out every once and a while and get a track record...Darrin is an ass-hat extraordinaire but at least he has an opinion...I can respect that...

I don't need to validate myself to a self-important partisan hack, dan. Get over yourself. I know Ive only got 1500 or so posts here because I spend alot of time working at my job as an analyst...I work with stats every day.
I've busted plenty of chops and had mine popped a few times here as well. Not my problem if you lack the cognitive developement to recognize and recall these instances. Be sure and let me know what metrics, in your august opinion, constitutes an acceptable level of participation and how long I need to be here before my posts register, so that I can studiously ignore them.:lol

You're held hostage by your mypoic ideology and the descriptors you use to parse the polls results show this. "....independent voters are generally less informed and more likely to fall for political propaganda from wing-nut sources as this graph shows..."
Really? This graph shows that independents are less informed? Show me the data, not the bullshit spin from a fucking partisan hack. Your myopic interpretation is pathetic. Lrn2 contextualize and you'll realize that independents are incredibly fluid and they wax and wane very much like the general population does. If you had actually read the poll, you'd see that Pew pretty much says the same thing. "Independents’ voting preferences have changed considerably since the last two elections. Just two years ago, Obama held an eight-point lead among independents, according to exit polls by the National Election Pool. The shift since the 2006 midterm, when Democrats held an 18-point advantage among independents, according to the exit poll, has been even more dramatic.

The propensity of independents to reject both parties in a relatively short period of time may in part reflect the fact that the ranks of independents have swelled in recent years with voters who have rejected party labels themselves. Underscoring the fluidity in party identification, many of today’s independents were themselves partisans not so long ago. More than half of independents say they have been a Democrat (23%), a Republican (22%), or both (9%), in the past five years." You, bouton's, DarrinS et al are the embodiement of the old saw "If all you have is a hammer, everthing looks like a nail." You need a few more tools, lad.
Just a smidgen of intellectual honesty is all it takes to grok poll results...well that and a knowledge of polling/survey methodology...much of which I gained in my classes in sociology in college. And no dan, I won't email you a jpg. of my fucking degree.:lmao

[TDMVPDPOY]

lol u guys will love the independents when either parties come chasing for their voted seats to get govt...fkn thats what happen down last month, both major partys in a tie, the 4 independents had the swing and they had more than their lebron hr of fame on tv for 2 weeks to decide who they siding with...fck that shit

[Homeland Security]

"Yay democracy."

See, when it comes down to it, deep down you understand that dictatorship is the way to go. Democracy is too flawed, too weak, too obsolete to handle contemporary problems. We need the ability to move forward with decisive action quickly, rather than dithering through the byzantine bureaucracy of parliaments and the ever-mutable opinions of an electorate that can't see past next week.

Under a right-wing dictatorship, we can:
1. Silence liberals forever
2. Destroy the green agenda
3. Eliminate subversive elements working to destroy our families
4. Take back control of our educational and cultural institutions
5. End wasteful social spending
6. Establish true safety and security at home
7. Empower businesses to grow and create jobs through pure market reforms

[Nbadan]

If Obama had been elected at some time in history not coinciding with an epochal financial panic, things would have been much different, true. But he was not, and the additions to the debt and the national deficit during Obama's administration have been in no meaningful sense minuscule.

What happened or didn't happen in some alternate universe does not justify what Obama is doing in this one.

...dramatic much? seriously....Obama saved us from financial collapse and 20+ unemployment...you can put a price tag on that? Your myopic if you think that things would be better today if the whole system had just collapsed...

[Nbadan]

What about the mountain of unfunded liabilities left by past administrations in the way of social programs? Was that Bush's fault too?

blah...blah..blah....blame the poor....typical.

Bush turned a projected multi-billion dollar surplus into a very real multi-trillion dollar deficit...

[Nbadan]

NBADan has always had illusions of grandeur. This is nothing new.

Illusions of granduer.....

http://thoushallblog.com/wp-content/uploads/pot-kettle-fat.gif

[Nbadan]

I know Ive only got 1500 or so posts here because I spend alot of time working at my job as an analyst...I work with stats every day.

:sleepy .......I'm a mathematician... specialize in game theory... So what?

[Nbadan]

Just a smidgen of intellectual honesty is all it takes to grok poll results...well that and a knowledge of polling/survey methodology...much of which I gained in my classes in sociology in college. And no dan, I won't email you a jpg. of my fucking degree

:rolleyes

Sociology :lol

...that pretty much speaks for itself....

[Nbadan]

...I won't hold my breathe for you to post anything with meat as I wonder aimlessly on my estate...

:lol

[Winehole23]

...dramatic much? seriously....Obama saved us from financial collapse and 20+ unemployment...you can put a price tag on that? We're not out of the woods yet.

We're still propping up toxic assets and insolvent megabanks and bad mortgage debt still hasn't unwound. The fiscal condition and debt load of the USA is far more perilous now than it was before the panic. It's hardly unthinkable that the rescue you're crowing about now has set us up for an even worse crash down the road. War with Iran just might do the trick. Oil spike could easily tip us back into recession.


Your myopic if you think that things would be better today if the whole system had just collapsed...I might have rather have seen our financial system go down in flames than put our future in hock for it.

[Winehole23]

You'd rather have the megabanks and bank receiving companies own our asses for generations to come than see any harm come to them.

That doesn't make me myopic. It just makes you a faithful toady.

[Winehole23]

Our financial system was insolvent. It was supposed to fall on its face, and we were supposed to fall on our faces too.

It wasn't just "them." Ordinary Americans got too leveraged out too.

[Winehole23]

Now that we've saved their reckless, improvident, ungrateful asses, whenever the next shock comes we get to save their asses all over again.

Wouldn't it have been altogether smarter to let the megabanks fail just once, than allow them to do it over and over again?

[Winehole23]

FinReg dog will not hunt. TBTF ain't solved yet, and I'll believe the threat of receivership when I see it. It's way overdue.

[Winehole23]

We're still stuck socializing private risk.

[Winehole23]

It was a shitty precedent. Maybe the shittiest, ever.

[Wild Cobra]

Welcome to Obama style Marxism.

[TeyshaBlue]

:rolleyes

Sociology :lol

...that pretty much speaks for itself....

Whatever gets you through the night, little fella.

[TeyshaBlue]

...I won't hold my breathe for you to post anything with meat as I wonder aimlessly on my estate...

:lol

You post a wish sandwich and then ask for meat. Nice.

I notice you can't defend your asinine spin of the poll. Ok. We understand.

[Winehole23]

Society is a sum of the parts and the stock market is supposed to be our thermometer. When the chasm between perception and reality becomes untenable, a seismic readjustment inevitably occurs, as we saw a few short years ago. The current juncture is complicated by the strong state of corporate credit -- which bodes well for higher stock prices -- but there are so many fragile elements and assumed conclusions that it's difficult to separate what we're feeling vs. what we're being programmed to believe.

I've written about the two paths; there are drugs that mask the symptoms and medicine that cures the disease. The drugs -- giving the drunk another drink with hopes he doesn’t sober up -- will carry us for only so long before social mood sours to the point of deterioration domestically, internationally or both. The medicine -- debt destruction or reorganization -- will be a bitter pill for asset classes but a strong step towards an eventual outside-in globalization. (Also read The Main Event: Inflation vs. Deflation (http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/todd-harrison-inflation-deflation-stock-market/8/4/2010/id/29449).)

The government bought time -- literally -- by reflating markets last year and allowing corporate America to roll out debt and issue stock. Risk wasn't destroyed, it simply changed shape. It migrated from one perception to another, from one balance sheet to the next. Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills; the imbalances are cumulative still and the lessons learned from the previous crisis have seemingly been squandered. http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/todd-harrison-bulls-billionaires-goldman-sachs/9/29/2010/id/30287

[jack sommerset]

That's right. Independents are going to run those filthy dems right out of office. About a month left?!?! It's been a long 2 years of watching those dems rip our country apart. Obama wasted 2 years of our lives.