February 2007 Archives
Frank Luntz, the famous pollster, was at the National Press Club this evening, where I work. He opened up the floor for comments toward the beginning of his talk, so I chimed up. He called on me saying that I look like Allen Ginsberg, so I recited the beginning of Howl. I'd never been told by anyone that I look like Ginsberg -- what was eerie is that I'd been talking to a friend about the poet just a few hours before, more on that in short order. I thanked Luntz for the compliment and gave him my crit of polling:
Pollsters as far as I can tell never actually ask people who they want to be president among the candidates. They ask people some variation of "if the election were held today, which of the following would you vote for". They don't ask "who among the candidates to you agree with the most?" or "who among the candidates to you most want to be president?"
And so they are not really opinion polls, they simply purported to try to predict the outcome of an election. The current method turns citizens into pundits. It marginalizes candidates in the primaries that seem to have little chance of winning in a general election and totally undermines third party candidates in the general election.
I outlined this in a piece in 2004: "Why Public Opinion Polls Aren't".
After a bit of back and forth, Luntz seemed to really get the point far more than any other pollster I've talked to. He said he'd consider incorporating it into his work. We'll see.
The funniest part of the evening came when Luntz asked people about what they'd "imagine" their life to be like -- what their "American dream" was. The first person's response was to leave the U.S. and go to Catalonia. More on the "American dream" down the line as well.
I've been asking questions about the ripoff of Iraq's oil. But The New York Times reports (Feb. 4, 2007):
Mr. Abdul Jabbar said he rushed to collapsed buildings trying to help the wounded but finding mainly hands, skulls and other body parts. At one point, he discovered the remains of a close friend, who was engaged to be married.
"How would you feel if you were in this position?" he said Sunday. "The government is supposed to protect us, but they are not doing their job. I watch the TV and see the announcements on the imminent implementation of the security plan. Where is it for God's sake?"
"I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all," he added, "so we will rest and anybody who wants the oil -- which is the core of the problem -- can come and get it. We can not live this way anymore; we are dying slowly every day."
The truck exploded around dusk on Saturday at a market flush with crowded food stands. The crater from the blast was large enough to hold a sedan; the blast threw the truck's gnarled engine block than 100 yards away.
Nader now (Video on Jon Stewart, Feb. 8, 2007):
"Republicans stole it from Gore. Gore won the election, he won it won it in Florida but it was stolen from him [applause]. You would think that these guys would go after the thieves instead of some little Green Party."
Nader then (Denver Post, Nov. 22, 2000):
Third-party presidential wannabe Ralph Nader has a simple solution to the stalemate in Florida: Toss a coin.
He's not being flip.
"It sounds kind of arbitrary. But I'm not joking," the Green Party candidate told The Denver Post on Tuesday. "There's really no other way to end this. At this point, no one's ever going to know who really won Florida."
