The GOP's Worst Nightmare

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


JT

You underestimate the eroding confidence that folk like Berz and I have. I'm wouldn't consider myself young (more approaching middle years), consider myself fiscally conservative and as a consequence feel more than slightly betrayed by actions of Bush of late. Will it be enough for me to either a) throw away my vote to the libertarians or b) God forbid vote Dem? I can't say until more evidence in.

Your point about the leftist leaning in general of this forum is well taken, but more to the original intent of this thread conservatives are ticked as well.

Og

You can count me in this group as well. I vote Libertarian most of the time, as neither party comes close to representing my interests. The Repubs used to be closer to me, but I'm running out of reasons to see it that way when they ram through crap like the medicare bill. Too bad the media are so economically dependent upon the current system, there is a lot of anger toward the repubs and a longstanding continuing disgust with the dems in a large part of the country. It's long past time for one or both of these parties to hop into the dumpster.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


The Libertarian Party wants to spend more than the Republicans? I doubt that somehow...

Maybe he's one of those people who thinks that cutting taxes is giving away money.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by mindseye

I also find it amusing that many voters are deluded to think that someone who bankrupted 2 or 3 companies in his only chief executive experience is qualified enough to be Commander in Chief.

I remember thinking of that while he was being touted as America's first MBA president!

2 out of 3 bankruptcies is pretty average for an MBA.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


I don't know about any other thread discussing it, but the bottom line in the initial thread was that your reasoning involved changing the definitions of the terms, which of course is a patently ludicrous way to argue.

Not if by ludicrous you mean brilliant.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Spiffor - the Libertarian candidate of course If I vote for either the Dems or Repubs I'm giving my tacit approval to the future incarceration of millions of people for drug use and I can't do that.

Hopefully Bush will lose by a narrow margin and then the Bushies will give you Libs hell like the dems gave the greenies.

[Spiffor]

Hopefully, Bush will lose by a huge margin, showing the Americans have kept some sanity

[Theben]

It's not that we're insane, just stupid.

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


take a stats course.

First it is easies to lie or commit perjury with stats and the size of your sample does matter a great deal. I play alot of pokar the royal flush is very rare there is only 1 change out of 300,000 of getting than royal flush for each hand being deal to you. Does that mean it you have 300,000 desks of pokar card that have one hand deal that one of then will be with than 100 % change of being than royal flush. Most likely none will be than royal flush.

[CharlesBHoff]

The next president will have to raise taxes or end the Bush tax cuts to bring sanely to the budget. Taxes are the income which allow than government to run an do thing for the people. The prosit 13 wreck Calif fine public education system certain very wealth people donot like to pay they fair share in taxes. Than government need than fair tax rate that is neither too hight or too low to run without huge budget debit.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
The next president will have to raise taxes or end the Bush tax cuts to bring sanely to the budget. Taxes are the income which allow than government to run an do thing for the people. The prosit 13 wreck Calif fine public education system certain very wealth people donot like to pay they fair share in taxes. Than government need than fair tax rate that is neither too hight or too low to run without huge budget debit.

Yes by all mean lets never consider trimming government spending.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
First it is easies to lie or commit perjury with stats and the size of your sample does matter a great deal.

It is easy to lie with stats, whatever the size of the sample. You can even lie with stats encompassing the whole population (such as election results). The key to lie with stats is to provide a faulty interpretation of the results, it doesn't lie in the results themselves.

I play alot of pokar the royal flush is very rare there is only 1 change out of 300,000 of getting than royal flush for each hand being deal to you. Does that mean it you have 300,000 desks of pokar card that have one hand deal that one of then will be with than 100 % change of being than royal flush. Most likely none will be than royal flush.

Samples of 1000 - 2000 people are enough to measure societal trends when they are well done, because it has been often proven that larger samples repeat the same patterns. You can get a better accuracy with a higher sample (read: a smaller error margin), but that's it. General trends remain the same. The margin of error of a poll with 1000 people is about 3%. You need 4 times more people to halve the error margin. 4000 people make sense. 16000 people only in specialized polls. More than that is stupid.

In your example, royal flush would be deemed statistically insignificant, and as such, its complete absence from the results wouldn't make the trends any less true.

The only reason why you'd want to have a big sample is when you have many variables, and you want to analyze each of them with high accuracy.
For example, if you're polling on European politics, you only need a 1000 sample over Europe. However, if you want to analyze the differences per country, you need 1000 questionees per country (that's 15000 already). If you want to analyze the opinions of people based on their nationality AND their social class, you need a sample of 1000 per social class within each country. If you kept to the original 100 across Europe, to back you analysis of "what do wealthy Belgians think of Europe", you could only rely on very little amount (maybe 5 or 10) of wealthy Belgians questioned. Such a minuscule sample has virtually no relevance whatsoever.

[Boris Godunov]

I think the GOPs worst nightmare would actually be someone discovering a loophole whereby Clinton could run for president again. Then they'd not only see Bush lose, but lose to the man they all hate the most (again).

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I think the GOPs worst nightmare would actually be someone discovering a loophole whereby Clinton could run for president again. Then they'd not only see Bush lose, but lose to the man they all hate the most (again).

Who Hilllary?

[Boris Godunov]

No, Bill. I'm not convinced Hillary could win at all, but Bill could, easily.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Ohhh I thought you said man.