Thursday, February 22, 2007

Dumb polls and silly statistics soothe the wrongwingers

I'm crawling through the last day of this ridiculously brutal rotation and only have a minute to post, so just this short take on the wrongwingnuts current desperation to convince anybody, including themselves I guess, that their extremist position reflects mainstream America. The right wing rag, the New York Post got the ball rolling yesterday with this really silly poll conducted by a Republican polling company with a sample of 800 respondents. They claim the results prove that most of America approves of the surge, disapproves of troop withdrawals and not only wants to "win" in Iraq, but believes "victory" is possible.

This is of course, complete claptrap. I understand the polling methods were heavily criticized and the questions were just dumb. I mean really. Who is going to say no when asked if one would like to see the US win in Iraq. I think Bush is the most inept president this country has ever suffered through. I loathe every decision he's made on foreign policy and I believe his domestic policies present a greater threat to our country than all the terrorists in the world could hope to be, but I would answer yes if asked if I would like to see us win. I would also like to see victory defined but they didn't ask that question. Pure silliness.


But the poll looks like a Mensa test compared to the much touted Victory Caucus invented by Glenn Reynolds and his big shot Wrongtopians. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to accomplish outside of convincing the remaining extremist war-nuts that they don't belong in a psyche ward for the permanently deluded, but as Glenn Greenwald so aptly illustrated, a ten year old could figure out the statistics Instapundy touted were as fake as Anna Nicole Smith's breasts.

These PJ Media guys think they have the public bamboozled with their little circle jerk trick. They invent the news and then link to each other endlessly, creating a Romulus Mobius strip of buzz that goes nowhere but back to themselves. This apparently is good enough to fool some idiot investor who put millions into their charade but it ain't selling in Peoria.

The Victory Caucus is their latest "tipping point" novelty item and sure enough, they did pump up the hits to 30,000 for a day or two via relentless incestuous linking but as the site meter shows, all that boasting about how there really is a majority of Americans who believe Iraq can still be "won" is as empty as their current hit count.

[Thanks to PlaguePuppy for the correction]
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2 Comments:

Blogger Plaguepuppy said...

Romulus strip has an interesting ring, but I suspect you meant 'Möbius'.

12:00:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

LOL PlaguePuppy. You're correct. I did mean Mobius. That's the problem with posting on the fly when you're exhausted and have no time to proof the posts. Thanks for the heads up.

12:36:00 PM  

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