Polls, 50-50-50 and 50-50
Over the last couple of days during the convention coverage I've noticed there is, and will continue to be, the talk of what a divided country this is and how all the polls show that it's a close race. Now if you check in here regularly you know that I like to ask questions about things. And I think my main question this brings to my mind is: How can you fix an election if it is not close?

What brought this on is another concept that I will call the 50-50-50 nation. I heard it used a couple of times in reference to, usually a "wingnut" spouting some poll about how we are a 50-50 nation. The person that brings up the 50-50-50 nation is on the opposite side of the argument. What this points to is the fact that election polls are usually done on "likely voters" and don't take into account the opinions of people that usually don't vote. The 50-50-50 should really be 33-33-33. Because in our country roughly 1/3 vote D, 1/3 vote R and 1/3 don't vote. So what this theory takes into account is that if that other third comes out to vote in a substantial number and votes one way then you've got a landslide on you hands. From some of the things I've heard there are many new voters registered for this election.

Now we can debate from now until the cows come home about how a poll should be run but what this means is that if there are a bunch of new voters -- those that usually aren't likely to vote -- they are not being polled for these polls. So if they don't show up before the election in the polls and they don't show up on election day as far as the election returns are concerned. Then did they show up? And how will you know if they did or didn't?

Now the reason this is important when you talk about fixing an election is because if you have someone losing in most or all of the polls going into the election and then he pulls out a win, don't you think people would be suspicious? Especially after 2000. Not to mention when I see things like this, Lost Record '02 Florida Vote Raises '04 Concern, it gets you wondering about how you would have a recount without anything to recount. So if you haven't already done so be sure and check out blackboxvoting.org. These too, Howard Dean, Democrats sound off on e-voting security and Michael Moore to tackle voting rights issues in Florida.

Why did we really attack Saddam?
This Guardian article I posted yesterday, The real reasons Bush went to war, lays out two reasons we went to war in Iraq:

There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

He leaves one other out that also needs to be mentioned, Israel. These, of course are not spoken about in your media. Last year Paul Wolfowitz pretty much admitted that the WMD argument was just a selling point:

"For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair magazine's July issue.

Now just like New Coke or any other product launch we are sold war just like anything else, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." What in essence was done was this administration sat down and said, "what is the scariest thing we can use to sell a war in Iraq to the American sheeple?" Then the intelligence service that serves the President, the CIA, fudged intelligence to make it look like Saddam still had WMD. Even though we were told that he didn't have them anymore:

From 1991 to 1998, U.N. weapons inspectors, among whom I played an integral part, were able to verifiably ascertain a 90 percent to 95 percent level of disarmament inside Iraq. This included all of the production facilities involved with WMD, together with their associated production equipment and the great majority of what was produced by these facilities.

Scott Ritter makes a sane argument saying we should have a national debate about the war and then says this:

But if a case cannot be made on national security grounds, then one must consider the real possibility that the administration's drive for war with Iraq is being pursued in support of a domestic political agenda, something that should concern all Americans, regardless of political affiliation.

The brave men and women in our armed forces have demonstrated their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice so that our democracy can be preserved. To ask them to do so in support of politically driven motives would not only disrespect those to whom we look for protection, but also dishonor American democracy as a whole. It is up to our nation as a whole to ensure that is not, and never will be, the case.

Words like that just make me feel bad and of course your media didn't tell you about this either. We are all to blame for allowing fear and insanity to take over this country and our minds, to allow ourselves to be walked over like that. When one realizes that Iraq had nothing to do with a threat to this country it changes the way you look at the war. It was just a waste and to think that it didn't need to happen, it was just good business. What else would you expect from an administration that is run like a business. First MBA President and a Vice President that was the CEO of Halliburton. It's just common sense that he would steer Federal contracts to his old company that he still has a vested interest in. It's not like a government run by Republicans would ever do anything about it. So when all the Iran talk starts, and it will, just remember that when they try and sell you the Iran war in the same bottle as the Iraq war with a "New and Improved" sticker on it that it's just the same old war.
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 10:52 AM