Obama '08?

Fox vs kicky; kicky wins by a "knockout!"

Yep. Not "probably" - you did. I just quoted you doing so.


A month. I may be getting older but my memory can still deal with a month.


What do you mean with "out of context"? Responding to a Media Matters item that had nothing to do whatsoever with Soros, you went out of your way to add "Soros-funded" as qualifier to describe them three times in a row. No idea what that was supposed to achieve, I assume it counts as an insult in your eyes. My point here was simple: you repeatedly asserted that MM was Soros-funded; it wasnt. End. What context would you like to have introduced here on that count?


Huh? I happened to come upon the Politico correction today, and remembered that you had made the exact same allegation that the Politico had to retract just a month ago. So I typed "Media Matters Soros" in the A2K search box, found your post in question, and responded to it. Took me five minutes.


When you posted here that George Soros funded Media Matters, and called Media Matters the Soros-funded people? No, you didn't.

When you later reworded the claim more ambiguously in another thread, you did give a source - CNSNews (founded as "Conservative News Service"). When that was received sceptically, you did (not for the first time) what appears to be a Google word search linkdump - a bunch of links that must all have had the words "Soros" and "Media Matters" in it, but that you hadnt apparently actually read, since some never even mentioned any link between the two.

For example, your links had an Eric Alterman column among them, from the Nation. One problem: it didnt actually mention Media Matters anywhere - let alone it being Soros-funded. Why was it in your list of links then? I think I know - the little "about Eric Alterman" frame next to the article mentioned that he's a weblogger for Media Matters. So thats how it must have come up in your Google search.

Same with the WaPo story you included in the list. Does it mention anything about Soros funding Media Matters, directly or indirectly? Nope. Nothing. Article happens to mention both Soros and Media Matters, which is how it must have showed up in the Google search results, but it never made any connection between them, not about funding or anyhow else.

So what was that all about? I mean, come on - what do you take us for? Is your gambit to assume that we wont actually click your links anyway, so you can claim to have "listed your sources" even though some of those links never even mentioned the thing you were talking about?


Uhm, I did actually link in the sources for what I posted here. You have to click the blue words - those are links.


"Connections".. Look, didnt you do something in the field of fundraising yourself, once, or do I misremember? If you did, then you will know that most funding is earmarked for specific activities. That is certainly true for most all funding given by Soros's Open Society Institute, for one. You dont, usually, get funding to spend, or in your turn give away again, as you see fit. So funding that Soros gave to "various leftwing organisations" will tend to have been tied to specific projects, activities, etc. And as Media Matters has stated, it has not received funding "indirectly" from Soros this way either.


Really?


See above. Grants and funding are rarely just given away for the grantee to spend on whatever it sees fit. So if Soros works the same way in America as he does here, the money he gave to other organisations would have been spent on earmarked activities, and could therefore not have been in turn channeled on to Media Matters.

Not that I would mind if Soros funded Media Matters, just to make that clear - I think they're doing an admirable job of dispassionately fact-checking media stories. They're partisan, for sure - they mostly only fact-check stories that put liberal groups or issues in a bad light. But they are nerdily precise in what they do; simple fact-checking.

So I wouldnt mind - but fact is, he doesnt - and your reasoning that somehow indirectly he is responsible after all is naive at best, and a lie at worst.

Look, lets look at the reasoning here. Your CNS news story says, "Clearly [Media Matters] worked very closely with Soros-funded groups", with which it meant MoveOn.org: ergo, "there is definitely a Soros connection there."

According to the same logic, the US Republican Party funded the Ukrainian Orange revolution. After all, the International Republican Institute has supported organisations, which in turn were active in the revolution.

Simple, uh? Except it's nonsense.


What Kicky said. If you repeat claims that are plain false, then you will be pointed out that they are plain false. If you dont want the bother of being fact-checked, then simply make sure not to post, or parrot, falsehoods.

Since I was very off-topic with that last post and I was talking with Fox about this on two threads simultaneously anyway, I've copied the above post in the other thread and asked Fox to respond there, if she'd like to, as well.

OK, so back on topic -

(I'm still going through some backlog -)

What are the polls in Iowa saying? Like with those in New Hampshire, there's a clear divergence from the picture of the national polls.

This is important for two reasons: one) the people in those states are already far more acquainted with the candidates than elsewhere, and two) no matter what the national polls say, if a candidate flops in both those two states, he's done with for the rest of the race.

On the other hand, its early days, and in Iowa there is the additional problem that the much narrower segment of caucus goers is especially difficult to poll.

All that said here's info about the last poll from the Des Moines Register, from a week ago (the info; the poll itself was done two weeks ago):

Should add this graph of theirs on the candidates' favourability ratings.

John Edwards has both the highest favourability rating, and the lowest unfavourability rating, of all the Democratic contenders.

Obama follows in second place. Hillary is at a clear disadvantage on both counts.

She still fares better than the second tier though. Richardson and Biden should worry, since their unfavourable rating is already as high or higher as that of the frontrunners, while their favourable rate is a lot lower. Ie: fewer people know them, but even among the smaller number that does know them, there are already as many people who dislike them as there are those who dislike the frontrunners.

Kucinich, Dodd and Gravel stand out by having more people think unfavourably of them than favourably. They are thus in the same category as Hunter, Gilmore, Cox and Ron Paul are on the Republican side, though Gravel is the most unpopular one of the lot.

You keep posting all of these polls,but IMHO none of them mean anything.
There are to many people running right now,we havent been given a clear picture on where ANY of them,repub or dem, actually stand on all the issues,and until some of them drop out of the race its just noise coming from both parties.

Feel free to ignore them, Mysteryman.

It'd be great to get Swimpy's take on the local 'noise'. I really enjoyed her reports last time round.

I am not saying to ignore them,they are fun to read.
I am saying that you shouldnt read very much into them yet.

Well the candidates read a lot into them. They're always watching those polls.

Think they know something you don't?

No,but as politicians they rely on polls to determine what color underwear to wear.

I have never been a believer in polls,nor do I trust them.
The wording of a question can have you agreeing that Hitler was the best thing to happen to Europe.

The only poll I trust is the one on election day,where we all get to answer in secret.

Don't waste one second on Bill Richardson. I watched him on Meet the Press, and he's a complete moron. I don't think he could tell you what time it is without contradicting himself.

It's the first time I've tried to listen to him at any length. He impresses me as someone totally impressed with his own importance in the scheme of things, and also pretty clueless.

Wow, that must have been quite the fiasco, if people as different as you two both came away from it with such a devastating impression!

Indeed!

I think Bill has potential but took a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe he's trying so hard to lose weight that his brain isn't in top form.

Well he's never has done very well in the polls and I think he is a non-entity with not much of a message. Paul, on the other hand, is a non-entity with a very strong message that a lot of people like.

(Here's a transcript):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18818527/

I agree with xingu, Richardson is a non-entity, and will remain so in November 2008.

And yet the last opinion polls out before the elections tend to get pretty darn close to the result of that only poll you trust. So they're not really all that unreliable.

If you dont look at one single poll, but take the average of the last polls out before the elections, you'll see that they've become pretty good in getting the percentages right. It's an unlikely case when a candidate ends up getting 3% more or less than the polls had suggested.

For example, I listed the final polls out the day before the elections of '04. Add them all up together and calculate the average, as I did, and they said: Bush 49%; Kerry 48%. The actual result? Bush 51%; Kerry 48%. Not bad.

Same in 2006. The polls didnt end up much off from the actual results at all. Looking at the average of the last polls out rather than any single poll, they got most of the races pegged pretty well. (Dont have a link but there's numbers and graphs on pollster.com.)

So no, they dont deserve the rap that they yield just any random result. Sure, if you tweak the questions enough you can bend the results pretty far (which is why you should beware of polls done on commision for political pressure groups, for example). But these "horserace" political polls are, on the whole, done professionally enough to nowadays be able to get the end percentages down to one or two percent difference.

Course, if the difference between two candidates is just one or two percent, then no poll is going to be able to 'predict' the winner. But on the percentage points for each candidate, they dont do too badly.

Of course, all of that is talking about the last polls out before the elections take place. Right now, we still have a year and a half to go, and anything can happen. So yes, when you write:


Thats absolutely true of course. Even just because the majority of people havent even tuned into the candidates at all yet, and when they make up their minds they can potentially throw the rankings upside down.

The polls published now say nothing about what the final outcome will be, in the primaries next year, let alone the general elections. They have zero predictive power. I mean, a month before the Iowa primaries of '04, Dean and Gephardt were still in the lead in the Democratic race there, right? Kerry was third and Edwards fourth, still.

But what the polls do reflect is how the election campaign is going for the individual candidates so far. They provide the politicians - and us - with feedback about who's making strides in impressing the voters so far, who's made a big mistake. Want to know how Giuliani taking a clear stand on abortion rights went down with the Republicans? Want to see whether Romney and Edwards, in distant third place nationally, are perhaps doing very well under the radar locally? Curious about whether the debates have won or lost any of the candidates any supporters? Polls'll tell you.

Plus, they sometimes provide an interesting sociological sort of snapshot about voters - what they're preoccupied by, what interests them, how their age, religion, place of residence or race affects their views.

For example, Ive gone back to the Iowa poll on the other thread to post about which subjects the likely Democratic and Republican voters consider important. The differences are striking - and telling.

nimh,

Even if you believe that these polls provide a "snapshot" of what the voters are thinking right this minute,there are still to many voices in the choir to understand the song.

There are to many candidates,on both sides,to make a poll right now anything more then a name recognition contest.

Most voters cant tell you right now where any one candidate stands on an issue,because most of them are avoiding being specific,so that they dont lose in the polls.

Until we are down to only 3 or 4 candidates,the polls will be,IMHO,useless but interesting bits of trivia.