A Meaningless Midterm and my own poll...

In the video I reference the following message that Rusty Shackleford sent me after casting his vote:

"Regardless of whether or not you believe in this (and you know my stance on this), assimilation into the military-industrial complex is REALLY far down on the list of priorities for trans rights.  If you want to buy into this neoliberal nonsense, whatever, but I'm going to be heavily side-eying your priorities if this is where you choose to focus your energy.  Liberation, not assimilation.  Don't feed the military more victims and call them "free" for having the privilege of dying for some rich cis-het assholes."

Also, if anyone is interested n seeing the original discussion between myself, Rusty and Princess Bitchface Androgyne Anode, you can find it in the comments section, here. (Assuming MMFA didn't remove any of it.)

And my sincerest apologies to KRISTEN BECK, (not "Christine Speck") who's name eluded me during the video.  I really should have had all of my notes in order: I'm sorry about that!

Something about POLLING DATA...

I saw a really stupid item from Fox News the other day on MMFA. They were trumpeting the results of a POLL that, they claimed showed that they were more balanced that the other media outlets. As is par for the course with Fox, there are several problems with both the claim and interpretation.

1) The poll was old and it's data contradicted by a more recent poll's data.
2) It polled the political affiliation of the VIEWERSHIP, not the content of their broadcast: It showed that they have a ~50/50 split of Democratic vs. Republicans viewers, while other networks have almost entirely Democratic audiences.

(So... Going by that kind of logic, Eminem would have been BLACK.)

The thing is... I don't think either poll says anything particularly profound about Fox at all. Consider this: The percentage of Democrats to Republicans in this country in somewhere between 50/50 and 60/40, slightly favoring the Democrats. So what this polling data tells ME is that Republicans pretty much refuse to watch anything except Fox, whilst Democrats prefer to get their news and opinion from a variety of sources. That says for more about Republicans that it does about Fox, and it doesn't say much for 'em at that. (No tolerance for Cognitive Dissonance, you see.)

Now... Goofy Polling Data is far from just a problem at Fox. A few weeks (months?) back, I heard a story on NPR. They were reporting on a Poll that saying (something like) 80% of Americans were "angry" with "how things were in Washington." (The numbers may not be right, and I'm paraphrasing the poll, but I hope you get the idea.) Now, they went to cite the conventional wisdom that an angry populace is a bad thing for the incumbent party. Well... that's certainly possible, but do you know what they DIDN'T report? (Or apparently ask as a follow-up question?) WHY are people angry? WHAT or WHO are they ANGRY AT? It certainly could be that everyone pissed at the Democrats and their "socialist agenda." (Which is nonsense, but you wan't hear that on Fox!) It's also just as likely that people were pissed at Republicans for obstructing EVERYTHING and refusing to work with a party that is trying to work with them to solve this country's problems. Are they angry at the direction we're heading, or the fact that we're not going there fast enough?!

And THAT'S the problem with the way polls are conducted and reported. They always leave me with an OBVIOUS and EASY follow-up question (or two) that was either not asked or not reported. And what good is applying conventional wisdom in this way? If you're just going to make the results conform to conventional wisdom, WHY BOTHER DOING A POLL IN THE FIRST PLACE?!