thoughts on the tea parties?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Bush had something like a 80% approval rating in Africa. Why don't you get your facts straight before you start posting a bunch of lies.

The entire continent? I'm not the pp but I'd like to see that broken down by country. Would you do that for us? Africa is a pretty big place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bush had something like a 80% approval rating in Africa. Why don't you get your facts straight before you start posting a bunch of lies.

The entire continent? I'm not the pp but I'd like to see that broken down by country. Would you do that for us? Africa is a pretty big place.

Here's a link to an article that I quickly found but I knew the number because I remember hearing it on one of the evening news programs.

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/bush-of-africa/71401/

[Anonymous]

Taking original post in a totally different direction, just want to report that there wre not NEARLY enough teabagging jokes being told in my office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bush had something like a 80% approval rating in Africa. Why don't you get your facts straight before you start posting a bunch of lies.

The entire continent? I'm not the pp but I'd like to see that broken down by country. Would you do that for us? Africa is a pretty big place.

Here's a link to an article that I quickly found but I knew the number because I remember hearing it on one of the evening news programs.

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/bush-of-africa/71401/

Unfortunately, this statement is inaccurate. Here's the statement from the article:

Mr. Bush hasn't gotten much credit for this among the American public, but, as a BBC interviewer noted yesterday, his approval rating in Africa is in the 80% range, which is astonishingly high.

But I went back and looked up the figures in the Pew poll and, while President Bush did score high in a few African countries, it is highly inaccurate to say that he scored in the 80% range in Africa. First of all, the Pew poll did not report on all countries in Africa. Second, other African countries gave him lower confidence scores. He averaged 56% among the African countries in the poll. True, higher than a lot of other places but not anywhere near what the author claimed.

This is emblematic of two troubling things: 1) The consistent way we tend to think of and talk about "Africa" as if it is a country when in actuality it's a continent that contains highly diverse countries within it and 2) the lack of understanding of statistics and the kinds of abuses that result from it.

You, pp, are not responsible for this distortion. You simply passed on what someone in the media said. But we all need to look carefully at what is behind such sweeping statements about things like public opinion in "Africa."

This happens on the left as well. A number of years ago there was a big hoopla about an alleged huge increase in domestic violence on the day of the Superbowl. A WaPo reporter investigated and found that a lot of people claiming this were quoting each other. One advocate pointed to a research paper showing an increase in emergency room admissions of women in Northern Virginia who had been shot, stabbed, or had fallen on the day after the Redskins won a game. She incorrectly said that it showed a 40% increase in these incidents. So, first of all, she couldn't understand the thing she was reading and second of all it's quite a stretch to link increase of emergency room admissions to football games in Northern Virginia.

At any rate, the very first thing to ask yourself when you hear things such as a 40% increase in emergency room admissions (which as one person pointed out, we would have noticed if it had been that big of an increase) or Bush had an 80% approval rating in Africa is what is really behind that statement?

Here's the link for the Pew study: http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=256

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Taking original post in a totally different direction, just want to report that there wre not NEARLY enough teabagging jokes being told in my office.

If you think teabagging jokes are appropriate in an office you need a serious lesson in proper behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Here's a link to an article that I quickly found but I knew the number because I remember hearing it on one of the evening news programs.

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/bush-of-africa/71401/

PP again here. Forgot to post the figures from the Pew report. It's difficult to sort them out in this form so if you have trouble with it, check out the link I posted in the earlier piece I wrote about this.

A lot of confidence Some confidence Not too much confidence No confidence at all DK/Refused Total
Ethiopia 20 28 29 21 1 100
Ghana 36 33 13 11 6 100
IvoryCoast33 49 11 7 0 100
Kenya 33 39 16 10 3 100
Mali 28 38 14 18 2 100
Nigeria 36 26 12 21 5 100
Senegal 11 27 22 35 5 100
SouthAfrica11 26 21 33 9 100
Tanzania 16 24 15 34 11 100
Uganda 22 30 14 15 19 100

[Anonymous]

Okay, sorry to go on about this but here's the 11:44 again and I discovered the origin of the BBC quote that said Bush had approval ratings of 80% in Africa.

A paragraph early on says:

He has approval ratings of around 80% in Africa, according to some polls, and in Kosovo a main street was named after him to thank him for supporting Kosovo's independence.

Whereas a paragraph much further on says accurately:

Pew foundation polls suggested that he had approval ratings of up to 80%, even in countries with a dominantly Muslim population.

I'm really surprised that the reporter's editor let that first incorrect statement get through. Here's the piece if anyone wants to look at it directly:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7821449.stm

And with that I will stop going on about statistics this morning!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taking original post in a totally different direction, just want to report that there wre not NEARLY enough teabagging jokes being told in my office.

If you think teabagging jokes are appropriate in an office you need a serious lesson in proper behavior.

I'll be sure to exlude you from the next teabagging party invite, Captain No-Fun.

[Anonymous]

I don't know-I think if fox made some kind of veiled sexual comment about Obama we would have hear a huge uproar--bottom line it was unprofessional but so many of these reporters have exposed themselves for being unprofessional that nothing surprises me anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am just laughing. Running a country is not a popularity contest and if you notice Obama got no support from any of the countries,in his recent summit, on his policies and in fact was chided over his spending..by China and France..god help us!!. Having diplomacy wth Chavez is a non starter--have you no idea what he does to his citizens esp. those who dissent..have you no idea about how he takes over private corporation that invest in his country

So what do you think China does to its dissenters? Yet we borrow money from them! Yet we trade with them! We let them import billions of dollars worth of goods into our country. What's the difference?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bush had something like a 80% approval rating in Africa. Why don't you get your facts straight before you start posting a bunch of lies.

The entire continent? I'm not the pp but I'd like to see that broken down by country. Would you do that for us? Africa is a pretty big place.

There is no freakin' way Bush had such a high approval rating throughout Africa. Most of Africa is MUSLIM. Muslims hated Bush across the entire world. They felt betrayed by him. I should know as I'm a Muslim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Bush had something like a 80% approval rating in Africa. Why don't you get your facts straight before you start posting a bunch of lies.

The entire continent? I'm not the pp but I'd like to see that broken down by country. Would you do that for us? Africa is a pretty big place.

There is no freakin' way Bush had such a high approval rating throughout Africa. Most of Africa is MUSLIM. Muslims hated Bush across the entire world. They felt betrayed by him. I should know as I'm a Muslim.

I don't know, maybe spending billions of American dollars to fight AIDS and malaria might have made a difference? All Muslim's are not anti-American, are they?

[Anonymous]

My thoughts? The tea parties are totally misunderstood or misrepresented by the media. This is not anti-Obama, but anti-big government. All these commentators saying "Gee, don't these people know they just got a tax cut?" totally miss the point. Responsible adults realize that when you borrow, you eventually have to pay back. Borrowing to give feel good tax cuts today just postpones the inevitable increase until tomorrow.

Frankly the pandering of the Gee we gave you a tax cut crowd is the perfect example of what was being protested.

[Anonymous]

May I add that Keith Olbermann & Janeane Garofalo's "analysis" reducing the protesters to a bunch of limbic brain damaged racists doesn't do the left any favors.

[Anonymous]

Republicans just can't pull off a protest. They might as well try saying "You Go, Girl".