John McCain has essentially admitted that he doesn’t understand economics.
Yikes.
I suppose he’s at least being honest.
Daily Archives: September 16, 2008
Canadian Election: Be Wary of Polls
Polls wield an enormous amount of influence on the decision making process with Canadians. Every day, during an election, we’re inundated with numbers about how leaders are doing, who we’d vote for and what the trends are.
Unfortunately, a lot of it is bunk. Polls might offer some guidelines, but they are rooted in an imperfect science. I could go to the ‘Canadians Supporting Stephen Harper’ Facebook page (I don’t know if there is one) and ask them what they thought of recent announcements and conclude that 100% would love to jump Steve’s sweater-clad bones.
To make matters worse, questions can be carved out to reflect the ‘conclusions’ that pollsters and the mainstream media want to push through the public.
Example: do you like it when people rape you? If no, should we have more money spent on security?
However, the reality is that this probably only represents the will of a small portion of people.
Here’s a story that might be of interest to those who read this blog : Gallop has been accused of releasing number only when they favour McCain.
Gallup is admitting the following:
- At the time it released the September 8th poll (showing McCain up by 10), it believed institutionally that likely voter results were less accurate than registered voter results.
- Likely voter results have only occasionally diverged from the registered voter results.
- Despite these facts, Gallup deliberately chose to release, to the widest fanfare possible, a poll using an admittedly less accurate method (the likely voter method) at the time of McCain’s maximum convention bounce, knowing that it would show a large divergence (+10 for McCain vs. only +4 with registered voters) based on the likely voter method, even though such a divergence is not often present.
- In short, they combined all possible factors in McCain’s favor to make his lead seem as big as possible — and the media went wild with it.
Like tea leaves, these predictions and prognostications are up to interpretation. Be careful how you read the numbers and be even more wary of how people interpret them for you.
Financial Meltdown Incomplete
The financial meltdown is incomplete. Yay. We should expect to see several more ‘institutions’ on Wall Street dissolve like a poorly built castle on a beach on a stormy day.
Moving to the Canadian election: what underpins this instability is a once-inflated housing market that has been deflating for years in the US.
Stephen Harper wants to create a similar level of house price ecstasy in Canada by pushing new home building here, based on his latest string of promises geared towards breeders and builders.
How sadly out of touch this is. This man can’t even keep up with today’s headlines, let alone the general direction of the interests of Canadians.
Our economy is hanging by a thread because of Republican & Conservative neglect. He points to national figures saying that things are going well, yet fails to acknowledge the wake of disaster that laissez-faire policies have left for Canada.
More is being spent on defense in both the US and Canada than ever before, billions are being dumped into the pockets of well, billionaires, and nothing is being done to salvage our manufacturing economy.
In times like these, governments are supposed to open the budgets to people and go into deficit. We are not corporations and quarterly reports should not dictate the future stability of this country.
We are a country of people that need leadership rather than casual comments about not worrying about the state of the market.
Stephen Harper: Permanently Our of Touch
Stephen Harper constantly attacks schemes that are being made up on the fly, but is he really that much better?
Think about it. His last two promises from our pocket books:
- Baby bonuses for breeders
- Housing bonuses to increase the number of suburbanites
These policies show that Harper is consistently out of touch with the general trends related to urban intensification, single or no-child families and a general dislike of the constant expansion of cities into good, arable farmland.
People don’t want more houses. They want urban infrastructure.
People are concerned about population and are only have one child, if couples have one at all. Breeders are a thing of the past.
People don’t want to level good farmland for more McMansions. They want a reliable source of food and produce to feed themselves and those they love.
People want commitment to stability brought on by tough regulation and monitoring of what’s happening in the marketplace. They don’t want to die because of bad meat and they don’t want to lose their homes because of deregulation.
In summary, I believe the people of Canada want commitment to green action. Period. It’s the dominant plank of all other parties in Canada and not with the Conservatives. Local. Prudent. A helping hand rather than the invisible hand.
I guess it comes with mindset. Republicans Conservatives are rooted in a belief structure that is centred around the notion of "what is here belongs to us and all resources should be used today to our benefit. Today." Go forth and multiply. Etc etc.
What do you think?
I believe this weakness of the Republicans Conservatives (the fact that they’re out of touch) will be their downfall, but only if people stop falling for Steve’s sacharine ‘sacrifices’.