04/20/06 FOX Poll: Gloomy Economic Views; Bush Approval at New Low

MobBoss said:
Everything that happens to me on a daily basis at work and at home indicate otherwise.
But that's to you and not Joe Schmo two blocks over. Their experiences might be different, though.

Even though the economy isn't in the dumps, once again, the higher prices of certain things have made it seem worse than it might otherwise be.
 
zulu9812 said:
Worst. President. Ever.
Nah, Nixon had a lower approval rating.

And I think Franklin Pierce was much worse.
 
Well, I am not a liberal, and I don't know about the entire economy, but I just paid $35.00 to fill up my gas tank this afternoon, and I used to fill it up for $15.00 and I thought that was outrageous then. I can hardly afford to pay my bills anymore, because I only got a huge!? 3% raise. Let me say this, if all the rest of the prices of goods and services continues to go up like the price of gas (and they will, because of the price of gas) then I am going to have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet. Something has got to give. I don't think it's because of the war in Iraq, and I don't think it's President Bush's fault either. I always thought that in the past, wars were supposed to be good for the economy?
 
MobBoss said:
Massive Deficits: Does not effect me on a daily basis.

Increased US expenditures in Iraq: Does not effect me on a daily basis.
Of course they don't. You're not the one that will be paying for them.
 
How low can Bush get :lol:?
 
megalomaniac said:
Statistics can be made to say whatever you want them to.
The margin of error for a .000003% sample.
Besides, 900/280000000 is not big enough to produce a valid statistic.

Incorrect. If a sample size becomes a sizable portion of the total population, the result is skewed. There are equations, which depend on what type of statistical test that is used, to find the optimal sample size required based on the statistical power desired, usually ~80%. More appropriate to polling here, is the marigin of error.

And statistics can only be made to say whatever you want to say if you do not use it properly. Use statistics properly and there is no problem. For example, look at this link to determine the marigin of error of a poll- http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/selstat/ssstart.htm

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Using this sample size with a 95% confidence level, we have a confidence interval of ~3.07 for a 33% approval rating; e.g. 33% +/- 3.07.

As well, from wikipedia:

An interesting mathematical fact is that the margin of error depends only on the sample size and not on the population size, provided that the population is significantly larger than the sample size. Thus for instance, the poll in the running example with 1,013 randomly sampled registered voters would yield essentially the same margin of error (4% with a 99% level of confidence) regardless of whether the population of registered voters consisted of 100,000 people or 100,000,000 people.

This may seem counter-intuitive at first; after all, each person in the population has a unique personality and opinion, and in a very large population, only a very small fraction of such people would actually be polled, and it would thus seem that the poll is not capturing enough information. However, because a poll involves only a very specific question, there is only one relevant attribute in the population that needs to be considered, and this means that an individual's opinion is effectively equivalent to those of many other members of the population, some fraction of which will be polled. For instance, in the running example, the only relevant attribute of a population member is whether he or she is a Bush voter, a Kerry voter, or a Nader voter - all other characteristics of a population member are irrelevant. Thus for instance if there are 100,000,000 registered voters, and 48,000,000 of them were Kerry voters, then for the purposes of this statistical analysis all of the 48,000,000 individuals in this group would be completely interchangeable and equivalent. An individual Kerry voter has 47,999,999 other voters with identical opinions (as far as the poll question is concerned), and it is exceedingly likely that a poll of 1,013 voters will contain a properly representative fraction of this group, provided of course that the voters being polled were selected randomly.

To give an analogy, suppose that one is trying to estimate the percentage of salt in an ocean. This can be easily accomplished by taking a glass of seawater and then chemically analyzing the proportion of salt in that sample. The amount of salt and water in this glass is far smaller than the amount of salt and water in the ocean under study. Nevertheless, the sample is likely to give a very accurate measurement of the ocean's salinity, provided of course that the salt is evenly distributed across the ocean (this hypothesis is the analogue of the hypothesis that the poll sample is being randomly chosen). In fact, one could already obtain a crude but reasonable estimate of salinity by testing just a single drop of seawater, though of course the larger sample in the glass would provide a more accurate measurement. This analogy may help explain why it is the sample size, rather than the population size, that determines the margin of error in a poll.
 
MSNBC said:
The Dow Jones industrial average on Friday rose 4.56 points, or 0.04 percent, to 11,347.45, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index slipped 0.18 point, or 0.01 percent, to 1,311.28. The Nasdaq Composite Index , however, fell 19.69 points, or 0.83 percent, to 2,342.86.

For the week, the Dow ended up 1.9 percent at its second straight six-year high, the S&P gained 1.7 percent and the Nasdaq finished 0.7 percent higher.

The blue-chip Dow index hit a lifetime high of 11,750.28 on January 14, 2000 and the S&P 500 touched its high of 1,553.11 in March the same year. But the Nasdaq is still far from its peak of 5,132.52 seen in March 2000 during the technology bubble.

The economy is strong. Gas prices are the only reason why people think the economy is weak (and that they keep getting told the economy is weak). And short of price fixing and drilling our own oil in Alaska, what can be done about gas?
 


She really needs to be convinced that it is her duty to run! Frankly, to any bigshot national RNC type Republicans reading this, she's the only chance of you all keeping my vote the next time around. It's either her or most likely I'm Constitution Party bound.
 
Olorin0222 said:
The economy is strong. Gas prices are the only reason why people think the economy is weak (and that they keep getting told the economy is weak). And short of price fixing and drilling our own oil in Alaska, what can be done about gas?
You could always make car companies produce more fuel efficent cars. Start looking at alternative fuels is another option.
 
The economy is still doing fine, the Dow was able to rally almost 300 points this week even with $70+ oil futures. Typically that announcement would crush the market, we have cooped with higher gas prices without taking on too much inflation.
 
I blame the conservative media for him being selected, then elected, in the first place.

The man is doing such a poor job that even the conservative media can no longer spin things positively.
 
Irish Caesar said:
If you base presidents only on their approval ratings, then you are a fool.

If you do a search of this forum for threads started by myself, you will see that I have given plenty of reasons why Bush is a bad president. Fool.
 
Xanikk999 said:
We cant provide security on a full scale for iraqis. Some of these terrorist groups are not just targeting american troops but iraqi civilians also. And with all the insurgents popping up fighting us with geurrilla warfare styles its not a war that can be won.
Oh yes you can.

The problem is, of course, it's not "economically viable" and that a westerner's life is worth more than an Iraqis.

'Nuff said.
 
VRWCAgent said:


She really needs to be convinced that it is her duty to run! Frankly, to any bigshot national RNC type Republicans reading this, she's the only chance of you all keeping my vote the next time around. It's either her or most likely I'm Constitution Party bound.

I want Condoleeza Rice v. Hillary Clinton, so it can motive me just enough to move out of this nation.
 
CIVPhilzilla said:
The economy is still doing fine, the Dow was able to rally almost 300 points this week even with $70+ oil futures. Typically that announcement would crush the market, we have cooped with higher gas prices without taking on too much inflation.
The Dow rallied because of the Fed minutes, which indicated that rates have peaked. Markets like low interest rates, but they indicate that the Fed thinks that the economy has also peaked.

I'm playing devil's advocate here, by the way.
 
zulu9812 said:
If you do a search of this forum for threads started by myself, you will see that I have given plenty of reasons why Bush is a bad president. Fool.

Heh, Zulu signs his quotes "Fool". I like it.:lol:
 
Bah, the Dow is a rather crap indicator for the state of the economy anyway (the S&P 500 would be better, but for most people, the state of the stock market still doesn't affect their bottom line as much as generally thought).

If inflation hasn't risen as much as one would expect in a a fast-growing economy, it's because real wages are pretty much flat. That's a sign of weakness, not of strength. Unemployment is low because people are dropping out of the labour force, and job creation hasn't kept up with population growth for several years now. The main thing keeping GDP growth up now is GDP spending, and if you look at the [negative] real savings rate among consumers, it looks sustainable only if the rise in housing prices keeps up (since housing makes up for the lion's share of most people's investment portfolio, its appreciation in value makes peoplethink they're rich even if the price rises can usually not in fact be easily cashed in).

Contrary to popular belief, most people in fact aren't that stupid when it comes to their personal finances, so if Americans think the economy is doing only fair to poorly by a 2 to 1 majority, chances are good that things aren't as fine as a few cherry-picked numbers would seem to suggest.
 
MobBoss said:
Dont see this one. Feel free to convince me.
:lol: I think that is the whole issue. If you want our energy policy ask an oil executive.
 
Xanikk999 said:
Well they are definitly more knowledgable about the situation then any outside observer...

Read it.

I volunteered to go back to Iraq for the fall and winter of 2004-2005. I went back out of frustration and guilt; frustration from watching Iraq unravel on the news and guilt that I wasn’t there trying to stop it. Many fine Marines from my reserve battalion felt the same and volunteered to go back. I buried my mounting suspicions and mustered enough trust and faith in my civilian leadership to go back.

I returned disillusioned by what I saw. I participated in the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. We crushed the insurgents in the city, but we only ended up scattering them throughout the province. The dumb ones stayed and died. The smart ones left town before the battle, to garner more recruits and fight another day. We were simply the little Dutch boy with our finger in the dike. In retrospect, we never had enough troops to firmly control the region; we had just enough to maintain a tenuous equilibrium.

I now know I wrongfully placed my faith and trust in a presidential administration hopelessly mired in incompetence, hubris and a lack of accountability. It planned a war based on false intelligence and unrealistic assumptions. It has strategically surrendered the condition of victory in Iraq to people who do not share our vision, values or interests. The Bush administration has proven successful at only one thing in Iraq — painting us into a corner with no feasible exit.

I will never trust any of them again.

Christopher H. Sheppard is a former Marine captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq as a combat engineer. He currently is finishing his master’s degree in mass communication and lives in Marysville.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002925025_snomarine12.html

Iraq Construction Projects Fall Short Of Goals

BAGHDAD -- On the southern outskirts of Baghdad, a sewage treatment plant that was repaired with $13.5 million in U.S. funds sits idle while all of the raw waste from the western half of Baghdad is dumped into the Tigris River, where many of the capital's 7 million residents get their drinking water.

Adjacent to the Karkh sewage plant is Iraq's most advanced sanitary landfill, a new, 20-acre, $32 million dump -- also paid for by the United States -- with a liner to prevent groundwater contamination. It has not had a load of garbage dropped off since the manager of the sewer plant was killed four months ago. Iraqis consider the access roads too dangerous, and Iraqi police rarely venture into the area, a haven for insurgents who regularly lob mortar shells across the city into the Green Zone less than six miles away.

A reservist in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Col. Otto Albert Busher III, says that Baghdad easily needs $3 billion in water and sewer repair.

Busher estimated that between 40 percent and 60 percent of the purified water that leaves Baghdad's treatment plants never makes it to city taps because of leaks in the system.

"You're looking at a couple of million dollars of lost water per day," he said. And because the water network was built 25 years ago with brittle cement pipes that have a 20-year life, every time a bomb explodes in Baghdad, the water system is damaged.

Even tanks rumbling on the streets crack the pipes -- and not just water pipes, but sewer pipes that run alongside. Contamination of fresh water by sewage "happens on a daily basis," Busher said.


http://www.parapundit.com/archives/003378.html#003378

In fairness a recent survy put Bush approval amounst serving personal at 53% down from 64% last year. No doubt there is a decline in support from the troops themselves as the Iraq war drags on.
 
CivGeneral said:
How low can Bush get :lol:?


Zero Percent

I'll keep my fingers crossed:D
 
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