or, maybe they're saying (for the top right example) 67% of fox news viewers believe the statement, etc......

jerseyhoya wrote:No, I think that means that 33% of Fox viewers believe that WMDs were found, compared to 23% of CBS viewers, etc.

Dammit now I don't know what it means

It means PIPA/Knowledge Networks Inc. is incompetent mostly

Woody wrote:This isn't new, but interesting



Found it in this article, which is scary, but not unexpected

These findings, if true, have worrying implications. Cognitive dissonance won't help people make rational decisions, but it also suggests that there's little point in arguing with someone who holds an opposing belief.

Most of us here realize that by now.

commies at the bottom

paging Tufte

"The Leonardo da Vinci of data."

Woody wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:No, I think that means that 33% of Fox viewers believe that WMDs were found, compared to 23% of CBS viewers, etc.

Dammit now I don't know what it means

Pretty sure that's the only thing that makes sense numerically. It's just whoever created that graphic is at least as dumb as the people they were trying to mock, since that's not what the graphic says.

jerseyhoya wrote:The Democrats have 235 votes in the House. You need 218 to pass legislation. There's more bipartisan agreement in the Senate, which is needed to prevent a filibuster.

Dajafi's post after yours explained it well, but why should Democrats bear the burden of passing this alone. A lot of Republicans - if I were Pelosi, I would insist on at least half of all House Republicans - should have to commit to a "yes" vote before the Democrats should even allow this to come to the floor.

It's a different principle but I still recall that when Denny Hastert was House Speaker with a very small majority, he declared that no bill would be brought to a vote unless supported by "a majority of the majority". In other words, a bill could have had unanimous Democratic support and 49% Republican support - roughly 2/3rds of the House and Hastert would not have permitted a vote.

They've played this way a long, long time - they're not going to get a chance now to put this all on the Democrats. The pain and the blame will be shared.

BuddyGroom wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:The Democrats have 235 votes in the House. You need 218 to pass legislation. There's more bipartisan agreement in the Senate, which is needed to prevent a filibuster.

Dajafi's post after yours explained it well, but why should Democrats bear the burden of passing this alone. A lot of Republicans - if I were Pelosi, I would insist on at least half of all House Republicans - should have to commit to a "yes" vote before the Democrats should even allow this to come to the floor.

It's a different principle but I still recall that when Denny Hastert was House Speaker with a very small majority, he declared that no bill would be brought to a vote unless supported by "a majority of the majority". In other words, a bill could have had unanimous Democratic support and 49% Republican support - roughly 2/3rds of the House and Hastert would not have permitted a vote.

They've played this way a long, long time - they're not going to get a chance now to put this all on the Democrats. The pain and the blame will be shared.

I appreciate that you didn't read my response to dajafi's post.

Read it - you want the Republicans to pony up 80 votes or so. Fine. Just putting in my two cents - thought some might find the old Hastert policy relevant to the situation.

McCain is going to the debate.

BuddyGroom wrote:Read it - you want the Republicans to pony up 80 votes or so. Fine. Just putting in my two cents - thought some might find the old Hastert policy relevant to the situation.

I think jh and I are describing two sides of the same mutated elephant/donkey hybrid.

His point that Obama and Hill Dems shouldn't muck things up any further is a fair one, but at the same time I think a little frustration is understandable: these guys thought they had a deal (which they already knew they'd be getting killed for over their next recess), and then it fell apart right around when McCain made his high-profile entrance into the discussion. Based on what I've read, it's way too strong to say that he quashed it himself, but the presence of all those extra cameras and pencils was I'm sure tempting to those given to grandstanding on both sides... i.e. pretty much all of them.

BuddyGroom wrote:Read it - you want the Republicans to pony up 80 votes or so. Fine. Just putting in my two cents - thought some might find the old Hastert policy relevant to the situation.

How, exactly, is the Hastert comparison relevant? It's actually the inverse of what's going on. The GOP ran the House, and passed bills without help of Democrats for the 12 years. Now the Dems run the House, and can't pass a bill without the help of Republicans? Pelosi isn't doing this because she all of a sudden is really responsive to the rights of the minority. She's doing it because she doesn't want House Dems to be on the hook for this by themselves. Of course if the plan fails, I imagine 99% of the blame will fall on Bush and not Congress, but whatever.

Your history is also lacking in one great respect. If a majority of House members signed a discharge petition, the bill came to the House floor, regardless of what Hastert wanted to do. That's how campaign finance reform passed.

I'm backing JH on this one (hoya, not 316). The Hastert example is not at all relevant. Just like he said, it's an inverse.

I'm a little frustrated with the Dems though. They have enough votes to pass a bill they believe has to be passed. It will be approved by the President. But they don't want to pass it because it's controversial. So okay, let's try to get the Republicans on board, but let's not go so far as to not pass the bill.

Except that Bush is a Republican, one who for quite some time had shut Democrats out of the governing process. Yes, conservative Republicans also have their beefs with Bush (This is actually turning out somewhat like Medicare Part D) but in the end, the obstacle here is a split among Republicans.

So, is it a pissing contest? Yes. Is it all the Democrats fault? Not at all. Now would be a good time for everyone to go and read Mann and Ornstein's The Broken Branch. It will explain how we've come to this point.

TenuredVulture wrote:Except that Bush is a Republican, one who for quite some time had shut Democrats out of the governing process. Yes, conservative Republicans also have their beefs with Bush (This is actually turning out somewhat like Medicare Part D) but in the end, the obstacle here is a split among Republicans.

So, is it a pissing contest? Yes. Is it all the Democrats fault? Not at all. Now would be a good time for everyone to go and read Mann and Ornstein's The Broken Branch. It will explain how we've come to this point.

I said "So who had their money on Bush acting like a grown up and everyone else pissing and moaning and generally acting like children? Anyone?" I don't think that anyone is saying it's all the Democrats fault.

I think the Dems are being disingenuous with all this "We had a deal and McCain effed it up" crap. The House GOP is what is holding this back, apparently. They weren't involved in the "deal" that was "made." How does McCain have anything to do with that?

I think anyone who pretends that Pelosi can't pass this by herself if she wants to doesn't know how the House works.

I think the House GOP is being retarded by holding back at least partially supporting it.

I think McCain is partially to blame, and not for showing up, but because he hasn't taken a position other than "we should all get together, negotiate, and pass something."

Actually, JerseyHoya made some good points and I wasn't aware of what he said about the discharge petition.

I cited the Hastert policy more to try to illustrate that Republicans often seem to want to play by their own set of rules, rather than by the ones already in play. And I'll add that most speakers exert enough influence over their own party that they can quash members of their party from voting for a discharge petition. But that's not the issue here, so I'll drop it.

What I perceive is that conservative financial ideology is at the base of much of what has happened with the investment banks, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, etc. I know that is not a new or novel viewpoint. But I just find it ironic that, in essence, congressional Republicans apparently want the Democrats to clean up the conservatives' mess - and absorb the unpopularity of the Bush-administration sponsored solution - and take the blame if it doesn't work out well.

I have no illusion that Nancy Pelosi is looking out for the rights of the minority party. She is looking for responsibility (and possibly blame) to be shared equally. Will the Republicans - who I and many others blame for much of this debacle - finally stand up and do the nation's business for a change?

Finally, has anyone seen McCain's grandstanding statement on agreeing to debate tonight? He claims that he was a model of bipartisanship while Obama basically scuttled an agreement by posturing and politicizing. I believe this is called projecting.

Why House Republicans Balked

Definitely worth a read.

Here's a piece by Michael Barone on the House Republicans' position regarding the bail-out/rescue.

What do House Republicans want? A senior House Republican gave me and some other reporters a look yesterday at what a working group headed by Assistant Minority Whip Eric Cantor is demanding. The senior House Republican (hereinafter SHR) has what sounded to me like an ingenious approach. He cited Ginnie Mae loans to low-income borrowers, which the government can insure. He proposed that the government (presumably through the entity envisioned by the Paulson plan) offer to sell insurance to financial institutions that hold mortgage-backed securities (hereinafter MBS). Premiums would be determined by the rates of foreclosure on each class of securities so far. Under this plan, the government would be taking in money, not paying it out. Of course, if the premiums are not enough to cover losses, the government might eventually take losses, as it did when the savings and loan industry collapsed. But losses don't seem inevitable and in any case will mostly occur in out-years, not now.

So I asked the SHR whether a commitment by Paulson to consider an insurance program would be enough to win over a significant number of House Republicans. He said that a hazy commitment would not be enough, with the implication that the bill would still seem to House Republicans to be a Wall Street bailout with the implication that the government would be shelling out $700 billion of taxpayer money. I followed up by asking whether House Republicans would go along if Paulson pledged to use authority in the statute to set up an insurance program within a month of passage. "That would go far toward convincing [Republican] members," the SHR said. In other words, the insurance option may be the way to save this legislation.