On Oct 2, 2008, at 1:42 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Ralph Nader, Shane Mage, Counterpunch, and the Republican right
> agree - the people have spoken! Have they?]
>
> <http://pewresearch.org/pubs/977/the-bad-rap-on-the-bailout-bill>
> The Bad Rap on the Bailout Bill
> by Andrew Kohut, President, Pew Research Center
> October 1, 2008
>
> The American public is taking a bad rap for Congress's failure to
> pass the bailout bill...
> An ABC/Washington Post survey conducted on Sept 29 found the public
> evenly split with 45% favoring and 47% opposing a government
> proposal to use $700 billion to shore up failing financial
> institutions on Wall Street...
There's all the difference in the world between *a* proposal to "shore up failing financial institutions" and "*the* bailout bill." And the extreme bias of the pollster is revealed by his words "taking a bad rap for," instead of a neutral "given responsility for" or, *per impossibile* a positive "given credit for." Not to mention the loaded difference between "failure to pass" and "rejection of." Giving credence to so obviously biased a source just reveals one's own bias.
Nevertheless, even with his ingrained right-wing bias (as long as I
can remember the words "Pew" and "Right-wing Republican" were
virtually synonymous) this pollster cannot avoid admitting that
> ..fully two-thirds of Americans (67%) say that they feel angry about
> the government's plan...
and this must be awfully disappointing to the disaster capitalists
when, thanks to the hysteria of all MSM financial reporting
> ...the financial crisis is dominating the public's consciousness at
> levels usually only associated with wars and natural disasters...
even though that MSM hysteria is successful enough for MSM polling to
find
> ...94% saying the current financial situation is a crisis. And 88%
> of ...respondents worried that Congress's rejection of the plan,
> which resulted in Monday's big stock market loss, could lead to a
> more severe economic decline in this country...
And by the way, when will the pollster (or the one quoting him) say something like "the Senate's approval of the plan, which resulted in Thursday's big stock market loss?"
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos