u hardly know where to begin, i certainly dont know where to stop!

u sed 'the biggest issue of all is how they would try to broach this subject when it is such a political timebomb'
my guess is that they are confident that they can sell it - ie its presumptive to assume that its truly a political timebomb. praps the most interesting thing is that they are apparently trying to ram it thru *b4* the election, rather than waiting till after nov. given that they are taking this apparently risky strategy, we can perhaps assume two things a) they know they can survive it b) they are in a real hurry. given that the election is only 6 months away, it would make sense for them to wait, unless they cant afford to wait another six months.

u sed "so maybe the Dem's/media are trying to scare this rat out of the hole while there's still a chance..."
i wish i had your lack of cyncism :-)
heres the things - a) one of those pushing thru legislation is a dem. rangel is his name. the GOP bill promoter is hagel. b) the media is pushing the story - thats why we see the issue on hannity/brown/blitzer et al. theres no rat scaring going on. its all basically an advertisement for the draft.

i cant find the details of the blitzer poll - but no matter. polls (especially medias silly yes/no questions) are purely political tools - the important issue is the fact that they are running the poll at all. there are 8 main levels of message control in purported polls
a) the selection of which issues even get a poll (ie lets have a poll on the draft)
b) the wording/framing of the question/issue (eg 'we need more troops in iraq. do u support the draft?' is different to 'vietnam was a disaster. do u support the draft?' same question, different results)
c) the choice/wording of the options/answers. (a 'yes/no' choice is different to 'a) yes - draft 500k kids for the military b) yes - draft 30m kids to subsidize corporations c) no'
d) the choice of who gets polled (whether actually choosing respondents, or by choosing whether to run the poll on blitzer, or on oprah, or during the day, or at night etc)
e) freeping (someone continually answering the online poll, or organizing like-minded people to respond to the poll)
f) outrite changing of the results
g) how the results are presented
h) whether the results are presented - if they like the results itll get press, and if they dont like it, they dont report it fully.

basically - any outcome can be engineered. a classic one was the bbc poll in iraq one year after the invasion. i think the headline was 'most iraqis feel better off' (ie iraqis think the invasion was a good thing). the actual data said something like '57% of iraqis feel better than they did a year ago' - the unsaid bit was that a year ago, iraqis were expecting to get shocked and awed at any moment.

so my guess is that they will have been happy with the 72% - its far from overwhelming. all they need to do now is hit the 'we need more troops - do u support the draft?' and 'hey liberals - its not fair that blacks are over-represented in the military - do u support the draft?' buttons.

separately, i saw a story briefly on the teeve abuot some plan to change the rules so the congress people can be appointed, rather than elected. the apparent logic being that if congress gets 911'd and lots of people die, then we'll have to appoint new congresspeeps so that they can, for example, declare war... (thats how absurdly audacious they are - they didnt need congress to declare the iraq war!).

be very afraid.


__________________________________________________
but we were *saving* the village
wotisitgood4.blogspot.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 11:28 PM
To: Luke Ryland
Subject: RE: she's drafty, she gets around....


Wow. A record rant night...hardly know where to begin...

However, I will note that CNN has been playing up the draft issue quite a
lot, with Wolf Blitzer Poll of the Day - Do you think we should institute a
draft (72% said no, by the way), and other speculative Draft stories...I
still find it hard to imagine actually happening, but indeed the facts are
starting to point in that direction.

But the biggest issue of all is how they would try to broach this subject
when it is such a political timebomb...and so maybe the Dem's/media are
trying to scare this rat out of the hole while there's still a chance...




__________________________________________________
but we were *saving* the village
wotisitgood4.blogspot.com