False Internet Rumor Deleted by Management

Follow the snopes link if you want to know which rumor.

Paul

sorry bsp

I read on several conservative blogs weeks ago that this is a fraud email alert. Starbucks certainly denied it and I believe them.

While I am not a Starbucks drinker, this story apparently isn't true:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/starbucks.asp

False as per snopes.....which notes that since the company does not send out coffee it would pass on such requests for free beans to its workers and to quote...."Starbucks partners receive one pound of free coffee each week as an employee benefit (known as "partner mark-out"). Many of them have elected to send their weekly mark-out to members of the military or military families, and related organizations. "

If you read the rest of the AP story it talks about how "sluggish" the economy is and how bad the job numbers where. Yesterday I read that the job numbers for December where better than expected and we had the lowest first time jobless claims in over four years.

I think this is another case of cherry picking data/poll numbers to fit their already formed opinion.

Ipsos says that seniors were the key to the approval rating slip, seniors that have swallowed the left's dishonest claims of Bush having them eating kibble sans bits again I'm sure. A little selective polling with carefully worded questions can result in incredibly skewed results.

They could save the time and effort on the polling and just use the standard:

'Everything went to hell when the usurper Chimpy McBushitler Corp was selected in 2000.'

Um, Ipsos is a pretty well-known international polling firm. If you want to do overseas public affairs research they'll generally wind up on the list of people you talk to. I know this because I used to manage polling and market research operations for clients who didn't have the internal capacity to run those projects themselves.

It doesn't mean they did a good job here, but they're not some fly-by-night organization.

I saw the AP article this morning and immediately thought of the CNN and Fox polls reported yesterday that showed the exact opposite trends...

I emailed the AP writer, Will Lester: "...your article seems to imply that the AP poll reflects a negative impact on Bush's ratings from the SOTU address...as well as recent Iraqi elections. Are you kidding me? There is only one demographic in the United States that would have a negative response to those two events...partisan Democrats. Who exactly did the AP include in the poll?"

I think I wasted 15 minutes of my (occasionally)valuable time.

I followed the RealClearPolitics blog closely leading up to the election. As I recall, any poll including Ipsos was nearly always skewed away from the polls favoring Bush.

"If you want to do overseas public affairs research they'll generally wind up on the list of people you talk to."

Is that where they took the poll? Overseas?

I followed the RealClearPolitics blog closely leading up to the election. As I recall, any poll including Ipsos was nearly always skewed away from the polls favoring Bush.

True. Ipsos are either worryingly skewed pro-Democrat, or just inept. They're about as reliable as a russian-made car.

Is that where they took the poll? Overseas?

You raise an excellent point, which is why I brought up their overseas focus. I can think of a half-dozen polling organizations I'd turn to before Ipsos for work in the States (except in those cases where Ipsos has acquired the US firms I once worked with). Anyway, the issue was whether anyone had ever heard of them.

The poll may still be crap, I'm just sayin'.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli

'Nuff said.

As posted above, I emailed the AP writer, Will Lester...suprisingly, I received a response.

"Your thoughtful note deserves a response...I understand your reaction given the Gallup poll showing him at 57 percent early in the week...BTW, a new Gallop shows the 57% from earlier this week dropped to 49%...I'll be glad to report when the poll moves the other way."

I thanked him for responding(!), and said the new numbers are most likely due to the overwhelming negative press coverage to the new Budget proposal.