British politician Benjamin Disraeli famously asserted:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I think Disraeli seriously short sold the number of lies. In his defense – he shuffled off this mortal coil decades before being afflicted with today’s hardcore Left media.
Because today’s media is constantly finding new ways to lie.
To wit: The Poll.
To begin: The only polls that have ever mattered to me – are the ones where we actually vote for our elected officials.
All of the “opinion polls” the media conducts in the intervening 104 weeks (minus primaries, of course) – are conducted to make it look like Americans agree with the obnoxiously Leftist opinion of the media.
There are myriad ways the media can rig their poll results.
They can warp the ideological sample of respondents – ridiculously over-representing Democrats and Leftists. Which they do – ALL the time.
The presidential polling history is simply banal:
“Starting in 1992, EVERY Pew poll appears to lean to one direction – always towards the Democrat, and by an average of more than 5 percentage points.”
This of course turned out well:
ABC Poll Oversamples Dems by +9, Claims Hillary Leading
And of course it ain’t just presidential.
John Zogby: ‘Oversampling of Democrats’ Problem With Polls
And of course: The media’s poll results are almost wholly dependent upon how the media writes its poll questions. Which can be absurdly warped – so as to lead respondents in any absurd direction the media chooses.
And of course – and perhaps most important: The media is mostly polling its audience. Which means the audience mostly only knows – what the media tells them.
The media universally and incessantly denigrates President Donald Trump. Then asks its audience “What do you think of President Donald Trump.” Guess how that’ll turn out.
Poll respondents can only respond to the media’s polls based upon the “news” the media has provided them – or not provided them.
Fake News – begets Fake Polls.
Which leads to ridiculous poll results like this:
Majority of Young Americans Prefer Socialism or Communism to Capitalism
Of course this is at least as much an indictment of government schools. But the schools and the media share at least one culpability. They both glossily praise Socialism-Communism – while skipping over the hundreds of millions of lives ended and destroyed by it.
When young Americans are asked why they like Socialism-Communism – they demonstrate their woeful government school/media-imposed ignorance.
LOL VIDEO: College Students Super Excited About Socialism. But Then They’re Asked To Define It.
And when Socialism-Communism’s awfulness is right in our faces – the media lie their faces off.
Socialist Venezuela Isn’t ‘Socialist’ in More Than 87% of Network Stories
Which brings us to this ridiculous poll.
80 Percent of Americans Support Bringing Back Net Neutrality
The media has ensured a disheartening percentage of Americans don’t even know what Socialism-Communism is. What makes anyone actually think they know what Net Neutrality actually is?
But we know the media are lying – because they inadvertently admit it in their very first half sentence:
“Over 80 percent of Americans agree with the ‘basic tenets of net neutrality….”
As we’ve discussed ad nauseam – NO ONE in DC disagrees with the “basic tenets of Net Neutrality.” Which were established – to bipartisan acclaim – in 2005.
But this stupid article about the stupid poll – gives away the lie in the very first paragraph:
“Over 80 percent of Americans agree with the ‘basic tenets of net neutrality.’…The survey comes after the ‘Save the Internet Act’ was introduced by Democrats in Congress in early March, which would repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s Restoring Internet Freedom Act (a misnomer if ever there was one), thus resurrecting regulations from the 2015 Open Internet Order. Under this now-defunct order, internet service providers were categorized under Title II of the Communications Act, which meant they were classified as a ‘telecommunication service’ and regulated like utilities.”
Get that dishonest juxtaposition? “The basic tenets of Net Neutrality” – with the Democrats (really, truly misnamed) “Save the Internet Act?” Which will impose 1934 landline telephone law – upon the 21st Century Internet.
Which has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. And everything to do with government power grabbing control of the Internet.
I will bet all the money in my pockets – against all the money in your pockets – several fundamental facts about the “Save the Internet Act” were not afforded the poll respondents.
I am this supremely confident – because the media has spent the entirety of the Net Neutrality debate not providing these fundamental facts to their audiences.
Let’s look at but a few.
Fact: Applying 1934 landline telephone network law to the 21st Century World Wide Web – is technologically VERY stupid.
You’ve seen phone lines along roads your entire life. That network is almost entirely binary. Your phone can at best handle two or three calls at once.
The Web – is a WEB. Heading in a trillion different directions – all at once. You can have…I don’t know, a thousand different Net pages open simultaneously. While simultaneously streaming multiple videos and audio streams.
To try to constrict all of this unbelievable dynamism – into 1934 binary landline law – is simply insane. It will quite simply crush the Internet – all the way down to the very tiny size of its very early days.
Fact: Imposing Title II – allows the government to tax your Internet connections. At the ridiculously exorbitant levels they tax your phones:
“…(O)nce ‘internet access services’ are reclassified as ‘interstate telecommunications services’ under the exclusive authority of FCC, it will be subjected to the 16.1% fee that’s currently applicable to such services.
“So (Title II) ’net neutrality’ could result into the largest single tax increase on internet to date.”
And the most important fact directly addressing this nonsense poll:
You can have the “basic tenets of Net Neutrality” – without absurdly reclassifying the Internet to ridiculously punitive Title II.
In fact, House Republicans are currently offering three different bills – that do exactly that. That’s three different Republican bills – all looking to protect Net Neutrality in law.
But that ain’t nearly enough government for the lying Leftists in the polling media:
“The ‘Save the Internet Act’ would bring back the FCC’s Obama-era rules that ensured net neutrality. While the bill was introduced by Democrats, the Comparitech poll shows across-the-board support from Americans on both sides of the aisle on this particular issue, with almost 87 percent of Democrats, almost 80 percent of independents and 77 percent of Republicans supporting the ‘basic tenets of net neutrality.’”
Because for the lying Leftists in the polling media – this actually has nothing to do with Net Neutrality.
And everything to do with government power grabbing control of the Internet.
The Republicans’ bills protect the former.
The Democrats’ bill ensures the latter.
This first appeared in Red State.