Bush commutes Libby's sentence Options

[Spectatrix]

This is more than a little bit pissy, but completely unsurprising: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/03/lib...ence/index.html

Actually, I take that back. I'm surprised that Bush only commuted his sentence rather than granting a full pardon.

[pebkac]

terrorist attacks dont. wars are always generally unpopular and will subtract from their approval ratings.

stuff like gas prices too. believe it or not, the president does not have a dial which turns gas prices up or down, but people are dumb enough to go "omg gas is $3/gallon i hate bush!".

besides the fact that surveys are stupid and can't possibly ever get a general feel for how the public thinks on any issue. "but we surveyed 10,000 people!", yeah, a whole one thousandth of a percent of the population.

1) Wars of any type are always popular with the American people. The longer they drag on though, the more support drops for them. Thus, if you have a clusterfuck like Iraq, it's doomed to be unpopular.

2) Have you ever taken a statistics class? Statisticians adjust for the possibility that it could be a fluke. Usually a study is considered statistically significant if there's less than a 10 percent chance of it being a fluke. When you've got a lot of different polls and studies of the president's approval raiting each with less than a 10% chance of being a fluke, well it would have to be a pretty big fluke.

It could be worse, it could be as low as congress's approval rating. I think he's commuting the sentence to keep him out of jail since they were going to throw him in right away. He'll pardon him his last day in office. I don't see what right the Dems have to be upset, look at Clinton's pardons, and I don't see Clinton serving 30 months in jail for lying under oath.

Meh, it was wrong for Clinton to pardon people that didn't deserve it and it was wrong of Bush to as well. Then again, if we follow your argument, Clinton's pardons were ok because Reagan pardoned almost as many people..

Secondly, the case against Clinton was weak.

1) Lying about a blowjob does not fit the Constitutional requirement of being a "high crime."
2) To be convicted of perjury, the lie has to be pertinent to some kind of law proceeding. And it's highly debateable if the question was pertinent to the Paula Jones case.

[impala454]

1) Wars of any type are always popular with the American people. The longer they drag on though, the more support drops for them. Thus, if you have a clusterfuck like Iraq, it's doomed to be unpopular.

yeah 'quick' wars seem to be pretty popular. which is kind of funny and stupid because rarely are they ever quick. but you have to agree any war that's not quick or popular will subtract from the president's popularity.

2) Have you ever taken a statistics class? Statisticians adjust for the possibility that it could be a fluke. Usually a study is considered statistically significant if there's less than a 10 percent chance of it being a fluke. When you've got a lot of different polls and studies of the president's approval raiting each with less than a 10% chance of being a fluke, well it would have to be a pretty big fluke.

Yeah I've taken a statistics class, but I didn't realize that made one an expert in political statistics. Maybe you missed the lecture where the prof told you that 93% of statistics are made up. Political statiscs especially. It doesn't have anything to do with the mathematics. You can really get any number you want, simply by phrasing a question in different ways. The local radio station here has a poll question every day, they had an excellent example of this yesterday. The question was, "Should there be government surveillance cameras here in the U.S. like those used in Great Britain to foil and catch terrorists?". How friggin loaded is that question and what do you think the responses were vs if they'd asked it without the "used in Great Britain to foil and catch terrorists" part?