John Stewart Rips John McCain

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Jon Stewart last night lampooned Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) continued stalwart opposition to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, even after the Pentagon released its review indicating that a repeal of the ban on openly gay men and women would have little to no effect on military readiness.

"McCain's like one of them Japanese soldiers living on Okinawa in 1949, still fighting because he doesn't realize the war ended a long time ago," Stewart said. "And, for some reason, even though he's been alone for years and years on this island, doesn't like gay people."

S&L is standing side by side with John McCain. Wow.

You're an ass. I express my concerns with gays in the military and you start spouting BS like this without even engaging in a discussion. And yet you continually accuse me of being closed minded. Look in the mirror.

No BS posted.
I posted an article on the Israeli army (i didnt mention the British army etc which does likewise)
and the fact that they dont discriminate against gays. REMEMBER? Did you respond? NO!
Stop being so touchy and stand up for your opinions (which in my mind are antiquated)

The Israeli Army has nothing to do with the US Army. In fact, they need every individual they can get, but that's not the point.

As you will recall, my concern was sexual attraction in the ranks. It's nature. All I said is that if I were in the Army, I would be uncomfortable with unwanted sexual attraction, and I think most everybody would be - same sex or not.

The Israeli army and the British army etc. are just examples of militaries that have integrated Gays seemlessly. The worries proved to be exaggerated.


The point is, as Defense Secretary Gates stated, in all countries where there is no discrimination in the military on the basis of sexuality, the system is working just fine.

The study shows clearly that in the poll of soldiers who knew they were serving with Gay fellow soldiers over 85% had no problem whatsover.

You have an old way of thinking about sexual attraction in my opinion. Do you feel the same way in your workplace today? You are expressing some outdated ideas. Look at the polls of the
American people. I think you will find that once we do away with dont ask dont tell things will settle down over time and the issue will be forgotten. This is similar to the days when people argued we couldnt integrate the military with blacks and women because it would be disruptive. It was obviously false.

This policy will change one way or another (courts). Sorry, but its really time to get past your old prejudices. I wish you had listened to NPR last night when a straight captain (highly decorated) expressed total support for the ending of dont ask, dont tell. He was very elegant.

20 years from now we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

"Old way" of thinking?

I guess schools have unisex bathrooms and locker rooms now.

I'm fine with ending the policy. I just expressed a concern. Actually, I think a gay soldier would "self police" himself. I would, or risk getting my ass kicked.

You sure do a lot of editing. I may have to start quoting you.

You really dont get it do you? VERY OLD WAY of thinking. You look at the polls of the
American people lately?
You're comparing same sex bathrooms to Gays in the military? LMFAO

I know you dont understand it. Maybe Defense Secretary Gates and Admiral
Mullen (both Republicans) will have to sit down and explain it to you.

In the meantime you should know that the policy will be changing. Get used to it. One way or another the policy will be changing and as i said before 20 years from now this will all be considered quite nothing.

Why would I have to get used to it? You make it out as if I have a sign in my front yard with a red circle with a line through it over the phrase "gays in the military". Please see the initial words of my initial reply.

Liberals speak often of tolerance, but they only tolerate Liberals and Liberal ideas.

The Liberal's only method of debate is to appeal to the emotions of uneducated and illogical persons. Liberals seek to insult and discredit anyone who dares to disagree with them, especially in the college classroom. Why? Because the facts of logic and history do not support the agenda they are seeking to advance.

When possible, Liberals oppress anyone who questions their beliefs.

Stop reaching for the word "liberal" everytime you feel cornered. Its downright dumb. Sorry. :)

You have to get used to a changing world. Anti gay discrimination is the last sphere of discrimination to be dealt with. Its changing fast as you can see from polls of Americans. Even gay marriage is now coming to be accepted.
Just look at how the polls have changed on this in the last 10 years.

I said nothing about circles with red lines. I just said you have anitquated ideas about sexuality and gays. Doesnt make you a bad person.

Im just telling you to watch the John Stewart clip and understand why young people think the way they do about John McCain's hypocrisy. Then try to understand why Defense Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen are for the end of dont ask, dont tell.

The policy will change one way or another in short order because its just plain wrong. Sorry if you dont understand now, but when you look back on it in the future im sure you will realize that it was right to end discrimination of gays in the military.

Take a look S&L.

Swing And A Miss: McCain's Misguided Attack On 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

-- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has raised many objections to a repeal of the military's controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, but this morning he added something new: criticism of the polling methodology behind the massive Department of Defense survey of servicemembers and their spouses released earlier this week. Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain complained about the survey's sample size and response and coverage rates:

In addition to my concerns about what questions were not asked by this survey and considered in this report, I'm troubled by the fact that this report only represents the input of 28 percent of the force who received the questionnaire, including completely leaving out a numerous members of the military in combat areas. That's only six percent of the force at large. I find it hard to view that as a fully representative sample set.
Does this criticism have merit? Not according to the standards of modern survey research and the detailed description of the methodology included in the Defense Department's survey report.

Let's take a closer look.

The first element of McCain's critique is one we often hear about sample surveys. How can you fairly represent the views of a large population by interviewing only few hundred or a few thousand respondents? Random sampling may seem illogical, but as anyone who has taken a basic statistics class should know, obtaining a representative sample has far less to do with the size of the sample than whether it is randomly drawn and demonstrably representative and unbiased.

That said, McCain's complaint that the DoD survey reached "only" 28 percent of sampled respondents is ironic -- and misplaced -- given that DoD completed an enormous number of interviews as compared to conventional phone polls. The DoD survey involved 115,052 completed interviews among service members on active duty or in the reserves, and 44,266 completed interviews among spouses of active duty or reserve personnel (a sample size attainable because respondents filled out surveys online, rather than completing them with the assistance of an in-person or telephone interviewer).

As Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson pointed out during this morning's hearings, the recent Pew Research Center national survey on Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell sampled far fewer respondents (n=1,255 adults) even though it was measuring the opinions the much larger U.S. population.

Another irony is that the 28.2 percent response rate achieved for active duty service members was in line with previous surveys of the military and far better than what most conventional telephone surveys currently obtain. That response rate fell within the "normal range" for Defense Department surveys, according to the testimony of Army Gen. Carter Ham this morning. But it is actually far better than the response rate obtained by last month's Pew Research Center
DADT survey, which according to their survey director Scott Keeter, had a response rate of just 10% using a comparable calculation (the AAPOR1 response rate formula).


As Keeter points out via email, studies conducted by the Pew Center and similar efforts by academic survey researchers have shown that the response rate alone "is not a good measure of survey quality or representativeness…surveys with low response rates can produce results that match up very well with externally validated parameters." He points to their final pre-election survey last month, which accurately predicted the national U.S. House vote despite an 11 percent response rate for the landline sample and 8 percent for the cell phone sample.

The second element of McCain's critique is that the survey "completely [left] out numerous members of the military in combat areas." That contention is not supported by the detailed description of the methodology included in the Defense Department report. According to the report's methodological appendix, the "target population" of the sample of active-duty members included all "members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard, up to and including pay grade O-6 with at least 6 months of service as of June 15, 2010." It makes no mention of any systematic exclusion of combat service members.

The survey also provided service members ample time to participate. The first solicitations were sent out via email and postal mail on July 7, and those solicited had until August 15 to complete the online questionnaire. Those who did not respond received as many as five reminder notices, including two sent by both email and postal mail and three more by email only.

Would a field period of more than six weeks allow service members doing combat duty sufficient time to participate? David Wilson, a political science professor and regular HuffPost Pollster contributor who is also a 20-year Army veteran -- including service in Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom -- says yes. He writes, via email:

Military personnel all have service related email addresses, as well as other online communications that they rely on to do their jobs effectively. Almost every solider checks their email on a regular basis, regardless of whether they are deployed in hostile theaters of operation such as Iraq or Afghanistan, or are serving as reservists or national guardsmen who meet one weekend a month. Thus, it is virtually impossible for any randomly selected service member to not have known they were asked to participate.
(Note: Wilson supports repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and posted his thoughts on the issue earlier today).

Moreover, because the Department of Defense drew their sample from Department of Defense personnel files, they had unusually rich data available (as compared to conventional telephone surveys) to monitor and correct for statistical bias that might result if some service members responded more readily than others. They actually divided their active duty sample into 200 separate subgroups based on data tracked in the personnel files: service level (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard), pay grade (five levels), location (U.S. territory and overseas), family status (two levels) and -- most relevant here -- "duty occupation group" (combat and combat support).

When the survey was complete, the DoD researchers weighted each subgroup* by the inverse of its response rate so that the full sample would be representative on all of these characteristics. They then weighted the full aggregated samples by eight variables to match "known demographic totals" calculated from the personnel files.

Put simply, if service members in combat areas were less likely to respond, that difference would not skew the representation of combat troops in the final weighted results. Further, the rich data from the personnel records gives the DoD researchers powerful tools to control for non-response bias, more powerful than what opinion pollsters use to weight the surveys that our political leaders frequently cite and procure for their own campaigns. McCain's concern that the Defense Department's DADT survey was not "fully representative," especially on the issue of those assigned to combat duty, is misplaced.

We sometimes overstate the precision of pre-election polls that are often more art than science, but the methodological rigor of the DOD survey puts it in a much different class. "The bottom line," David Wilson explains, "is that this is one of the most scientifically representative studies the military has ever done."

**According to the report, a few of the strata cells had to be combined due to a small number of responding cases.

S&L

John stewart gets the better of your Bush oil audio.