[eom]

This is a repost.

Charles, thanks for pointing out the typo in the original.

Mags, thanks for cleaning up my mess for me

Al Gore escapes to a country without an extradition treaty on the wake of numerous lawsuits pertaining to promotion of "junk science"

Excellent poll! ...and it took me awhile to realize that <EOM> is 'end of message'. I was never good at abbreviations...but now I've found my second favorite dictionary...

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/


check out the entry for MILF.

They tell us anyway not to hold our breath for Social Security...

In my husband's line of work, when he has to talk about that group...he does find it hard to keep a straight face apparently

Steven,
I also didn't know what EOM meant the first few times I saw it so I finally had to ask.

voted!

Glad you like it, Steven. My thinking recently has been more along the lines of identifying the worst possible outcome and determining how to avoid it. There are too many problems out there to solve, so risk avoidance seems prudent at this time.

I personally feel SS going insolvent will have the greatest impact on us as a people, but it is interesting to see that mine is a minority view.

Another question which could have been put to the audience here, is this: which of the three outcomes, in your opinion, is most likely to occur?

Yeah, in the Philippines you hear a lot about the MILF. Didn't realize it had a totally different meaning in other settings.

it is a well known internet fact...that on vj there is hot milf action

omg...bro Dean...

you on the top of the list... sister welch cake...

Here's an interesting explanation...

Parsing the Polls: The Immigration Conundrum



A CBS News poll conducted March 9-12 asked: "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" The war in Iraq led the way with 20 percent, followed by economy/jobs (13 percent), terrorism (6 percent), health care (5 percent), gas/heating oil crisis (4 percent), foreign policy (4 percent) and immigration (4 percent).

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in late January asked voters "which one of these items you think should be the top priority for the federal government." Twenty-one percent of respondents said the war in Iraq, 19 percent cited job creation and economic growth. Health care received the support of 16 percent, terrorism 14 percent and "illegal immigration" (not simply "immigration") nine percent.

When people are prompted in polls about their level of concern regarding illegal immigration, a strong majority expresses considerable worry. In the same NBC/WSJ poll cited above, 71 percent of the sample said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate "who favors tighter controls on illegal immigration." A Time poll from January found similar results, with better than 60 percent of those tested saying illegal immigration was an "extremely" or "very" serious problem.

So why does immigration rank so low on some polls while voters also express so much concern about it in others? The Fix was perplexed, so we sought help from a few top political pollsters.

What did we find?

First and foremost, immigration (illegal and otherwise) falls into the same issue matrix with voters as issues like abortion, gun control and congressional ethics. None of these issues ever rate highly when people are asked about the pressing issues the country's leaders should address, but they are significant drivers of the political debate because of the passion they evoke.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and partner in the firm Ayres, McHenry & Associates, explained that the "political agenda is frequently driven by intensity as much as the breadth of the effect of an issue." Abortion is never mentioned as the most important issue by more than a few percent of voters in any poll, and yet "we talk about abortion incessantly," he said.

Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster with Garin-Hart-Yang Research, said immigration, abortion and gun control are not "clear cut issues" because they deal directly with individuals' "values." So while few voters see immigration as the most pressing problem of the day, many see it as an issue worthy of their attention and concern.

Glen Bolger, a partner in the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, draws a comparison to the ethics issue when asked about the impact of immigration on the 2006 midterm elections. Even though ethics typically ranks extremely low on national priority questions, "that doesn't mean that people are saying 'We don't care about the issue,'" he said.

While many people don't specifically cite immigration as a pressing concern, Bolger said the effects (and strains) that immigration puts on the education and health care systems, or the doubts it raises about national security, have a major impact on many Americans' daily lives.

Under that line of thinking, immigration underpolls in these national priority questions because respondents who may be unhappy with immigration's impact on education or health care cite those particular issues rather than immigration itself.

Mark Blumenthal, a Democratic survey research professional and the author of the terrific Mystery Pollster blog, offered another potential explanation for the seeming disconnect between the energy surrounding the immigration issue and its relatively low standing in national polls.

"An issue need not be 'most important' to a majority of voters to help create a lot of grassroots energy," said Blumenthal. "If only one percent of the voters care passionately about something, that still adds up to roughly a million Americans."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006..._immigrati.html

I voted for the SS one too. I think it's the most likely one to occur too, though the immigration issue could be also.

Social Security..allot of americans will continue to use it as their only retirement solution...

Very true. See http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=95377.

i know even here.. a supposely professional arena..most folks count on their SS check to be the majority of their retirement income