Today is Jack's birthday. He is 73, but he still governs like a petulant adolescent. France was a very messed up place during the years Jack came to power. Yet, once he had securely grabbed the reins of government, he managed to make France an even more messed up place. Really messed up. Such are his gifts.

ANOTHER BRIGHT DAY!
Happy Birthday, Jack!

CHIRAC TURNS 73
Original AFP headline: CHIRAC ''LE BULLDOZER'' LOSES STEAM AT AGE 73

PARIS November 29, 2005 (AFP) - President Jacques Chirac turned 73 Tuesday amid signs that his authority at home and abroad was eroding... A survey by the CSA institute published last weekend found that 72 percent of the respondants thought Chirac's influence over what happens in France was "weak". Two-thirds felt his clout internationally was similarly feeble.

CHIRAC'S POPULARITY SLIDES AFTER RIOTS-POLL

PARIS November 19, 2005 (Reuters) - Thirty-five percent of French people were satisfied with Chirac as president [That would make 65% dissatisfied with Jack.] compared to 38 percent in October, according to a monthly IFOP-Le Journal du Dimanche poll.

Why not send Jack a birthday greeting? Even superior beings get mopey when relegated to the basement of public opinion. Click this link to drop him a line. He loves fan mail.

UPDATE 11.30.05: PARIS November 28, 2005 (Guardian) - A poll for the daily Le Parisien showed yesterday that even in his ruling party, the UMP, only 43% of voters feel Mr Chirac plays a major role in France.

PFFT (What is this?): Another year of accomplishments 0 | Rayonnement français 0

Geez, how many more years?!

Are they gonna torch the cake (too)?

Understandably Jack is a little jumpy around flames. We are using a base-73 candle so as not to spook him on his special day.

DGB

Arafat died at 75, Stalin too... Komrade Jacques, you have only 2 years left; question is: how much more stupid, useless "achievements" until then?

Damian,

Are the "youths" invited to the party, too?

Bonjour,

Deux années de présence Brit et Yankee en Irak.
Et alors ????

Et dix années de Chie-raqu(i)e, ça donne quoi en terme de canicule et de plan (sic) grand froid ?

And what have done ten years of chiraqism in terms of heatwaves and "harsh winter" help plans?

Et alors?

Democracy (the second in Middle East after Israel). No more Saddam. Hundreds of bearded, degenerated crooks fried. Rogues states around begining to pee into their pants. UN rotten, corrupted bureaucracy (more) revealed. "Peace camp" unveiled for what it is: a bunch of collaborationist, failed states.

Well, that more than enough for me, Antibrit/antiyankee fascist piece of crap.

[Deleted. dgjh posted a link to the products page of a Chinese industrial equipment site. Fascinating stuff, we're sure, if you happen to be in the market. But not here.

The Management]

[That would make 65% dissatisfied with Jack.]

Don't make me defend him, please! I would love 65% dissatisfaction, but it is not dictated by 35% satisfaction. There may be some "somewhat satisfied" and "somewhat dissatisfied" as well, and even if not there is certainly some "don't know/no opinion" between the two. It would not surprise me if the latter group was large, provided that you could find enough people to actually admit that they aren't informed well enough to have an opinion instead of making the most cynical answer to avoid the appearance of ignorance.

Meh, what are the odds of that though. You're right, it's probably somewhere near 65%.

Doug,

The only numbers reported were for a "satisfied" category.

We do the arithmetic based on the simple choices the poll suggests, are you satisfied or not with Jack Chirac. Here is how we read the reported current number:

35% expressed satisfaction. For whatever reasons 65% of those polled felt excluded from that category's characterization. All other categories combined would be something less than satisfied, whether wholly or partly. We surmise that to have no opinion in this case is to be unaware of any manifest sense of satisfaction, therefore the unaware are relegated to the less than satisfied category. This lumping is within the definition of dissatisfaction.

The annotation was not meant to be scientific. Rather it was to draw attention to Reuters' mollifying Jack's low numbers. Imagine Reuters reporting on similar poll results for Mr. Bush:

A mere thirty-five percent of American people expressed any satisfaction with Bush as president, with an overwhelming majority of Americans appearing to reject their fundamentalist cowboy president. As decent intelligent Americans awaken to the failures of the chaotic Bush administration, Mr. Bush also finds himself struggling with erosion and complaints from his once reliable base of yahoos, goons, and imbeciles.

BTW, don't forget to send Jack a birthday greeting. It will mean a lot to him. He loves Americans. He just hates America. Or is it the other way around?

Regards,
DGB

My point is that satisfaction doesn't exist in binary states, which is why the poll does not suggest what you're insisting. Per the definition that you supplied, "dissatisfied" is "displeased", "unsatisfied", or "discontent" — these aren't the absence of satisfaction, but the presence of negative satisfaction. "Satisfied" is a positive state of satisfaction, "dissatisfied" is a negative state, and there are more possibilities in the realm of satisfaction than positive and negative. This is why such polling always includes more than two choices; "Don't know/no opinion" is neither positive nor negative. A state other than satisfied is not un(or dis- or anti- or mal- or what have you)satisfied by default.

Two illustrations:
1) Were I to ask your opinion of my dentist, to say that you were either satisfied or dissatisfied would be inaccurate and dishonest. You have no basis to form an opinion of my dentist; you've never seen his work, experienced his service, stepped foot in his office or even met the man. You've never so much as seen his web site, and don't even know his name. You can't possibly be satisfied or dissatisfied; an accurate and truthful answer demands a third choice.

2) President Bush's approval ratings are somewhere in the 40's. This does not mean that his disapproval is in the 50's, only that forty–some percent approve. Since there will be a number in between the positive and negative who don't give a fig for news or politics and can't really say that they're satisfied or dissatisfied, and those who are more informed but yet not inclined towards satisfaction or dissatisfaction in their overall estimation of him, his actual disapproval rating might be in the 40's or even 30's. This is again the reason that there should always be a neutral choice, and the reason that Jack's dissatisfaction is very unlikely to be 65%. Or 60%. Maybe even under 50%, but since it's Jack I rather doubt it.

Now, was it really necessary for me to type all that? It will be a difficult proposition to convince me that you don't already know this. Btw, did you lift that quote directly from Reuters? It kinda sounds familiar...

@Carine - put wheels on the cake, and I think anything can happen.

Doug,

Last things first.

No, you needn't've typed all that, especially as you are largely answering arguments we are not advancing.

Disapproval and dissatifaction are wholly different propositions and what holds for one needn't hold for the other. As reported the poll in question didn't ask for the average French person's approval or disapproval of Jack, a judgment on Jack's actions, but whether they were satisfied in some way with Jack as president, a declaration of the respondent's feelings toward Jack as president. During Zippergate, a majority of Americans felt satisfied with Mr. Clinton as president while disapproving his presidential recreations.

Asking us about your dentist, whom you have assumed we do not know even to point of never having stumbled across his Web site -- and granting your assumptions -- is not analogous to the poll in question. Ignorant of your dentist, we have no feelings to declare about him. However, it is a stretch to think that the average French person is unaware of Jack, never seen his work, experienced his service, never so much as seen his Web site, and doesn't even know his name. There is no reason to believe that is what obtained in the reported poll.

If there is satisfaction and something else that is not satisfaction -- however manifold the someting else -- then you have a binary state. You've lost us on the nice distinctions between the absence of satisfaction and the presence of negative satisfaction.

But your larger argument seems concerned with poll methodology. We did not search out the IFOP-Le Journal du Dimanche poll, so we can't speak to its methodology, its rigor, or its truth. We only commented on the poll as reported. We do not pretend to more than a practical interpretation of a single number for a single category in a limited context. If you are arguing from the poll itself, then yours is by far the richer experience.

All our little annotation sought to do was drop the other shoe on the reported poll number of the average French person's disposition toward Jack.

Now it is a day later and there is no cake, no ice cream, for us.

Regards,
DGB

No, you needn't've typed all that, especially as you are largely answering arguments we are not advancing.

Apparently, I needed to type even more. Perhaps one of you would care to enumerate all these absent argument's that I've answered? Would you quote all these unasked-for answers? By my count, I've answered one -- count them all, that's one -- argument. At present, I find you still without anything closer to an argument than (approximately) "not being satisfied is to be dissatisfied". Happily, that's the one that I've answered.

If you strip out a couple of my offhand smartass remarks, you'll find (or determinedly fail to find, as is your wont) that I've done nothing else than refute the only argument you've advanced. To avoid the convenient bewilderment you tend to discover in such circumstances, I expressed that satisfaction has more than two states in not just one, but multiple ways. Excessive, I would have thought, when one sentence conveys the entirety of this tiny concept, but it seems that several paragraphs of fairly simple English were insufficient to achieve penetration. I'm thinking you've now read the word "neutral" often enough that some measure of it has taken to you. I'll bet that you can spell it with confidence by now, even if you remain blissfully unaware of what it might have to do with the discussion. By tomorrow, it may yet be slippery and new, but I think it may dawn on you.

Summarized for your convenience, here is the complete syllogism which was fleshed out in two comments, four paragraphs:
1) Satisfaction exists across more than two characteristic states; a binary expression of it is false.
2) You are aware of this.
That's it. I've said nothing else. Each paragraph posits or demonstrates one or both parts, so show that I've done as you've said, confine yourself to accusing me of things that I've actually done, or change party affiliations.

Disapproval and dissatifaction are wholly different propositions and what holds for one needn't hold for the other.

Abort the attempt at semantic play, it's irrelevant. The actual argument - and do pay attention this time, my patience is short - had nothing to do with whether they were synonyms, nor directly analogous in every particular. The analogous portion of the illustration was that they are both measures of opinion whose various states are primarily characterized as being positive, negative, or neutral. The full spectrum of opinion is not measurable by only positive and negative, approval and disapproval, satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Attempting to measure public opinion with any one of these pairs will yield results both incomplete and inaccurate, since they do not represent all reasonable possibilities that will exist. I would have thought that someone with vocabulary and rich phraseology that any post-grad lit could admire would not have such enormous difficulty with the most elementary dynamics of human opinion, but then I would not have counted on your dogged determination that it be so. If you suspect you'll need further guidance through such a thorny tangle, I'll wait here as you locate a schoolchild to assist you. These days they do timelines in second grade, and negative numbers in fourth, so aim for a 5th grader. At this hour, they're likely to be groggy, but I think they'll manage.

Asking us about your dentist, whom you have assumed we do not know even to point of never having stumbled across his Web site -- and granting your assumptions -- is not analogous to the poll in question. Ignorant of your dentist, we have no feelings to declare about him. However, it is a stretch to think that the average French person is unaware of Jack, never seen his work, experienced his service, never so much as seen his Web site, and doesn't even know his name. There is no reason to believe that is what obtained in the reported poll.

No, but it does provide the framework for a simple example whose mastery all of you may flounder. It's just a thought, but it could help if some of you unclenched your eyes and stopped chanting "Neener neener, I can't hear you" (your schoolchild will confirm for you that no one says 'neener' anymore). Scoffing at my expressed certainty that you do not know or have an opinion of my dentist does not impact on the argument. The dental diorama itself was not an argument, but an example of satisfaction being measured as both something other than satisfied, and concurrently something other than dissatisfied. Presto! A third state.

This just isn't complex stuff. I swear to God, at this time of night I'm not capable of "complex". I can just about manage "precise" and "cogent". Now if I could just include "terse" without fear of your disability getting the better of you...

Let me get these pieces of imbecility out of the way: First, you don't know my dentist. You haven't stumbled across his web site, haven't shared an elevator, flown on the same plane, changed his flat tire, spilled his drink or screwed his daughter because I don't have a dentist. Now, unless you're compelled to argue the point further, let's assume you've confessed that someone other than you was right about something even THAT immaterial. Second, for your illumination, the existance of a possibility of less than one degree of separation between you and my dentist has nothing to do with the argument. My flight instructor, my demolitions trainer, my vast army of monkeys, or my dead aunt Stella would all have sufficed to illustrate the point of a person or persons that you're in no position to have any opinion of. Relax your grip on the irrelevant and transfer it to the thread of the discussion, please.

Thank you for instructing me that the average French citizen is not completely and utterly ignorant of Jack as if my argument required that they be, but even if I hadn't actually noted that ignorance is not the only explanation for a neutral/don't know/no opinion position (nor taken the trouble to outline other possibilities for how this magical third possibility exists - and by way of preempting the next vacant rebuttal, I make no claim this list is exhaustive), the argument would still not require any ignorance at all from the average French citizen. I'll let you in on a dirty little secret: that was the whole point of including a second illustration, to spotlight cases of neutral position besides ignorance, which I'd already mentioned twice. I hadn't realized when I wrote it that it would prove so fiendishly clever of me. It seemed tedious at the time. Then again, I sorely underestimated how energetically you would apply yourself to missing the point.

My argument only requires that there be enough neutral responses, regardless of the explanations behind them, to become noticably differentiated (or statistically significant, if you'd prefer). Not the average, the above average, nor sub-par French citizen's ignorance is needed. In the dentist case, only the possibility that ignorance might explain part of the totality of neutral opinion was advanced. I still say that this exists, and you've not said otherwise. Demonstrate that it does not at your leisure.

If there is satisfaction and something else that is not satisfaction -- however manifold the someting else -- then you have a binary state. You've lost us on the nice distinctions between the absence of satisfaction and the presence of negative satisfaction.

I rather doubt that the 10th grade vocabulary was so stilted as to have lost you, and still believe that your serial misadventures in reading comprehension can't be other than by design. However, taking you at your word, once again - the possible measures of satisfaction are more than positive and negative, which is also to say more than satisfied or dissatisfied. An accurately modeled portrayal of the satisfaction of a group as large as France will also include -- say it with me -- neutral satisfaction (and some degrees of positive and negative trending towards neutral, but let's keep it stripped to the essentials for simplicity's sake). It will include this because it exists in the group; a qualitative expression of satisfaction which is both 1) something other than satisfied, and 2) something other than dissatisfied.

I'm going to experiment with a brand of clarity that perhaps even you cannot evade: the definition of dissatisfaction that you posited as being "something less than satisfied" is false, inaccurate, wrong, at fault, untrue, amiss, corrupt, unsound, an utter and complete logical and linguistic fallacy, and even the definition that you yourself linked did not even suggest that "something less than satisfied" might describe dissatisfaction. Redefining the English language more favorably to your argument will not get a pass tonight.

Is that perchance still a bit foggy? Can you at least feel your way about the edges now? May I procede on the assumption that you've re-examined your mastery of key terms like "dissatisfaction", and you now have a handle on the most rudimentary principles of public opinion, or have I yet left some ambiguous ground? I regret crediting you with adequate savvy from the outset, and don't wish to repeat the mistake.

But your larger argument seems concerned with poll methodology.

Really?

Thirty-five percent of French people were satisfied with Chirac as president [That would make 65% dissatisfied with Jack.] compared to 38 percent in October, according to a monthly IFOP-Le Journal du Dimanche poll.

I would love 65% dissatisfaction, but it is not dictated by 35% satisfaction. There may be some "somewhat satisfied" and "somewhat dissatisfied" as well, and even if not there is certainly some "don't know/no opinion" between the two.

Thank you for explaining it to me anyway. Inasmuch as I'm merely the one who made my larger argument, I gather that I'm in an inherently inferior position to know what I meant.

We did not search out the IFOP-Le Journal du Dimanche poll, so we can't speak to its methodology, its rigor, or its truth. We only commented on the poll as reported. We do not pretend to more than a practical interpretation of a single number for a single category in a limited context. If you are arguing from the poll itself, then yours is by far the richer experience.

Nor do I imagine any requirement for any of you to examine its methodology, its rigor, or it's truth. If we presume that 35% satisfied is accurate, we need know nothing else about it. You keep yourself well enough informed of current events that it appears to be your long habit to do so, and this being the case I can't imagine you as being genuinely unaware of a neutral gap between positive and negative opinions. Or couldn't have, previously - now I consider you capable of being unaware of anything you set your mind to.

Incidentally, if divining 65% dissatisfaction was not pretending to more than a practical interperetation of a single number for a single category in any context whatsoever, I'm at a loss to say what it would be.

I challenge the suggestion that you are not aware that even if the poll itself should be fashioned so shoddily as to omit the neutral choice, that neutral opinion will still exist in the group whose opinion the poll seeks to model (the French). As I think you noted (but I'm too lazy to check), our approval polling sometimes presents binary choices - "Approve" and "other". If President Bush's approval is 45% and his other is 55%, that does not dictate 55% disapproval. Disapproval is in the negative end of the spectrum, and that there are people in that number who are neutral is a given. Jack's case is no different.

I submit again that you've been perfectly well aware that 65% dissatisfaction among the French does not follow from 35% satisfaction. Just simply deny it - tell me flatly that it's not true that you knew this. I can't refute that, I'm not in your head with the rest of you, and at this point you'll have taken the smaller half of the syllogism effortlessly. If you tell me that you spent your life locked in a cage away from all human contact, I might even believe you.

Now, if you'd like to continue this, I'm going to have to insist on a few ground rules.
1) That if you still have a valid point to press, you burden yourself to produce an argument for which actually has legs and meat remaining. A relevant point will by its nature somehow bear on the statement that "That would make 65% dissatisfied with Jack.", and viable arguments will remain consistent with anything you've said but not withdrawn. The parody of an argument you've presented, and half-killed yourself, needs to be withdrawn.
2) That you desist in your refusal to understand anything inconvenient to you. I see no plausable excuse that an explanation which a high school sophmore can grasp having read it once should be insufficient for you, and once is exactly as often as I intend to explain anything from this point forward.
3) That you summon heretofore untapped reserves of intellectual honesty to make such admissions and amendments as forthright argument may demand.

In other words, I need you to argue in something more closely resembling good faith. My patience for bankrupt argument is exceeded, and with it my store of civility was exhausted. I won't spend a minute on anything less, don't respond if you can't ascend to it.

All our little annotation sought to do was drop the other shoe on the reported poll number of the average French person's disposition toward Jack.

And all my observation sought to do was to inject a small measure of fairness in the assumption. It was not such that it would even dilute your point, and strengthened your stance by being closer to whatever the truth may be. Given the 17 keystrokes to which one or more of you are violently allergic -- "Yes, that's true." -- I clearly should have ignored it. It's not as if this is news to me.

Doug,

You have confused your ability to type with some sort of forensic mastery. Your argument is flawed on your insistence of manifold alternate states standing in contrast to any single reported state. I have addressed this. It has not penetrated. You prat on about your dentist requiring a third choice, then play your trump, he doesn't exist. Well, then there are no opinion choices, you can't express any more of an opinion about him then me. Following this you lecture about arguing in good faith. You take me to task for a surmise about an unaccounted 65% of the French polity. Yet you feel comfortable making claims about my interior state and my childhood, well, that certainly gives you the edge. Just tons and tons of this superior plain English cant.

Further typing is useless.

But then it's not an argument you are building but a logorrheic monument to the last word.

As your patience is limited -- though its limit is not in evidence above -- and there are only 24 hours in my day, here. You have it. The last word. It's yours.

Regards,
DGB