An entry on the St. Petersburg Times military blog touted as breaking news on the Times' homepage reports that troops deployed overseas have contributed six times more money to Sen. Barak Obama's presidential campaign than to Sen. John McCain's.
The story appears designed to imply that military service members do not support their own mission and have thrown their support behind Obama, who has opposed U.S. involvement in Iraq from the beginning.
But the blog entry omits some important information.
A chart on the OpenSecrets Web site shows the total number of donations to each candidate.
There were 135 donations for Obama and 26 for McCain. With over 170,000 military personnel deployed in Iraq alone, the total percentage donating to Obama stands at a wopping .00008 percent.
That doesn't even take into account the fact that the donations represent all troops deployed over seas, which include personnel stationed in non-war zones.
Statisticians call small numbers like that insignificant.
The real story here is that over 99 percent of all military personnel deployed overseas have made no campaign contributions to a presidential candidate.
Of course, that doesn't make for a very interesting story - and doesn't make a political point.
2 comments:
I had read that story and wondered how it could be...
Normal though for the MSM, half the story and partial truths. Thanks for giving us the rest of the story...
Now I know!
Good bit of digging deeper!
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