How to Understand the Meaning of Terrorist Alert Ratings

[louis c]

By following the recent terrorist alerts and heightened warnings, I have come to understand how, why and when those alert rankings are issued by the Bush Administration.

Here is my theory on the terrorist threat level evaluation:


Green: Bush's poll numbers are above 55%

Blue: Bush's poll numbers 51%-54%

Yellow: Bush's poll numbers are 45%-50%

Orange: Bush's poll numbers are 40%-44%

Red: Bush's poll numbers are below 40%

Now that we all understand how the alert system works, we can see that it doesn't reflect the American public's level of fear of imminent attack, but it does reflect the Bush Administration's level of fear of losing the election.

(on edit) Blue added, as you can see, this country will never see a code of Blue or Green.

[arwalden]

1. Of Course You're Correct... BUT....

I'd love to find out if someone has (or could) come up with some documentable facts and figures that confirm your brilliant hypothesis.

Can we document a correlation, a cause-and-effect, between the terror alert status and Bush*'s poll numbers?

-- Allen

[wtmusic]

2. Absolutely

A couple of hours on Google, a simple graph--I nominate Allen! :D

[arwalden]

6. You're Too Kind.

But I know that there are many others who are better, faster, and stronger Googlers than I am.

-- Allen

(Thanks for the vote of confidence though.)

[louis c]

4. The last warning

the one Ashcroft blurted out, without telling Ridge, was the day after Kerry chose Edwards as his running mate.

The overnight polls rose decidedly for Kerry.

My evaluation is mostly tongue in cheek, because the alerts have not accompanied an increase in the alert color, but you get the point.

[rkc3]

3. Al Franken on Letterman last night explained the difference...

Yellow means you should go shopping at the mall.

Red means you should do all your shopping online.

[Walt Starr]

5. The ever popular Sesame Street Guide to the color code system

Green - Oscar the Grouch
Blue - Cookie Monster
Yellow - Bert
Orange - Ernie
Red - Elmo

[louis c]

7. kick

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

8. Shouldn't blue be above green?