There’s a famous and profound conjecture in mathematics that I won’t describe to you (maybe I’ll say a few words in the comments) that people often complain is almost unfalsifiable. It’s an inequality that is supposed to be true, given certain fudge factor adjustments, but one has so much latitude with these fudge factors that it’s nearly impossible to even imagine what a counterexample might look like.
(It’s still a great conjecture, mind you, and if it was proved, it would be pretty much the most awesome thing human beings have ever accomplished, with all due respect to antibiotics and the iPhone and Exile On Main St.)
So, in that spirit, let’s start with the following political conjecture: No matter what action Republicans take, and what calamity this action causes, “ostensibly nonpartisan pundits” will blame Democrats at least as much as Republicans for the calamity.
Can any of you imagine a counterexample to this conjecture? Can you imagine Ron Fournier or Charles Lane or any of the other Broder wannabes agreeing that something was primarily the fault of Republicans? I can’t. I’m sure that they all say “I just call it like I see it so of course I might end up doing it”, but that’s not good enough. I’d like to know whether they can actually visualize circumstances under which they might do it.
I’m going to try to contact some pundits and see if I can get them to say whether or not they can imagine blaming Republicans more than Democrats for something.
Update. Ron Fournier was kind enough to answer:
@DougJBalloon yes
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) September 27, 2013
Comrade Jake
I’m sure Jake Tapper will be very eager to take you up on this, right after he runs a segment on Senator Obama voting against raising the debt ceiling.
Ruckus
In their world if they did blame repubs, would they implode? Fall into a black hole? Die in a fiery ball of intense light? Or dissolve into a tiny little ball of dust?
Because otherwise what’s the point of the exercise?
Comrade Jake
Chuck Todd will say that if he hasn’t blamed Republicans more, then it is Obama’s fault for not adequately explaining to the public why the GOP is to blame.
Chris
I have my own theory, but am always curious to see what happens when such theories are tested.
third of two
I have no idea what the mathematical example is you’re thinking of, but it sounds a lot like Popper’s work on falsifiability being the distinguishing characteristic between scientific and unscientific theories.
JPL
How’s that hopey changey thing?
Maybe it’s hopie/changie Where’s Sarah when I need her?
Doug Milhous J
@third of two:
The conjecture is falsifiable and the fudge factors are there for a reason, it just annoys people that it’s so hard to conceive of how one might construct counterexamples.
Bill in Section 147
They won’t have any problem blaming Republicans more than Democrats. In fact, they do it all the time.
Those darn Republicans always want to get there way but constantly demand that it happen in a bipartisan fashion.
Wag
yin and yang always split down the middle. There is no right or wrong, there is no yes or no, only shades of maybe.
I think of our current stalemate like a domestic dispute. Sure the woman got hit, but she was asking for it by asking for health care for her kids. What’s a guy supposed to do? Give her what she needs?
reflectionephemeral
It’s important to bear in mind that this “both sides are to blame” attitude is to the benefit of the GOP, in two ways: (1) Republicans behave crazily/ideologically, dragging the “center” to the right; (2) people who don’t pay much attention to politics get the message that “Washington is broken”, which helps the GOP.
But you don’t have to take my word for it! Longtime GOP staffer Mike Lofgren explained the strategy behind the sabotage:
dubo
THEORETICALLY, if John McCain and Lindsey Graham sponsored a bill that got Dems on board but not the GOP, the media might blame the Republicans
Mark
Why don’t you just name the conjecture?
If you’re trying to make an analogy it seems weird to leave it out.
Wag
@Bill in Section 147:
Which means Democrats voting for what Republicans demand
The Other Chuck
All right spill the beans, what’s the mathematical conjecture?
CorbinDallasMultipass
So wait, are you treating this as a NP problem where it is supposed to be easy to verify a possible solution as correct but coming up with an algorithm to generate that solution is hard?
Hawes
If the Masters of Wall Street allow them to cast blame where it belongs…. maybe.
MattF
I think the key word is ‘ostensibly.’ It actually means ‘not’, in the sense of ‘Jen Rubin is ostensibly going to write something positive about Obama’.
At least Rubin has made up her mind and cast off any pretense of impartiality.
Paul in KY
Theoretically, it would have to be something that really hits them hard in the wallet.
Doug Milhous J
@The Other Chuck:
abc
I don’t want to get dragged into a discussion of whether the current 600 page alleged proof is correct or not.
Sasha
A wonderful related thought experment: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/09/debt-ceiling
Villago Delenda Est
Simple Answer to somewhat complex question: NO.
Broderism is a disease. A cancer. Something that must be excised from the body of the 4th Estate by nuking from space. The only way to be sure.
PurpleGirl
I’m going to try to contact some pundits and see if I can get them to say whether or not they can imagine blaming Republicans more than Democrats for something.
To dream the impossible dream…
Paul in KY
@reflectionephemeral: That quote is beyond cynical. They are playing with fire & they’re too stupid to realize it.
Sasha
A wonderful thought experiment: What if Obama threatened to veto any increase to the debt limit unless the Republicans capitulated to his policies?
Helmut Monotreme
I hypothesize, that if the GOP, were to bring 2nd amendment solutions to congress and the white house and violently overthrow the current administration, a plurality of conservative pundits would applaud, and blame the Democrats for forcing their hand.
Ben Cisco
@Ruckus:
One can always hope.
Bill E Pilgrim
From the Wiki page about the conjecture:
Sounds like a reason to drink, if you ask me.
schrodinger's cat
The math example went way over my head. But MSM types will never blame Republicans 100%, instead they will bemoan the lack of civility and bipartisanship, like it was in the good old days when Reagan was the President.
reflectionephemeral
Incidentally, with WWII comparisons in the air thanks to Ted Cruz, I’d like to argue that our Churchill is Paul Krugman.
Churchill is revered because he broke with the conventional wisdom of the elites in his era, and was proven f’ing right.
Similarly, when it was fashionable to treat Pres. Bush as an amiable, straight-shootin’ manager and leader of men, Krugman wrote that he would bust the budget and botch the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. He also wrote that austerity would harm the economy, and that the stimulus was too small.
In short, he’s been entirely correct, and unfashionably so, on all the major issues of the past decade plus. He continues to be treated as somehow gauche by all the world’s Fourniers, Weisbergs, et al.
barbequebob
Its just your imagination, running away again.
The Other Chuck
@Doug Milhous J: I dunno, it seems as easy as 123 to me ;)
Ecks
Actions attributable to specific people. When it became clear that Katrina was a clusterf*ck, that eventually landed on the preznit. They’re ok singling out Republican PEOPLE for blame (though reluctant to do so), but I assume you’re restricting your observations to blaming the whole party apparatus?
Alex S.
If this was the whole Twitter exchange, wasn’t your question insufficiently precise? After all, I think Mr. Fournier would be perfectly fine with blaming something only on the Democrats.
schrodinger's cat
Defaulting on the debt will put the primacy of the dollar as the de facto world currency at stake. No one wants their banker to be insane, Euro or Yen may start looking better to the money bags of the world.
Ecks
@reflectionephemeral: Nah. Churchill isn’t seen as great because he was right, it’s because he was bombastically, charismatically, and quotably on the right side of (what came to be seen as) an entirely black and white manichean struggle against existential evil. That’s the Great Leader 101 out of mythology casting central.
dmsilev
Fournier’s response is meaningless. All he’s saying is “Yes, I’m a reasonable man”. The problem is pinning down exactly what it would take for him to reach the assessment that the GOP is to blame for something. And if you ask that question, I predict that he’ll be as slippery as an eel in his response.
beergoggles
Well that tweet left open the option to blame the Democrats for it.
Wag
Please ask Mr Fournier to eloborate.
That would be entertaining. And may prove useful if his conjuctured situation comes to pass and he blames both sides anyway.
schrodinger's cat
@reflectionephemeral: Churchill was wrong about India and the Empire in general.
marc
I asked Fournier a similar question. It didn’t go well:
https://twitter.com/ron_fournier/status/383370351729975296
KG
What did the punditocracy say in the 90s when the GOP shut down the government? My guess is that the pundits will go along with the general public who pretty much understands Republicans don’t like government, so if someone is responsible for shutting it down, it’d be them.
And in some fairness to the pundits, their “both sides do it” stuff is them just following the public perception. A lot of people think that both parties are crooked and corrupt. Pundits play on that because it’s easier to tell the story that people already believe.
Punchy
Shorter Ronny F — if all the Republicans–every one of them–admit all on the same day that they are 100% culpable for this mess, and nobody else is to blame in Washington, then perhaps I will assign 50.1% of the blame to the GOP, and the rest to the Dems.
Anyone know what Jen Rubin’s take on Cruz’s non-filly was?
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not to mention the Dardanelles campaign, Crete, and the “soft underbelly” of Europe (the Italian campaign in WWII).
gnomedad
@Mark:
+1. Why so coy?
@Doug Milhous J:
Then don’t. Jesus Hypothetical Christ.
eemom
Did you hear the Stones or the Temptations in your head when you posted this?
Villago Delenda Est
@KG:
The narrative must be reinforced constantly. To do otherwise would involve actual work, which is to be avoided, at all costs.
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
Are you implying that DougJ is having his 19th nervous breakdown?
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: I think his low opinion of “coolies” is what makes Churchill such a great hero to the right more than his stance against Hitler.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, there’s definitely that factor in play, for sure for sure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@marc: Wow
Fournier concedes Sargent’s main point about the uselessness of the Beltway, but he’s too smug and stupid to notice. Arguing about who is the worst Villager is a bit like trying to argue about the fluffiest cloud, but Fournier has to one of the worst ten.
Villago Delenda Est
Reference the update:
He’s lying.
eemom
@Villago Delenda Est:
Nothing I do don’t seem to work, it only seems to make matters worse.
reflectionephemeral
@Paul in KY: The thing is, by “sabotaging the reputation” of government, in our presidential system, the Republicans are quite literally imperiling the republic. I go into more detail here, but the short version is, government like ours don’t last. Political scientists writing 25 or so years ago said that we, uniquely, survived the competing legitimacies of a legislature & president by having heterogeneous parties. We don’t have that anymore.
The GOP is literally holding the economy hostage, demanding the implementation of the political program its presidential candidate just ran on, and was soundly beaten. And they earned about 1.3 million fewer votes than Democrats in elections for the House in 2012!
The government that lasted the longest with a constitution like ours was pre-Pinochet Chile.
scav
@dmsilev: I agree on the meaninglessness on the response, but hesitate to agree that he “is” is reasonable man. He may just have chosen to position himself as one (for at least a 140-char window). Or, he may just have a vivid imagination.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@marc: That cracked me the hell up, on a day when I did not think that possible. Thanks very much for that.
And of course, any support of Team Bella Q will go a long way toward helping people with actually treatable brain illnesses. As opposed to the personality disorders afflicting most of the GOP and its courtiers in the press. Sociopaths, like the proverbial light bulb, have to really want to change. Light bulbs are more likely to want that, in this instance.
reflectionephemeral
@Ecks: That’s reasonable enough, as is schrodinger’s cat’s point. I was operating within the mythology of Churchill, but those points are important.
gelfling545
I can certainly imagine a situation in which they would not say “Both sides do it.” It would be one in which they felt they could totally blame the Democrats. This may be the type of situation to which Mr. Fournier refers.
marc
@Jim
Fournier blocked me, which is kind of churlish considering he had just called me “grasshopper” as if he’s a teacher and I’m his pupil. I guess I’ll manage to keep living my life, though.
Thanks, @Bella. It’s nice to have good work recognized. Obviously can’t figure out how to end a link.
Epicurus
Alternate translation of Fournier’s response: “I don’t understand the question, and I won’t respond to it.” Or, he’s just lying. I eagerly await his first article placing the blame squarely on the GOP. I will NOT be holding my breath during this period.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gelfling545: The whole “Obama doesn’t reach out” thing was a way of saying “Both sides are equally to blame, but it’s the Democrats’/Obama’s fault that Republicans are to blame at all.” Broder logic.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Failure to take reasonable steps to minimize collateral damage makes you a war criminal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Epicurus:
A friendly correction.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
If it takes out future Luke Russerts, that’s just gravy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Newsmax headline
I still think they’ll all fall in line if he’s the nominee, but there will be some comedy along the way.
Chris
@reflectionephemeral:
It’s funny, it strikes me that the consensus’ rejection of Krugman is what “political correctness” would ACTUALLY mean if it wasn’t just a wingnut meme – the insistence that being politically convenient trumps being objectively but inconveniently right.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think she’s implying that he’s on Mother’s Little Helper.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
By that logic, it’s OK to kill every living thing in Brazil just to make sure that you get Greenwald.
Hmmm …
Gian
@schrodinger’s cat:
Like McCain Churchill was a POW
JPL
@marc: Fournier must be losing it. Good job!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@reflectionephemeral: the spectacle of Paul Krugman being paired with likes of Mary Matalin and David Frum (and I am not impressed by his overblown “apostasy”) in economic debate is as good as any example of the utter uselessness of the Sabbath Gasbag/Village culture. Morally and intellectually bankrupt.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@gnomedad:
I always thought
From an interview in 2011, in Esquire.
scott (the other one)
@Wag:
Yeah, I’d be helpful to clarify: “Sorry, I meant, can you imagine a scenario where you believe the GOP and only the GOP is to blame? OBVIOUSLY the Democrats and only the Democrats often bear all the blame.”
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Right. The “both sides do it” meme never appears without its corollary, “but liberals are worse.”
Doug Milhous J
@eemom:
Both!
sharl
@Doug Milhous J:
Haha, I’ve seen something comparable in the realm of materials science, specifically regarding the various mechanisms bandied about for how the metal/alloy in question undergoes fatigue at the microscopic scale that ultimately leads to component failure.
Apparently the theory had/has many critics. But the only way it could be definitively falsified (or “proven”, for that matter) was by sacrificing an aircraft (or two, or more – better statistics with more data) after a certain number of service hours, followed by massive TEM (transmission electron microscopy) analysis of the metal components in question that underwent all the stress during take-offs, flights, and landings.
In theory this was/is doable, so it can be said that the theory is falsifiable – one of the essential criteria for a scientifically valid hypothesis (whether ultimately shown to be true or not). And so the response to folks skeptical of the theory was “prove it!” (i.e., prove that we theory proponents are wrong). But in practice the analyses needed for that would be sooooo expensive, lengthy, and labor intensive (=expensive, also too), that no sponsoring agency would never be able to justify funding it.
Oh, and it might have helped just a wee bit that one of the hypothesis’ proponents was a program officer at the sponsoring agency, who in fact had oversight over the program in question.
So, you write up yer papers supporting the theory, then write up some more defending it and demanding that yer critics put-up or shut-up, then as your publication list grows, go on ahead and get bonuses and promotions and attaboys and whatnot from yer management, who are happy that yer makin’ yer sponsor happy.
The End.
I love happy endings (and not just the kind you’re thinking of, pervs).
elspi
“It’s still a great conjecture, mind you, and if it was proved, it would be pretty much the most awesome thing human beings have ever accomplished, with all due respect to antibiotics and the iPhone and Exile On Main St.”
We are all too late. Perelman already won “most awesome thing human beings have ever accomplished”.
Geometrization was da bomb.
Cacti
@reflectionephemeral:
Incidentally, with WWII comparisons in the air thanks to Ted Cruz, I’d like to argue that our Churchill is Paul Krugman.
I think a more flattering comparison would be that of a modern Keynes, as Churchill was an unapologetic racist and imperialist.
Keynes correctly predicted the economic disaster that would follow the reparation terms levied on Germany following WWI.
He was also correct in his assessment that austerity would deepen economic depression following the bust of 1929, and that austerity should be implemented during boom times.
RosiesDad
Too bad he didn’t try to elucidate in 140 characters.
Elizabelle
James Fallows has you covered. Send this to anyone who’s not a howling at the moon wingnut.
Illustrated with a photo of John C. Calhoun:
Your False Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead (a kind of politics we have not seen for 150 years)
Fallows reminds of of 3 things to keep in mind:
Ron Fournier and others: consider yourselves slapped.
Francis
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): The H is for Howard.
“Our Father, who Art in Heaven, Howard be thy Name”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Amen. I suppose if I spent the afternoon forwarding that to the Jake Tappers and Andrea Mitchells, I’d be both wasting my time and acting out a real live Grampa SImpson episode. But I hope it’s a small burr under the saddles of the smug self-satisfaction.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Villago Delenda Est: Churchill wasn’t wrong about the Dardanelles. The strategic vision was correct – it would have seriously compromised the German position. The failure was in the execution, and in the timidity of de Robeck.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
You see my point, then….
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Also in the notion (and he repeated this in Italy) that the Turks would fold like cheap suits, because, you know, they’re wogs.
ppcli
@gnomedad:
Reread the comment – DougJ answered it.
The abc conjecture in number theory.
Edit: A very interesting result, if correct, but it’s sure no Artin Reciprocity Law or Riemann Mapping Theorem, IMO.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think James Fallows is sickened by what he’s seeing, and he wrote simply and accurately on what is really going on.
He’s a treasure.
Gary K
abc
RSA
@dmsilev:
I’ve had arguments with Creationists who have said that they would accept evolution if they came across a sufficiently convincing argument. Unfortunately, that argument would have to be made personally by God himself, coming down from on high.
LanceThruster
And then there’s this kind of journalism that doesn’t even register on the radar.
“Both sides do it” doesn’t even begin to cover this sort of myopia.
Elizabelle
Fallows toward the end of his blogpost:
He also commends the following journalists for giving the full story — and there’s something very interesting about this list:
reflectionephemeral
@Chris: Agreed 100%, I’ve used that line in conversation before. “I know, the safe, politically correct thing is to put the blame on ‘the extremes on both sides’, but that just doesn’t describe the real world right now.” It actually does seem to get people to stop and think for a sec.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t disagree that Churchill was a big poopyhead – but he was right about the Dardanelles.
drkrick
@Helmut Monotreme:
That one’s testable. How many conservative pundits are on board with Larry Klayman’s proposed coup d’etat?
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: I thought the main reason we attacked in Italy was to get Stalin off our back aboout starting a 2nd front & we weren’t ready to hit France, so we went with Italy.
Churchill was definitely wrong about it being a ‘soft’ target, though.
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Strategically, he was right. Unfortunately, he failed to take a lot of things into consideration in the process.
Also, it’s pretty obvious that not everyone was on board with the concept, no matter how strategically sound it may have been.
mclaren
Doug, the polling data contradicts your pessimistic assertion.
Source: “Ominous Signs for the GOP in 2014,” The Fiscal Times, 26 July 2013.
Paul in KY
@reflectionephemeral: That is part of what I was thinking about. The other part might be that one day the non-27-percenters might finally realize the ride they’ve been taken on by GOP & then they don’t win shit at any level.
Culture of Truth
I don’t believe Mr Fournier
Ruckus
@Francis:
“Our Father, who Art in Heaven,
HowardHarvard be thy Name”Depends on your bank account of course.
Mr_Gravity
If “both sides do it” why isn’t anyone talking about “House Democrats”?
I wrote this. Does that make me Hunter S. Thompson?
Paul in KY
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Wasn’t Churchill as 1st Lord of Admiralty remiss in the strategic decisions made? Like using the navy so much & amphibious landings in front of cliffs/forts, etc. etc.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Some of my people when I was in USAF had been in Vietnam & observed some Turkish units that fought there (also some ROK units fought in Vietnam as well) & said ‘when the Turks enter the valley, the only thing that comes out of the valley are the Turks’.
mclaren
Contrary to the absurdly overinflated claims that “Obama is fighting to save the presidency” and “the debt-ceiling showdown is the fight of Obama’s life,” this debt ceiling problem is minor and trivial and will not be remembered in 6 months.
The reasons why this issue is trivial are fourfold.
[1] Obama has a simple easy 14th amendment escape hatch. He’s constitutionally obliged to make good on America’s debts, so he can simply issue an executive order to pay the debt regardless what congress says. People who assert the president of the United States doesn’t have the power to do what he’s constitutionally required to do are either dishonest or dyslexic. Read the constitution.
[2] The good old platinum coin can always be dragged in to resolve the situation.
[3] If America goes into default, despite ludicrous doomsday scenarios bruited about by economically uneducated pundits, the U.S. will not collapse and disintegrate. It will cost a significant amount of money, it will raise interest rates, it might damage America’s bond rating, and it might even produce another recession — none of these problems are permanent. To give you an idea of how trivial those problems really are, consider that Standard & Poor’s lowered America’s credit rating after the last debt ceiling crisis in 2011. Nobody gave a shit. Why does no other nation in the world give a shit that America’s credit rating took a hit after the last debt ceiling crisis? Because however bad America’s bond rating, we’re still solid gold compared to the alternatives. If you’re some sovereign nation and you want to invest your money, where would you rather put it — Russia? China? The Eurozone constantly teetering on the edge of disintegration with non-stop weekly member nation default crises and bailouts and no central banking mechanism to resolve the problem? (No central bank for the entire Eurozone, that is, to adjust exchange rates twixt member nations, which is the core of the problem.) China with its exchange-rate game-playing with the yuan and its black-box completely non-transparent economy riddled with corruption and cronyism?
Or America?
You know the answer.
[4] Even the threat of default will put such pressure from Wall Street and big-money donors on the Republicans that the Repubs in the House will turn into charcoal briquettes.
Watch.
You’ll see. This so-called “epochal crisis” is a bunch of hype generated by a press desperate to gin up a story. The reality is that this entire situation will blow over directly and no one will talk about it or even remember it in 6 months. It’s another Y2K scare.
gnomedad
@ppcli:
D’oh! I was scanning for a reply — that was so anticlimactic I missed it.
schrodinger's cat
@Gian:
So? That makes the decision by Churchill’s cabinet that starved millions of Indians OK?
tybee
@Paul in KY:
i have also heard that about the ROK units
Another Bot Splainer
@Elizabelle: Reconstruction today, Reconstruction tomorrow, Reconstruction forever !
Felonius Monk
Canadian Ted Cruz has proved himself to be a truly bi-partisan member of the United States Senate — he is hated by both Democrats and Republicans alike. I’m sure his mother is proud.
Chris
@Ecks:
This.
The comparison between Churchill and McCain is apt, since he was pretty much that kind of all-out nationalist nutjob. It’s why he chose to keep the war going against Hitler even though there was no particular reason to think that would end well (Russia and America were a long way from entering the war, there was no way to know Germany and Japan would be stupid enough to make them, and no one else was around to help out). The gamble, or leap of faith to look at it another way, paid off.
Unfortunately, the same “fuck the Germans, we will fight them on the beaches” mentality also applied to all the colonized people.
D.N. Nation
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2008/07/aps-ron-fournier-karl-rove-keep-fight
Fournier is a wingnut moron who’s too cowardly to come out and admit his political affiliation.
Elizabelle
@mclaren:
Bruce Bartlett’s take.
Interesting link; thanks for putting it up. Had not heard of the Fiscal Times.
Gian
@schrodinger’s cat:
Lighten up. Seriously comparing the fact that Churchill was a pow to the much repeated fact that McCain was as well is a bit of a joke.
Its not an endorsement of any particular position or person.
Chris
@reflectionephemeral:
Interesting. Are parliamentary systems supposed to be more effective than presidential ones? And if so why?
burnspbesq
Who is this impostor who has hacked mclaren’s login credentials?
schrodinger's cat
@Gian: Yes the death of 4 million people due to starvation is laugh out loud, funny. Sorry my bad.
gogol's wife
@burnspbesq:
I know what you mean, but this does happen every once in a while.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: In the parliamentary system the leader of the majority party in the Parliament is the Prime Minister, the head of the government. So this current situation would not have happened in parliamentary democracy. However the government can collapse if it cannot survive a vote of no-confidence
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
You asked Mr. Fournier the wrong question. Yes, he can imagine a situation in which both sides aren’t to blame, but that’s probably because he can imagine certain situations in which Democrats are entirely to blame. What he can’t imagine is a situation in which Republicans are entirely to blame.
Paul in KY
@Chris: England could not survive as a vassal of Nazi Germany. Fight to the death was the only option against that regime (probably one of the closest in the last several centuries to emulate the fictional Mordor). Chamberlin finally realized that & that was why he resigned in favour of Churchhill.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@mclaren: The central issue with the both sides are to blame crowd is that, at least in my age cohort, there are a bunch of Reagan era folks who identify Republican and can’t bring themselves to accept that that party is the entire problem right now. Their wish list for government spending/economic policy is basically everything Obama has proposed – a jobs bill that emphasizes education, infrastructure building, and research, ensuring that medicare and social security remain essentially unchanged, paying down the debt by taxing rich plutocrats and Wall Street bankers more.
They may hate abortion and illegal immigrants, and maybe the gays but really not so much, but on fiscal and economic policy they’re right there with Obama. But…they just can’t fathom that the republican party is standing in the way of those agenda items. They know Obama isn’t entirely to blame, but they can’t bring themselves to believe that the party they’ve identified with for so long is entirely to blame either, so both sides do it.
Sinnach
A bit late to the party but it should be noted that asking right-leaning or even Politico-esque Villagers if both sides are equally to blame can be quite easily interpreted as asking if there is ever a situation where a D deserves more blame than an R.
I imagine you’ll get a lot of responses like Fournier’s – seemingly decisive but actually totally meaningless and without context, content, or intellectual heft.
cashto
If I were to guess, I think Doug is alluding to Vinay Deolalikar’s claimed proof that P != NP (although it’s only 100 pages, not 600).
Ex Regis
Proving a theorem or constructing a counter-example to the theorem might both be impossible. That’s Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. For example, the Goldbach Conjecture might well be true but unprovable using logic and Peano’s Axioms. I was sorely disappointed in my youth when the same became true of the Continuum Hypothesis (there is no cardinal number strictly between the cardinality of the integers and the cardinality of the real numbers) as shown by Paul Cohen.
Gian
@schrodinger’s cat:
yeah, that was exactly what I brought up
only it was you.
read the freaking lexicon on the damn website:
“Did you know that John McCain was a POW?”- Post tag used throughout the 2008 Presidential campaign to reflect the remarkable frequency with which the McCain campaign or a surrogate pointed this fact out, seemingly regardless of context. Media members spent the entire 2008 presidential campaign pretending to be astonished, and charmed, that McCain was too principled and modest to ever, ever bring up his POW status, even though he and his campaign brought it up all the time.”
https://balloon-juice.com/balloon-juice-lexicon-a-h/#D
and lighten up francis
Seanly
@burnspbesq:
That’s what I was wondering.
elftx
Fournier is a lying sack of shit :
State of Play: Independents to decide which is least obnoxious, dysfunctional, irresponsible, no-account Party. Ds/Rs jockey for the “win”
joel hanes
there are a bunch of Reagan era folks who identify Republican and can’t bring themselves to accept that that party is the entire problem
Bingo. This describes nearly every non-wingnut retired Republican I know back home in Iowa.
Tribal identification trumps reasoning and analysis in most people, and more so in Republicans, and especially in Republicans of a certain age.
schrodinger's cat
@Gian: You brought up McCain and POW status and compared him to Churchill, I didn’t. MSM papered over all of McCain’s faults with a default he was a POW. As if that excused his subsequent behavior. Your initial comment sounded to me like you were excusing Churchill’s behavior regarding the Bengal famine. If you weren’t, well then I was mistaken.
Perhaps because, Friday Kitteh has a tired
Cermet
I keep trying to tell these people the same thing – that the debt ceiling is not anywhere as serious or disastrous as some many are told by talking heads and the same economist that have missed every single bubble, inflation spike or no inflation since the 80’s. Even the stock market, after a few weeks at most would climb back quickly as everyone realized that the world didn’t end and that there are numerous now lower cost stocks waiting to climb ($$$.) The worse that happens is the dollar weakens and that would do a lot to help us in the long run, a great deal.
Bring it on thugs and see your base melt away come 2014.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@joel hanes: I’m a Gen Xer so no where near retirement, but our Glory Days (aka high school) were during the Reagan administration so a lot of my HS classmates identify republican because, America! Carter sucked!
fuckwit
@mclaren: NO NO NO THIS IS BULLSHIT!! Where is our bench? Where is our 50-state strategy? Where are our candidates poised to run, with organizations ready to go, in al those gerrymandered red districts?
The Rethugs have gerrymandered themselves into a decade-long majority, and the only way out for us is to COMPETE IN EVERY DISTRICT IN EVERY STATE. I do not see our idiotic, fucking beltway consultant bullshit Democratic Party even thinking about this… the morons who failed to keep Howard Dean as Chairman.
Fight every seat. Fight in every state. Fight like your country depends on it, because it does. Swing states are bullshit. Every state is a swing state.
mclaren
@Chris:
I don’t know about “more effective,” but parliamentary systems enjoy certain advantages compared to the American system.
First, in a parliamentary system, a crisis can force a vote of “no confidence” and require a change of government election within 30 days. That means that really spectacularly bad examples of atrocious governance can’t grind on for 2 or 3 or 4 years until the next presidential election. Nixon’s government would’ve fallen within 30 days after the tapes became public back in the 1970s, Reagan’s government would’ve gotten dissolved with a no-confidence vote after the Iran-Contra scandal, and Dubya’s putsch would’ve been shut down before it could even start in the 2000 presidential election.
Second, parliamentary systems typically have “shadow cabinets” and “shadow prime ministers.” This means that not only does the opposition have a fully-functional government-in-waiting ready in the wings to take over, opposition parties find themselves obliged for this reason to spell out in particular detail all their policies. The shadow cabinets typically issue detailed white papers about their policies. This helps boost support amongst their voting base, but more important serves as a spark point for substantive policy discussion. It would simply not be possible in Britain for a shadow opposite cabinet to propose something like “let us repeal the NIH, but we shan’t issue policy papers describing any alternatives.” That just wouldn’t fly in a parliamentary system. But the crazy motto “repeal, revoke, rescind” seems to fly for the Republicans in the American system — probably because of the differences twixt our winner-take-all electoral system with a 4-year guaranteed term for the winner.
Third, narrow elections can force several minority parties to form a coalition in order to create a majority government. That’s not possible in a winner-take-all system like America. In particular, an atrocity like the 2000 presidential election where the Drunk Driving C Student and his torturer sidekick stole the election wouldn’t be possible in a parliamentary system. If the 2000 election were to happen in a parliamentary system, the Repubs and Demos would have to form a coalition government, and the entire history of the Dubya years would’ve been completely different.
mclaren
@fuckwit:
I agree with you on strategy. What I said about the polling data doesn’t mean we Demos should sit on our asses and twiddle our thumbs. By all means, let’s “fight on the beaches, fight in the polling booths, fight in the NASCAR stands” for every last vote. I’m just pointing out that polls show demographics are on the side of us liberal progressives, contra Doug’s doomsday fatalism.
It may be true, as Frank Zappa said, that while scientists say the universe is made of hydrogen because it’s more common than any other element, Zappa disagreed and believed the universe was made of stupidity, because stupidity is even more common than hydrogen. Nevertheless, even human stupidity is finite, and has an end.
Chris
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I agree. But I think for a lot of the VSP crowd, it goes back much farther than Reagan. The Republican Party has been the party of East Coast elites all the way back to the original Gilded Age (maybe even before) – a social class that includes the Village and many of the other professional centrists. The ideology of the party’s gone back and forth – from Victorian-style capitalism to Rockefeller/Eisenhower liberalism back to Reaganite capitalism – but throughout it all, the GOP remained the social club of these elites, and their interface with the federal government. (While the Democrats remained the party of horrid lower classes – whether rural Southerners and urban immigrant workers, like a hundred years ago, or nonwhite people like today).
Republican tribal identity isn’t just for the masses – it’s been inscribed on our upper classes for well over a hundred years.
(I don’t know if you were talking about people like the Villagers or just voters in general, but I’m dwelling on the Village and those like them because that’s where the “professional centrist” and self-proclaimed “moderate Republican” mindset seems to die hardest. The public as a whole is pretty well polarized).
Chris
I know it’s probably a dead thread, but since I couldn’t answer before (in class) –
@Paul in KY:
Why not?
I mean, what was preventing Britain from simply going for a Vichy style government like the French did (or as a best case scenario, an independent but friendly power like Italy or Romania, even at the cost of the democratic system)? Just in recognition that, yes, it sucks, but the krauts won, they control Europe now, all the remaining major powers are either allied with it or neutral and it could be years and years before that changes, let’s just make our peace with the new order? Why wasn’t that even considered? I mean, I’m thrilled that it wasn’t, but given how bleak the situation must’ve looked in 1940, also surprised.
Peter
@Chris: Same reason they spent the entire Cold War acting as thogh they were America’s equal partner, and to this day keep insisting that their international politics penis is as huge as ever. England could perhaps have survived, but the Empire could not have. For the upper crust of English society, the existence, power, and majesty of the British Empire was profoundly ideological: inalienable and unquestionable. Although it’s obvious to us now that the hey-day of the Empire had long since come and gone by this time, it was not at all obvious to them at the time.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Go back and study european history some more. There was bad blood between the many separate countries for centuries. A few wars and other such things. Not much love to be lost there, that’s for sure. Even in the same century, just 25-30 years earlier many lives were lost on both sides for basically nothing. England was not going to submit. No way, no how.
Bill Arnold
@dmsilev:
It’s possible that Fournier was playing with the post (tinyurl included in DougJ’s tweet), which says basically that it’s hard to prove that the answer is yes, absent an existence proof.