According to a CNN/ORC poll, 68% of Americans think shutting down the government for even a few days is a bad idea, while 27% think it’s a good idea.
And it appears most Americans would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown: Sixty-nine percent said they agreed with the statement that the party’s elected officials were acting like “spoiled children.”
It’s been a while, so newer readers may not understand the crazification factor, so here is a refresher:
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?
Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.
John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?
Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?
John: … a bit low, actually.
Just brilliant.
dmsilev
My personal theory is that the pollsters are fucking with us now; whenever there’s a result that’s within spitting distance of the Crazifaction Constant, they simply round it off to the proper number.
ranchandsyrup
I baader-meinhof that percentage all the time. Thanks a lot Obama.
Comrade Dread
I noticed that last night. I’m starting to think that God is really a divine computer programmer and he’s leaving Easter Eggs in the matrix for us.
ronin122
I wonder if some chap will ever do a doctoral thesis in political science discussing the crazification factor. I mean it makes sense: half the world disagrees with you, and half the world is less-informed or more-crazy than you. If you assume these to be independent, about 25% of the world disagrees and is a relative lunatic. The extra 2% is due to contrarian assholes. Thus, we have just mathematically proven the plausibility of the CF. I think I just depressed myself….
David in NY
Thank you for that. Takes me back — and to wonder, were the days of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz worse or better than now? Explain your answer.
C.J.
@ronin122: as a political science grad student, that sounds incredibly tempting
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
After all these years, you’re just copying and pasting this post now, aren’t ya? Just change the topic at hand and repost.
PurpleGirl
One must remember another of John Rogers’ great quotes:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
MikeJ
@ranchandsyrup: I once had to proofread a powerpoint presentation about one of their assassinations using a shaped charge on a bicycle. I’m unfamiliar with it as a verb though.
JCJ
Is it somehow related to the golden ratio? Natural logarithms? 3**3? Where are the math wizards to explain this?
HinTN
@C.J.: Jump on that like a duck on a June Bug.
Punchy
@C.J.: I would just love to see “kung fu monkey” listed as one of the dissertation cites.
The Dangerman
CNN is reporting that the House will send piecemeal, Department by Department, budgets to the Senate; I suppose Obamacare is HHS, so once we get to their Department, will they piecemeal it even more? This seems like a dangerous precedent to me, i.e., maybe we need to segment out the DOD budget, project by project, meaning some little ol’ states will get screwed when their pet project gets axed.
ranchandsyrup
@MikeJ: They got a syndrome named after them: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@The Dangerman: The Senate can color on them and send them back.
JimBucksbury
It’s actually John’s friend Tyrone that’s the genius, John just repeated what he said..
Ahasuerus
Anybody else read Charlie Pierce’s rant over at Esquire? My favorite part:
The man can certainly turn a phrase.
Carnacki
So Tyrone is the real genius since he said the 27 percent so quick and then gave his reasons.
Bill E Pilgrim
@ranchandsyrup: Weird you should mention that today because I just learned that there was a TV series after the movie called Breaking Baader Meinhoff.
Keith G
One of the truly frightening things about the internet is that it allows folks to seek their own truth and to interact for a considerable amount of time in environments that do not challenge their favored concepts (you can see the results of this sometimes here at B-J).
I imagine that explains many in the permanent 27% that we always note.
Ahasuerus
@Bill E Pilgrim: You’re a very Baad (er Meinhoff) man for saying that.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Goddammit! How come no one ever credits Tyrone?
Omnes Omnibus
(Emphasis added)
Isn’t 13-14% about where Cheney’s approval ratings ended up?
Roger Moore
@ronin122:
They’ll be able to get some interesting data from Public Policy
PTrolling, who seem to love asking questions intended to elicit responses from the 27%.Jay in Oregon
@Carnacki:
There has been some debate on whether or not Tyrone is a real person.
John Rogers swears he is, but that he also doesn’t want to deal with harassment from being a (very minor) internet celebrity, IIRC.
But he also reads BJ, so I’m sure he can clarify now that he’s been name-checked in a post.
Jay in Oregon
I’m not sure if this is intended as an open thread or not, but I just saw this float by on the Internets…
http://www.occupycooperative.com/the_occupy_card
ranchandsyrup
@Bill E Pilgrim: Well done! You’re gonna see meth everywhere now.
Percysowner
According to the Quinnipac poll cited by Kevin Drum When asked if they supported shutting down the government in order to stop Obama care only 22% support doing that, with 72% opposed and 6% don’t know or don’t care. In other words 5% of the seemingly unmovable 27% is starting to say, Whoa, maybe this is too much. I’m trying to find a silver lining somewhere.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
The Crazification Constant (or wtf we should call it) and Going Godwin are two of the absolute truisms I’ve discovered on the internetzez. Their respective validity is proven time and time again.
Trollhattan
I’m newly informed there’s a crazification synod of the Lutheran Church. This is akin to discovering a contingent of Quaker ninjas.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/01/creationists-in-minnesota-kill-inherit-the-wind-theater-production/
David
It’s worse than you think: 27% * 313.9 million = 84.75 million
Chyron HR
@Jay in Oregon:
‘Course he is. Why, I have it on good authority that he can jump on the backboard, take a quarter, and leave fifteen cents change.
Rosalita
@Ahasuerus: Love Pearce. This one gave me a big happy today:
Bill E Pilgrim
@Ahasuerus: Good thing I didn’t mention the courtroom drama series called Breaking Bader Ginsburg then.
boatboy_srq
@David in NY: I suppose that depends on what one considers “better.” It’s true we had two houses of Congress that actually passed legislation, rather than rant about how Teh Big Gubmint was the biggest curse on the planet since The Plague and whine and pout when Big Gubmint tried to do just about anything, but the legislation they were passing was all repeals of business regulation/oversight, shredding environmental laws, buying pharmaceuticals at full retail (Medicare Pt D) and bombing the BLEEP out of other countries because mushroom clouds and GWoT and fight’em there… IYAM, it’s a toss-up between bomb-throwing Repugs who lob their bombs elsewhere and invent the funds to pay for it all, and bomb-throwing Repugs who lob their bombs inside the Capital and refuse to find the funds to pay for anything.
Roger Moore
@Percysowner:
No. 5 of the 27% are unwilling to tell a pollster that they support shutting down the government to stop Obamacare. Some of the probably believe that because they don’t think we need Obamacare as an excuse. That, or it could be sampling error.
NotMax
@Ahasuerus
That entire blockquote could have been lifted almost verbatim from what we DFHs were bemoaning at the time Ronald “Government is the problem” Reagan was elected.
scav
@Trollhattan: There’s always been a synod of crazy in the denomination, although they may very well be developing pustules of tea-matter in new bodyparts.
Bill E Pilgrim
@ranchandsyrup: I’m going to seemeth what everywhere now?
Oh sorry. I thought we had changed to old English.
The Dangerman
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I suppose your way (coloring) would be far preferential to mine (which would, presumably, require trips to the Men’s or Women’s washrooms).
There is some danger, however, of the Senate rejecting a piecemeal deal on something the would be bad theatrics (I think the Pentagon is already funded, so it couldn’t be there).
feral1
Hey did y’all see that TBogg’s back? And not at firebagger central- http://www.rawstory.com/rs/category/panic-in-funland/
ranchandsyrup
@Bill E Pilgrim: Olde English?
Frankensteinbeck
@Trollhattan:
I didn’t know creationist Jews EXISTED until I met my mother’s Rabbi. Genesis has been officially an allegory since way before Christianity. Unfortunately, obeying the letter and ignoring the spirit is a basic human failure. No faith, organization, or cause is immune.
Southern Beale
Today the CBS news had a poll where it was 22% said yes, 72% said no. Again, it’s always that same margin.. I think it’s less than 27%, you have to factor in the margin of error/people who don’t give a shit or are brain dead. I think it’s more like 22% myself.
Anyhoo, this just happened:
It wants its cake and it wants to eat its cake.
These are political shenanigans of a high order. It’s all about the elections. Cue scary-voiced announcer-lady’s voiceover, “he/she voted to keep the government shut down …” How absofucking insane. These people are incapable of doing anything except worrying about the next election.
NonyNony
@The Dangerman:
From what I recall of US Congressional antics – the actual right way to do this is to strip out the language of the House bill in its entirety for one of these piecemeal funding jobbies, put in the Senate’s language that they have already sent over to the House and Boehner won’t put up for a vote, and send it right back to the House.
I believe in parliamentary procedure terms this is called a “No, Fuck YOU, Mister Speaker” move, but my Robert’s Rules of Order is off in a box somewhere so I can’t look it up.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@The Dangerman: Nah, just keep sending the crap back til they send over a clean CR. The only way to get through to rightwingers is to beat them thoroughly. They don’t have the capacity to understand anything else. It’ll be difficult in the short term but it will pay off.
boatboy_srq
@The Dangerman: Given that sequestration slapped each and every department with flat cost reductions, and the Teahad has been whinging about being made to inflict this on the country (rather, of course, than simply shutting down the parts of Big Gubmint that offend their sensibilities and saving
trillionsbillionstens of thousands that way) this approach might actually result in some decent decisions being made once the Teahad figures out what they need to spend just to keep their constituents fat and happy. IIRC there was a Transportation bill that was quietly pulled once Boehnhead and CANTor figured out they couldn’t get their own people on board with the cuts the sequester required them to make there: we may see more of the same process now, with less-crazy results. OTOH, we could just see the Teahad mull department-by-department funding just to pull each and every one because they can’t agree on how much to cut and where to get the funds. It’ll be fun to see the farmers against the armsmakers against coal against gas/oil etc etc each fighting over the scraps… popcorn, hell: that’s beer-and-hotdog and did-I-miss-kickoff-again?…Southern Beale
Also, this other thing just happened:
It’s where he belongs.
Bill E Pilgrim
@ranchandsyrup: Sante!
The Thin Black Duke
@Percysowner: I think the “silver lining” glows brighter when you realize that the propaganda that’s reported faithfully by the news isn’t representative of what people in The Real World are thinking. And from listening to folks talking on the streets, mostly everybody out there is pissed, and they’re not pissed off at Obama.
Spaghetti Lee
@David:
Well, be reasonable and leave out the children and teens, which roughly speaking leaves about…60 million crazies. Yeah, that’s depressing
Kristin
I don’t know. Maybe the 27% are just really fucking dumb. Boehner and his merry band of morons are certainly on the lower end of the IQ scale.
Seanly
@Carnacki:
I get the sense that Tyrone/John discussion is a fictional dialogue.
Another great post from Rogers is from July 23, 2006 (no link as my work laptop thinks Kung Fu Monkey is a bad site). He starts by talking about the Middle East, transitions it into a discussion of when he was bartending for a restaurant in Boston & from there into asshole patrons. Finally ends with a story about a Saudi prince groping a waitress. The restaurant owner asks the prince to leave & when the entourage complains about the douche being a prince, replies “This is America, which makes you the Prince of absolutely fucking nobody.”
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@JGabriel: That’s what I was just going to say! Tyrone is the genius. John Rodgers just recognized the genius.
Trollhattan
@Southern Beale:
Still won’t get him booted from WaPo.
PurpleGirl
@Trollhattan: Ah yes, the Wisconsin Synod. No other description is needed for either current or former Lutherans. Wisconsin is to the far right of even the Missouri Synod.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
Neither House of Congress follows Robert’s Rules of Order (though they were originally based loosely on the House rules), so they may not be a good source to look up that particular piece of parliamentary procedure. And I think that move may be known as the “I’ve got your compromise RIGHT HERE!” move.
boatboy_srq
@Southern Beale: Ain’t it funny how it’s the stuff that’s visible to all those volk who travel and vacation and use those parts of Big Gubmint that are suddenly funding-worthy at times like these? The National Park Service? Really? Aren’t these the same volk who want to auction off that whole segment because Locke and LL&P and Freedumb™?
Trollhattan
@scav: @Frankensteinbeck:
Sadly, it puts a big ol’ torpedo through the hull of my reflexive “Well, I was never taught this by the Lutherans” retort to Baptists, fundys and Opus Dei Catholics.
NotMax
OT:
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Trollhattan: Huh. And I’d always heard that the Missouri Synod were the crazy ones.
Ahasuerus
@Bill E Pilgrim: Just for that, I am going to stick rabid weasels in your underwear. Make peace with whatever deities you hold dear.
On second thought, the weasel treatment is far too kind. I’m going to make you Louie Gohmert’s new chief of staff. Congratulations!
Chris
@PurpleGirl:
I never knew those came from the same person!
The entire Crazification Factor post is well worth reading; right before the 27% thing, it’s tearing Bush and the entire “Eurabia” crowd a new one over the stupidity of their concerns about a “new Caliphate.”
Belafon
@The Dangerman: Naaah. Reid just stands in front of a microphone and says, “If you want to actually discuss a budget, pass a clean CR, and then we’ll discuss a budget the way laws are supposed to be passed. You don’t get to legislate the election away just because you lost.”
Carnacki
@Seanly: I always liked his 2004 post I miss Republicans
David Hunt
@Seanly: According the Rogers, the Conversation with Tyrone stuff weren’t more frequent (when he was blogging) because they were real conversations. I expect that he cleaned those dialogues up a bit and deleted irrelevant tangents from the conversation, but he claimed that those conversation did happen.
Ahasuerus
@NotMax: I remember doodling ” This is going to be bad…” on my desktop blotter late on election night in 1980. Found that blotter years later after several moves; Cassandra took one look and laughed at me.
Suffern ACE
@Trollhattan: Well, the good news is that WELS is so insular, you won’t actually be taught it by them. Bachman is WELS. Even the LCMS thinks the WELS is a bit far to the right.
Southern Beale
@boatboy_srq:
Hunting season/fall break season/school trip season. That’s my only guess.
IowaOldLady
The R freakout over war memorials being closed is yet more proof of their emphasis on symbol over substance.
Botsplainer
toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail toenail
I really want to see this ad. I keep seeing the boobs, but I want to see some toenail fungus.
Ahasuerus
@Southern Beale: I’m surprised it took so f***ing long.
boatboy_srq
@Southern Beale: Exactly. Surely there’s a Koch with the pocket change to buy their favorite stomping grounds…
IowaOldLady
@Botsplainer: Damn you to hell.
Davis X. Machina
@Carnacki: “Simply put, if you are voting for these guys who call themselves Republicans, then you are voting for crazy air-rifle guy”
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@PurpleGirl:
Ha! The part of my family from which I get my surname (it isn’t McGee) left Prussia in the 1880’s because the King/Kaiser adopted a slightly less rigid form of Lutheranism. The family settled in…Algoma, Wisconsin. They donated land there for one of those uber-conservative Wisconsin Synod Lutheran churches.
I wonder how his grandparents felt when my grandfather broke down and married a Roman Catholic.
Trollhattan
@Suffern ACE:
I believe you’ve just explained everything I need to know.
PurpleGirl
@Trollhattan: Besides the Wisconsin and Missouri synods, there are any number of independent Lutheran churches which are as crazy or crazier. It’s the mainstream ELCA congregations, the descendents of the splitter Missouri factions, the ALC and the LCA which are liberal and liberalish. There are also individual pastors in Missouri who are liberal and refuse to leave because of family and historical connections.
different-church-lady
@Jay in Oregon: What could possibly go wrong?!?
Southern Beale
@Carnacki:
From your link:
The new thing I learned this year is that the modern John Birch-style conservatism we’re currently dealign with was formed, not in opposition to Democrats, but in opposition to Eisenhower Republicans, who were deemed ideologically mushy.
So, no wonder we libtards liked those guys.
Suffern ACE
@Southern Beale: Those war memorials are run by the park service.
I’m in favor of keeping them closed, frankly, unless they agree to release WIC funds.
different-church-lady
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: add Poe’s Law as the third leg of the stool.
PurpleGirl
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Missouri is crazy but not the only crazy ones, and not the craziest.
I spent 10 years attending a Lutheran congregation and was involved in church administration and synodical politics. Ah, I remember it well…
schrodinger's cat
@Carnacki: Were the Republicans ever like that or is this nostalgia speaking?
sharl
@feral1:
Thank you! Most excellent news.
ETA: fixed link (I hope)
Botsplainer
@IowaOldLady:
Still nothing. I googled toenail fungus, clicked links for products, even looked at images (mine isn’t nearly as bad as some of the google images, and is only on my two big toes).
Nothing, nada, zip. I only get the boobs ads.
Suffern ACE
@IowaOldLady: fresh pair. fresh pair. fresh pair.
Hopefully that will bring back the underwear guys who may be more to your liking.
catclub
@David: I am not so worried. I bet only a fraction (27%) of them have the mobility to leave their home without a scooter.
Another set is likely to shoot themselves ‘cleaning’ their gun.
Darwin award candidates…
David in NY
@Southern Beale: “modern John Birch-style conservatism”
I think it’s far older than Eisenhower, or even the Republican party. Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” as I recall, traces such fruitcakes back to the mid-19th Century, or earlier(?). This is the first time they’ve got a hand on the tiller, though, so the ship’s careening pretty wildly.
pseudonymous in nc
@Roger Moore:
They do that a lot, yes. I like to think of it as the equivalent of a control to make sure that their sample includes an accurate 27% of crazy.
Ben Franklin
@NotMax:
Sakharov-Russian
Putin-Russian
Snowden-In Russia.
This sounds bad for Americans.
scav
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Turns out elements of my family were in early at a first gen spinoff of St Paul’s German Evangelical “Birthplace of MO Crazy MO Lutheran” church. Teaching didn’t stick on this side either.
Belafon
@Ben Franklin: Yeah, I suspect most American’s won’t be able to pronounce the names correctly.
different-church-lady
It’s well beyond the “plate o’ shrimp” phenomenon now — just pops up too many damn times. Perhaps Douglass Adams was wrong: the answer to life, the universe and everything isn’t 42, it’s .27.
Trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
My folks were caught up in some kind of schism that occurred in the ’80s and followed the sane wing out to a church in the ‘burbs. I never quite understood the substance behind the kerfuffle, but the mom especially wasn’t pleased with there the Mo Synod was headed. To which I can now belatedly say, “Good for you, mom!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
Exactly. Will is a fascist shithead. Faux Noise is precisely where he belongs.
jl
Just saw a clip of Boehner’s press conference, announcement, appearance, sighting, apparition, whatever you want to call it.. Reminded me of the kind of CA GOP leaders’ appearances I saw before the last election that made them go away, and now you don’t hear a peep out of them.
Except sometimes when Jerry Brown gets a conservative twitch, one of them might get on the media and say “me too’ and then go away.
I know the House GOP is gerrymandered, and will be hard to get rid of them in the election. But the CA Assembly and Senate districts were way gerrymandered too.
I hope Boehner gives more pres conferences with that kind of smooth class, that impart so much useful information about what the hell they think they are doing.
Edit: I gotta say, self-confidence and command just wafted off of Boehner, kind of like the sweet waves and stale merlot and Camel fumes wafts off a bond salesman missing his quotas as he staggers in a few hours after the day starts.
Comrade Dread
@NotMax:
I’ll be curious to see if his new homeland, widely known for its outstanding commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms, will let him go pick up the award should he win. Probably should just mail it to him.
David in NY
@Southern Beale: Also, @Carnacki:
I miss them too. As an example, sometime take a look at Murrow’s “Harvest of Shame,” on the plight of migrant workers [who all happen to be white, but it was the ’50’s]. Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture (E.T. Benson, hard to believe, maybe an undersecretary) sounds far more liberal than anybody in that position since. It’s sort of amazing to see a striped-suit Republican talking like that.
Cacti
Personal bleg from a freshly furloughed federal employee. Legislation has been proposed in the house that would approve back pay for federal employees during the furlough period. Please call or e-mail your rep and ask them to support H.R. 3223.
I and 800,000 others thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Bob In Portland
Some of the blame rests at the grave of Saint Ronald. You know, “Government doesn’t solve problems. Government is the problem.” My incursions into familial wackjobbedness have found that while they seem to be short on logic and short on contemplating consesquences, they have no problem with coming up with a catchy truism that’s intended to shut down discussions.
If I were an international competitor for economic hegemony I couldn’t think of anything better at running down the US than exploiting the racism and anti-governmentalism of the MetaSouth. Heck, I’m willing to let them secede as long as we don’t let them have nuclear weapons.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@scav:
Funny how that works out, huh?
Those grandparents made a deal when they got married: When the children were to be baptized, he’d bring the boys to the Lutheran church and she’d bring the girls to the Catholic church. Problem was that grandpa drank. So after he failed to baptize the first two kids- my Uncles Jim & Mike- grandma took matters into her own hands and had them baptized as Catholics. Two more sons followed (dad was the first of those), two more Catholics. When Aunt Becky was born, gramps sobered up and brought her into the Lutheran church.
pseudonymous in nc
@PurpleGirl:
Obligatory Emo Phillips.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
That’s funny, because having grown up and come to political awareness in the 2000s, I’ve always seen things exactly the opposite way. Democrats are the grown-ups, Republicans are the rebellious teens. When you’re a teenager whose biggest concern is showing Mom and Dad that they’re not the boss of you, Republicanism sounds perfectly logical; of course every man is an island and should be allowed to do what they want and The Man is just an asshole if he tells you otherwise, maaann. Then you grow up; you find out that no man is, in fact, an island, and that there’s a thing called society that most of the things you always took for granted require in order to exist. That there’s actually a reason for all those obnoxious, mainstream, Establishment rules, whether they govern the behavior of drivers on the road, Wall Street CEOs, or Jack Bauer. That even if there’s a problem with society, you’ll get a lot farther trying to work within the system than you will just going to your room and slamming the door, because let’s face it, no one actually wants to live in Galt’s Gulch.
Becoming a Democrat for me was an organic part of the growing up process. And even with all the history I’ve read, it still strikes me as odd that anyone might think otherwise. Times change, I guess.
David in NY
@David in NY: correction from above — maybe it was Eisenhower’s Secretary of Labor in Harvest of Shame who was great.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@PurpleGirl: Well, primus, I’m a Southerner, and secundus, not a Lutheran, so I’m unlikely to have encountered WELS in person or by reputation.
So I’ll just express again my amazement that there is crazier than the Missouri Synod. And old enough crazy that it isn’t the result of steeplejacking!
eyelessgame
27% is easy to explain.
It’s the minumum required to get the majority of the majority, if you round up. If you divide the nation into equal parts, each part having one representative in Congress/gov’t elected by majority vote, then you can gain a majority in that government with 27% of the people.
David in NY
@Chris: Times really have changed. The Republicans of old were growups in the “take your medicine, it’s good for you,” or “there’s no free lunch” kind of way that’s a little more conservative than current Democrats, but not really so much. Democrats are now more fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. Republicans are fiscally nuts, and socially wacko.
Oh, and look at “Harvest of Shame” sometime — the Eisenhower Secretary of Labor is amazing.
Chris
Also,
Not sure I agree with this at all.
Republicans have always been willing to chuckle, shake their heads and ask “who’s going to pay for this?” when it’s a matter of health care, solar power, public transportation, or any of that limp-wristed liberal girly stuff. They still are. And they’ll continue chuckling and shaking their heads long after you’ve handed them all the facts and research they will ever need, and even decades after every other country has implemented these things with vast success. That part hasn’t changed.
But when it’s a question of military or security spending? Like that missile defense program he was talking about? Republicans have been defending boondoggles like that since long before the Goldwater/Reagan wing took over the party. When did they ever not? Eisenhower gave one speech against the military-industrial complex… he gave it just as he was leaving office and after spending eight years of allowing said MIC to develop with little to no opposition. Anyone else? If so, you’d have to go back to the pre-Cold War days.
eyelessgame
Well, the precise percentage is 27.18281828…. does that help?
Ben Franklin
@Comrade Dread:
Funny thing is Russia has never been known for those qualities, and like being poor, it’s better to remain so than it is to have riches and lose them, or imagine you had them and find it an illusion.
schrodinger's cat
@eyelessgame: e?
xenos
@Southern Beale:
It is older. They go back to the anti-Catholic mobs in Boston and NY before the revolution (who were systematically excluded from power by the likes of George Washington), to the Anti-Masonic party in upstate NY, which was the first third-party movement, and the post-WWI KKK. All of a long, paranoid piece.
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: 10e
gelfling545
@Trollhattan: I just need to put in here that there is more than one “Lutheran Church”. They are,from left to right, least crazy to most: the ELCA, more or less similar to the Episcopal Church re doctrinal & social issues & with whom they are in communion, The Missouri Synod, roughly equal to the 1950 RC Church minus pope & who deny intercommunion with ELCA & the Wisconsin Synod of which Michele Bachmann was a member & who, roughly, agree with her “thinking” and aren’t in communion with anybody last I heard. Probably more info than anybody wants/needs but it can be decieving to classify by the term “Lutheran”.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
My God, he does not deserve to be in the same sentence with Yousafzai, let alone competing with her for the Sakharov Prize!
Kay
@Chris:
My oldest son is the same way. He’s 25. He thinks Republicans are reckless and erratic.
katie5
Redistricting gives the crazies supreme power. Add to that intensity to vote in primaries and off year elections coupled with primaries to the right with crazy representatives of the crazies. The cake that’s half-baked as a result is impossible to ignore for the Republicans.
And while I’m ranting, the graphs about low confidence in government and Congress drive me crazy. The underlying assumption is that low numbers will shock people into doing SOMETHING to improve governance. No. It simply confirms a lot of crazies’ belief that we should indeed shut down government.
Ben Lehman
27% is basically the amount of population you need to control the government after a perfect gerrymander.
opiejeanne
OT: AAARRRGGGHHHHH! The contractor working in our kitchen is listening to some idiot named Michael Medved.
Jack fm playing on my computer so that I don’t hear that idiot yelling at anyone fool enough to call in, or maybe actors who have been hired to pretend to be liberals.
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: You are right of course. I meant it was a factor of e.
As lim–> wingularity, series of infinite crazy –> 10e
Now DougJ should prove this.
Tone in DC
@opiejeanne:
Don’t know if you can fire the guy, but, if you can… think about it.
Then, check this out. Another guy named Cole is on fire.
http://www.juancole.com/2013/10/americas-super-cake.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+juancole%2Fymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29
David in NY
@xenos: Your source Hofstadter? I couldn’t remember if he went back that far.
Botsplainer
@Ben Franklin:
Irony is defined as naming a spy who is being sheltered in place and coddled by an authoritarian journalist/opposition/dissident murdering homophobic former KGB officer to a prize named after a Russian dissident.
ROFLMAO
So if Special Ed wins, are Glenn and his paramour planning to visit him in Russia to congratulate him? Will they hold hands or share a room while they’re there? Will Glenn write anything about official Russian oppression of LGBT люди, or will he confine his articles to statements critical of Obama’s moves on DADT and DOMA?
FRANCH
The problem is, of course, that 27% is just enough to wield as a weapon when your side has less than 23% of the legitimate, intelligent vote. “Our position is unpopular? Unleash the stupids!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Some of us have been wondering why Boehner doesn’t just give up and go play golf and drink all afternoon
He’s Sarah Palin with a gavel, and arguably less influence.
ETA: From here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/01/why-boehner-doesnt-just-ditch-the-right/
an old suburban Rotarian, out of his depth and knowing it.
johnny aquitard
Why is John Rogers a genius for what Tyrone came up with? In the exchange above it looks like the 27% crazy observation was made by Tyrone not John.
Ben Franklin
@Botsplainer:
You managed to put everything, including the kitchen sink into your little pork pie.
ROFLMFAO !
opiejeanne
@Tone in DC: I can’t fire him; we have a contract and there’s nothing in it regarding his listening choice. He’s brilliant, has added 8 feet across the back of the house and it looks seamless inside and out, fixed our stupid front porch, and now he’s installing the wood trim in the dining room. The kitchen cabinets are still to come, and the counters, backsplash, etc.
I can ask him to switch to music, but right now I’m trying to avoid a confrontation because he’s in a vile mood today. I can just about guess why.
Normally he’s a sweet guy, and he’s a craftsman, and he has only listened to music on his radio up until yesterday, but I thought that was a fluke because it was only for a few minutes; he was working on our front porch and I wasn’t aware of it until he was about to pack up for the day. Today it’s inside the house and it’s obnoxious.
What startled me most is that he’s my age and talks like a 60s hippie. Right on!
Chris
@Botsplainer:
Snowden elevated to the same category as a women’s rights activist in Taliban territory, of all places, and at 16 years old no less.
I may vomit.
Botsplainer
@xenos:
The Know-Nothings had some huge riots in the mid-1850s. Here in Louisville, they burnt the Catholic cathedral and went on murderous rampages against German and Irish neighborhoods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Monday
Botsplainer
@Chris:
Hey, it is hard work being a dudebro.
johnny aquitard
@Ahasuerus:
IOW, people who walk the walk the so-called moderate Republicans were always talking the talk about since Ronnie Reagan.
Tea Baggers. What Real Republicans look like.
And yes they are as stupid, despicable, bigoted, callous and cruel as we always thought they were.
opiejeanne
@Tone in DC: Thanks for the link. I can’t get in yet, I think the intertoobs are blowing up today.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@johnny aquitard: IT’s gotten worse. I remember in the early Clinton years when they passed a CHIP extension, George Hatch was fulminating against this grotesque expansion of gov’t to Orrin Hatch, who in those days would and did help write and pass such legislation. Hatch, in a “are you a moron?” tone, said “Just because it’s a government program doesn’t mean it isn’t doing good” or words to that effect. Will was left literally speechless, just shook his head back and forth like a three year old refusing a spoonful of cream of wheat.
Jay in Oregon
@johnny aquitard:
Yes, but John is the one who coined the “Crazification Factor”.
Southern Goth
The Republican: We’re more of the stupid, deranged, and greed party. Well, we can do you deranged and stupid without the greed, and we can do you deranged and greed without the stupid, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can’t give you stupid and greed without the deranged. Deranged is compulsory. We’re all deranged, you see.
David Gregory: Is that what people want?
The Republican: It’s what we do.
Violet
@Southern Goth:
Fixed for accuracy.
schrodinger's cat
When were Republicans rational? They have always been the party of 1%. They probably just had better manners. Milton Friedman was as radical any teabagger in his hatred of the government. I think ultimately Friedman and his fellow travelers have made the world of profit over people we live in now possible.
My review of the Inside Job where I draw a line between neoliberal economics of Friedman and others and our current financial and economic situation.
schrodinger's cat
When were Republicans rational? They have always been the party of 1%. They probably just had better manners. Milton Friedman was as radical any tea-bagger in his hatred of the government. I think ultimately Friedman and his fellow travelers have made this world of profit over people, that we live in now possible.
My review of the Inside Job where I draw a line between neoliberal economics of Friedman and others and our current financial and economic situation.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
After the twenty year backlash of the Roosevelt/Truman years, most of the 1% finally resigned themselves to the idea of making their peace with big labor and big government, and turning out money by cooperating with them rather than fighting them. Hence “Rockefeller Republican.” That lasted until the right wing revolutions of the seventies and eighties made politics safe for economic royalism again, at which point the 1% returned to the old ways. So, there was that time.
Carnacki
@Southern Beale: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: What about Goldwater?
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Grabbed the nomination, lost in a landslide, and you had another fifteen years of Nixon/Ford governments that continued to abide by the New Deal consensus even after destroying the New Deal coalition. Goldwater was an insurgent and didn’t represent the Republican “establishment” of the time – although his supporters worked hard for the next couple decades to change that, it wouldn’t bear fruit until 1980.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: The crazy wing was dormant but never dead!
MCA1
@Chris: Well, considering that a Republican President greenlit the interstate highway system, a lot of Republican suit-wearing science guy support was necessary to put a human being on the moon, and that as of 1995 or so we had managed to build the most advanced infrastructure systems the world had ever seen, I’m pretty sure something has, in fact, changed in the chemistry of “what is a Republican.” As proof, I offer my parents. Early Boomers, they still clearly labor under the impression that this is my grandparents Republican Party. Consequently, they still truly, actually, deeply believe that Republicans are the brand of “fiscal responsibility” despite fully two decades of evidence directly to the contrary. And they cannot be dissuaded. If Republicans had always been nothing more than no-spending-on-anything-government-is-inherently-evil nihilists, that image of them would have taken deeper hold on the children of the ’50’s and ’60’s. The Friedman and Bircher and Federalist Society influences were on the periphery, other than a flowering during the Goldwater uprising. There were a sufficient number of adults who’d grown up in an agricultural, semi-industrialized country and seen it transformed after the War into the greatest power in the world largely through the exercise of government power, that a deep belief in the ability of government to actually do shit was at play in the system. Then Nixon came along and starting wedging everyone through resentment politics, and Reagan picked up the torch by turning anyone who was the slightest bit dependent on the government into the enemy, and voila, 40 years later you get 47% comments and the complete overthrown of basic Keynesian understanding of how an economy works because soshulizm.
Southern Goth
@MCA1: There may have been a there, there, but it ain’t there no more.
schrodinger's cat
@MCA1:
You can thank reasonable Republican Milton Friedman for that change.
Chris
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, yeah. So no, there was never a time when all Republicans were rational. There was, however, a time when you could be relatively sane and still be a Republican… even if it was still a 1%er’s party (and so prone to excesses like the MIC I was bitching about earlier) during that time, it wasn’t balls-to-the-wall economic royalist like the current crop.
@MCA1:
Fair enough.
Teddy Salad
@C.J.: Make sure you show your work.
Steve Finlay
Even if absolutely every other post in Balloon Juice had been total nonsense (which was not the case), the discovery if the Crazification Factor is a monumental contribution to our understanding of the world. IT JUST KEEPS APPEARING. I can hardly f’***ing believe it.
Redshirt
@Steve Finlay: 27% agree!
The 27% is a virus, and can kill the host.
SiubhanDuinne
@ranchandsyrup:
The One Methematical Truth.
SiubhanDuinne
@PurpleGirl:
I feel as though I’ve wandered into a nightmarish drug-infused episode of News From Lake Woebegon.
karen marie
@Percysowner: You know what else was 22%? George Dubya Bush’s final approval rating in February 2009.
Barbara
@Percysowner: If the Internet had greatest hits this would definitely be one of them! Just consider how deranged something has to be to bring that number lower — I believe that the polling on the federal efforts to interfere in Terry Schiavo’s case was something like 85/15.
karen marie
@Botsplainer: I have the same thing! I look forward to my Obamacare kicking in come January so I can have a doctor prescribe something. I read that toenail fungus can, if left untreated, cause liver problems.
karen marie
@Comrade Dread: I am guessing Greenwald and/or Miranda won’t be visiting him there.
karen marie
@Cacti: posted to facebook. Good luck!
karen marie
@Cacti: posted to facebook. Good luck!
PS: I always get to a thread after the party has moved on. Oh,well.