We’re just simple folk at the Tea Parties
Commenter “manju” wrote:
With the teaparties driving the republicans toward simple-minded libertarian sloganeering, conspriacy [sic] theories (birtherism), and even an ahistorical revival of the confederacy(McDonnell, Barbour), the top candidates become less and less electable. we may very well be looking at a reverse mcgovern scenario in ”˜12. even now, its not looking too good for the right on the presidential front, as evidenced here [and then a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan].
Manju is what’s known in the trade as a concern troll—that is, someone who comes onto a blog being very “I’m one of you, guys” (or, as in the case of manju, neutral), and then voices worry and pessimism about the effect of some phenomenon he/she is trying to discourage. Here, it’s manju versus the Tea Parties.
Commenter Steve H. came back with a good response:
“”With the teaparties driving the republicans toward simple-minded libertarian sloganeering””
As opposed to the nuanced Ivy League minded progressive sloganeering thats nearly destroyed the country?
I’ll take simple. Because truth and decency really are simple.
But I’d like to drag Winston Churchill in to back Steve H. up:
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Now, that was an eloquent man.
Winston didn’t need a teleprompter either…
Providing a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan as a source for insight on politics was all I needed to see to know exactly what this fellow was up to. Or, to paraphrase a remark attributed to Churchill, “…exactly up to what this fellow was.” Avoids a prepositional ending, doncha know.
Don, that split infinitive just seems rather unwieldy, though.
Yes, I do seem to remember the eloquence of the left during the middle of the decade.
“Bush lied, people died”
“No war for oil”
chimpyMcBushHitlerBurton
The eloquence is hard to match.
A better answer to *manju, I think, will be “Sure. Aha. Absolutely. Ts-ts-ts, how sad for those right-wing pests. Buy a case of Crystal for November, dude. ”
Don – is there something wrong with prepositional ending? Hey, it took me almost 18 years to learn! What are you telling me this FOR?
However Churchill did keep speech notes in his pocket, though he never used them!
“Providing a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan as a source for insight on politics was all I needed to see to know exactly what this fellow was up to.”
The data comes from 538, the guy who was pretty dead on about the last election, correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states. Anyway, he compiles all the polls to get these numbers.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/romney-not-paul-fares-best-in-12.html
If you doubt the accuracy, make an arguement. perhps they’re not using “likely voters”, as someone speculated in the other thread, but a mistake I doubt Nate Silver is making. Merely attacking the source (sully) doesn’t make the case. Simpletons often make that logical fallcy.
It doesn’t appear that the dems will get a handle on the tea party. But some are offering advice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR2010041504131.html
Maybe they won’t take that advice.
Now, that was an eloquent man.
I would say Now, that was an eloquent mothers boy.
I could not even begin to imagine Churchill being who he was without having such a mother. 🙂
[there are quite a few successful people with such parentage]
Merely attacking the source (sully) doesn’t make the case. Simpletons often make that logical fallcy
i am so glad he realizes that the left completely work off that fallacy and so by his own words, are simpletons.
i would list all the examples i could find of leftists debating from the simpleton position, but then would be in trouble again for super long posting.
The data comes from 538, the guy who was pretty dead on about the last election, correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states.
Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.
Maybe manju is mitsu’s significant other?
I would only add that sometimes a preposition is the only thing you can end a sentence with. 🙂
“If you doubt the accuracy, make an arguement.” My argument is, “Please to continue with your autofellatio in private, thank you.”
I’ll stick with simple.
The left can be simplistic.
Smell the fear.
Not enough patchouli oil in the world to mask it.
Older and Wheezier: I also though, on reading manju’s posting, that he might be a mitsu clone. They do appear to be different people, although they have a similar style.
Manju:
Sullivan has a well-deserved reputation for being a few french fries short of a Happy Meal. Trig Palin. Need I say more?
I am not so much a simpleton that I would consider a “naked” bar graph to be a credible source. with no information regarding where the bar graph information came from.The link you initially gave us had the bar graph and nothing more.
If you had any idea of how to present credible information, you would have given us the 538 link to begin with, with perhaps a “hat tip to Sullivan.”
You seem to like calling those who disagree with you “simpletons” and “simple-minded.” Are you so devoid of original thought that you feel the need to recycle a lib talking point that is over a half century old?
Occam’s Beard: Have you ever been to Eugene, Oregon and the Country Fair? If not, I have a revelation about the masking power of patchouli oil. Combined with the power of denial, no fear is consciously felt until right before . . .
No One You Know: But ya gotta admit that when I split an infinitive, I REALLY split it. Three, count ’em, three words involved in the split! If my fifth grade teacher wasn’t dead, this would surely kill her. She was huge on word usage. Drilled one statement completely into our skulls – “Kids? kids? I don’t see any goats in here, only children.” We could use more teachers such as her these days.
One of Barry the Midget’s first acts as president was to ship Sir Winston’s bust back to the Brits. ALL that need be said.
Have you ever been to Eugene, Oregon and the Country Fair?
Curtis, nope, but at least the rain would dilute the funk a bit. I did spend many years in Berkeley, however, and by the end of the dry season (shudder)… Well, let’s just say I had to go to Love Canal to repair my health.
Mitsu and Manju may have similar names and viewpoints, but they’re clearly not the same person. At least Mitsu can use the English language with accuracy and grace. As for Manju, linking to Andrew Sullivan is never a sign of mental acuity, but misspelling a word like “argument” is just as red a flag — especially in someone who’s so busy sneering at the supposed stupidity of others. Reading a sentence like “Simpletons also make that logical fallcy,” I wonder if Manju’s a native speaker of English — if so, certainly not a well-educated one. It’s almost enough to make a person miss Mitsu!
As for ending sentences with prepositions, here’s a little dissertation on what Churchill is supposed to have said and whether or not he said it:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html
Lefties have an adolescent urge to let the world know they’re more enlightened and complex people. I don’t think i’ve ever met anyone i truly thought was enlightened about the world that would say the same thing about themselves. Because once they do, they prove they aren’t.
Sullivan has a well-deserved reputation for being a few french fries short of a Happy Meal. Trig Palin. Need I say more?
No kidding. 😛
I hear tell that there was a time, in the years years ago, when Sully was actually an intelligent, rational blogger who was capable of discussing things other than Sarah Palin’s uterus. I don’t believe it. In any case, the articles of his that I *have* read leave me with the slimy feeling one might get after swimming through a cesspool. It doesn’t exactly fill me with a desire to investigate more deeply.
Mrs Whatsit: Your link regarding Churchill is something I will not up with put. I think ending a sentence in a preposition is grammatically wrong and it is a conviction which I will die with and for.
And my fave Orwell quote applies to manju’s comment. “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man would be such a fool.”
> I’ll take simple. Because truth and decency really are simple.
Actually, they are rarely simple. Doing the Right Thing is rarely easy or obvious:
“In politics, one can never do more than decide which of two evils is lesser, and there are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic.”
– George Orwell –
But getting TO Truth and Decency absolutely requires starting simple and then tweaking to the more “nuanced” form.
Starting with “full blown nuance” is a recipe for disaster, as, under these conditions, large chunks of the “nuance” are better referred to as “bovine excreta”.
So, while Steve is essentially correct on the ends, he’s not starting from an optimal place to get there.
> All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
The thing is, the words are easy. The underlying meaning, the concept, is not, especially when they are interacting in The Real World.
Duty is generally directly counter to Freedom. To do one’s duty rarely leaves one free to act as one might in the absence of that duty.
If I’m in a burning building with a bunch of kids, I have the freedom to run like hell and save my own ass. I have a duty, however, to help save the children, even if they are not my own (indeed, EVEN IF I AM NOT THE ONE IN CHARGE OF THEM!!), and even though that may place me at substantial personal danger. And it is my sense of Honor which binds me to that duty.
And suppose I have children of my own? Does my overall duty to remain alive so as to support them outweigh my duty to the children whose lives in this dangerous situation I have immediate sway over? Is my duty to my children to run like hell and save myself, or to stay and possibly lose my life saving the children of others?
And more interestingly, you often get to make this decision with only seconds to choose
“Duty” is an easy word to say. And it does carry a great deal of meaning. But it’s rarely a simple thing in practice.
One bit of evidence in support of this is how recent many of these concepts are in human history. Truth dates only back to the Greeks. Honor and Duty predate it somewhat, but tie directly to family, kith, and kin. Extending them to much larger and more indirect entities — your nation, and to mankind, are much more recent.
“Justice”? This one seems like a basic notion — even children have the concept — and it seems an old one, too — it dates back to at least the time of the early Bible and probably further than that — but it’s an endlessly evolving one, and what you and I consider “Just” is radically different from that which one would have considered just even three hundred years ago, to say nothing of two thousand years ago in an entirely different social mileau. Looking at the Old Testament, for example, one is hard pressed to find the “justice” in some of God’s actions — One of the most notable is about Elisha @ Kings II-2:23-25:
(23) He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”
(24) And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.
In case this is not clear — some young, punk kids made fun of the prophet Elisha’s baldness. So he cursed them. And the just and merciful God sent two bears to rip them apart.
Clearly, God felt the need to do something we ourselves would find particularly UNJUST by modern standards. But, assuming you believe in the inherent justness of God, you must presume that He saw that our modern concept of Justice did not match with these people and their more primitive outlook on the world. So he did something which DID match their notions of Justice — because, let’s face it, He does not have to answer to us.
Q.E.D. — most of the notions discussed here are among the more recent, higher developments as man has become more civilized and less and less of an animal. And these concepts, while identified by small and simple words, are often anything but small and simple when their whole gestalt is taken into consideration.
P.S. — clearly by corollary — those who criticize modern man as “no better than his forebears” lack any grasp of history, and just how far we’ve come since the “early days”, several thousand years ago. We are far from perfect, but we are not, by and large, anywhere near the hardened brutes our forebears necessarily were.
I wonder what I would have to say to get NEO to write a whole article on me?
> If you doubt the accuracy, make an arguement.
Since I have no idea what an arguement is, I’m just going to put forth a simple “argument”, n’kay?
It goes like this:
ANY speculation on who is going to win in 2012 is, at this point, completely idle and foolish. Anyone with any history observing presidential elections (as in been at least a HS senior or better) for more than three of them knows one thing holds true — They cannot be predicted with even the slightest reliability even one full year out. This last election was a blatant case of it — there is not a single person who could reliably have predicted that Obama could beat Hillary as of 11/2007, much less have won the job. And in no sense would anyone have predicted with any certainty that Obama would even have been a serious contender for it as of “this” point in the election cycle, namely, April 2005. He’d made a very notable speech in 2004 and that was IT.
Similarly, no one would have predicted the sudden appearance of Sarah Palin on the scene, either, even six months prior to the 2008 election.
Events that affect the chances of this or that person even getting their party’s nom (excepting the incumbent) tend to be too fluid and changeable. Who around here remembers Gary Hart?
It is utterly impossible to even GUESS at this point regarding serious GOP contenders and their chances against whomever the Dems nom (which in this case does have a uniquely high possibility of NOT being Obama).
So what 538 — or you thinks is nothing but time-wasting speculation.
Further, this claim shows serious flaws in your critical thinking process:
The data comes from 538, the guy who was pretty dead on about the last election, correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states. Anyway, he compiles all the polls to get these numbers.
Look, there are SO MANY people making prognostications on this or that aspect of the election cycle that someone is likely to hit the jackpot. A single election cycle doesn’t mean SQUAT.
Has he been that accurate for even two elections in a row, much less three or more? Or are you being a second-hand Texas sharpshooter by finding one person out of thousands who, at random, hit the target blindfolded and over the left shoulder, then claiming that person is “one damned fine shot”…?
Anyone else think the manju needs a shiksa?
:oP
Lefties have an adolescent urge to let the world know they’re more enlightened and complex people….Because once they do, they prove they aren’t.
SteveH, I’m reminded of another eloquent speaker, Abraham Lincoln, who also had a way of cutting through the nonsense and getting at the essentials. The following would appear to apply in Manju’s case:
“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”.
IgotBupkis:
my central point was not to predict what will happen in ’12 or ’10, though thats part of it, but rather get an accurate snapshot of where we are now. I’m aware, a lot could happen between now and ’12, or frankly between now and november, to change the calculation (OBL could be caught and the dems could then fare better in the midterm, for example) but that doesn’t mean you don’t make calculations.
what the data indicates to me now is obama is unpopular because people haven’t perceived a recovery, which is predictable mostly because unemployment tends to increase for a few quarters even after a recovery takes place. after all, when clinton took office the recovery had already begun, but he still got smacked in the midterm.
but the part that caused the stir was my comparison of obama to leading repubs, where he more or less kicks everyones ass. Romney comes closest ot beating him while cultural warrior palin and libertarian purist ron paul get spanked like he’s their mama. could things change? sure. but thats where we are now (at a time when the prez’s approval ratings are low!)
what that tells me is the teaparties are pushing the most unelectable repubs, and this bodes ill for the party. the most electable, romney, can’t get thru the primary b/c if obama’s a socialist/fascist due to HCR, then its hard to conclude romney isn’t one too.
the puppetmaster behind this whole thing is of course obama, who wants to run against the reverse-mcgoverneque palin. thats why he picked a fight with rush limbaugh, a low hanging fruit for many year now because of his racially incediary language, which scares mainstream americans; like framing HCR as a form of reparations for blacks for example. his power in the party is such that no one wants to cross him. previous dems, needing to win a southern state or 2, were a little gun shy. but Obama doesn’t need the south, rather he wants to turn the republican party into a regional one–one that appropriates the language of libertarianism in order to further statist goals (not unlike the way the south uesd “states rights” to justify jm crow ) which he’s is doing quite well.
“what the data indicates to me now is obama is unpopular because people haven’t perceived a recovery”
What data? Where are the poll results that you are refering to? I though Obama was weak on a number of issues, not just economic. You are describing a situation where a President is situationally weak based on the economy. That would mean his polls would show poor marks on the economy and strong marks on health care, foreign policy, and the Afghanistan War. Unless I’ve been missing something, I believe his sole strength is on the War (which is always a big driver of Dems to the polls, right?).
And why do you think Dems are afraid to cross him? Evan Byah just QUIT on him. How many other Dems have retired in the past few months (and please think before you go all in with Obama wants the Dems to get crushed in 2010 because he’s got some double ought secret idea)? If you’re a Dem and you want to cross Obama you have to take a number (and those folks he strongarmed into supporting health care? most of them will be gone a year from now leaving a clear message to those left behind – you’ve hit this one 180 degrees wrong, the story is that Obama is on the verge of being a lameduck a fully 2 and 1/2 years before his term expires).
And then you go onto talking about the Republicans as a regional party the very year that the seat formerly known as the Kennedy seat goes to a Republican. Obama couldn’t even hold Massachusatts! It went to unelectable tea party friendly Scott Brown, and Chris Christie who must have lost his Southern accent on the way to winning the governership of Southern New Jersey (wait a minute, I think he actually won the whole thing). You’re not whistling past the graveyard, you’re screaming ‘I can’t hear you’ with your fingers in your ears as you go by the graveyard.
Fail.
Manju:
“what the data indicates to me now is obama is unpopular because people haven’t perceived a recovery”
Here is a recent Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters on which party voters trust on various issues. Please inform the simpletons in the audience how the data supports your assertion.
Issue Democrats Republicans
Economy 37% 49%
National Security 36% 51%
Iraq 39% 47%
Health Care 37% 53%
Education 40% 43%
Immigration 34% 47%
Social Security 36% 48%
Taxes 34% 52%
Government Ethics 35% 33%
Abortion 32% 47%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/trust_on_issues
“What data? Where are the poll results that you are refering to?”
i was using clinton’s famous “its the economy stupid” rule of thumb. basically president’s approval ratings live and die by the perception of the economy, with war popping in to interfere on occasion (like Bush I’s skyrocketing approval rating after Iraq I, followed by a defeat as the economy regained its primary position). other issues, like social ones, are peripheral.
so as the Obama presidency gets older, more and more voters naturally perceive him as owning the mess he inherited from bush, and thus the predictable decline. You can see the remarkable // here, where Obama’s approval ratings on the economy are graphed next to his overall.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/its-still-economy-dumbass.html
“Here is a recent Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters on which party voters trust on various issues. Please inform the simpletons in the audience how the data supports your assertion”
The data obviously doesn’t support my assertion –“obama is unpopular because people haven’t perceived a recovery” (which I explained above)–because the poll in question compares generic dems to generic repubs, so its rather removed from the issue of Obama’s popularity.
Furthermore, there appears to be major problems with rasmussun’s methodology. in short, they appear to be significantly underestimating the population of democrats, as you can see here:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5ieXw28ZUpg/S8oU0RuAR5I/AAAAAAAABoU/WNSVDhJU-Z0/s1600/parti4.png
…while simulateously overestimating the liklihood of repubs voting, as evidenced here:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5ieXw28ZUpg/S8oUIUpSzVI/AAAAAAAABoM/hW4DrNRqB0k/s1600/parti2.png
Manju: apparently you are a such a simpleton that I need to repeat to you what I said at April 16th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Include the whole article, not just the graph. How many times do I need to repeat that for that to sink into your head?
Only a simpleton would believe that the mere inclusion of a bar graph consists a convincing argument. Include the link for the whole article, which will provide an explanation of the graph.
regarding potential problems with rasmusson, you can find the entire article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/use-of-likely-voter-model-does-not.html
Oh pleeeze, keep dragging Winnie back into the conversation. It’s such an antidote to the political double-speak of today.
“there appears to be major problems with rasmussun’s methodology”
Like there was in 2008, when they missed the election by nearly a full percentage point?
Manju:
I present Rasmussen data that indicates that Republicans are trusted more then Democrats for the economy, for health care, for national security, etc. , to point out that the economy is by no means the only issue where the electorate is not satisfied with the POTUS.
Manju replies:
As POTUS, Obama has always been personally more popular than his policies. We are trying to establish which policy issues cause Obama’s unpopularity or loss of popularity. You admit to his unpopularity or loss of popularity: “obama [sic] is unpopular because people haven’t perceived a recovery.” You claim that “it’s the economy, stupid,” and nothing else as a reason for Obama’s unpopularity. Or not much else.
Your trying to separate the Democratic Party brand from Obama, when you talk about “generic dems,” is a fool’s game. The Democratic Party brand is associated with the POTUS. If the populace doesn’t trust the Democratic Party on a particular policy, rest assured it also doesn’t trust the POTUS on that particular policy. After all, who sets policy? The POTUS. Again, we are not discussing personal popularity, but popularity for his policies.
If you are going to throw out the data because it comes from Rasmussen, then we must throw out ALL the data, including the data on economics. If that is the case, then we must write the following hypothetical statements.
“Because the Rasmussen data is bad, the data that indicates voters trust Republicans than Democrats by a margin of 15% on national security is bad data. We conclude that voters support Obama’s policies on national security.”
Etc.
“Because the Rasmussen data is bad, the data that indicates voters trust Republicans than Democrats by a margin of 12% on the economy is bad data. We conclude that voters support Obama’s policies on the economy.”
Which even you admit is not true.
Heist on your own petard.
“You claim that “it’s the economy, stupid,” and nothing else as a reason for Obama’s unpopularity. Or not much else.”
This is a common non-partisan (although associated with the clinton campaign) CV. I didn’t think it was too controversial, though I’m open to argument that its wrong. Other issues certainly come into play, war in particular and occasionally scandal, but the economy generally is the best indicator of popularity and generally the one people vote on. I supplied a graph to support the claim.
“Your trying to separate the Democratic Party brand from Obama, when you talk about “generic dems,” is a fool’s game. The Democratic Party brand is associated with the POTUS.”
Completely separating it is a fools game but pointing out a degree of removal is not. Obviously data dealing directly with the president is more relevant than data dealing only with the party, if one is trying to ascertain the popularity of the president.
“If you are going to throw out the data because it comes from Rasmussen, then we must throw out ALL the data, including the data on economics.”
You lost me. First, I didn’t say throw out the data (you could always include data from other polls as a control) but even if you did why would throwing out data based on a bad methodology mean you throw out all data?
“Because the Rasmussen data is bad, the data that indicates voters trust Republicans than Democrats by a margin of 15% on national security is bad data. We conclude that voters support Obama’s policies on national security.”
I don’t see your logic again. If you throw out bad data that means you must conclude the opposite of what the bad data indicates?
I’ve arrived at this party after the food has been eaten, the drinks have been drunk, and everybody has left. Even so, the post brought a Clausewitz quote to mind:
That observation does not only apply to war.
It was her refusal to deal with such political friction that was the last straw for my (former) support for Palin. Not to mention George Bush.
(And there’s Mitt Romney’s calculation to not run for reelection as governor. The country needs a President, not an actuary. Had he taken the bull by the horns and succeeded in defeating Deval Patrick in the Democratic year of 2006, Romney might well be in the Oval Office today.)