I’m not one either, but…

I am not Republican. I am not Democrat. But it would be interesting to make funny questions to Democrats as well to see what we get.

I was in a discussion about privatization today. A well-educated (Graduate School in a top 10 university) politically-active democrat said: we need to consider the risk of "losing control". A second democrat said that we need government because people don't know what they need. And my favorite, a third said that we need more government because private companies look for their own benefit (of course, because politician don't do that).

What about spending billions of dollar protecting trees and fighting against the fur coat industry instead of dedicating those resources to help the millions of children without anything to eat. They say they hate corporations, but then they oppose free trade giving more market power to their "evil" corporations.

Thinking of corporations as "evil" and government as a "the savior" is at least hilarious.

Which party can throw the first stone?

We have a Ducktor who frequents this Cafe who devoutly believes that only politicians can know how much liberty a man needs in order to be free.

That is definitely hilarious. I am going to follow him to add more intelligent comments to my list.

Do you work for the fur coat industry, or the logging industry? Who do you think is "evil" and who do you think is "the savior"? Why do you think that? If someone wants to spend their time and money fighting against whaling, do you object to that, too? Bob Barker spent millions to help buy a sophisticated boat to be used by Greenpeace to fight Japanese whalers. Do you think his money would be better spent on hungry children? Do you go around telling rich people how to spend their money? Do you have anything better to do with your time? Are you that rich? If you are that rich, why don't you spend your money feeding hungry children? You can start right now by sending $1,000 to a charity to feed hungry Haitian children devastated by the recent earthquake. How do you feel about adults that are going hungry? How do you feel about the mote in your eye?

The funny thing is that I am actually that rich, I don't like fur coats, love trees and whales, prefer helping children than animals and plants, don't think anybody should tell anybody how to spend their money (you are right there, my mistake), don't have anything better to do with my time (I'm already very rich), enjoy fruitless internet debates, spend most of my money feeding hungry children and adults and don't care much about the mote in my eye because I'm blind.

Wish there was an unlike button for some of these comments...

Repeating an email I just sent to Russ responding to an email from him about this post:

You say it's a Daily Kos poll. It was commissioned by them, but they didn't do the poll.

I worried about who they hired, but felt better upon reading:

"A total of 2003 self identified Republicans were interviewed nationally by telephone. Those interviewed were selected by the random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers, nationally."

And when I checked Research 2000's website, as I'm sure you did as well, they seemed to be a legitimate polling organization. For example:

"RESEARCH 2000 is a nonpartisan full service research firm that conducts surveys and focus groups for advocacy groups, trade associations, businesses and over 300 news media organizations. ...

Some of our most active media clientele include the Bergen Record, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Concord Monitor, The Manchester Journal Inquirer, The New London Day, The Reno-Gazette, The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, The Spokesman-Review, KCCI-Television in Des Moines, Iowa, WRAL-Television in Raleigh, North Carolina, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and KMOV-Television in St. Louis, Missouri. Our Polls can be seen on CNN’S “Inside Politics” and are also mentioned frequently in the National Journal’s “Political Hotline”, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Wall Street Journal. Visit our In the News Page to see some online examples of this."

Etc. etc. -- it seemed legit to me. (Also, when I searched the polling firm's name along with keywords like "bias" nothing notable came up, so if there is a problem with this organization, I couldn't find it.)

Mark

Just as Mark Thoma had directed the audience’s attention to the right, No_Red_Bull entered from stage left, breathing through his mouth and dragging his knuckles on the floor. A paragraph’s worth of howling at the moon and frothing at the mouth completed the scene.

Thanks NRB for in advertently making my point come to life. Now Mr. Thoma has both poll data and a colorful example for his upcoming essay on the paranoid delusions of the American left.

Mark,

On May 4, 2007 Rasmussen reported that 35% of Democrats believed that George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance and 39% weren't sure. This, of course, is stunningly stupid. I look forward to your disquisition on the obvious futility of attempting intelligent discourse with Democrats.

How many of either party think Bush, the marionette, and his neocon puppeteers lied and machinated their way into starting a fresh war against Iran? How many were tried and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors for their part in it? Oh, that's not a good poll question, sorry.

Hey, looney, can you tell me exactly when this fresh war with Iran began, I must have been in the shower and missed it?

I not only missed the war, I missed the trials of Bush Cronies and the convictions, just how many now were convicted for falsifying data about Iran, committing high crimes, and misdemeanors for their part in this start of war with Iran, Sheeeeeees you'd thought that would be real news.

NRB, please, put your crayon mouse down and walk away before attempted thought permanently damages you.

I meant Iraq, obviously. Can't your soft noodle make obvious corrections? Too much beer, I guess. Will the VA pay for your liver transplant? The (nuclear?) war with Iran is the next one to be hatched and prosecuted by the U.S. and Israel.

You make the mistake and some one else is supposed to clean it up for you.

There is the looney left philosophy succinctly contained and writ large across the landscape and this blog in particular.

Dangerous idiots, ya'll are.

Reminds me of George Carlin's bit on traffic.

Everyone going faster than you is crazy, and everyone going slower is an idiot.

What a pathetic attempt to make excuses for Barack's inability to inflict any of his stifling policies on the population.

Fix "our" problems? I don't need Thoma meddling in my problems and the only problem I currently have IS his and his party's "fixing" and threats of more "fixing".

The other side is always evil, crazy, etc.

We need the other side to make our side look good.

US v. THEM: the game that will take us down.

Huh? Helllllllo Sam, is that you? All sides are equal, it is just perception that is different?

I think I need a drink.

Political rule, being inherently inimical to liberty, should always be obstructed.

these kinds of polls always end up being due to partisanship. Ask a similar poll of democrats circa 2006 and i guarentee you youd end up with majorites saying Bush stole the election, that he hated black people, and should be impeached.

But it is clear that this group is never going to participate in or even support a bi-partisan effort to solve our problems.

Could it be that some people actually don't want a bipartisan effort on much of anything because there is strong correlation (if not causation) between the history of bipartisanship and the growth of government in this country?

Something like 15,000,000 people in this country identify themselves as atheists. What does that tell you about the other 285,000,000? Does the phrase, "believing in fairy tales" come to mind? How about seriously delusional and illogical? If you combine the attributes of being a "believer" with a low IQ, home schooling, a diet high in hamburgers, fries & diet soda, and low in vitamin C, along with the free trade in gunpowder, then you have the makings of a scorbutic suicide bomber. How do you agnostic libertarians feel about the "freedom" to commit mass murder? Can you say Exxon Valdez? And most Rethuglicans think abortion is plain wrong. How about making an assessment post-natal, say around 10 years of age, just before they set off their first and last suicide belt killing scores of innocents? We can provide them with a Hitlerian ultimatum, you shoot yourself or we will do it for you.

I rule!

FWIW, I'm not a Republican and I think ACORN would have tried to steal the 2008 election if it had been close. It just wasn't necessary.

Their hand in widespread voter registration fraud is pretty well documented.

Any claim quoting the Daily Kos on the topic of "crazies" is self-refuting.

Is Thoma and Bartlett are reading the Daily Kos, well, that tells us a lot about Bartlett and Thoma.

Bruce as much as anyone is responsible for the modern spend and borrow and spend and borrow ideology of the American political class.

He needs to spend more time being honest about his own role in the central craziness of our age -- the craziness which will destroy my children and grandchildren.

Yeah, Thoma is a pretty liberal guy teaching in a liberal city, at a rather liberal Econ department (I had him as a professor in monetary policy). It's no shock to me that he would read the dailykos, or at least think a quoation from the dailykos constituted a blog post. That said, I do believe he is a pretty solid professor; he just suffers from biases, as we all do.

While I agree that something seems hinky (one quarter of Republicans think Obama wants terrorists to win? Really?), I feel the need to point out that the poll is only Kos' in the sense that they paid for it and posted it on their blog. The poll was conducted by Research 2000 (which is supposedly non-partisan.

DK is right, we need to see the sample/methodology. Something doesn't smell right.

Usually the firm wants to please the client...

I've read that 35% or so of Democrats believed that Bush either had advanced knowledge of the 9/11 attack and let it happen anyway or was responsible for it. In 2005, half of African-Americans believed that AIDs was man-made, and a majority that a cure existed but was being withheld from the poor. You could use these and similar polls to conclude that Democrats are partisan crazies.... or you could conclude that it's not at all hard to put together a poll that reveals large bodies of whacko beliefs in a population.

I think that about as many democrats thought that Bush was behind 911. Or at least I remember seeing polls along those lines.

I remember those polls too. I was just as skeptical of them as I am of this one.

I don't know how many people actually believed this, but I got an earful from more than a few people who I thought were perfectly sane before they advanced this conspiracy theory in all seriousness. Of course, it's hardly shocking. There will always be people who buy into fringe opinions even if they are generally not insane.

Evidence that this poll is severely biased? They show only 26% support among Republicans for gays in the military; something Gallup polls as 58%. That's 16 standard deviations away.

". . . other implausible or ugly “partisan” views."

This sounds like jobs "created or saved" when one says "implausible or ugly". Anyone interested in "enlightenment", Muir asserts to be one, should care not whether a view is ugly or where it comes from.

Why is it crazy to think Obama should be impeached? Is POTUS some special job where we should all accept the fact that the office holder should enjoy unasailable job security without regard for whether or not he performs the duties of his job description (i.e. upholding the Constitution)? I'm for making it as easy as possible to fire all high ranking government officials, both elected and appointed, and see nothing crazy about that.

I'm not sure anyone said it's crazy that it be possible for Obama to be impeached, did they? That wasn't how I read it.

When the frenzy over potentially impeaching Bush was going on a lot of legal briefs were produced laying out the case for impeachment. And indeed, the Supreme Court concurred with the unconstitutionality of many of the same issues that those calling for impeachment cited.

What is the case against Obama? Have such legal arguments been made? I've heard a lot about him not really being born in the U.S.. Is there anything else? What have lawyers said?

These are the relevant issues. I don't think anyone - Democrat or Republican - is opposed to the idea of impeaching elected officials.

"I'm not sure anyone said it's crazy that it be possible for Obama to be impeached, did they?"

I inferred that from the remark, "Republicans are crazy. They think that Obama should be impeached."

I supported impeaching Bush. Signing No Child Left Behind, to say nothing of any number of more serious offenses, was sufficient reason for that in and of itself for us to fire him. It would not be at all difficult to make a similar case against Obama on the basis of laws he's already signed.

Hmmm... don't you think there's a difference between thinking someone should be impeached and thinking that someone should be able to be impeached?

I think every president that has ever served should be able to be impeached. I don't think all of them should have been impeached. It doesn't follow that I think the president should have "unassailable job security". I think you're infering too much. They think it's crazy to think that Obama should be impeached because they think there is no non-crazy justification for impeachment, not because they think Obama deserves "unassailable job security".

The fact that only one president has actually been impeached, while all of them (as far as I can tell, perhaps with very few exceptions) disregarded their oaths of office and signed unconstitutional bills into law, suggests to me that the President has virtually unassailable job security. There are not very many other jobs where one could flout one's job description so blatantly as the POTUS can without fear of being fired.

Equating Bush to Hitler is totally sane, btw. He's Republican and - as we've already proved with our crack poll - Republicans are partisan and crazy.

Ugh. Republicans are just soooooo partisan and we can't expect them to solve our problems.

It is crazy to want to fire Obama. He's a Democrat. And anyone who thinks he should be impeached is crazy. Just like anyone who didn't agree with Stalin was also crazy.

It is crazy to want to fire Obama.

Actually, that's true. Look who is next in line. Don't think Vice President Biden was an accident. The Anointed Won knew the prospect of President Biden would be great job-security. Vice President Dean would probably be the only topper.

Good point, Brotio! I was clearly guilty of not thinking beyond step one. Thank you for pointing out the drawbacks of such truncated reasoning.

Actually two Presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

Precisely. I want to hear a little more about the sample.

The poll was done by Research 2000, a respected firm.

The results are consistent with others I've seen and typical beliefs of Republicans.

Heck over 35% were still supporting Bush to the end or still do, they have congressmen and senators who think climate change science is a massive hoax and they put up presidential candidates who do not believe in evolution or even its teaching. These people believe in "freedom" and but not gay rights or a womens right to choose.

And we support them with tax free services to their religious institutions that require them to remain ignorant and indoctrinated.

It's no party of the future and certainly not one of enlightenment.

35% were still supporting Bush

And I know of at least one Ducktor who is OK with Roosevelt starving millions of Americans, because he was a righteous ruler.

AGW is a scam not a hoax, muirgeo. A hoax is a prank to expose stupid people. A scam is a confidence trick to extract as much as you can before people catch on to you.

Didn't you get the memo. Global warming has collapsed, and environuts have moved on to the next thing: laughing gas, a.k.a nitrous oxide. If we don't control the amount of NO2 in the atmosphere, we will laugh our way to extinction. This is a huge concern, kid you not.

LMAO! (pun intended)

Tell me more. This sounds more funner than the other story.

Each party has their core group of reliable supporters...no matter what.

Amazing how Pepsi always wins the Pepsi challenge during Pepsi's advertisements.

But sales numbers being what they are, Coke gets lots of votes every election day (i.e., when you actually purchase the product with your own time and money).

That's funny coming from the same crowd which consistently equated Bush with Hitler and thought 9/11 was an inside job.

Self fulfilling prophecy.

Like being the party of no is being a bad thing when everything being advanced by the looney lefties is proven to be devastating to life in general, human life in particular.

Nationalize industry and business, NO.
Nationalize health care, NO.
Provide living wage to every living soul that manages to make it across our border, NO.
Education as the sole province of the Federal government, NO.
It goes on and on.

I'd say Kos is working on excuse-making for Democrat failure. Still, this sort of thing does take some of the edge off of the concept of a powerful median voter.

You could do the same with Democratic nut-policies and every decent human being would only shake its head. Just go for homeopathy or "soul healing" and you will see a disproportionate democratic number thinking it works. Or you could do something on economics or hate crimes and you would think, they will never support bi-partisan policies...

Homeopathy works. I saw a program on PBS showing that it works in dairy cows for an udder condition. I don't think that cows are subject to the placebo effect like humans are. For all your antipathy, you need to be better informed and have a thorough and utter "soul healing" and do some serious soul-searching about your liability to planet earth. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror; you are pointing your guns in the wrong direction.

You familiar with the theory behind homeopathy?

There was a study done on rats that led to a conclusion that was later overturned when it was discovered that the mere handling of the treated rats affected outcomes.

In the next study, they had to handle rats in the control group same as in the test subjects.

"Homeopathy works. I saw a program on PBS showing that it works in dairy cows for an udder condition."

Oh really? What PBS show was that? I've got a sneaking suspicion it wasn't a PBS show, but an infomercial made to look like a documentary.

It was probably Front Line, but I can't remember exactly because it was some time ago. After I saw farm animals (cows) being successfully treat with a homeopathic remedy (in the U.K.?), I concluded that it wasn't bogus. If the therapy didn't work on their cows, you'd think that they would be the first to admit it.

If it worked, then it's not really homeopathy.

Check to see if your crystal ball was manufactured by Toyota. I think there is a recall of crystal balls as well as of faulty brakes.

Lot's of products are touted as homeopathic which are not really homeopathic because the word now has a certain marketable caché.

Homeopathy began at the end of the 18th century and involves dilution of the "cure" to the point where the original substance is virtually undetectable.

Truly if something touted as "homeopathic" actually works, then it cannot be accurately classified as homeopathic.