February 10, 2017

"Just three weeks into his administration, voters are already evenly divided on the issue of impeaching Trump with 46% in favor and 46% opposed."

"Support for impeaching Trump has crept up from 35% 2 weeks ago, to 40% last week, to its 46% standing this week. While Clinton voters initially only supported Trump's impeachment 65/14, after seeing him in office over the last few weeks that's gone up already to 83/6."

That's from Public Policy Polling. The approval/disapproval question produced a 43%/53% split. I think it's really weird that 87% of the people who disapprove are ready to impeach the President. How did we get so damned dramatic?

(Not that I trust the polls. The Trump presidency is a monument to the inaccuracy of polling.)

252 comments:

1 – 200 of 252   Newer›   Newest»
Mark O said...

Fake news.

Ron said...

Yes, impeach the guy after a couple of weeks! What could go wrong?

David Begley said...

How does a poll like this even get commissioned? What were the results one month into the Obama presidency?

More of The Resistance.

Francisco D said...

How many pro-impeachment supporters understand the rules and procedures of impeachment?

It's just a wailing virtue signal. Waaaaaaaaaah!

Original Mike said...

"How did we get so damned dramatic? "

Have you done any significant watching of the Dems on the Senate floor? The end times are nigh.

n.n said...

PP... P reflects the national division between twilight and life.

readering said...

Never thought I'd be one of only 6 per cent of people.

chuck said...

The 35% starting point is way high, I mean, impeach for what? I think it was due to Democrat party propaganda. I left the Democrats on account of their utter moral, ethical, and monetary corruption. The Democrats will put aside all other considerations in the pursuit of power.

hombre said...

The lefties hate the rest of us and they hate that Hillary the Grifter lost. They are not merely "dramatic," they are a threat to the Republic, indoctrinated by public school teachers unwittingly abetting the Marxist social revolution.

Nonapod said...

Trump inflames passions like no other political figure in modern history. I think he truly terrifies some people. He represents true uncertainty, and uncertainty can make peoples imaginations run wild. He also represents a massive disruption to the status quo, for good or ill. He represents risk, and I think there's lots of risk averse people out there.

Sprezzatura said...

Didn't DJT lose by two or three percent?

Not to mention each poll's margin.

Anywho, Althouse isn't too mathy.




So, carry on.

Original Mike said...

Blogger chuck said..."I left the Democrats on account of their utter moral, ethical, and monetary corruption. The Democrats will put aside all other considerations in the pursuit of power."

Wait, I assumed "life-long Republican Chuck" was self-appellation. Not so?

Original Mike said...

Glad that Presidents aren't subject to recall. OTOH, it worked out pretty well for Walker.

n.n said...

Less than three weeks of gestation and they're Planning an abortion. It seems a bit premature to discern the character of this administration's life.

Drago said...

Original Mike: "Wait, I assumed "life-long Republican Chuck" was self-appellation. Not so?"

Yes. Yes it was.

Well well.

chuck said...

@Original Mike

The names are case sensitive. Please pay attention.

Big Mike said...

@Original Mike, Chuck and chuck are two different commentators.

Andrew said...

"How did we get so damned dramatic?"

Where have you been since 1967?

Drago said...

Stop the presses!

"lifelong republican" Chuck is not the same as lowercase "chuck"!!

It appears lowercase chuck is the one who claims to have been a democrat in the past.

Just like Reagan!

Unknown said...

Fake news, huh? Yes Trump did say if any negative polls came out they would be fake news, didn't he? I see the Trump Derangement Syndrome is one of the tags. I'd say the bigger problem is Trump Cultist Syndrome. With the news of Flynn making deals with the Russian Ambassador to get rid of the sanctions placed on them for Russian hacking by President Obama (even before Trump was sworn in) we're going to see how Trump Cultists deal with the bad news that here is a real connection to Russia and Putin by Trump and his administration. With the various investigations going on we will continue to hear leaks about it. When the Senate and House Intelligence Committees hold their hearings, I think we're going to see some Trump Cultists heads explode.

Interesting times ahead.

Original Mike said...

Oh. Thank you.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
pacwest said...

Free stuff for everybody. Paid for by guillotines for rich. Import jihadis to replace the resident population. War with Russia. Free Iran to nuke Israel and the US. Stop cheap energy to save the planet so we can commune with nature in our huts. Impeach Trump so we can feel good about ourselves. We are righteous.

chuck said...

"Chuck and chuck are two different commentators."

Yep, "Chuck" is a newbie to the blog.

n.n said...

Trump is stepping on clumps of cells, toes, and fingers, left, right, and center, respectively. Still, Planning for an elective abortion seems a bit extreme, even for our progressive liberal culture.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Nonapod said...
He also represents a massive disruption to the status quo,


That has yet to be seen.

Rae said...

"Public Policy Polling surveyed 712 registered voters on February 7th and 8th. The margin of error is +/-
3.7%. 80% of participants, selected through a list based sample, responded via the phone, while 20% of
respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet
panel."

They found 570 people willing to take a poll over the phone. About another 142 used the website.

I've answered one poll in my entire life, and I lied my ass off.

tcrosse said...

They probably think that impeaching Trump will put Hillary in the White House.

Unknown said...

My conclusion, Pence and Trump are likely to be impeached. Depending on how many Republicans in office knew about Flynn's phone calls and dealing with the Russian Ambassador, they too can be removed..

Chuck said...

David Begley:

I asked that same question once. But I asked it of Public Policy Polling's Director, Tom Jensen. The fast and unequivocal answer I got, to the poll that I asked about (way back in 2009) was, "Nobody." Nobody had commissioned the poll that I asked about.*

Public Policy Polling, which is something of a sub-department of the Democratic Party, does lots of polls on its own, and the do them to get the name of PPP into the news. They do LOTS of polls that are pure clickbait.

This is of a piece with their clickbait. Another one of PPP's self-crafted, self-commissioned, self-interested, self-promoting stunts.

Althouse, the subject of PPP has come up before, on your blog, and this is not the first time I have mentioned these features of PPP. I am surprised at you, Ann, for not noting some sort of qualifier or caveat when trotting out yet another stunt-poll from PPP. Note the comments in this old Althouse post:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2015/02/ppps-newest-national-republican-poll.html

*One of the favorite memes of PPP is college sports. Most newspapers have learned what sort of online catnip collegiate sports are, and PPP has jumped right in. I was infuriated by a kind of push-poll PPP did in the days of the controversial, and ultimately debunked, charges of terrible major NCAA violations in the University of Michigan football program. PPP did a poll about then-coach Rich Rodriguez. I was pissed, and took the time to track it all down with PPP.


Humperdink said...

Nonapod said...
He also represents a massive disruption to the status quo,

ARM responded: "That has yet to be seen."

Betsy DeVos???????

Unknown said...

Do you think that because there is a majority House and Senate, if enough evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors comes out, that they won't move to impeach? They are going to try to save their own skins and they will throw Trump and his administration that are involved under the bus. The Congress won't keep Trump in the Presidency if they sense danger to themselves.

Amadeus 48 said...

This poll is a rehash of the election results. Right now, you'd probably get the same results for impeaching Obama, Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher (even though she was never president of the US). We did impeach Clinton.
I think we should have impeached Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, Truman, FDR, and Wilson. Also, all the Democratic appointees to the US Supreme Court since 1900, plus Warren, Brennan, Stevens, and Souter, but not White.
There. I think that does it.

Drago said...

Nonapod: "He also represents a massive disruption to the status quo"

ARM: "That has yet to be seen"

That's fair.

The EO's signed thus far represent a first step toward massive disruption and if "personnel is policy" is a truism then the personnel choices by Trump thus far certainly indicate future disruption.

But we will only know once the policies and legislation are fully articulated and begin to wind their way thru the system. Not to mention what comes out the other end.

Todd said...

Impeach him for what, having the audacity to win the election?

Big Mike said...

The way I remember it from grade school civics class in the 1950s, a bill of impeachment (@Althouse, should I have capitalized that?) must be voted on by the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate, which conducts the trial. At the present time the Republicans have a 47 (let's write that out: forty-seven) vote advantage over the Dumbocrats in the House of Representatives. All 193 Dumbocrats would have to vote for impeachment (and at least some of them would be running for reelection in less than two years in jurisdictions Trump won) and then they'd have to peel off 24 Republicans -- 10% -- from Ryan's majority. And theses Republicans would have to face the voters in less than two years, with very poor chances.

Their odds of getting a conviction in the Senate are worse, if anything. McConnell is more likely to pick up Manchin than to lose any Republicans.

And if the Dumbocrats think they'd be happier with Mike Pence in the presidency, especially when he can figuratively wave Trump's bloody shirt to rally the troops, then they are even dumber than I imagined.

Meanwhile other Dumbocrats are openly talking about a military coup. Uh huh. The general that the enlisted troops would follow is Mattis and he's Trump's SecDef.

The one thing that Dumbocrats could do to regain power sooner rather than later is to pay attention to the needs of ordinary Americans, even if it means telling wealthy environmental dilettantes to go f*** off, but there's no way that they're going to do that.

Unknown said...

Well, Karen does have a point: Republicans are willing to impeach their own. Democrats? Never. Obama could have literally brought in a 12 year old white girl every week, raped and sodomized her on the front lawn of the White House, tied her to an alter, ripped her heart out Aztec style then cooked and served her body for dinner.... and the Democrat party and media would have trampled each other to sit down to the dinner.

There's nothing a Democrat could do that would be impeachable, I don't think.

--Vance

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Humperdink said...
Betsy DeVos???????


Being anti-teacher's unions is pretty standard Red team stuff at the federal level. DeVos is an interesting case however. As I understood things, Trump was bringing in billionaires because they had the best minds. But DeVos married into the main source of money in her life and even her husband is one generation removed from the actual entrepreneur who made the money. What is her qualification besides being a gold digger?

Chuck said...

Ann Althouse said...
...
(Not that I trust the polls. The Trump presidency is a monument to the inaccuracy of polling.)


We've been through this, too, Ann. The national polling for the 2016 election was not bad at all. The final RCP average called the final popular vote correctly, within the stated margin of error. It was a close election. Hillary Clinton did indeed win the popular vote as the polling mostly called it. Public polling for Michigan had the race going to Clinton, and that was wrong, but it was very close and even the candidates' internal polling showed it to be very close. Pennsulvania polling was a bit more off, but again the polling for individual states has always been less accurate.

It is simply untrue, to suggest that the 2016 election was a "monument to the inaccuracy of polling." The 2016 election was a monument to the limits of national polling, when it is the electoral college that determines the outcome.

n.n said...

Rae:

They're goal is not to characterize the environment, but to manipulate perception in order to effect reality. As with JournoLism, caveat emptor. The traditional standard advises to consult multiple, independent sources to improve accuracy and discern bias.

Bay Area Guy said...

68 Million citizens (48%) voted against Trump.

They are not happy. Most of them still oppose him. Many would like to impeach him, although they would be hard pressed to provide a basis for such impeachment.

However, the GOP House Majority will never impeach him.

And, I predict, the Dems will not retake the House in 2018. Too many GOP governors and Legislatures control the redistricting. I could be wrong though.

C'est la vie.

BJM said...

I'll take push polling for $500, Althouse.

Although Sullivan was bit of a curveball.

Otto said...

"How did we get so dramatic"? Look in the mirror and see the university. One word - snowflakes.

Ambrose said...

Impeachment is based on polling data now? I missed that one.

tcrosse said...

What is her qualification besides being a gold digger?

Which reminds us of John Kerry.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Chuck said...
We've been through this, too, Ann.


Multiple times.

Drago said...

"lifelong republican" Chuck: "The final RCP average called the final popular vote correctly, within the stated margin of error."

No one cares.

We have an electoral system for our elections. Polling final popular vote is irrelevant.

It's like polling/estimating "men on base" instead of "runs scored". Why would you be focused on polling that does not reflect the state of the race for how a candidate actually wins?

Trump and his team did exactly that. And then marshalled their more scarce resources in a much more clever and adaptive way than Hillary.

It's this innovative analysis and application of the that analysis that left the MSM and their "linear thinking" opponents in the dust.

Nonapod said...

@AReasonableMan

I guess it depends on what "status quo" we're talking about disrupting. I think it's safe to say that he has disrupted the normal relations between the media and the US President. He's certainly disrupted the normal way a President typically gets his message out by using Twitter. He's disrupted the way a President typically communicates with the other branches of the government.

He certainly disrupted the 'normal' ways Presidential campaigns are run in many ways.

I'll grant you, it doesn't seem like has disrupted the larger Washington establishment power structure in a meaningful way just yet. And he may not ever really be able to or really want to despite all his "drain the swamp" rhetoric. But then again we're only a few weeks in.

Drago said...

This poll is nothing more than MSM "chum" designed to keep the work "impeachment" at the forefront of the transient news consumer minds.

In that way, later on, when the Deep State/Dems/Media Complex moves toward it the battlespace prep will already have been completed.

Amadeus 48 said...

"Although Sullivan was a bit of a curveball."

O-oo-oh! Not politically correct. Trump, the most LBGTQVWXYZ friendly president ever elected, could denounce you via Twitter.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Drago said...
It's this innovative analysis and application of the that analysis that left the MSM and their "linear thinking" opponents in the dust.


That, or they got lucky.

Todd said...

Nonapod said...
@AReasonableMan

I guess it depends on what "status quo" we're talking about disrupting. I think it's safe to say that he has disrupted the normal relations between the media and the US President. He's certainly disrupted the normal way a President typically gets his message out by using Twitter. He's disrupted the way a President typically communicates with the other branches of the government.

He certainly disrupted the 'normal' ways Presidential campaigns are run in many ways.

I'll grant you, it doesn't seem like has disrupted the larger Washington establishment power structure in a meaningful way just yet. And he may not ever really be able to or really want to despite all his "drain the swamp" rhetoric. But then again we're only a few weeks in.

2/10/17, 3:12 PM


Want to see some disruption? Trump should tweet out that he is switching to gab.ai and no longer using twitter. THAT would be a show...

Chuck said...

AReasonableMan said...
Humperdink said...
Betsy DeVos???????

Being anti-teacher's unions is pretty standard Red team stuff at the federal level. DeVos is an interesting case however. As I understood things, Trump was bringing in billionaires because they had the best minds. But DeVos married into the main source of money in her life and even her husband is one generation removed from the actual entrepreneur who made the money. What is her qualification besides being a gold digger?


A "gold digger" is a term we apply to ordinary women (or men!) who choose marital partners who are wealthy, so that the ordinary partner can improve her (or his!) status.

Besty DeVos is not a gold digger. And you are a real nasty asshole for claiming that, when you obviously are so ignorant on the subject.

First, Betsy DeVos had no need of DeVos/Amway money. Betsy is Betsy Prince. Her own family is wealthy. Her father Edgar Prince founded an auto parts manufacturing business and they all millionaires if not billionaires. And active in the family businesses. Betsy's brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, etc.

Second, Besty DeVos has a history of hard work and leadership at the very highest levels of the Republican Party in Michigan. She was a two-time Chairperson of the Michigan GOP. She is as serious a political strategist as there is in our state. She has been working on education policy, and operating charter school businesses, for decades.

Third, about Betsy's husband Dick DeVos. While Dick was once active in Amway, he left that business a long time ago as an executive (after successfully restructuring it for the 21st century), and moved on to other things in which he's been enormously successful. The Windquest Group, and the Orlando Magic, among other things.

Okay, ARM? Had enough of this topic?

Michael said...

This is the sort of thing a full-court press by the MSM can do, at least for a while. And how many random poll respondents actually know what "impeachment" means?

hstad said...

"Public Policy Polling" a Leftist polling outfit ginning up another "Fake Poll." This question should tell everyone how this polling outfit is run by Leftists. "....Voters are increasingly taking the media's side in his fights with them....? Really, the "Media" is winning this fight? LOL!

Drago said...

ARM: "That, or they got lucky."

Sorry to disappoint you.

Perhaps you should read the quite extensive Forbes write-up on Jared Kushner and the Trump data operation.

But hey, I get it. The Trump team can't have done anything smart or clever. Nope. Just not possible.

Keep believing that. It can only lead to positive outcomes for the left.

Chuck said...

Drago said...
"lifelong republican" Chuck: "The final RCP average called the final popular vote correctly, within the stated margin of error."

No one cares.

We have an electoral system for our elections. Polling final popular vote is irrelevant.


I know that. Neither the mythical "popular vote," nor polling, determines who wins the presidency. I understand the electoral college very well.

So what is your point?

Althouse said that the polling was way off, that the election was a monument to polling inaccuracies. But that isn't true. The polling was pretty good. It was accurate to within the margin of error, in general.

I think Trumpkins have trouble with that fact because like Der Fearless Leader, they think he won a "landslide." Which the polls obviously didn't predict. But he didn't win any landslide, on any metric.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Chuck said...
Had enough of this topic?


And her entrepreneurial achievements are exactly zero. Doling out your husbands inheritance to buy political influence is not an achievement. Isn't she exactly the untalented establishment type that Trump was going to replace?

rcocean said...

83/9? I doubt many Democrats even know what "Impeachment" means. Poll after poll shows the Democrats have a lock on the most stupid and ill-informed members of society.

The Democrats are made of two separate elements. At the top, the members of the chattering classes, the billionaires and millionaires, the MSM, and Hollywood, etc. Their foot soldiers are the dumbest and least educated, felons, crazy people, and minorities of various types. Oh, and Government employees.

I wouldn't accept any poll that didn't include a preliminary question asking the respondent to define "impeachment".

rcocean said...

From watching BHTV, I'm sure Bob Wright would have been in favor of impeaching Trump on January 21st.

Drago said...

The ultimate political "gold digger" is Hillary Clinton who accomplished almost nothing in a 30 year career of nothingness that itself was only made possible by the man she married.

No wonder she lost the race for the Presidency twice to relative novices and outsiders.

I realize that for lefties that might be difficult to accept as they long ago convinced themselves that their latest cult-hero Hillary was the smartest, most qualified, bravest & most courageous, most beautiful fashion icon EVAH!

But there it is.

Drago said...

ARM: "And her entrepreneurial achievements are exactly zero. Doling out your husbands inheritance to buy political influence is not an achievement. Isn't she exactly the untalented establishment type that Trump was going to replace?"

Trump did "replace" an untalented establishment type.

He "replaced" her by defeating her in an election.

Drago said...

rcocean: "83/9? I doubt many Democrats even know what "Impeachment" means"

It means "make the bad man who doesn't agree with us go away!!!"

n.n said...

History has a propensity to repeat itself. So, who will cut the baby in half?

mccullough said...

Shouldn't they be calling for impeachment and removal. Impeachment is so 1998.

Known Unknown said...

"What is her qualification besides being a gold digger?"

Maybe you could look it up.

Darrell said...

Lefties--let's use Common Core English and put it in a way you can understand. Cash me outside howbow dah?

Well over half of the people support Trump, think he is doing a great job, and that is supported by multiple polls. Why would half want to impeach him?

Bob Ellison said...

Man, the force is strong with Title Case Chuck!

Chuck said...

AReasonableMan said...
...
And her entrepreneurial achievements are exactly zero. Doling out your husbands inheritance to buy political influence is not an achievement. Isn't she exactly the untalented establishment type that Trump was going to replace?

I have no idea. You should ask somebody who is a fan of Donald Trump.

Except that the premise of your question, like the rest of your comments in this post, is just garbage. You don't know what her achievements are, because you haven't been following Republican politics and education policy in Michigan.

Amadeus 48 said...

Chuck at 3:18.

Hear! Hear!

Bob Ellison said...

mccullough said, "Shouldn't they be calling for impeachment and removal[?]"

Just like Obamacare: can't call for removal without replacement! You'd better remove Trump, Pence, Paul Ryan, and much of the Cabinet before you losers have a chance at the government you want.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Known Unknown said...
Maybe you could look it up.


I did, that's how I know that she made a 'career' of peddling influence based on doling out her husband's money. Otherwise she is a nobody.

Sprezzatura said...

"Shouldn't they be calling for impeachment and removal. Impeachment is so 1998."

Maybe, maybe not.

Now that the bar for impeachment is getting a blow job from an intern and denying getting a blow job from an intern, maybe that's the sorta infraction these libs have in mind. The poll should be conducted to test what percentage of folks want to go beyond the blow job.

Pookie Number 2 said...

You don't know what her achievements are, because you haven't been following Republican politics and education policy in Michigan.

ARM is just demonstrating that being a Democrat is all about being ignorant and hating people. Once upon a time, it was African Americans, now it's the politically conservative. But the impulse to believe falsities about their opponents is unchanged.

Sprezzatura said...

IOW, lying about getting a blow job doesn't seem like the end of the world. And yet, that's impeachment stuff. It's not so hard to achieve impeachability, as the Rs showed us w/ blow jobs.

Unknown said...

I realize the "Trump issue" is of much concern to a lot of people throughout the country, but to try to impeach him within the first month of his term could be considered, by some, a little too anxious. The two decisively different views between the conservatives and the liberals have been causing a lot of controversy since President Trump publicly voiced his choice to run for the Presidency. The case of the immigration ban is the main issue with the public at the moment it seems. Here's my thoughts on the whole thing; I don't believe he is trying to completely keep immigrants out of the country, he is trying to make sure they enter the country legally and without the threat of terrorist agenda in mind once they get here. It's always better to be safe than sorry. The authors of 'Ethics in Human Communication' write that "deception undermines the ability of people of different cultures to trust each other" (Johannesen, p.227). That statement in itself says a lot, there is so much fighting and hatred between the diverse cultures (abroad and in the U.S.) that nobody can see past the different cultural ideals or mishaps to understand what is trying to be communicated. Not all Muslims are out to destroy us (there are a few in each culture who do things that enables others to misjudge),but it is the President's duty to ensure the safety of the citizens of the United States.
What we need to do is wait and see (just like we did with Obama, Clinton, Reagan, etc.) what his true intentions are; then, if need be, so what must be done. Just like everyone else, he deserves a chance to prove himself.

Sebastian said...

GOP President does his job, keeps his promises, and upsets lefties: impeach that man!

Dem President harasses women and lies about it: don't impeach that man!

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Chuck said...
You don't know what her achievements are, because you haven't been following Republican politics and education policy in Michigan.


Seems to me that instead of screwing with Detroit schools, where she was neither wanted nor successful, she should have focused on the education of rural whites: Michigan near bottom of national rankings for white student achievement.

Sprezzatura said...

Deadwood and Bills wood seem so distant. Even if they're not in the media, cocksuckers carry on.

Pookie Number 2 said...

IOW, lying about getting a blow job doesn't seem like the end of the world. And yet, that's impeachment stuff.

Only when it's under oath. (The lying, that is. I don't think blow jobs under oath are any different.)

Unknown said...

Johannesen, R. L. (1990). Ethics in human communication (6th ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Chuck said...

3rdGradePB_GoodPerson said...
IOW, lying about getting a blow job doesn't seem like the end of the world.


You forgot the part about "Lying under oath, in federal court litigation."

And just to show you what a good chess player I am, thinking of the nest two moves, you might just want to suggest that Donald Trump has also lied in federal court litigation. Except that unlike his Twitter account, and his press releases and his interviews, I'm not aware of Trump having lied under oath.

I have read a couple of his depositions, and he's a terrible witness. An attorney's absolute nightmare of a client. But I never saw him as a liar in that setting. I got the impression that Trump knew all about perjury and refused to cross that line. Precisely because he is such a touring professional at the game of lying.

Sprezzatura said...

BTW, folks I didn't forget about the fact that the lie about the blowjob was an under oath lie about a blowjob.

Believe it or not, it still wasn't the end of the world. And, it did set the bar for impeachment at lying about blowjobs.

Facts, not the Alt variety.



Carry on.

Pookie Number 2 said...

Believe it or not, it still wasn't the end of the world.

True. Is that the actual standard for impeachment?

Jamie said...

Drago, exactly: keep the word "impeachment" in the zeitgeist. More anchoring. Yesterday afternoon's NPR nugget involved an interview with the director of operations for Voice of America. Interviewer: "Let's cut to the chase: has the Trump administration tell you what to broadcast?" Answer: "They absolutely have not." Postscript: "And if they did, it would be illegal."

Then some more about the Trump administration. And then, the interview then moved on to the RUSSIAN propaganda and the budget the Russian government devotes to it. The NPR interviewer (again I am trying to get these quotes as close as possible to the actual words, but I'm always driving when I listen to NPR, sorry!): "Now let's talk about false narratives." [pause] "Can you tell us something about Russian efforts to shape American news stories?"

This is more anchoring, more agenda-setting: 1. Plant the bad seed (did the Trump administration try to tell a news organization what to say?). 2. Restate the name you want people to remember (talk more about Trump). 3. Plant another bad seed (let's talk about false narratives - or "fake news"). And only then segue into the actual story, RUSSIAN propaganda, so that you can say you did in fact do news.

But the effect is that the listener hears "Trump" - "tell you what to broadcast" - "Trump" - "false narratives."

Sprezzatura said...

"I have read a couple of his depositions"

And, FTR, I own a hard copy of the Star Report book.

So, been there, done that.

Bob Ellison said...

Chuck, the next move is "look, squirrel under the bus". For example, maybe the collapse of the Clinton Foundation.

It's so difficult to stay on-topic. But after a few dozen comments, it gets easy, and the hostess doesn't seem to mind too much.

Jamie said...

I've never heard that there's any legal barrier to receiving OR giving a BJ under oath. Lawyers? Your thoughts?

Mark said...

I think it's really weird that 87% of the people who disapprove are ready to impeach the President. How did we get so damned dramatic?

Because they do not believe in "the peaceful transition of power." Because if this were a third-world country, they would implement a coup. Because if this were the 19th century, they would -- as they did before -- start a bloody civil war. Because THIS is why they can NEVER be allowed to be in power ever again. Because they are hell-bent on destroying the country.

Mark said...

How did we get so damned dramatic?

Because this is who they are. Because this is what they are. And always have been. They are letting their true hate and rage and evil destruction out in the open for all to see.

Jamie said...

Tonya, thanks for addressing the issue of trust in society - we no longer seem able to believe that our interlocutors or political opponents are acting in good faith. My personal view is that Republicans are less apt to fly off the handle than Democrats, but possibly that's just because of the particular Republicans and the particular Democrats I know... In any case, it's hard to debate at a screech.

Static Ping said...

Impeachment at this point, barring some revelation of great malfeasance, would essentially be a coup. Yeah, you thought Trump was bad. They have no idea what they are asking. Then again, if they thought these sort of things out they wouldn't be in this situation in the first place.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"What is her qualification besides being a gold digger?"

Posed by the party of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, absolutely hilarious.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Chuck said...
Besty DeVos has a history of hard work and leadership at the very highest levels of the Republican Party in Michigan. She was a two-time Chairperson of the Michigan GOP. She is as serious a political strategist as there is in our state. She has been working on education policy, and operating charter school businesses, for decades.


So she can be held directly accountable for the decline in Michigan white student fourth-grade reading scores from a ranking of 28th in 2003 to 41st in 2015?

Or, 42nd in fourth-grade math in 2015, down from 27 in 2003?

Isn't she just another useless cog in a failing system? She has no entrepreneurial skills that aren't directly tied to her political influence peddling and no actual achievements.

Henry said...

We envy the multi-party democracies. There, any fringe party can upset the government, forcing a new coalition, or new elections. Our system doesn't do that. If we normalize impeachment, it morphs into a vote of no confidence. In other words, it becomes the impeachment charge against Andrew Johnson rather than the impeachment charge against Richard Nixon.

Drago said...

Pookie Number 2: ' (The lying, that is. I don't think blow jobs under oath are any different.)"

Insufficient evidence. I recommend a detailed study.

tcrosse said...

Trump is guilty of the High Crime of denying Hillary her Rightful Coronation.

Pookie Number 2 said...

Insufficient evidence. I recommend a detailed study.

I'm sorry. I do love you, but not in that way.

Jim at said...

"My conclusion, Pence and Trump are likely to be impeached."

That's because you haven't the slightest clue as to what you're talking about.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

"DeVos isn't an educator, or an education leader. She's not an expert in pedagogy or curriculum or school governance. In fact, she has no relevant credentials or experience for a job setting standards and guiding dollars for the nation's public schools.

She is, in essence, a lobbyist - someone who has used her extraordinary wealth to influence the conversation about education reform, and to bend that conversation to her ideological convictions despite the dearth of evidence supporting them."

"One of the two Republican senators who said they could not support Mrs DeVos, Susan Collins of Maine, said she was "concerned that Mrs DeVos' lack of experience with public schools will make it difficult for her to fully understand, identify and assist" challenges facing rural schools in particular."

Maybe should have spent some time in Michigan's rural schools, they don't seem to be doing too good at that readin' and rithmeticing stuff.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Chuck said...
Ann Althouse said...
...
(Not that I trust the polls. The Trump presidency is a monument to the inaccuracy of polling.)

We've been through this, too, Ann.


Blogger AReasonableMan said...
Chuck said...
We've been through this, too, Ann.

Multiple times.

Akthouse just got mansplained by Chuck and ARM.

But will she persist?

Jim at said...

"Now that the bar for impeachment is getting a blow job from an intern and denying getting a blow job from an intern, maybe that's the sorta infraction these libs have in mind."

Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice.

But you knew that, didn't you.

Drago said...

ARM: "So she can be held directly accountable for the decline in Michigan white student fourth-grade reading scores from a ranking of 28th in 2003 to 41st in 2015?"

Actually, the party and ideology that was actually in charge over the last 40 years should be held responsible.

As a leftist I realize you simply can't "go there".

Not surprising that ARM wants to quickly hand off responsibility for public education to the republicans in the same way he is desperate, desperate, to get the republicans to change one letter of Obamacare so that can be handed off.

Just think, the first second after Maduro is thrown Putin Venezuela expect nonstop news reports of the "failure" of conservative economic theory.

Sprezzatura said...

CocksuckerGate = Watergate


chuck said...

> [Michigan] reading scores from a ranking of 28th in 2003 to 41st in 2015?

That would be Jennifer Granholm, Democrat governor fromm 2003 to 2011.

Drago said...

Pookie: "I'm sorry. I do love you, but not in that way."

I don't think you understand how a broad base of empirical data should be obtained.

Drago said...

chuck: > [Michigan] reading scores from a ranking of 28th in 2003 to 41st in 2015?

That would be Jennifer Granholm, Democrat governor fromm 2003 to 2011."

That's precisely the kind of fact, amongst many others, that ARM is running away from.

But courageously running away!

Sprezzatura said...

Did Kenny Boy (not the Enron one) get his cock sucked back when WJC sex details consumed his mind? Did he ever get blown? Is there some sorta olden days, uptight con thing that wasn't/isn't into oral (both ways)?

I dunno.



Carry on.

boycat said...

The idea that a Republican-dominated house would bring impeachment articles against a Republican president is so looney tunes it would take a complete leftard to dream it up.

Unknown said...

We'll see Jim. The wheels on the bus are getting wobbly.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Drago said...
Actually, the party and ideology that was actually in charge over the last 40 years


But school performance is declining with a Republican state government. The state government has been considerably more Red than Blue over the last 22 years. And school districts are even more Red, if you insist on making this a partisan affair.

PB said...

Yes, the polls are sooo accurate.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

chuck said...
That would be Jennifer Granholm, Democrat governor fromm 2003 to 2011.


That would be 2010 for Granholm. Snyder has been governor since 2011. There was Red team state Senate for that entire time and a Red team state house for the majority of that time period. Plus, Red team school districts.

Francisco D said...

Which chuck would be Chuck if chuck could be Chuck?

cubanbob said...

karenfrFL said...
Do you think that because there is a majority House and Senate, if enough evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors comes out, that they won't move to impeach? They are going to try to save their own skins and they will throw Trump and his administration that are involved under the bus. The Congress won't keep Trump in the Presidency if they sense danger to themselves."

Let me guess, you must be in Broward. Broward County people are lefty and crazy enough to believe the nonsense you are spouting. You should be more concerned that AG Sessions decides that the FBI Director tanked a criminal referral regarding Hillary Clinton. It is far more likely that Hillary would be facing a criminal indictment than Trump facing an impeachment.

Drago said...

ARM: "That would be 2010 for Granholm. Snyder has been governor since 2011. There was Red team state Senate for that entire time and a Red team state house for the majority of that time period. Plus, Red team school districts."

What would the MI averages be if we filtered out the Blue People's Paradise of Detroit?

eric said...

This is standard operating procedure for the Democrats and leftists among us.

The politicians, the media, the Pollsters and the rubes all work together to create a narrative.

Trump so far appears to be impervious to it.

If this proves true, watch as more and more heads explode as they attempt the same old tricks and fail miserably.

Sigivald said...

My question is always "for what, exactly?"

Unles you can name the "high crime or misdemeanor" you have in mind, give up.

(And remember that it's a term of art for malfeasance with the office, not "any misemeanor in the everyday sense", and especially not "I really super hate him or his policy ideas".

I think he's a jackass with plenty of bad ideas, but I ain't seen cause for impeachment.)

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

I see that Betsy DeVos, who has been criticized by the Left because she supposedly had never been inside a public school, was briefly blocked by leftists from entering the inside of a public school today.

She eventually got in anyway. So in other words: She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.

buwaya said...

"Trump was bringing in billionaires because they had the best minds."
"What is her qualification besides being a gold digger?"

Trump may have been misdirecting. I suspect a lot of the senior people he has selected are there because no-one and no interest has a hold on them. The only truly free people in the US these days are those rich enough to defy the system or those with nothing to lose.

Anyone who depends or will depend on future employment, on ongoing business relationships, or with families similarly dependent are likely to feel intense pressure. Tillerson, Flynn, Price, Kelly, Perry, Sessions and Mattis are their positions as retirement jobs and are set for life regardless. DeVos and Mnuchin are independently wealthy. Carson is black, retired and invulnerable. Elaine Chao is extremely wealthy, however she is a "system" member through and through and unlikely to suffer personal consequences whatever happens. Some of the others are similarly "system" personnel.

It would be interesting to follow up on the pattern.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Drago said...
What would the MI averages be if we filtered out the Blue People's Paradise of Detroit?


Nice try but no cigar. Can't always blame the black man.

"White students show a decline in actual performance on the national assessment since 2013." Not just ranking.

"Michigan’s white students now rank 49th in the country in fourth-grade reading compared to their peers – and 42nd in eighth-grade math – according to new national assessment data."

"Even Michigan’s white higher-income students now rank 50th in fourth-grade reading, down from 45th in 2013 and 17th in 2003."

I did not realize just how bad white Michigan performance was. It is actually a bit shocking. Remind me again why DeVos is now our education secretary?

Drago said...

ARM: "Nice try but no cigar. Can't always blame the black man."

I don't. I blame the teachers unions and Dem politicians, so naturally where those regressive and non-adaptive forces are strongest is where I immediately turn my attention.

Not surprising you played the race card as it is the only one left in Dem deck.

West Texas Intermediate Crude said...

Chuck says the RCP called the election accurately.
No.
The election was a binary choice.
Trump or Clinton.
If they thought it was too close to call, it would have been quite respectable, and responsible, to say, "The election is too close to call."
Nobody did that- all said Clinton, many predicting a landslide.
Oops.
They called the popular vote accurately.
That's a Participation Trophy.

West Texas Intermediate Crude said...

I hope they do try to impeach Trump.
Now.
It will, of course, go nowhere.
It will immunize Trump against impeachment for the rest of his time in office- are they going to impeach him twice?
Be careful what you wish for. It will release the inner Trump of your worse imagination.

Anonymous said...

eric: The politicians, the media, the Pollsters and the rubes all work together to create a narrative.

Trump so far appears to be impervious to it.

If this proves true, watch as more and more heads explode as they attempt the same old tricks and fail miserably.


Yeah, it's amusing for a while, but frankly I'm getting a bit bored by the narrative molders' non-stop cat-lady histrionics.

If Trump is as crass and crazy as they claim, how hard should it be to come across as the adult in the room? And yet they're failing at that, miserably.

Anonymous said...

Public Policy Polling is particularly slanted polling group - but I don't doubt at all that a very sizable set of Americans are ready to put an end to the Trump presidency.

Unknown said...

Impeachment will depend on when the shit hits the fan.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/russia-dossier-update/

Washington (CNN)For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump's inauguration.

None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.

But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.

The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given US intelligence and law enforcement "greater confidence" in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say.

Anonymous said...

cubanbob: Let me guess, you must be in Broward. Broward County people are lefty and crazy enough to believe the nonsense you are spouting. You should be more concerned that AG Sessions...

Karen is one of the sock-puppet posters from The Hive. She'll only be concerned about something Sessions is doing if that shows up on this evening's script.

It's pointless to engage these people.

buwaya said...

Re Michigan -

"And school districts are even more Red, if you insist on making this a partisan affair."

You have to disassociate by race to get comparable results.

NAEP public schools Michigan scores 8th grade Math (math is less subject to changes in standards) and 8th grade because the subject area is uniform, unlike in the 12th grade.

Michigan
White 2005 - 285 (SD 1.6)
Black 2005 - 247 (SD 2.2)
Hispanic 2005 - 265 (SD 3.8)
White 2015 - 285 (SD 1.3)
Black 2015 - 251 (SD 2.0)
Hispanic 2015 - 269 (SD 4.0)
US
White 2005 - 288
Black 2005 - 254
Hispanic 2005 - 261
White 2015 - 291
Black 2015 - 260
Hispanic 2015 - 269

Overall the trend seems flat. For Michigan, as with the general US trend minorities are improving very slowly relative to whites, and it seems Michigan is in line with the national trend. Michigan whites are somewhat static wrt to the US though, perhaps there needs to be a policy that targets their sub-standard progress.

Same as with many other such looks at the data, education policy is not an effective tool to move this metric. It seems that there are far more powerful factors at work.

Paulio said...

"(Not that I trust the polls. The Trump presidency is a monument to the inaccuracy of polling.)"

This post is another monument to the illiteracy of Althouse whenever the question has to do with math. The polls were quite accurate re: the national popular vote, which is what most of them measure. More accurate than in 2012. But with a binary outcome, and the electoral college, close was no cigar this time around. But 83% +/- some even large margin of error, is still a big number. The opposition is, shall we say, more opposed than normal (it took a couple months before the impeachment talk started among Republicans with Obama and never reached this level).

wwww said...


How did we get so damned dramatic?


Trump's dramatic, everyone's dramatic, twitter is dramatic.

IT'S ALL CAPS OMG PANIC!!!

We're re-living Jr. High School.

The other day I re-watched The Right Stuff. Feeling nostalgic.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

The idea of impeaching the new President came from Rush Limbaugh.

Darrell said...

My God! CNN has the scoop on senior Russian officials meeting with other Russian individuals. Anything in the world could have been discussed. Do you know how significant Intel like this is?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya said...
Same as with many other such looks at the data, education policy is not an effective tool to move this metric. It seems that there are far more powerful factors at work.


If by 'far more powerful factors' you mean the dumbass student's dumbass parents then I agree with this statement.

Big Mike said...

@ARM, tell me how we fix what's broken in American public schools without breaking the AFT and the NEA? I'm not in favor of breaking unions just to break unions, but if it costs a few recalcitrant union reps and a larger but still relatively small number of very bad teachers their jobs, well, omelet, eggs.

Darrell said...

I'd like to see Hillary charged and convicted of one felony count of mishandling classified materials. That would prevent her from ever holding public office again. While you're at it, do the same for Chelsea since Hillary admitted having Chelsea print out classified materials without a clearance.

Darrell said...

The polls were so good that Chuck absolutely fucking guaranteed us that Trump would not win Michigan--Chuck's home State.

Sprezzatura said...

"I did not realize just how bad white Michigan performance was. It is actually a bit shocking. Remind me again why DeVos is now our education secretary?"

She's gonna help MAGA, as others focus on tax cuts for the job creators that will trickle down on the salt of the earth, real Americans, she'll work on turning out voters for Trickle Down. I.e., uneducated folks are a rising R demo. Just as Ds want to increase the numbers of Mexican (and such) voters, Rs (and, therefore, their job creator benefactors) benefit when education declines.

That's mathematics. Thinking of education, perhaps there's a word problem related to this situation, e.g.: if R education policies makes X number of dumb hick voters, how much $ do Job Creators gain? And, part two, how will the job creators proportion their trickle down into buying 1) another Ferrari, 2) production machines in place of staff, 3) upgraded pussy (or cock, if that's their thing), or 4) other stuff/investments/savings(incl tax shelters)?

Fabi said...

"Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs."

Sounds like terribly solid reporting. Anonymous sources tangentially discussing classified intercepts -- what's not to like!

Drago said...

Blogger Left Bank of the Charles: "The idea of impeaching the new President came from Rush Limbaugh."

Would you like to try again?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-impeachment-213817

Gahrie said...

You have to disassociate by race to get comparable results

Now compare those test results to IQ scores. But don't ever talk about what you notice if you know what is good for you....

buwaya said...

"If by 'far more powerful factors' you mean the dumbass student's dumbass parents then I agree with this statement."

Yes, that's one, but it must be shown that the proportion of dumbass parents is increasing or otherwise. Other factors -

- Demographic change - for instance the origin and nature of the rather broad subsets, White is not simply "white". In MI, the proportion of Arab/ME kids for instance as %white vs whatever others used to be there. And then there is the differential propensity to migrate. And then there is immigration. Do the smart ones leave, or the dumb ones? Are the new population smarter or dumber than the old?

- General change in intellectual standards. Technology and culture. Arguably for instance Hispanic kids are doing significantly better, relatively, and one can argue they are converging, slowly. Maybe its the smartphones.

- Biology. Dysgenics, "Idiocracy", or maybe the opposite? Is Planned Parenthood slowly culling the wrong sort out, as was the original plan? Is there a built-in intellectual deficit in kids with over-age parents?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Big Mike said...
tell me how we fix what's broken in American public schools


I have interacted with the Great American Parent up close and personal in recent years in a fight over math teaching in my local school district. In the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The teachers are a bit clueless but the parents are adamantly so. I live in a 'good' school district yet the parents are unwilling to acknowledge that things can't stay the same if the country is to remain competitive. Thank god for all the immigrants in my district, because they are the ones who have insisted on more rigorous schooling and have come up with alternatives when the school district refused to respond.

I think nationwide testing as well as comparisons with competitor nations should be made a much more integral part of the system. It is unfortunate that we have to turn out kids lives into an educational competition but I don't see much of an alternative given the competition.


Drago said...

ARM: "If by 'far more powerful factors' you mean the dumbass student's dumbass parents then I agree with this statement."

It's very very very important to the left that those "dumbass" parents not be empowered to send their children where they deem it best.

Bureaucrats are the way to go. After all, deferring all matters to all-powerful bureaucrats is what made the Soviet Union the success it is today.

Drago said...

ARM: "The teachers are a bit clueless but the parents are adamantly so. I live in a 'good' school district yet the parents are unwilling to acknowledge that things can't stay the same if the country is to remain competitive. Thank god for all the immigrants in my district, because they are the ones who have insisted on more rigorous schooling and have come up with alternatives when the school district refused to respond.

I think nationwide testing as well as comparisons with competitor nations should be made a much more integral part of the system. It is unfortunate that we have to turn out kids lives into an educational competition but I don't see much of an alternative given the competition."

The education establishment is the single biggest barrier to change that exists.

But you can't effectively launder money back to the dems if you remove power from the unions, so there you go.

buwaya said...

"Now compare those test results to IQ scores."

They all run in parallel of course.

OTOH, IQ scores are not entirely static in populations, and subsets reported may have bad data, the data is rarely as complete as school achievement test scores. For reliability you have to go with comparable school tests.

Some populations are extremely well sampled for IQ though.

Gahrie said...

Remind me again why DeVos is now our education secretary?

Because she believes in school choice, so parents who give a shit can pull their kids out of those failing Michigan public schools and send them somewhere they will get an education. Hopefully the competition will force the public schools to improve.

Gahrie said...

Some populations are extremely well sampled for IQ though.

The truth is, there are unpleasant demographic realities that no one is willing to discuss or attempt to address.

That is why we have Affirmative Action, to provide equal outcomes when providing equal opportunity isn't enough.

buwaya said...

For what its worth, note, Black kids in Wisconsin are only a hair better off than those in Alabama, and those in Arizona are much better off. The differentials are substantial.

AL - 248
WI - 249
...
AZ - 269

West Virginia Whites - 272

Smartest subset of all - Massachusetts Asians - 324

Clyde said...

The Democrats are completely out of power. They don't control the White House or either chamber of Congress. They have been delaying and "resisting" Trump's appointments, but they have no power to stop them. All they can do is howl in the wilderness, and that is what they have been doing since he took office. Realistically, there is no chance that Trump gets impeached unless he does something that pisses of a significant number of Republicans. The Democrats cannot do it on their own; they don't have the numbers. And since they can't take any meaningful action, all that they can do is act out like drama queens.

Big Mike said...

@ARM, I accept everything you've said, but I think your response is orthogonal to my question.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Gahrie said...
Because she believes in school choice


Wouldn't it have made sense to get someone from a system that was a) improving and b) internationally competitive?

You hire the defensive coach from the Super Bowl champions, not from the Jets.

heyboom said...

Blogger AReasonableMan said...

Nonapod said...
He also represents a massive disruption to the status quo,

That has yet to be seen.



Hey ARM, maybe you could ask Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos about the status quo?

Chuck said...

Darrell said...
The polls were so good that Chuck absolutely fucking guaranteed us that Trump would not win Michigan--Chuck's home State.


Darrell as I have said too many times to count, I admit to having predicted that Trump would not win Michigan. He had trailed in all of the polls, but the polls had tightened a lot late in the campaign. More than the polling (and I suggested that the candidates' own internal polls must have told them how close Michigan was, since they all ended up the campaign with eleventh-hour appeals here), I just considered that no Republican had won the Michigan presidential election since 1988. Two of my least favorite people in the world, filmmaker Michael Moore and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, both said that the Democrats would have to work hard to save the day for Hillary in Michigan, and they were right.

But Darrell; this issue only arose because Althouse claimed that it was a terrible election for the polls. And I only pointed out that the polls -- nationally -- were within the margin of error. And in Michigan, Trump won all 16 of Michigan's electoral votes with a little more than 10,000 votes, out of 4.8 million cast. A win of historically narrow dimensions.

So I don't get your substantive point, Darrell. What is it? The national polls weren't all that bad. State polls are a lot harder to do, and have serious limits. But few of them got it terribly wrong either.


buwaya said...

"Wouldn't it have made sense to get someone from a system that was a) improving and b) internationally competitive?"

Texas

heyboom said...

Here's the UPI:

Garcia de Rayos was convicted in 2008 for using a fake Social Security number and was ordered to be sent back to Mexico. She appealed and a court allowed her to stay in the United States as long as she checked in once a year with immigration authorities.

Garcia de Rayos did so for eight years and for eight years immigration officials let her stay in the country. But on Wednesday, that routine changed.

Chuck said...

Remind me again why DeVos is now our education secretary?

Because the President of the United States nominated her, she had a hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the committee voted her nomination to the floor, and she won confirmation by 51-50 in a floor vote of the entire Senate.

Next question...?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Big Mike said...
I think your response is orthogonal to my question.


I don't see the teacher's unions as the problem. My personal experience with the teachers has been generally positive. Where I live they are responsive to the parent's concerns, the big problem is the nature of the parent's concerns that they are responding to.

The teachers collectively have pissed me off in recent years by encouraging the students to skip the common core tests. But, it was the parents that initiated this boycott movement. If the parents had stood firmly in favor of finding out what little Johny actually knows the teachers would have complied.

Big Mike said...

I wish people would stop referring to IQ. A bunch of years ago, for reasons that made sense at the time, I took a battery of IQ tests. IMAO they were largely vocabulary tests, and vocabulary is not what intelligence is all about. Some of them made an effort to have you reason from three strange patterns in a row, now pick the next pattern in the sequence, but very often a bright person (humble me) could find multiple answers that were correct because there were multiple patterns hidden in the sequences. One was "right," but only if you happened to choose the same pattern as the test creator. I love to read and I have a life-long habit of looking up words that I stumble across which I don't know, so I scored astronomically on tests that were highly vocabulary-based.

Meanwhile I know a man with a Ph.D. in a very abstract area of mathematics who hates to read fiction (he makes an exception for certain types of science fiction), and I assume he'd score above average but not blindly so on the same test. Yet his analytical abilities are almost inhuman. If you describe a problem to him he has the solution (if there's one and only one) and usually two or three solutions before you've finished laying out the problem. And they all work, every one. An IQ test says he's nothing special. Real life says otherwise.

Bottom line,

Freeman Hunt said...

Remind me again why DeVos is now our education secretary?

Hoping it's to close down the department.

Seemed like an odd pick, but then again, we've had many highly experienced Secretaries of Education, and education hasn't improved, so perhaps there's something about that type of experience that actually makes one less likely to be successful in that job. Or not. In any case, the state of education is terrible, so if we're going to take a flyer with one of the departments, it might as well be that one.

Big Mike said...

@ARM, every school my children have gone to have had duds. Maybe that's because I sent my kids to minority majority schools. I do know that when one parent, a lawyer, carefully built the case that a particular teacher routinely committed fineable offences that the Montgomery County Maryland teachers union landed on our PTA like a ton of bricks.

How bad was that teacher? So bad that it was not unusual for parents to need to put their kids into professional counseling following the school year. What kind of students got put in her class? The best and brightest, because only they had a chance to learn despite the teacher. The American school system shits on its best K-12 students. And we wonder why we do poorly when compared to other industrial nations?

buwaya said...

"An IQ test says he's nothing special. Real life says otherwise."

There are IQ tests and there are IQ tests.
But overall I think you are better off with achievement tests.
The SAT isn't bad for comparisons.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Chuck said...
Next question...?


Unresponsive. List actual demonstrable achievements that aren't linked to her doling out money to Republican politicians.

Bob Ellison said...

Freeman Hunt, amen.

Federal education funding is, last I heard, around 14% of total at actual schools.

Federal education regulation is obviously atrocious. Difficult to quantify.

Whence comes the power for the federal DOE to tell local schools what to do? And they do that. If I were a 14% contributor to a local charity, I wouldn't call Numberwang.

buwaya said...

" The American school system shits on its best K-12 students."

The US school system does worst at the top of the achievement distribution IIRC from the TIMSS and PISA series. The result of no or little tracking I think.

Tracking is anathema in US educational policy and educational practices and training.
It is extremely difficult to dislodge even in conservative school districts as that is what the whole teaching profession has learned over a half-century or more.

That alone is a reason to overturn the educational-industrial complex.

Jon Ericson said...

Pee-Wee got a new account number and changed its name.
Cunning plan.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Big Mike said...
every school my children have gone to have had duds.


This was also my experience as a child. Not a high percentage, but enough to put me off school for a long period. Some of those duds would have done fine on performance metrics.

With respect to the particular teacher you described I think a class boycott might have been effective. If the parents simply refused to send their children to that particular teachers class it would have become very difficult for the school district to ignore the problem. They may just parked the teacher in 'administration' but that would have been a better outcome.

It is difficult to come up with an answer. The problem is that if you make school teaching even less attractive as a job than it is now it becomes even more difficult to get good people, so it is a trade-off. There is almost no job I wouldn't do in preference to being a middle school teacher. How they get people to do that job is beyond me.


Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

(Not that I trust the polls. The Trump presidency is a monument to the inaccuracy of polling.)

I think that monument you're thinking of is his election. Whether his horrendous presidency itself so illustrates that inaccuracy remains to be seen. But signs point to no.

n.n said...

The DOE is not viable in its present configuration, however it should not be aborted but rather transformed. The federal government with rare exception is directed to provide oversight services. Let the State laboratories conduct their individual experiments, and the DOE can review outcomes and assess the fitness of methods. Then the States can come together, compare notes, and perhaps reach a consensus, or not, about some universal truth.

Michael K said...

Wouldn't it have made sense to get someone from a system that was a) improving and b) internationally competitive?

There are no public schools systems in the US that fit that description.

The unions have destroyed public school education.

"When children a\start to pay union dues, I will start to pay attention to what children want,"

Gahrie said...

An IQ test says he's nothing special. Real life says otherwise.

Really?

Because that's not what the research says.

Chuck said...

AReasonableMan said...
Chuck said...
Next question...?

Unresponsive. List actual demonstrable achievements that aren't linked to her doling out money to Republican politicians.

Seriously; why should I? You can watch the four hours or so of her confirmation hearing for yourself. You can search her online. I am not going to pretend to try to convince you of something that you will never accept. I am not going to waste my time on that hopeless endeavor. So, sorry.

I watched the floor debate on her nomination. I knew it already, but seeing it on the floor of the Senate was a stunning demonstration of how deeply loathed by the left Betsy DeVos is. And it is all about the interdependence of the Democratic left on institutional higher education and teacher unions. They are each other's most important client. And the DeVos/Education fight will last to the end of this President's term in office.

I never wanted to agree with a line that many Althouse commenters have suggested to me; that Donald Trump was pissing off all the right people. I couldn't quite agree with that; but in the case of Betsy DeVos, I am quite delighted with ALL of the people whom she is pissing off.

buwaya said...

Arizona isn't half-bad actually.
Almost up there with Texas.
After disassociating for race of course.
It may be demographics, but who knows.

Gahrie said...

There is almost no job I wouldn't do in preference to being a middle school teacher. How they get people to do that job is beyond me.

Been there, done that...I'll never do it again.

Anonymous said...

Big Mike: I wish people would stop referring to IQ. A bunch of years ago, for reasons that made sense at the time, I took a battery of IQ tests. IMAO they were largely vocabulary tests, and vocabulary is not what intelligence is all about.

I don't know what tests you took, but IQ tests are good predictors of success - in lots of important areas of life, not just for "taking tests" and doing well at school. We all know smart, successful people who don't perform well on standardized tests, including IQ tests, and "IQ brilliant" fuck-ups. But they are statistical outliers.

Meanwhile I know a man with a Ph.D. in a very abstract area of mathematics who hates to read fiction (he makes an exception for certain types of science fiction), and I assume he'd score above average but not blindly so on the same test. Yet his analytical abilities are almost inhuman.

You assume, but you don't know. I doubt very seriously that someone with a PhD in a "very abstract area of mathematics" would only score so-so on a proper IQ test. It's possible, but I wouldn't bet any money on it. If you want to see people with high IQ scores, you look in math and physics departments. English departments, not so much.

Gahrie said...

Tracking is anathema in US educational policy and educational practices and training.

Solely because of the unpleasant demographic realities it produces.

David said...

"Destroy your adversary."

Once you realize that is the objective of the left, none of this will surprise you.

buwaya said...

"There is almost no job I wouldn't do in preference to being a middle school teacher."

I am considering this as a retirement career.
Middle School Mathematics.
Well, I am going to have to figure out what I'm going to do with myself.
Sort of a hobby I suppose.
Am I insane?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

IMAO they were largely vocabulary tests, and vocabulary is not what intelligence is all about.

Nothing is what intelligence is about, for the simple reason that intelligence isn't one thing. It's a few different things. Is a figure skater or long-distance runner as strong as a weight lifter? It depends which muscles you're measuring. Same with intelligence, but to an even much greater degree.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

n.n said...
The DOE is not viable in its present configuration, however it should not be aborted but rather transformed. The federal government with rare exception is directed to provide oversight services. Let the State laboratories conduct their individual experiments, and the DOE can review outcomes and assess the fitness of methods. Then the States can come together, compare notes, and perhaps reach a consensus, or not, about some universal truth.


This is basically what Common Core was. At a minimum the Feds should be monitoring performance of schools and highlighting chronic problems.

chuck said...

> Yet his analytical abilities are almost inhuman.

Above a fairly low threshold, I think talents are more interesting than IQ. Physical talents, musical talents, mathematical talents, language talents, the world is full of people with oddball talents from being able to see stars in daylight, to learning a new language in a couple of months. IQ may correlate with some of those talents, but doesn't explain them. If you have no talent for music, no amount of IQ will help you play a tune with any feeling.

n.n said...

If Trump can avoid a second cold war with dead Soviets, end the practice of waging social justice, enact global emigration reform, compensate for labor and environmental arbitrage, reverse the progressive debt, promote sustainable energy production suited to purpose (e.g. organic black blob, nuclear microverse), defeat the rise of global anti-nativism, replace "=" (i.e. congruence) with equal protection, civilize the urban jungles, defeat the reconstitution of institutional [class] diversity, and separate the Pro-Choice Church and State, he will have already realized significant positive progress.

If Trump also manages to tear down the privacy veil, close the abortion chambers, and shutter the Mengele clinics, then his name will be recorded in history right as a leader of humanity.

Revitalization. Rehabilitation. Reconciliation.

Michael K said...

"I am considering this as a retirement career.
Middle School Mathematics. "

I was planning, some years ago, to retire to Vashon Island, WA where I owned 10 acres of land.

I thought about maybe teaching high school biology for something to do.

Vashon has one of the two highest achieving high schools in Washington state. The other is Bainbridge,.

Anyway, I learned that without a degree in "Education" I could not get a teaching certificate.

For other reasons, I later gave up on the island and sold my property.

Michael K said...

"If Trump can avoid a second cold war with dead Soviets"

He is engaged in a cold war with in the Deep State, which he might win if he can stay alive.

The Soviets had an army, The Deep State has trillions of dollars and an army of politicians of both parties.

n.n said...

AReasonableMan:

I thought "Common Core" was active direction, not passive oversight, where the former precludes the function of independent laboratories.

n.n said...

Michael K:

Deep State

The Deep State, the establishment, represent one source of conflict. Perhaps the primary conflict. Actually, I was thinking of sovereign States that possess WMD and delivery systems that may pose a threat to viability of life on Earth if forced into an existential crisis.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Buwaya you're no crazier than Lloyd Braun.

Lloyd Braun: That was odd. Am I crazy, or does Jerry not wear glasses?
Kramer: You’re not crazy. Jerry does wear glasses. He just forgot ’em, that’s all. Not crazy.

Anonymous said...

buwaya:

I am considering this as a retirement career.
Middle School Mathematics.
Well, I am going to have to figure out what I'm going to do with myself.
Sort of a hobby I suppose.
Am I insane?


If they really need you (and I bet they do), and you are in a position to tell them to stuff it if they give you any grief, you might enjoy it. Lucky kids.

One of my cousins, a retired teacher, does just that. She still teaches when and how she likes, "for fun", and is able to do so because they know she's good and they desperately need first-rate teachers like her. (First-rate brains with a real vocation for teaching children, who will teach in "bad" schools, are not easy to find.) She's a conservative in a sea of daft libs, and has no illusions about the stupidity and uselessness of the entrenched educational bureaucracy. (She began her career in the age when there were no "colleges of education".) She plows on anyway, doing "what she can, where she can, with what she's got".

buwaya said...

"Let the State laboratories conduct their individual experiments, and the DOE can review outcomes and assess the fitness of methods. Then the States can come together, compare notes, and perhaps reach a consensus, or not, about some universal truth."

California was doing exactly this from 1998-99, effectively, till 2012-13
The idea was to score school performance against comprehensive demographic and other factor models to normalize external effects. The purpose, in large part, was to identify successful programs and propagate them among districts and schools.

The data acquisition part worked very well, and the analysis part worked almost as well, the resulting model may be the best such ever applied to such a large, consistent sample. And, indeed, successful programs were identified that had a multi-year track record of improving performance among low-SES students, particularly in K-5. There were star schools and districts.

However, the "star" schools methods were generally unacceptable to the educational nomenklatura, being as they were always some sort of highly structured curricula, with plenty of drill and scripted lessons and disciplined top-down management. One example was the Inglewood school district that produced excellent results for over a decade.

The fact that they worked, and could be proven to have worked, did not make these methods professionally acceptable to schools of education, school districts or school teachers, and for the most part they were not generally copied.

There was also the problem of the lack of successful models for Grades 9-12. There were no real stars with systems to copy. Whatever was achieved in K-5 tended to fade out by High School also (though that was possibly explained by high mobility and the inability to properly analyze data at the individual level).

So its been done, really.

n.n said...

an army of politicians of both parties

That cannot be overstated. While the faces may change with active and passive involvement, the overlapping and converging interests can be observed in outcomes.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

chuck said...
Above a fairly low threshold, I think talents are more interesting than IQ.


People with unique abilities advance the ball a lot more regularly in the real world than people with a well-rounded above average intelligence. There are a large number of people with high IQs who are good at everything but not really great at anything. These people tend to clog up the professions with competence but not a lot of genuine talent or passion.

damikesc said...

Third, about Betsy's husband Dick DeVos. While Dick was once active in Amway, he left that business a long time ago as an executive (after successfully restructuring it for the 21st century), and moved on to other things in which he's been enormously successful. The Windquest Group, and the Orlando Magic, among other things.

Holy shit, I never even realized it was THAT DeVos family. I have family in Orlando and when I was there, you'd see the DeVos name a lot in stories involving the Magic. Never even realized that was the same family.

No, I have no clue how I didn't realize that.

So she can be held directly accountable for the decline in Michigan white student fourth-grade reading scores from a ranking of 28th in 2003 to 41st in 2015?

No. The system she is trying to reform did that.

khesanh0802 said...

Good speculative piece in the WSJ about Trump and his modus operandi: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-method-in-trumps-tumult-1486770583

buwaya said...

To expand on what happened in CA, the testing/data system did not survive a year after the Democrats won the State House (last data year was 2012-13), as it was hated by the educational establishment and considered a Republican imposition.

It was not replaced until the 2015-16 school year and the evaluation model is not yet available.

The current system is not set up to identify "stars" or evaluate methods that I can see.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Michael K said...
I was planning, some years ago, to retire to Vashon Island, WA


The other day someone suggested Bellingham as a retirement destination for Althouse and Meade. I looked it up and was ready to move half an hour later. That is an incredible environment for small boaters.

Curious George said...

"How did we get so damned dramatic?"

What you mean, "we," Kemo Sabe?

buwaya said...

"If they really need you (and I bet they do), and you are in a position to tell them to stuff it"

I don't know about needing, there are loads of jobless young graduates.
I certainly won't need the money.

n.n said...

So its been done, really.

What they should have learned is that the system may be nonlinear and sensitive to initial conditions. So, optimal performance will be realized with a model that adapts to perturbations caused by integrated and extrinsic factors.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

ARM wrote:

"The teachers are a bit clueless but the parents are adamantly so. I live in a 'good' school district yet the parents are unwilling to acknowledge that things can't stay the same if the country is to remain competitive."

This is correct. Once upon a time, I was a teacher, and I taught at a pricey private school for a while after I graduated from college. I got phone calls from screaming parents at 1 am. They were upset because little Buffy got a B or C and she wasn't going to get into Harvard with those grades! "Tell little Buffy to study harder," I would say and hang up, but I was young and became weary of the constant badgering and sense of entitlement, coupled with crappy pay and benes. They had no real interest in having educated children; only credentialed ones, and I was standing in the way of the golden doors they expected to magically open for their kid.

So I went to grad school to get teacher certification which would enable me to teach in the public school system and found myself student teaching in the DC public system, which is a sewer. I went from dealing with rich pampered kids with helicopter parents to poor neglected kids with parents who didn't give a shit. When I was in school, the scariest thing a teacher could threaten me with was "I'll call your parents." What do you do when they don't care if you call home, because they know mom will say, "Not my problem, lady?"

I had to constantly back up 3 or 4 steps because assumptions I made about what 9th graders know just didn't apply. I was dealing with 14 year olds who didn't know you need a noun and a verb to make a sentence. Half the girls in the class were pregnant. The few kids who were trying to learn were constantly derided for "acting white." The veteran teachers were simply cynical. I said to one once in the teacher's lounge "How do you do it?" One said, "I close my eyes and think of summer vacation." Everyone laughed.

I gave up on teaching after that semester. I wish I could report that I had some sort of "To Sir With Love" experience, but the truth is I found I simply lack the patience to teach. There were a few who did well - one of the best was a retired Marine who taught math and appeared to have inspired respect in his male students - but I found the entire experience demoralizing.

And I hated, hated, hated the education courses, which were insultingly stupid, pandering to whatever the latest educational fad was ("cooperative learning" - having kids work in groups- was the big deal in my day, as was multiculturalism. Have black kids read about MLK and Rosa Parks instead of Shakespeare and Dickens and they'll be interested. Well, no, they were not interested and I didn't know how to make them interested.)

That was a long time ago. I don't know what to do about public education, except that I wanted those few kids who wanted to learn and succeed to get ahead and not be pulled back into the general morass of illiteracy and neglect, like crabs trying to escape from a bucket getting yanked back into the bucket by the others.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

n.n said...
I thought "Common Core" was active direction, not passive oversight, where the former precludes the function of independent laboratories.


It started as a state initiative. Jeb Bush was one of the initial proponents, which is why he couldn't run away from it during the primary. The basic idea is fine, a national set of achievement goals/tests to determine the state of play in education across the country. My youngest has done the tests. For the kids it is actually a positive experience since it is a no stress introduction to standardized achievement tests, since their scores don't count for anything.

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