[ExI] Enlightenment - was Re: statins

[spike]

>… On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Subject: Re: [ExI] Enlightenment - was Re: statins

 

>>…BillW, remind me please why you are wondering why the world doesn’t follow us?  It is entirely clear that we are following us?

>…(I think you mean 'Is it')    spike

Ja thanks.

>… some time back polls show that our citizens are highly critical of Congress, and until lately, Obama.  So those citizens know that what is happening in DC stinks and is not just business as usual, or doesn't need to be…bill w

 

Ja BillW, note that for the head of the executive branch, half or nearly half the people voted for the winner (we are told anyway (while being carefully prevented from verifying.))  For congress, each voter only votes for 2% of the senate (two of 100 senators) and less than a quarter of a percent of the house (one of 435 representatives.)  So, regardless of what happens, approval ratings calculated in this manner for a president stay somewhere around half and usually in the teens for congress.  Regardless of what happens, that pattern stays, and will always.  

Presidents try to pretend that these poll results mean they are more popular than the legislature, but if viewed another way, the opposite is true.  

Note the few polls which ask not the public’s opinion of the senate and the public’s opinion of the house, but rather ask their opinion of their own senators and their opinion of their own representative.  Take those numbers then calculate the approval rate of the legislature by averaging the approval ratings of the ones they could vote for, the ones in which they had actual say in the matter.  Then we find that only one modern president has ever scored a higher approval rating than congress, and then only briefly.  That president was… George W. Bush for a few weeks, starting on 11 September 2001.

If calculated in that more logical way, congressional approval ratings hover in the 60s and 70s, depending on how well the economy is doing and how one filters the fraction of the voters who do not know their state’s senators and have no clue who is their representative in the house.  Do those count?  Should they?  Or can we come up with some kind of three-fifths compromise for those who cannot name their representative in congress?  Can you?  (I’m not meaning that as a criticism BillW, for I can name my senators but cannot name my representative either.)  

spike

 

 

 

 

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