It is my sincere hope that this weekend will represent Peak Stupid. To borrow from Hunter S. Thompson, I hope that five years from now we’ll be able to stand on a tall hill in Maryland and look down into Washington DC and see the highwater mark where the Stupid crested before it began to recede. We need this national nightmare to stop. A federal balanced budget amendment is the stupidest, most irresponsible idea to be introduced by the leadership of a party in the history of the country. And, yet, John Boehner is forced to pretend he thinks it’s a good idea. Putting our AAA credit rating at risk is the dumbest, most reckless behavior we’ve seen since South Carolina seceded from the Union. Today, I see Jon Huntsman, a Republican candidate for the presidency, pleading with Republicans to stop pretending that climate change isn’t occurring. It was nearly 130 degrees in Iowa last week and we’re still having a debate on this?
Somehow, someway, this Stupid has got to end.
Balloon Juice has been discussing Peak Wingnut for years, and I believe have generally decided a peak will never be reached. Based on history of exceeding one impossible limit after another.
We’ll see, I guess.
isn’t it a law of physics that all waves have a crest and a trough?
Yes, but there’s no law of physics that limits a wave’s length.
Yeah but this isn’t physics. By that theory the population of dinosaurs in the world should have increased at some point in the last 65 million years.
Heh – must be an anomaly thrown in there somewhere.
I know right? I WANT DINOSAURS!!
Huntsman. I think he would have a good chance of beating Obama in a general. Alas they are
IMHO, we will know that we have passed Peak Stupid when Rush Libaugh’s ratings plummet like a stone and conservative talk radio starts drying up and receding.
There are a lot more opportunities for Peak Stupid left to the Republicans in this Congress.
You can start with the August recess and whatever astro-turf the usual suspects can organize to show up at Congressional Town Halls. Most likely the GOP folks will be too busy to have Town Halls this August.
There is the FY2012 budget and attempts to sabotage efforts to deal with climate change and pollution. No doubt other legislation will have other policy attacks on the ability of the federal government to deal with the problems of the country.
There is the Christmas recess. What wars on Christmas will they invent as distractions there?
Then there is the coming Republican primary flameouts.
Not to mention the Republican National Convention and the return of the purple-bandaid wearers.
Had enough yet?
Peak stupid. Some indicators may be advance indicators.
Limbaugh’s ratings have already dropped by MORE THAN A THIRD since last November, and Hannity’s not doing much better.– Don’t forget, the TP maniacs were already elected 9 months ago and we’re stuck with that until 2012. Media audiences can reflect trends on a day-to-day basis.
http://www.businessinsider.com/rush-limbaugh-hannity-imus-radio-ratings-2011-5
http://inyourfaceradio.net/?p=4597#
You’re going to need a really tall hill for that and the tallest point in Maryland (barely in Maryland) is the Hoye Crest of Backbone Mountain in Garrett County. Yep, ironically Backbone Mountain.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.237222,-79.485833&spn=0.1,0.1&t=m&lci=org.wikipedia.en
&q=39.237222,-79.485833
I don’t know, Booman. Waves of stupid seem to breed more stupid (literally and figuratively). It is characteristic of the leaders of stupid to double-down even when presented with irrefutable evidence of one thing or another. Think of the school systems that treat evolution and intelligent design as competing theories. Think of consolidated corporate ownership of media in all forms, and the disdain for useful information. Astonishingly, the flood of stupidity hasn’t yet his its high-water mark. It hasn’t even reached 10, and it can go all the way up to 11.
Laughable thinking of Boehner’s addition of the balanced budget Constitutional Amendment and the reaction of Rep members thinking, wait a minute, my financial base comes from military vendors and a balanced budget pretty much is the end of wars.
So Boehner would get a few more tparty votes but lose hawks.
You’re giving them too little credit.
Recall a man named George W. Bush, who started two wars and funded them with supplemental bills. Those supplemental bills were never counted in the budget, but rather as “emergency spending”.
You think that if the sabre-rattlers want to start a war a little thing like a “balanced budget amendment” would stop them? Hell no. You’re missing a fundamental aspect of American democracy – which is that there’s ALWAYS money to start a war when we want one.
I’m personally in favor of an amendment to the Constitution that when troops are deployed out of the country for any reason all tax brackets are automatically increased to pay for them. If we could figure out a way to make wars cost more money to rich folks than they make we might find a way to stop getting into pointless wars (hey – a market based solution! Conservatives should love it!) But I have no doubt that they’d figure out a way around that one too.
Vietnam had a surtax:
http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/6B24ABB33FE1996C852570D200756A5D?OpenDocument
Interesting, what a concept to think of creating a surtax to pay for a war!
And it was not enough to stop the inflation of the 1970s.
Those 1950s marginal tax rates that look so good to progressives today. They were passed to dampen the inflation of World War II. And rationing to prevent even more inflation was why there was a middle class with savings at the end of the war. If there is nothing to spend money on, you save.
The price administrator during the war was a guy named John Kenneth Galbraith. He was so good that Henry Luce (Time-Life) hired him to write for Fortune magazine. That how business in the 1950s became sympathetic to the ideas of John Maynard Keynes that saved their butts and their fortunes in the 1930s.
But I go off on a tangent.
Sure – and W’s wars should have had a tax increase for them too.
It was a conscious choice on his part to put the wars on the credit card rather than pay for them. Because his mandate was to cut taxes for rich people and he knew it.
Point taken, but there’s alot more to economically going to war from the standpoint of a vendor and thus a finanial backer than finding supplemental funding.
Somebody is going to have to kill the beast. I don’t think it can be done by the current crop of GOP pols, so that leaves either the overlords (they could shut off the money and turn the media wurlitzer around to take aim at the beast) or the voters in 2012. But the beast on its own will simply grow. There is no peak wingnut, because wingnutness is driven by insatiable desire. The beast will always be able to find another, more outrageous demand.
I’ll remind you that The Stupid didn’t peak fast enough to prevent World War I, a totally useless war that killed 15 million people.
There is no law of nature that demands that The Stupid peak today.
Exactly.
Limbaugh had to oppose Boehner’s plan or lose his street cred with the Teabaggers and being to the far Right is his whole persona but it makes him appear truly crazy and not just his usual pretend-crazy.
There’s a coming wave that could cancel out the Wave of Stupid. That’s the 4 million young people who turn 18 each year for the next decade or so.
It’s a demographic wave so it’s going to take some time, but there’s a good chance that it adds 4-8 million net votes to the Democratic base by 2020.
(That’s not counting the net loss to the Republican base by the deaths of today’s over-65 voters in the coming decade.)
Unfortunately, we’re losing white voters to the GOP. That’s really the only way the right can stay competitive and they seem to be doing a good job at increasing the race and class divide.
Yes and no. The percentage of white voters who vote Democratic has fluctuated up and down over the past generation, but it’s generally been around 40%. (So, for example, IIRC, Obama’s percentage of the white vote was roughly the same as Carter’s in 1976. Carter squeaked into office but because of demographic changes Obama had a much wider victory margin.)
If Republicans get, say:
*60% of the white vote;
*10% of the black vote;
*40% each of the Asian, Latino, Native American vote;
then they’re increasingly a minority party as time goes on.
I mean, at a greater rate since 2008.