Early on in the birther movement, the Daily KOS did a survey that included demographic questions. We learned that those doubting Obama’s US birth came from all over, but their percentages were markedly higher in the South.
Obama Conspiracy Theories has done a new first-of-its-kind poll of 8,000 US birthers, asking them where they lived. Since only birthers were polled, the results are reported as a scaled percentage of their states’ population.
Not surprisingly, we found that most birthers live in Texas, followed closely by California and then Florida. The least number of birthers live in Vermont. As a percentage of the population, however, our survey found that the 10 most birtherish states were (starting with the highest): Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, New Hampshire, Arizona, West Virginia and Montana. Texas came in 18th, California 42nd and Florida 12th.
In the following table I show the Relative Birther Scale (RBS), which is the number of birthers polled per 100,000 in population (2012 estimate). Of course this is not a measure of any absolute number of birthers, since we only counted a sample.
| State | RBS |
| WY | 5.20 |
| AK | 5.20 |
| ID | 5.01 |
| OR | 4.67 |
| CO | 4.45 |
| NH | 4.32 |
| AZ | 4.21 |
| WV | 4.20 |
| MT | 4.18 |
| OK | 4.12 |
| AL | 3.84 |
| FL | 3.77 |
| ND | 3.72 |
| ME | 3.46 |
| AR | 3.42 |
| KY | 3.31 |
| SC | 3.20 |
| TX | 3.09 |
| NV | 3.08 |
| TN | 3.07 |
| LA | 3.06 |
| MO | 3.01 |
| WA | 3.00 |
| SD | 3.00 |
| IA | 2.93 |
| KS | 2.88 |
| IN | 2.86 |
| NE | 2.86 |
| NC | 2.81 |
| UT | 2.73 |
| DE | 2.73 |
| NM | 2.69 |
| MI | 2.65 |
| VA | 2.65 |
| GA | 2.51 |
| OH | 2.33 |
| MS | 2.18 |
| WI | 2.17 |
| PA | 2.11 |
| MD | 2.07 |
| MN | 2.06 |
| CA | 2.03 |
| IL | 2.02 |
| NY | 1.85 |
| CT | 1.84 |
| NJ | 1.53 |
| HI | 1.51 |
| RI | 1.43 |
| VT | 1.28 |
| MA | 1.26 |
| DC | 0.47 |
Methodology
If I were reading this, I would be scratching my head about how such a survey could be done and whether the writer was just pulling my leg. The survey is, however, serious.
What I did was to look at the 8,504 signers of the Orly Taitz investigate Obama’s SSN petition. I’ve roughly estimated that around 500 of the signers are duplicates, but that doesn’t particularly bias the results towards any state. It is also possible that petitioners lied about where they lived, but again this shouldn’t be significant source of bias. The birthers I selected may be biased as a sampling of birthers a whole because they are perhaps more activist than non-signers, and more likely to know about Orly Taitz. Also the particular issue in the petition deals with Obama’s social-security number, an ancillary conspiracy theory to place of birth.
I am definitely surprised that Georgia isn’t higher on the list. Wonderful state but man, the crazy is strong in the Peach State.
So glad to see that Missouri isn’t in the top ten.
I am thinking
1. What weird selection effects come with this method?
2. How the heck does DC lead in birthers per capita?
3. 1 and 2 probably have a lot to do with each other.
Yeah, DC #1 is very strange, since Obama won somewhere over 90% of the vote there. Could the White House staffers be having some fun with Orly? Otherwise, it mmre or less tracks the electoral map with a few exceptions (OR and CO are high though quite blue, while MS is low for such a red state).
With DC’s small population, it only took 50 signers to attain the high-state status. Anything could explain a bump like that.
And why are Vermont and New Hampshire so very different? Again small sample.
Vermont and New Hampshire are VERY different culturally and politically. I am not saying that explains the result in such a small sample (it probably doesn’t) but they are different.
Multiple signings by the Holy Cao?
She has a screw loose. Correction: all of them are loose.
I looked at the DC data and it was obvious that someone had played with those, putting in words that were not names, but a message. After kicking out the obvious bad entries, I was left with three, which moves DC from the top to the bottom of the list.
Before my very eyes, DC has plummeted from first place to last place. Is that you at work, Obama?
Oh, I now see it’s Obot 1. 🙂
They were carted off to the FEMA camps.
New Hampshire is also being targeted by a rightwing ‘colonization’ effort, the “Free State Project”
http://freestateproject.org/
A relatively small group of people, but they are online and politically motivated (enough to move for ideological reasons), and opposed to “big government”. The movement predates Obama, but it’s definitely not his crowd. NH’s pre-existing culture attracted the movement, the movement didn’t create NH.
I looked at presidential results state-by-state over time recently, NH has been drifting rightward for at least 30 years … historical difference amplified by … well, everything. America in a regional microcosm.
NH and VT form a yin-yang in more ways than simple geography!
A fun experiment, Doc! As soon as I saw the title and the ~8,000, I knew you had put the petition to good use! LOL!
how right you are!
Does anybody know why she wears wings? And why so many Israeli flags all the time – all for easy identification of the crazy??
Here’s an interesting correlation. I took the ten states with the greatest of birthers and a ranking of the states by percentage of African Americans in the population. (I got my data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-American_population.)
The higher the number after the state, the FEWER African-Americans.
OK 24
CO 33
AK 34
AZ 35
WV 37
OR 41
WY 42
NH 44
ID 48
MT 50
It would appear that the fewer African-Americans, the more birthers. Curiously enough, there are no Southern states with the possible exception of West Virginia.
I am not a statistician but it would be interesting to see if this relationship is true for the rest of the states.
Gee Doc, I thought everybody knew that Birthers come from the Birther Canal just like everyone should expect DC to have the most Birthers per capital! Charmingly, one does not have to demonize Birthers to expect to find most of them eventually in Hell. Orly for sure. So that turns off Hell for me as a vacation spot. Wailing and gnashing of teeth one expects – but not all that screeching!
I’m so glad you wrote thiis! When I looked at the list I was so proud to see MA, my home state, next to the bottom. Then I started reading the comments and got really confused, thinking that somehow I had misread the whole thing. There’s no way MA could be even close to the top. Whew, that’s cleared up.
With friends like that…
I was going to venture Mars.
CCB,
The correlation coefficient is -0.224, so I don’t think you can say this relationship holds for all 50 states (I excluded DC as it wasn’t in the table you linked). If you look at the second decade of the RBS you’ll find many southern states with large black populations and (relatively) large birther populations (starting with AL at #11: 26.38% African Americans and an RBS of 3.84).
For kicks and giggles I looked at the correlation by decade (the first decade being the ten states with the lowest RBS, etc.). Here’s what I found:
1st decade___0.517
2nd_________-0.200
3rd__________0.536
4th__________0.040
5th__________-0.332
So while the group you looked at has the highest negative correlation, it still isn’t very strong and at the other end of the spectrum you see an even larger positive correlation.
It was an interesting proposition, too good to resist. Check this out:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwbVB7E55h6GTi04dTF0OUt1Z1k/edit?usp=sharing
All 50 states, plus DC (Doc’s revised DC RBS with demographics from Wiki), ranked by %age of African American population, along with a new index, RBS/%AA/100. (The reduction in magnitude is arbitrary, just to get both statistics into a similar range without affect proportion)
Charted as a basic line chart by state rank, and as a scatter by %AA.
As you noted, very curious alignment on the bottom 10 states by %AA population, only a very general correlation for the other state all the way up to the highest %AA (DC).
Looking at the numbers a bit, here’s a hypothesis.
The 11 highest states after DC, by %AA, are all southern states (well, and Delaware, which is right on the line…)
It seems there are two phenomena, the 11 states with large black population and prevalent birferism (old Deep South slave states), and 10 with nearly no African Americans and prevalent birferism. The other 30 states are all over the place, within a defined range.
Subtract the African American population from those Southern states, their RBS would rise, and the correlation would be strengthened.
Now this is funny! Taking out the African American population, per the 2010 census figures, and re-calculating to find the RBS of the non-African American population, you get ….
A spot-on correlation with rMoney’s vote %age!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwbVB7E55h6GYUVmTldseDd5Tm8/edit?usp=sharing
The only significant outlier (high rMoney vote %age, relatively low birferism) is … Utah LOL
I thought they kept promising us this wasn’t political?
Back to my origin of birferism: Obama primary sin isn’t being “other-than-white”, it’s that he is of the wrong party. Racism, conscious, virulent, latent, or whatever, is the gas on the fire.
I agree. VT is just as white as the top 3- WY, AK and ID-but it is among the bluest of states, while they are deep red. The right-wing conspiracists will go after ANY Dem on trumped up charges. Obama’s ancestry made it possible to attack him on that, rather than the crap they trumped up against Clinton. They are already gearing up to go after Hillary with nonsense like Rand Paul’s. Of course, she is only 1000 smarter than they are, so good luck with that.
I actually take the birthers at their word that they would support Alan Keyes or Allen West or any other far-right black guy named Al.
or the planet Htrae.
Actually, I think that crowd will vote for any RW crackpot.
misha marinsky: Actually, I think that crowd will vote for any RW crackpot.
what is very sad is they don’t think those people are “crackpots” – they think the fringe of the ever dwindling gop is “mainstream”
New Hampshire is where Orly started the ballot challenge with encouragement from some state representatives. Vermont had just the one guy (Paige v. Obama) and he was generally laughed at by fellow Vermontites.
And as I recall during the recent election there was talk that New Hampshire might go for Romney, Vermont was also considered safe.
Okay, okay…there has got to be something terribly wrong with this survey. Frankly, it’s hard for me to believe that any birther is of this earth, because their minds obviously only consist of empty space.
From which I would conclude that birthers aren’t racists because of personal negative experiences with blacks but rather because they are not exposed to a lot of black people – just as I believe that most of the most fervant anti-Muslims have never met many Muslims in their personal life. It seems fear of “the other” is greater if “the other” is perceived as being “far away, yet threatening to be close”. I expected that.
In Germany, racism directed towards foreigners (especially of different skin colour) used to be (and maybe still is) more prevalent in former East Germany where people were *not* exposed to many foreigners during the Socialist regime.
For the same reasons, situation inverted, the hatred of America as the “great Satan” in predominantly Muslim countries is larger where people have never met an actual American.
I fully agree, having experienced institutionalized racial segregation in the US, and the profound change brought about by school and workforce integration.
I did some thinking about the statistics of this poll, and there are some issues to be aware of. With 8000 “respondents” the statistical error is about 1%. That probably sounds good, but here you are trying measure how the pool is divided among 51 categories, so a 1% error is going to cause trouble with at least some states.
Might be easier to look at the counting error, which is about 90 counts. So states that got around or below 100 counts are basically below what this method can detect with any accuracy. For example, I infer that Florida, pop. 19.3 million, had 728 counts. That’s well above the error bar. But Wyoming, pop. 0.6 million, must’ve had around 30 counts, which is much smaller than the error for this poll.
Of course, these statistical issues are completely aside from any selection effects that might be present.
Ditto gay folks. People who have met a lot of gay folks know they’re not a threat to anything. I seem to recall that Ronald Reagan (who had met more than several in Hollywood) said something like “Being afraid of gays is the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
Oh, I DO so love it when birthers turn on their own. http://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2013/02/01/constitution/mark-levin-hypocrite/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
I’m not at all surprised that Colorado is 5th on the list, and am sort of surprised that we’re not even higher.
Having lived all over the United States, there is an unexplained confluence of conspiracy-minded individuals here coupled with a willingness to believe in crazy things that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Part of it is the fact that people move here, and other places out west, hoping to get away from the government, and those people seem more apt to believe in conspiracies, but that doesn’t explain all of it.
People need to believe in crazy things here.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
Not just a line from Alice in Wonderland.
“Relative Birther Scale” – I love it! You’re our only hope, Obot1-Kenobi.
A little surprised my state of California is so low. Thanks in part to Prop 13, our educational system has gone from being ranked among the best in the country to now being ranked among the worst. And where there is ignorance, there is birther.
i’m from vermont… seriously
Oh, so you’re not the “scott e” who signed Orly’s petition from DC?
You guys need to jettison Orange County, that done, you’d be rivalling DC for birfer purity LOL
(this comment not entirely serious)
More to the point is the presence here of Peter Boyles on KHOW. He’s probably the most “mainstream” pure birther radio personality in the country – most listened to as well.
indeed i are. but home base is vt.
vermont has only become so recently liberal.
Don’t forget Alan Berg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Berg
Alan Berg…was an…Denver, Colorado, talk radio show host. Berg was notable for his largely liberal, outspoken viewpoints and confrontational interview style.
On the evening of June 18, 1984, Berg was fatally shot in the driveway of his Denver town home by members of the white nationalist group, The Order. He died immediately. Ultimately, two members of The Order, David Lane and Bruce Pierce, were convicted for their involvement in the case…
Alan Berg was a native of Chicago, Illinois. His family was Jewish…At about 9:30 p.m. on June 18, 1984, Alan Berg returned to his Adams Street townhouse after a dinner date with Judith, with whom he was attempting a reconciliation. Berg stepped out of his black Volkswagen Beetle and gunfire erupted. He was struck twelve times. The murder weapon, a semi-automatic Ingram MAC-10, which had been illegally converted to an automatic weapon, was later traced to the home of one of The Order’s members by the FBI…
Berg was on a death list according to a former producer because he was Jewish and he challenged on the air the beliefs of an author who wrote that Jews were from the family line of the devil.
Nonsense. I have family in Burlington.
Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery.
Vermont has been liberal for at least 40 years, since hippies began moving there in the 60’s and 70’s. Bernie Sanders was elected Mayor of Burlington in 1981 as a Socialist. Many Vermonters are considerably to the left of “liberal” and consder Obama to be a right-wing sell-out to Wall Street.
I’ve lived in California, and I think it’s a belief they can get away from their troubles.
My step-sister is schizophrenic, and she thought going from NY to California, would make her better. When my step-brother divorced, he went to San Francisco. Multiply that by thousands…
FIFY.
The Pacific has no memory. As for people, they always make the mistake of taking themselves with them.
My grandfather, a Talmudic scholar, always used to say ‘When you move, you pack your troubles with everything else.’
Ben and Jerry’s ice cream started in Vermont.
Oregon? Are you serious? My family lives in and around Portland and I have heard none of this. Now if you go into Eastern Oregon near places like Pendleton that are very conservative you will but those areas are very sparsly populated. It is hard for easterners to understand how few people there are in a very large area. The county that includes Portland votes between 75 and 78 percent Democatic and 40 percent of the people in Oregon live there. What about Eugene and Salem?
When I lived in Evanston, Illinois, I used to walk by the town’s token Conservative’s house. He eventually moved out. Probably did not like the wall to wall “Obama for Senate” signs.
[AKA Brain Dead Again, Not Capable, BLOG DUNCES. Doc]
C’mon now! aren’t the numbers that have been ‘derived’ from what is equivalent as an attempt to capture and bag a fart [or flatulent] during a hurricane? The numbers aggregated are explained with more than an overblown and fancy word description of how they were selected makes one wonder if Goebbels is not re-incarnated in the Obot’s. Goebbels did a great job for Hitler when he created the mass of lies for the duped German citizens, and Goebbels is back again on this blog.
Here’s the story of what is going on, herein, with all of the; useless, pernicious, vile rhetoric setup by uninformed cretins aka Obots.
Obot’s need to be contained else they will destroy themselves as the Branch Davidians did to themselves, and let’s not forget the People’s Temple members led by Jim Jones that finally left the earth after drinking the magic potion. All of the former were PROMISED goodies just like the Americans were promised goodies by the ‘community organizer’.
What he, the malevolent one, has begun can only be known after the suffering begins in America during the coming months. What the vile America’s Achilles heel, yhe usurper, has perpetrated on the masses of Obots is not any different than what has repeatedly occurred over the last millennial in many nations on planet earth.
Mass hysteria enveloped the Obot community after the failed, and ignorant community organizer produced his lying, deceiving, fraudulent campaign.
The Obots now know that they are going to be hit with huge medical cost, reduced wages, fines and penalties of 2 to 3 thousand a year if they do not accept the O’bastards health plan. The Obots will begin to pay 20,000+ for health care by 2015.
The “useful idiots” with degrees brought the following to power; Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Chavez, Castro, Nicolae Ceausescu, Kim Jon Il, and many more fascist who promised the masses ‘free goodies’ as did the White House stink promise to America’s un-informed and as Putin said, illiterate Americans.
The only way to know who is in America’s house is to see ALL that is necessary to make a determination of that critters loyalty, to know his hidden agenda, and to interrogate any and all persons who have ever been connected to his grubby butt.
What is posted on this BLOG is ‘hot air’ and nothing more. Phewww… there goes the hot air … thank the creator as soon as you can.
You are a vile ignoramus. The Holocaust touched me and my family.
I’m thankful I don’t belong to your crowd.
tl;dr
I mean, seriously, what kind of trolling is this. First and foremost, a troll should never look this desperate to provoke a response. And second, what’s with the monograph. Dump all your material in one comment and nobody is going to read it.
Problem is there are at least 65 million Obots just to start, and then you’ll have to add in all those Republicans who didn’t vote for Obama but still admit he is eligible, and then the same for those who didn’t vote.
Good luck containing most of the country from inside your navel!
Jon Stewart has an old stand up bit (circa 1996) about the folks in a compound in Iowa somewhere who are convinced that the Jews control the world’s banks and the blacks are coming to steal their things. They’ve never met a Jew or a black person, but they’ve seen Yentl and watched an episode of Martin so they know they have a pretty good idea about what’s going on.
You clearly should take an overdose of aspirin tonight.
C’mon, indeed! Some epic projection, but …. I told you once … this is not an argument 😛
Mnnnn word salad, yummeh. 🙂
You’re welcome to come here and make a point or to criticize an article. However, if all you have is mindless insults, devoid of argument or justification, you can keep them to yourself, or go somewhere where mindless drivel is more appreciated. I’m not going to give you and your sock puppets a platform to bloviate.
I have some numbers for you.
Obama 65,899,557 51.06%
Romney 60,931,959 47.21%
Number of days left in the Obama Administration: 1,448
Denialists’ reaction – priceless
Research the Rajneeshis and then tell me that Oregon doesn’t have it’s kooks. The Rajneeshis are the reason that Oregon doesn’t have same-day voter registration.
Then of course, there was the terrorist training camp in rural Oregon…
And then of course there’s people like Art Robinson. Climate-Science Denyist, who has a personal triade against Oregon State University for kicking out his sons. He’s also the Republican Nominee for Congress in the last 2 elections for the 4th Congressional District, and is running for Chairman of the Oregon GOP.
I didn’t live here then, but remember it happening, and read the book Talked to Death: The Life and Murder of Alan Berg, which became the basis for Talk Radio, one of my favorite films.
What happened to Alan Berg was a horrific tragedy. It should be a lesson to those who use birtherism to egg on racists and kooks for money, but is hasn’t been so far. I’m looking at you, WND & the Birther Posse. They don’t seem to mind potentially inciting violence as long as it pays well.
One of the big problems I’ve had with birthers and birtherism from the very start is that the movement seem to attract nuts, and anytime anyone even remotely legitimate gives the issue lip service, it eggs them on. Birthers are of the opinion that you are either with them, or you’re a commie pig who doesn’t deserve air. There is no middle ground.
So, when Mitt Romney slyly says that no one has asked for his birth certificate (’cause he’s just so much more American than the other guy); or Santorum refuses to refute a birther at a campaign event; or Sarah Palin says that Obama has spent $2 million dollars to hide his birth certification; or Michele Bachmann says that all President Obama has to do is show his certificate after he’s shown it… when those things happen, you have mainstream Republicans adding to the pile of crap which may eventually push someone to act violently.
We have Eric Cantor and John Boehner, Republican #1 & #2 in the House of Representatives, refusing to dispel the notion that Obama isn’t an American. They flatly refuse.
The behavior of mainstream Republicans on this issue is inexcusable.
No white man ever had to show his birth certificate.
Which is exactly their goal. They’re being disingenuous.
Boehner on birthers: ‘It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think’
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that while he believes President Obama is an American citizen and a Christian, Americans have a right to think otherwise if they so choose.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/143737-boehner-on-birthers-its-not-my-job-to-tell-the-american-people-what-to-think#ixzz2Jj5Q1b6N
I apologize for my rants in the past, but this is why I get angry.
Three states noted for views beyond the pale…personally;
California…born.
Texas…raised.
Tennessee…resident for over a decade without qualm despite the obvious (Blackburn, Murfreesboro, and a fundamentalism Texas envies).
Birtherism is hard to gauge what with the sampling. I would hazard that such can be found all over…Vermont, Eastern Washington, and most of West Virginia…
Don’t hate…appreciate.
i know it’s hard to believe, but vermont has republican history. what happened was a severe influx of liberal transplants. mostly burlington is what tipped the scales. i’ve known bernie since he was mayor. howard dean was a factor. there are still a lot of conservative vermont natives.
from nytimes:
“Moreover, Vermont was once among the most reliably Republican states. It favored the G.O.P. presidential candidate in every election from 1856 to 1960, the longest one-party streak of any state, Mr. Nelson said. Vermont elected all Republican governors from 1854 to 1963.”
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/new-vermont-is-liberal-but-old-vermont-is-still-there/
Vermont, and actually most of new England was Republican for quite some time. However, that did not make then “conservative” in the modern sense. After the civil war, the Republicans of the northeast were referred to as Northeast Liberals (the midwestern Republicans have always been the libertarian wing) and the Democrats in the south were the Southern Conservatives. There was a republican conservative, especially in the later years but they were different from the southern flavor.
With the Democratic liberal and leftward shift from the 1930s on, and the Republican Southern Strategy, the playing field shifted. Liberals did not enter New England. The GOP left it.
And that’s where I stopped reading, Blomi. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a writing class, but I’m pretty sure the opening sentence of a paragraph is supposed to be a sentence. But thanks for explaining what a “fart” is. That morsel was probably the most useful information you shared.
How true. There is a hurricane coming and you Obots strain to capture farts. A hurricane is brewing, and yet the Obots tilt at windmills and mock the weather vanes. As I’ve always said, you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows. And it is an ill wind blowing, a very ill wind. The Obots have sown the wind, surely we will all reap the whirlwind. Remember, the wind does not respect a fool.
That is why I beseech you Obots, in the bowels of Christ, to consider the possibility that you may be mistaken.
Gosh, what happened between 1960 and 2004 (“howard dean”)? Methinks you misrepresenteth much, and make the very silly, but common, winger assertion that current party alignments and platforms were laid at the beginning of time.
Quick reminder for the slow: “Republican”, “Democrat”, “Whig”, “Federalist”, “Anti-Federalist”, “Democratic-Republican”, etc., etc., are party names, not political philosophies. Republican ≠ conservative, Democratic ≠ liberal.
Vermont was indeed a reliably Republican state, but that doesn’t indicate it was conservative at the time (quite the opposite!); it only indicates it was Republican. The parties changed, the state didn’t. Check the voting pattern of New York, California, etc. If you need help tracing the evolution of party positions over the course of the 20th century, just ask.
We do, constantly, thats what makes us right 😉
I have never heard that particular expression before. Is that what people mean when they say, “Holy Sh!t!”?
“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.”
Your vapid pointless refusal to accept the President of the United States as legitimate damages America. That makes you a detriment to your country.
“And the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.”
You Birthers know, deep down, that we are correct and there us nothing illegitimate about BHO’s Presidency. You shout insults and stamp your little feet anyway, like children.
Maybe if you were more familiar with your Bible, you’d have the wisdom and serenity to stop this Birfing nonsense and try to do something positive for America for a change.
Sure, but if you don’t stick to simplistic labels and generalizations, you’re just going to keep confusing many of these paranoid birther bigots. Learn from actual history and not the fear based pablum of Fox and Rush? Yeah, right!
Leaving would be a positive start. Maybe they could build their own theocracy on an island far away.
“The Obots have sown the wind, surely we will all reap the whirlwind.”
Hosea can you see?
“the Obots tilt at windmills”
Nice projection for a quixotic birther bigot.
well it seems to have become a lot more liberal in the thiry or so years i’ve lived there. but you can say whatever you want, i know there are more than 8 birthers.
besides that chart seems to point to mass and D.C as the least birther, not vermont.
In 1956, 72% of the voters in Vermont voted for Dwight Eisenhower. In 1958, Robert Welch formed the John Birch Society and claimed that Eisenhower was a Communist agent. In 1964, 66% of the voters in Vermont voted for LBJ.
Do you really believe that there was a huge influx of liberals into the state between 1956 and 1964? Or was it simply a case of most Vermont Republicans being repulsed by, the party’s swing to the right?
Here is an interesting quote for you to consider:
“The Communists have installed in the Presidency a man who, for whatever reasons, appears intentionally to be carrying forward Communist aims… With regard to this man, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason.”
That isn’t some Tea Partier writing about Obama. It is Robert Welch writing about Eisenhower.
Voters in Vermont no longer vote for Republicans because the John Birch Society has taken over the Republican party.
I’ve learned so much here today.
For example, when the bowels of Christ are involved, one doesn’t need a weatherman to tell which way the winds are blowing.
Is that where “holy crap on a cracker” comes from?
Thanks for posting that, Rickey, I hadn’t seen that quote before! That anyone would say such a thing about Eisenhower is ridiculous in hindsight, but at the time, I guess he committed the cardinal sin (in the eyes of wingers) of failing to instigate WWIII. The Birchers would have preferred Patton.
I think he is quoting Oliver Cromwell in an address to the Church of Scotland.
“Bowels of Christ” can be found in the King James Version (KJV) of Philippians 1:8
In later versions, it is translated as “in the affection of Christ” or “in the compassion of Christ.” To please Rudy, the Greek word is σπλάγχνον (splagchnon) and would roughly translate as:
Older hymns such as some by Dr. Isaac Watts used to contain the word bowels, but as the “tender mercies” definition faded from modern languages, the word was replaced to one that better spoke the original meaning to those singing the hymns (or read the bible).
Here endeth the lesson 😉
Actually, the birther is quoting Oliver Cromwell! Upon being told that the Church of Scotland. although fiercely Presbyterian, had agreed with Scottish politicians (more interested in Scottish independence from England than in religion) to support the King, Orwell famously wrote them (ie the church leaders) “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell%27s_rule
That is the problem with birthers, they refuse to believe that in most of the universe, two plus two does equal four.
(and this is when I can appreciate being an Anglican, knowing that my faith is equally based on scripture, tradition and reason – rather than on the sola scriptura of calvinists like Cromwell and the Church of Scotland)
Nice one to add to the increasing list of things Obama and Eisenhower have in common.
Reminds me of a classic.
– Tell me, Brainstorm, what do you think of the novelty up here in Vermont?
– Maybe we can dig up a Democrat?
– They’d stone him!
You’re close. It’s actually s**t on a shingle.
Remember, Jesus was a carpenter.
I can go to any state and name kooks. Oregonians in general are tolerant but that does not mean they harbor or believe the idiots. It has developed its own unique subculture. The State motto is She will fly by her own wings. Oregonians love being different and I think the idea of tolerance developed is often translated poorly.
Welch made the claims about Eisenhower in a book called “The Politician” which he wrote in 1956 and published privately. A slightly altered version was published for the general public in 1963.
The current fascination which birthers have with the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, etc. can be traced directly back to Welch’s conspiracy theories. Welch and his brother were in the candy business and Welch has been credited with developing Junior Mints and other popular candies.
It also shows how little Ragout understood what he was quoting. Cromwell was pleading with those of a shared faith in Christ pointing out they all shared the “affection.” Ragout is tossing out this statement to a blog with participants of varying levels of different religious faiths and those of not religious faith at all. Again, a birther with no understanding of history, meaning or context.
Fair and true.
Thanks to all for explaining the Cromwell quote, of which I was unaware. There is a lot one can learn here, too bad the birthers don’t take advantage.
seems as if some opinion of vermont is from an outside perspective. act 250 drew a lot of environmental types. but we had dick snelling and jim douglas too. bernie was the socialist mayor. i think his first times in elections were dismal. i honestly never see john birch people. we have the libertarians. i would join the libertarians but wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. anthony polina is a well known progressive. there is a big urban rural split. colleges play a big part in the political climate.
vermont has changed a lot since i’ve been there, lots of transplants (including me). we are only about 630,000 people. my little town has 700 or so. i love how cosmopolitan burlington is, but there is more to the state. brian dubie came very close to beating peter schumlin in 2010, but we decided things were hard enough without a governor named dubie.
Along with evangelicals. I would not vote GOP for dog catcher.
I wrote this before: I drove from DC to Anchorage, for the Iditarod. I met a minister in the Anchorage AoG who stridently told me the terrible things that were going to befall the Jewish people, and demanded I let him baptize me.
When I refused, he bellowed “Auschwitz was divine retribution because you people have refused to accept God’s only son.” A woman with him told me Jewish people “deserve to suffer.” She also told me “Buddhism should be banned.”
Bible Spice, AKA Caribou Barbie, belongs to the Wasilla AoG.
Here’s the truth about WND:
http://newyorkleftist.blogspot.com/2012/09/claim-corsi-hid-gay-life-to-write-pulp.html
Sorry, I’m Jewish. We don’t believe.
So Obama’s re-election caused Sandy?
I just took it to mean he was hailing us from Christ’s heinie.
You’re telling us statistics and history work differently in Vermont? Don’t confuse the inside of your head with the inside of Vermont!
The inside of your head is but a very, very small subset of the inside of Vermont.
i’m telling you that vermont has become recently more liberal since act 250. i’m not sure about the subset you talk about.
Vermont actually is moderate when it comes to Presidential elections. GWB carried Vermont in 2004 even though Kerry is from a neighboring state. There are lots of reasons to dislike Bush, but he was not a Tea Party ideologue (note Bush’s support for immigration reform and his efforts to battle AIDS in Africa).
Vermont voted for JFK in 1960, Nixon in 1968 and 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Reagan in 1980.
Let me ask you in all seriousness whether you consider the possibility that you may be mistaken? There are certainly plenty of reasons to do so. Our species has the ability to detect and flee from danger. An error can be fatal, so when it comes to deciding whether something is a threat or not, we err on the side of believing that it is. That is human nature and we cannot deny our natures. Scientific inquiry and critical thinking do not come naturally to us but must be learned and practiced.
When it comes to what we believe in our gut (bowels), chances are that we’re wrong.
So yes, I do from time to time reassess my thinking and review the evidence. I might lay out a multi-step path by which I might be convinced of various birther claims. They might start with cracks in the official story, and then it might include testimony from a real expert or a knowledgeable and trusted source. There would evidence with a source. I won’t go through the whole process, but for a rational person, good arguments can change minds. However when it comes to the birther stuff, step 1 is never passed because birtherism is complete and utter bunk from one end to the other. It has been from the first day that somebody posted that Barack Obama was born in Kenya on the Free Republic site (with no reason whatever to believe that it was true) through all the attempts to create support for an unsupported rumor.
I don’t know what you mean by Obot. If you mean the handful of vocal anti-birthers, then we really have sown nothing. If you’re talking about the majority of voters in the 2012 Presidential Election, then yes we got what we chose and we will live with the consequences (which are looking pretty good from here).
Birthers and anti-birthers have a lot invested in their sides of the argument, but ant-birthers are rational and evidence-based and so in theory can change their minds in the face of new evidence; Birthers who base their beliefs on confirmation bias and self-reinforcement cannot.
**
are there other states you could tell me about ?
Though Vermont and the country have changed over the years (which is normal), have you ever considered that you have changed as well. We learn and we experience, and this changes us over the years. Has Vermont gone left or have you gone right, or is it a mix of both?
I met a Minister of the (Calvinist) Dutch Reformed Church once. He had a rather large congregation in South Africa. To this day, I don’t know anybody who smoked more dope than that guy. He was a marijuana chimney.
Daddy Koch funded the JBS, and the sons don’t fall far from the father’s tree. The TEA party’s ideology is just warmed over JBS effluent.
The TEA party is the JBS rebranded.
both, for sure. good point. the country has changed too. and the world. no one ever talks about population.
You’re not sure about the plotical climate inside your own head?
Yikes.
🙂
Weren’t you born in Michigan?
That is incorrect. Kerry carried Vermont in 2004. It has been solidly D since 1992
http://www.270towin.com/states/Vermont
Yes, moved to Arizona when I was 6. I think I know what you mean, there’s a lot of Dutch Reformed in Michigan? Well then maybe I met a DRC minister more than once, but I don’t remember. I grew up in the Methodist Church, though my Grandmother was Presbyterian.
The guy I’m talking about was in Arizona on a 6 month (I think) exchange program of some sort. He didn’t refer to himself as ‘Dutch Reformed’; he called himself ‘Calvinist’.
Yes, you’re correct. I don’t know what I was looking at – I must have been hallucinating!
Never mind.
There’s a wonderfully handy table here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_election_results_by_state
State-by-state since 1789, graphically. Like a heat map of the country’s electoral history. Clearly shows how certain ‘wave; elections (Wilson 1912, FDR, LBJ 1964, Reagan 1980/1984, Bush I 1988) are the exception in long-running patterns. You can also see how relatively abruptly the Northern states flipped from Republican to Democrat, and the Southern states vice/versa, in the ’60s.
Back to the NH v. VT discussion, however the local politics, they’ve only split once Presidentially since WWII, that being 2000. Before that, it was more interesting. NH going along with the rest of the country since the Civil War, VT being reliably Republican since that party’s founding.
Arkansas is AR, not AK. AK is Alaska.
Thanks. I’ve fixed the article to correctly list Alaska as the #2 birther state rather than Arkansas. The table was correct.
Then perhaps you will consider the old testament quote, and avoid sowing the wind. Or maybe the Cervantes and Dylan references will enlighten you. Any Klingon readers can ponder the Kahless quote.
Misha is Jewish, not stupid. Also, it’s quite clear that you are a radical, bomb-throwing Alinskyite stoner, masquerading as a patriotic birther. Here’s the proof. In an earlier post you wrote,
Dylan, huh. “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” huh. Boy, you really gave yourself away, buddy! As everyone knows, this song (by that Anti-American pot-smoking JEWISH! mARXIST, Robert “Bob Dylan” Zimmerman) helped inspire the formation of the Weather Underground. To wit:
“The Weathermen grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of SDS. It took its name from the lyric “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, from the Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows was the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a ‘white fighting force’ to be allied with the ‘Black Liberation Movement’ and other radical movements to achieve ‘the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism.'”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
Go smoke your maryjane, dirty hippie!
Do not presume to instruct me.
I’m one of those Jewish New York liberals you read about.
An Anchorage AoG minister said to me, “Auschwitz was divine retribution because you people have refused to accept God’s only son.” A woman with him told me Jewish people “deserve to suffer.” Palin belongs to the Wasilla AoG.
I will remember that every time I go into the voting booth.
You were probably thinking George HW Bush….in 1988…the last time Vermont went to an (R)
Whatever I was smoking, it at least proves that we Obots will admit it when we make a mistake!
Speeking of Hippie’s, RIP Reg Presley. So it goes.
(If you choose to follow that link, please ensure that your speakers volume is set to 11. Thank you for your cooperation).
(And according to them Bonhoeffer died there because he was Lutheran and not Catholic?)
Yet the same people believe God helps a football player win the Superbowl if he prays hard enough. ‘Nuff said when it comes to religious zealots.
Great video! Thanks
OK…. pffffffffssss…. now what?
Well, to begin with, don’t bogart!
Don’t forget Father Kolbe.
“Excuse me, I think you’re bogarting.”
“Dave’s not here, man.”
My favorite quote: “Aww, man! Somebody stole all our stolen shit!”
-Cheech to Chong, as stoner thieves.
Three points for the movie title. Anyone?
Ya gotta let it out sometime, Cap’n!
Milos Forman meets Cheech and Chong.
Wow… loved the article and most of the fascinating commentary that ensued. Even many of the Birthers commenting started moving, to some extent, from simple trolling agitation towards actual participation in topical discussion.
In particular, I found myself really appreciating scott e’s contributions in the conversation threads exploring the political / philosophical composition of VT and the GOP over time. I feel this was the most genuinely engaged and serious I’ve seen him come across over the years here. Maybe there is still some hope that the extreme polarization of the past few years can be mitigated to an extent…
I also very much enjoyed all of the statistical analysis conversation threads in examining the various correlations between the states in this Birther sampling to other factors… great stuff! …and glad to see my beloved OH at the lower end of the Birther spectrum. 😉
Too bad I was otherwise occupied and missed out on most of the good discussion here these past few weeks.
Now I know that I need to find more time to spend here again! 🙂