Grim Young

In Which We Learn that Grim Will Die Young:

Relatively young, anyway; I'm not as young as I once was already.

The three authors, all from the University of Oklahoma, found that states with a “culture of honor” –- in the South, and the West, mainly -- also have higher rates of accidental death for white males: 42 per 100,000 compared to 36.8 per 100,000 in non “honor” states.

So what’s a “culture of honor”? “The relentless, and sometimes violent, defense of masculine reputation,” according to the study.

“This is an adaptation to what the Ulster Scots [also called the Scots-Irish] experienced over 800 or 900 years in southern Scotland,” one of the study’s authors, Ryan P. Brown, explained.

Well, and so what? Death before dishonor, we used to say; and I see no reason to recant. I find that my broken ribs hurt more as I get older, but that doesn't mean I'm sorry to have them. What makes a man is daring what comes, and that means a true man -- even the best man -- will suffer, and die, as Fate sends.

Can Anyone Govern?

Can Anyone Govern?

A piece entitled "Can Rick Perry Govern?" sets a high bar.

Amid all the horse-race analysis of Perry’s candidacy—can he win? how does he stack up against Mitt Romney?—a more basic question has been lost. Can he govern?

Therein lies the rub for Rick Perry. His record in Texas doesn’t exactly blow you away. The man can win an election, no doubt. But once the campaigns are over and he actually gets into office, well, the results aren’t inspiring.

In fact, I would argue that Perry has achieved no major legislative accomplishments as governor.

One might argue that 'legislative accomplishments' aren't really the business of a governor; and certainly Texas' jobs picture is markedly better than anyone else's. Both pieces argue that Gov. Perry had little to do with the economic picture, though; and at least some of the reasoning is solid.

What is interesting to me is that this question about Perry precisely mirrors questions about Obama and Bachmann. As for the President, the difference between the rhetoric around his campaign and his actual record of accomplishment is so well rehearsed even on the left that it needs little argument; and the charge of legislative accomplishment was also leveled at Rep. Bachmann during the recent debates.

We know from Rep. Bachmann's career in the private sector that she is a capable woman. One might claim that Mr. Obama had a successful career too, being a lecturer in Chicago, a state official and a Senator, publishing two books and winning awards like the Grammy. Gov. Perry was a military officer (a C-130 pilot, which is a pretty nifty job all things considered).

There is a point of complexity at which human organizations cease to be effective, and begin to break down. Technology is probably changing the precise locus of that point, but I doubt it is eliminating it. I might not ask if failure to govern effectively proves that someone is a poor candidate. I might ask instead whether good governance, at this level of complexity, is still possible.

Interesting Point

An Interesting Point about the Forthcoming Race:

RCP had something very interesting to say today:

The RNC has provided that states holding primaries before April 1 must allocate delegates proportionately. But after that date, states may opt for winner-take-all primaries, and many of these states have done so. In other words, we could have a situation where a conservative candidate (or a pair of conservative candidates) does well in the first three months, but has to give some delegates to the more moderate candidate. This is similar to what happened to Clinton, who won crucial primary battles late in the game, but couldn’t make much headway in the delegate count because of how these delegates were allocated. So despite winning the majority of primaries, the conservative candidate could end up with only a small lead in delegates over the more moderate candidate. If the moderate candidate then performs well in April or afterward, he could quickly rack up enough delegates to break away and claim the nomination.

This is clearly to the benefit of the institutional Republican party, which is very much tied to the Washington machine and to Wall Street. It's a hobble on populists who tend to vote for Republicans, but might also vote for socially conservative Democrats. That makes sense from the perspective of the RNC, which wants party loyalists to win its primaries: those loyal to the party and its leadership, that is, not those whose loyalty is to principles.

Wise! Cunning! Of course they are running the party for their own benefit, and why shouldn't they? Still, keep it in mind. They are not your friend. They may, at best, be allies; but you must be as wise and as cunning in dealing with this sort of ally as they are plainly intending to be.

A question I don't know the answer to has to do with what happens to proportionately-won delegates whose candidate steps out of the race. Can a defeated Perry (or Bachmann) throw delegates to a named candidate? If so, the proportionality rule is of less importance: we can afford a long consideration of the merits of the candidates, if the final conservative winner can expect to receive the delegates of his closer conservative competitor.

The prospect of an establishment candidate, especially one with so muddled a record as Mr. Romney, strikes me as worse than an Obama second term. The establishment is wedded to the kinds of policies that have brought us to this pass. Mr. Obama will have only four more years, at most; an incumbent Romney could have eight. Every year that passes without our Republic making a sharp change in course makes it far more likely that the project will finally fail.

Gov. Perry

Gov. Perry Speaks:

Accepting the gentleman from Texas as the most serious competitor to Rep. Bachmann for the Tea Party leadership -- and, far less importantly, the Republican nomination -- here is his recent speech.



He has very much the manner of a backwoods preacher, which may not be entirely to his advantage. Still, he says several things that are exactly right, including his plain evocation of the 10th Amendment.

Help the Boy Out

Help the Boy Out:

Day By Day is nearing the end of its fundraiser. He's closer than Project VALOUR-IT was to his goal, although he has what I gather are more modest aims: just keeping afloat, rather than providing expensive high-tech items to wounded troops.

I read the guy's stuff every day. (It's on the sidebar, so probably many of you do as well). This next year, we're going to need assets like this to prevail. Give him a thought, if you have a buck or two you can spare.

Is the U.S. the Next Low-Wage Haven?

Is the U.S. the Next Low-Wage Haven?

This article from The Institute for Southern Studies argues that the trend of losing American jobs to overseas competition may be on the point of reversing. China's wages, though rising, are still lower than those in the U.S,

But because American workers have higher productivity, and since rising fuel prices are making it even more expensive to ship goods half way around the world, costs in the two countries are converging fast.

Alliance for American Manufacturing Director Scott Paul cites factors that could bring jobs back to our shores:

Costs of labor and commodities are rising on the Chinese coasts, as workers demand higher pay. If companies move further inland to poorer areas, they hike their logistics costs.

In most of the world, the dollar is worth 25 percent less than three years ago, and in China 5 percent less.

Shipping costs are increasing because of rising energy costs.

Companies fear that in China they'll lose their intellectual property to spin-off competitors.

Some consumers prefer an American-made product.

The U.S. has an abundance of skilled but unemployed workers.

And U.S. wages are stagnant or even falling.

The Longbow

Touch Not The Cat:

The Temple of Mut has a call (via InstaPundit) for the restoration of the longbow to English society. This would answer the problem of looting gangs who have a maneuver advantage versus the police.

The looters are all offense and the police are all defense. Because the police have no missile weapons and are too weighed down with armor to pursue their enemy, the looters can engage and disengage at will with absolutely no risk to themselves.

Well, indeed, the police could stop the riots once and for all if they were issued rifles and shot looters on sight. That was the traditional remedy for looting, after all.

The suggestion is also bedeviled by the fact that the longbow -- the proper one from Agnicourt, which he cites as evidence of its effectiveness -- is the kind of instrument that takes years to develop the strength to use. You could use a smaller bow these days, since you don't need to penetrate armor, but any bow is inferior to a firearm as a defensive weapon: it lacks the firepower (i.e., the number of rounds you can bring to battery quickly), it cannot be concealed (meaning that there is no 'free rider' benefit for those not carrying arms), and it is rather cumbersome to lug around.

However, I did like the graphic he employs.



It reminds me of another piece of British heritage:



The heraldry of the Clan MacPherson uses the motto, "Touch not the cat, but a glove." They are thinking of the Scottish Wildcat, who comes with significant armament on his own.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori

My heart is heavy for some college-era friends who have just lost their 18-year-old son. I just stumbled on this commencement speech from Steve Jobs, who famously faced a mortal fright when it was believed that he had an inoperable form of pancreatic cancer:

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

H/t Maggie's Farm

Straw Poll

Straw Poll:

Results are in, and Rep. Bachmann won narrowly. Hot Air, whose reporting places it clearly in the Romney camp, downplays:

Bachmann comes away with a win, but not by much — and since reports had her giving out 6,000 tickets to the event, it’s not exactly a big endorsement.

Rick Perry got 718 write-in votes without showing up at all.

Of course, the big question won’t be what this means, but if it means anything at all. The consistent poll frontrunner, Mitt Romney, didn’t contest the straw poll, although he did show up for the debate and did some local campaigning this week. Perry’s entry to the race means the arguable #2 candidate in the race didn’t compete, either. Those two developments mean that the winner might be battling for third place everywhere else but Iowa, and maybe even here after a few weeks have passed.

Caveats duly noted. Nevertheless, so far, it's Bachmann on top: and victory in the straw poll tracks well to how Iowa votes in general, though the sample set is limited.

The Thinking Man's Spelling Rhyme

The Thinking Man's Spelling Rhyme

Those of you with aspiring spelling- bee contestants in the house might want to upgrade your pre-schooler's training song with this ditty from "Barenaked Ladies," reminiscent of the old joke about spelling "fish" as "ghoti":

A is for aisle, B is for bdellium
C is for Czar (and if you see him, would you mind telling him?)

D is for djinn, E for Euphrates
F is for fohn, but not like when I call the ladies

G for gnarly, I for irk, H is for hour
J is for jalapeno, in either corn or flour
Tortillas

K is for knickknack, L is for llama
M for mnemonic, N for ndomo

O is for ouija board, P for pneumonia,
Pterodactyl, and psychosis; Q is for qat

R is for argyle (I couldn't find a good R word)

S is for Saar, a lovely German river
T for tsunami, a wave that makes me quiver

U is for urn, but not like earning money
V for vraisemblance, from French and therefore funny

W for wren, wrinkly, and who
X is for Xian, an ancient Chinese city, true

Y is for yiperite, a very nasty gas
And zed's the final letter and by final I mean last.

H/t Assistant Village Idiot

Individual Mandate Struck Down

Individual Mandate Struck Down

The 11th Circuit refused to follow the Florida lower court's lead in striking down the entire Obamacare act, but it did rule that the individual mandate is an unconstitutional extension of the Commerce Clause. This ruling issued from the usual 3-judge panel by a 2-1 vote. One of the two judges in the majority was a Clinton appointee.

The decision is subject to review, upon request, by the entire 11th Circuit sitting "en banc." Either the en banc 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court will have to tell us whether they agree that the individual mandate must go and, if so, whether the rest of the law is sufficiently severable that it can go forward without the mandate. There is a serious practical question, too, whether the law can be implemented without the mandate. I have real doubt whether the American insurance industry can stay in business if it's subjected to the new requirements for expanded and universal coverage, but does not receive the economic benefit of the mandated market. If that proves to be the case, will the bill be abandoned, or will Congress seek to promote a single-payer option by permitting the industry to bankrupt itself?

Here's a statistic from the ruling that surprised me: "In 2007, 57% of the 40 million uninsured that year used somemedical services; in 2008, 56% of the 41 million uninsured that year used somemedical services. . . . The medical care used by each uninsured person cost about $2,000 on average in 2007, and $1,870 on average in 2008." I would have expected the number to be higher.

The ruling contains this brief, helpful summary of the Act's nine sections:

Title I contains these four components . . .: (1) the insuranceindustry reforms; (2) the new state-run Exchanges; (3) the individual mandate; and(4) the employer penalty. . . .

Title II shifts the Act’s focus to publicly-funded programs designed to provide health care for the uninsured, suchas Medicaid, CHIP, and initiatives under the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. . . .

Title II contains the Medicaid expansion at issue here. Title II’s provisions also create, or expand, other publicly-funded programs. . . .

Title III primarily addresses Medicare. . . .

Title IV concentrates on prevention of illness. . . .

Title V seeks to increasethe supply of health care workers through education loans, training grants, andother programs.

Title VI creates new transparency and anti-fraud requirements for physician-owned hospitals participating in Medicare and for nursing facilities participatingin Medicare or Medicaid. . . .

Title VI includes the Elder JusticeAct, designed to eliminate elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation. . . .

Title VII extends and expands certain drug discounts in health care facilitiesserving low-income patients. . . .

Title VIII establishes a national,voluntary long-term care insurance program for purchasing community living assistance services and support by persons with functional limitations. . . .

Title IX contains revenue provisions. . . .

Appendix A . . . documents (1) the breadth and scope of the Act; (2) the multitudinous reforms enacted to reduce the number of theuninsured; (3) the large number and diverse array of new, or expanded, federally-funded programs, grants, studies, commissions, and councils in the Act; (4) the extensive new federal requirements and regulations on myriad subjects; and (5) how many of the Act’s provisions on their face operate separately and independently.

There's more detail about each of these Titles in the full document. It's the best summary I've run across so far.

Things You Won't Hear from the British Authorities

Things You Won't Hear from the British Authorities

From a speech by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, on the city's plan to deal with the threatened spread of flash-mob riots:

Sense and nonsense cannot exist in the same place, in the same city, in the same world, and is not going to happen here in Philadelphia.

The whole speech is well worth the read, as an antidote to the usual predictable helpless hand-wringing over "youth" and "root causes" of their disaffection. The cost of spouting and accepting nonsense in public discourse is higher than we sometimes acknowledge. The Mayor is prepared to lock up not only out-of-control kids but their feckless parents, because he's tired of hearing why the parents can't cope. His call to intellectual arms brings to mind Voltaire's warning: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Republicans

The Republicans:

I missed the debate last night, having just finished a thirteen-hour ride through the searing heat of August; but it sounds like it was interesting. This morning people are talking about lines of vulnerability for Rep. Bachmann and Mr. Romney.

Rep. Bachmann

Rep. Bachmann's problem is analogous to John F. Kennedy's problem when he ran as the first serious Catholic candidate, except that it's more serious. Let's watch the video, and I'll explain what I mean.

Bachmann gave a great answer, both in substance and in terms of how she managed the tone of her response. Any doctrine that you choose to guide your life must be interpreted. As we have often discussed here, submission is a very important part of marriage -- not for wives, but at times for each of the partners. It entails a deep respect and willful service, of choosing to put your own interests aside and serve the interests of the other for a time.

I prefer the medieval framing of this concept to the Biblical or Islamic ones: the medieval framing is informed by ideas of fealty, which better reflect that this is a two-way relationship of willful service and support. The medieval ethic of service between man and woman also better shows that it is sometimes the man and sometimes the woman who needs service or support!

Rep. Bachmann conveys that this issue is really about respect, and then offers some examples of things that she and her husband have been able to achieve together using this principle. Anyone who is not impressed by those accomplishments isn't taking the time to think through and appreciate the amount of work and sacrifice entailed.

Nevertheless, she's got a serious problem here. The question is really one that will dog Romney as well, which boils down to: 'You have some unusual religious beliefs. How can we vote for someone who believes differently than we do?'

The reason Bachmann's problem is worse than Kennedy's was is that she explicitly said that this religious principle of submission had guided her in public life. The Kennedy response -- that private religious principles would be kept out of public life -- is therefore not available to her.

What she has to convince people to believe is that her private religious principles will redound to the benefit of the nation. That's going to be a harder sell to people who do not share those principles.

For Americans, this principle of willful submission is one of the hardest to accept. I think it would be hard to name a principle that ran more directly counter to the current of our popular culture. Very few will take the time to do the soul searching necessary to find the great wisdom embedded in it.

Mr. Romney

Romney's problem is clear even if you take the kindest possible reading of his remarks that "Corporations are people, my friend." Even granting every argument made by his defender, there remain two critical points that Romney obviously does not get.

1) This extremely weak recovery has actually been very good for corporations: corporate profits are at an all time high. It is the small business sector, normally organized as single-proprietorships or partnerships, that has not recovered. Pay for corporate employees is flat these last few decades, adjusted for inflation, which means that all that profitability is not helping the employee any more than it is helping the small business. It is helping those who collect dividends. So, you are telling me that some people are doing very well in this economy, which I already knew: people like Mitt Romney are doing very well.

Romney's political problem is that he is seen as a symbol of northeastern corporatism, that wing of the Republican party that cannot be trusted by the common man. He has done nothing to help himself with voters who are not already corporate executives with this remark.

2) Telling me that 'corporations are people' is no different than telling me that 'governments are people.' Well, yes, indeed in some sense they are: but it makes no difference if my complaint is that the government is profiting unfairly by using its power to extract wealth from what has become a subject population.

That is the substance of the Left's critique against corporations -- and indeed it is also the non-Left, TEA Party populist critique against both corporations and government. The populist complaint is that the rich and powerful use their alliance with government to do so by having unreasonable barriers to entry raised for small businesses.

Both the Left and the TEA Party agree on this problem: what they disagree about is the solution. The Left believes in increased regulation by government, which is odd since "increased regulation" is exactly the mechanism that raises the aforementioned unfair barriers; the TEA Party believes in slashing regulation, so that I can easily and cheaply go out and start a business if I want.

We can debate which approach is the right one, or if there may be occasions for each approach. The problem, though, enjoys broad agreement across the ideological spectrum. It is only among a very narrow band of voters that the pro-corporate argument will fly.

Real Issues

As Allah notes, apparently there was time to ask about submission in marriage, but not about entitlement reform. I would like to see the Republicans -- and any Democratic challengers to President Obama -- speak to this issue more than any other. Entitlements and government pensions are the big rocks we need to figure out how to move.

They're Coming for Us out of Perseus

They're Coming for Us out of Perseus

Although this year's Perseid meteor shower won't peak until Saturday night, the best viewing may well be just before tomorrow at dawn, since the waxing moon will wash out the show somewhat by this weekend. Perseus rises near midnight this time of year. It lies right along the Milky Way in the northeast sky, near the distinctive "W" shape of Cassiopeia, to the left of the Great Square of Pegasus. Perseus is between Cassiopeia and the brilliant star Capella in the constellation Auriga. The constellation contains the variable star Algol, considered the Medusa head that Perseus holds, which is not a single star but a triple-star system that waxes and wanes every three days depending on whether one of the system's dimmer or brighter stars is in front eclipsing the others.

The Perseid cloud stretches along the 130-year orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle and consists of a stream of particles ejected each time the comet approaches the sun. The August meteor shower, which results from the Earth's annual passage through the relatively static stream, has been observed for about 2000 years. Most of the meteors we see this week will have been ejected about a thousand years ago, but there is a new filament that was ejected only in 1862, which generates a higher volume of visible falling stars than the older portion of the stream.

A multicolored, long Perseid striking the sky just to the left of Milky Way in 2009

For years I've wanted to try a trick I read about: you set out a large flat pan the first time it rains after a meteor shower, then carefully let the pan dry out. Supposedly the remaining dust will react to a magnet, because it contains traces of iron from meteor dust in the upper atmosphere. I've never made it work. It would be hard to try this year, as we're beginning to wonder if it will ever rain again.

That reminds me of a quotation of Mark Twain that my husband cited to me yesterday: During a thunderstorm, someone asked whether he thought the rain would stop. "It always has before," he replied.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin:

It looks like the voters narrowly endorsed the death of public sector unions. This has been one of the nation's early attempts at wrestling entrenched government interests, and so far it's proving out.

This is important, because fixing America means fixing both the famous entitlements (Medicare and Medicaid) but also, and especially, slimming public sector pensions. The Wisconsin decision shows that voters can resist a public relations campaign and long-running protests, even if it was a close-run thing. This is a good sign for the future of our country, and somewhat of a surprising one. It is this approach we'll have to build on, in every state and at the Federal level, in order to be sure that the government does not devour the People.

Not Getting Mad

The Non-Agitated:

A headline that Rep. Bachmann surely wants to see often during the early days of her run at winning the Republican Nomination is, "Why Michele Bachmann is no Sarah Palin."

This is part two in that series from the Washington Post. Today's lesson: when the media does something really unfair, just ignore them. The American people already know they're a bunch of rascals. What they need to know is that you're not the kind of person who can get worked up by a bunch of rascals.

Flashmobs

Walking the Edge:

London's mobs seem to be using social media to organize themselves. There's no reason this can't be done very efficiently, as an asymmetric way of overcoming even the most robust police presence. After all, even a rich community with a very high normal police density can be the sudden locus of a flashmob of a few hundred gangsters, who can easily overwhelm the few policemen who would constitute a 'very high normal police density.' As with a terrorist attack, there is really no defense here except to harden the general society, so that there is a ready made 'anti-flashmob' of ordinary citizens who can pin down the gangsters long enough for a response to arrive. That response can be police, military, or what Major General Rick Lynch used to call 'concerned local citizens' with equal effect. What is important is that we have lost the 'find' phase of the old military rule to 'find, fix, and finish.' We need to be prepared to 'fix' them wherever they should happen to 'find' themselves. Finishing, assuming the fixing can be done, isn't that hard a nut to crack.

In America this phenomenon has a dangerous racial tendency, and in both directions. For all that commentators spoke of America being 'post-racial' just a few short years ago, the truth is that America has not become 'post-racial' at all. What America has become is antiracist. American culture is currently devoted to the proposition that racism will not be the rule in our society.

America has not forgotten its racial divisions, though. As the Buddhist proverb says, "To say you have forgiven but not forgotten is to say that you have not forgiven." What we have put in place is a set of protocols and social controls designed to suppress anything like racist expression. This is formalized and legal at the margins -- anti-discrimination suits are not unheard of -- but it is a system of social control as much as it is a system of political control. We, the People, have decided we do not want to be racists. At the same time, we remember what it was like to be racists: indeed, it is precisely because we remember what it was like to have a racist society that we have become so devoted to doing it otherwise.

This antiracism marks a real change from the bad old days, but it is far from a "postracial society." There is grave danger of having the old fault lines brought back into focus. The very young people who are engaging in this violence are the ones among us with the least memory of what the 'bad old days' were like -- they are least likely to believe in the change, because they did not live to see it.

That's the way it goes, as the opening lines of Quentin Tarantino's True Romance say, but sometimes it goes the other way too. We may be watching the tide break at the high water mark. This was as good as it got, perhaps: and now we shall roll back to the sea.

If not, it will only be because we dug in, and clawed the rest of the way.

President Dunning-Kruger?

PRESIDENT DUNNING-KRUGER

One of the more entertaining of Obama's campaign promises was his oft-repeated vow to "Restore Science to Its Rightful Place":

How is his administration doing so far? It has failed to strengthen protections for endangered species, appointed officials with long records of suppressing politically inconvenient science, ignored new evidence-based recommendations for breast-cancer screening, failed to remove all restrictions from embryonic stem-cell science and ignored decades of research in a politically motivated effort to prevent nuclear waste from being stored at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Dude... why so harsh? I can't think of a single public servant who has done more to increase public awareness of the Dunning-Kruger Effect:

ERROL MORRIS: Knowing what you don’t know? Is this supposedly the hallmark of an intelligent person?

DAVID DUNNING: That’s absolutely right. It’s knowing that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. [4] Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”

Give Barack his due: when it comes to increasing public awareness of the value of scientific inquiry, he walks the walk. Thank God the Smart Folks are back in charge:

"I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," [Obama] reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."

And unlike the ignorant and arrogant BusHitler administration, they're humble, too.

Instrumental

Instrumental:

Ya'll are cheating yourselves if you don't watch the last few minutes of the last one, at least.

Rass 17%

Rasmussen: 17% Say the US Gov't Has Consent of Governed

That's the top line finding, in any case.

Daniel W. Drezner asks if he's missing anything:

The first line line of defense has been breached, but the second line of defense looks increasingly robust. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll in the wake of the debt deal show the same thing -- everyone in Washington is unpopular, but Congress is really unpopular and GOP members of Congress are ridiculously unpopular. At a minimum, S&P needs to calculate how the current members of Congress will react to rising anti-incumbent sentiment. If they did that analysis and concluded that nothing would be done, I'd understand their thinking more. I didn't see anything like that kind of political analysis in their statement, however.

In the end, I suspect Moody's and Fitch won't follow S&P's move, so this could be a giant nothingburger. Still, if these guys are going to be doing political risk analysis, it might help to actually have some political scientists on the payroll. Based on their statement, S&P is simply extrapolating from the op-ed page, and that's a lousy way to make a political forecast.

Am I missing anything?

Well, yes, you are: national public opinion polls cut very nicely against the President, whoever he is; but Congressmen are elected by district, and Senators by state. A Senator can be 0% popular outside his state and still win re-election; and a Representative can be 0% popular outside his district and still do so.

Opinon poll after opinion poll has shown, and for decades, that people hate Congress but roughly speaking support their own representatives. That being so, the findings on Congress aren't especially relevant to our diagnosis.