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Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More
SharpFang writes "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that misinformed people, particularly political partisans, rarely changed their minds when exposed to corrected facts in news stories. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
This explains the popularity of right-wingers, ordinary people who would have nothing to gain for voting for right-wing parties, yet who keep doing so.
... when exposed to corrected facts in news stories.
Perhaps because we have learned to distrust the news providers?
This is why George W. Bush served two terms.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Nietzche
In some circle, they call that a leap of faith
Well people (and by people I mean you and me as well) believe a whole lot of things just because that's the way we were brought up. We have never really dug into our beliefs thoroughly.
When it comes to politics it really is some sort of emotional connection, not fact based, facts can't change our minds when this is the case. Politicians like to play on our innate sense of belonging, our fears, not however our minds.
-1 troll? I'm guessing somebody needs to replace the batteries in their sarcasm detector.
No wonder people are insistent they have "faith" in the absence of facts.
I'm a liberal but I have studied the climate science controversy and no longer believe that CO2 causes catastrophic global warming. I have been following the skeptical web sites. It's real lonely for liberals over there. In fact, the prevalent opinion on those blogs seems to be that global warming is a plot to let the UN take over and make the whole world communist!
Never mind just the public, it seems to me that even scientists will not change their minds in the face of evidence contrary to what they believe.
People tend to want to hear information that agrees with their particular world view. This is why even though all main stream media has a slant to a story there are different "flavors". AP actually puts out 7 different versions of every story depending on which propaganda machine is quoting them. Today's media presents very few facts but presents lots of opinions. Every "expert" speaker is just a person presenting his opinion. While it is easy to bash Faux news you can just as easily catch the same thing going on at NPR, BBC, CNN, etc if you are observant. All of them have money behind them determining how a story is presented, or if it is even presented at all. If your smart enough to read slashdot you should be smart enough to research things for yourself.
This is a problem with pretty much every political issue there is. You have to pick a side eventually. Very few people are truly neutral as far as political spectrum goes. You are leaning either to the right or to the left. The problem is that when you finally pick your side (early twenties, typically) it becomes natural to stick to it no matter what new information comes your way and you end up in a "us versus them" kind of position. You see everything that doesn't make your side look good as propaganda or media bias. I think politics can be compared to professional sports in many ways in the sense that science, data and morality have basically nothing to do with who you are rooting for.
For most people, Politics, like Sports and Religion is all about having an emotional attachment to something - they're for/with/believe a group/ideology because they feel like "one of the group" and one cannot be against oneself.
A high level of intelectual abilities (i.e. IQ) is no defense against it: just look at all the religious-like flamewars around things like editors and operating systems.
In order to do trully informed judgements one must first be aware of one's inner-self, one's drives and fears and be capable of analysing one's motives. One must be capable of separating the "logic" from the "feelings" and the "habits" in the way things are perceived, interpreted and reasoned about.
Unfortunatly this requires a level of inner maturity that seems to be far above that of most people ...
I just read this a while back. There are larger ramifications than political sniping, and beyond politics altogether.
It's a perfect illustration of why this phenomenon matters to all of us.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
The saddest part of this story for us, nerds, is that our strongest weapon - our knowledge, superior understanding of facts, digging deeper into matters than cheap news stories, is in fact totally inefficient against "joe average". The more you argue your case the worse your chance to -really- win the argument, convince the other side. More often they will admit defeat to get you off their neck and keep believing their falsehood even stronger.
That is why John Hodgeman's punch line "Glen Beck makes a lot of sense if you think about it. If you don't think about it, he makes even more sense" makes me quite sad.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is one of the reasons that I dislike discussing/arguing issues in person. They will bring up some information I hadn't heard before, but I have no idea whether it is reliable or not. I try not to be set in my beliefs, but 90% of the "facts" that people spout usually had some foundation in truth originally but have become so misinterpreted by the time they heard it that it is almost complete crap. I like to look into things before I accept them, but that isn't an option in person. If you can't immediately refute any random thing they bring up and won't just accept what they say as gospel truth then you are pegged as a ignorant stubborn idiot. Furthermore, when I am pressed like that I do feel a strong desire to dig in and defend myself, when otherwise I would just take in the information and have one more thing to mull over while I continue to read about the issue.
Funny stuff.
--
For Obama to try something like 'commie healthcare', he has to be a liberal first, and he is not, he is a politician of the kind, who do not care about ideology.
I am a libertarian, I care about ideology and thus I will never be in government. Ron Paul or Peter Schiff (who is trying to become a Senator right now) are very exceptional people, in that they care enough to try and fix the system based on their ideology and not so that they can personally make money or get more power.
You can't handle the truth.
This highlights a fundamental weakness of democratic systems of government.
"The people" are, on the whole, intellectually unfit to govern themselves.
It remains true that those governed should have authority over the policies of government, and that the governors should be held accountable to those they govern. These must be true in order to avoid rampant corruption and crimes against humanity. But it is also true that the majority of people are too incapable of critical thinking, of self-education, and of consistency in the application of their principles to be effective in discriminating good policies from bad.
People who claim to love freedom will happily deprive their neighbor of very important freedoms, and see no problem with this (this is true on both sides of the political perspective....freedom-loving Americans want to stop their neighbors from marrying the same gender, or owning guns, or terminating unwanted pregnancies, or using drugs for pleasure, or having access to sexually explicit material online, or having access to shared public facilities while being of a different race, and so on). That is just one example, but others abound.
There is a difference between diversity and ignorance. Diversity would be people's views on abortion or whether there should be prayer in schools.
Ignorance is claiming Obama isn't an American because he's never shows his birth certificate even though Hawaii has repeatedly indicated they do not give out copies of such. They only give Certificates of Live Birth, similar to what other states do.
Yet, we have people like Senator Vitter (R, LA) continuing to trot the misinformation about Obama's citizenship despite evidence to the contrary.
P.S. Once again Slashdot has me typing this in a 2"x3" box.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The experience of the last century shows that fanatics can remain hermetically sealed from the truth until the fabric of their society collapses around them, and there is literally rubble in the streets.
I think that education is the only hope to fix this, but that means that this will be a problem for the rest of our lives, if not a lot longer.
I was about to jump on the Beck-Flame then had to remind myself he's just an entertainer like any other news or talk media figure.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
To be fair:
Poe's Law - Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.
So this study proves that dumbasses will continue to remain dumbasses.
1) People believe what they want to believe, most often they believe that which
conforms to their ( pre-existing ) worldview.
2) By definition, 50% of the population has an IQ of 100 or less. What this doesn't tell
you is that most people, EVEN IF their IQ is above 100, do not ever engage in
critical thinking. And if they aren't engaging in critical thinking, they aren't going to
get results which are any better than the imbeciles, because intelligence is useless
unless it is USED.
3) The bigger the lie, the more likely the above idiots are likely to believe the bs, hook, line,
and sinker. You know, lies like "Iraq has WMDs" or "We must defeat Al Quaeda and the
way to do that is to engage in war in Afghanistan ( where the real reason for this war is
maintaining access to petro-chemical reserves ).
I am American. Most Americans are such gullible fools it makes me want to puke, and this is
independent of their IQ. There was recent proof of this on Slashdot in the way most of those
who posted embraced all-electric cars despite the fact that there are practical and significant reasons
why all-electric cars are not going to be successful in the mass market yet. The difference between
Billy Bob Dumbass and the Slashdot audience is that the Slashdot audience allows itself to be blinded
by its fetish for what they assume is "advanced tech". The sad truth is that most of the people who post
on Slashdot don't know shit about the subject they are commenting on, and they are simply engaging in
mental masturbation because their lonely pathetic lives lack any other form of fullfilment.
And now if you will excuse me I have real work to do, and it has nothing to do with a website or a computer.
Funny, I was just going to say the same thing about the Holy Religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming, because His Eminence Pope Gore told me so.
-Styopa
Nobody would go to the cinema if the film didn't have a flow to it, a beginning, a middle and an end.
We like our facts to fit the same pattern and where they don't we twist them around in our head until they do.
What we also do is look for stories which fit our circumstances. If we are poor, we believe in evil rich oppressors and Robin Hood style heroes. If we are rich we believe in the feckless, unworthy poor, and our own natural superiority.
Don't imagine that it is someone else who is prone to this and not you. If affects us all. It's just that people don't tend to recognise it in themselves - because that sort of fact doesn't appeal.
Why should I care about it?
Because sometimes people act on their beliefs, and even if your philosophy is "live and let live", that won't stop *them* from going out of their way to affect you
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
The Republican party depends on a group of deeply delusional voters known as Evangelicals. That's why, in the 21st Century, there are elected officials pretending to be concerned about gay couples, pretending that evolution is a lie that shouldn't be taught as fact, and pretending that a woman's body is the property of the Federal Government.
And if you don't believe me, just look at how pathetic McCain was when he had to prostrate himself in front of these idiots: http://thinkprogress.org/mccain-flip-flops/
The Democratic party has it's fair share of hypocrites, but only one party demands delusion as part of their party platform. They are still demanding God be put back in Government, and pretending the founding fathers wanted the same thing. Their next sentence could be about the dangers of muslim theocracies, but their delusion is thought-proof. They know God chose America to fight Evil, just like their old hero President said himself: he answers to a higher father, even if the father he has in reality fought the same war against the same army only a decade earlier.
That's fine. The scary part is that most of the people who watch him don't realize that.
and not so that they can personally make money or get more power.
I would caution anyone voting for Peter Schiff, who's ultimate goal is to crash the dollar since he has been predicting that for about a decade. Solipsism can do just as much damage as greed or a lust for power.
I agree with Ron Paul on many things, but as long as he stays within the Republican Party, they'll never let him be more than a sideshow.
Notice how all of the fascist, unconstitutional and Anti-American policies that Bush and Cheney implemented (and should have legitimately resulted in impeachment and at least life sentences in prison ) are still in effect?
Nothing has changed, therefore conservative.
Obama is a conservative, not a liberal.
We have a far right wing fascist party and a moderate right wing fascist party.
No, Obama is not a liberal at all. Even before election it was clear to me that no liberal can become a president of US so he could not have been one and it was a correct assessment.
Obama has no liberal principles, and I do not mean libertarian principles, I mean liberal.
Were Obama a liberal he would not have tried so hard to make all of the republican/conservative moves. You would have to search hard to find something, where Obama is showing any liberal/progressive leanings, specifically where it concerns the important stuff: economy/military/constitution.
Things like gay rights are important of-course, but they are of no consequence, they are always just a distraction, a useful construct, like 'child porn'. Something to make a clear distinction of 'us versus them'.
Obama is not a progressive or a liberal or a commie or a Marxist. He is definitely a statist/corporatist/opportunist.
This can be seen in every policy, in every so-called 'reform', non of which is a real reform based on any ideology. Instead all of his 'reforms' are checkmarks he can put on his resume, so that later he can point and say - see, I did pass a Bill! Rejoice!
Too bad none of what's passed matters at all, instead those Bills make things worse. For a second imagine that the so called financial reform was in place before the year 1980 and was in place for all of that time, do you believe that US wouldn't have the credit crisis that hit during the dot/com and then during the house bubble and soon enough during a yet-to-come t-bills/bonds/debt-refinancing bubble? Of-course not.
Do you think that the 'health care reform' is actually a reform? It certainly made things worse - like increased the patenting time for drugs from 7 to 12 years, it will cause higher premiums for everybody obviously and many people still will not be covered.
No no, a real commie/liberal bastard would have come there and stuffed a single-payer system down everybody's throat, the kind that I hated in Canada (remember, I am not a liberal, my leanings are all practical, I despise governments for distorting the market.)
Bush was good at stuffing shit he wanted down people's throats, no matter how much they didn't like it, he did it anyway. Obama also is good at it, but he is no liberal, thus when he stuffs shit down people's throats, it's shit similar to W's shit, like making sure that no law passes that allows actual competition in the drug market with companies importing cheaper drugs from other countries, like from Canada.
No no, I meant what I said.
You can't handle the truth.
It's tragic that news is, or at least perceived to be, entertainment (in the US at least - it's not like that everywhere thank fuck). It's also tragic that people aren't up in arms over that, dragging network executives down the streets by their hair. What the fuck? Factual, accurate news broadcasts are important to the well-being of a country. They are the cornerstone of democracy.
We are a culture that values strength over intelligence. A man who is unflexible, unyielding, who cannot be changed is strong. A man who is open to change, who compromises appears to have a weak heart. When we argue and discuss, our goal is not to learn something, is not to find the right answer - our goal is to win the argument
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
You mean to tell me they can't make an exception for the president? It would really put all of the questioning to rest if he showed it. It just seems strange to me that he won't.
TFA is all about the fact that, no, it wouldn't. Conspiracy theorists always believe that there's a deeper layer. They demanded to see Obama's birth certificate. So they released the certificate offered by the state of Hawaii. In the minds of the birthers, this only PROVED that he wasn't born in America, because that's not the real birth certificate. He's obviously hiding the truth! He's lying!
That's exactly what the article is pointing out - people who strongly believe something are likely to see evidence against them as a part of the conspiracy, that people are lying to trick them out of their beliefs. Show the birthers the "real" certificate, and they'll probably believe it was a forgery.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Let's keep it simple: anyone who wants to increase government power is a progressive.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with your thesis: do you realize (and would you agree) that this would make GW Bush a very, very progressive president when you consider the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act?
Or forbid you from marrying the one you love because it's "unnatural"
Get the Government out of marriage and this wouldn't be an issue. When you strip away the romantic and religious aspect what is a marriage other than a legal agreement between two people? What other legal agreement do you enter into where you need the permission of the government before you can proceed?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
These findings are not a surprise to me.
Thanks to the innovation of the internet I've had probably thousands of arguments with people committed to a particular viewpoint.
The usual mentality is not curiosity, listening and interest in discovering truth.
It is a verbal boxing match with both sides flinging opinions and links until someone gets tired and stops
Who said Bush was a conservative? Republican, yes, but conservative? No
The only difference between what I said and what you said is that you believe Schiff has good intentions. But the fact remains: Schiff is personally invested right now in the failure of the US dollar. He has staked his reputation on it. If presented with an option to freeze spending and deny social services on a massive scale that would certainly destroy the American economy, Schiff would support it, because he has said many times before that such a collapse is the cure our economy needs for the disease of cheap interest.
Peter Schiff understands perfectly the concept of classical economics. It's unfortunate that it has nothing to do with the modern world. He can't model the relationships between China and America and Europe because he simply doesn't believe in economic theory based on math. That's why he's been wrong on the dollar versus the Euro, and why he's been wrong on gold, but since he sticks to the same line year after year, sometimes he seems right.
Frankly, if things were to be that bland, why not just elect that other guy (the Republican)?
When Bush was elected, 50% of Americans were saying "sorry, we didn't vote for him"; with Obama, it's: "oh, he needs to govern for all, including those who didn't vote for him"!
How come Republicans always win? Is this a hidden rule?
(a concerned foreigner)
Ummm... guys, it's called dogmatism.
Did we really need peer-reviewed research to confirm that it exists? Where have you been living? Why do you think there are STILL people refusing to take vaccines, even after Andrew Wakefield has been utterly discredited? Why do you suppose there were still people who thought Piltdown Man was real, even after the hoax was exposed? Why do you suppose it is that so many people mindlessly "vote the party line" in direct opposition to observable reality?
Dogmatism and its kid brother groupthink are huge threats to meaningful progress in just about every facet of human civilization.
As non-usa'ian, I have to agree that your Republicans are extremely right wing, and your Democrats are only very right wing. Compared to most of the rest of the "western" world politics in the USA are extremely right wing. Obama does not qualify as a "liberal" in any western country except the USA.
If all people allowed facts to easily sway their judgment there would be no creationists, no global warming deniers, no birthers, and no war on drugs.
Anarchists never rule
While I agree with the rest of your rant, I must point out that healthcare lacks the necessary pre-conditions for a market activity and as such cannot be left to the tender mercies of the capitalist "free market". One of the fundamental problems is the lack of any possibility whatsoever of consumer making an "informed purchase" from competing vendors, particularly while unconscious in an ambulance or in excruciating pain. And it just goes downhill from here.
Therefore it logically follows that healthcare has to be dealt with in a completely different framework, very much the same way as other essential societal infrastructure, like the justice system or roads.
Are we pre-preemptively invading nations?
Are we declaring war without congress?
Are we giving tax breaks to the rich?
Are we legitimizing young earth creationists?
Are we performing illegal wholesale wiretaps on everyone? Oh wait, yeah, we're still doing that one. You got me there. But the rest? Naw. So he's way better in that regard. He's no second coming, but he's really not that bad. It'd be nice if he brought the troops home, and stopped being a dick with the wiretaps, but most of the rage people direct at the guy is just generated out of nothing at foxnews. Their biggest complaint seems to be that he's a Nazi socialist, which is just silly.
It makes for a really neat Catch-22. Because the press is 'free', it is also for sale. There's no way to prevent the corporate/wealthy interests from gaining control over the media without allowing the government to control it instead.
So, pick your evil -
A) Government-run media
B) Greed-run media
There isn't any 'C'. At least not within the reasonable confines of established western civilization.
Humans are neat!
I noticed you focused on the negative aspects of that article. How about the later paragraph:
The researchers--John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley--found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.
I guess you could make a value judgment on those attributes, but they have equal value in a person.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Oh, I am sorry about your door being too tight.
Every single thing is a subject to the rules of the marketplace and when people interfere with this fundamental truth, some balance is lost and the incoming crash is going to be just that much more severe. Nothing at all exists in this world that is not subject to the simple rules of thermodynamics, and economics is fundamentally the same thing.
You can't handle the truth.
Nazi is not an economic label, for example it does not mean a 'fascist' - which means ruling by corporations really.
Now to your core questions:
Are we pre-preemptively invading nations? - why, do you have to invade nations every year and a half, was that actually happening under any republican government, I mean aren't the current wars enough for now to satisfy the need for blood by the military industrial complex? Did you leave Iraq? How about Afghanistan? You think you are leaving any time soon? You think the Afghanistan mission has anything to do with actual terrorism? curious.
Are we declaring war without congress? - why, did any democrat declare a war with congress? Did Bill Clinton declare a war with congress before bombing former Yugoslavia?
I just copied this from a wiki page for you:
In a remarkable vote against the war in Yugoslavia, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 213 to 213, failed to give the President the constitutionally required authorization he needed to carry on the air war against Yugoslavia.
Are we giving tax breaks to the rich? - :) do you think that bailing out largest corporations is somehow dissimilar to giving them tax breaks? Is City or GS etc. suffering much in terms of bonus payouts for example? Just asking.
Are we legitimizing young earth creationists? - I really don't know.
You can't handle the truth.
I find it more than a little distressing that Jon Stewart provided one of the best and most informative interviews about the economy when he grilled Jim Cramer last year. Stewart himself may not be the most fair interviewer in general, but he was asking questions that a lot of professional journalists were not asking, and Cramer's discomfort at being put on the spotlight was obvious. Unfortunately, the questions that get asked by the pros are usually either softball questions or loaded questions because they're afraid of losing access, and no real information comes out.
During the presidential election, I didn't expect Obama to be able to lay out a complete, 500-page plan on how he planned to turn around the economy. I didn't expect McCain to provide an exact, to-the-day timetable of addressing energy concerns. But in both cases, they repeatedly got away with vague suggestions of how they would handle things.
The press should be asking tough questions, questions that keep the politicians on their toes. The American people will listen to real information if it's presented to them; Ross Perot showed us that. (He could have won the election, given that about 20% of the voters said that they didn't vote for him, but would have if they would have thought that he had a chance, giving him about 40% of the vote and leaving Clinton and Bush with about 30% each.) Instead, we get spoon-fed claptrap, major parties run by fundamentalists, and a growing alienation of the moderate in this country.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
What exactly is Glenn Beck informed about? Pretty much all of his rants illustrate his misunderstanding of both current and past affairs.
For example, two of Glenn Beck's purported heroes are Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King Jr. Both of those men were hard-core socialists, and advocated radical (for their time) socialist agendas, of which Beck spends 99% of his time railing against.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
You seem like the pedantic type so I wanted to correct a mistake in your post. The issue isn't whether or not Barack Obama is merely a citizen of the United States. In order to be President, one has to be a natural-born citizen. The question is whether or not being born in a foreign country (to US citizens) is enough to make you a natural-born citizen. Don't forget that John McCain was born in Panama so there was an issue there as well.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Nothing at all exists in this world that is not subject to the simple rules of thermodynamics, and economics is fundamentally the same thing.
That's just stupid. The only time in which your analogy could be even close to accurate is in a situation where there absolutely zero interference in the marketplace by the government. This would mean no official paper currency, no bank regulations, no consumer protections, no anti-trust laws, no zoning laws, etc.
In the modern world, our economic systems are artificial constructs, which are designed by people; not by nature. If we are going to enjoy the benefits of having a modern marketplace, then we need to take responsibility for fixing the problems that exist with it. Your belief that ignoring problems in a modern marketplace will lead the marketplace fixing itself is akin to believing that ignoring problems in a house will lead to the house fixing itself. In the case of both house and economic system, negligence will only lead to deterioration and eventually collapse.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
You don't give any citations, so I have to guess a bit at your time-line. I picked 1970. The average income for the entire decade was about $7500/year, so probably below that for the year 1970. Your deductible of $500 suddenly looks incredibly high, putting health care out of the reach of the poor. Which is exactly why the government got involved. Did it increase demand? Of course; suddenly people were receiving care that before couldn't afford it. That was the point. Obviously, if we just stopped providing health services to people that can't afford them, costs will reduce. Or if we figure out a way to take the billions in dollars insurance companies make in profit every year and put that into an actual productive part of the system, costs will reduce. When the choice is between peoples' lives and corporations' profits, one strikes me as more like an actual right that should be protected by government.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
No, you're exactly wrong. He has never said this. He did destroy CNN's Crossfire by http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/bljonstewartcrossfire.htmblasting them for partisan hackery and shrugging off any bias he may have with, "You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls."
He is sometimes taken as a serious journalist because he asks questions that others are afraid to ask. He doesn't care about getting these people back; they think they can go in and handle the clown. He is whip smart. But he never, ever says, "I'm just being objective here." Unless, of course, he is being clearly biased and mocking someone else who is being clearly biased and lying about facts. Is he partisan? I think he'd say he is, a bit, but he doesn't let liberals off scott free. It's just that the conservative hate machine has an entire network devoted to bullshit and the liberals have "mainstream media," which can't do a story about the Earth being a globe without digging up a flat-earther somewhere. (Two sides to every story is a double-edged sword.) So that gives Stewart and crew a lot to work with.
I don't understand libertarians in anyway. I have never seen a market correct it's self.
- you just don't understand when you see it happening right in front of your eyes.
Do you remember the dot-com bubble? Do you remember the housing bubble?
The incoming t-bills/bonds/government short term refinancing bubble?
That's market trying to correct itself and people interfering with the correction.
Currently market is completely off balance by the actions of those, who do not want to accept the consequences of idiocy that has passed for economics since the Fed started printing cash and Keynes came to town.
I am not going to say anything about you being a troll, because I see you as somebody who is simply confused, and I don't mean it in any derogatory fashion, it's just that they don't want anybody to understand what economics is, even though it's really very simple.
You may want to find out, I suggest starting by observing people who understand it and reading something about it.
You can't handle the truth.
It's increasingly clear to me that Americans who are adamantly against socialism have no idea what socialism means.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
As a actual conservative, let me assure you Bill Clinton was no conservative. The most recent conservative president was Calvin Coolidge. The most recent Democratic Party conservative president was Grover Cleveland.
Ronald Reagan was not conservative either. Rush Limbaugh is not. Ron Paul might be (of course, his influence is essentially nil).
Repeat after me, I am a conservative, I believe and can support it up by the facts that ...
Obama should be impeached, George W Bush should have been impeached. Bill Clinton was impeached. George H.W. Bush should have been impeached. Ronald Reagan should have been impeached. Jimmy Carter should have been impeached. Gerald Ford should have been impeached. Richard Nixon would have been impeached had he not resigned. LBJ, JFK, DDE, HST, FDR and Hoover should all have been impeached. Of course, these all should have been convicted (removed from office), not just impeached by the house
I suspect I could say the same about virtually every member of Congress, The Supreme Court, or other Federal Judges if I had.to research their breach of trust while in office.
I would also repeal amendments 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, and 26 of the U.S. Constitution and can justify each on by clear factual based logic.
BTW, these all of these should have been convicted as well resulting in their removal from office. Wash rinse and repeat until you start getting actual conservatives in office.
Short of agreeing with me, you are not a fact-based conservative, though you may well believe that you are. You may think I am a nutjob (and most people do), but I have truth, justice, and the American way on my side.
I was engaged in political debate in the press for several years. One of the things one learns early on is that the goal of the debate is not to convince the opponent who, as the study in TFA found out will never yield. The goal is to convince the audience, who hasn't yet formed an opinion of where the facts are. The audience at large will usually side with the person with the most solid arguments (give or take a bit due to clarity and style of presentation, etc).
So the US military are socialists? As far as I can tell they are government run. How about the court system? All paid for by tax dollars and run by the government.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.