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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."
... when exposed to corrected facts in news stories.
Perhaps because we have learned to distrust the news providers?
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.
Hah, you sir are truly delusional. *Every* political party has its share of disinformation and lies. To single out a specific party as being the culprit of misinformation only serves to show just how ignorant and naive you are.
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.
*Every* political party has its share of disinformation and lies.
I'll go one further and say that *every* political party actively engages in pastisanship, fearmongering, and disinformation - with the explicit intent of making the electorate less rational and less able to make clear choices. The study in TFA (correctly) paints this phenomenon as a bad thing, but for political hucksters it's not a bad thing; it's a good thing - a great thing - when you can turn people into mindless partisan zombies just by throwing a few lies around.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
I have just run out of mod points...
Grandparent:
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.
Your answer:
Hah, you sir are truly delusional. *Every* political party has its share of disinformation and lies. To single out a specific party as being the culprit of misinformation only serves to show just how ignorant and naive you are.
As I write, the grandparent is modded -1 troll and you +4 Insightful. Unfair. The grandparent has a valid point. While it is true that no party can claim to be free of disinformation, right-wing parties can indeed be singled out for practicing it on an industrial scale. Just think of Fox, O'Reilly and Beck: no contest.
To accuse the grandparent of ignorance and naivete smells much more of trolling than the actual actually quite moderate tone of the grandparent.
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.
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
You, sir, are very delusional if you don't think the Republicans far outpace the Democrats when it comes to outright lying to their constituents. How many Fox News viewers think Saddam was responsible for 9/11? No, both parties manipulate the truth to their benefit but one party takes it to a whole new and exciting level.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
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.
The thing that irritates me the most about the GOP is their attitude toward their OWN people. God forbid you don't do EXACTLY what everyone else does. People mock the dems for not being completely unified, but I think that's a good thing. I think the damn legislators ought to be out there using what brains they have, representing THEIR people.
The state where I live, it's absolutely the worst. The gop at the state level is extremely intolerant of other voices within the party, so if you have an opinion that differs from the majority, you hide it, or the state party will actively campaign against you in the primaries.
My local US rep is a dem...probably the most conservative dem in the entire house...and the republicans have run multi-million dollar campaigns against him for the last 3 election cycles. They can't even effectively campaign against him because he's a morally conservative, anti-tax hawk, so they have to field these whackjob wingnuts...It's ugly. They get crushed every election. And they're gearing up to fight him again, because he has a D after his name, and it drives them fucking MAD.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
right-wing parties can indeed be singled out for practicing it on an industrial scale. Just think of Fox, O'Reilly and Beck: no contest.
As opposed to MSNBC and Olbermann?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
The Democrats, as it were, just can't help but shoot themselves in the foot with the gun control issue.
It's more the urban base of the Democratic party that can't help themselves. Rural Democrats tend to be staunchly pro-gun, moreso than their GOP counterparts in many cases. The most out-outspokenly pro-gun US Senators are both Democrats -- Baucus and Tester from Montana.
But yeah, the urban liberals can't help themselves when it comes to guns. They literally work themselves up into a hysteria. It's pretty amusing to watch. Every single time there's an expansion of gun rights they predict that blood will flow in the streets. The fact that it hasn't happened yet does not prevent them from repeating the claim that it will. They also spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what the law-abiding gun owners are doing -- witness Mayor Daley's new gun law after SCOTUS struck down his old one. He's going to limit law-abiding gun owners to a SINGLE handgun that they aren't even allowed to take INTO THEIR GARAGE. Want to clean your gun on the workbench in your garage instead of stinking up your house with the smell of solvent? Sorry but the City of Chicago has deemed that your 2nd amendment rights do not apply in your garage.
I'm sure this new law will deter the criminal element too. Murder is one thing but carrying a gun outside the home or owning more than one? What self-respecting criminal would cross that line?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This might also be in part because of... ah, a shattering of expectations. A lot of liberals had hoped that getting their party back into power would mean that they could get things fixed (and I count myself as one of them). Putting this administration into power has made a lot of us realize that there's a lot wrong with Congress that can't be fixed by putting any one particular party in power.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
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.
"How many Fox News viewers think Saddam was responsible for 9/11? No, both parties manipulate the truth to their benefit but one party takes it to a whole new and exciting level."
Not many. How many people think that global warming is man-made, even though there is evidence to prove otherwise? How many people believe that bush started the war to make himself rich?
As you can see here about 1/3 of the american population believe that saddam was directly responsible for 9/11. I'd say that is pretty significant (and you can bet that the majority of this 1/3 is watching fox)
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.
It's hard to blame them though. They feel that this issue is very important, and that the Democrats' stance on this basic right is merely a sign of a deeper disregard for personal rights in general
I've always felt that gun control was more a rural/urban divide than anything else.
If you live in the country, guns are how you hunt and keep the occasional mountain lion from eating your children. (And probably, in the event that someone does break into your house, having a gun is the only way to stop them in any kind of reasonable time -- the police station is probably not less than a mile away.)
If you live in the city, guns are how people in your neighborhood get killed. (And, sure, if somehow guns magically go away people would be killed by knives etc. instead, but try doing a drive-by and accidentally getting the wrong person with a knife.)
Speaking in broad terms that clearly don't account for every person in either situation, rural people don't want to give up an important tool, and urban people want the freedom to not be shot more than they want the freedom to own a gun.
I joined the Republican Party because I thought there were too many people spreading their "RINO" nonsense. I'm a moderate, but up to this year I was always independent. I want to bring moderation back to the party, as I believe the party was at one time more moderate and aligned to the middle. I also think that Christian right wingers (and i'm a Christian myself) are hijacking the party and turning it into a Jesus-fest. Again, I'm a believer. But that doesn't mean I want a "Holy Priest of the US" for President. The US was founded to escape religious oppression and I follow those tenants to a fault, regardless of my faith.
Barry Goldwater would be rolling in his grave if he knew of how the modern Republican party has been twisted.
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!
This is me trying very hard:
Daily Show?!?!
hah! The Daily Show is NOT a news program. It's shown on COMEDY CENTRAL. Epic fail.
sudo eat my shorts
How many people think that global warming is man-made, even though there is evidence to prove otherwise?
The entire point of the article is that people do not take facts into account when holding onto their opinions. Global warming is an excellent example, as you've proven. The facts show that it is man-made, without a doubt, but some people such as yourself refuse to believe it.
It's pretty obvious that the entire point of the "study" at UofM is to somehow prove that "misinformed" (or people on the right) people are believing lies more than the truth. This line of thinking is pretty typical of elitist leftists that feel they know what is better for the rest of society.
The study is showing that people are not believing in facts. You know -- facts? Unassailable truths arrived at by rigorous logic from concrete data?
This isn't a left or right thing, except that the right disagrees with more facts than the left does at this moment in history. In twenty years it'll be the other way around. But no matter who is doing it, I think we should all agree that people who cannot handle the facts are not being helpful to their society, especially when they involve themselves in setting public policy.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
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
have you EVER seen a negative comment about bush on fox ? or a positive about obama on fox ?
Yes and yes. Various Fox personalities ripped Bush when he nominated Harriet Miers to SCOTUS. I also saw some favorable coverage of Obama's handling of the General McChrystal mess and subsequent nomination of General Petraeus.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The problem is because of an inherent distrust of the source of the facts when they contradict information someone already believes to be true. Trust and knowing who to believe are big problems for people especially as they become more-and-more bombarded by bullshit day-in and day-out. Who do you trust?
After the trust hurdle comes the self/ego-preservation-instinct of people not being able to admit they are wrong or were ever wrong, despite evidence to the contrary. Think "LA, LA, LA, LA, I can't hear you". It reminds me of the Matrix a little; "We have a rule...We never free a mind after it reaches a certain age. It is dangerous, the mind has trouble letting go. I've seen it before and I'm sorry".
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.
I don't see how this statement can be logically defended:
There is absolutely no way you will ever, ever, EVER keep a criminal who wants one from obtaining a gun. You might as well attempt to regular the air in the hope that they'll suffocate.
Let's illustrate with an extreme example. Certainly, if a government were to decide (and be able to enforce without a revolution, which is true in some countries but probably not others) that anyone caught with a gun in their possession was going to be publically tortured to death immediately, the number of criminals with guns would drop drastically. Make it something even more outrageously draconian (maybe you also seize all their property and kill their immediate family) and the number of criminals with guns will drop further.
I don't think these are good ideas; I'm not even actually for gun control. But it's very obviously untrue to say that there's nothing that could possibly be done. Along the same lines, I generally view the random gun violence deaths that do occur a price we pay for the freedom to bear arms, and I think that's a price worth paying -- but it's disingenuous to try to claim that either there is no such cost or that nothing can be done about it.
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.
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.
Just so you know, the reason we have elected representatives instead of a direct democracy is because public opinion is a shitty way of making public policy.
No, the reason why you have elected representatives is because the people who have originally created your political system were mostly of the wealthy landowner class, and didn't want to share power with rabble. So they arranged it so that the rabble elects them as their representatives, and then they rule in their name, ostensibly backed by popular mandate - but not truly beholden to popular opinion, and free to do anything in the name of "greater good".
There is a minor inconvenience of being voted out every now and then when the rabble get too unhappy about things being done differently from what they want, but does it really matter if your son, brother, nephew or other relative is going to get his seat in power not long after, anyway?
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.