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A Ray of Hope For Americans and Scientific Literacy?
An anonymous reader with a snippet from Politico: "A finding in a study on the relationship between science literacy and political ideology surprised the Yale professor behind it: Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers. Yale law professor Dan Kahan posted on his blog this week that he analyzed the responses of more than 2,000 American adults recruited for another study and found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative. However, those who identified as part of the tea party movement were actually better versed in science than those who didn't, Kahan found. The findings met the conventional threshold of statistical significance, the professor said. Kahan wrote that not only did the findings surprise him, they embarrassed him. 'I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension,' Kahan wrote. 'But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the tea party,' he continued.'" More at the Independent Journal Review.
"No thy enemy". How can they form crazy anti-science rhetoric properly if they don't know what they are fighting against?
A lot of private practice Drs and Dentists back the tea party, as they vote single issue - lowering the taxes on their $300k+ incomes. Medical degrees and certifications are of course lumped in the science bucket so probably make up a large part of the total. They tend to dislike welfare programs such as medicaid and medicare too, as they cut into their profit margins.
I guess the assumption was that if you don't agree with something, you couldn't possibly know about it or understand it? I guess that's why there are so many atheists better versed in one or more bibles and religions than the supposedly devout followers of them?
Additionally, I could probably count as many "durp i done been abducted by aliens" and "angels are real!" morons from almost every political spectrum.
That can't be!
Everyone knows that the Tea party is a bunch of comic, laughable clowns with no grounding in reality. I mean, why else would they be so thoroughly lampooned using derogatory terms and snarky, dismissive comments.
Even Obama himself (praise be his name) mocks them.
It can't be true... can it?
I have also conducted a similar study Between a Red fish and an Yellow Fish, I have proven that together they know some orange fish, this I concluded though using another study's results (called are you an orange fish)
I weep for science.
No.
What the hell kind of crap summary is this? I hate to admit it, but I kind of miss the days when Taco ran this place. Remember when Slashdot used to discuss things like the finer points of BeOS or Amiga. This summary makes Fox News look like Pulitzer Prize winning journalism.
"Thatâ(TM)s what fruitful research is all about. It turns out that even the New York Times reported in 2010 that tea party supporters are wealthier and more college-educated than the general public."
As an outsider, that is surprising to me. I always thought the Tea Party was a bunch of extreme right wing climate-change denying Bible-thumping wackos represented by Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and that guy who shot the senator in the face. What little we hear in the international media shows your Tea Party as being a lot of mouth-breathing buffoons.
Now I wonder if it is a failing of your education system, as in, the older, more established people who would be attracted to the Tea Party received a better education than today's generation.
Here is the actual Tea Party platform
Feel free to argue any of those points, but don't just make up stuff. Far too often (if not "always") there is no debate on the issues... just "but what about the children/unborn". Whatever.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The Unabomber knew lots of science too. It didn't make him any less crazy.
The stereotypical Tea Partier is, for me, somebody who is professional, a high achiever who believes that most, if not all of that is due to their own merit. They might be really good at science and math; but they're short on compassion and unwilling to admit that they benefited in their youth from programs that are socialist. It doesn't surprise me one bit that they'd be more scientifically literate than average. Scientific knowledge isn't everything when it comes to leadership, management, politics, etc.. In fact, I'd me inclined to say it isn't worth much at all in those positions. Face it. The squishy "human factors" matter.
What other variables were controlled for or tested?
Breaking News: Researcher assumes those he disagrees with and doesn't like are ignoramuses. Is shocked when he finds out they aren't.
People who think about politics and issues enough to join up with a nonmainstream group are often brighter and better informed than average. (Regardless of the wisdom of the positions they adopt.) The average types tend to stay in the parties they grew up with.
This would probably also hold with members of the IWW, for example.
I'm guessing it's almost all a selection effect.
I am sick and tired of hearing about the idiots in the Tea Party. Why even publish the results of this study? The Tea Party is dangerous to our way of life. They fear change because they do not want to give up their wealth and power that was built on inequality, hate, derision, and homophobia. The Tea Party in their three years have:
1) Almost assassinated an American congresswoman. (2011)
2) Refused to even allow debate about gun-law reform as children are murdered in movie theatres and preschools. (2012)
3) Held hostage the national debt forcing the most austere sequester in federal government history, leading to spending cuts and furloughs (2013)
4) Shut down the government and almost lead to the worst global economic disaster since the Great Depression (TWO DAYS AGO)
5) Divided America to the worst point since the Civil War.
This kind of rubbish should not even be studied. The sooner we stop giving "attention" to the Tea Party, the sooner we can move on as a nation and heal.
By the way, this study is flawed, in that it is skewed towards college-educated people. If you were to get a proper representation of the Tea-Party demographic (the three-C's: climate-change deniers, creationists, capitalists), you would find that there are more GEDs and high-school drop-outs than college elite. You would also find that multiple studies have proven that the college elite (read: EDUCATED) tend to be liberal. The sample was skewed; much like that "study" years back that tried to say a Hummer was more environmentally safe than a Prius. The Tea Party is no way smarter than the rest of America.
I figured out in college that there were smart and dumb people (and informed and ignorant and good and evil ones) on all sides of pretty much any political question. That left emotions as the key issue, and it has never ceased to amaze and depress me how many people think of politics in the the most primitive, emotional ways: name-calling, tribalization, and tons of logical fallacies, all in the service of flinging feces at the Evil Others Who Don't Vote The Right Way.
The Tea Party is an interesting case in point. Their views, boiled down, amount to 1) the federal government should stick to its Constitutional powers, and 2) not spend more money than it has. Those are hardly extreme notions, but you'd never know it from the vicious attacks on them. This is not to say that every Tea Partier is correct on everything, or that their aren't nuts and unsavory types among them, but any political division that encompasses roughly 25-30% of the population will have some nuts and unsavory types.
So I don't find this result terribly surprising, but the people who think Tea Partiers are all ignorant racist/sexist/fascist/homophobes will certainly be surprised.
Final note: anyone interested in the psychology of political belief should check out the work of Jonathan Haidt, particularly his work on moral foundations theory. No matter what you believe politically, it will help you understand why the people who disagree with you think the way they do.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
..whether or not there is actually any substance to this story, everything about it is so hopelessly trollioactive that any attempt to have a meaningful discussion on slashdot of all places will be futile. So why post it?
And people wonder why the US is all fucked up?
"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost." ~ V.I. Lenin
KAHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaNNNN!!!!!!!!!
That is all.
Grr filter.
Ron Paul types are idealists, not your "normal" Republicans. We don't think of Ron Paul as a TPer, but that's only because he's so extreme. He's also a bit weird (i.e. mystical) which is why he stayed in that party.
The anti-science people are merely Republicans. There's actually very little conservative about them, and when you ask them about certain aspects of government relationship with people, they'll go left of Stalin and insist upon an extremely authoritarian police state that tells people what to do.
Then there are the non-mystics. They know about science, because science is the only way anyone has ever come up with, for understanding Anything; it turned out that everyone else (the non-scientists) were always lying about everything they said. So of course, they're informed. Not extremely informed, just better than average (remember: average is a pretty low bar). And a lot of them are idealists too. And .. get this .. some of them go with non-planned economies, really thinking that a free market algorithm will tend to find some fairly good optima (and by "fairly good" they mean something superior to everything you've ever seen in real life). So they become Tea Partiers.
That isn't to say all non-mystics become TPers; some believe in Philosopher Kings instead. If only we put unbelievable amounts of power into the hands of the best planners, they'll do Good. And also do better than anything you've ever seen in real life.
And then there's the other 90% of the population, who believe in mysticism. They split between Republican and Democrat however their parents did. And then they (incorrectly) label themselves as conservatives or liberals, or sometimes even become their self-assigned right/left labels through the power of cognitive dissonance. But without the idealism or any intellectual component at all. So they'll project anti-mysticism by knowing about evolution or global warming, but they're really doing it as dogma, not science. They just happen to be correct, as a matter of luck. Had they been told to believe in Body Thetans, they would.
I think that means "they know just enough to be dangerous". Perhaps on occasion little knowledge is worse than none at all.
That said, I do not find Tea Party supporters laughable at all. On the contrary - I think they are dead serious, and quite scary.
Tea party members - feel free to mod this "troll".
I am an American of Chinese descent, and I happen to strongly agree with *some* of Tea Party's core values, mainly, a fiscally responsible, and socially less intrusive government, as well as personal independence and responsibility.
The Tea Partiers I've come in contact with over the years (there are a bunch of them here in Texas) are generally nice people, and mostly WASPs, unsurprisingly. Their not-so-subtle religious fundamentalism as well as racial superiorism are a huge put off, NONETHELESS, most are well educated, and have a genuine respect for education and science, if not passion/devotion.
Were juiced up because the left believes the tea party wasn't grassroots and was funded by rich donors. Which of course may be true, but instead of discussing the issues such as lowering deficit spending to control the debt problem in the US, the typical left winger just shouts "tea bagger" and smokes a joint. Apparently thinking about the future only matters when it comes to global warming, and not when it comes to economics.
The Soviets had a similar problem - except the lefties were in control and imprisoned or murdered the "deniers". We haven't gotten that far, but you can see the delusional left thinking along those lines. Fortunately, the SovUnion ate itself alive, proving for all time that the left doesn't have a clue how to actually run a country.
News anchors and columnists still think anyone that isn't in the Democratic Party is a bible thumping, gun clinging, racist hillbilly. And their view is what gets spread to people in big cities who never experienced a tea party member for themselves. No surprise then that the researcher was surprised that tea party members have a large nerd contingent. We weren't surprised because we've seen them here on /. quite a bit.
A Tea Partier's knowledge of science is of minor relevance. It is their knowledge of the political system and their ruthlessness to exploit it for their (and only their) personal goals is what scares the living Jeebus out of the rest of us, trying to cobble together and maintain a stable society.
The Tea Partiers would happily drive the U.S. off a cliff, or sodomize a box of kittens, or shoot a nun in the kneecaps, if it meant they could get their way. They could not care less about the country or the political system that gave them power and a soapbox. They are addicted to the limelight and the power - nothing more, nothing less. 200+ years of political evolution has reached its culmination.
In fairness, the Tea Party is hardly unique in this regard. There are elements of all political parties that would gladly do the same - the Tea Partier's merely got there "furstest with the mostest".
Have any of you RTFA, and looked at the website this is posted on? Pretty much a blog, a year and a half old with "stories", i.e. bloglinks so vacuous towards everyone. "Independent Journal Review" ? Slashdot just got Onion'ed.
You've got it backwards. That astroturf "movement" was funded and assisted so that large numbers of people that opposed the regulations that Koch and the other funders disliked could be bussed in to protests to give an appearance of a lot of support. The people that organised the transport, media releases etc were not "Tea Partiers" themselves but professionals paid to create events. Most of the tea party was literally a rented crowd which is why it has no cohesion and nobody within doing much in the way of organising anything. Left alone they do not appear to be able to organise a drunken party in a brewery.
I'm not knocking the individuals who stand for whatever they do, but instead that it's a disorganised mob that cancel each other out and ultimately don't really stand for anything. They are a weird "only in America" footnote whose time passed once the adult supervision driving the busses decided to do something else.
The ironies are many, the largest of which are the strident calls for replacing the United States with the sort of fuedalistic system that the Boston tea party was a protest against. "Getting the government out of people's lives" really means letting the rich and powerful run a country without interference from the people - just like those English Lords could do.
I support a good part of the Tea Party platform because I can do math. Taxes are too high, spending is too high, and if the segment of our populace that depends on taxpayer funds for its living grows much more in contrast to those who provide the funds, the whole system will collapse.
I'm also pretty liberal on social issues, a passionate environmentalist, and a gun owner. I believe in equal rights for all under the Constitution. I'm okay with gay marriage. I'm agnostic. And I've never voted for a Democrat in my life.
Kahan wrote. 'But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the tea party,' he continued.'"
That's because Mr. Kahan has never left his Yale Law ivory tower long enough to meet anyone unlike himself.
He is also probably unaware of some important historical facts. Tea Party was not originally a GOP subset. It was a non-affiliated movement called "Taxed Enough Already" consisting mostly of independent voters. I am not pleased that the movement has been co-opted and turned into something different, but someone has to carry the torch of smaller government.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Our best hope for scientific literacy for Americans is immigration reform.
Get enough people from places where they don't think the world was made in 6 days and it might raise the average some.
Either that or hope the South secedes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The usage of "left" and "right" as political terms goes back to the French revolution. I've always wondered if the origin of "left" and "right" for politics had to do with brain hemisphere dominance and a slight preference for wanting to view the center from one side or the other of a chamber (parliment/congress). There are aspects of liberalism that seem right-brain dominant. Liberals are overrepresented in art, music, drama and writing (journalism.) Liberals seem to have a commendable and almost child-like faith in human nature, even when our failings are all-too-obvious..
Conservatives seem to be less trusting but possibly more realistic about human nature. When solving poblems, they do think ahead several moves, almost as a good chess player would. They know that the the knock-on effect of a subsidy is a monetary bias which raises the price of a commodity. Liberals don't seem to ever get that one. But conservatives don't seem to think more than one move ahead when it comes to political strategy. They're terrible at representing themselves, aphasic, left-brained. But it doesn't surprise me to hear that tea partiers are slightly more scientifically literate. It has been my experience that Tea Partiers/Conservatives in general are far more scientifically literate than average. In fact while we hear a lot of media noise (from those right-brained leftists) about creationism, global warming denialists. But it isn't the tea partiers who tend to believe in crystal power, Chinese medicine, magnet therapy, homeopathy, Sasquatch, UFOs, and Obamacare?
local governments just get picked apart one by one by the Corps and the 1%. A centralized gov't can be abused, but local govt is useless. It was the Federal Government that ended slavery and that bogus 'Separate but Equal' nonsense. Most conservatives championing small gov't just want one small enough they can abuse it themselves. Petty tyrants like Ron and Rand Paul that are all in favor of individual freedom as long as it's one of the freedoms they personally want.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Those that are literate enough to figure out what the tea party actually means might understand the science. The rest joined the "Don't Let O-bama Take our Gunz" party and have no interest in science beyond muzzle velocity and jacket composition.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Funny, I've never met a single one who wasn't
In other words you almost never meet them because you are so insular - I know your type; you are the type I would not tell I am a Tea Party member because you would automatically turn against me without thought, and you'd never suspect me of belonging because my views don't match up with your bigoted notions of Tea Party members.
It's a shame that there are even some people I consider good friends who I cannot admit to being fiscally conservative, because I see how unhinged you become at the thought of any kind of conservative in your ranks...
Something to chew on is that Tea Party members are WAY more tolerant of alternative viewpoints than you are; we have to be.
The Social Conservatives are just the people more used to being loathed by people like you so they don't mind telling you what they are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I want to call bullshit on this. The Tea Party not only likes buying pseudoscience from Koch Brothers funded libertarian thinktanks like the Heartland Group, consistently is filled with people who think evolution and the big bang are Satan's tricks, and identify largely with the evangelical crowds. Something isn't right here.
Nobody is saying they ALL are, but their vocal majority is pretty awful, so guess what? If your vocal majority and the ones in control are batshit crazy and off the wall kooky especially when it comes to civil rights, climaye science, public education, taxes, and immigration, you MIGHT get lumped in their with them. I'm sorry, the Tea Party has made it pretty clear that they have gone off the deep end?
Just to add a bit to this, most of our perception of political entities we are not directly involved with are largely shaped by the wording others use to define and deal with them. In the recent shutdown episode, some of the conservative commentators have compared tactics by the president and democrats with Saul D. Alinsky's rules for radicals and found most of them to be in use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
I will highlight a few that specifically intend to instil a picture of a group that is not consistent with reality.
âoeRidicule is manâ(TM)s most potent weapon.â
âoeThe threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.â
âoeIf you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.â
âoePick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.â
If in fact these tactics are in use, it is no wonder people find out what they think about the other guy is often wrong or vastly over inflated.
Tea Partiers don't seem to understand that the Social Security and Medicare programs they don't want changed in any way - both programs by the big, evil government they despise - are government programs. Oh, and that their friends in the Republican party - the people they're voting for all of the time - have spent the last 80 years (in the case of Social Security) and the last 50 years (in the case of Medicare) trying to destroy both programs. By any chance were the Yalies (that bastion of revolutionary thought) who conducted the study Tea Partiers themselves? ;-)
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he is suggesting that progressives (educated scientifically literate liberals) want a philosopher king. Woodrow Wilson could be considered the prototype of such a king. An authoritarian schoolmaster if there ever was one. Willing to trample the rights of the individual to make the correct decision *for* that individual. The fact he was very well educated and probably right quite a large portion of the time doesn't alleviate the effects of removing individual responsibility and freedom upon creative thought.
And the notion that a greedy optimization algorithm like a anarcho-capitalist pure free market is so incredibly elegant that it must work, neglects the nasty inelegant humans that are part of that market and screw everything up. If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter how elegant it is. I think that is the mysticism the gp was talking about. The faith Ron Paul has placed in elegant ideas often involves handwaving and appeals to common sense, rather than empircal tests. I think that is somewhat unfair as he does cite historical incidents, he just has different interpretations from his detractors. Also doing correctly scaled economic tests that control for all the variables is impossible. Still, he's kinda handwavy even compared to economists.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Everyone knows that the Tea party is a bunch of comic, laughable clowns with no grounding in reality.
Not at all. From outside the US, particularly from places like Europe where we have suffered when countries like extreme right wing political parties get out of control they look dangerous. The finding that they actually know science and reality but choose to reject it makes them scarier. I'd be far happier if I thought that all they lacked was education instead of medication.
News at 11.
Arguing that the federal government should not spend more money than it has in the depths of a recession is remarkably ignorant.
So are you implying that Dan Kahan is a far right winger? I question this study when most of the Tea *aggot party doesn't even know how some of the government programs, nor the government itself works, let alone science. But you do have a point, the only thing I would ask is who or what type of people based on there backgrounds, and or professions did they choose for the study? And that is the very problem with every study like this one, depending on the area, or how they want to study to come out, your going to see people give opinions that are to the left or right, or in this case opinions on what they know about science.
The thing is, the tea party stereotype is not so much built on "partisan caricature" but rather based on the people they elect. Michele Bachmann ? Need I say more ?
I've come to the conclusion that like the original Boston Tea Partiers who sparked a revolution are what the modern day Tea Partiers aspire to. The effort to trigger a default is revolutionary and is a direct assault on the US government which is technically treason. The fact that they score well in science implies that these are intelligent people who know full well what they are doing.
The thing is, the tea party stereotype is not so much built on "partisan caricature" but rather based on the people they elect. Michele Bachmann ? Need I say more ?
Both Republicans and Democrats have officeholders who conform to the caricatures of the other side. Both also have officeholders who don't fit the caricatures. It all depends on how even-handed you want to be. If you think "Michelle Bachman, Ha Ha Ha!" is a fair way of dismissing the concerns of the Tea Party and/or Republicans, you can't object when someone dismisses progressives and/or Democrats with "Hank Johnson, Ha Ha Ha!" (Johnson is the Congressman who asked, at a House hearing, if stationing more troops on Guam might cause the island to "tip over and capsize."
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
remember that it's effectively "survey of idiots finds that idiocy rates were slightly different between the two groups of idiots".
Newsflash: that ain't a ray of sunshine.
One problem is that it's not at all clear what "stick to Constitutional powers" means, it is something that people can validly disagree about. However many of the loudest Tea Partiers, at least the ones that most people manage to hear, believe that it is all obvious and there's no need for debate. Some may even propose unconstitutional actions (defaulting on the debt which seems on the surface to be against the 4th clause of 14th amendment).
The other problem is "spending more money than it has". This is a great principle. But it has to be achieved in a rational manner. That means not cutting it off cold turkey. We actually managed to slow this down and flatten the growth of the debt during the Clinton era (with lots of Republican help of course). However there does seem to be a big desire to do more than just keeping the spending in limit, but to actually reduce the spending even after there is no debt. Plus the idea of using taxes to eliminate the debt is anathema to most tea partiers.
As you state the two principles above, there are probably many liberals who would agree with those statements but who would be unwelcome in the Tea Party movement. That's because there's also a very strong conservative and libertarian leaning there. So while there many be many who say they are only basing their views on those two principles only, they also have very specific ideas about the corollaries they derive from those principles.
My co-worker is a Tea Party advocate, and I generally consider him bright, although a tad stubborn.
His issue with "science" is that he believes people in general are motivated by their wallet; and climate science, for example, is allegedly heavily biased toward "alarmist" results in order to justify yet more studies of a (allegedly fake) growing threat. If there are no fires, then nobody hires fire-fighters.
And evolutionists are allegedly biased to "deny a creator" so that they can sin without penalty. He knows all the usually down-side talking points, like the Piltdown fraud, the relatively suddenness of the Cambrian Explosion, few if any new phyla since then, etc.
Complex topics are difficult to verify on one's own and one has often has to rely on expert interpretation of fossils, weather patterns, etc.
Perhaps if he really dug into the topics, he'd see the stronger evidence, but it's not his interest to do such. He likes military history the most and reads only cursory articles on science-related topics, usually from biased sources. You are not going to "get to the bottom" of the topic that way.
As a semi-side note, I once wanted to "get to the bottom" of the UFO mystery and purchased many books on the topic from both sides. Unfortunately I still can't come to a conclusion. The skeptics don't make a good enough case to stop exploring UFO's. I consider it an "open mystery" still. Not everything has an available answer. I would note that the top skeptics surprisingly don't claim witnesses to the top cases are lying, but rather propose psychological explanations. But those explanations are odd, full of a few contradictions, and untested.
Table-ized A.I.
A Ray of Hope For Americans and Scientific Literacy?
Hope does not emit rays, so scientific literacy seems unchanged.
You mean vocal minority? The most vocal part of any organization will almost assuredly be a minority of that organization. The Tea Party is no different.
Do you judge Christians by the Evangelicals, or liberals by eco-terrorists?
The tea-partiers may or may not understand science, but, fortunately for the future of our democratic republic, they are manifestly ignorant of the legislative process, which is why they just got their heads handed to them on a platter in the U.S. Congress.
I actually rtfa, and then read the actual data behind it! Crazy I know. The biggest news in this study is that there is small correlation between liberal and conservative, no correlation between religious vs non-religious, and the only moderate correlation that could be determined placed 20% Tea Party, vs (30% Non-Tea Repub + 50% Dem.) Judging by the small correlation in the other direction when tea party and republican were combined, the non-tea party republicans must be dumber than rocks.
Not the tea party people... but rather the rabid statists that demonize them because they disagree with their big government agenda.
Understanding was never a priority. Having a discussion was never a priority. Getting to know was never a priority.
And so the statists and those stuck in their echo chamber do not not understand, have not discussed, and really don't know what they're talking about on the subject.
And they won't until they're prepared to put away the petty insults and ACTUALLY make some kind of effort to have an intelligent conversation on the issues.
Till that happens... their comments will remain as mindless as we've come to expect.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This correlation explains ~0.0025% of the variance i.e. the relationship is tenuous and not particularly influential one way or the other.
Beyond that the author of the blog post himself admits that education is even more highly correlated with the measure in question and I've got an inkling that if you did an analysis with education level as a mediator between party affiliation and science knowledge you'd see the relationship disappear or maybe even the sign change.
"Tea party members know more science than non-tea partiers"
Heh. Doesn't surprise me one whit.
The Actual Pauline Kael Quote—Not As Bad, and Worse
The clearest example of the bizarrely naive quality of hermetic liberal provincialism was attributed to the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael almost 40 years ago, and has been discussed in right-wing circles ever since. It went something like this: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” ... more
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The average atheist is a lot better versed in the bible than the average catholic. The latter have their dogmata, and have neither the inclination nor the necessity to diverge from the cherrypicking done by their spiritual superiors.
Defaulting on the debt is only a scare job. The US government takes in roughly 200 billion a month in tax revenue and serving the debt only take about 20 billion. The problem with not raising the debt limit is that we spend roughly 1/3 more then we take in so spending over that limit would be absolutely required to stop. This is easy to do but it would mean that entitlements stop and other things until either the debt can get under control or the limit is raised.
So a default for not raising the debt limit is only a default if the president insists on not servicing our debt and keeping entitlements and/or other government not subject to a shutdown active.
There were economic activities during the Clinton year that made a balanced budget more probable that simply won't be recreated. We had Y2k fears which spurred an entire industry trying to avoid a computer meltdown that would send us back to the stone age, there was the creation and conversions of the IRAs to ROTH IRAs in which retirement income that was saved before tax had the option to pay the taxes and then become tax free at withdraw. We also saved a load on government spending by modernizing a lot of the departments and automating some systems. But Clinton actually negotiated with congress when the government was shut down which got welfare reform and a few other footholds in entitlement reform that allowed the budget to be balanced.
President G.W Bush had actually produced and passed a balanced budget in 2001 which projected to be balanced his entire first term as president. The problem is that those other activities didn't follow into his term and economic activity collapsed greatly after 9/11. Something else that Clinton had was cheap energy. This is something we found to be missing during Bush's terms in office, somewhat present today but is unlikely to happen on the same scale because of the threat of global warming. Energy is something the impacts everything from the production of food and products to the enjoyment of either as well as the costs just to get to work. If you look back at almost every booming economy in history (in the US) we have had cheap energy and when that energy became too expensive, the boom was over. But note, a booming economy doesn't mean a balanced budget or debt reduction. It just makes it more plausible if someone where to attempt to do it.
It would depend on your meaning of liberal. There are Tea Party politicians who appose the federal government doing a lot of th
People with any interest in politics are likely to be smarter than those who do not.
Jersey shore fans? Less intelligent. People who vote in primaries? More intelligent.
Actually, I thunk about this a bit. Going back to circa 1970 when I was in college, I noted a divide between 'hard science and scientists," social science/scientists, and the humanities. The hard science, students and teachers: higher math, physics, chemists, geologists, esp geologists were tilted to conservativism. CP Snow even wrote about this, titled, "The Two Cultures." Which I haven't read.
See also Garret Hardin's 'an inclination of the mind.'
I haven't read the researchers study. I wonder if he differentiated what type(s) of scientific knowledge Tea Partiers have? It would be interesting the follow-up on other types of knowledge. One of my friends has a PhD in Physics, considers himself somewhat aligned with Tea Party politics, but has no idea who Tavis Smiley, Sonic Youth, Francis Bacon, etc. are. He also has near zero knowledge of biological sciences. When considering some public issue involving biological questions or mental-social science issues, let alone the humanities, he falls back on ideology.
Tall tale: being scientifically 'literate' or informed does not mean that someone will use or follow that knowledge. Kinda like US Catholics; most still have practiced birth control.
Another Tall tale:
I enrolled in a computer programming class in 1969. I had slightly long hair and was growing a beard. Hippy-light. The first day I enthusiastically sat in the front row. I was the only hippy in the room. The instructor came in. He was crew cut and had the look and demeanor of a Marine Drill sgt. He walked in, glanced around, and immediately started on his opening speech that this was a serious class, and wouldn't buck any goofing off, and if you weren't here to buckle down and do some hard work, why you should just go drop the class right now. While he said this he was glaring right at me, and ignoring everyone in the room. After the class was over I went and dropped it, because I suspected the vague possibility might have a prejudice against me.
1.) Ultimately, "Tea Party" of the self-declared is little more than a bunch of true Scotsmen moving goalposts around. Once you get beyond "Tea Party" office-holders (i.e. the folks who actually get elected on what they declare to be "Tea Party values," and who are uniformly right-wing reactionaries), you're left with a myriad of small groups not much more than a dozen strong, who together can't even agree on what day it is. Which brings me to my next point...
2.) Knowledge of hard sciences is (at best) independent of knowledge of social sciences, or economics, or any number of other factors that arguably make one more fit to govern. Their inability to organize, to the point where they are being led around by the nose by the likes of Sarah Palin, should highlight this. So an average "Tea Party member" acknowledges anthropogenic climate change. Ask them what should, or even can be done about it. Ask them what is politically feasible to accomplish on a national or international level.
The author notes that he doesn't know any self-declared Tea Party members personally. The general inclination here is to view him as an "ivory tower academic." But there's a converse: the law professor doesn't know any Tea Party members because the Tea Party doesn't actually value the study of law.
Hey man, the court jester can tell you how it is without too much pain. I suppose Colberts expose on the stupidity of super pacs was not informative or news? His Peabodys would have to disagree with you.
Yeah Wikipedia is the fount of all knowledge.
The weight of government expenditures increase the money supply though increasing the velocity (turnover) of money as a direct result of employing people. Attempting to achieve "full employment" of the workforce in turn stimulates demand for goods and services. Improved demand results in increases to GDP and tax revenues. Debt is both shrunk as a % of GDP and is able to be paid down*.
QED The nation gets richer
Suck it Trebek
*if the politicians can remember that's what they were trying to do with the money.
Not sure if you wrote what you meant to write. You said it's ignorant to argue for the government NOT to spend more money than it has in the depths of a recession.
If you meant what you wrote, then you are he of remarkable ignorance.
We had huge government intervention during the depression and this current recession / malaise. Government is the reason the depression was as deep as it was and as long as it was. Government is the reason we haven't rebounded from our current doldrums.
If you argue that a poor economy is worth all the government programs, then fine. But if you try to argue massive government control over the economy is positive for the economic health of a nation, that is crazy as shown throughout history. Compare North Korea to South Korea or East Germany to West Germany while the iron curtain was up for the glaringly obvious examples.
Less government control over the economy is the reason the United Stated had been well ahead of Europe economically for many decades and more government control is why it isn't any more.
If you USAians need a ray of hope for scientific literacy, you're fucked, plain and simple.
Neil Armstrong is rolling in his proverbial grave...for shame America, for shame
The cognitive dissonance from this is that the politicians that seem to have the strongest tea party support tend to be the most scientifically backward bunch out there. From Michelle "pray the gay away" Bachman, to a whole host of global warming deniers. Have they decided to sacrifice their science principals to achieve the goal of lower taxes and smaller government, no matter what wacko they have to sign on with in order to get that?
Then a copy of your post stapled to your forehead.
Professional anything assumes a level of competence requiring a commensurate level of intelligence.
Not that I can prove anything by your post, but I take it that you are NOT professional at anything but using jack-booted thugs to make slaves of everybody else to take what you want rather than trade goods and services of value.
With four 'medical professionals' in the extended family, I repeat, a pox on you, and a sincere hope that none of them will be forced to "service you".
A typical tea party type has more in common with a classic 19th century "liberal" than a modern "liberal".
A modern liberal has more in common with a 20th century collectivist (marxism, syndicalism, or corporatism) than a 19th century liberal.
A modern conservative has more in common with a 1930's progressive.
A modern progressive has more in common with a 20th century totalitarian (fascism, Stalinist communism).
All results of re-branding by the various ideologies after their various catastrophic failures.
... don't seem to be the ones elected to Congress in the last round of elections. I heard a report on the radio just the other day that stated that every single Tea Party-affiliated member of Congress that was elected in 2010 believed in a Young Earth (along with being knee-jerk climate change deniers and pretty much incapable of doing simple math when they get to talking about budgets). Where'd the researchers dig up the Tea Party folks that were exhibiting all the scientific knowledge? Surely not from the hallowed halls of Congress.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Isn't this basically selecting American who are interested in or active in politics against those who aren't? The NOT tea party set is primarily made up of people who are not bothered and just want to watch the episode of some inane soap.
If the results are very surprising, "statistical significance" is not enough. They're probably still wrong.
That's Bayes 101.
In my experience the simple fact is that older people are more likely to be classic republican, and younger one, from tea party. I see only that he is looking at science comprehension, from a "representative sample" of 2000 adults, but at no point did he mention age/education correction.
News at eleven!
It is one thing to deny that global change is occurring, it is another different thing to be against spending taxpayer money on ride-share programs, shutting down coal-fired power plants, funding windmills that produce electricty whose production cost is eight times higher, funding solar power manufacturing plants, funding electirc car companies, where the main thing that all of this spending accomplishes is to make the General Electrics, Tesla, Solardynes, Phillips, Exxon even more profitable.
Calling the people who oppose large government spending problems "deniers" just becuase they do not agree that something ought to be fixed is short sighted, and the idea that people who know about peer review journals but lack basic science skills are somehow better informed than those who understand basic science but might lack a detailed understanding of the climate change peer review process is just flat out ignorent.
Take 100 people, ask them if they think it will rain today, most will say according to the weatherman "it is supposed to", but if one of them is an actual weatherman, he'll take a look out the window and use his own judgement. The people who refer to the forecast are participating in the peer review process, the actual weatherman is thinking for himself. Peer review is not a subsitute for actual knowledge.
You don't get to redefine political terms on the fly to mean something utterly different than what the rest of the world understands them to mean. If you do that then you might as well start calling the sky yellow and grass grey, because it amounts to the same thing, which is Orwellian doublespeak a la "Freedom is Slavery" and "War is Peace."
Here is the standard understanding of the political spectrum, since you don't seem to know what that is, or because you're being cute, "According to the simplest left-right axis, communism and socialism are usually regarded internationally as being on the left, opposite fascism and conservatism on the right."
That means authoritarianism is not the sole province of the left (to which "liberal" belongs) or of the right (to which "conservative" belongs). The entire rest of the world understands that fascism and socialism are distinct political philosophies that stand on the opposite ends of that left-right political axis. Conflating the two is ludicrous and bespeaks profound ignorance of political science. It is nonsense. It is like asserting that democracy=fascism=socialism=monarchy=theocracy because they all have hierarchy and are not the one truly moral and good political philosophy, anarchy. You see? I have just done exactly what you have done by claiming Republicans are "left of Stalin," and it's ridiculous.
"Conservative" does not mean what you think it means, as a catch-all for everything sweet and light in the world like chocolate fudge sundaes and bunny rabbits and sweet, blond haired blue-eyed children gamboling on a sunny meadow. "Liberal" also does not mean what you think it means, as a catch-all for everything dark and evil in the world like taxes and public education and rules and safe food in your grocery store and helping out a random person whose car died on the side of the road. They are both political labels that describe political philosophies that are different, not smears. This is easily understandable by acknowledging that liberals also like sundaes, bunnies, and children, and that conservatives also like education and help random strangers whose cars are broken down on the side of the road.
Please quit perpetuating the idiotic meme that claims otherwise. Calling Obama a socialist fascist marxist muslim, all of which are mostly diametrically opposed (marxism espouses atheism, for example), does not tar him with anything because all of the tar has already wound up on you.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Tea partiers may know more hard science, but they know less economic science and social science.
Exhibit 1, the shutdown. Exhibit 2, Ted Cruz generally.
A big number of scientist and engineers were affiliates to the nazi party in Germany (some of them acknowledged scientific and technical geniuses). Culture is not an absolute limit to human stupidity, another form of Einstein's postulate: "Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but I'm not sure about the first."
The Koch brothers, aka Tea Party, don't really care about science as such. All they want is to not pay taxes or get EPA fines for pouring toxins into the environment. If you tell them that their actions kill people why should they care if science or the tooth fairy tells you so? They just don't care. They simply want more money for themselves and they believe selfishness is the only ideal. Caring about the suffering they inflict on the world would be a sign of human frailty.
"this current recession"
you were saying something about remarkable ignorance?
The army and navy are authorized but not mandated.
Also: no patents. No copyrights. No trademarks.
The Politico story ignores part of the researcher's conclusions:
"Next time I collect data, too, I won't be surprised at all if the correlations between science comprehension and political ideology or identification with the Tea Party movement disappear or flip their signs. These effects are trivially small, & if I sample 2000+ people it's pretty likely any discrepancy I see will be "statistically significant"--which has precious little to do with "practically significant.""
Interesting study.
Now please explain Sarah Palin.
Limiting government and being fiscally responsible are not extreme notions and most sane individuals support these ideals. What the Tea party gets insulted for is their insane black-and-white, near sociopathic approach to these ideals. This ranges from burn it all down and start over to blindly cutting huge swaths of programs with little concern for the consequences.
Or maybe that's just the loudest extreme arm of the group. Maybe the real Tea Partiers aren't like those elected to congress, where they vilify the poor and make some of the most idiotic statements I've ever heard uttered from politicians. Maybe we're all just getting a really bad impression because that is what the media wants us to see. The media shows us a bunch of uneducated white bigots with a banner "Tea Party" underneath it, and the real Tea Partiers just shake their heads and weep over how their good honest movement has been usurped by a bunch of neo-fascist, anti-science douchebags.
If that's the case, then the Tea Partiers need to make a solid effort to get these nutbags that claim to represent them out of office and get some real people in there. They are making you guys look bad.
~X~
If you launch into an unsolicited 45 minute long lecture about ``Fucking Obama is trampling my rights again!'' when you get a parking ticket, then I'm not going to want to be around you.
I don't want to be around you either, slave.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Those who believe in what is and not in what should be are more likely to be conservative, and somewhat radical about it, such as the "Tea Party". Blindingly obvious.
Having an upside-down and inside-out understanding of common political and legal definitions makes it really difficult for anyone to take you seriously.
You're so cute. It's funny that you think any reasonable or thinking person gives the slightest fuck about what you think. You don't take Tea Party folks seriously? Well, they don't take you seriously either...and they outnumber you. God does not care in the slightest about your idiotic opinion. A Revolution is coming, and people like you are too stupid to understand why. That's why you'll probably be among the first to die.
The Contract lists 10 agenda items that it encourages congressional candidates to follow:
Identify constitutionality of every new law: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does (82.03%).
Reject emissions trading: Stop the "cap and trade" administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. (72.20%).
Demand a balanced federal budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax modification. (69.69%)
Simplify the tax system: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words – the length of the original Constitution. (64.9%)
Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in an audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities. (63.37%)
Limit annual growth in federal spending: Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%).
Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010: Defund, repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (56.39%).
Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy: Authorize the exploration of additional energy reserves to reduce American dependence on foreign energy sources and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation. (55.5%).
Reduce Earmarks: Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%).
Reduce Taxes: Permanently repeal all recent tax increases, and extend permanently the George W. Bush temporary reductions in income tax, capital gains tax and estate taxes, currently scheduled to end in 2011. (53.38%).
To cold_fjord: Your quoted article doesn't touch on any of the background, but it touches on an example of how history -- if not actually repeating itself -- often rhymes.
A key component of Nixon's victory had to do with the schism in the Democratic party that formed in the late 1940's to 50's between the Northern Democrats (your "hermetic liberal provincialism", which sought to embrace the burgeoning Civil Right movement), and the Southern Dixiecrats (who portrayed themselves as primarily opposed to the expansion of Federal power, but also happened to be rather socially conservative). The Dixiecrats splintered off into their own faction -- the "States Right's Democratic Party"; at least portions of it saw themselves as separate from the the mainstream Democratic Party, even while attempting a Democratic party-platform takeover from within.
Not surprisingly, this conflict eventually would prove terribly destructive to the Democratic Party. Even though the Northern Democrats eventually won control of the platform, the climax of the conflict would come with passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, at which time President Lyndon Johnson was said to have prophetically stated that "We have delivered the South to the GOP for a generation" (note: variations in claimed wording of LBJ's quote, and he infamously has also been rumored to have remarked that "We'll have those N------ voting Democrat for the next two hundred years."). Nixon successfully courted the disaffected supporters of Southern ex-Democrats, winning him the presidency and successfully splitting the formerly Solid South -- the move that was the source Pauline Kael's bewilderment in your quoted article.
Of course, every reaction has it's equal and opposite reaction(s). The absorption of the Dixiecrats would also mark the beginning of the fall for Rockefeller Republicans. It also resulted the beginnings of an exodus for Black Republicans who had long supported the "Party of Lincoln", although the migration to the Democratic Party would take many years to complete.
The few people that I met were uber Chrisita, let's get back to the 50's, white older couples, usually male dominated marriage, claimed to respect the constitution but want to outlaw abortion, gay sex, and public schools. Yeah those people deserve all the negative publicity they can get.
Or more precisely, most people don't understand it.
The correlation coefficient (which goes from -1 to 1) was 0.05.
I.e. It's VERY CLOSE TO ZERO, meaning that correlation is NEGLIGIBLE.
In other words, when asked if there is ANY relation between science comprehension and considering oneself a "part of the Tea Party movement", the answer was - WE CAN'T FIND ANY.
Same goes for science comprehension and "liberal-conservative ideology and party self-identification" (i.e. science and political conservatism) - only that one is a negative 0.05.
Still comes out to bupkis though.
I wonder how would we measure correlation of this study to attention whoring?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"That might be more believable if the Tea Party had not challenged republicans who held safe seats in government during the primaries just to lose the general election to political adversaries."
This is the MSNBC and establishment Republican view (they both agree on it) but actually the establishment Republican candidates lost more senate seats than the TEA partiers did. (A good example of this was Mr. "Legitimate Rape" who was the candidate that defeated Sarah Palin's pick in the primary much to the joy of the establishment but who was then re-branded as a supposed TEA Party candidate who cost multiple seats after he opened his pie hole). Furthermore, your "evidence" here actually makes the opposite point: The TEA Party went after Rhinos in "safe seats" because phony small-government and phone less-regulation and phony lower-taxes politicians are not there in the fight when they are in office. i.e. having Rhinos in place benefits a GOP that simply wants power for power's sake but serves no purpose to people who actually want to do what they say they want to do: Make government smaller, leaner, cheaper, and more-focused on the essentials while getting it out of those aspect of our lives it was never supposed to get into in the first place.
" What you are claiming would require the republicans to actually defeat themselves in an attempt to make themselves win under a false pretense. That's a little like a bank robber asking the cops to drive the get away car at his next heist."
Again, your bad assumptions lead to a confused conclusion. If the TEA Party people were typical politicians who will claim to be for stuff while running for office but then abandon all that and use the office to keep power and become personally wealthy (notice how many Repubs and Dems become EXTREMELY wealthy while in congress earning $170K per year?) while doing nothing then you might make sense...but the TEA people are being far smarter than typical libertarians: They are trying to either take-over the GOP (as the established party that is, in rhetoric and on paper at least, closest to their ideals) and/or shame that party into actually doing what it always claims it's for in campaign seasons. Such a movement has little interest in helping self-serving mushy unprincipled people stay in office no matter how desperately the GOP wants them. This is why establishment Republicans like the Bushies and McCain and Peter King go nearly insane when faced with TEA people...
Actually, this is not much different from what happened to the Democrats in 1968. The hard left in the US who used to be at the fringes of society, hanging out at colleges and in coffee shops printing cheap little Marxist newspapers, disarmament papers, gay advocate publications, atheist books etc moved-in on the Democrat establishment after LBJ announced he would not seek reelection during the Vietnam war. As the generally Judeo-Christian and nominally free-markets and strong-military Democrat establishment was in the doldrums feeling bereft of ideas and drained by years of war was busy losing the '68 race to a hack named Nixon, the left was knocking-off "moderate" Democrats and electing a new breed of vary left-wing ideologues to "safe" seats and demanding the Democrats start living-up to all their "fairness", "tolerance" and "equality" rhetoric. The Democrat party of today shares almost no platform positions with the Democrat party of Jack Kennedy.
The lesson of BOTH parties and BOTH these transitions is that when a party sells-out its most-energized supporters year-in and year-out, election cycle after election cycle, and ceases to stand for anything more than "vote for me so I can have a prestigious position and become personally wealthy and powerful" it can come face to face with the combined forces of [a] an angry base, and [b] external groups who have a REAL agenda close to the one the party has been pretending to have.
I hold an apparently bizarre position on global warming:
Yes, the climate is changing, and evidence suggests it is following a warming trend. However, I do not fully attribute that change to anthropocentric causes. In light of these two statements, I am firmly opposed to knee-jerk high cost outcome-vague reactionary measures that serve to drastically affect the economic stability of the nation, or even the world. I am however, in favor of further study, while implementing 'gentle' changes, ie, more efficient power generation, reduction of emissions as quickly as is cost feasible, development of more efficient homes, tools, and machines to reduce our energy needs, etc.
The bizarre and potentially harmful ideas people are floating as serious solutions to global warming are absolutely terrifying. I have seen serious proposals ranging from genetically re-engineering cows and kangaroos(?) to produce less methane, to blanketing the seas with iron oxide to cause algae blooms to absorb carbon, to anchoring giant mylar bags of C02 to the ocean floor, to scattering reflective particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back into space. These, along with a host of other ideas, are beyond insane. I don't claim that global warming is a complete farce, but ideas like this, in the off chance that we are actually *wrong* could do immense and possibly irreparable damage to the environment in their own ways.
Effectively, in terms of climate change 'repair' we need a planetary version of the Hippocratic oath. "First, Do No Harm." any corrective action we take simply must not put the planet at further risk down the road. However, that is not an excuse to do nothing, greater energy efficiency across the board, and cleaner energy production are a must, and a long term benefit to humanity, no mater the final result of 'climate change science'.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
"Oh no, I wouldn't. Honest. If you launch into an unsolicited 45 minute long lecture about ``Fucking Obama is trampling my rights again!'' when you get a parking ticket, then I'm not going to want to be around you. Otherwise, we'd be cool. But as of yet, I've never met any self-identifying TP member who didn't do that."
The reason you've "never met any self-identifying TP member who didn't do that" is that the serious TEA Partiers around you knew what you are like and they did not out themselves. You might have encountered some ornery TEA Party persons or you might have simply encountered some ornery people you presumed were TEA Party people because your biases lead you to presume all ornery people who complain about government are "those people". Generally, serious and thoughtful TEA Partiers are pretty good at spotting closed-minded angry people who are likely to hate them and they are generally peaceful so they see no reason to provoke such people.
"Christ, you act as if you're about to admit that your gay to a bunch of Muslims or something. Get over the persecution complex."
Let's see... you apparently freely and casually abuse the name of Christ (do you also equally abuse the name of Mohammed around Muslims, the Buddah around his followers, etc?) but you do not understand that TEA Partiers around you can automatically sense your hostility and bigotry?????? I have known many like you over the years and my response is never to shove my political OR economic OR religious beliefs into faces. I am a civilized man; I will engage in a civilized discussion on any one or all of the preceding topics with another civilized man who disagrees but wants a good long friendly discussion over a beverage by the fireplace, but I'll not waste the time on somebody who oozes signals that he is not such a man.
"Hmmm..... Let's look at the behavior and voting records of the members of Congress that are part of the Tea Party...."
Yes indeed, let's look. Some TEA Partiers in congress vote one way on certain social/cultural issues and other vote the other way (the TEA Partiers are diverse on many things but have common cause and common purpose on government size, spending, taxing, and regulating). If you examine their voting records on money matters you will see they are generally doing what they said they would.... and it's refreshing to see some politicians do this
"And they deserve it (being loathed), mostly for not being honest with themselves about what their vision for the future really is."
You see why you do not see any real TEA Partiers around you? There might be some around you who tolerate your bitter bile, but there's no benefit to them outing themselves to you..... that would be like outing yourself as supporting the other team in a sports bar full of drunk fans whose team just lost. You appear to be a jerk and a bigot who continually outs himself as exactly this. You are probably only comfortable around others who agree with you on all the things that truly matter to you (Oh, I have no doubt you pride yourself on having a few "friends" who disagree with you on stuff that's not important...... all bigots have such "friends" who they maintain as "proof" that they are "open minded" and "good")
"Or maybe they'll be skeptical of your motives and your logic. Given how the Tea Party conveniently appeared only after Obama was elected, I'd be skeptical too."
This is a lie Obama supporters have been telling for years to try to imply that this proves TEA Partiers are racists and their opposition to Obama's POLICIES are invalid and driven by racism..... after all, if Obama's opponents are all RACISTS then they are all invalid and none of their arguments must be addressed, right???
The modern TEA Party started as a mini revolt among rank-and-file (as opposed to "beltway") Republicans during 1990s when Limbaugh told some complaining callers to send tea bags to the GOP members of congress who, having gotten control of congress for the first time in 40 years, were continuing to grow government and spend more than was coming in. It was meant as a warning shot from the party base to the party leaders that they needed to act as they'd always promised they would if they got power. Sadly, the move failed to get the needed attention in congress and it faded. This movement arose again under Bush43 as the base grew angry over the unfunded wars (NOT the fact that there WERE wars, but the way they were magically "off book"), the creation of the TSA, the creation of a new entitlement drug program (while the existing programs were already on a trajectory to destroy the nation) and then the ignition spark was the Bi-Partisan TARP and Auto Bailouts of the expired Bush admin and incoming Obama admin. The movement got a name "The TEA Party" and a spark of inspiration from Rick Santelli's "Rant of the Year" on the floor of the Stock Exchange (on CNBC if I recall) in Jan 2009..... probably viewable on YouTube...... which was all about financial bail-outs and more fiscal recklessness ( IIRC he was ranting about yet another proposed bailout of "homeowners" who could not afford the homes they'd bought on non-traditional terms and who'd be unlikely to every actually re-pay ...... a rant that had NOTHING to do with anybody's skin color )
We will know the Democrats have finally stopped their hundreds of years of racism (which included slavery) when they start treating blacks exactly as they treat whites (expecting them to be measured by their job PERFORMANCE) and stop trying to say either that we must accept sub-par performance (because their guy happens to be black) OR that nobody can question their guy's performance (because he is black). It's disgusting. Just go back and LOOK at the way the press GRILLED presidents of BOTH parties when they were LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush41.... and compare to the way the press (90% of whom self-identify as lib dems or further left) treats Obama. Some of the best leaders of the TEA Party are black and NOBODY but the Democrats make ANY issue of their skin color (Democrats call them "Oreos" or "Uncle Toms" or "Race Traitors" or worse...)
"Far right" is TINY government (or possibly no government) with almost no power and no taxes and maximum freedom (to succeed or fail). Any social safety net in "far right" is provided by free people acting charitably to each other as individuals or in groups (churches, secular "mutual aid societies", etc). You guys in Europe have never had a "far right".... you mostly went from various forms of totalitarian monarchy to various forms of spread-the-wealth-around (as an anti-monarchy play). As a result, your entire political spectrum is insanely, dangerously, precariously perched between national socialism and international socialism.... you paint national socialism (NAZI) as "far right" and international socialism (the Commies) as "far left" and you all try to live comfortably on a knife-edge of "social democracy" between them. Your education systems try to scare you with tales of the "far right" NAZIs (with their government control over everything like national schools, national healthcare, indirect control of industry, mighty armies, etc) and the "far left" (with their government control over everything like national schools, national healthcare, direct control of industry, mighty armies, etc) and in doing so, your leaders produce populations who are afraid of anything that does not employ armies of bureaucrats maintaining the supposedly "moderate" status quo. You are in a gilded cage of the left's construction and you will never know true freedom. You and your children and your grandchildren can look forward to a boring moderate safe uninspiring future..... unless all that socialist economic fantasy fails.... in which case you will likely tip left or right into some evil form of totalitarianism. What you simply do not grasp is that your political spectrum is one centimeter wide .... 15 meters to the left of the U.S. where we once had actual freedom, and no king or queen has ever stood (except as a visitor).
The American left has long admired the left of Europe without fully understanding it, which is why FDR had so many admirers of Stalin and Hitler before WWII. Indeed, FDR had advisers studying the "economic miracle" in Germany and implementing some similar economic "reforms" here as a remedy for the depression (not a wild Godwin-esque trolling... go spend some time in the national archives READING) before Herr Hitler explicitly showed the world his true stripes. The borrowed "reforms" did not help in the US and the intellectual borrowing stopped as the horrors over there became known over here (and thus ended the American experiment with "early twentieth century progressivism") The Stalin huggers of FDR's administration were not tainted by the war as the Hitler huggers had been and were inherited by Truman; they became the ammo that armed the right in the US during the fifties. Our left keeps trying to borrow programs from your "center" (the middle of your extreme left spectrum) but the results are never very good here because they do not scale well to our huge and diverse nation and also because we lack your corps of much more competent career bureaucrats. I doubt that Germany, for example, would have done the "Obamacare" rollout. It's possible the European competence at managing large bureaucracy derives from having a certain trained portion of the population managing the affairs of their monarchies for centuries.....the US lacks this cultural asset/baggage.
The problem with not raising the debt limit is that we spend roughly 1/3 more then we take in so spending over that limit would be absolutely required to stop. This is easy to do but it would mean that entitlements stop and other things until either the debt can get under control or the limit is raised.
So a default for not raising the debt limit is only a default if the president insists on not servicing our debt and keeping entitlements and/or other government not subject to a shutdown active.
*BZZZZZT* Wrong.
Government spending is required by law. That mean each time a government obligation comes due, the President is required to pay it by law. (Well, presumably he only to pay it if he has the money on hand. This has never been tested in court, but he can't do things that are physically impossible.).
There is no legal justification, and it would be criminal, for him to refuse to pay an obligation on Monday just because on Tuesday he has some debt to service. Even if that obligation on Monday is completely trivial that the government could easily not pay at the moment, he is REQUIRED BY LAW to pay it, right then and there, no matter what consequences happen on Tuesday due to lack of money.
(There are some circumstances where he can possibly make a judgement, like if he had to make two payments in the same day but could only afford one, but that's not actually important here.)
People who assert otherwise are either a) morons who don't understand that the executive branch operates under the law, including _when_ and to _whom_ payments are made, and cannot diverge from this, or b) Republicans who do understand them but are rather suspiciously suggesting that President Obama decide to break the law...they all pinky swear they won't impeach him, of course.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Most of modern science rests atop pillars built by those people you disparage as those who "think the world was made in 6 days"
Ever heard of Newton? Kepler? Copernicus? Monseigneur Georges Lemaître (of "the big bang theory" fame) ?
The idea that all serious science is done by atheists is a modern bit of propaganda that is hung upon Darwin. Without all those pesky religious nuts you clearly dislike there would be no modern science; a point once made by the non-Christian, somewhat famous Dr Robert Oppenheimer whose scientific credentials include "synthetic sunshine"(TM) and who was clearly NOT making some self-serving statement.
Oh, and NO.... our best hope is NOT to keep importing people from the rest of the world, teaching them science, and then displacing all the young Americans who SHOULD have had those educations and careers; Our best hope is to tell jerks like Bill Gates and Mr Facebook that they will NOT be allowed to keep suppressing American wages this way..... if they need more engineers then they should either train them, or pay more to get them from the existing labor pool..... it's a little thing called "supply and demand" and if they want to use it when it conveniently makes them billionaires then they must use it when it inconveniently means they have to pay their employees more money
And that post should not be read to imply that no government spending is under control of the executive. Grants, for example, could stop being issued, and certain projects where the executive has discretion could be delayed.
However, social security couldn't possibly be stopped by the executive, and neither could 90% of military spending. Hell, 60% of the budget is 'mandatory', meaning it is money we have to pay under standing law, not under the year-to-year budget process. And probably 90% of the remaining money is allocated, by law, under the budget process.
I'd be amazed if the amount of money legally under the control of the president, to the extent he can legally choose not to spend it, was more than 5% of the budget.
(And this entire stupid argument, ignoring the fact it's illegal for the president, is under the rather dubious logic that people would continue buying government bonds simply because that is the one part of the government still working, while we're failing to make payments on everything else. Uh, no. That's not how loans and bond markets work.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"The constitution didn't give women the right to vote."
The Constitution very explicitly does NOT give ANYBODY rights! In the American form of government, there is recognized to be a creator (No, not explicitly Jesus, or Jehova, or any other named deity.... that's up to the people to individually decide) and all people get all their rights from that creator. Since those rights are not given by government, government has no right to take them. The majority does not give those rights and the majority therefore cannot take them away. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say "we grant to the people the following right..." Many of our founders were afraid that, human nature being what it is, our government would grow and grow until it was overstepping and trampling on our rights so they insisted that a "Bill of Rights" be added (the 1st ten amendments) to emphasize the minimum things government could never infringe. Others feared that by adding those amendments, future generations would fall into the trap of thinking those listed rights were the only ones that could not be infringed. You, my friend are in the trap.... and you would not be had you read their actual writings instead of just lapping-up what a high school teacher poured out and then listening to late-night comics. Oh, and FYI: Women who owned property were able to vote in some northern states right from the beginning.
"Blacks were considered 3/5ths of a person."
Only in your fevered, propagandized mind. The constitution considers non-free persons to be 3/5ths for purposes of allocating seats in congress (as a temporary sop to the Democrats who ran the slave plantations of the south). This is an ANTI-SLAVERY position designed to make sure the influence of slavery goes away over time and no new colonies/states are slave states! Furthermore, it does not talk about skin color because blacks in the northern colonies were complete people with full rights, and because there were a very small number of non-black "indentured servants" in the colonies. You would know this if you read REAL historical documents instead of just accepting what a bunch of unionized Democrat school teachers spoon-fed you. FYI: some free blacks served in the revolutionary war army - some were heroes, and there's plenty of historical records of this for those who actually go READ them. Blacks in northern states were always free, including free to vote, free to own land, etc. The US government (including the Army) became officially segregated under Democrat president Woodrow Wilson's orders about a century ago (around WWI).
"There were no Presidential term limits"
Right. And there should not be. George Washington set the precedent that a man should serve his people for a limited time and then walk away from power to live among them. No tyrant could safely do this. All presidents upheld the precedent until Democrat FDR broke it. Republicans at the time grew fearful because FDR did not walk away from power and he was using a new thing we now call "mass media" (movies and radio) to make it nearly impossible for a challenger to meet him on equal footing. There are old newsreels (which used to be the news people saw in theaters before the feature film played) with FDR supporters in the media denouncing Republicans as hating the poor, etc - same playbook decade after decade - and the GOP had no equivalent media mouthpiece. They pushed term limits as a fix to prevent the rise of a tyrant using the new communications tech of the day.... they were wrong to do it; now all presidents become "lame ducks" in their second terms whereas al presidents before Truman could keep power by keeping open the option of a third term (almost as a threat). The American people should, however, be VERY suspicious of any politician who actually tries to stay a third term.
Wrong. The laws automatically appropriate funding which is considered spending but it in no way requires it _all_ to be spent or _all_ to be spent at once. Under the 14th amendment of the US constitution, the president is obligated to service our debt first then deal with any lawful spending. I know it is a problem for most of you on the left when the constitution gets in your way, but constitutionally, he is obligated to honor the debts before any spending by law. that means even if congress passed a law saying all money appropriated either by entitlement law or whatever must be spent on anything other then the debt, it would be unconstitutional to do so.
So, if we didn't raise the debt limit, the constitution would supersede any laws in place, the president would have to service debt obligations and then make judgement calls about which entitlements would remain fully funded. To suggest that a law can create a conflict here is incorrect as the US constitution as well as judicial declaration, clearly places the constitution and it's amendments over top of any law made by congress or states or judicial order.
Everything else you wrote is negated by that fact there alone. I will not bother addressing them in detail but no criminal act can withstand conflict with the Constitution so that argument is dead on arrival. Your ad hominem attacks fail also because it clearly demonstrate you have a lack of knowledge of the constitution and it's role in government.
And the idea of an impeachment is already completely ignorant because Obama has already violated his constitutional obligations and faced no repercussions at all over it. Why do you think that all the sudden one more time would make a difference when congress cannot even get together to work out a reasonable deal on the debt or budget? IS it because the thought emboldens your ignorance and bluster's your false understandings?
All government is not the same, your a fool if you think so.
Big government A, and big government B could be completely different, and have vastly different outcomes.
Big govt A spends 49% GDP on wars propping up friends in foreign countries and handouts to the already mega wealthy.
Big govt B spends 50% GDP on healthcare, infrastructure, education, science, etc.
Intervention can be good or bad, regardless of its size.
Where would you rather live? Is the bigger big govt worse?
What is this merging you speak of?
Are we still having the same number of people doing the exact same things as before with a different letterhead on the paper?
Net change, increase of $X to print new stationary. That is all.
If your only concern is the number of departments, just stick them ALL together and call it "The Department Of Government". Problem solved.
You assume that education has to be expensive. Check out 'unschooling'. A group of mixed-age kids given computers and games, with an adult to answer questions and handle problems, will go all the way through a good 12-year education without teachers being necessary. Youtube is a marvelous educational tool, and kids will use it a lot.
I fucking LOLed.
The, a 'Independent' Journal Review is not terribly independent - Pretty Right wing actually, and the article cited has a *lot* of context missing. It's not as bad as some I've read - the basic thesis is true, but statistically neither the Conservatives, the Liberals, or the Tea Party itself are *meaningfully* correlated with better or worse understanding of Science - very slight negatives in the main body of Conservatives, very slight positives in Liberals and Tea Party members, but the correlations are miniscule. The researcher has some choice words to say regarding the attempt to make the Tea part look like hyper-encephalic geniuses here, including a bit of snark along the lines of "Hey Suddenly Eastern Ivy League Studies are completely trustworthy among Tea Party Conservatives - Who Knew!"
Original Post: Some data on education, religiosity, ideology, and science comprehension
His Update with a review of responses: Congratulations, tea party members: You are just as vulnerable to politically biased misinterpretation of science as everyone else! Is fixing this threat to our Republic part of your program?
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I am not sure that it is necessarily all that surprising. For one thing, if you are against something, you would have to learn something about it, so you can argue against whatever you disagree with.
And the thing is, being stupid often requires quite a lot of intelligence - you have to be able to gain some degree of insight, and then you have to be able to explain away the conclusions you don't like, which is actually hard work, intellectually. So, the people who are prominent in those fringe movements have to be very intelligent. Think "emperor's new clothes": the clever, experienced and insightful adults are the ones that are taken in, and the naive child accepts the obvious conclusion.
They're not dumb, they're EVIL. Understand the difference.
It just proves that people who are primarily fact-oriented know how to follow the money.
And that aligning themselves with those who have money, over anything else, is what really matters.
Follow the money and the ugly truth is always revealed.
What irritates me most about Tea Party folks isn't their knowledge of facts.
It's the weighting of some facts being more important than others. Like the fact their party isn't "grass-roots" at all, it's funded by the same kind of corrupting and dishonest big money everyone else is funded by.
The ability to memorize facts and call them "science" is consistent with the way "science" has turned into more of a field populated by specialists and mere technicians than people who are capable of innovation and paradigm changing insight.
Because that isn't what generates obscene wealth. Being a whore is.
So glad to see all these comments that directly relate to the article at hand. Oh, wait there are very few that do. Another item on the web hijacked by a bunch of adults acting like two year olds.
As for the article, i felt it was a bit interesting as far as the final results were concerned.
"Far right" is TINY government (or possibly no government) with almost no power and no taxes and maximum freedom
By your definition, not mine. The US political spectrum is shifted so far to the right on the non-US spectrum that we need to use our peripheral vision to see it which admittedly does merge things together. The US system works well when you have rapid growth as the US has enjoyed in the past. Regulation tends to get in the way of that and is not required because things are growing rapidly enough that if someone is blocking you or your company in one direction you can easily expand in another.
However where it fails, as we see it doing now, is when growth slows and there is increased competition for limited resources and benefits. In this scenario you need regulation to restrain the largest players becoming bullies. Just look at the US today - it is run by corporations who can practically dictate the laws for their own benefit. Saying that the system gives everyone 'true' freedom is only half the story because those with power can then use their freedom to effective restrict the freedom of others. The end result is that only some actually have true freedom and everyone else is left with a hollow freedom where certain choices can leave them penniless, homeless and without any healthcare. It's the same sort of freedom you have when someone puts a gun to your head and says "do this or I shoot you" - you are free to choose not to do it so hey you must have "true freedom" right?
At the same time the left places far, far too many restrictions on everyone's freedom in some insane drive to produce absolute equality for everyone and I would completely agree that many European countries have gone far too far down the socialism road. I'd also agree that there is a fine balance, perhaps not a knife edge, between straying too far to the right where we lose our freedom to corporations, and too far to the left where we lose it to government. What I would disagree with is that the US is somehow going to escape needing to make the same balance. You are no longer a young nation flush with the exhilaration of youth and if you are going to continue to be successful as a nation you need to find your own balance to maximize everyone's freedom not just those with the most money and power.
If you want to keep the money you earn in your paycheck, you are scary.
You mean vocal minority? The most vocal part of any organization will almost assuredly be a minority of that organization. The Tea Party is no different.
Do you judge Christians by the Evangelicals, or liberals by eco-terrorists?
No, but I judge Catholics by the actions of the Pope and the church leadership they support. And guess what? I judge political parties by the actions and rhetoric of their leadership as well. The Tea Party doesn't just have a few nutters--it's covered in batshit from top to bottom.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I know it is a problem for most of you on the left when the constitution gets in your way, but constitutionally, he is obligated to honor the debts before any spending by law. that means even if congress passed a law saying all money appropriated either by entitlement law or whatever must be spent on anything other then the debt, it would be unconstitutional to do so.
Hey, look, it's the complete dumbass who has no reading comprehension but constantly pops up to defend whatever fucking stupid thing the right believes.
You just repeated exactly what I said...that the president must pay any currently outstanding debt. I just additionally pointed out that if there's an outstanding debt, he has to pay it, period, he can't save the money for a more important debt that's going to happen later.
And, despite what is going on in your fevered imagination, he is, in fact, required by law to pay social security, for example. If the president could just decide not to pay social security, I have a feeling some Republican president would have actually tried that at some point, don't you?
You did notice I used the word 'obligations' in my post, right? What the hell do you think that means? The government owes that money to people on social security. The government owes defense contractors. The government owes its employees their wages. Those are debts. They must be paid, on the schedule laid out in law. (Only if the executive has money, presumably.)
You, along with the right, have decided that the only 'debts' are 'issued bonds'. Or, rather, you idiots have spent absolutely no time thinking about this.
If someone comes and works on your house for an agreed on amount, and you haven't paid them yet, you are in debt to them. Um, duh. If you are a company, and pay employees your wages on Friday, and it's Thursday, the wages you owe for the week so far are debts and will be reflected as such on your balance sheet. Um, double-duh.
Bonds, are, rather obviously, just one of the many ways to be in debt...if they were the only way, uh, no human being would be personally in debt, because human beings usually don't issue bonds. We should try that with banks. 'No, I don't owe you any money. To owe money is to be in debt, and according to the Republicans the only sort of debt that exists is bonds. I have never issued you or anyone else any bonds, thus I am not in debt.'(1)
Now, you say we must pay debts because of the 14th amendment, and I don't think the 14th is that relevant, and assert that's just basic law, but whatever, that's rather moot. The point is, 95% of money that exits the Federal government is to pay obligations, aka debts, created by the law. (And the other 5% is to pay obligations created by entities under the executive's control that he could stop, but are still obligations once created...but he could stop making more obligations.)
The President is required, by law (And possibly by the constitution, whatever.), to pay all those debts, not to just the ones to bondholders.
1) Hilariously, this logic makes the entire debt ceiling rather pointless, because if 'bonds' are the only 'debt', the president could just get loans some other way, like via credit cards and other unsecured bank loans. Heh. Actually, money owed to the social security trust isn't 'real' bonds (We call them bonds, but they are not, really.), so we're already a good deal under the debt ceiling if you only count 'bonds'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You know, sometimes after I make a post, I can psychically predict sumdumass's response, and this time I predict, drumroll please, that he will attempt to argue that the 14th's amendment is relevant here, despite the fact I pointed out it doesn't matter.
So, I will preemptively respond by conceding that point, for the purpose of this argument. The 14th amendment does apply here.
So now sumdumass will have to address my actual point, in that almost all government spending is to repay debts, so anyone who thinks the 14th somehow means 'bondholders get paid first' is an idiot. There's nothing special about their debt vs. everyone else's under the constitution or the law. It doesn't say 'US bonds shall not be questioned'. It says the debt can't.
In fact, let's look at the actual wording of that part of the 14th:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
And before you try to argue that some specific thing isn't listed there, as I also psychically(1) predict you will do, please notice that 'bonds' are not in that list either. The list is not inclusive. I was just pointing out the amendment lists two specific examples of public debts, and neither of them is bonds...one is a retirement system, and one is wages!
1) It is very easy to psychically predict sumdumass's responses to things. He will pick a completely irrelevant thing said and argue as if it's important. Notice I didn't say an incorrect irrelevant thing...if sumdumass were to start accurately nitpicking responses, people would go 'By gum, you're right!' No, sumdumass will find something that is, indeed, completely correct, but completely irrelevant to the point, and argue about that, like he just did with the 14th amendment. That way other people will argue back over the pointless thing, and the original point will completely lost.
Don't fall for it. Ask yourself 'If sumdumass was right, would my point still stand? Yes, I know he's wrong, but if weren't, would my actual point be correct anyway?' If the answer is 'Yes', then just concede his idiotic position and repeat your actual point as if he's right. He'll keep trying to argue the point and come across as a complete idiot.
(For example, see his followup post, where he will try to argue somehow that 'public debt' only means bonds, despite the fact the 14th amendment just explained that 'bounties' and 'pensions' count as it!)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Like i said, your drivel is negated by the 14th amendment. Your explaination of why you think it is not is also negated. The laws about automatic spending can not be constitutional if the congress does not appropriate funding for it. Otherwise during a budget impass, none of the government would shut down at all. A law binding social security payments can not remain constitution without the means to pay it.
Debt, as in what the 14th requires the US to pay is debt paid. Not creating debt that has not occured yet because a law says it should be created. Despite social security being funded differently the the rest of the government (it can pull from it trust fund without incuring additional debt unlike other spending), any law mandating payments would be unconstitutional if the funds weren't availible and congress didn't authorize funding.
You simply cannot pass a law that takes away the constitutional roles of congress or the president and have that law supercede the constitution. All laws regarding spending have to be interpreted through the constitution else they ae become unconstitutional. If the debt limit wasn'T increased, it would be a duty of the president to chose which spending continued within the bounds of the capabilities of what is availible. If legal obligation exceed the abilities, the president would have no choice but to view spending in excess of our ability to pay as unconstitutional if only for the duration of the inability to pay.
Or in words an ad hominem slinging partisan hack like you who tried to insult without effect rather then argue the logic of your pisition can understand. If the ability to fund the spending is not there, regardless of any law, the funds absolutely cannot be spent constitutionally and like any other law that the constitution doesn't allow, would become unconstitutional. Ehat you seem to want to argue is that if a law regulating speech like inviting a riot is ever enforced in a way that is unconstitutional, it must be enforced because there are ways it can be enforced that is constitutionsl and that is completely wrong.
Like i said, your drivel is negated by the 14th amendment. The spending in excess of what we are capable of would have to stop in order to remain constitutional.
Hey, moron, reread my post.
As I pointed out, almost everything the government pays out is 'debt' in one form or another, as in, things it owes people by law. You managed to complete ignore the entire fucking post, and have started yammering about the 14th amendment yet.
The 14th amendment requires that we pay all debt. (Well, not really, but, as I said, I won't argue that.) I will, again, point out as part of the debt we have to pay it gives examples of pensions and bounties. It does not say we have to repay 'bonds', it says we have to repay 'debts'. All of them. Bonds, pensions, bounties, back pay, social security, medicare owed to doctors, all debts.
You, while yammering that we have to repay all debts, have managed to completely fucking ignore is that almost everything is debt.
All those things are, equally, debt, and they have to be paid on time. By law. (And, you assert, by the constitution, to which I say 'Whatever.')
We cannot decide not to pay social security debts because we have bond repayment debts coming up tomorrow. (In fact, under your logic, it would be unconstitutional to try to do that.)
The laws about automatic spending can not be constitutional if the congress does not appropriate funding for it. Otherwise during a budget impass, none of the government would shut down at all.
This is a large part of why, under the budget shutdown, only 13% of the spending stopped, you idiot. Thank you for pretty much proving my point.
You seem to think the government is somehow deciding to spend money in real time, that it pays money and gets things in return.
Uh, no. Like all businesses, it hires people and they work for free for two week (Or however long) and then they get paid. Those people are owed their wages. Those wages are debts the government owes them.
Likewise, the government does not go out and buy bridges. It enters a contract with a company to build a bridge, and then when the bridge is done, the government owes that money.
(I won't argue social security in this post, because that is much more complicated, but people really are owed social security benefits under the law. But even without social security, we're still screwed.)
If we stop raising the debt ceiling, we still owe all that money, and, as you keep insisting, government debts shall not be questioned.
You can yammer about 'Not creating debt' all you want, but the fact is the government has billions and billions of outstanding debt that isn't bonds, right now, already existing, and the government must pay them, which means at some point, many debts payment are going to be missed, including bond repayment.
This is even accepting the dubious preposition it is legal for the president to 'choose' not to make new debt in violation of the laws saying he has to. The constitution says all debts are valid, but it does not logically follow from that 'And thus if the president thinks the government won't pay debts when they come up, he has the power to ignore current law and not create them.'! There's nothing in that amendment about the government not having the power to create debt, or the president to override the creation of debt.
But even in that rather surreal world which gives the president nearly unlimited power, the US would slide over a frozen debt ceiling almost immediately due to fucking payroll, even if the president instantly laid everyone off in violation of the law. (Because, duh, even laid off people get paid for the time they already put in.)
If the debt limit wasn'T increased, it would be a duty of the president to chose which spending continued within the bounds of the capabilities of what is availible.
No, it's not. It's the duty of the president to do what the laws and constitution say.
In the actual world, if Congress has allocated $40 million for a library in Dover, the president (That is, the e
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?