Talk Elections

particularly annoying talking points:

-"family values." the only people that say this are either ones too cowardly to come out and say what we all know they really mean or people that are so clueless that they totally miss what it's actually code for and instead think it sounds nice and fuzzy.

-"iran wants to wipe israel off the map." this has been debunked so many times, not to mention it makes no logical sense. why would iran want to fire a nuke at a country with hundreds of them that is unconditionally supported by the us. use your head.

-"you're a conspiracy theorist." this is never in reference to an actual conspiracy, just a response by idiots whenever you mention things like the fast and furious scandal. anything remotely critical of the government now is a conspiracy theory according to obamabots. it's like what happened to the word 'racist.'

-"lesser of 2 evils"

-"socialized medicine." this is not an argument.

-"the poor/48% pay no taxes." right because sales tax, payroll tax, cigarette taxes, gasoline tax, property tax, etc. don't count. this is so idiotic. to make it worse it's normally paired with something similarly inane and disingenuous like "everyone needs some skin in the game" to justify supporting tax hikes for poor people.

-"i support a strong defense."  because anyone that has a problem with the military budget constantly expanding regardless of our financial situation or need obviously wants a weak defense.

-"clinton reduced the debt." no president has reduced the debt in my lifetime, this isn't hard to google either. what happened was congress stole money from social security (as usual) and that resulted in the deficit going down a bit for awhile. and then they kept borrowing from it but still managed to run massive deficits under bush.

-speaking of which: "obama ended the iraq war." no, by the time he got in most of the people fighting in iraq were armed contractors. that's still the case, we still have a huge heavily armed military base there which isn't going away. the fact that the media reported the iraq war was ending twice should have tipped you off that something was not quite right.

-"reagan reduced spending/never gave amnesty/[insert ridiculous claim]."  

- "reagan conservative." he's totally irrelevant to most people now. a huge chunk of the electorate either wasn't born when he was in office or (in my case) were far too young to remember any of his presidency other than what we learned second-hand. the constant idolizing and insistence that you're a "reagan conservative!" in 2012 is embarrassing as far as I'm concerned. stop talking about how you want to to be an imitation of someone who was dead before I finished high school, and start proposing solutions to problems now. it's not like you see democrats talking about how they're "fdr progressives."

-"saved or created [insert] million jobs." if you want to argue for keynesian economics ok whatever, but please don't insult my intelligence.

-"white privilege." this is such an infuriating oversimplification. there's so much evidence pointing towards poor scotts irish actually having worse education and career prospects than minorities in this country for example. white people are not a monolithic group, there are definitely significant outcome differences for people based on other variables like class or ethnicity still.

I agree with all of what you said, actually.

Yes. Surprisingly...

"The mess left behind by the last government!"
Shut up, David Cameron!

"We had no other option when we entered coalition."
There were many, Clegg!

There are so many that I don't know where to start.

Indeed. Everything that's been suggested so far, at the least.

Without Blair Labour wouldn't have won an election/Blair won 1997 (with the implication that anyone else wouldn't have).

The "If you are a member of an ethnic minority, It isn't a prejudice, it's 'culture' , but if you are anyone else, it is unacceptable" attitude. It is is abominable and is the clearest set of double standards in modern political discourse.

"Obama's socialist agenda."

1. The people saying this have no idea what "socialist" means, only that it is something bad.

2. Obama barely qualifies as an American liberal, let alone a "socialist."

"Left wing media bias"

Uh, yeah, a quick glance of the newspaper endorsements for the last election disproves that pretty swiftly.

'sanctity of' anything.

"Facts have a liberal bias"

"All conservatives are stupid"

"The government is trying to destroy the middle class"
"Corporations and the 1% are destroying the rest of the country"
"A woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her own body"
"Homophobia is the same thing as racism"

You don't agree with the principle of self-ownership?

The talking point pisses me off when used in situations that don't apply, or involve someone else (abortion).

"War on Christmas"

'Militant atheism'.

Someone else being a bunch of cells... oh boy...


And it's brother talking point, "militant secularism" as Baroness Warsi put it...

We are all a bunch of cells.

And you just murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of cells; your own white blood cells are carrying out massacres of innocent bacteria. Where's your point?

Any politician who compares the economy to one household deserves to be stretched on the rack.

"The Royal Family pays for itself."

Most of what is on conservative.ca would be a good place to start. In particular:
"family values"
"moral values"
"religious [whatever]"
"job creation"/"create jobs"
"entrepreneurship"
"small businesses"
"tax grabs!"/"low taxes!"
"strong defense"

And, of course, as a public servant: New Public Management.

Wait wait what ?

How is homophobia different than racism exactly ?

"The Royal Family bring a lot of tourist money into this country"

^^^

This is a good one.

I suppose homophobia is different to racism, in the same way that antisemitism is different to racism.

Jmfcst used to argue that they believed in some crazy Islamic prophecy and that anyone who disagreed simply does not understand religion :(

"Just because I oppose someone's right to marry doesn't mean I oppose equality under the law or anything."

Speaking of which: "Gays are just looking for special rights" and "You have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex!" Homophobes in general just piss me off.

Ah yes, my two favorite strawmen.

Um, one is basically pre-judging or hating a race of people who just happen to be of a differently ethnicity. Another is a natural feeling of unease at abnormal sexual attractions.

To me, their are black people and white people. I don't recognize 'gay people' as a group, I recognize that certain people have abnormal sexual attractions, but that's doesn't make them a special group to me, no matter what the particular attraction may be.

There is nothing biologcally 'off' about people born of a different race, it is part of the identity. Abnormal sexual attraction is obviously biologically 'off' since it has no natural purpose. Therefore, feeling uncomfortable towards it is natural, and for alot of people probably would not fade with more exposure like racism.

Actually even taking into account the money borrowed from social security, there was a surplus in 1999 and 2000.

Basically you're implying that everyone who is not born with the same orientation as the 'average person' is somehow not natural or what you self-righteously deem 'abnormal'.

You really don't have any idea what you're talking about if you think homosexuality can be classified as merely a fetish.

If we lower x tax rate and make up for it with spending cuts, a billion jobs will be created, and vice versa. Complete ignorance of economics and they're all knowingly guilty of it.

"A natural feeling of unease" is not homophobia, as long as you keep your unease for yourself and don't translate it into hatred toward a category of people. In which case you are just a bigoted bastard morally equal to a racist.

I'm not even going to get into the inherently fallacious nature of the way you're using the word 'natural', but it's completely false that same-sex behavior has no 'natural' purpose, unless you're one of those special 'selfish gene' types who think that teleology in nature is limited to the direct transmission of alleles. In species that engage in same-sex behavior it's been observed to:

Enhance social bonding, particularly between males, sometimes in situations where the usual alternative would be conflict (it's also been used for this in human societies)
Trigger parthenogenesis in some species (not applicable to humans)
Limit population growth (arguably not applicable to humans)
Establish hierarchies (it's also been used for this in human societies)

And more!

Of course, the simple fact which none of this changes is that in humans it's characterized by exactly the same sorts of feelings of love that you, if you are indeed heterosexual, presumably have or can imagine yourself feeling towards a woman, and since there's no abuse that can come of it that's inherent to the groups being discussed (as with, say, pedophilia and at the very least most incest), there's no legal reason to treat it any differently, even if it's morally marginally more complicated than that. The state's job isn't to put its citizens out to stud.


ETA: I should clarify that there are obviously purposes and significance in life beyond the sexual, in case my use of the word 'teleology' above was confusing about this point. I don't, intellectually, make a great gulf of separation between one's sexuality and the rest of their life, even though in my personal life sexuality is next to nonexistent; so even if we're not centering sex I don't think it's terribly helpful to decenter it quite to the extent that we would have to if we were selecting groups of people for whom to treat it separately from their emotional lives on the basis of real or perceived gender differences. TJ rightly pointed out that I wasn't terribly clear on this point, and I'm afraid I'm still not, but if I were to fully address what he brought up it would take a while and I might have to start my whole argument over again.

Or if one believes the teleology of sex acts is for procreation. I wouldn't be so sex-centered as to claim there is no more to teleology than just sex.

Dig at Thatcher? Why is it so wrong? IMHO, Macroeconomics isn't really very different from Micro, Keynes was innaccurate to say they are unconflateable, and that really was poor mathematics.

Also , people that don't accept the laffer curve as correct get my goat. We can legitimately debate where the maximum point is, but don't pretend near 0 or 100% income tax would generate revenue

Social  Security Trust Fund.

Did someone mention the GOP War on Women? 

So the whole 95% tax rate we had from 1945-1973... it generated no revenue at all?

That's why I specified teleology in nature (the all-too-common construction of 'nature' as something that doesn't include human civilization and exists essentially as a proving ground for the life sciences, which is the opposite extreme to the naturalistic fallacy and not entirely unrelated to it), but you do of course raise a legitimate point. I wouldn't claim that either. I'll edit the initial post to make this clearer.

The word "investing" replacing "spending" when it comes to government expenditures. Most of them have nothing to do with "investing" as I understand the concept from my days studying finance. They just don't.

Pretty much. Tens of Thousands of wealthy people and celebrities moved abroad. When the top rate was cut to 60%, revenue more than doubled.
Don't forget, Taxman by the Beatles was a protest against that exact policy.. "Should 5 percent appear to small".

Of course VAT was raised through the roof at the same time income tax for the rich was cut, totally changing the social balance of taxation (for want of a better way of putting it).

There is just one household so it can do whatever it wants but the economy has many different parts so something which is sensible for one party may hurt another. Meaning comparing them is ludicrous as they are completely different and need different approaches.

Noone on here would recognize the ones that really get on my hips.

.

Did Thatcher really originate this type of analogy? It's wrong for an infinite number of reasons. Take the common plea for "belt tightening." When households "tighten their belts" by spending less, the net effect is that their financial situation improves, because the same amount of income is coming in, whereas less money is going out. To use the analogy of American football, they are playing the same offense, but now they have a better defense.

But when governments "tighten their belts" by spending less, the net effect on their financial situation is unclear, because whereas less money is being spent, less money may also come in as a consequence. This is because the government's income (revenue) is endogenous to the same system that is effected by the government's spending. If there is a rise in unemployment, and a decline in consumer spending and investment, than revenue will fall. By the same token, government revenue is affected by all sorts of private sector events, such as banking crises, property values, the money supply, price fluctuations, and the like. The government, by spending money, can influence the direction of these movements. There is no clear household equivalent without engaging in some not-so-intuitive gymnastics.

Anything involving the words "create jobs" or "job creators".

Tax loopholes =/= higher top rates not being a good idea.

"Wisconsin values" in the recall race. What in the heck does that even mean? I once tried to land a job in Watertown, WI, and I can assume that Wisconsin values is eating a lot of dairy products and walking your dog while riding on a riding lawnmower.

such and such is "voting against their own interest"  (the assumption being that self-interest must be defined as narrowly as possible and is predictable to someone thousands of miles away)

Oh, but do explain.

It's not necessarily about loopholes. It just distorts the economy in a way that lowers efficiency.

And regardless, high rates always lead to loopholes. You may not like this, but it's a political reality.

Thinking of ones that haven't already been mentioned:

-Basically any defense of the Electoral College, especially the idea that it forces candidates to campaign across the country instead of just the most populated states, when it just disenfranchises tons of people like the conservative parts of California and all the blacks in the Deep South, and just means that only a handful of large swing states matter. It does the opposite.
-People who act like it's unfair that a candidate can win a state election or the popular vote with just a few urban counties with the vast majority of the state's geography voting against them. The funny thing is that the reasoning is usually that it's not fair for some area and demographic to be able to dominate the rest of the state on a numerical advantage and candidates should need to have a broader appeal, but such urban counties are much more diverse and have a broad range of interest groups than a ton of tiny rural counties.
-Any scared suburbanite who acts like US cities are similar to Sarejevo in the early 90s and any random person is likely to get shot.
-This isn't really used by anyone besides libertarian-ish trolls/quasi-trolls, but the idea that it's hypocritical to support "state intervention" in things like health care and yet also oppose things like the War on Drugs or PATRIOT Act, sort of based on the idea that your political philosophy must be that all government intervention is good if you support it in some areas.

High tax rates are a disincentive to increase earnings , productivity, and revenue, as well as a loophole/avoidance creating tool.

"Family values" and "moral values", especially when used interchangeably with conservative Christian values.

Using prominent blacks and women in the GOP to pretend that the GOP isn't racist or sexist.

Equating equal rights with special rights.

Let the people decide, in regards to gay marriage bans (as if all laws are voted on by the people).

"For the children", in relation to sexuality, while ignoring things like health care, poverty, bullying, and corporal punishment.

"Smaller government" while supporting government intervention in the most private areas of our lives.

I guess I'd agree with that.


Coming where I come from, similar beliefs about Detroit are all too common, they I don't protest them. They seem fitting.


I guess I'd agree here, but of course in the opposite direction.

"a woman's right to choose" - but the human being inside the womb cannot choose

Along with this:

1. Couching marriage in terms of rights
2. Almost anything with the words freedom or liberty in it
3. Saying the separation of church and state is absolute/misconstruing its meaning
Corollary: "Religious people are inherently ignorant/blind/stupid/irrational and shouldn't be in public conversation"
4. "Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol" [Not because it's wrong but because it's a really stupid argument]
5. Anything whatsoever that mentions states' rights
6. "The people have spoken" or anything similar that supposes popular support (especially for a party but not an issue) gives moral or even political legitimacy
7. "The American people are cutting back so government should too" [ugh]
8. Anything that talks about economics in non-quantitative absolutes
9. Anything calling politicians blanketly corrupt/stupid/evil/bad etc.
10. Anything calling government blanketly corrupt/stupid/evil/bad/etc.

There're plenty more I'm sure.

That's a simple fact. You can die of an overdosis of alcohol, but not from smoking pot.
Why does that irritate you?

One that irritates me is:

"Guns don't kill, people do" and anything similar.
An apparant truism, that is both simplistic and stupid and miss the point.


 

I hope you extend the right to choose to warts and tumours

Also, marijuana is less harmful than alcohol as has been shown in countless scientific studies - there's less potential for addiction, it's far less likely to be related to violence and it's possible to overdose on alcohol - no-one has ever died from a marijuana overdose.

The old argument: who was before the egg or the hen? When a foetus can be regarded as a human being? We`ll never end arguing.


1. Marriage is attached with certain social and economic advantages and with civil rights so this doesn`t piss me off.

3. Separation of church and state does not imply lack of respect towards personal beliefs, so the corollary seems to be wrong.

It's not that it's factually inaccurate; it's just a very poor argument. In fact, to me, it's a perfectly good argument for banning alcohol.

You are pissed off by freedom and liberty?

Not exactly. Mostly it's a couple of things: First, the way people use those words in political discussions as silver bullets that they think magically win conversations. Second, the way those concepts are commonly construed I believe is very limiting and disservicing. Third, the way people frequently believe that these things are always or nearly always good things or, even more so, that their maximization represents the highest echelon in the hierarchy of political ideals despite that aforementioned limited view of what these words mean, and most of all that this view should be universally accepted.

I believe that freedom, liberty, and choice are amoral constructs whose proliferation and even simple existence are not always desireable ends. I do not think that they are bad per se; I just think that our understanding and discourse about freedom assumes far too much and that a more nuanced view could benefit society.

How can warts and tumours be equated with developing human beings? Do warts and tumours have characteristics that clearly identify them as "human" just like embryos and fetuses? Your comparison only makes sense if you can answer these questions in the affirmative.

Another really annoying one is people using words which no one would argue with to describe their views (e.g pro life, pro growth) as if their opponents are against these things.

I also hate it when someone negatively refers to something Congress, the president, a mayor or state legislature does as "politics." Jay Carney referred to the Congressional investigation of Fast and Furious as "politics." Well, duh! Congress is made of politicians so everything they do is thus "politics."

Because that was such a success.

"Pro-life but pro-death penalty"

Irrelevant.

1. "Independents vote for whoever is the most moderate"
2. "Most people don't pay taxes"
3. "10 out of 10 terrorists vote Democrat"
4. "Pro-choice people are bad Catholics, but pro-death penalty pro-war and anti-poor people are good Catholics"

i'm not aware of anyone who uses that as a talking point.

Everyone heard about Kerry being denied communion.

And Kerry is pro-death penalty, pro-war, and "anti-poor" by your standards as well as being pro-choice.

I thought a talking point was something someone actually said. It involves rhetoric and argumentation to make a point.  If you put words in someone's mouth to characterize their position, that's not the same thing - even if you put quotation marks around it.

The effects a policy will have is irrelevant to you?

This argument is basically the same problem as the scenario where two students turn in work with the same answer, get different grades, and then the one who got a lower grade complains to the teacher. The teacher could then give that student a better grade. Or the teacher could lower the other student's grade to match.

If we saythen logically either alcohol should be outlawed or pot should be legalized but you cannot determine which should be done from the statement.

Of course in American politics ideological purity is the stuff of internet forums and advocacy groups not the government in practice. Our laws are not logically consistent, they never have been, and I doubt they ever will be. That's because they are constructed from a patchwork of different people and groups with different motives at different times throughout history. Pragmatism rules the day. In my scenario above, the teacher would simply ignore the student, which makes for a bad teacher but a functional government.

Pragmatism is wasting billions of dollars to turn a benign drug into a gateway drug apparently.

"I'm not homophobic, I just oppose gay rights"

Here we go:

1. "We should keep the monarchy, they bring in tourist money!"
2. "It's Scotland's oil"
3. "Everyone on welfare is a scrounger!"
4. "Immigrants are taking all our jobs/leeching off our welfare!"
5. "It's political correctness gone mad!"/"I'm not racist but..."
6. "Thatcher got some things right/We got some things wrong in the 80s" (Specifically from Labour ministers, usually)
7. "Gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage!"
8. Every single argument radical feminists use against transwomen.
9. "The Human Rights Act is evul!"
10. "The BBC/media is controlled by the left wing/liberals!"

Why would feminists be against transgenderism ? ???

Not all feminists, just the radical "kill all men" fringe - the arguments being that transwomen are somehow "appropriating" the female gender, they're not real women, they can never understand because they don't have uteruses, they're mentally ill etc.

There's been a spate of controversies recently due to some radfem events having "womyn-born-womyn only" policies to exclude transgenders specifically.

One for our Aussie viewers - "this government is illegitimate" - Tony Abbott.

I'd say those aren't real feminist. If you believe in an essentialist conception of female identity you're eventually a defender of the patriarchal order.

Indeed... they're little different than religious fundamentalists/extreme conservatives who claim much the same thing...

This one is a bit weird since it is standard for private and public debt to move in opposite directions (indeed, certain economic theory pretty much makes this true by definition).

OK. I see your point, but its a premise for that statement that alcohol is so ingrained in our culture, that it is impossible to forbid it. As a consequence it becomes pointless to ban a substance, that is less dangerous.
Its not totally logical, but it does make sense. 

I realize this is a bit late but the whole "America is a republic not a democracy" is really, really irritating because the terms aren't actually mutually exclusive.

Republicans are the "party of the rich" and Democrats the "party of the little guy"; also, that Republicans are racist.  Those are my two biggest turnoffs.

"states rights".

"Welfare queens" and anything opposing gay rights/women's rights/civil rights/all that stuff.

More of the most annoying talking points for me:

"Under Clinton we had budget surpluses and the strongest economy in a generation."-- This is true, but it was because Clinton compromised with Republicans in Congress after the 1994 election by cutting taxes and spending as well as signing the welfare reform bill.

"The segregationist Democrats all became Republicans."-- The only segregationist Democrat in Congress to ever switch to the Republican Party was Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and he later had a change of heart on racial issues.

"The 'Southern Strategy' was an attempt to appeal to white Southerners by pandering to racism."-- According to former Nixon advisor  Pat Buchanan, arguably the author of the "Southern Strategy", it was an attempt to convince Southern moderates who supported civil rights to vote Republican as a protest against the segregationist Democrats.  See this link: http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16477/

"You cannot legislate morality."-- Virtually all laws legislate some form of morality.  And besides, banning abortion/gay marriage doesn't necessarily "legislate morality."  After all, it's not making it illegal to have extramarital sex or for homosexual couples to live together and love each other.  I support allowing birth control and adoption as alternatives to abortion, and I support civil unions for homosexual couples as long as they receive equal benefits to heterosexual, married couples.

"A woman's right to choose"-- Everybody has the right to choose to do anything, even something illegal; having the "right to choose" to do something doesn't make it morally acceptable or mean that it should be legal.

"Reagan's economic policies unfairly benefited the rich at the expense of the poor."--  Actually, during Reagan's presidency, not only did the middle class expand, but federal spending for the poor (as a whole) actually increased.  The expansion of poverty, in my opinion, was more likely the result of the increase of drug abuse in the 1980s. 

"Rush Limbaugh is a racist."-- The man who finds sound bytes to play on Rush Limbaugh's show, Bo Snerdley, is black, and the minister who performed Limbaugh's most recent wedding is also black.  I am not a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh, but this charge is ridiculous.

"Bush stole the 2000 election."-- There is no way to prove this charge either way, but every legal method of recounting the votes in Florida in 2000 would have given the election to Bush.  On Election Night 2000, all of the major news networks and the AP called Florida for Al Gore before all of the polls in the Republican-leaning panhandle were closed.  This depressed turnout among likely Bush voters nationally because they were convinced that the election was over and their candidate had lost.  Likewise, the call was made based on exit poll results rather than raw vote totals.  At the time of the early call for Gore in Florida, Bush was actually leading in the returns being reported to the networks.  As proof, check out some videos on YouTube by searching "election night 2000".

Even though I don't like Obama's performance in office. The talking point that gets me that some people make about him:

1.) He is a socialist
2.) He is a Muslim(he's actually a christian.)
3,) People think he is far left. In my opinion he is a Moderate Liberal.

I would mostly agree with you.  I am a conservative and a Republican and am no fan of President Obama, but I don't necessarily think he is a socialist.  I do, in fact, believe that he is a Christian, and I also believe that he was born in the United States.  At this point, those questions are irrelevant.  I would rather keep the debate on policy terms and stop with the conspiracy theories (on both sides.)

"strong defense"
"Obama is a socialist"
Republicans are the "party of the rich" and Democrats the "party of the little guy"
"Gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage!"

Liberals are "nice people", conservatives are "nasty people"

The rich have a "fair share" that they must pay for welfare

South Africa is a better country now than in 1994

Global Warming

Your third talking point is the one that annoys me most.

I'm a little leery of the implications of not liking the third.

Dear God.

Cool! Now there's somebody we can talk to about all the talking points we hate, like "Black people are better off now than in 1964", "the 13th Amendment was a great idea", "Science is typically correct", things like that.

Israel deserves to exist.
Albert Einstein was very smart.

"The Democrats are the party of Science"

especially when said by liberal arts majors

It pisses you off because it's true. ;)

Activist liberal judges

Only if all of the scientific world consisted of evolution, embryonic stem cell research, and global warming. All of that together isn't worth terribly much when the left is constantly trying to divert educational resources toward arts and humanities fields and encouraging people to major in something other than hard science since whether a field is practical or useful should apparently not be a consideration (at least according to most of the people on this board). Most of the liberals who are complaining about federal funding for embryonic stem cell research don't even understand why we would want to fund it instead of using adult stem cells.

Are you saying that everyone should major in "hard science"?

The point is going over your head, I see. Democrats are the party of science because it's  overwhelmingly supported by scientists in a way that few parties around the world are.

If you look at college faculty by field of study, the hard science fields are significantly less favorable to Democrats than social sciences (http://www.cwu.edu/~manwellerm/academic%20bias.pdf). The Democrats are really more of the party of English Literature.

No, only that it should be encouraged and considered when awarding federal money to students. The government should be more interested in a return on its investment than it is.

Education isn't and shouldn't be merely considered an "investment".

I see that TJ has returned with this old stupid "only real hard sciences are good/useful/worthwhile" argument

I would like to thank him for including this argument in this thread, because it is a talking point which pisses me a whole lot.

I believe that the technical term for someone who holds such views about higher education is 'dickhead'.

It is always a bad sign for a thread when it is responsible for adding people to my ignore list.

Treating higher education as only an "investment" is a terrible attitude to have.

Not everyone's sole purpose in life is to make money.

"Allocating high quality vocational and tradesmanship based education (Plastering, Carpentry, Bricklaying, Car Mechanics, Metalwork, Plumbimg, Electrician skills, Baking) etc to academically less able students creates a two tier system of well to do "Posh" clever kids and poor kids.
After all, its not like there are any well paid jobs in these areas or any need for the skills, eh? Those Polish people are mere decoration.
After all, its not like they may enjoy or be good at these things!"

Merit based , parallell systems are the best.  Yes, the old system was imperfect, but we through the baby out with the bath water. We should have built more Secondary Technicals, introduced a second chance to get in to Grammar Schools at 14 for improved pupils, expanded grammars and funded  the SecMods better. Its what they did in Germany. We have wasted 3 generations of vocational potential.
Also, rename the worst performing Uni's Polytechnics. Not all of the ones that originally were, but most of them.

The "science is defined as whatever a majority of scientists support" argument.

Straights who think equal marriage is almost exclusively about 'their rights'

     I see everyone is ignoring the point of TJ's argument, that being that the government should regard education as an investment, such that education does not become a sinkhole of taxpayer dollars.

     That said, a problem I see with that argument is that liberal arts majors seem to be able to pay off their loans too. If liberal arts majors were defaulting in large numbers, then pushing college students into hard sciences would make more sense as a policy.

What he's saying is that people who aren't majoring in science, especially the hard sciences, should not make claims as to who, if anybody, is the "party of science".

"Democrats are the party of the middle class"-Yeah if you are in a union job I think they would be. For any other middle class folks probably its probably a toss-up between the 2 parties.

Sure, if you're white. But the middle class is not just white folks.

And that's a rather dumb thing to say.

I've seen that study and it doesn't surprise me but it doesn't discount my point. Democrats are supported by the scientific establishment almost exclusively and basically serve their interests in the same way that Republicans serve oil, logging, mining and the like. In this sense they are the party of science.

More importantly, who cares who the 'party of science' is? I like my parties political.

This (a million times)

I'm assuming by "serve their interests" you mean appropriate more funding (please correct me if I'm wrong in that interpretation). It is true in many cases that the Democrats have appropriated more funding to scientific research, this is not universally true. In fact,  science spending increased as a percentage of GDP under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, and George W. Bush and decreased under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush. Overall funding increased under every President since Eisenhower except Nixon, Ford, and Clinton (http://www.livescience.com/11093-infographic-science-spending-federal-budget.html). So that part is complicated at best. I will agree that academics in general do support Democrats, scientists less so than other fields, but the Democrats still do have an edge there.

But, to then extrapolate this to the Democrats being the part of Science (as an institution not the magazine :P) is a bit much. Democrats' interests do not align with the science the way the Republicans' do with oil and gas because the Democrats also have other constituencies that take precedence over Science insomuchas science is a Democratic constituency, such as environmental regulations which are not always in line with science, such as The Precautionary Principle (http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/38.crs_.precautionary.pl-lt.pdf) which establishes a burden of proof in a way that doesn't understand the scientific process. Or take nuclear energy or vaccination or GMOs or a wide array of other topics.

In addition, consider the "discussion" on the previous page about the importance of different fields and note the general Democratic response (okay, I'll admit I was trolling a little there; sorry for pissing everyone off in the pissing people off thread) but it shows a little insight into how other constituencies affect the Democrats' relationship with Science. Also notice the most of the people who took a more sympathetic view are libertarians; there are a ton of libertarians in science even though libertarians often want to slice funding apart more than anyone else! The reason is that science fosters some degree of objective impartiality toward outcomes; ie. I should not really be hoping for a test to turn out one way or the other when I conduct it, much the same way a libertarian is somewhat indifferent to what other people do.

Basically, the talking point that the "Democrats are the party of Science" is irritating because its used to make Republicans look like moronic country bumpkins while ignoring the complexities of the matter. The reality is that neither party is the party of Science and neither likely ever will be.

It doesn't really matter that much which party, if any, is the "party of science".  There is plenty of scentifc evidence for a variety of both liberal and conservative views.

Democrats are the party of science because they are so often contrasted with the specific wing of the Republican Party who think that science is full of crap because they come up with things like evolution.

Being considered the 'party of...' something like science by process of elimination is stupid, I think is the point that's being made.

Whoa I'm not denying any of those things. But given the rise in AIDS, crime and corruption in SA since 1994, I find these rosy depictions of the rainbow nation gut-wrenching, as it seems to be going the way of Rhodesia. As for global warming I find the science behind it questionable, and often politically motivated.

It takes...um, a Hell of a lot for a country to 'go the way of Rhodesia'.

I don't think I've seen this one mentioned yet: "Democrats are weak on defense."  Just because nothing can be further from the truth.

Appeals to base emotions, such as ad campaigns that make voters fear the opposition.  That is politics at its most disgusting.

The newest one:

The Supreme Court's ruling on ACA is bad for Barack Obama/good for Mitt Romney.

You know what there hasn't been a rise in? Segregation. You know what else there hasn't been a rise in? Bantustans. Know what else? Forced removals. Know what else? Racist violence. Know what there has been a rise in? Multi-racial democratic elections.

As for global warming, what political motivation is there, asides from preventing more Democratic coastal states from flooding?

Hate groups that use the word family in their name.

BritishDixie is pretty clearly a racist troll who think South Africa and "Rhodesia" (ROFL) were awesome countries a couple of decades ago.

So Zimbabwe is now better off than it was when it was Rhodesia. You do realize that 75% of the Rhodesian Armed Forces were black. Or that Morgan Tsvangirai praised Ian Smith as "Zimbabwe's greatest Prime Minister". Or that the struggle was mainly a conflict between supporters of the Smith government on one side, and Marxist terrorists on the other, not a clear cut racial conflict. How many white Rhodesian Farmers have been butchered or had their property destroyed under the Mugabe regime. The Rhodesian Army never did that to black Rhodesians.
You mean a one party state, where a large majority of the ANC's supporters only support it because it was the "great liberator" (read terrorist group) organization. I have massive respect for Mandela, but not for any other ANC thugs who currently run the country.

DA, COPE, IFP, etc. are all fairly active, with the DA actually controlling the governance of Western Cape. And yes, when someone's shooting at you and violently oppressing you support the people who shoot back.

Ok, I know its not quite a talking point, but when anyone tells me to "wake up" I want nothing more than to beat them over the head with some sort of blunt object. 

Oh, to clarify I mean something like "wake up sheeple" not "wake up, you're late for work".

Unlike the ANC, the South African Police and Army never went out into areas where blacks lived and either bombed or necklaced them. Many of the black deaths during the apartheid era were caused by people on their own side, killing what they thought were "sell-outs" (read people just trying to make their way in life). One final point, if South Africa is a beacon of multi-racial democracy, why doesn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hain), who used to pal around with terrorists, return to live there.

()
Are you familiar with the Sharpeville massacre? A crowd of unarmed black protesters was fired upon by South African police. 69 dead, 180 injured. Many of them were shot in the back as they were fleeing.
()
How about the Soweto Uprising, where 176-600 unarmed students were shot dead by police while protesting educational changes?
()
How about the squalor and slums of the Bantustans many black South Africans were forced into under apartheid?
()
How about the forced removals of tens of thousands of civilians from District Six and the bulldozing of their homes?
()
How about the political prisoners of Robben Island?

How about the destruction of Sophiatown, the occupation of Namibia (South-West Africa), the executions at Vlakplaas? You're attempting to defend an indefensible regime.

As for Hain, he seems to be pretty established politically in the UK, and (except for the alternative medicine thing/donations scandal) seems like a FF.
 
Also, I saw your comments in the thread on Louisiana and thought you'd appreciate this.

I was joking on that thread. I'm not a racist, but I can empathize with the old South African Government's dilemma. Ending minority rule, especially before the 1990's, would have consigned whites (and probably coloureds and asians) to permanent second class citizenship. Even with the concessions De Klerk managed to wring from the ANC in 1994, those are now steadily being chipped away. If you were white, and living in South Africa, and could see what was happening across the rest of the continent, would you want to risk your priviledged existance in the name of equality. My guess is not. But I am not a racist, I do believe that we are all one people under God. But I'm not blind to the majority rule posed in Africa. If you look at what happened to Rhodesia, or Kenya then you can see why the whites were not inclined to hand over the reigns of power to the majority.

British Dixie's posts.

The chances of RSA turning into Zimbabwe are ridiculously tiny (admittely, greater than zero but not much greater).

Of course, I can't leave without pointing out that Zimbabwe isn't actually exactly what it is in the imaginations of most racists (ie. The vast majority of the victims of Mugabe have been blacks).

I know, which is what makes the whole thing even more sad. We aided and abetted Mugabe's rise to power, only to find that he began murdering his own people.

Not necessarily a talking point, but people who act like only bumbling idiots would oppose the idea of "Global Warming".  I mean really guys, there is a reason why people have started calling it "Climate Change" instead.

"The two parties have reversed since the 1960's!"
Ignores a large amount of ACTUAL "history".

"The Republican has always been non-racist because they supported Civil Rights even in the 1860s!"
Ditto.  Also makes fallacy assumption that just because somebody supports Civil Rights they are not racist.

"Slavery wasn't an important issue in the Civil War."
Seriously?

"The Civil War was waged over slavery!"
It was ONE of the issues, but not THE issue.

Denying that American Civil war was about Slavery.

While certainly there other issues at stake they all came down to one fundamental point - the strong structural differences in the economy and society of the South vis-a-vis the North and this was fundamentally due to slavery (and the Cotton-Export dependant economy it created).

I'm not getting involved here.

You have a point.

What I was mostly referring to was the way it was taught in like eighth grade history.  A lot less focus on the economic part of the war and more on some sort of notion that the North was full of abolitionists and that the Union Army went down South because Slavery offended them so.

I was mainly pointing out that it wasn't the ideological idea of slavery that was the main issue.  The economic issues of slavery, though, were THE issues of the Civil War.

As someone who just finished 8th grade history, this is pretty much accurate. Abolitionist movement is trumped up, Lincoln is idolized, and rationale portrayed as "South like slavery. Lincoln no like slavery. South no like Lincoln. South leave. Lincoln decide to save black people. Lincoln's people burn Atlanta."

I remember a discussion about this in a history class. It was more like

South evil, north nice, Davis bad man, Lincoln like God, south like Nazis, north help south, reconstruction a success.

We may have had a southern editor for our textbook. We got a question like "How was the South like the Patriots in the American Revolution?"

For what it's worth, an important source for the idea of preserving slavery being the lion's share of the Southern ruling class's motivations for secession was the fact that the Southern ruling class, when asked at the time about their motivations for secession, said that preserving slavery was the lion's share. Lincoln of course was a politician, and while he may verily have been Honest Abe he was so purely in comparison to other politicians.

While going through some complaints at work today, I fell across something which made me facepalm:


"I am very concerned by the recent decision of the federal government to abandon the complete version of the census forms. Is this another means of hiding the perverse effect of the open doors immigration policy on the linguistic vitality of Francophone communities across the country? We fear that it is"

Dear Lord. TEH IMMIGRANTSZ ARE DESTROYING TEH COUNTRY AND TEH ZOMGZ FRENCH LINGUAGE!111

Why are European neo-Nazis so much more influential (from my point of view, at least) than the Americans? Golden Dawn, the National Front, the BNP, the Sweden Democrats; the American Nazi Party can't hold a candle to them.

Hashemite's Canadian.

I suppose that's one reason to be thankful of the two-party system. No nazis or communists gaining traction.

"Personal Responsibility", which so often means that those less fortunate should be punished.

I'm generally repulsed by the concept of whittling down complex, intertwined, fluid issues into often entirely nonsensical sound bites for commercials and hustling. Though I guess in our age of drowning ourselves in information, the US continues to become more and more complicated by its over-simplification and "efficiency" fixation. What bothers me more is the adoption of these cheap marketing lines as actual legitimate conversation. I guess that's the point at this point. I don't know that I could pick any particularly irritating ones because of that.

The National Front, the BNP and the Sweden Democrats might be disgusting pieces of trash, but they are not, properly speaking, neo-nazis. There might not be any outright far-right party in America, but is the GOP's right-wing (Bachmann, Palin, Beck, etc) any less nutty than FN or BNP politicians ?

Well said. Now can we get along condemning the far-left as well. Jean-Luc Melenchon and his ilk.

Not really, since Mélenchon isn't far-left under any meaningful definition. The French far-left polled 1.7% in last elections.

This is not far left?

Not really. Mélenchon certainly does not qualify as your standard orthodox marxist. As for Jaurès, he's an alleged source of inspiration for the French left as a whole.



Not at all.



That's a bit nutty, but overall no. The last part of the sentence shows that this is basically the traditional goal of Europe's radical-left parties.



Pretty bland left-wing discourse, nothing really far-lefty.



Traditional pipe dream of the French left. No People's Republic of France in sight, as you can see.



Not in any way.



Like in Italy and Switzerland, not exactly socialist countries.



No.


Add to this that Mélenchon's true goal, like that of typical radical left parties in Europe (see the Danish socialists for example) is to influence their bigger center-left allies into taking more left-wing stances and to participate to the elaboration of government policy. Add the fact that he is a former PS cabinet minister. Add the fact that he is allied with the PCF, a fairly bland party made of established notables with no intent at playing the extremist card. Add to that that the actual far-left (LO and NPA) loathes him with a passion. So, in short, no, he's not far-left.

So he is a nutty leftist, just not a nutty far-leftist?

Basically. When you know actual French far-leftists, you can easily see the difference.

Yes but France is several notches to the left of almost every other developed western nation with the exception of the Scandinavian states. Although the difference is their political discourse seems competent, whereas in France it seems like half of their politicians are still stuck in the 1790's. Melenchon would be considered a far-leftist outside of France. Even the BBC, a bastion of liberal-leftism, calls him a far-leftist, as to other such bastions like the Guardian.

I would join in this argument, but considering who we're arguing against, I think I prefer to ram my head into the wall.

Aw I'm not that dum :(

They also think Syriza's far-left, so they're not exactly the best judges. And France has had 2 left-wing Presidents since the war, hardly "several notches to the left of almost every other developed western nation".

France is the only Western country I can think of where opebo would be taken seriously and considered within the mainstream of political discourse.

Well, to be fair, within Greece's political system SYRIZA and the KKE were the far left until this year. They were certainly quite a bit to the left of the mainstream PASOK and DIMAR. And don't use that "only 2 leftist presidents" excuse, major leftist proposals like the 35 hour work week were passed and never repealed, even with Presidents from the French Right.

By that logic dailymail is a center newspaper?

Nope. It is very right-wing. But then the Guardian is incredibly left-wing. As for the 'Independent'. The title makes me want to laugh.

I'm really impressed by your deep knowledge and perfect understanding of French politics.

The problem is that your classifying BBC as a left-wing paper, that's like saying CNN is left-wing.

But even its own commentators own up to its left wing bias. For instance Andrew Marr said "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people. It has a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."

I don't know much about CNN, but I thought it was centrist.

Even if we are to accept that the BBC is "culturally liberal", that is not the same thing as left wing.

Obviously this thread is a disaster, but with regards to France it should be pointed out that a certain disconnect between rhetoric and reality is a traditional (the most traditional?) feature of political language there. In any case, the existence of a formerly viable hard left political tradition does not make the entire country so inclined...


Hahaha, no.

Didn't they endorse the Lib Dems? Obviously far-left.

Don't destroy their fantasies with your facts!

Perhaps I should have phrased it differently, but anyone denying that the Guardian has a leftist bent is obviously living in a dreamworld. I wouldn't call the Lib Dems far-left, but their claim that they are centrist is just laughable.

Clearly the Lib Dems are liberal. I don't know how a British person becomes so Americanized as to come to believe that liberalism and leftism are the same thing.

I didn't say that they were. But the Liberal-Democrats are emphatically not "liberal" certainly economically, where they are similar to Labour, wanting to avoid public spending cuts, aside of course from in defence. They are probably the most socially liberal major party, which also puts them on the centre-left. Their main distinction with Labour is their woolen themes of localism and decentralization, as well as a bigger emphasis on environmentalism. There main pretense to being centrist is that they are not particularly unpopular in the North or South (they are infact unpopular in both). This largely extends from their positioning themselves as the party of the centre during the ideologically extreme 1980's (they were far less left wing than Labour, but were still centre-left).

On which planet do you live on at the moment?

I'm not talking about the actions of the Party in power, where they are the junior partner, but about their general ideology, as represented in the main by people like Vince Cable and Simon Hughes. They have been more like this since the early 2000's, when they started getting disillusioned Labour supporters due to the Iraq War, and shifted further to the left on public spending in order to help maintain this support.

This is the soundest post made on this argument so far.

Yes, because the Liberal Democrats is an emphatically center-right party, following a center-right agenda.

Where is the evidence for this. You do realize that the "cuts" would be working far more effectively if it weren't for the Liberal-Democrats watering them down at every possible stage.

Could we just lock this thread? This has turned into a total and utter disaster and train wreck, courtesy of our latest stupid troll.

or you could you know, move on and post something else on the thread.

I fail to see how my posts are stupid and trollish. I don't think of your left-wing posts as stupid or trollish, rather I just disagree with them.

You're clearly worse.

This was actually an interesting thread despite some weird tangents including some by trolls.

Here's an addition I can't believe wasn't mentioned: Anything about "Reagan Democrats". Words can not describe how much of a stupid f**king term this is. And perhaps the only thing more idiotic than it is some of the areas that it's used to describe. Anyone who says this basically should be considered of having no credibility whatsoever, period.

Unless you mean Reagan supporters who are now Democrats, but yeah, that's not what they mean.

Well, they are right-wing.

I've heard complaints here that Mary Landrieu was the "deciding vote" for Obamacare.

If something passes with 60 votes, couldn't any one of those 60 Senators conceivably be the "deciding vote?"

In the Senate, you need 60 votes to pass anything anymore.

EDIT: Oh, totally missed your point there. Well, I'd call the one who was most likely not to support it the "deciding vote."

Just to bring this thread back on topic, here are a few of my pet peeves in political posturing.

"Small businesses are the engines of job creation" - no, actually that would be large and medium-sized businesses.

"If we raise the minimum wage, unemployment will go up" - nope.

"Unions are outdated/a relic of the past/are on the out because of technological change." - See every other industrialized country that has seen technological change. Guess what? They all still have stronger labor movements than the United States. 1 out of every 4 German workers is a union member, and they're experienced just as much technological change as we have.

"Obama is [anything to the left of what he actually is]"

"Bill Clinton/Ronald Reagan was the best president ever"

"[anything having to do with us needing to reduce the deficit right now]"

"People who work in fast food don't deserve [a living wage]" which is usually accompanied by "We shouldn't punish success by closing the capital gains tax loophole" or "we shouldn't raise taxes on the rich"

"Nuclear power is a dirty form of energy" - this one really kills me.

"GMOs need to be banned, because they're unnatural"

Missed this joke, but then the troll hasn't been seen since posting that rubbish.  

Any sort of "middle class lifestyles are getting more expensive" article where the author thinks paying $5000/yr for a cleaning lady to come in once a week (http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2010/12/07/Down-and-Out-on-250000-a-Year.aspx#page1) is a working joe thing to do.

Add this to my list.

It has an obvious historical context in Democrats that voted for Reagan. The problems are:

1-Reagan is dead.
2-Reagan hasn't been in an election for 28 years (meaning the youngest one can be and still have voted for him is 46.)
3-Reagan hasn't been in office for 24 years, and has no relevance to contemporary American politics.

Calling someone a "Reagan Democrat" is about as logical as calling someone a Mugwump or Bourbon Democrat today, it's meaningless. The fact that it's used to refer to certain groups that Reagan didn't even do all that well with just underscores the stupidity even further.

The one that really pisses me off is when politicians claim that they want to run for office to "serve the people." Joe Sestak said some such nonsense a few days ago. He said he wanted to "serve again" and so he obviously has to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, the highest executive office in the commonwealth. If Sestak wanted to serve again he could read books to kindergarteners or help an old lady with yard work. Those are ways to "serve the people." But no, Sestak and other parasites use the word "service" to justify their lusts for power. The talking point that politicians actually want power to "serve" the people is total bullsh**t. Politicians want power to forward personal agendas and vendettas and to fulfill burning, Luciferian ambitions.