This sounds like a joke, but it isn't

Discussion in 'Humor & Satire' started by junius. fils, Aug 28, 2013.

  1. junius. fils

    junius. fils New Member

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    These are excerpts, with a link to the full article below.

    A poll of Louisiana Republicans released last week contained some strange news for President Obama: Twenty-nine percent of them said that he was responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina — in 2005.

    This was slightly more than the 28 percent who said President George W. Bush was to blame. An additional 44 percent thought it over but just weren’t sure.

    This is a preposterous notion. Everybody knows Barack Obama couldn’t have been responsible for the Katrina response because he was in Indonesia in 2005, learning about his Muslim faith in a madrassa. He had moved to Indonesia directly from his home country of Kenya, stopping in the United States just long enough to fake the moon landing.
    ....
    The Katrina result, from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, is somewhat suspect because it is from an automated, push-button polling method. Yet the finding, if unscientific, is revealing: It shows that a substantial number of Republican voters will agree to something they know to be false if it puts Obama in a bad light......
    .....
    But Obama’s presidency has provoked a particularly steep rise in the proportion of Republican conspiracy theorists. A Pew polllast year found that 30 percent of Republicans and 34 percent of conservative Republicans thought Obama was Muslim — roughly double than thought so four years earlier. Gallup polling in April 2011 found that 43 percent of Republicans thought Obama was born in another country.

    Obama conspiracy theories have flourished in the Deep South, where wealth and educational levels are both low. This makes sense: Where voters are least informed, they are most susceptible to misinformation peddled by talk-radio hosts and the like.

    For this reason, voters in reliably Republican states, which tend to be poorer, with lower test scores, are more vulnerable to misinformation. To use one measure, the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress test of eighth-grade reading, all but one of the top 10 states were in Obama’s column in 2012. Of the 19 doing worse than average, 14 were red states.

    This is what makes the Katrina question so interesting. Certainly, Louisianans are on the low end of the education rankings, fifth from the bottom in math and third-to-last in reading. But this question got around the ignorance question by asking Louisiana Republicans about a topic they know intimately.
    ...
    “Obama derangement syndrome is running pretty high right now among a certain segment of the Republican base,” Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, told me. “There’s a certain segment of people who say, ‘If you’re going to give me the opportunity to stick it to Obama, I’m going to take it.’ ”

    In other words, a large number of that 29 percent who said Obama was responsible for the Katrina response knew that he wasn’t but saw it as a chance to register their displeasure with the president. Obama has driven a large number of Republican voters — Jensen puts it at 15 to 20 percent of the overall electorate — right off their rockers.

    ....
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...73493a-0f4f-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html
     
  2. Pregnar Kraps

    Pregnar Kraps New Member Past Donor

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    Where they will join the legions of loony Liberals who elected this deceitful, disloyal wanna-be Dictator in the first AND SECOND place.
     
  3. Vicariously I

    Vicariously I Well-Known Member

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    The OP is made even more hilarious by the first reply to it.
     
  4. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    The only thing I can think of is that you have to be from Louisiana. Am I right?
     
  5. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    Liberals certainly have a lot of negative stereotypes about people from the South.
     
  6. junius. fils

    junius. fils New Member

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    Statistics are not stereotypes.
     
  7. JoeSixpack

    JoeSixpack New Member

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    Not sure how this is supposed to be funny/humorous, by all measurements of logic/common sense this should be scary. :icon_jawdrop:

    This is why so many people are turning against both parties or having to decide which party will do the least damage and direct their support that direction (here's a clue for that crowd, you are part of the problem). They are slowly but finally waking up to the lies, and mind manipulation propaganda touted by the corporate owned media and used by both sides to keep the general public dazed and confused, or pissed off and irrational. Either makes for bad decision making, and voting for either or one of the two party scams corporate parties is a bad decision. :blankstare:
     
  8. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't think most people who use this forum actually realize how stupid most people are.

    If you got down to it, the vast majority of people would struggle to give you policies from either party. They might get out "welfare", or "wars", but that's about it.

    I can guarantee you that under similar circumstances you'd get similar responses from Democrats. It's a sad fact, but ~25% of people are complete idiots in every sense of the term.
     
  9. JoeSixpack

    JoeSixpack New Member

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    And when you cannot blame it on stupidity, it falls on their ability to become irrational.
     
  10. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Sorry, lost in translation, what are you saying?
     
  11. TBryant

    TBryant Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The policies themselves are vague and open to interpretation. Redundant too, many are held by both parties, they just see different pathways to implement them.

    Honestly I have read through both sides published policies and its a lot like reading a vitamin companies brochure about how helpful vitamins are. I forgot most of it within three minutes of reading.

    Seriously useless.

    Mostly we know what the parties stand for.

    The democrats want increased tax revenue, more regulation, and equal rights.

    The republicans want lower taxes, less regulation, and greater reward for greater effort to be more important that strict equality.

    On the surface it seems like there should be some room for compromise, but more and more its a winner take all mentality.

    But this thread is not about policy or peoples awareness of it. Its really about this cult of personality where groups are venting all of their frustration on a single person without bothering to examine the truth. Its the bully mentality where the victim is accused of all sorts of moronic things and given little chance to defend themselves.

    In the end people are not just stupid, they are pathetic.
     
  12. JoeSixpack

    JoeSixpack New Member

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    Simply saying that politics has a way of using emotion and discrimination to spark folks to think irrationally. Mostly why both parties have their extremist nut jobs.

    Quick example, republicans who make statements like, women's bodies can naturally prevent pregnancy from rape, or a democrat who says, "ALL" gun owners are domestic terrorists, racists, and unpatriotic, so as to stir up the irrational emotions and prejudices of their ignorant followers.

    That is the good cop/ bad cop routine they present for show, so they can divide and conquer from within utilizing the ignorance and emotional mechanism of people to get what they really want. That is a desire to maintain the rich/elites wealth & power by keeping the plutocracy alive.
     
  13. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    Or, put another way, Democrats want to pay the bills, protect consumers and citizens from fraud and toxic substances, and equal rights.
     
  14. JoeSixpack

    JoeSixpack New Member

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    Do they?

    Cuz it sure seems like they want to tax everybody into dependency or bankruptcy, regulate most small businesses out of existence for their rich masters, and rarely want any rights that are equal just imposed, (and in that they are no different that the religious nut jobs.)
     
  15. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    I own a small business and barely notice the government. My business is regulated by the State but the governor (a Republican with a Republican legislature) started raiding our account (supported by the dues we pay, not taxes) a couple years ago to put into the general fund so the department is way underfunded and understaffed and there is no regulating going on at all except for somebody answering the phone. That seems to be the way of regulation these days.
     
  16. Micketto

    Micketto New Member Past Donor

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    The liberal circle jerk got old in the last thread about this ?

    rheotical.
    I know you guys get bored with each other.
     
  17. JoeSixpack

    JoeSixpack New Member

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    I find that hard to believe, since the government is involved in most every aspect of everything business these days. Read the other day that they are enforcing some idiotic regulation on nursery schools in some parts of the country that they can only have crayon boxes with a specific number of crayons in it. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which, or you can be fined. And then there is the idiotic lemonade wars with government insanity that pop in to the headlines.

    Regulations are made by politicians and bureaucrats, but these people are typically not experts in any field other than politics. By their very nature, they are less concerned with the economy, the environment, and national defense than they are with getting reelected and pleasing their masters who got them elected in the first place. Policy makers are therefore almost invariably unqualified to perform the job for which they were elected. This lack of expertise necessitates that they solicit the opinions of others on policy matters, opinions which typically come from powerful lobbyists with a monetary interest in obscuring, or at least bending, the truth.

    The consequences of this mismatch of skills and power are seen in a series of unhelpful, unscientific regulations based on emotions and assumptions, or for the most part designed by the heads of industries by proxy of their lobbyists who use the regulatory system to give themselves an advantage against their competition.

    Public Choice Theory in economics teaches us that politicians, rather than being benevolent advocates for all things good and pure, are just as self-interested as the rest of us. This means that they tend to base their decisions less on what is right, and more on what polls say. Hence, feel good laws that do more harm than good.
     
  18. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    What do you find hard to believe, that I own a business that isn't bothered by regulation or that there isn't any regulation anyway because it's a simple matter of not funding enforcement?

    True, but you usually can't blame the politicians and bureaucrats. Some bureaucrats have a vested interest in regulation, but most are merely functionaries. Most regulations are put in place by special interests, including business itself.
     
  19. JoeSixpack

    JoeSixpack New Member

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    Yes I find it hard to believe there is any business that isn't hamstrung by idiotic regulations and irrational taxation. Even if you are not directly effected you indirectly by the regs and taxes others have to deal with.

    The bold is especially true but it is from a selective few the government chooses to listen too. And most of those choices are decided by what benefits those politicians get by choosing sides.
     
  20. carloslebaron

    carloslebaron New Member

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    I guess that this opinion given by "poor Republicans" in the poll, is a "justified reaction" caused by the after-effect events of Katrina, because the ones who committed rapes, killings, and disorder (read chaos) in the affected zones of New Orleans were the "poor Democrats" living in that State. Lol.
     
  21. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    It's not that I don't know what you mean, but my business seems to generate enough revenue, even after regulation and taxes, that I am satisfied. But I never went into business to max out profitability or leverage staff to the breaking point. Maybe I have a mini-Starbucks here.

    There seems to be a rash of new regulation after every disaster or major scandal and just about everybody favors those at the time. Other than that, a lot of regulations are put into effect by the mostly corporate lobbies and their payees to raise barriers to entry or limit competition or to otherwise enrich themselves.
     

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