Presidential debate 1
- Thread starter bob123
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HeHasTheJazzHands
Well-Known Member
Ya don't say...
Just pointing out double standards.
Also find it funny how my relatives are claiming Biden's laughing was interrupting Ryan while he was getting this "facts" accross.
Konfyouzd
Return of the Dread-I
People are gonna like who they like regardless of what the debates and fact checkers uncover.
We all watch TRENCHLORD post whatever will make the conservative candidate look good and the liberal one look bad. That's not a phenomenon limited to SSO or even the internet. That's how a lot of ppl really think. Same works in reverse.
My dad wouldn't vote conservative if they were literally the only choice.
I got a Republican--excuse me--"Libertarian" friend that told me if I really wanna be free I should vote for the Tea Party.
I think I'm free enough. 
I know what they say ab assuming but typically the guy/gal who presents himself/herself most intelligently w/o being arrogant strikes me as the better leader regardless of what end of the spectrum they prefer.
That said one's opinion on *certain* topics can still cost them my vote should I choose to do so.
We all watch TRENCHLORD post whatever will make the conservative candidate look good and the liberal one look bad. That's not a phenomenon limited to SSO or even the internet. That's how a lot of ppl really think. Same works in reverse.
My dad wouldn't vote conservative if they were literally the only choice.
I got a Republican--excuse me--"Libertarian" friend that told me if I really wanna be free I should vote for the Tea Party.
I think I'm free enough.
I know what they say ab assuming but typically the guy/gal who presents himself/herself most intelligently w/o being arrogant strikes me as the better leader regardless of what end of the spectrum they prefer.
That said one's opinion on *certain* topics can still cost them my vote should I choose to do so.
I had a dream last night that Paul Ryan was my substitute teacher and the subtext was that everyone in the class thought the guy was joke and were trying to contain laughter, etc. I felt \sorry for the guy and then at the end of class, he gave away unripened plantains to all the students. I didn't really have any use for plantains but I was going to take them anyway (I was raised that not accepting a gift is rude) until he mentioned that if anyone wasn't planning on eating them, he'd appreciate it if we gave them back because he and his family are poor and could use them. Then I felt really bad for him and after class, I went by his place to cheer him up and he asked me if there was a batting cage somewhere nearby and if I could take him to it.
This post is almost entirely off topic. My guess is that the dream was an offshoot of the fact I kinda felt sorry for the guy during the debate. I totally agree the guy's a bullshit peddler but the way he was tripping over himself in the beginning, the way most/all his swings missed their mark and his repeated attempts to be courteous... it was a bit painful to watch.
This post is almost entirely off topic.
My guess is that the dream was an offshoot of the fact I kinda felt sorry for the guy during the debate. I totally agree the guy's a bullshit peddler but the way he was tripping over himself in the beginning, the way most/all his swings missed their mark and his repeated attempts to be courteous... it was a bit painful to watch. Konfyouzd
Return of the Dread-I
I was thinking the same thing. It's a sign!
And Ryan looks like a fucking nutjob psycho chemo patient.
Also kinda looks like John Stewart.
Today, I see that lame CNN poll is being used to call this debate a draw. Not entirely surprised to be honest. The usual conservative comment postings are either calling Biden a meanie, using the Bible to condemn Biden, or saying that Ryan won because he was composed and Biden was a meanie.
I don't want to gloat on Facebook about this, but it is really tempting. If I gave in, I have a feeling (being in a very conservative part of Texas) I might be threatened with physical violence for my viewpoints. Again.
I don't want to gloat on Facebook about this, but it is really tempting. If I gave in, I have a feeling (being in a very conservative part of Texas) I might be threatened with physical violence for my viewpoints. Again.
Adam Of Angels
The GAS Man
Ridiculous dream, Randy.. but I also felt bad for him last night - he was particularly respectful of, if not slightly intimidated by Biden, and Biden was just a condescending old man.
synrgy
Ya ya ya I am Lorde
I was much happier with Raddatz as the moderator. She did a pretty fantastic job.
This was my favorite moment:
RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent. You have refused -- and, again -- to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics? Or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?
RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the...
RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics?
I only wish *every* debate moderator was that tough, on *every* question. What I've been waiting for, for years now, is the Jeff-Bridges-in-Newsroom-style "You're not answering the question, Sir..". Every time they start to dodge, call those fuckers out! We'll never get better politicians if we don't demand that the entirety of our press stop allowing our politicians to bullshit all the time.
Sure, I know: 'If the networks don't agree to softball, the politicians won't show up on the networks.' AWESOME! That's a WIN! "You want softball? Go play softball, Senator. PS - Good luck on your reelection campaign, Tough Guy."
This was my favorite moment:
RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent. You have refused -- and, again -- to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics? Or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?
RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the...
RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics?
I only wish *every* debate moderator was that tough, on *every* question. What I've been waiting for, for years now, is the Jeff-Bridges-in-Newsroom-style "You're not answering the question, Sir..". Every time they start to dodge, call those fuckers out! We'll never get better politicians if we don't demand that the entirety of our press stop allowing our politicians to bullshit all the time.
Sure, I know: 'If the networks don't agree to softball, the politicians won't show up on the networks.' AWESOME! That's a WIN! "You want softball? Go play softball, Senator. PS - Good luck on your reelection campaign, Tough Guy."
I agree on the two of these together.
No double standard, here. It was wrong for Romney to walk all over President Obama and the moderator in the first Presidential debate, and it was certainly disrespectful for Vice President Biden to do a lot of the same. Given, I wouldn't excuse it altogether, but I'd put an asterisk next to what Biden did because there were some really 'in your face' lies and cheapshots in there that he did hold his tongue for. Likewise, the moderator did a much better job wrestling them back on topic and if somebody (either direction) said something that warranted a retort, she allowed it.
Not letting Vice President Biden off the hook, on principal, he should've been more courteous but considering the specifics, I didn't think it was as off-putting as Romney's performance.
Semichastny
Well-Known Member
This is just a very sad presidential election.
Treeunit212
Not your bro, bro.
I'd say the same, but I'm too young to be able to have paid this close attention to any of the previous.
I'm making up for it this time around.
Some things to consider, courtesy of Factcheck.org, my favorite source of fact checks. Instead of calling everything a lie, they rank order the severity between the candidates; something more people should be doing rather than just calling all politicians blatant liars.
FactCheck.org : Veep Debate Violations
Stuck_in_a_dream
Well-Known Member
IMHO, politics (in a democracy or even a pseudo-democracy) is ugly no matter how you cut it. I didn't like Obama's '08 campaign for the extreme lack of details and I thought he sounded like a scam, mind you I am a liberal. So I think it always was and it's always gonna be the choice between the lesser of two evils.
I enjoyed last night's debate as it showed in a much clearer way (than the 1st) where to draw the lines between the two camps. More facts = less blur = more clarity as to where everyone stands.
I honestly believe that Romney is a moderate Republican but unfortunately at this day and age it's a fictional character. In order to get elected by the Repubs., he had to present himself in a way that is now alienating him from the moderate in-the-middle voters.
Being a new immigrant to this wonderful country, I was shocked by what the republicans get away with. But judging by the number of still 'undecided' voters a few weeks before the election, there should be no wonder. In any case, I can not put it more eloquently than Seth Macfarlane did in this...
Konfyouzd
Return of the Dread-I
Nine...
... Eleven...
I love it.
... Eleven...
I love it.
Scar Symmetry
Ex Whiny Bitch
Scar Symmetry
Ex Whiny Bitch
This, with a slice of this on top, with a side of this.
Also, I'm surprised at the distaste for Biden's behaviour. Was it slightly immature for an old man? Yes. Was there pressure to be aggressive (note the importance of this election...) given the previous debate? Yes. Did he school Ryan? Yes. Did I feel bad for Ryan...? No.
Ryan shouldn't have been in that seat in the first place and Biden knew it, hence his behaviour.
Treeunit212
Not your bro, bro.
Before Trench even says anything.
Necris
Bonitis.
I actually have Fox News on right now, I love how when talking about the past debate one of the guests on the show said "The Democrats always have to complain about everything" and then went on to whine about how terrible Martha Raditz was as a moderator, the cognitive dissonance is palpable.
Semichastny
Well-Known Member
That is what faith-based thinking will do to a person.
Watty
Naturally Cynical
Semichastny
Well-Known Member
Among other things.....can't forget ALL the other things.
TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT
By Chris Mooney
"[This is a portion of the essay]... adapted from Chris Mooney’s forthcoming book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, due out in April from Wiley. [link at the bottom]"
"I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in thinking—hoping—that laying out the “facts” would suffice to change politicized minds, and especially Republican ones. It was a typically wonkish, liberal revelation: One based on statistics and data. Only this time, the data were showing, rather awkwardly, that people ignore data and evidence—and often, knowledge and education only make the problem worse.
Someone had sent me a 2008 Pew report documenting the intense partisan divide in the U.S. over the reality of global warming.. It’s a divide that, maddeningly for scientists, has shown a paradoxical tendency to widen even as the basic facts about global warming have become more firmly established.
Those facts are these: Humans, since the industrial revolution, have been burning more and more fossil fuels to power their societies, and this has led to a steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, and especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. At this point, very simple physics takes over, and you are pretty much doomed, by what scientists refer to as the “radiative” properties of carbon dioxide molecules (which trap infrared heat radiation that would otherwise escape to space), to have a warming planet. Since about 1995, scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place, but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they exist, can’t explain what we’re seeing. The only reasonable verdict is that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and their smokestacks.
Such is what is known to science--what is true (no matter what Rick Santorum might say). But the Pew data showed that humans aren’t as predictable as carbon dioxide molecules. Despite a growing scientific consensus about global warming, as of 2008 Democrats and Republicans had cleaved over the facts stated above, like a divorcing couple. One side bought into them, one side didn’t—and if anything, knowledge and intelligence seemed to be worsening matters.
Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between one’s political party affiliation, one’s acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and one’s level of education. And here’s the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.
For Democrats and Independents, the opposite was the case. More education correlated with being more accepting of climate science—among Democrats, dramatically so. The difference in acceptance between more and less educated Democrats was 23 percentage points.
This was my first encounter with what I now like to call the “smart idiots” effect: The fact that politically sophisticated or knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant. It’s a reality that generates endless frustration for many scientists—and indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.
And most of all, for many liberals.
Let’s face it: We liberals and progressives are absolutely outraged by partisan misinformation. Lies about “death panels.” People seriously thinking that President Obama is a Muslim, not born in the United States. Climate-change denial. Debt ceiling denial. These things drive us crazy, in large part because we can’t comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist.
And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to refute them—to argue, argue, argue about why we’re right and Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right-wing misinformation’s defeat is nigh, if we could only make people wiser and more educated (just like us) and get them the medicine that is correct information.
No less than President Obama’s science adviser John Holdren (a man whom I greatly admire, but disagree with in this instance) has stated, when asked how to get Republicans in Congress to accept our mainstream scientific understanding of climate change, that it’s an “education problem.”
But the facts, the scientific data, say otherwise.
Indeed, the rapidly growing social scientific literature on the resistance to global warming (see for examples here and here) says so pretty unequivocally. Again and again, Republicans or conservatives who say they know more about the topic, or are more educated, are shown to be more in denial, and often more sure of themselves as well—and are confident they don’t need any more information on the issue.
Tea Party members appear to be the worst of all. In a recent survey by Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, they rejected the science of global warming even more strongly than average Republicans did. For instance, considerably more Tea Party members than Republicans incorrectly thought there was a lot of scientific disagreement about global warming (69 percent to 56 percent). Most strikingly, the Tea Party members were very sure of themselves—they considered themselves “very well-informed” about global warming and were more likely than other groups to say they “do not need any more information” to make up their minds on the issue.
But it’s not just global warming where the “smart idiot” effect occurs. It also emerges on nonscientific but factually contested issues, like the claim that President Obama is a Muslim. Belief in this falsehood actually increased more among better-educated Republicans from 2009 to 2010 than it did among less-educated Republicans, according to research by George Washington University political scientist John Sides.
The same effect has also been captured in relation to the myth that the healthcare reform bill empowered government “death panels.” According to research by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Republicans who thought they knew more about the Obama healthcare plan were “paradoxically more likely to endorse the misperception than those who did not.” Well-informed Democrats were the opposite—quite certain there were no “death panels” in the bill.
The Democrats also happened to be right, by the way.
The idealistic, liberal, Enlightenment notion that knowledge will save us, or unite us, was even put to a scientific test last year—and it failed badly.
Yale researcher Dan Kahan and his colleagues set out to study the relationship between political views, scientific knowledge or reasoning abilities, and opinions on contested scientific issues like global warming. In their study, more than 1,500 randomly selected Americans were asked about their political worldviews and their opinions about how dangerous global warming and nuclear power are. But that’s not all: They were also asked standard questions to determine their degree of scientific literacy (e.g, “Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria—true or false?”
as well as their numeracy or capacity for mathematical reasoning (e.g., “If Person A’s chance of getting a disease is 1 in 100 in 10 years, and person B’s risk is double that of A, what is B’s risk?”.The result was stunning and alarming. The standard view that knowing more science, or being better at mathematical reasoning, ought to make you more accepting of mainstream climate science simply crashed and burned.
Instead, here was the result. If you were already part of a cultural group predisposed to distrust climate science—e.g., a political conservative or “hierarchical-individualist”—then more science knowledge and more skill in mathematical reasoning tended to make you even more dismissive. Precisely the opposite happened with the other group—“egalitarian-communitarians” or liberals—who tended to worry more as they knew more science and math. The result was that, overall, more scientific literacy and mathematical ability led to greater political polarization over climate change—which, of course, is precisely what we see in the polls."
http://www.alternet.org/story/15425...science_--_and_reality?page=entire&paging=off
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