Sometimes it just gets to the beyond belief point. I mean seriously. The Tea-Publicans are deeply investing in ideas and policies that are full of nothing but Tragic Fail.
The examples are numerous.
Today Michelle Bachmann said that America should be more like Canada, which is ahead of us in it's economic recovery she claims because "they didn't implement a stimulus".
Lesson in economic recovery: Consider Canada. No stimulus & unemployment is 20% lower than US. is.gd/jxebtd #tcot #teaparty #canada
And that's fine except that - well - they Did implement a stimulus.
But the absolute fact of the matter is that Canada undertook a thorough stimulus program under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party -- one that was relatively smaller than the one here, but given the apples and oranges situation of having different economic needs, it was still a very considerable one.
...
As Bloomberg reported in January 2009, this stimulus was CAN$40 billion, equal in then-current exchange rates to US$32.6 billion, over two years (a similar period as Obama's US$787 billion stimulus). If we make further adjustments, using IMF data for each country from the year 2008 for purchasing-power parity, per-capita GDP, and the much larger population of the United States, this would work out as very roughly equal to a stimulus of over US$360 billion if it were done here.
Bachman is just plain Wrong!
Then you have Rick Santorum, who claims the relative low scores by American students on their own history - is part of a deliberate campaign by Liberals.
We donât even know our own history. There was a report that just came out last week that the worst subject of children in American schools is â not math and science â its history. Itâs the worst subject. How can we be a free people. How can we be a people that fight for America if we donât know who America is or what weâre all about. This is, in my opinion, a conscious effort on the part of the left who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they are more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America.
Yeah, "The Left" has a huge influence on the curriculum when the majority of books have been given a right-ward slant by the likes of Dave Barton.
Despite its proven track record of success, separation of church and state is increasingly becoming just another target for the Religious Right's smear campaign strategists. In the past few years, an entire cottage industry has sprung up in Religious Right circles that seeks to "prove" that mainstream history is all wrong. The United States was really founded to be a fundamentalist Christian nation. Separation of church and state was never intended; it was, these far-right activists allege, foisted on the country by the Supreme Court in recent times.
The Religious Right's leading practitioner of this type of historical revisionism is David Barton, who runs an outfit called WallBuilders out of Aledo, Texas.1 Barton makes a lucrative living traveling the right wing's lecture circuit where he offers up a cut-and-paste version of U.S. history liberally sprinkled with gross distortions and, in some cases, outright factual errors. Crowds of fundamentalist Christians from coast to coast can't get enough of it.
Santorum is simply Wrong!.
And this distortion isn't just happening with history, it's undermining the foundation of Science as well. Just this week, 49 out of 51 contestants for Miss USA wouldn't say they believe in evolution, and didn't think it should be taught in schools.
All of the contestants were aware of the question ahead of time. Indeed, according to one pageant veteran, the women were scared to death of a Prejean-like fiasco and were concerned that there is a right or wrong answer. In their apparent struggle, 96 percent of them either confused the evolution of species with the origin of life (not the same) or said a variation of Miss Michigans line that its silly and ignorantâ not to know both sides including, evidently, religious views in public schools.
Kentuckys Kia Ben-et Hampton, however, did her states Creation Museum proud by firmly rejecting evolution in schools. Believing that scientists have their different theories, she said, I don't believe it's a good topic for school subjects. At all. While Alaskas Jessica Chuckran, Mississippis Keeley Patterson and West Virginias Whitney Veach at least thought evolution should be taught as a theory alongside religion, Alabamas Madeline Mitchell simply declared, I do not believe in evolution, I do not believe it should be taught in schools, and I would not encourage it.
Evolution is the foundation of our understanding of Biology. If we don't understand that, we understand nothing about ourselves via Medicine or about the animal world. I mean that's just pathetic.
96% of them - were Wrong!.
Fortunately the ultimate winner. Alyssa Campanella from California was one of the two contestants to give the correct answer that "Yes, we should teach science in Science Class".
In Wisconsin we have Governor Walker dodging the Public to implement cuts to Medicaid, while in Florida Governor Scott is rejecting $19 Million in Federal Medicaid Funds for the poor and disabled.
While this is going on we have a man who Robbed a Bank for $1 just so he could get Medical Care in Jail.
James Richard Verone of North Carolina spent his whole life playing by the rules and staying out of trouble. Having worked as a delivery man for Coca Cola for 17 years, Verone was known as a hard worker and honest man.
Yet when he was laid off from Coca Cola three years ago, Verone was desperate to find work. He eventually found employment as a convenience clerk, yet he began to notice a protrusion in his chest. He developed arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome, and soon the pain became too much for him to bear. He filed for disability, but he was denied any sort of coverage by the federal government.
So earlier this month, as the Gaston Gazette reports Verone drove to a local RBC Bank and told the teller he was robbing them for a dollar. He said he wanted to rob the bank in order to go to jail and get medical coverage:
As a nation, we should be ashamed that anyone has to resort to crime just to have his tumor looked at. No should ever even consider this. Republicans love to say all anyone has to do for Medical Care is "Go to the Emergency Room" -well if the lump in his chest, arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome aren't immediately life threatening - then they aren't an Emergency are they?
He wouldn't be admitted for that. Not a chance. It's not even likely that he'd get an X-ray or an MRI to examine the lump, even after waiting in an Emergency room for 16-20 hours (As I've done with at least 15 times over the last few years) My wife has a broken back (compression fracture near the spine after falling down a flight of stairs, and it took them 18 months just to even give her an MRI. (Note: This month - three years later - they finally did a procedure to alleviate the pain, they burned the nerves near her spine so she couldn't feel the fracture anymore. They didn't fix the fracture, even though their's a peice of bone pressing on her spinal cord - they just burned the nerves which will grow back in about a year, but at least she won't be in constant agonized, vicodin dulled pain for a while)
If his lump is malignant, he could be dead in three years, just like the other 45,000 Americans who die every year from lack of access to health care.
Maybe if we were a little more like Canada, none of that would be the case - but we aren't and it is the case. He was Wrong to commit a robbery, but did he really have a better choice?
Lastly, as we've heard time and time again, the only idea Republicans have to invigorate the economy and create jobs - whether it's Tim (a decade of 5% Growth) Pawlenty or Paul (Granny Killer) Ryan - is to cut taxes for the Rich, while raising them on the poor.
Yet when you look at the historical correlation between the top marginal tax rate and economic growth, the lowest rates have not created the fastest growing economies.
Back in the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was more than 90 percent, real annual growth averaged more than 4 percent. During the last eight years, when the top marginal rate was just 35 percent, real growth was less than half that. Altogether, in years when the top marginal rate was lower than 39.6 percent the top rate during the 1990s annual real growth averaged 2.1 percent. In years when the rate was 39.6 percent or higher, real growth averaged 3.8 percent. The pattern is the same regardless of threshold. Take 50 percent, for example. Growth in years when the tax rate was less than 50 percent averaged 2.7 percent. In years with tax rates at or more than 50 percent, growth was 3.7 percent.
Yet again, They are Wrong.
And it's not a coincidence, nor is it an accident. Just like Sarah Palin's mangling of fact regarding everything from Ellis Island to Paul Revere - they're Wrong because it suits their ideological purposes to continually push this Disinformation on the American Public.
The entire foundation of the GOP is frankly based on a pile of lies. America is "Exceptional" (Meaning: Superior) to every other country. (Yeah, Superior in Debt!) Government is inept and costly. Private Business is efficient (except that every time we privatize a government function it costs more the way Fed Ex costs more than the Post Office, and it can be full of corruption like KBR, Blackwater/Xe and Wackenhut or lead to tragic disasters like those overseen by BP and Massey Mining). We need to give more and more money to the "job creators" (So they can continue to eliminate American Jobs and benefits and send them overseas faster, rather than revitalize the American middle class with better wages so that consumer spending and demand, which is the real driver of our economy, grows and expands.)
We have to realize these people are Wrong for a Reason. They aren't dumb. They aren't even consciously lying. They're like a pack of Conspiracy Theorists trapped in Pathological Partisan Cult of Confirmation Bias.
Half-a-century of research has placed confirmation bias among the most dependable of mental stumbling blocks.
Journalists looking to tell a certain story must avoid the tendency to ignore evidence to the contrary; scientists looking to prove a hypothesis must avoid designing experiments with little wiggle room for alternate outcomes.
Without confirmation bias, conspiracy theories would fall apart. Did we really put a man on the moon? If you are looking for proof we didn’t, you can find it.
In a 1979 University of Minnesota study by Mark Snyder and Nancy Cantor, people read about a week in the life of an imaginary woman named Jane. Throughout the week, Jane did things which showcased she could be extraverted in some situations and introverted in others.
A few days passed. The subjects were asked to return.
Researchers divided the people into groups and asked them to help decide if Jane would be suited for a particular job. One group was asked if she would be a good librarian; the other group was asked if she would be a good real-estate agent.
In the librarian group, people remembered her as an introvert. In the real-estate group, they remembered her being an extravert. After this, when they were asked if she would be good at the other profession people stuck with their original assessment, saying she wasn’t suited for the other job. The study suggests even in your memories you fall prey to confirmation bias, recalling those things which support your beliefs, forgetting those things which debunk them.
So if your personal memories are formed with a particular perspective, things that you see or learn in your life looking forward continue to be prioritized and de-emphasized based on that perspective. It's not something that is exclusive to the Right-Wing or Conservatives - but the fact is the center of Conservativism is based on Belief and so-called "Traditional Values", not based on fact, science and evidence that can be brought to bear for us in what we like to call the "Reality-Based Community". It's not that we don't have biases, it's just that we constantly test them, challenge them and improve upon them while they fight hard to Confirm what they already want to believe.
It's like being color-blind to facts.
Hence we constantly get Romanticized claims of how wonderful things were during the Reagan Era even though he ran like a scared rabbit out of Beirut, traded weapons with terrorists and had far higher tax rates than we have now. This is how we wind up in a War with an Unarmed Country - that didn't have any WMD's. This is how Bin Laden gets away in Tora Bora, and nobody says anything about it. It's how Jack Bauer styled Torture becomes Official U.S. Intelligence policy. It's how we get a massive angry Tea Party "movement" as a result of the Wall Street Bailouts - who apparently don't give a shit about Wall Street's skyrocketing profits, but want to take away the health care and pensions for Teachers, Nurses and Police.
You can point out the truth, you can shout it from the rooftops, but these people are not going to accept it. They Refuse to Believe it, because they are emotionally, financially, ideological and religiously invested in believing BULLSHIT.
You can't reason with them. You can't negotiate with them. You just have the beat them and run them out of any and all positions of authority and control.
One by one, bit by bit - the Wrong-Wing of Corporate Feudalists have to be Purged from our Government.
It's not going to be easy. It's going to take some time, but we should commit ourselves to taking our Country Back to Reality - or Bust.
We have to keep the Presidency. We have to take back Congress. We have to take back the State Houses and every Governorship we can get. Push 'em back on every front.
Because, they're just plain WRONG about Everything.
Vyan