The Glade 4.0

Please don't break out in a religous war here.

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Oh, by the way?

53% of Blacks believe in Young Earth Creationism and 41% in some form of guided evolution

I'd be willing to bet this guy does not believe in evolution, nor do most of his parishoners:



So let's not pretend Romney has cornered the market on a base that contains a lot of Creationists, shall we?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Whatever, dude. You're right, I don't like it, because it's not true. You calling it a fairly tale does not make it so.

But then you only show up every once in a while to make inflammatory comments anyhow.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And apparently you don't believe in or appreciate nuance if it helps what you think is mocking people.

Way to contribute!

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

No, it's pretty clear he believes in evolution. So no, he doesn't believe in it all. Why would that need to be the case anyway?

Just to point out the numbers:

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Holy shitsnacks!

That's good figurin' no matter which of the two you're talking about.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

The silliness of rthis is mitigated by the fact that some Americans claim to be witches.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The 2012 General Election will momentous for proving the following readily apparent truths.

1. Nearly 100% of voters disagree with someone else who should be President.

2. This is the most important election ever.

3. Not voting for Barack Obama is racism.

This thread is momentous for demonstrating that people are so wrapped up in the false dilemma of American elections and faux populism that they think it matters.

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I don't find this thread to be momuntous at all, and I'm the one who started it.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Anybody who wants to throw out Romney's "I can balance out a 20% tax cut by closing loopholes" but simultaneously believes we can grow and tax our way to government revenue matching government spending 22% of GDP is a hypocrite and moron.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Far, far less than 21 percent.

No, you know what, nothing mitigates that. It's just moronic. And the fact that fewer people recognize evolution than believe Barack Obama is a Muslim is just...I don't think we've yet invented a word that can can contain the disdain and disappointment that should be packed into a group of syllables.

They are evolutionarily challenged, in every sense of the term.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The party who scored the affordable care at one trillion when it is nearing three shouldn't be lecturing anyone on budget projections.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Oh goody, a new sig..

This thread turned out to have some value after all!

Thanks!

What's that got to do with anything? It isn't like if someone claims to be a witch, only one other person can actually believe them



It is certainly not moronic to believe there are witches when there are people actually claiming to be witches. Overly credulous and silly perhaps, but far from moronic.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

But there are witches. And warlocks too. Its just a name taken by a person who follows a belief set. I'm trying to remember where I saw the term "head necromancer" on TV last.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Why so? Basically every other western country has government revenue that's a significantly higher percentage of their GDP than that (most over 30%, some even over 40%), including many that have been outperforming the US economy for years. Also, even in the US, I believe Federal + State/Local government revenues have been over 22% since WWII and at or above 30% since the early 1970s (see here), so it's clear even our economy can do just fine with levels of total government revenue in the 20s and low 30s.

"Hauser's Law", which is what I assume you're basing your comment on, doesn't account for any of the foregoing (nor does it account for the shift at the federal level from high marginal income taxation to payroll taxes). Now, if you want to argue that increasing federal revenue to 22% will necessitate reducing state/local revenues so our total government revenue doesn't go too far beyond the 30% mark that's proven historically sustainable, that's fine, though you still have to explain why the US is apparently uniquely incapable of sustaining 30-40% total government revenue levels like the rest of the western world.

Note: I'm not necessarily advocating such an increase in federal and/or total government revenue as a percentage of GDP. I'm just noting that it strains credulity to argue that it's impossible, given the points I make above.

Exactly. If you already believe that witches exist, and then someone claims to be one, your belief has just been reinforced. This is then compounded by the fact that most counterargument is then the begging the question tactic of simply rejecting the possibility of witches out of hand because it's supernatural, which is ridiculous, which we know because supernatural claims are automatically ridiculous and to be rejected out of hand. I have no doubt that people can and do debunk claims of witchery just like they do UFOs and other such things, but the usual response of most people is just arrogant disdain.

It is positively astounding to me how many people think they can change a person's belief if they only insult that person and their belief long enough. Frankly, I think it's a lot stupider to engage in displays of superiority towards the belief and people in question and loudly and publicly wonder why they don't just embrace what's so obviously true than it is to hold those beliefs in the first place. "Oh, you believe in witches? Well, despite their being an abundance of good reasons not to believe in them, I'm going to simply rant and carry on about what a fool you are." Yes, that's bound to work.

I don't believe in witches in the first place, but when I see people just screaming about how stupid that, or any other belief is, it confirms my impression that skeptics are not any smarter or better at reasoning than the credulous people they argue against; they think their belief is so obviously correct that they don't need to put forth any argument at all. There is nothing worse for a sound position than to put it forth in a fashion that indicates you are a stranger to reason yourself.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE what im saying is that belief in witches should be 100% because they do exsist. Now we could argue that the poll question referenced the supernatural variety, but as the question was posed in the post, witches do exsist.

So I find it silly that close to 80% of Americans can't figure that out. (Barring a loaded question designed into the polls for a gotcha moment)

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Uh.. I just agreed with that. What's the problem?



That's true.



Also quite true.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Shifting goalpost fallacy.


And no, the only time the federal revenues (since you want that level of specifics to move targets), have exceeded 20% in the last 50 years or so was 1, perhaps 2 years under Clinton.

In fact, here's a story from Reason talking about how we could actually balance the budget without any "real" cuts. I've posted it before. Feel free to ignore it again.

In the meantime, look at Figure 1. in the story at least, where the official OMB numbers compare spending to revenue.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It's not shifting goalposts to point out an additional factor that's relevant to the analysis. The US divides its taxation between central and regional governments to a greater degree than most other western countries, which is an important consideration when analyzing the stability and magnitude of central government revenues.


Link appears to be missing.

Where do you think Barack Obama is on that graph?