Contributors

Monday, May 10, 2010

News On The March!!!

Big doings across our country today...

First of all we have the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Stevens. I guess I'm wondering how someone without any bench experience should be on the SCOTUS. Add in the fact that she is going to have to recuse herself from over 90 percent of the cases the SCOTUS hears in the next year because she is now solicitor general of the United States.

As expected, both sides are all uptizzy about her nomination. The left wanted Wood, a more liberal judge, and thinks that Kagan was too much of a champion of Bush era executive power issues. The Cult thinks she's a liberal activist judge who wants to kill their babies, take away their guns, and send them to re-education camps so nothing new there.

My view is that she's just OK. I think he would've done better with Garland or Wood. The fact that they both have bench experience and could actually hear cases and rule on them make them better choices. I think President Obama had other factors in mind.

Moving out west I see that the GOP purity test has been given to Bob Bennett of Utah and he has failed. Voting for TAARP and trying to solve the health care issue with Ron Wyden added together means exile from the Cult. Doesn't he know that the golden glow of the free market would've easily solved the health care issue and the government always fails? What a fool. More and more, we are seeing the move further to the right on candidates from the GOP. Again, I must ask, how does that translate to victory when it's the middle of the country that decides elections?

I am still holding steady at 17 pick ups in the House and 5 in the Senate for the GOP in the fall election. That number could fall, however, if we see statements from Harry Reid's challenger in Nevada, Sue Lowden, similar to her solution to the rising costs of health care. Lowden said that "bartering is really good" to "get prices down in a hurry," and even urged people to "go ahead and barter with your doctor."Lowden subsequently doubled down, saying that in the old days, people traded chickens for health care, adding: "I'm not backing off of that system."

Finally...this just in...99 percent of the GOP are not racist. At least, that was what was asserted to me by all of my conservative friends after Bill Maher's recent comment on This Week on ABC.

Not all conservatives are racist but if you are racist, chances are you are probably a Republican.

True, indeed, Bill. Why is it so hard for them to admit this? The titanic level of denial is amazing to behold. The Democrats have a much longer history of racism in this country. As soon as Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, however, Nixon employed his southern strategy and now all the former Dixiecrats are Republicans. It's not particle theory, folks. Take a look at this map.

See the giant concentration of RED in the Dixie states? That's where the people live who don't like black people and they all vote Republican. They are the base. So, please, stop insulting my intelligence and playing games. Maher is right. If you are a racist, chances are you don't like President Obama (he's black) and you are a Republican.

File this under: NO SHIT...which is where it fucking belongs.

8 comments:

rld said...

Earlier this morning you demanded this of others - "Where was the critical thinking behind the investors article? The due consideration to the evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, and fariness?"

Now you give us "That's where the people live who don't like black people and they all vote Republican."

You're still pretty mad considering democrats control everything right now.

donald said...

Makes perfect sense to me. The area of our country that traditionally has been biased against blacks is the same area that is more Republican. Mark's not saying that everyone in these areas is racist. If they are racist, however, then they are probably (but not completely) Republican.

As the frightened old white people pass on, so will many of these old biases. I'm sure we'll find some new ones, though.

I do take issue with this map in regards to my home state of MO. Light blue? Not so much. Try orange to dark red.

6Kings said...

"That's where the people live who don't like black people and they all vote Republican."

"As the frightened old white people pass on.."

Ha, such a small minds. You guys just can't get past sound bite "knowledge" can you?

blk said...

Again, you have to make a distinction between a racist and a tribalist. A racist is someone who harbors unreasonable prejudices against members of another ethnicity simply because they are of that ethnicity. A tribalist fears members of other groups because they feel their in-group is threatened (physically, economically, intellectually) by the other group.

Absent a direct threat from another ethnic group a tribalist often feels no animosity against that group. Note also that tribalists do not necessarily congregate based on ethnicity, they may organize based on political or religious beliefs, family/clan relationships, regional affiliation, etc.

Thus, white supremacists are racists, while radical animal rights activists are tribalists.

Given those definitions, most Republicans are tribalists and not racists. They will accept members of other ethnicities into the fold as long as they obey the norms of the tribe. But some Republicans are definitely racists, and there are many racists who think the Republicans are far too "liberal" because they let guys like Michael Steele into the party.

However, that doesn't mean that tribalists are nice guys. The bloodiest violence comes from tribal conflicts. Many of the genocides in history arise from one tribe slaughtering another (like Bosnia and Rwanda in the 90s). These groups were practically identical ethnically, yet their tribal conflict escalated to mass murder.

Also, given those definitions, we can see that the Republicans are far more tribalist than the Democrats. The Democrats tolerate opposing views within the party much more than the Republicans do. It's why it's nonsensical for people to say "the Democrats are in complete control." There is no monolithic central party diktat among the Democrats as there is with the Republicans. For example, there are many Democrats who oppose abortion and are full-fledged members of the party, like Bart Stupak (who is being drummed out of Congress not by fellow Democrats, but by abortion foes). There are many Blue Dog Democrats who cause party leaders no end of trouble.

And that's how it should be. Those Democrats represent the views of their constituents, and there's nothing wrong with that.

That's why having the Democrats in control has historically worked better than Republicans (Reagan gave us the Savings and Loan debacle and Bush gave us the 2008 crash). Because Democrats are all over the map, you get a more centrist policy in the end because they work together to arrive at a reasonable compromise. Whereas with the Republicans, you get tribal dogma that ignores the realities of the situation. And that's why the Democrats have historically controlled Congress more often than the Republicans. They're more centrist and they appeal to a broader cross-section of the country.

Republican numbers will go up and down, but because they constantly excommunicate heretics who violate their ever-tightening dogmas, they will ultimately cull their own numbers and condemn themselves to minority status again.

Anonymous said...

"Not all conservatives are racist but if you are racist, chances are you are probably a Republican."

That's absolutely true, given the context.

Of course, the context is that it's said (and repeated) by someone who believes bestowing or denying privilege, benefits and entitlements on the basis of skin color, gender and ethnicity is specifically not racism, but that calling someone a communist who calls themselves a communist somehow is racism.

If you define racism as "the belief that it's acceptable to reward some and punish others on the basis of race", a solid majority of Democrats has to be racist in order for Affirmative Action to still exist, right?

Anonymous said...

http://tsfiles.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/2008_election_map.jpg

As much as I am starting to doubt ever teaching you anything, I keep trying to correct you. By your (dare I even call it) "logic", my map shows pretty much the whole country is full of racist Nazi homophobes. Or perhaps in your Bill Maher trained reality, everyone is. Except you of course, because you and your ilk are so enlightened that you can freely tell everyone else that disagrees with you that THEY are racist.

But your map explains the vicious, racist hate-speech and Neo-Nazi marches that keep coming out of Nebraska and North Dakota.

No, it's not particle theory. Particle theory is based on facts, and decades of research. I got an A in that class, and it was interesting and at times amusing. Your post is neither.

dw

Anonymous said...

More Nazi racists in the Republican party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/politics/05blacks.html

dw

Ed "What the" Heckman said...

I just find Marky's whole argument fascinating:

"All conservatives are racist because the South is THE Republican stronghold, and everybody knows that most people in the South are racists."

It's amazing that anyone could seriously put forth an argument with more gaping holes than those in a homicide bomber after the explosion. Let's look at some of those holes:

Most ≠ All: Even IF the claim that "most" Southerners are racist is true (a questionable assumption at best), "most" is still not "all". Nor does it say anything whatsoever about which party the racists identify with. Remember, Democrats have been the ones who implemented racists policies (which, Marky claims, magically switched in 1964).

Read any book on logic. Inductive logic means reasoning from the specific to the general. (We have never seen a black swan, therefore all swan are white.) In other words, it's theoretical logic, not deductive logic. But when there are known counter-examples (Black swans were discovered.) that logic is shown to be invalid. Marxy already knows that there are conservatives who are not racist, yet he insists on putting forward this theory which has already been destroyed.

Southern States ≠ Entire Country: Again, even IF it's true that "most" Southerners are racist, that doesn't mean that other parts of the country are racist. In fact, according to this stereotype, only the Southern States are primarily racist, while the rest of the country is not.

So far, we've got Marxy contradicting himself. He gloms on the stereotype that Southerners are racist (and the rest of the country isn't) to claim that conservatives in the South are racist, then contradicts that stereotype to claim "therefore everyone else is racist too".

Southern States ≠ Most Conservative: Marxy points to the Southern States as being the core, the center, the bastion of conservatism. Yet look at his map. Where are THE most conservative states in the country? The Midwest! (Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma) Meanwhile, the only Southern State that matches the least conservative of these states is Alabama. (Note that it's still less conservative than 5 of the Midwestern states I listed.)

Of course, I haven't even really addressed the questionable assertion that "The South" is racist, that the ones in the South who are racist are conservatives, the "magical" switch of racist attitudes from Democrats to Republicans, or even that Marxaphasia claims to be able to read minds when he pretends that conservatives are "actually racist" when our statements and actions have absolutely nothing to do with race, and even when are arguments are explicitly directed towards reducing racism (for example, AA).

This "argument" is so full of holes that the USS Ronald Reagan has already sailed through without even being touched by the remaining tatters, so I don't see any reason to address those other issues.