WHY “despair” that a political party or cult of idiocy has decided as a matter of political strategy to disrespect scientific evidence – that can inform us of our real-world situation and which pertains crucially to our future welfare and prosperity – if there is another political party which does not?

Why would anybody in their right mind ever wish to PRESERVE such a political party or cult of idiocy? WTF? Haven’t you noticed? These people don’t want you to look at any evidence. They want to obtain and maintain positions of power, and they don’t care about how they obtain it. They are contemptuous of the real world of nature and the science which reveals it. They fully expect to obtain their power through a studied reliance on voter ignorance and apathy. They are not interested in testing their ideas and policies against the actualities of the natural real world, but are only interested in shaping a fantasy world specifically designed to enhance their interest, power and wealth.

Are we to presume now that there is some ridiculous conservation ethic at work to be observed? Is a political party or cult of idiocy or opinion entitled to special protection because it is endangered? Is that a valid concept now??? Can a political tradition now be as important as the welfare of the people? Of the country? Of the world?

Can it possibly get any more insane?

Oh yes. Can it evar.

We can read about how awful it is that a cult of idiocy has infected a political party…and then actually be presented with the proposition that the party which so easily sells itself to management by the cult of idiots might be saved.

As if the idiocy (namely, a disrespect of evidence and nature and the science which reveals it) was a precious and valuable virtue to be protected and nurtured.

Tradition, you know.

Yet the solution is so simple, so obvious. You wanna REALLY “fix it”? Then QUIT IT. One chucks crap. You flush it. You throw trash away, you don’t hang onto it as a keepsake. DON’T try to “fix” it. That’s assinine-caliber stupid. One fixes them by getting rid of them, and the way to do that is by not voting for them, not by helping them to return to the center. They’re GONE. Exterminate them by refusing to preserve them. DON’T VOTE FOR THEM. Knock off all of the imbecilic accomodationist appeals and let the political/religious cults of idiocy DIE already.

Vote for those who respect real-world evidence and the science that actually reveals it. Vote for those who sincerely support science funding. Vote for those who respect evidence that comes from nature. Vote for those who love science and nature and human beings

And be smart. Be a well-rounded human being aware of your astonishingly ancient natural heritage and environment. Be what best makes a fully-competent human being: DON’T listen to a-holes who want to bamboozle you with an idiotic dichotomy which doesn’t reflect the authentic human condition. The dichotomy doesn’t exist. Be BOTH a Free-Thinking “LIBERAL” (THAT’s what the word means, related to the word LIBERTY) AND an authentically careful and practical “CONSERVATIVE” (which is a virtue in any real human being not screwed up by imposters who LIE about what it means just to keep you under control). Why not be YOURSELF instead of their idiotic characatures that make you less than a complete human being?

Return to your natural aptitudes as a complete human being, and tell all those political schmucks who want to mess with your mind to shove it and take a flying leap.

THEN, vote for yourself for a change.

We can’t afford to be so damned stupid and naive any longer.

They focus on an amendment to the constitution regarding marriage, and then they let a one cent sales tax expire that was meant for education. This meant laying off a few more thousand teachers, and other cuts to the schools. It is so hard to recruit science and math teachers to this state (along with others in the South) that there is a company called VIF (Visiting International Faculty) that gets $10,000 for each teacher it brings in, the majority of which are from the Philippines and thus very happy to get the relatively low wages paid in the South.

They get a three year contract, which the state can cancel at any time, and the state makes no effort to keep these teachers, so at the three year mark, if not before, the teachers either go back to Asisa or to Texas (another third world country?) which is so desperate for science teachers that it offers assistance with citizenship for these visitors. On a personal level, I can be quite fond of a Republican neighbor, but as decision makers, they are a disaster (and admittedly, the Dems are not worthy of worship, but at least they approach rationality and compassion and some focus on the future).

Although I taught at the college level for forty years, the only expertise I feel that I have is recognizing intelligence (grade a few thousand papers and it comes with the territory), and that left me with the conclusion that conservatives and logic and intelligence and compassion are not likely to be found in the same room. And we are the poorer for it.

I think that people also should take the 19th and early 20th stories of abuses with a grain of salt and research it more fully.

And when you do research it, you will find that there is very little exaggeration. People really did sell chalk as flour. They really did adulterate goods in all sorts of ways (which is one of the reasons brand names arose). They really did sell all sorts of stuff that was hideously toxic – in some cases through ignorance, but sometimes knowingly.

Government regulation of – for example – medicines really was necessary. Not only to protect people from stuff that was actively toxic, but also to prtect people from unknown hazards, and to protect people from “medicines” that were no such thing. This last point is a battle that is still ongoing.

The abuses were no where near as widespread as claimed, and many cases were used a red herrings to increase power.

Nope, from what I have read and heard, from sources I consider at least reasonably reliable, the reasons for the introduction of government regulation of industry were sound.

If anything, there is too little government regulation of industry – after all, it was a relaxing of regulation that allowed the banks to land us in the hole we are all still trying to climb out of. And yet bankers still award themselves massive bonuses, despite making a complete hash of looking after their customers’ interests.

. . . As a note, I am a liberal and wholly support the need of the state to protect us from fraud and abuse, but not from ourselves.

Well, government regulation of industry is the main tool for protecting the consumer from fraud and abuse. As for protecting us from ourselves, if you refer to what I think you refer to, it seems that the need for this to occur has arisen from the American litigation culture. I mean things like warnings on a cup of coffee that it is likely to be scalding hot, and so on.

Almost all of the recent cases where this exact kind of delayed threat exist were caught by company inspectors, not government inspectors. They were protecting their own brand from third party manufacturers.

This may be the case for recent examples, but the concept of regulation and inspection of industry was introduced by government to protect the people from a multitude of unscrupulous traders.

Or would you recommend heroin for a sore throat, and thalidomide for morning sickness?

Not really going to comment on much other than news sources that are anti-Tea Party to begin with aren’t really reliable sources of information. Remember the fraud Dan Rather participated in that caused him to lose his job. News sources have political agendas, and 99% of them are left leaning. I really laughed when someone above used *NPR* as a resource. That’s almost as silly as using Huffington Post. And for the poster who posted a link to a site that actually said *liberal* in it, all I can say is “Really? You call that unbiased?”

So . . . does this mean you believe in some kind of divine plan that means liberals don’t have access to facts, or what?

Ooh, can I pinch that for future use?

Sort of curious that anti-science hasn’t tackled geology yet.

Oh, but they did. About 10 years ago, when Peak Oil was in the news, the geological community was attacked, in mass, by those that declare ignorance and stupidity a virtue(some of whom have posted in this very thread).
I guess other issues dominate main stream media, these days, but geologists have known for 60 years that a calamity is lurking just over the horizon.

The Tea Party may be full of religious people, but the agenda is not religious. It would be the same as saying that the Academy of Science is mired in a radical leftist agenda, just because the majority of them are leftist. I dislike the Tea Party for being inconsistent in their calls for economic freedoms alongside calls for kicking out the illegals and calls for protecting medicare rates where they are. They are absolutely confused, but they are very much an economically focused group.

The core values of one of the national Tea Party groups, Tea Party.org are

NON-NEGOTIABLE CORE BELIEFS OF THE TEA PARTY
1. Illegal Aliens Are Here Illegally.
2. Pro-Domestic Employment Is Indispensable.
3. Stronger Military Is Essential.
4. Special Interests Eliminated.
5. Gun Ownership Is Sacred.
6. Government Must Be Downsized.
7. National Budget Must Be Balanced.
8. Deficit Spending Will End.
9. Bail-Out And Stimulus Plans Are Illegal.
10. Reduce Personal Income Taxes A Must.
11. Reduce Business Income Taxes Are Mandatory.
12. Political Offices Available To Average Citizens.
13. Intrusive Government Stopped.
14. English As Core Language Is Required.
15. Traditional Family Values Are Encouraged.

Interesting. Numbers 1, 2 and 15 are also claimed as core values of the British National Party, which is widely recognised as a neo-fascist (or at least, so far right-wing that they verge on fascism) organisation.

“Traditional family values” is a code for strict and institutionalised patriarchal homophobia (woman’s-place-is in-the-kitchen-barefoot-and-pregnant / gays-should-be-”cured”-or-jailed), enforced with routine corporal punishment (“spare the rod and spoil the child”). Do you consider Victorian social values to be a good thing for a 21st-century technological society?

So, which part of the Tea Party isn’t dominated by the ultra-conservative religious far-right?

The defenders of a Mad Max society have coalesced with the Old Testament followers to create an alternative to civilized rational western society. Obama must understand that times are not for “triangles” but for a democratic, self-controlled, compassionate, reasonable -but determined and bold- crusade against this real threat to the wellbeing of human kind.

Personally I think any election should always have the option “none of the above”. If “none of the above” wins then every candidate that stood is banned from standing again for the position, either permanently (let’s be honest, it’s not like there really are only a few dozen people of the intellectual status of Bachman, Obama, Perry, Clinton or Palin available in the USA capable of doing the job) or for at least the next election term. “None of the above” shoud translate to “They’re all unacceptable – give me new candidates to choose from, please”.

I kinda like this idea.

However, the option already exists (at least, it does if US elections are anything like those in the UK). You can deliberately “spoil” your ballot paper, by striking through the whole list, or any other means that isn’t simply putting a cross in a box – or you can even write “abstention” on it. (Of course, this is not possible with computerised voting – does anyone know if the computers allow you to abstain?)

Sadly, I don’t see this idea getting any traction, mainly because most people don’t care enough about the individual candidates and simply vote for a party (except, obviously, in presidential primaries).

Personally, I think both parties pretty much suck at science.

Maybe so, but candidates don’t have to publicly deny firmly-established science to get the Democrat nomination, do they?

See, that’s the kind of thinking that pisses me off. How can someone willfully be so irrational? “I don’t like the way some people are proposing that we deal with problem X, so I’m going to stick my fingers in my ears and pretend that problem X doesn’t exist.” Just because we understand how their train of thought lines up doesn’t mean it’s any less stupid.

Believing that “cap and trade” is a bad idea is a valid opinion. Believing that the best course of action on climate change is to do nothing right now and deal with it as it comes is a valid opinion. Generally speaking, any belief about what people should do is a valid (if possibly misguided) opinion. Choosing to deny the whole damn thing, though… As Mr. Schultz said, “They’re entitled to their opinion, but they’re not entitled to the facts.”

Except it doesn’t. Wake me when a Democrat controlled state legislature wants to remove the requirement for vaccines or ban animal research.

In comparison, how many Republican legislatures have tried to add intelligent design?

People may be equally scientifically illiterate on both sides, but the Democrats in power rarely attempt to legislate anti-science.

http://reason.com/archives/2011/10/04/more-anti-science-democrats-or

Sorry but this is untrue. I know many who caucus with the “tea party” who are more libertarian and not religious at all. The “tea party” was formed to combat economic decline and deficit spending.

Phil you are regurgitating the Democratic party line.

Can I have freedom to choose as well?

Absolutely–as long as it doesn’t impinge on my or my family’s safety. Also, as long as it doesn’t increase costs to society by a significant amount (e.g. skyrocketing medical bills that insurance, tax-payers have to help cover). Problem is how do you have a set of regulations for one company that won’t apply to another company? I’d go with regulation vs non-regulation even if the regulation is overkill. And if it fails at times then it is often because their budget had been cut and the regulatory agencies can’t actually make inspections. Food and drug inspectors have been upset about that for quite some time now.

The food issues are relatively minor though. If you want to see what non-regulation looks like for other industries, visit some of the former Soviet bloc countries. Or read about the multinational companies that set up shop in countries without such strict regulations (India, countries in Africa, China, Mexico, etc). Massively polluting the environment and harming/killing people there is a common occurrence rather than an isolated occurrence. Or read up on what happened here in the 50s and 60s and how the people of whole communities suffered from poisoned air and water supplies.

Sure, the market may drive those industries out of the market (perhaps due to class action lawsuits, not necessarily because they’re making inferior products) but not before they’ve done a lot of unnecessary damage and harmed people, sometimes for decades.

No company wants to spend millions of dollars protecting the environment and people who depend on that environment especially in remote areas. Without regulations that require them to do just that, they very likely would not. In fact, even with the regulations companies still try and take short-cuts and downplay the damage they do. E.g. the tar sands and the leaking of contaminants into the river–it took famed limnologist Dr. David Schindler to highlight the contamination and for the first few months the company said contamination was all natural and not their fault. In the meantime, people in the communities were dying of cancer and the tar sands project isn’t going bankrupt any time soon…instead it is expanding on a massive scale and even with tight regulations, it will pollute on a much larger scale. Hate to think what they would do without any regulatory agency.

Yojimbo had it right when he said there was a very good reason for regulations being enacted in the first place. It is just that we’ve forgotten how bad bad can get…sort of similar to the way people forget how bad polio was and now claim we don’t need to vaccinate against it.

The abuses were no where near as widespread as claimed, and many cases were used a red herrings to increase power. I’d go so far as to suggest that cases of inspection failure have not gone down as a result of it.

I’m not saying you’re wrong here, but these do sound like extraordinary claims (abuses used as red herrings to increase power, and inspection failures have not gone down). Do you have some links or other reading for that? How often did it happen? Which abuses were not as widespread as claimed? No snark here–I really want to know as it would be important information to incorporate into the material I learned in university classes.

To be honest, I’m not following you. But pursuing it would be pretty far off topic, so we should probably just agree that we don’t

As such, when anyone is in need of a chuckle, I highly recommend looking at the videos for potholer54 on youtube. Granted, given most people’s opinions that post here, it will mostly be preaching to the choir, but they are still well done. And, since creationism/age of the Earth has been mentioned by others, I think this video is a great place to start:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APEpwkXatbY&feature=channel_video_title

He provides a good amount of information to show how creationists (in this case) misuse results. A little NSFW (language) but if you just need a laugh, start the video at 4:25 and watch for 1 minute (really, you need to get to 5:30). Just don’t blame me if you laugh out loud and people want to know what happened (especially if you work with other scientist).

Still makes me smile even though I have shown this to folks… many, many times.

Given how companies have responded to inspections rules, I don’t think I’d trust them to voluntarily inspect their goods. If inspections were voluntary, then companies would treat them as just another expense and corner to cut. Why go with Inspection Company 1 who charges a lot but does an extremely thorough job when you could go with Inspection Company 2 who isn’t as thorough but is a lot cheaper? If any issues come up, you can deny them and claim they are isolated incidents. When no denial is possible anymore, you can blame the inspection company, fire them, and replace them with Inspection Company 3 who is identical to #2 but a different company.

So, that’s why all of the electronics brands are quickly ditching Underwriter’s Laboratories, huh? Its as much about the brand of the inspection company. Today, that inspection is a government monopoly. If USDA vegetables come up to have e. coli they don’t get the blame, the growers do. Their inspection regime failed because it was too cozy with the growers. I want separation of powers.

Furthermore, how would customers know the quality of the goods they are getting? Bad goods might not make them sick right away. You might give your child toys to play with that seem safe and your child doesn’t get sick upon touching it, but issues crop up after years of use.

Almost all of the recent cases where this exact kind of delayed threat exist were caught by company inspectors, not government inspectors. They were protecting their own brand from third party manufacturers.

@48. Dragonchild:

It is VERY much about demographics. In democracy, there is little else. The “core values”? THAT’S the blah-blah. That’s the stuff that can be ignored out of hand.

So back to my original point that the Academy of Sciences should not be trusted because its all about demographics.

I recall much of the same blah-blah about “compassionate conservatism”. To reiterate, it comes down to what they’re actually doing. And while there is some truth to the Tea Party’s austerity fever (as destructive as their policies are, they are remarkably doing what they promised to do), there’s no mistaking them for libertarian atheists.

Not all Libertarians are atheists and most of their agenda is not libertarian, only the spending cuts, calls for smaller government, and gun rights are libertarian, and they aren’t even consistent in those.

The agenda really hasn’t changed. But to be fair, let’s take a look at those self-proclaimed values:

I already pointed out much of their inconsistencies, so thank you for validating it, but I’d like to critique one point. I never argued that the Tea Party weren’t Republican, I argued that they weren’t primarily a religious organization. If they were libertarian, than I believe that their stance of gun ownership would only be more central, rather than a sign that they are Republicans.

If Phil’s wrong, it’s only in the most technical sense. Which could be a concession on my part, but honestly, I care more about what the Tea Party is than whatever “blah blah” it says it is. But they’re not even doing a half-decent job of hiding their true colors.

Words matter. If the words they are using alienate members of the crowd, than they are not united on that issue. The issues that the movement is united on are primarily (though not entirely) fiscal. If you don’t buy it, fine.

@52. Yojimbo:

I think you might be forgetting why inspection and regulation came about to begin with. It wasn’t because of some overwhelming need government has to control things.

You sure? Why are they raiding organic food stores then when everyone going there KNOWS that the foods haven’t been treated per inspection requirements. I would never shop at an organic food store, but I absolutely support the right of other people to make foolish decisions.

True, we need regulation to protect us from abusive practices. Problem is we are not protecting ourselves from abuses, we are protecting ourselves from ourselves.

I think sometimes that when people call for the removal (or reduction) of regulations and freeing up the market place, they forget the 19th and early 20th centuries.

I think that people also should take the 19th and early 20th stories of abuses with a grain of salt and research it more fully. The abuses were no where near as widespread as claimed, and many cases were used a red herrings to increase power. I’d go so far as to suggest that cases of inspection failure have not gone down as a result of it.

As a note, I am a liberal and wholly support the need of the state to protect us from fraud and abuse, but not from ourselves.

Not to mention fly-by-night operations dumping unsafe products for a quick profit and heading for the hills.

Again, laws and regulations have a place.

No, I’ll pay the extra and buy the inspected stuff, thank you very much.

More power to you. Can I have freedom to choose as well?

Deficits under Reagan and the Bushes, good. Deficits under Obama, bad.

I mean, really, you have to admire such gymnastic ability.