Well, no…it’s not that Republicans just think the toilet question is stupid. They also think all the rest of that stuff in that paragraph is stupid, too, because government isn’t there to better the lot of The People. It’s there to prove which country in the world has the biggest dick (the US, of course!) and to help really, really rich people stay really, really rich while punishing all the lazy welfare cases for being lazy. All of that nigger college stuff and cripple access crap is stupid to them. And veterans are only worthy of utter respect and head-bowing reverence while they’re out there blowing foreigners up. Once they come back, fuck 'em.
ETA: Yeah, some days I don’t really think Der Trihs is entirely insane…
Well, you may be particularly cynical today, but there’s a basis for your thoughts…
Some folk on the right of the spectrum genuinely do not understand how data can be used to help us understand a population. All they know is that they don’t really understand it, and this process is done by the same sort of nerds that made them feel stupid in high school. Nobody likes to feel stupid.
Also, the data is frequently used to help the government make policy. Policy based on rational analysis of factual data. Those folks on the right don’t like policy based on this, because sometimes it does not agree with what they want, or think should be done. Therefore, they don’t like it.
Their solution is to throw out the initial data collection in the first place. Then policy decisions can be made based on ideological positions, rather than logical analysis of data. When decisions are based on ideology, you always get the answer you like.
It’s clear by the fact that it’s solely the “toilet question” that they bring up as invasive or stupid, that they know exactly how not-stupid the survey is. It’s one of the few questions that might have a lot of the general population say 'Yeah, why DO they need to know that?" If they truly thought it was all useless, they’d use the race or education questions as examples, but they don’t dare do that because it’s too obvious how important those questions are. They’re trying to frame the argument in a way that gains the support of morons whose only knowledge of the survey is the soundbites they hear on Fox News, and in certain cases, it obviously works.
FTR, I never thought The Week was like The Onion. Mine was just a facetious disclaimer intended to be slightly humorous.
My writing and speech are sprinkled with these little “witticisms” which are seldom amusing and often confusing. It’s one of many many bad habits I have, that I should try harder to break. Oddly, the “talent” came in useful once – in a Silicon Valley job I was sometimes called in to “translate” the utterances of a smart engineer who was even worse at facetiousism than I.
You know, I honestly considered simply posting “Named Clothahump” in the “design the most hated doper” thread. Now I remember why. You’re a moron.
On topic:
Yes, you read that right – they’re going to hold the debt ceiling debate. Again. On one hand, I applaud them for sticking to their principles. On the other hand, I wish they would all go fuck up some other country, because their principles are beyond fucking retarded.
I know that every country has it’s crazy nut-jobs and ideological morons but boy do you guys make some good ones. And not many other countries actually elect their nut-jobs to positions of responsibility.
I love America, and I love this thread but the last 2 pages contain some seriously scary craziness!
Obviously – if they believed their own rhetoric, they’d actually come up with the correct answer (keep the survey, remove the mandatory-response requirement). That wouldn’t solve the problem of getting inconvenient information (in fact, it would make it worse by making the data more reality-based, because you’d lose the people who just write in random numbers because they aren’t going to be bothered digging out old electric bills and whatnot), however.
I can sort of understand the resistance to toilet-based questions on the census. If you’re of the mindset that the government should do the minimum of what’s required and no more, then they should count people every 10 years, and everything else is just unwarranted intrusion into the individual’s privacy.
I don’t particularly agree with this mindset – I also see the value in demographic and economic data in making policy – but I can understand it.
Thing is, they’re not of that mindset. They just want the government to do different things. Granted, there are Republicans here and there who want the government to shrink in all directions, like Ron Paul, but they’re a tiny minority.
This is funny, because your stance is based on the fact that you simply aren’t smart enough to understand this issue.
You should stick to teaching kids how to strike other people with their feet. That seems around your level of ability. Why not leave the complex issues of governance for people who can actually grasp the particulars?
The simple explanation is that the subject is rude enough to be funny but not rude enough to be downright offensive, thus making for a good “hook”. The same dynamic applies to the citation of “$500 toilet seats” as iconic of Pentagon waste (pardon the pun).
The subject has triggered a debate subthread; I started a new thread for it.
I worked for the 2010 Census in the backoffice. I helped accumulate the data. No one in the office gave a rats ass about how many people of any particular race or ethnic background lived at an address, nor whether an appartment was legal nor whether the people counted were legally in the USA. We just wanted the boxes answered.
Most census forms were returned by mail and the office I was in did not deal with them. We dealt with the non-replies.
On occasion, the door to door people were chased away from some houses, no doubt right wing nut jobs. Twice we had census takers threatened with guns. (A federal crime, I was told)
In the case of the survey in question, it’s only the aggregated that matters. No one gives shit about anyone’s shitter.
I suspect the toilet question was far more significant around the year 1900 when public sanitary measures were seriously being undertaken. Those measures probably added 20 years to the average life span of an American between 1850 and 1950.
As an experiment, just try to get your (or your parents or grandpartents) census data from 1950. You can’t do it. It’s still secret. You can get the 1940 data (now over 72 years old), but 1950 won’t be available until 2022.
