Have you ever considered a career in politics? You seem to have the most necessary qualification; an uncanny ability to not answer a question.
I don’t answer truthers. I just point and laugh.
I don’t think there are any truthers in this thread. Did I miss a post?
My mistake.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_05052011.html
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Go figure. Time to drop that point, I suppose. :o
As in their personal policy? Well, on a regional level, it was not the dems who supported teaching creationism in schools from Texas to Dover. But furthermore, isn’t it at least a little bit telling that out of the current candidates, Perry, Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, and probably Cain and Gingritch are all staunch creationists, leaving, AFAIK, only the two mormons?
But common belief and practice in the republican party, especially among candidates like Paul, Perry, and Bachmann is that the 10th amendment basically means that the federal government has almost no powers whatsoever.
This philosophical position sadly does not apply to smart economic policy nor to a balanced budget. .
It’s also with Fox News. Then again, they seem to dictate what the party actually is, so…
…What? The republicans have slashed services while lowering taxes on the richest people; a clear redistribution of welfare towards the rich and away from the lower and middle classes. Now people like Cain and Perry are advocating flat tax, which slashes taxes on the rich, while slamming the lower and middle classes. I mean, by working class, do you mean people making above $1M/year?
I don’t support this viewpoint within the party, but it holds some merit, as we still have no way to dispose of radioactive waste with a long half-life. Just sayin’.
Cite? Also, Coal is the single dirtiest industry kicking around right now. There is extreme merit to getting rid of coal power and replacing it with some other form.
In deep-sea locations, or on national land? Yeah, that’s never given us any problems, has it? :rolleyes:
Bullshit. These are all modern concerns with very real impact. Switching to renewable energy is very important. Moving away from coal is crucial. Nuclear waste is a concern going into the future. The few points you’re right on I actually agree with.
No… facts. Look, it’s one thing to claim that Bush was involved in 9/11. It’s another to point, accurately, to the fact that NPAC wanted a new pearl harbor, that he had defense briefings describing that Osama Bin Laden was probaby going to attack prominent targets with planes… and did nothing. Those are facts. The conclusion you draw from it may be different, but I find it hard to see how this doesn’t implicate bush as either lazy, incompetent, or evil.
How do you determine who is a truther and who isn’t? A related question would be how would you define “truther”; is it someone who believes the September 11th attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration, or just that the administration should have done more to stop it?
Would you settle for the TEA Party’s predecessors, the death panel panic town hall terrorists? One of those worthies bit off a kid’s finger!
I’m from hillbilly country, “Lonesome,” and as this is not the Pit, will refrain from answering you in the manner of my people. “Redneck” & “hillbilly” are not slurs any more than “French” & “Swede” are slurs. They’re ethnic terms used by people to describe themselves. A far, far cry from “kike.”
And considering the Democratic base most places is blue-collar, unionized, working class white folk, it’s pretty funny saying the Democrats hold them in more contempt. Of course there are pretentious social climbers and the like in both parties, the sort who hold their “inferiors” in contempt. But in the Democratic Party, they are expected to be civil to the working man, because without the working man, you don’t have the Democratic Party, you have a small dinner party. The highly educated types with their arugula and such are the hangers-on, friend. The core is blue collar steak-and-potatoes.
There are two flavors of truthers. MIHOP and LIHOP. The LIHOPers are in this thread.
From your cite:
If Democrats choose to back Hispanics and blacks over white Anglos, it may be because white Anglos like you abandoned them. But you do have a point. You just don’t realize what it is.
You’re right. But the key word here: also. Of course the GOP is a party of privilege and power. Two seconds in the vicinity of Nancy Reagan should make that clear. The country clubbers freak out at how much the low-class evangelicals nominate their own kind and run the show, because it used to be the jet set that ran things.
The Democratic Party’s problem is that it isn’t populist enough. It’s got too many grasping self-important nitwits in high office. But the Democrats’ failings do not make the GOP a good party any more than Stalinism justified the Nazis.
You’re pretty much whining a tu quoque–complaining that you’ll vote Republican because the Democrats are as bad. Well, you implicitly concede that the GOP are pretty bad.
And as bad as the Democrats are, as much as they roll their eyes at even their own base, as much as they fail to actually serve the people half the time, and as many of them are supply-siders, global warming deniers, and economic right-wingers, at least they aren’t demanding that all Democrats be all of those things or be drummed out of the party. It’s normal for a Republican to be anti-EPA, anti-OSHA, anti-balanced budgets, anti-minimum wage, and pro-pollution. Democrats who think that way are at least embarrassed by some of it. So they are for many of us the lesser evil.
–an ex-Republican.
That doesn’t really answer my first question.
And I had to look up MIHOP and LIHOP. I assume it’s not Model International House of Pancakes. But let me see if I can connect all the dots here. The claim is that truthers among Democrats offset any claim that Republican are less in touch with reality. Do you have anything more recent than 2006 that says Democrats believe the previous administration acted “on purpose”? And is it your claim that a belief that the Bush administration didn’t stop the 9/11 attacks comparable to a denial of evolution, climate change, Obama’s birthplace, etc.?
Nope. Certainly not. You would have to add a myriad other existing silly Democrat beliefs to offset “any claim”.
Just look in this thread. There are quite a few that believe that the previous administration acted “on purpose” to overlook any threat so that the attacks could occur.
A belief that Bush administration on purpose didn’t stop the 9/11 attacks is definitely comparable to other conspiracy theories, yes.
You misspelled IOWA.
Well. I’m one of those Earth-worshipers, so what can I say? Oh, yeah. I’m not a technophobe. Rejecting an inferior technology for a superior one is not technophobia.
Pick one.
No, that’s not necessarily the case. Economics is a soft science. Biologists and ecologists should hold the trump card, not accountants.
Yeah, that’s just nonsense. The gutting of government revenues is far more important to the GOP than tormenting homosexuals. We should have called that post out earlier. Also, go wash out your mouth with soap.
Yeah, that’s weird.
I can understand one of those: “The state-sponsored execution of black people for the amusement of white Christians.” Read The New Jim Crow and you’ll see why some people react that way.
This is a good all-purpose answer, and applies to both parties. The important question is, what do the leadership do? Look at party leaders and whips, they’re the ones who get laws passed.
In fact, that’s not what it says.
It means winning majorities in that cohort is unattainable. But Democrats still want their votes. They’re just relying more on young people and single women than married white Boomers and Busters, who are set in their ways and harder to sway into voting Democrat. But those young people and single women are still somewhat white and working class.
Then why are we even discussing it in this thread? What the hell do truthers have to do with David Frum and the article cited by the OP?
Oh, really. In what way? It fits all the evidence, it doesn’t require violations of physical laws or implausibly large & effective conspiracies, it fits the known goals & characters of the accused, it fits exactly with how 9-11 and its aftermath played out; it wouldn’t even have been hard to pull off. In what way is that similar to “other conspiracy theories”? In what way is it even implausible?
In the particular case before us, the leaders gave assent via silence, from which one may reasonably conclude that that they share the sentiments of most people who boo American soldiers (i.e. hatred of America).
The religious right never controlled the Republican Party. If it did abortion would be illegal. Public school days would begin with prayer and Bible reading. The Motion Picture Code would have been restored.
Ronald Reagan courted the religious right but he never did anything for them because he never really cared about their agenda. Reagan was our first divorced president. Unlike Bill Clinton and Barack Obama he seldom attended church.
The only things Reagan cared about were fighting Communism and making the rich richer. On those issues he was effective.
You are more optimistic than I am. It is not clear to me that the GOP will self destruct. It may be possible indefinitely into the future for Republican politicians to get lower income whites to vote against their economic interests by appealing to their nationalism and racial bigotry. For well over a century Southern Democrats were able to do that in the South.
Prior to the Civil War only about five percent of the Southern whites owned slaves. The rest usually had a lower standard of living than people with their skills had in the North. Family owned farms were at a particular disadvantage in competing with plantations. Nevertheless, non slave owning whites enthusiastically joined the Confederate Army. I have read that as many as one third of Southern white males from the ages of fifteen to thirty were killed in the war.
Right now working class whites are afraid of a time when whites will be in the minority in the United States. The more scared they get the more likely they are to vote Republican.
Even if whites become a minority it is not clear to me that the Democrats will benefit. After one or two generations Asians tend to make more money than whites. When they do they have more reason to oppose high taxes than the caprices of capitalism. In the neighborhoods where they live blacks and Hispanics often hate each other. A Democratic coalition that depends on them will be unstable.
I was trying to think of a response to Qin Shi Huangdi, but the two of you said it better. :)
Perhaps he wants to become a virtual Democrat and write stuff Democrats will enjoy reading because it will say, “You were right all along.”
Kevin Phillips and Bruce Bartlett seem to have transitioned successfully.