Roger Ailes on the Tea Party

Believe it or not, it took Roger Ailes, the boss of Fox News, to figure out the Tea Party:

 "Listen, one out of every 25 people in America is a psychopath." 
-from Art

 

What we lose when we put faith over logic By Lisa Randall

How Science Can Lead the Way

What we lose when we put faith over logic

By Lisa Randall

TODAY’S POLITICIANS SEEM COMFORTABLE INVOKING

God and religion than they do presenting facts or numbers. Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her own religious be­liefs. But when science and reason get shortchanged, so does America’s future. With science, we put together observations with explanatory frameworks whose predictions can be tested and ultimately agreed on. Empirically based logic and the re­velatory nature of faith are very different methods for seeking answers, and only logic can be systematically improved and applied. As we head toward the next election, it’s important to keep an eye on how our political leaders view science and its advances, because their attitudes frequently mirror their ap­proaches toward rational decision-making itself.

When Rick Perry, who defends teaching creationism in school, says evolution is merely “a theory that’s out there, it’s got some gaps in it,” he’s demonstrating a fundamental mis­understanding of scientific theory. And when he chooses to pray for the end of a drought rather than critically evaluate climate science, he is displaying the danger of replacing ratio­nal approaches with religion in matters of public policy. Logic tries to resolve paradoxes, whereas much of religious thought thrives on them. Adherents who want to accept both religious influences on the world and scientific explanations for its workings are obliged to confront the chasm between tangible effects and unseen, imperceptible influences that is unbridge­able by logical thought. They have no choice but to admit the inconsistency—or simply overlook the contradiction.

Randall, one of 2007’s TIME 100, Is a professor of physics at Harvard and the author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door:

How Physics and Scientific Thinking  illuminate the Universe and the Modem Work

What we are seeing in the current presidential race is not so much a clash between religion and science as a fun­damental disregard for rational and scientific thinking. All but two of the Republican front runners won’t even consider that man-made global warming might be causing climate change, despite a great deal of evidence that it is. We know CO₂ warms the planet through the greenhouse effect, and we know humans have created a huge increase in CO₂ in the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. That man-made What we are seeing in the current presidential race is not so much a clash between religion and science as a fun­damental disregard for rational and scientific thinking. All but two of the Republican front runners won’t even consider that man-made global warming might be causing climate change, despite a great deal of evidence that it is. We know CO₂ warms the planet through the greenhouse effect, and we know humans have created a huge increase in CO₂ in the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. That man-made certainty does not justify its dismissal.

In fact, an important part of science is understanding uncertainty. When scientists say we know something, we mean we have tested our ideas with a degree of accuracy over a range of scales. Scientists also address the limitations of their theories and define and try to extend the range of applicability. When the method is applied properly, the right results emerge over time.

Public policy is more complicated than clean and controlled experiments, but considering the large and serious issues we face—in the economy, in the environ­ment, in our health and well-being—it’s our responsibility to push reason as far as we can. Far from being isolating, a rational, scientific way of thinking could be unifying. Evaluating alternative strate­gies; reading data, when available, either in the U.S. or other countries, about the relative effectiveness of various policies; and understanding uncertainties—all features of the scientific method—can help us find the right way forward.

In 2009 I testified at a congressional hearing about the importance of basic science—something the Obama Admin­istration made a focal point after years of unscientific and sometimes antiscientific policies by the Bush Administration. The hearing was in a room dedicated to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the Rayburn House Office Building. As hooked over the heads of the seated Representatives, I saw a plaque that read, WHERE THERE IS NO VISION, THE PEOPLE PERISH. It is a noble and ac­curate sentiment to display, and its origin  is Proverbs 29: i8.    •

                               TIME October 3, 2011

Texas Tea Party c. 1860

I just ran across this in a book I was reading.  It proves some things do not change, especially in the Lone Star State. -John

Perhaps the feistiest Southerner of all was Louis T. ‘Wigfall, a freshman senator from Texas. If Crittenden represented the past, this new man from a new state might represent the future—though there were many who devoutly hoped not. His very face was that of a man who, whatever his other endowments might be, found it unbearable to hear more than three or four words spoken consecutively by anyone else. His beetling eyebrows clenched and unclenched when he talked (which was almost incessantly), and his pugnacious black beard seemed to jut out perpendicular to his face. Even his nose, an English journal­ist wrote, was somehow “argumentative.” But his eyes, the writer con­tinued, were most dangerously transfixing: “of wonderful depth and light, such as I never saw before but in the head of a wild beast. If you look some day when the sun is not too bright into the eye of a Bengal tiger, in the Regent’s Park, as the keeper is coming round, you will form some notion of the expression I mean.”³²

By the age of twenty-five, Wigfall had managed to squander his considerable inheritance, settle three affairs of honor on the dueling ground, fight in a ruthless military campaign against the Seminoles, consume a small lakeful of bourbon, win an enviable reputation in whorehouses throughout the South, and get hauled before a judge on charges of murder. Three years after that, he took the next logical step and went into Texas politics. Of all the Southern fire-eaters in the Senate, Wigfall was the most flamboyant—and inflexible. He scorned the very idea of compromise, openly relished the prospect of spill­ing Yankee blood, and crowed the war would end only after Southern troops had cut a swath of destruction across the North, with the final capitulation signed in Faneuil Hall.³³

Excerpted from 1861 – The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart, Knopf, New York, 2011

Who Raised the Debt?

Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

Republican Lust for Death

If you didn't see Nancy Giles on CBS Sunday Morning, here it is.

GOP Right to Death Party

Insightful Comment on Tea Party from Art Woodstone

Someone recently said,  "Religion was the first politics." Sounds right. But when politics become the very source of worship... Sounds wrong. Worshiping a political party, treating it with the same abiding passion and faith as you would Christianity or Judaism, reacting  angrily to criticism,  hating disbelievers, even exhibiting delight at the deaths of human beings whom these true believers find inferior and unGodly....Isn't that a  definition of religious fanaticsm? When was the last time you heard someone becoming outraged  because his political party was  the subject of criticism. I was asked a couple of months ago  a beautiful woman asked me how I felt about the Tea Party.  When I answered, she shocked me by calling me a bigot.  You'd think I'd just attacked Jesus and and all the Jews in the world. Most Democrats don't take it seriously when someone attacks their party; most Democrats these days don't even take the Democratic Party seriously. But the Tea Partyers and so many Republicans  have transformed themselves into  crusaders, eager to defend  the new, true faith against their  enemies. And they see enemies everywhere.  You are ostracized if  you so much as hint  that these new and still novel religionists worship false idols, or that their responses are unbecomingly joyful  when told that renegades and other lesser humans have died. This morning I received an  email from a furious neighbor  in Ocala. He was incensed that I dared strike out against his party by accusing Tea Partyers  and their right-wing GOP allies of callousness. .  He took such offense at my lack of virtue that he cast me out and vowed never speak to me again. Twenty-four hours earlier,  I  had observed in an email to him that the audience at a debate sponsored by the Tea Party loudly applauded  the news that Texas had run up a record number of executions on  Rick Perry's watch  as governor.  I was reminded of "The  Tale of Two Cities." Each time the guillotine lopped off another head, the mob cheered. So at one debate the right-wing audience  applauds executions.  At a second debate, the Republicans and  Tea Partyers in the pews  actually  cheer Ron Paul for declaring that if an American died because he chose not to invest in health insurance, that--in our free society-- was  his own problem. These worshippers profess to be charitable.  Perhaps, but if so, it is a charity governed by whim.  They  show no charity toward those of us, not  all of us murderers,  who in their eyes can never measure up to the faith. Our crime against the Church of the GOPTP is less one of criticism than of failing to accept the truth. On the other hand, when the devout members of this historic church sneer at liberals, they are being, forgive a familiar expression, fair and balanced. If we cannot accept that gospel and keep our mouths shut, it only proves we  have no place in the new god's  America. It doesn't take  much imagination to  guess where these protectors of the faith might lead us next.  Art  Woodstone

Bachmann - immunizations - retardation

According to Michelle Bachmann, immunizations cause retardation.  Apparently she has had all her shots.
Click on the following link for the entire clip:

Anderson Cooper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MheCHKSNpyg

How the Right abuses language

Please click on this link for a You Tube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwMKPdvRIMI

The following pictures are from Tea Party rallies.

Aren't those code words wonderful?


And here is a wonderful glossary of conservative terms:
http://www.usmessageboard.com/media/176347-conservative-media-glossary-of-terms.html

A voice from where?

Thanks to Ellen Roberts for this sign!