Willie71

This is bigger than W and Cheney. It goes back to the Cold War, but W and Cheney certainly threw gasoline on that fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmbkoiI5IYg

How about "most rational people ACCEPT science?" The US is the only industrialized nation with that quantity of science deniers. It may be normal in the US, but it isn't anywhere else (in the first world.)

Tar, people look down on those you say you associate with because they, in general, support candidates that don't believe in science, don't believe in evolution, believe they have a role to play in the end times prophecies in the Middle East, and promote fictions such as trickle down economics to people too daft to see what is right in front of them. Your " associations" are playing by the fascist's rule book (Trump), or are so detached from reality (Carson) that the international community wouldn't be able to stop laughing if it wasn't so frightening what these people would do if elected. Runaway corporatism, wealth inequality, and the highest incarceration rates and gun murder rates in the developed world do little to show people that the republicans aren't "deficient." Rational people cannot believe what the republicans promote. It's impossible. Some get around this by convincing themselves in a delusional fog that their party doesn't really stand for these things.

How about all those sperm that could have been children, or ova? Some denominations for it sex at all unless conception is possible? Is using birth control murder of potential lives? Of course it isn't. Only a crazy person would argue that, right? The majority of abortions happen before the fetus is the size of a bean. Does it have potential to be a human? Yes. So does a sperm and ova, under the right conditions. Because the sperm and ova are joined is the magical moment? Why? You do realize that God causes over 50% of conceptions to spontaneously abort right? Murderer! Who could worship someone who kills more babies than planned parenthood?

American women only make $.70 on the dollar compared to men. They have only had the right to vote for 100 years. At what level should cultural inequality be justification for genocide? How about rights violations against gays? Blacks? Mexicans?

You raise relevant points. I would like to explain I have worked with disenfranchised people my whole career. What seems like common sense is really foreign to people in a different environment. I have had to teach 15 year olds how to brush their teeth, explain basic hygiene like how to properly shower. It isn't a choice to be like that, a form of rejection of regular society, but it's all they know, their norm. When I took histories, I realized that many of these kids had families where no one was employed, no one graduated high school, and most people were serving correctional sentences. We can't expect spontaneous skill development without teaching the skills. When I looked at the curriculum for the skills training group back in the early 90's, I thought it was patronizing, but after the first set of pre tests, I realized not a single one of these kids understood the basics of body language or basic social norms. None even knew how to say "thank you" in a reasonable way. It was quite the shock to me. No way could these teens be successful in a job interview, and if a buddy got them a job, the first time the boss gave them shit, they didn't know how to accept the feedback and walked off the job. No basic life skills. They couldn't budget, had no idea about basic health, and were woefully under or misinformed about sexual health. I realized that living that way wasn't a choice, but their normal. I had as much chance of becoming the next bill gates as they had taking out a student loan and getting a trade. Completely foreign world.

Tar, in a utopian world everyone would have equal opportunity and effort would be directly related to success. Unfortunately, we don't start from the same place. Studies have shown that having a black sounding name decreases your chance of getting a job, even with a college degree to lower than that of a white felon. Ask Tamir Rice about how his effort will pay off in the future. Oh wait, it won't. He's dead. Not a race issue? The oath keepers point guns at the government repeatedly and don't get shot. What if your parents had serious substance abuse issues, were chronically unemployed, and never taught you the skill to go to school on time every day? Some succeed anyway? Well, most don't. Not your problem? Take a guess how much prison and a lack of contribution to the economy costs. You will pay, but much more than helping the child out. The conservative principles sound like they are all for personal responsibility, but they really are about creating in groups and out groups. poor people are just lazy. They aren't as good as you. That's the message.

You do realize that xenophobia sells very well, right? A lot of the scary images are simply made up. Here's some examples for you. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-fake-refugee-images-that-are-being-used-to-distort-public-opinion-on-asylum-seekers-10503703.html

That is absolute BS promoted by right wing rags. Their evidence? Many refugees use their cell phones to coordinate and many of them have sunglasses. They do have cell phones in the Middle East, and people had jobs and lives before they became refugees. It's like the BS trope about welfare recipients not being poor because they have refrigerators and microwaves.

Tar, this goes back to the difference between what people believe republicans stand for, and what your current candidates actually stand for. There is a divide.

There are ideas that are based on millenia old plagiarized texts that are supposed to be our guides for moral behaviour, and they could be if it wasn't for all the genocide, oppression, and intolerance of pleasure. There are ideas based on math that requires us to believe that 5-2=7. Trickle down economics only makes sense to people who can't spot the flaw in the first sentence of this little paragraph. There are ideas that open themselves up to scrutiny, evaluation, falsification, and repeatability. They allowed man to go to the moon with less computer power than an I-phone. They allowed us to predict events in the future with moderate to unbelievable accuracy. They allow us to calculate what tax rates need to really be to balance a budget and maintain functioning services. I prefer to not want to belong to the group that lives by the first two paragraphs. If their reality is impervious to evidence and verification, it's a delusional reality. My reality may be incorrect, but I am open to testing that possibility.

I think these arguments sometimes get sidetracked when people hold on to what they believe being a republican or democrat ideologically means. The only candidate who is truly left of centre is Sanders. Everyone else is centrist or right wing. Americans no longer have any left wing representation from the major parties. I know Sanders is running as a democrat, but he has been an independent for decades. Regarding the parties as they stand now, both are pro corporate, pro war. They vary on the degree to which they go, but both are in the same camp. In terms of social programs and health care, the democrats are a bit more centre to centre left, and sanders is left. The issue comes in when a large group of people think that the U.S. Should be a theocracy, and the Jesus was a gun loving libertarian. It's a bizarre set of beliefs that are unsubstantiable. The dismissing of science to the point of preventing laws from being informed by science is a conservative baby. The dismissing of evolution, climate science, and even recently the Pope is disturbing. Pretending there aren't race problems, income inequality, and severe problems with education and health care is appalling. For profit results in one win. Profit for the companies. Trickle down economics and austerity measures have been thoroughly study pies and refuted, but one party continues to push for their implementation. The problem with America is that there is a good portion of people who are detached from reality.

Sad story on gun safety. An Arizona citizen accidentally shot and killed himself while trying to demonstrate the double-safety feature on a new handgun, reported the Phoenix New Times. Christen Reece, 23, of Phoenix, was partying with several friends when he decided, while drunk, to show off his pistol and the double-safety feature of the weapon. He held the gun up to his head, a little behind the temple area, and fired, said chief deputy Jim Molesa of the Navajo County Sheriffs Office. He immediately dropped to the ground, and his acquaintances started freaking out, not sure what to do, added Molesa. Reece was taken to the nearby Heber-Overgaard fire station since the nearest hospital was 40 miles away in Show Low, Arizona. However, the wound was too severe for paramedics at the fire station to handle, and Reece was airlifted to Scottsdale Osborn hospital. The main thing any teacher of a gun-safety class wants students to walk away is that you should treat every gun as if its loaded and never point it at yourself or anyone else, said Molesa. http://ringoffireradio.com/2015/09/man-shoots-himself-in-the-head-while-demonstrating-gun-safety/

State by state, and country by country, as well as city by city violence correlates with lead exposure. Like I said, I thought it was BS at first, but this is the most robust correlation/causation with violence there is, outside of direct exposure to violence within the family. It's the strongest societal correlation. Interestingly, many of the slum areas still have lead based paints on the walls. I would like to see if that gets researched.

There is some evidence in the literature. Mother Jones did a piece on it a while back. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline I may have picked a poor example from numerous studies available to pick.

It's not well known in a lit of circles, but this has been a revolution in forensic circles. http://www.nber.org/digest/may08/w13097.html I was skeptical at first, but it's pretty robust.

Part of the issue is how the stats are recorded. Sometimes improvements in one category is simply from changing the definition of the category. With politicized issues like this, and the pro gun culture in the U.S., I would suspect the stats are an under representation of the extent of the real problem. In any event, what we do know, even if an under representation is that the U.S. Far outpaces its peers in terms of gun deaths and deaths by police officers, at least in part due to the fear that suspects might be armed. It would take a fool to argue that increasing the prevalence of an object would result in a decrease in the effect of that object. More cars equal more auto related deaths, more Poole equals more pool related deaths. The exception comes when we see something such as drug use, where legalizing and regulating access/safety results in lower negative impacts. This appears to be the slant that gun advocates go for, but they reject regulations based on age, skill, type of weapon, or accounting for histories of violence, or mental health issues related to serious impairment in judgement, impulse control, self harm, or harm to others. We pull people's drivers licences when they are impaired mentally. It just seems obvious to do so. Why are reasonable restrictions seen as a loss of freedom, when people lose their lives over maintaining these freedoms?

These results are well known, and consistent with other studies on the subject. This is the reason the NRA lobbied for laws preventing firearm research. If the science was on their side, they wouldn't ban research, they would use it to support their position.

If people had to buy insurance on their guns like people do cars, damages would be easier to manage. This wasn't my idea. I read it somewhere else, and thought this made sense. High risk people, young makes, those with no formal training, those with a history of suicidal ideation, or violent offences would be restricted quite significantly due to higher premiums associated with higher risk.

The fact that Trump is leading in the poles gives a pretty good idea what people outside the U.S. Think of the U.S. The fact that a large portion of the U.S. Believes the world is 6000 years old, evolution is a myth, and climate science us a conspiracy cooked up by liberals to increase taxes provides another clue. It's not only the fact that these people and attitudes exist, you guys let them run your government that leaves people believing Americans are out of touch. What Americans call defense is really the occupation of many countries around the world, and there is little to no evidence that people's lives improve from these occupations. A comedienne Jimmy adore compare this half of the American people adult children of alcoholics, and that term fits, in how people defend America in spite of its obvious problems.

Jim Jeffries does a great clip on the gun debate in America. As he says, your only argument is: "I like guns. F**k off!" Note NSFW. Swearing.

Yes, I know that is wrong. I also pointed out the predictions from 1991. It's interesting discussing things with extreme conservatives. It seems a polarization is all they can understand, either scientists are only publishing laboratory confirmed results, or they are just another religion. Anything in between might as well be fairy dust. The defence against linking the articles is that the liberal education system indoctrinated them, and the peer review system is a way of controlling the funding. Tow the line in the conspiracy or go broke. It's odd, to say the least.

Some medications do have metabolic effects. This is known. Only 1-2% of the general population will require treatment with these meds, so it's not a major cause of obesity. Two independent studies a couple years ago found that 75% of people with morbid obesity had at least three inattentive ADHD symptoms. In controlled trials, the group that had the ADHD treated lost weight, where the untreated group, using the exact same program gained weight. To be sure it wasn't the effect of the stimulants on appetite, non stimulant ADHD meds we're trailed, with weight loss as well. Other psychiatric conditions associated with weight gain are Seasonal Affective Disorder and Atypical Depression. There are more, but these are the big three, and are all highly co morbid.

I have presented this info to deniers on a conservative forum I frequent, but they used it as evidence that scientists can't be right because they have to change their minds all the time.

Unfortunately, in states where Republicans are in control, we have seen defunding/dismantling of education, increases in poverty, increases in unemployment, resulting in an unhappy, unsuccessful population. Then the politicians blame the out group, such as the illegal immigrants, or the Muslims, or Obama for their problems. It's the same way Hitler blamed the Jews for the problems caused by the austerity measures after WWI. Austerity causes social unrest, just what the doctor ordered for Republicans. It makes divide and conquer easier. We see the same progression here with Harper. We have a few decades to go, but it's on it's way. I agree that this is a frightening time in history.