Man, the scrabbled is really beating me down as of late.

I full believe all of this which is why in real life I strenuously avoid talking politics. The part I found both amusing and sad was that when conservatives were presented with something that factually refutes some misinformation they have, that it causes them to believe the misinformation MORE than they did prior.

Most of my best friends are like that, and we usually end up talking this stuff. I don’t even take the left side, because I don’t find it terribly compelling, but as soon as I point out things that are untrue or whatever, I’m immediately the uber-liberal who loves Barrack Obama.

Here’s the thing that I think has contributed to this phenomeon getting worse, particularly the whole conservatives digging in deeper when confronted with facts and refutation: For so long, America was pretty damned big on divided government. President from one party, congress from another. However then both sides could sit there and go “Well, here are my theories as to what would work for the country but because the other side controls 50% of government, THAT’s why we have the problems we do.” But now we have a good almost 20 years of historical data. We have the first batch of the Clinton years where democrats controlled the presidency and congress and got everything they wanted. Then we have the 00’s where for most of it the republicans controlled the presidency and congress and got everything they wanted. So looking at life in America during the 90’s and looking at it during the ‘00’s there’s some more or less clear factual data showing what effect each side’s policies, unfettered by the “opposition” can have on the country. You can look at the economy after the targeted tax cuts and more industry regulation of the early 90’s…you can look at the result of multi-lateral, diplomatic military intervention in something successful like Kosovo and have a pretty good idea how unfettered moderate liberalism will work. Not saying you have to like it, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the majority of Americans will say that judged on what happened during that time period, that it worked at least moderately well. And now you have the results of 6 years of unfettered conservatism and republican rule. You have the economy, uninhibited by any even slight semblance of regulation, you have tax cuts aimed squarely at the rich, you have absolute free market capitalism at work and you have the fruits of uber-macho, unilateral, “fuck the rest of the world” militancy and foreign policy. Again, agree or disagree, like it or not, the proof is all out there. So in effect the problem is that now that we have real world results of this glorious political and cultural experiment from both sides of the aisle it’s much less theoretical and “what if” than it’s been in the past so people are no longer arguing for or against a philosophy, they are pretty much arguing for or against an essential reality and the actuality of history.

Paragraphs, Kevin. Paragraphs.

“Bullock, Nyhan and Reifler are all Democrats.”

I think that’s a pretty important sentence.

I’ll hold off on making any sort of judgement on this until I know more about the study itself, which will probably be never.

Jay said:

“Bullock, Nyhan and Reifler are all Democrats.”

I think that’s a pretty important sentence.

I think there may be some sort of irony here, but I’m not entirely sure.

I can believe most of this, except the part where it says repubs are worse than dems.