The Democrat Thread

[kapkomet]

The stimulus was proposed along with estimates that said unemployment would keep going up. That was 100% assumed at the time of passage.

 

 

Wrong. Remember 8%?

[Rex Kickass]

Wrong. Remember 8%?

The same report also predicted four million jobs protected.

 

Moody's and Princeton people did a study. They found out that was wrong too.

 

In this paper, we use the Moody’s Analytics model of the U.S. economy—adjusted to accommodate some recent financial-market policies—to simulate the macroeconomic effects of the government’s total policy response. We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. For example, we estimate that, without the government’s response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8½ million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.

 

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/document...t-Recession.pdf

[StrangeSox]

Conservapedia reaches new depths of stupidity with their attack on General Relativity. I didn't know this kind of stupid was possible.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1930...servapedia.html

 

"The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world."

 

In a footnote, this comment is followed up by: "Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold."

 

Does relativity really steer people away from God? Or maybe – and this is just a theory, to use their favourite phrase – the same kinds of people who study general relativity are simply less likely to consult the Bible for answers to the questions of the universe.

 

Action at a distance

 

The Conservapedia page then lists 30 counterexamples to general relativity, any of which, it claims, "shows that the theory is incorrect". Many of these are bizarre, such as "the action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54." Apparently, Jesus's ability to instantaneously heal a child from a distance – his healing powers travelled through space faster than the speed of light – was evidence enough to rule out Einstein's theory. Of course, Jesus wasn't the only one to appear to violate Einstein's cosmic speed limit. So-called entangled quantum particles do it in labs all the time. (Church of the Entanglement, anyone?)

 

and their list:

 

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1] Here is a list of 29 counterexamples: any one of them shows that the theory is incorrect.

The Pioneer anomaly.

Anomalies in the locations of spacecraft that have flown by Earth ("flybys").[2]

Increasingly precise measurements of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury show a shift greater than predicted by relativity, well beyond the margin of error.[3]

The discontinuity in momentum as velocity approaches "c" for infinitesimal mass, compared to the momentum of light.

The logical problem of a force which is applied at a right angle to the velocity of a relativistic mass - does this act on the rest mass or the relativistic mass?

The observed lack of curvature in overall space.[4]

The universe shortly after its creation, when quantum effects dominated and contradicted Relativity.

The action-at-a-distance of quantum entanglement.[5]

The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54.

The failure to discover gravitons, despite wasting hundreds of millions in taxpayer money in searching.

The inability of the theory to lead to other insights, contrary to every verified theory of physics.

The change in mass over time of standard kilograms preserved under ideal conditions.[6]

The uniformity in temperature throughout the universe.[7]

"The snag is that in quantum mechanics, time retains its Newtonian aloofness, providing the stage against which matter dances but never being affected by its presence. These two [QM and Relativity] conceptions of time don’t gel."[8]

The theory predicts wormholes just as it predicts black holes, but wormholes violate causality and permit absurd time travel.[9]

The theory predicts natural formation of highly ordered (and thus low entropy) black holes despite the increase in entropy required by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.[10]

Data from the PSR B1913+16 increasingly diverge from predictions of the General

Theory of Relativity such that, despite a Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded for early work on this pulsar, no data at all have been released about it for over five years.

The lack of useful devices developed based on any insights provided by the theory; no lives have been saved or helped, and the theory has not led to other useful theories and may have interfered with scientific progress.[11] This stands in stark contrast with every verified theory of science.

Relativity requires different values for the inertia of a moving object: in its direction of motion, and perpendicular to that direction. This contradicts the logical principle that the laws of physics are the same in all directions.

Relativity requires that anything traveling at the speed of light must have mass zero, so it must have momentum zero. But the laws of electrodynamics require that light have nonzero momentum.

Unlike most well-tested fundamental physical theories, the theory of relativity violates conditions of a conservative field. Path independence, for example, is lacking under the theory of relativity, as in the "twin paradox" whereby the age of each twin under the theory is dependent on the path he traveled.[12]

The Ehrenfest Paradox: Consider a spinning hoop, where the tangential velocity is near the speed of light. In this case, the circumference (2πR) is length-contracted. However, since R is always perpendicular to the motion, it is not contracted. This leads to an apparent paradox: does the radius of the accelerating hoop equal R, or is it less than R?

The Twin Paradox: Consider twins who are separated with one traveling at a very high speed such that his "clock" (age) slows down, so that when he returns he has a younger age than the twin; this violates Relativity because both twins should expect the other to be younger, if motion is relative. Einstein himself admitted that this contradicts Relativity.[13]

Based on Relativity, Einstein predicted in 1905 that clocks at the Earth's equator would be slower than clocks at the North Pole, due to different velocities; in fact, all clocks at sea level measure time at the same rate, and Relativists made new assumptions about the Earth's shape to justify this contradiction of the theory; they also make the implausible claim that relativistic effects from gravitation precisely offset the effects from differences in velocity.[14]

Based on Relativity, Einstein claimed in 1909 that the aether does not exist, but in order to make subatomic physics work right, theorists had to introduce the aether-like concept of the Higgs field, which fills all of space and breaks symmetries.

Minkowski space is predicated on the idea of four-dimensional vectors of which one component is time. However, one of the properties of a vector space is that every vector have an inverse. Time cannot be a vector because it has no inverse.

It is impossible to perform an experiment to determine whether Einstein's theory of relativity is correct, or the older Lorentz aether theory is correct. Believing one over the other is a matter of faith.

In Genesis 1:6-8, we are told that one of God's first creations was a firmament in the heavens. This likely refers to the creation of the luminiferous aether.

Despite a century of wasting billions of dollars in work on the theory, "No one knows how to solve completely the equations of general relativity that describe gravity; they are simply beyond current understanding."[15]

[Balta1701]

Wrong. Remember 8%?

8% was assumed...but we weren't there yet. 10% was presented as the worst case scenario if we do nothing. Some of us said that was wrong and doing nothing would push us into legitimate depression territory (12%).

[Balta1701]

I'm sure no one can guess which media conglomerate has made the largest corporate contribution to the Republican Governors Association.

[Rex Kickass]

I'm sure no one can guess which media conglomerate has made the largest corporate contribution to the Republican Governors Association.

 

You know, I wonder what the GOP would say if a foreign national renounced his citizenship to control an ever increasing share of broadcast and print media within the United States with a definite slanted bent and then decided to openly use his media company to donate to a single political party.

 

Turns out, they just say thanks.

[Balta1701]

Once upon a time, Republicans were so confident that the vast majority of Muslims preferred freedom to jihad that they believed the U.S. could install democracy in Iraq within months. Now, confronted with a group of Muslim Americans who want to build a cultural center that includes Jews and Christians on the board (how many churches and synagogues do that?), GOP leaders call them terrorists because they don’t share Benjamin Netanyahu’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once upon a time, the “war on terror” was supposed to bring American values to Saudi Arabia. Now Newt Gingrich says we shouldn’t build a mosque in Lower Manhattan until the Saudis build churches and synagogues in Mecca—which is to say, we’re bringing Saudi values to the United States. I wonder how David Petraeus feels about all this. There he is, slogging away in the Hindu Kush, desperately trying to be culturally sensitive, watching GIs get killed because Afghans believe the U.S. is waging a war on Islam, and back home, the super-patriots on Fox News have… declared war on Islam.

 

So please, no more talk about those idealistic neoconservatives who are willing to expend blood and treasure so Afghans and Iraqis can live free. People in Basra and Kandahar had better hope that America’s counterinsurgency warriors create a society in which they can practice their religion free of intimidation and insult. Because it’s now clear they can’t do so on the lower tip of the island of Manhattan.

 

And from now on, let’s stop condescending to the French about their anti-headscarf laws. Until a month ago or so, I genuinely believed that no such law could ever pass in the U.S. How naïve. After the right’s despicable performance over the last month, can anyone seriously doubt that if the U.S. had as large, and religiously traditional, a Muslim population as France, that Republicans would be clamoring for Congress to regulate their “Islamofascist” garb? Perhaps they’d merely propose that Muslim women be prohibited from wearing the headscarf within a mile of military bases that house families that have lost loved ones in the “war on terror.” We have to be sensitive, after all.

 

Words I never thought I’d write: I pine for George W. Bush. Whatever his flaws, the man respected religion, all religion. Maybe it was because he had been an addict himself, and knew from hanging around prisons that Allah had saved as many broken souls as Jesus Christ. Until a month or so ago, I genuinely believed that the American right had become a religiously ecumenical place. Right-wing Baptists loved right-wing Catholics and they both loved right-wing Orthodox Jews. All you had to do to join the big tent was denounce feminists, Hollywood, and gays. But when push came to shove, Sarah Palin didn’t care about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s position on gay marriage. In today’s GOP, even bigotry doesn’t spare you from bigotry. I wonder what Mitt Romney was thinking, as he added his voice to the anti-Muslim chorus. He surely knows that absent the religious right’s hostility to Mormons, he’d likely have been the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee. I look forward to his paeans to religious freedom when anti-Mormonism rears its head again in 2012.

 

And oh yes, my fellow Jews, who are so thrilled to be locked arm in arm with the heirs of Pat Robertson and Father Coughlin against the Islamic threat. Evidently, it’s never crossed your mind that the religious hatred you have helped unleash could turn once again against us. Of course not, we’re insiders in this society now: Our synagogues grace the toniest of suburbs; our rabbis speak flawless English; we Jews are now effortlessly white. Barely anyone even remembers that folks in Lower Manhattan once considered us alien and dangerous, too.

 

Congratulations, Republicans, you’ve safeguarded ground zero against the insidious threat of religious liberty. I’ve always found going there a deeply moving experience, but for the time being, at least, I’ve lost my desire to go. Hallowed ground? After the unforgivable events of the last month, it’s become a little less hallowed for me.

Peter Beinart with the winning rant.

[kapkomet]

Oh the OUTRAGE. OH. OHHHHHHH.

 

Can we rebuild the cathedral down there? Nah.

[Soxbadger]

Are you for or against the mosque?

 

Im personally for it.

 

(Thats a serious question because Im not sure how it fits into some peoples idea of "limited" govt.)

[kapkomet]

It's not the NATIONAL government's place to decide this. Oh, unless it's the taking of private property for some taxable interest. Then it's ok, but I digress.

 

Seriously, this is not a government issue, really. It's also not a first amendment issue, even though everyone is trying to turn it into that.

 

CONSTITUTIONALLY they can do whatever they want, but there's common sense here somewhere and something about some imam being an attention whore.

[Soxbadger]

I dont know what the relevance of your statement about taxable interest is, so Im not going to even address it.

 

Seriously, this is not a government issue, really. It's also not a first amendment issue, even though everyone is trying to turn it into that

 

I dont see how you can say its not a govt issue when you have politicians politicizing it. I think that they need to shut the f*** up about it, but since they wont, they are forcing it to become a political issue.

 

It is a First Amendment issue if a govt makes it so that they Mosque cant be built. The building's owner, had every right to not sell to them. Private entity doesnt fall under the scope of the 1st amendment. But if the Federal govt (US Constitution) or NY Govt (NY constitution) were to restrict Muslims from building a Mosque, I very much believe it would be an infringement on their 1st amendment right.

 

but there's common sense here somewhere and something about some imam being an attention whore.

 

I dont want to sacrifice my ideals even though it may support a douche. Its easy to make exceptions, to say this time is different. Over time Ive realized that Id rather stick with my ideals and then apply them to the situation before prejudging it.

 

 

[Rex Kickass]

It's not the NATIONAL government's place to decide this. Oh, unless it's the taking of private property for some taxable interest. Then it's ok, but I digress.

 

Seriously, this is not a government issue, really. It's also not a first amendment issue, even though everyone is trying to turn it into that.

 

CONSTITUTIONALLY they can do whatever they want, but there's common sense here somewhere and something about some imam being an attention whore.

 

The only people making a national case out of this happen to be Republicans. Locally, this group passed every hurdle. The community center doesn't even have a view of Ground Zero. It did, however, used to be a Burlington Coat Factory.

[clyons]

It's not the NATIONAL government's place to decide this. Oh, unless it's the taking of private property for some taxable interest. Then it's ok, but I digress.

 

Seriously, this is not a government issue, really.

 

I think this is incorrect.

 

The federal government effectively made this a national issue 10 years ago when it enacted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000cc, et seq., which provides, in pertinent part:

 

No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution, unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person, assembly, or institution--

 

A. is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and

B. is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

 

 

I believe that this federal statute applies, and makes most of the political pontificating against Cordoba House moot.

 

 

[kapkomet]

The law is irrelevant.

 

I said this pages ago and I'll say it again. The only reason this imam wants to put this thing there has nothing to do with religious "tolerance" but really, "intolerance". He's thumbing his nose at the world with a big "FU", I'm putting a mosque here whether you like it or not. And it's all for the attention.

 

Of course, Rex, it's all about the GOP. It always is in your mind about how the little guy's getting screwed over and over again by the GOP. Biiiiiiiiiiiig yawn.

[NorthSideSox72]

The only people making a national case out of this happen to be Republicans. Locally, this group passed every hurdle. The community center doesn't even have a view of Ground Zero. It did, however, used to be a Burlington Coat Factory.

Well that's not really true - Obama has talked about it twice now.

 

[Balta1701]

For being attention whores, the people who actually want to run this place seem to have gotten very little public media attention.

[Rex Kickass]

Well that's not really true - Obama has talked about it twice now.

 

That's a bit disingenuous. Obama only mentioned the controversy last week, after a month of browbeating from potential GOP Presidential wannabes and political hacks like members of the AFA, Newt and Palin - called for "peaceful" muslims to rise up against the building of a community center, Newt so much as said that we should only allow the building of mosques when Mecca allows the building of churches, and the American Families Association has come out and said that we should only allow mosques to be built once they have denounced the Koran. And, truth be told, he didn't even talk about whether or not it was a good idea to build anything there - he merely said that all religions have the right to build houses of worship as long as they comply with local regulations and laws.

 

The truth is, say whatever you want about W, he probably would have said the same thing - especially if the controversy was happening during an Iftar that he was hosting at the White House, which he did annually as well.

[Rex Kickass]

The law is irrelevant.

 

I said this pages ago and I'll say it again. The only reason this imam wants to put this thing there has nothing to do with religious "tolerance" but really, "intolerance". He's thumbing his nose at the world with a big "FU", I'm putting a mosque here whether you like it or not. And it's all for the attention.

 

Of course, Rex, it's all about the GOP. It always is in your mind about how the little guy's getting screwed over and over again by the GOP. Biiiiiiiiiiiig yawn.

 

When the GOP starts giving a s*** about people who make under a million dollars a year, I'll change my tune Kap.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

That's a bit disingenuous. Obama only mentioned the controversy last week, after a month of browbeating from potential GOP Presidential wannabes and political hacks like members of the AFA, Newt and Palin - called for "peaceful" muslims to rise up against the building of a community center, Newt so much as said that we should only allow the building of mosques when Mecca allows the building of churches, and the American Families Association has come out and said that we should only allow mosques to be built once they have denounced the Koran. And, truth be told, he didn't even talk about whether or not it was a good idea to build anything there - he merely said that all religions have the right to build houses of worship as long as they comply with local regulations and laws.

 

The truth is, say whatever you want about W, he probably would have said the same thing - especially if the controversy was happening during an Iftar that he was hosting at the White House, which he did annually as well.

The Presidential thing to have done there, IMO, is to not take the bait. He should have said nothing, or simply said, this is a local issue.

 

On a personal level, IF I was a resident in the area, I'd be perfectly fine with the mosque, BTW.

 

[Balta1701]

The Presidential thing to have done there, IMO, is to not take the bait. He should have said nothing, or simply said, this is a local issue.

In this case..absolutely not.

 

Calling out the people opposing this site for being bigoted ************* (pick your profane words) was 100% the right move and it's the kind of move we've rarely seen from this man since he took office.

 

Playing it safe politically is not always the honorable move.

[NorthSideSox72]

In this case..absolutely not.

 

Calling out the people opposing this site for being bigoted ************* (pick your profane words) was 100% the right move and it's the kind of move we've rarely seen from this man since he took office.

 

Playing it safe politically is not always the honorable move.

Not the point I was making. I don't care whether or not it was the safe move. Obama was doing what he thought was right, and as I said, I agree with his overall view. But the President needs to be above getting into fights over private land issues like this. Its not his place to intrude.

 

[Balta1701]

Not the point I was making. I don't care whether or not it was the safe move. Obama was doing what he thought was right, and as I said, I agree with his overall view. But the President needs to be above getting into fights over private land issues like this. Its not his place to intrude.

The sole reason why the President needed to be involved in this one is the specific circumstances. This case has rapidly become a statement on who we are as a people and whether or not we have any willingness to live up to our own ideals.

[NorthSideSox72]

The sole reason why the President needed to be involved in this one is the specific circumstances. This case has rapidly become a statement on who we are as a people and whether or not we have any willingness to live up to our own ideals.

I agree on the bolded. Its sad to see the sort of bigotry and fear that some people display. But I disagree that it was the President's place to wade in and take a side on a local issue.

 

[clyons]

The law is irrelevant.

 

To what exactly?

 

You said this wasn't a national government issue. How does that applicable federal statute not make it one? Because the imam wants publicity? Now that's irrelevant.

 

 

[Rex Kickass]

I agree on the bolded. Its sad to see the sort of bigotry and fear that some people display. But I disagree that it was the President's place to wade in and take a side on a local issue.

 

For that matter, its not Sarah Palin's place either. Nor is it Newt Gingrich's place. Nor is it Mitt Romney's place. Or Harry Reid. They all did make a stance. And in reality, it was those stances that forced a presidential response. Or maybe its the GOP PAC's that are spending money on a TV campaign to generate outrage to try and stop getting a community center built in an old Burlington Coat Factory because Muslims are the new gays.