Phuking Republicans!

[Kirkland Laing]

I just don't get it. Even knowing the stupidity of a large segment of the American public I just don't get how Obama's not up twenty points. Look at what's going on in this country for fuck's sake You just have to laugh about it I guess. I was talking to a friend and he was blaming it on the fact that Obama's run a stupid campaign -which I do tend to agree with it but anyway- but that's not the point. Obama should be up twenty points even if he exiled himself to Siberia and ran his campaign by sending a letter once a month written in crayons with exclamation points and horrible spelling.

There's just no excuse for being a republican anymore, sorry, you're on the wrong side.

It is insane, but I would imagine that a significant portion of the US populace is politically illiterate. Quite the same in other countries too but seemingly not so pronounced. The UK has the Tories thumping Labour in the polls at the moment, and though no Tory myself, I can see how and why things are that way. There is a sense of something logical happening. When it comes to American politics it just befuddles me how it can be such a close run thing especially after the two terms of Bush. How could anyone want to perpetuate that? Perhaps its a self denial thing and a case of "I will bat for my team and no other". Perhaps complete ignorance of the issues and the way the US is declining. The US needs change, no doubt about it, and there is a whopping great choice of two.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.
In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.


The Power of Political Misinformation


God help us all.