When you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot… And so if your main argument for how to grow the economy is ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about.
Source: barackobama
Stephanie Cutter is back with a new video taking down Karl Rove’s latest BS attack on the president—and she wants you to post it on your Tumblr.
Source: barackobama
If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.
(via theatlantic)
Source: theatlanticwire.com
Rick Santorum: Left uses college for "indoctrination"
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Wednesday that “the left” uses universities to indoctrinate young people for the purpose of “holding and maintaining power.”
After saying “we’ve lost, unfortunately, our entertainment industry,” Santorum told a Naples, Florida, audience that “we’ve lost our higher education, that was the first to go a long time ago.”
“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” said the former Pennsylvania senator. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?”
He continued: “If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly give them. Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.”
Santorum went on to encourage his audience not to “give money” to colleges and universities that he said are causing harm to the country.
“I’ll bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology,” he said. “And you continue to give to these colleges and universities. Let me have a suggestion: Stop it.”
Santorum said at the same event that he is leaving the Florida campaign trail this weekend - ahead of the state’s January 31 primary - to go home and retrieve his tax returns, so he can release them.
A new CNN/Time/ORC International poll showed Santorum at 11 percent in the Sunshine State, far behind rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
The bold part is my doing.
Yes, Santorum. Because that’s all that is taught at college: Secular ideology. Because I’m definitely not taking physics, calculus, economics, and other courses that have nothing to do with religion or government at all.
See, this is what I hate about people like him. Those guys who think that if things aren’t being taught one way, it’s being refocused the other way. Theology classes exist for a reason. The fact that I don’t learn about religion in every single one of my classes is not a big conspiracy to eliminate religion from existing, it’s simply because it has nothing to do with a lot of subjects. Not to mention there are colleges out there who put a focus on religion along with studies like Baylor University and Brigham Young University.
I see this as nothing more than an attempt to demonize college and higher education because it teaches people to think critically. If you can turn people against higher education, it’s only a matter of time before they destroy themselves. The grade school system has already been destroyed with the use of standardized testing. College is a pretty life-changing step for a lot of people; turning them against the idea is only going to hurt them. But it will do exactly what a lot of politicians want: Making everyone a dispensable, mindless cog in the machine.
What he/she said.
Source: abokononist
The scary thing however, is that the same people who spent this money on a science experiment, are the same people who, according to their own scientific beliefs, shouldn’t care about world proverty, etc. in the first place. The theory of evolution and the big bang are only possible by such means as natural selection in which weaker species die and the more successful species lives to reproduce and pass on their own “better” traits. So following the theory they spent four billion dollars to help prove, the logical conclusion is that as long as the scientists pass on their own genes, third world countries, and population of poverty in general should be left to die as the whole process is just weeding out the weak.
Hadron Collider.. Smadron Collider | Walkingwithspoons.
How on earth does believing in the big bang or evolution translate into ruthless lack of concern for the rest of humanity? Natural selection is part of evolution, in that it explains why, over billions of years, various species have survived, thrived, and evolved while others have gone extinct. However, just because you observe that something occurs in nature doesn’t mean that you think that human beings should actively encourage the process on an individual level, to the point of insisting upon actions and policies that allow the poor and the weak to starve, waste, and die. There is, in fact, something to be said for an entire species working together to develop mechanisms for overcoming the obstacles that would typically cause a species to go extinct. It increases the chances the species as a whole will survive if even the weakest members are stronger than their environment. After all, natural selection isn’t about the survival of the individual—which really doesn’t matter much if you’re the only one left. It’s about survival of the species as a whole.
Where do people get this crap?
(via robot-heart-politics)
SCIENCE MISCONCEPTION ALERT.
Let’s recall that Darwin said “survival of the fittest,” not “survival of the strongest.”
Repeat after me people: natural selection has nothing to do with strength. Nothing at all to do with strength. Or speed. Or size.
IT’S NOT ABOUT WEAKNESS.
Everyone clear on that? Any questions?
Original poster has another glaring misconception: that natural selection pits “weaker” species against “more successful” species. Sorry, OP. Natural selection occurs within a single species. It is actually nonsensical to talk about natural selection between species (co-evolution, on the other hand, totally a real thing, very cool stuff).
Within a species, there exist individual variations. In some instances, some variants will have more success surviving and reproducing than other variants. Maybe they’re stronger. Or maybe they’re better camouflaged. Or maybe they have a mutation that allows them to exploit an unoccupied niche and therefore they experience less competition. Or maybe they have a mutation that protects them from a plague that wipes out everyone else. In some way, their particular variation causes them to be more well-suited to their environment. If this advantageous variation is also heritable, then in all probability natural selection will occur within the population.
*Endnote: None of this actually has anything at all to do with the big bang.
Any questions?
OK. Now on to part II, which is entitled, “Why it is Stupid to Apply the Principles of Natural Selection to Contemporary Human Society.”
In biology, environmental factors that favor one variation over another—that essentially put natural selection in motion—are referred to as “selective pressures.” You can think of selective pressure as anything that presents an obstacle to survival—drought, change in climate, drastic change in food availability, etc.
Thanks to science and technology, the actual natural environment presents very few actual obstacles to human survival at this point. The last remaining selective pressures, I’d argue, are pathogens and genetic disorders. But more or less we can think about human society as operating free of selective pressure. This means that we would expect every individual to have an equal probability of surviving and reproducing.
But this is not what we see, of course. Someone in the US has a much better chance of surviving and reproducing than someone born into poverty in central Africa. This is because of stuff like unequal wealth distribution, vestiges of colonialism, unequal distribution of food and technology, etc. These conditions are all the result of human activity, not natural activity. So when they cause someone to die and not pass on their DNA to the next generation, that’s not natural selection. That’s artificial selection*.
*Like natural selection, except the selective pressure in this case is the human deciding which organisms get to survive and breed.
Anyway I could go on at greater length about this but I won’t. I do wish people would understand the limits of their own knowledge better.
(via speakers-corner)
Source: walkingwithspoons.com
I believe paying no taxes can help us return to the America I love. Not the America of Ronald Reagan; not the America of the Founding Fathers. But rather the America of thousands of years ago in which feral bands of mudpeople lived in caves, never worrying that Barack Obama was gonna come and take their hard-earned pelts or infringe on their rights to bear spears.
KRISTEN WIIG, as GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, on Saturday Night Live.
Heh.
Source: inothernews
“I hear your mom was asking about evolution,” Perry said today. “That’s a theory that is out there — and it’s got some gaps in it.” Perry then told the boy: “In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.”
Yep, that’s how schools work. You tell kids some things that are true and some things that are made up and you trust that the children will be “smart enough” to figure it out. “America’s first three presidents were George Washington, John Adams and the Green Lantern. Good luck on your AP History test.”
All across America, there are classrooms filled with fifth graders who only know the World Trade Center from pictures.
They have achieved the final perfection of George Orwell’s vision - we have always been at war with Eurasia - because they have never known a world where their country has not been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As with the Towers, some of these children only know a parent from pictures, because that parent was killed in those wars. They know what anthrax is, what an IED is, what WMD stands for. They know about fear, for it was fed to them, literally, with mother’s milk. For them, it has always been this way.
These children have never known a country that was not in an economic recession, for their country’s economy has been tottering on its feet like a punch-drunk prizefighter for the last ten years. Theirs is a country that has always tapped phones in secret, always imprisoned people without trial or due process of law, always tortured, always lived in a cocoon of fear and hatred that serves to justify virtually any act, no matter how barbarous or criminal or wrong. Politicians, in their world, have always used threats of terrorism to frighten, to control, to change the subject, to win elections, and to make money for themselves and their friends. There are no consequences for such vicious acts. For these children, it has always been this way.
William Rivers Pitt (via visceralconnection)
Great, you had to go and mention 1984. Thanks. *Hides and never comes out* Just leave me here, ok?
(via speakers-corner)(via speakers-corner)
Source: truth-out.org
I realize that some of you have a different theory on how to grow the economy. Some of you sincerely believe that the only solution to our economic challenges is to simply cut most government spending and eliminate most government regulations.
Well, I agree that we can’t afford wasteful spending, and I will continue to work with Congress to get rid of it. And I agree that there are some rules and regulations that put an unnecessary burden on businesses at a time when they can least afford it. That’s why I ordered a review of all government regulations. So far, we’ve identified over 500 reforms, which will save billions of dollars over the next few years. We should have no more regulation than the health, safety, and security of the American people require. Every rule should meet that common sense test.
But what we can’t do – what I won’t do – is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades.
I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy.
We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top. And I believe that’s a race we can win.
In fact, this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everyone’s money, let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own – that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.
Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and envy of the world.
But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.
We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.
Ask yourselves – where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways and our bridges; our dams and our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the GI Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?
How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this Chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result?
…Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past. Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for. And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities.
I know there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether the politics of the moment will allow us to pass this jobs plan – or any jobs plan. Already, we’re seeing the same old press releases and tweets flying back and forth. Already, the media has proclaimed that it’s impossible to bridge our differences. And maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box.
But know this: the next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here – the people who hired us to work for them – they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months. Some of them are living week to week; paycheck to paycheck; even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.
I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It shouldn’t be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose. What’s guided us from the start of this crisis hasn’t been the search for a silver bullet. It’s been a commitment to stay at it – to be persistent – to keep trying every new idea that works, and listen to every good proposal, no matter which party comes up with it.
Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we’ll have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country.
I also ask every American who agrees to lift your voice and tell the people who are gathered here tonight that you want action now. Tell Washington that doing nothing is not an option. Remind us that if we act as one nation, and one people, we have it within our power to meet this challenge.
From the prepared remarks of PRESIDENT OBAMA’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011.
Source: inothernews
Teacher, scientist, avid reader, observer
