Spell check!

Wild Bill wrote on Oct 6^th, 2008 at 5:41pm:


TKO... beyatch!

Riffhard wrote on Oct 6^th, 2008 at 7:13pm:
Pdog and Hugo Chavez would.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308185788382240

As we have pointed out repeatedly, Obama and Ayers didn't merely "cross paths." When Obama made his first run for the Illinois Senate, Ayers and terrorist wife Bernadine Dohrn hosted Obama's first fundraiser at their house in 1995. He remains in their debt.

Obama was CEO of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform project Ayers helped found, fund and use to advance his socialist agenda. Ayers served on its board. The two met frequently, talked a lot and shared ideas. Their ties were anything but casual.

Both men served for a few years together on the board of the Woods Fund. This group helped fund the leftist group ACORN and its project to coerce banks to issue the very risky loans that led to the current financial crisis. Among their grants was one to Yasser Arafat's associate Rashid Khalidi.

Ayers isn't the only terrorist or radical supporting Obama. Mark Rudd, one of the founders of the Weathermen terrorist group, worked closely with Ayers. He's one of the signatories and endorsers of Progressives for Obama.

The group was started by, among others, Tom Hayden, founder of the Students for a Democratic Society, and Hugo Chavez's buddy, actor Danny Glover. Also in the mix is former Maoist Bill Fletcher, leader of Democratic Socialists of America and a Chavez apologist.

Ten Thousand Motels wrote on Oct 7^th, 2008 at 12:20pm:


Bruce Fucking Springsteen.

Pdog wrote on Oct 7^th, 2008 at 2:09pm:


Come on P. He's a retard because he doesn't agree with you???
Isn't this type of posting EXACTLY what annoys you about Riffy???
I love ya, but come on.

LJ.

LadyJane wrote on Oct 7^th, 2008 at 2:13pm:


In the post where they refer to Chavez and Me and who we both vote for, damn straight they get a retard comment. I would've prefered to call them ignorant, but they are smart enough to know better, and are only doing it get my reaction... as far as I know, it is all good, we disagree, but no one is getting all bent over it.

I saw an Obama Wobble Head for sale today in Urban Outfitters, WDC ($16).  I passed.

worstest Joey Ever.

lighten up, Joey.

Wild Bill wrote on Oct 7^th, 2008 at 11:33am:

Looks like bull to me. I thought Ayers was acquitted when he was a stupid kid like 40 years ago. I think he's a professor at the University of Chicago now.

Some Guy wrote on Oct 7^th, 2008 at 5:26pm:




Ayers was only aquitted because the wire tap evidence was deemed inadmissable. He stated right after the aquittal, "I'm guilty as sin and free as a bird! God Bless America!"

He also stated, on 9/11/01 of all dates, in a NYT interview, "I have zero regrets. In fact I wish that we had done more."

He is the one that suggested Barry for the board for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Where Barry was in charge of distributing 50 million in cash to left wing education programs. Note that these were not state sponsopred education programs either. No, rather they were far left radical programs designed to indoctrinate kids to a far left mindset. That, btw, is Barry's only executive experience! I have said it before but it bears repeating. If the American public knew the real truth about Barrack Obama he wouldn't stand a chance. That is why I say, without any hesitation, that anyone that would vote for Obama after they knew the truth about him is an idiot. That is not my opinion. That is fact. The man is a fucking hard hard hard hard hard hard left radical, and he has loads of radical leftard friends that support this fact.

The media has done it's very best to sweep the truth about this fucking clown under the rug, and judging by the polls there are plenty of braindead Kool Aid drinkers out there that either don't know the truth about Barry, or who just willingly ignore it because they have a stupid irrational hatered of Bush.



Willfull ignorance is so ridiculous. And to those that think Barrack will help the economy. You must be high! Raising taxes NEVER helps an economy!! NEVER!!!! We're fucked if he wins, and you better know that I will be laughing myself silly when he destroys the Democrat Party for decades to come should he win. Take your goddamned party back from these radical fucks!!! You want to know just how far left the Democrat Party is these days? Just go read JFK's 1960 inauguration speech. He would be drummed out of the party is he gave a speech like that today.



Riffy

Why It's Hard to Change People's Minds
By Sean Gonsalves,
AlterNet. Posted October 7, 2008.

A new study shows that after being exposed to information contradicting their ideas, most people still cling to their prejudices.
   
A long time ago, Mark Twain told us: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

Entwined in Twain's train of thought, is an implicit -- and important -- distinction: the difference between being uninformed and being misinformed.

Today, there's scholarship to back up Twain's theory that being ignorant isn't as troublesome as being certain about something that "just ain't so."

Ignorance can be educated. But what's the antidote to misinformation? Correct information?

Not exactly -- according to political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, co-authors of one of the few academic studies on the subject, "When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political misperceptions."

While it may seem like common sense to think misinformation can be countered by giving people the real 411, Nyhan and Reifler's research indicates that correct information often fails to reduce misperceptions among the ideologically-committed, particularly doctrinaire conservatives.

That's something many readers of this column understand intuitively after having seen false claims like Obama-is-a-Muslim refuted over and over again and yet, unbelievably, somehow manages to persist.

There's lots of research on citizen ignorance but there's only a handful of studies that focus on misinformation and the effect it has on political opinions. Nyhan and Reifler's work adds to what Yale University political scientist Robert Bullock has found: it's possible to correct and change misinformed political opinions, but the truth (small 't') ain't enough.

In Bullock's experimental study, participants were shown the transcript for an ad created by a pro-choice group opposing the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts. The ad falsely accused Roberts of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber."

What Bullock found was that 56 percent of the Democratic participants disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation. After seeing the attack ad, it jumped to 80 percent.

When they were shown an ad that refuted the misinformation and were also told the pro-choice group had withdrawn the original ad, the disapproval rating didn't drop back down to 56 percent but to 72 percent.

Nyhan and Reifler conducted a series of studies where subjects were presented with mock news articles on "hot button" issues that included demonstrably false assertions like: Iraq possessed WMD immediately before the U.S. invasion. Tax cuts lead to economic growth. Bush banned stem cell research, as Sens. Kerry and Kennedy claimed during the 2004 presidential campaign.

With the Iraq-possessed-WMD-immediately-before-the-invasion assertion, participants were shown mock news articles supporting the unfounded Bush administration claim and then provided the refutation by way of the Duelfer Report, which authoritatively details the documented lack of WMD, or even an active production program, in Iraq just before the invasion.

But instead of changing the minds of ideologically-committed war-backers, Nyhan and Reifler found a "backfire effect," in which Iraq invasion-supporters only slightly modified their view without letting go of the misinformation by saying "Saddam Hussein was able to hide or destroy these weapons right before U.S. forces arrived." Sigh.

Nyhan and Reifler attribute that kind of "thinking" to the affects of "motivated reasoning," which can distort how people process information.

"As a result (of motivated reasoning), the corrections fail to reduce misperceptions for the most committed participants. Even worse, they actually strengthen misperceptions among ideological subgroups."

Now you know why those back-and-forth on-line debates so often prove to be fruitless. Unfortunately, neither Bullock, Nyhan, or Reifler suggest a way to successfully counter misinformation clung to by those who hold their political opinions with an air of certitude.

Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam suggests wrapping refutations in language that enhances the self-esteem of the misinformed.

Whatever you do, just don't forget Twain's timeless advice: "tell the truth or trump -- but get the trick."