Month: November 2010

Obama’s India trip: $200 million a day? | The Economist

Passing the smell test
SOME people just can’t estimate travel costs.

Source: Obama’s India trip: $200 million a day? | The Economist

 

To be a little fair, what does the average citizen know about the deployment of the US navy, what it is used for, or how much it costs?

The part that really hurts my brain is how blatant disregard for truth hurts them and their position. Is the average Tea Partier going to be that much more upset at $200 million than $2 million a day? And this rage-ohol is at the expense of the truth. What if the government did do something awful and these same people were the only ones who found out and reported it? No reasonable person would believe them. This isn’t even some Machiavellian move, it’s just incomprehensible.

The worst part is they believe because they want to be upset.

Stonekettle Station: The Election: What Does It All Mean?

For every well educated, informed, conscientious voter who puts the needs of the nation above their own petty concerns (and really, let me know if you find this person), there is one ignorant uniformed moron, one party hack, one perpetually angry asshole whose only goal is to gum up the works, one guy who votes at random, one guy who forgot to vote, one guy who didn’t vote in protest, one guy who didn’t vote because he was stoned, one guy who didn’t vote because he figures it doesn’t matter, one guy who didn’t vote because he was in prison, and one guy who didn’t vote because the space alien Jesus in his head told him voting booths are really experiments by government scientists to steal our precious bodily fluids.

Source: Stonekettle Station: The Election: What Does It All Mean?

 

From comments:

not only do monarchies work, they are probably among the most successful and stable forms of government known to humanity: they are compatible with multiple other forms of government through constitutions (democracy and democratic socialism), and they provide a core of civic tradition and sense of shared history which, if harnessed appropriately, is massively conducive to productive democratic participation.

— anonymous