Not quite. It's a matter of voting on real facts in context rather than distorted half-truths. I don't have a problem with a person seeing the same facts as myself but drawing different conclusions. For most of us, our perspective is shaped at least in part by our experiences, and our experiences all differ. It's not so much a matter of voting for whoever lies the least; it's a matter of who you find credible based on patterns of behavior and who's plans you find most viable and constructive after all the FUD is cleared away. But in a sense, yeah, if you BS a lot, you lose cred. After all, if you lie about what the current reality is, you're likely to lie about what you'll do about it.

And, what are the real facts? What VinTek says they are? What Obama says? What Romney says? "FUD" (what I deem to really be BS) is there for a reason. It works. NPR's Planet Money had an excellent show on the focus groups politicians put out there and how to get people to believe the things they say. It's quite interesting.

We all have a hierarchy of what is most important to us. As we go down our list, we probably won't get everything, but we make sure to get the most number of things which are important to us. Whether or not that happens is another discussion. Promises by any politician is as good a frat boy's at 2 am saturday morning.

So, we all say FUD and what the real facts are, but I think even the most educated have a hard time sorting it out. Case in point, I believe there is a thread here rambling on about "good" the President is on terrorism or fighting terrorism or whatever it is they do. The OP credits the President as keeping Guantanamo open and that he (the President) knows it is the correct thing to do. I seem to recall one of the first things the President did in '09 after his inauguration is to announce the closure of Guantanamo. He's never come out and said Guantanamo is the least bad answer we have at this point (I could stand to be corrected, but I doubt it). He's just swept it under the rug. Our excellent (and usually very biased) self-proclaimed FUD busters let that one slip by. So, did the best of the best just miss that? Or did they give it a pass? Or do we have a different view of what the "facts" are? It's probably a combination of the 3, but more the latter. But the point is, we shouldn't assign any negative connotation adjectives to people just because they have a different view of the political world than we do. Or look down our long pointy noses because we think they are buying what is obviously BS to us.

I think the real problem is that a great many people these days have trouble separating fact from opinion. They have been somehow taught or brainwashed to equate the two. There are people on both sides with that problem.

I agree that we should not assign negative adjectives to people just because of their political view. But I think looking down my pointed nose at someone who clearly doesn't know how to think is not only proper, it's what we all should be doing. We should not tolerate FUD, BS, or whatever you want to call it and we should not let people get away with confusing opinion with fact.

On a personal note, you BF have demonstrated that you clearly do know how to think. That means that I put a whole lot more credence in what you say even if I don't agree. I suspect you do the same for some of us here and not for others.

We can start with what most reasonable people (and I do understand that this is a loaded term) would consider fact -- things that are verifiable by a trusted source. For example, I would take it as fact that Obama was born in the US because Hawaii has produced his birth certificate.

I think we can agree that Paul Ryan claims $716M in Medicare savings because we can see it in his budget, Path to Prosperity, which can be accessed in its entirety. And if we examine the GOP's claim that Obama would cut Medicare by $716M, we can determine by looking at the actual law that it's the same savings in the Ryan plan.

Still another example of facts are numbers from the Bureau of Labor. True, it's not an exact science and true, it's numbers are often revised, both upward and downward, as more information becomes available, but I do believe that more reasonable people consider those numbers the best numbers available at the time they are produced.

So facts are not what VinTek would claim, or Obama, or Romney, but things that we can all verify from sources we can all access. At least that's a start.

This further complicates things as well: http://www.foxbghsuit.com/090201amicusbrief.pdf I found this while reading about the dangers of getting your information from only one source. Apparently it is not illegal for the press to give false information or deliberately distort a story.



I think this is why it's incumbent upon the person on the receiving end of the information to pull said information from more than one reputable source, and analyze the differences to make a conscious decision as to what he or she believes. (I.e., what Vin Tek said.)

So the question is, to respect one's right to vote, do we check all their sources and make sure we approve of their thoughts?

We were originally talking about what sways people to vote. There are certainly some elitists here when it comes to understanding "Facts", but I maintain that a person's voting is only incumbent on one thing, their legal eligibility (not meant to have a discussion of what that means). Others think they need to understand the facts. Or am I misinterpreting what is being said? Certainly, we can't have some cognitive hurdle to overcome to vote, so we do talk about if people really understand the "facts" or "FUD" or "bullshit"? Admittedly, I am very hands off when it comes to politics. I have my feelings, perceptions and facts and I rarely push those on others. If someone brings it up to me or engages me, I'll usually lightly oblige, but I am in no way trying to push my theory onto them.

I am sure the responses will be that they in no way implied voting to be contingent upon one's thought process, but that is surely what is said above. Perhaps, some won't straddle the fence and own up to it, in which case my question is, "have you ever once approached someone and convinced them that your ideology is better than theirs?" In reading the threads here, the evidence is, "no."

But that's not the intent, at least in my case. I know that the person I'm debating would be unlikely to change their mind. But for an undecided observer (who by nature of being undecided would be open to hearing opposing opinions), the information presented and the empirical support for that information might be enough to be persuasive. And again, I have no problem with people drawing different conclusions from myself. It would be nice if they came to the same conclusions, but I'm quite content that they access the facts in context. If you look at my past posts, I usually try to link to the source data, not something like an opinion piece. I've linked to the ACA. I've linked to Ryan's plan (so as not misrepresent it). It's up to the observer to decide what that source information really means.

I wish stupid people didn't vote. But I would not support anything that prevents any eligible person from voting. This country has a sad history of doing so...poll taxes, Jim crow laws, voter Id laws, threatening peoplecwith layoffs, not giving them time to vote, it goes on and on.

That's me messing up.

Too bad, it's a losing battle.

That explains why each generation thinks the next one is not as smart.

These days we think democracy depends on everyone having an equal say, that is, everyone having an equal vote. But that has not always been the case. Even in this country the idea that only "informed" people were electors has always been there. But I don't know how we would ever agree on what "informed" means and how to measure it.

Some day there will be a race of apes who can't believe that they were descended from those primitive homo sapiens. I already have arguments with the guys at Primate Programming, Inc.

Man, these guys are really sore losers!

Nah, just plain losers. Stories like that make me so proud to be from Arizona.

I know it's the Aussie ABC site, but there's so many face palm moments in this I had to share.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-15/r ... ma/4373674