–Microevolution, macroevolution, and the stupid party

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•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
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•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and poor.
•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between rich and poor.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..
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We are in the year 2015, an enlightened year of science and technology, as contrasted with the Dark Ages, supposedly ruled by superstition and ignorance.

Yet, in this enlightened year:

A major survey of US opinions has revealed that huge numbers of people reject Darwinian evolution, consider GM foods unsafe to eat, and doubt that human activity is warming the planet.

On January 24, 2013, Bobby Jindal, in one of his rare lucid moments said:

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults. We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.”

To be criticized by Bobby Jindal for being stupid is akin to being criticized by a bear for being furry.

Still, in it’s never-ending efforts to replace science with myth, the religious right continues to promulgate ignorance:

Republican candidate, Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon and living embodiment of mental compartmentalization (i.e., smart in one area; stupid in others), denies Darwinian evolution.

When faced with enormous evidence, Carson backtracked and said: “Microevolution versus macroevolution are two different things.”

What did he mean by that?

Microevolution occurs within a species. For example, arctic bears evolved to be white to blend with the snow, while other bears evolved to be dark to blend with the forest. But they still are bears. They didn’t evolve to become bats.

Carson acknowledges that microevolution happens (though many evolution deniers don’t.) Carson, however, continues to deny that one species can evolve into another species (macroevolution).

The main problem with Carson’s desperate attempt replace science with biblical lore is that “species” is an artificial construct, created by people in an attempt to categorize living creatures. (Humans love to categorize.)

In that sense, nature does not create “species.” People do. And, there is no agreement about exactly what a “species” is.

One common, but sometimes difficult, question is how best to decide which species an organism belongs to, because reproductively isolated groups may not be readily recognizable.

This means that according to one popular definition, “species” refers to sexual reproduction, wherein the dividing line is: One species cannot impregnate another species.

Another common problem is how to define reproductive isolation, because some separately evolving groups may continue to interbreed to some extent, and it can be a difficult matter to discover whether this hybridization affects the long-term genetic make-up of the groups.

So when Carson denies macroevolution exists, he denies not only the tons and tons of scientific evidence, but he doesn’t even know what he is denying. There is no agreement on exactly what a “species” is.

And all of this begs the question, “From where did homo sapiens (that’s us) come?” “Homo” is the species, and presumably it had a beginning. Carson, and others of similar leanings, apparently claim that homo at some point sprang fully formed, as in “So God created man in His own image.”

It’s difficult to do justice to the full range of Carson’s scientific ignorance, but here are some excerpts:

Ben Carson: Evolution Is An Absurd Myth, ‘Give Me A Break’

“They (scientists) are so smart that if they can’t explain how God did something, then it didn’t happen which, of course means that they’re God. You don’t need a God if you consider yourself capable of explaining everything.”

The irony is that it is the religionists like Carson, who claim they can explain everything with the simple declaration: “God did it.”

By contrast, science is based on the admission that we don’t know everything, and the very purpose of science is to discover what we don’t know, and to verify what we may believe.

He claimed that “no one has the knowledge” of the age of the earth “based on the Bible,” adding that “carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.”

Note that his statement has nothing to do with the validity of carbon dating. He merely rejects science in favor of religious faith.

(Carson) said evolution is unable to explain the development of an eyeball: “Give me a break. According to their scheme, it had to occur overnight, it had to be there. I instead say, if you have an intelligent creator, what he does is give his creatures the ability to adapt to the environment so he doesn’t have to start over every fifty years creating all over again.”

The “eyeball” objection has been used by evolution deniers for many years. It is completely untrue, and is a demonstration of Carson’s remarkable ignorance:

Scientists have traced the evolution of the eyeball from a “simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature (that) gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists’ hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve.

The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist’s calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

One well could wonder how a medical doctor could fail to know this. Don’t medical doctors take biology classes? Don’t they have to pass biology exams?

Oh, but it gets better (i.e. worse):

Ben Carson Forgets Baltic States Are in NATO, Dates Islam to Before Christ

and

But just when it seemed Carson couldn’t move any further from reality, he sat down with TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and came up with a brand new fantasy.

Carson said Putin shares a deep historical tie with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, suggesting he became acquainted with them during their college days in Moscow when Putin was a young KGB operative.

The Christian Broadcasting Network’s report referred to this as a “little known historical fact.” The trouble is, it’s little known because it’s not a historical fact.

There’s literally no evidence to suggest Khamenei ever studied in the former Soviet Union. And since he and Abbas are several years older than Putin, the timeline doesn’t even make sense – Putin would have been a 16-year-old high school student at the time.

All together, Carson’s abysmal ignorance about evolution, geopolitics, climate change (“There’s always going to be either cooling or warming going on” “It’s ‘irrelevant.’”), gun control (“In case of an invasion by foreign power, the people will be able to aid the military. And also, if we have a time when we have the wrong people in office and they want to dominate the people, the people will be able to defend themselves.”), homosexuality (“It’s a choice.”), poverty (Create a regressive flat tax and eliminate policies sheltering the poor from having to pay taxes.), religious freedom (A Muslim should only be president if he or she “renounces the tenets of Islam.”) and other ideas of similar malodor, make Carson a perfect Republican — a perfect representative of Jindal’s “stupid party.”

The fact that Carson currently ranks #2 (to Donald Trump) says little about Carson and Trump, and much about the Republican electorate.

But then again, what choices do they have? The Republicans have created rules about what constitutes a REAL Republican, and to follow those rules, a candidate first must join the “stupid party.”

For once in his life, Bobby Jindal was right on target

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Ten Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually Click here
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

The Ten Steps will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
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10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Recessions come after the blue line drops below zero.

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY