Can Republican 'science' be summed up as 'goalpost physics'?
That's what it should be called. They have 'moving the goalposts' down to a science.
Some examples...
2000: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time.
2004: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time.
2008: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time.
2012: The tax cuts will work, we just need some more time... and some deregulation too.
Person 1: Being gay is unnatural, you don't see any animals doing it.
Person 2: Plenty of animals have displayed homosexuality (Shows plethora of evidence)
Person 1: Oh yeah, well... uh... many animals also eat their young. So there.
"This tactic is extremely common in debates with creationists, who will often say "show me an example of something evolving today," or "show me an example of information increasing through random processes." When either of these are shown to the creationist, they will suddenly change the standards of what they meant by "evolving" or "information" to try and avoid losing an argument they clearly lost. The definition between "micro" and "macro" evolution is often left exceptionally vague by creationists and intelligent design proponents just for this purpose."
"The manufactroversy surrounding the release of Barack Obama's birth certificate has seen plenty of goalpost moving - often to a greater degree than any other conspiracy. First, the Birther movement demanded a birth certificate and Obama duly released one. Next they demanded that this wasn't good enough, and sort out a long protracted campaign to have the original, "long form", version released. After getting a special exception made by the state of Hawaii, Obama released this "long form" version. However, the cognitive dissonance was too great for the conspiracy theorists, who had invested a lot of emotional involvement in their denial of his citizenship, and they shifted the goal posts again to demand college and school records, and even proof that his mother was in the hospital at the time. What is particularly galling about the affair is the amount of focus given by the birther movement onto the "long form" certificate - and their constant goalpost moving proves that they will never be convinced." (Now it's reached to the point where they want Obama to prove that his real father was not Frank Marshall Davis!)
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
Call it out as it is. Righties are the masters of goalpost physics.
