How your tweets can betray your politics: Liberals use swear words on Twitter while those on the right discuss religion

This will be no news to conservatives who have had interactions with Leftists.  Abuse is about all they are capable of if you point out anything that undermines any of their claims.  Civil disagreement and rational argument mostly seem to be beyond them.

Like an earlier study, the study below found that profanity is much more common on Leftist social media. The earlier study of the matter found profanity to be TWELVE TIMES more common on Leftist blogs. Profanity is of course proverbially the sign of a weak mind trying to express itself forcibly.

It has to be that way.  Reality is so inimical to Leftist views  that a balanced consideration of all the evidence would make conservatives out of them.  So emotional responses to any undermining of their positions are all that is left to them. They are a sad lot -- ruled by their own hostile emotions


For many users of social media, figuring out their political stance is simple as they broadcast their views for all to see. However, it seems it is possible to discern someone's politics purely from the language they use on Twitter.

Researchers have found liberals, like supporters of the Democrats in the US, were more likely to use swear words.

They were also more likely to use emotionally charged language and express positive emotions than Conservative and Republican tweeters, but also use language associated with anxiety.

Conservatives were more likely to discuss religion, with 'god' and 'psalm' being among their most popular words.

Dr Matthew Purver, one of the authors of the study at Queen Mary University of London, said: 'Open social media provides a huge amount of data for use in understanding offline behaviour.

'The way people talk and interact on Twitter can provide a more robust and natural source for analysing behaviour than the traditional experiments and surveys.'

The researchers studied tweets sent between 15 and 30 June 2014 by followers of either the Republican or Democrat party Twitter accounts.

As might be expected, there were clear differences in the discussion of politics and topical issues.  Liberals were more likely to discuss international news, frequently mentioning 'Kenya', where 60 people were killed in violent attacks during the time of the study, and 'Delhi' which was also regularly in the news at the time.

However, while Democrats would be expected to mention Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi regularly it was actually Republicans who talked about their opposition most.

Democrats conversely were more likely to talk about former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The study, published in the journal Public Library of Science One, showed Democrats were also more likely to swear, with 'f***' and 's***' in their top ten most used words after common English words were removed.

Democrats were also more likely than conservatives to use words like 'I' and 'me', while Republicans used words like 'we' and 'our'.

Previous studies have suggested liberals have a greater sense of their own uniqueness while conservatives are more likely to emphasis group identify and consensus.

SOURCE

********************************

Anatomy of a Failed Liberal State

When I grew up in the north suburbs of Chicago in the 1960s and ‘70s, Illinois was still a financial and industrial powerhouse. The Land of Lincoln had a low-rate flat income tax, the property taxes were reasonable, the state ran budget surpluses, and Illinois was the home of such iconic mega-employers as Caterpillar, Sears Roebuck and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The public schools were pretty good back then and a dedicated corps of teachers put kids first — they didn’t walk out on strike, and they didn’t have the fat pensions they can get now when retiring at age 55.

Mayor Richard Daley (“the Boss”) ruled Chicago for decades, and it was “the city that works.” Yes, you had to pay off the unions to get things done, but this was a cost of doing business. Things did get done.

Fast forward to today, and what a sad state of affairs. Last week the state had to sheepishly announce that it doesn’t even have the money in the bank to pay lottery winners. Now jackpot winners are suing the state to get their rightful money.

Perhaps the state will need a second lottery to raise money to pay off the winners from the first lottery.

Chicago is so broke that its bonds are junk status, and Mayor Rahm Emmanuel had to go hat in hand last week to the state capital, Springfield, for bailout money to pay the bills.

According to Forrest Claypool, the new chief executive for the Chicago school system: “We are really now at a point where further cuts would reach deep into the classroom.” Teachers have been laid off, and extracurricular activities have been cut. Yes, the financial crisis is wreaking havoc, but to ask the state to kick in money is a laughable proposition — like Puerto Rico asking Greece for a loan. Springfield is plum out of money, too.

To protest additional service cuts, The Wall Street Journal reports, parents are going on hunger strikes. But it will take more than divine intervention for the cash inflow to meet expenditures.

Why should residents of other states care about this financial meltdown in Chicago and Illinois? The answer is that Chicago is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the government pension crisis. Pensions for teachers and state employees are bleeding the state dry. A state budget office spokesman tells me that “nearly one of three state tax dollars now goes to paying pensions for retired municipal and state employees.”

Meanwhile, tax increases on the rich under the previous governor failed to raise much money, but did accelerate an exodus of money and talent out of the state. A new Illinois Policy Institute study, based on latest IRS data, finds a record number of people have been fleeing Cook County, home to Chicago. “The income of the people who left Cook County in 2012 was $2 billion more than the income of the people who moved into Cook County. … The 2011 and 2012 outmigration will cost the county nearly $30 billion in taxable income over the next decade.”

It couldn’t get much worse, right? Wrong. The state has been operating without a new budget for more than two months. Vendors are routinely going two or three months without getting paid because the vault is empty. The Democrats who rule the state Legislature and serve their masters, the Illinois teachers unions, passed a $34 billion budget this summer that is $5 billion in the red, flouting the state’s balanced budget requirement.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who inherited this calamity, is the state’s last best hope. He has vetoed the state budget and rejected the unions’ demands for more taxes. Property taxes and sales taxes (which can reach 10 percent in Cook County) are already nearly the highest in the nation.

The rich whom the unions want to tax have been leaving for Florida, Arizona and Texas. Rauner argues that Illinois already has one of the five worst business environments in the nation.

Worst of all, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that pensions can’t be touched because they are contractual obligations. So funding for schools, roads, and public safety get shortchanged so that public employees can keep cashing in on benefits far more generous than what private sector workers/taxpayers receive. This is justice? No wonder residents are going on hunger strikes.

It’s a battle royale that pits the union bosses against the taxpayers. And it’s a fight that Mr. Rauner can’t lose. If he does, the exodus from the state will look like the floods of Middle Eastern refugees trying to get to Western Europe.

The shame of all this is that Chicago is a world-class city. It is the capital of the Midwest and by far the most desirable city in the region to live in. It should be, and could be, America’s Hong Kong if it weren’t for the labor agreements that are shredding basic government services and making the city unaffordable.

What is scary is that the fiscal virus that has incapacitated this once-great city and state may soon spread to a city or town near you.

Amazingly, national Democrats are saying with straight faces that to help American workers and make the country great again we need more powerful unions.

SOURCE

***************************

Walker's Plan to Take Down Federal Unions

As Republican presidential candidates prepare for the debate Wednesday, several have taken on specific issues that are viewed as either important to voters or important to the candidate. To name a few, Donald Trump’s focus, as always, is immigration, while Marco Rubio tackled college reform and Mike Huckabee's fighting against abortion and Planned Parenthood. And now, Scott Walker has made ending federal labor unions a top priority for his campaign. Considering that public employee unions are one of the things that make the federal government as inefficient as it is, Walker's proposal is intriguing.

Walker has had enormous success as governor of Wisconsin on this issue. In fact, the battle garnered national attention and is essentially the reason he's a presidential candidate. After being in office for only six weeks, he proposed and succeeded in ending collective bargaining for public employees in the state. Democrats in the legislature literally fled the state to avoid a losing vote. They returned when it became clear defeat was inevitable, but they also forced Walker into a recall election in 2012. Despite protests from union supporters and millions in special-interest money flooding into the state, he won — by a wider margin than his initial victory. He then won re-election in 2014. Earlier this year, he made Wisconsin a right-to-work state.

With all of the issues facing our nation, however, why is Walker choosing to focus on eliminating federal labor unions? There are a couple of factors to consider here. First, we repeat: He had great success fighting against Big Labor in the state of Wisconsin. It worked at the state level, so why not try it at the federal level?

Second, taking on Big Labor has not been talked about much amongst the GOP candidates thus far and Walker needs an issue that separates him from the pack. As The Wall Street Journal notes, “[T]he plan to severely limit labor-union rights nationwide is Mr. Walker’s attempt to force other candidates to respond to his proposals, rather than the other way around.”

The campaign spotlight is no longer on Walker like it is on Trump, Carly Fiorina or Ben Carson. In fact, Walker has plummeted in the polls. Early in the race, he was the frontrunner in Iowa. Now he has fallen to 10th place with just 3% support in a recent poll. He is no doubt hoping that taking on federal labor unions as a big part of his campaign platform — returning to his roots, as it were — will boost his numbers.

Walker highlighted several reasons that labor unions are detrimental to the federal government — and America.

“In 2012, American taxpayers shelled out some $156 million to do the bidding of big-government union bosses. Federal workers spent more than 3.3 million hours that year doing union work, instead of serving the government.”

Further, he explains that political donations from federal unions overwhelmingly go to leftist candidates and causes, and that's been true "for decades." The reason is simple: Unions have a self-interest in growing government, and Democrats promise to deliver.

Federal unions are also a “force for making our government less efficient and accountable,” Walker said, as evidenced by union bosses who have a grip on the Department of Veterans Affairs. Several employees at the VA should have been demoted or fired for poor performance or misconduct in the wait-time scandal, but because of labor unions they were allowed to stay — and even received back pay.

Walker contends that federal unions “interfere with the ability of government to serve people.” He specifically points to the IRS, which has "more than 200 employees work[ing] full-time for big-government union bosses at taxpayer expense" — all while the agency is targeting conservative political groups.

So what exactly does Walker intend to do to fight against federal labor unions if he is elected president? Reason’s Scott Shackford points out five key areas:

*    Eliminate the National Labor Relations Board — He will transfer power to the National Mediation Board and the courts, but he will need cooperation from Congress to change existing federal law.

*    Eliminate federal unions — He promises to end taxpayers subsidizing millions of hours of union lobbying.

*    Establish nationwide right-to-work — He proposes that all states be made right-to-work unless a state enacts a law saying it is not a right-to-work state.

*    Prohibit forced dues from government workers for political purposes — He'll end forced dues from those who don’t want to pay, and would protect employees from harassment and threats from union organizers. He would also protect whistleblowers who report union wrongdoing.

*    Dump regulations that drive up federal construction costs — He proposes a repeal of the Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act, which forces the federal government to pay artificially inflated "prevailing wages" for construction projects, as well as ending labor agreements that guarantee highway construction projects to union-only labor.

Walker has gone from frontrunner to long shot, and while the issue may not hit home with all voters, it will resonate well with those who despise the corrupting power of labor unions. We will see on Wednesday how much attention Walker devotes to the issue during the debate. And we will know soon whether focusing on this issue makes or breaks his campaign.

SOURCE

******************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************