If nothing else have a look at #1......everyone, right and left, will appreciate this story.....
1/ Absolutely fascinating article about the differences between conservatives and liberals, looked at in an objective and scientific way.......whether your instincts are left or right it explains everything you may be feeling about politics, and why.
Let me go out on a limb and say this is the best article we have had in DDD for a while, and I put in a few good ones......
arlier this week, yesterday's Republican primary champ Rick Santorum called global warming a "hoax." Yes, a hoax. In other words, apparently scientists are in a global cabal to needlessly alarm us about what's happening with the climate - and why would they do such a thing?Well, presumably to help advance an economy-choking agenda of global governance - or perhaps, to line their own pockets with government research grants. Seriously.
Santorum's absurd global warming conspiracy theory is the kind of thing that absolutely outrages liberals - but to my mind, they really ought to be getting used to it by now. From global warming denial to claims about "death panels" to baseless fears about inflation, it often seems there are so many factually wrong claims on the political right that those who make them live in a different reality.
So here's an idea: Maybe they actually do. And maybe we can look to science itself - albeit, ironically, a body of science whose fundamental premise (the theory of evolution) most Republicans deny - to help understand why it is that they view the world so differently.
In my last piece here, I commented on the growing body of research suggesting that the difference between liberals and conservatives is not merely ideological in nature. Rather, it seems more deeply rooted in psychology and the brain - with ideology itself emerging as a kind of by-product of fundamentally different patterns of perceiving and responding to the world that spill over into many aspects of life, not just the political.
To back this up, I listed seven published studies showing a consistent set of physiological, brain, and "attentional" differences between liberals and conservatives. Later on my blog, I listed no less thaneleven studies showing genetic
Last month, yet another scientific paper on this subject came out - from the National Science Foundation-supported political physiology laboratory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The work, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (free version here), goes further still in helping us understand how biological and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives may lead to very different patterns of political behavior.
As the new research suggests, conservatism is largely a defensive ideology - and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments. By contrast, liberalism can be thought of as an exploratory ideology - much more appealing to people who go through life trying things out and seeking the new.
All of this is reflected, in a measurable way, in the physiological responses that liberals and conservatives show to emotionally evocative but otherwise entirely apolitical images - and also to images of politicians, either on their own side or from across the aisle.
2/ Poor Mitt Romney....he has what we used to call foot in mouth disease. Paul Krugman looks at his latest gaffe and finds it symptomatic of the whole field of candidates, to a man pandering to the far right loonies in the Republican party....
Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.”
As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured.
That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.
Start with Rick Santorum, who, according to Public Policy Polling, is the clear current favorite among usual Republican primary voters, running 15 points ahead of Mr. Romney. Anyone with an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003 remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runs deeper than that.
For example, last year Mr. Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “American left who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a few massacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a 21st-century campaign?
Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a “beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excuse for more government control of your life.” You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.
3/ Jon Stewart with a clip about his favourite subject - the crazies at Fox News......5 good minutes.....
If there's one thing Jon Stewart can't stand, it's public figures making unfair comparisons to Hitler. Unfortunately, during his week off from "The Daily Show" last week, he was presented with yet another Nazi analogy courtesy of Fox News -- this time in reference to President Obama's birth control policy.
The President's healthcare plan requiring contraception to be included in insurance coverage has started a "firestorm" among Christians (or, as Stewart pointed out, "just the old dudes who run it") who do not want hospitals, colleges or other religious organizations to provide birth control. Obama's recent compromise that exempts religious figures from directly providing free birth control isn't sitting well either, with the likes of Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and, yes, Fox News pundits sounding off on how big an issue this is for the right.
Which brings us to Stewart's topic of the night: A panel Sean Hannity put together with men of all different races and religions to discuss contraceptive issue. Sounds good, except they forgot to invite any women. But that wasn't the biggest problem Stewart had with what he dubbed "The world's holiest sausage fest." Several panelists equated Obama's healthcare mandate to a war on religion, but Stewart especially took issue with one man who somehow managed to use Nazi Germany mandates as a comparison.
4/ "Dear Ronald Reagan - Thanks For Wrecking America"......
Charles Pierce in Esquire with a passionate look at how the Gipper started the attack on the middle class and the rise of the oligarchy.....
Turns out yesterday would have been Ronald Reagan's 101st birthday. In all the excitement over the tsunami of Santorum that engulfed the country, it plumb got right by me. So, let me say, in my own belated way, and because behind-the-times was the basis for Reagan's entire career, happy birthday, ya silly old coot.
How do you like your party now, Ronnie? A Mormon everyone hates, a world-historical balloon animal 10 years past his sell-by date, a survivalist crank from Texas, and a guy who is pretty much a dick. That's the party you and your boys created. That's the end product of the "conservative movement" of which you were the amiable and occasionally coherent figurehead, a prop in your own life. You know how you know that's the case, Ronnie? Look how hard they're trying to memorialize you in concrete and marble. They stuck your name on National Airport, and on the biggest and ugliest building in Washington, D.C., to celebrate your devotion to smaller government. What was it that Bogart said in that detective movie?
The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
You taught us that "deficits don't matter." (Dick Cheney himself reminded us of that.) You sold missiles to the terrorist-sponsoring mullahs in Iran so you could sponsor our own priest-slaughtering terrorists in Central America, thereby laying the groundwork for all the secret deceptions in foreign policy that led to the Iraq war, which was designed and launched by some of your own old Iran-Contra hands, and thereby also laying the groundwork for the destructive increase in presidential power that continues (alas) to this day, under a Democratic president.
5/ Sometimes you have to do the right thing - Onion News interviews a couple who had to put down their teenage daughter because she was braindead.....3 minutes.....
6/ Like the phrase "Pelvic Politics"? Has a certain ring to it doesn't it?
Great column from Nicolas Kristof about the recent "controversy" with the Catholic Bishops vs women.....you know, the same Bishops that turned a blind eye to pedophile priests. The ones who hate contraception, love foetuses, but ignore the resulting babies.
Them. Old white guys.
I MAY not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.
The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals. On the contrary, few areas have more impact on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts to chip away at poverty.
My well-heeled readers will be furrowing their brows at this point. Birth control is cheap, you’re thinking, and far less expensive than a baby (or an abortion). But for many Americans living on the edge, it’s a borderline luxury.
A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means, ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated. Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30 percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that they economized by not taking it every day. (My data is from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization on issues of sexual health.)
One-third of women in another survey said they would switch birth control methods if not for the cost. Nearly half of those women were relying on condoms, and others on nothing more than withdrawal.
The cost of birth control is one reason poor women are more than three times as likely to end up pregnant unintentionally as middle-class women.
7/ Both Gingrich and Santorum have recently] been attacking "the elites", and Bill Maher has a few choice words for them and the audience of stupid America they are pandering to......3 minutes......
8/ Last week a brave Lt. Colonel in the US Army published a report on the truth of what is happening in the shithole into which we are pouring hundreds of billions of our treasure and thousands of young men - Afghanistan. His conclusion is everything the Military says about this pit of despair is a lie - we are losing, we will never win and the Afghanis hate us.
There is a link to his 84 page report in the story, but read the summary - it's pretty clear.....
Davis last month submitted the unclassified report –titled "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort" – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We've decided to publish it in full; it's well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.
9/ The Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai has one of the most sophisticated fountain displays in the world, and they programmed it to [the late] Whitney Houston's "I will always love you".....3 minutes of an amazing show.....and of course the song is wonderful....
10/ A woman writing about women's health and the political battles over who will control your 'lady parts".....really good read, especially for you ladies......
Did I expect this? Did any of us foresee that in 2012 there would be a full-tilt battle about women’s health and how it should be handled?
In the thick of the presidential race, with the continuing mortgage mess and a still-precarious economy, this is what engages the most passion — certainly from those on the right. It seems to be the cultural issue they think can carry them forward.
I am not talking just about abortion — a morally divisive issue that is always there, simmering. This involves even contraceptives — who should get them, who should pay for them, or not.
It’s strange to realize that one of the dominant battlegrounds in one’s lifetime is not some exotic place like Iraq — or even the war on terror. No, the ultimate battlefield has been the female body.
So here we are again, with the Republican candidates trying to outdo each other in the sanctity-of-life sweepstakes. They regularly have to do this to play to their religious base. But this round, the intensity has picked up. There is a new fervency in the air.
One candidate, Mitt Romney, has done a full 180 — from pro-choice to anti. Another, Rick Santorum, has suggested that even rape victims should keep their fetuses, however “horribly created” those babies-to-be. They are, he says, gifts from God, whatever their origins.
On some level, one shouldn’t be surprised. The abortion pushback has been going on since the Supreme Court decided Roe v.Wade almost four decades ago. Within three years, we had the Hyde amendment, barring any federal funding for abortion. Since then, there has been constant effort by the activists.
They always had a rhetorical edge: the language of “life” versus the language of “choice.” One sounded big, emotional, a matter of deep values, while the other seemed wimpy and selfish by comparison.
The pro-lifers’ passions often came with a deep faith, not easily dismissed. Those who believe abortion should remain legal often seemed to be at a linguistic — and thereby moral — gap.
I’ve never written much about abortion because I could never figure out how not to tumble into seemingly unsatisfactory clichés. A woman’s right to choose? Was there not something more urgent, more elemental? The right to privacy?
11/ A classic video from the 80's that holds up today - Dire Straits with "Money for Nothing"........"I want my MTV!" You will definitely remember this one......
12/ And speaking of lady parts Naomi Wolf recently spoke in Britain about the lunacy of the British government not to disallow silicone breast implants.......reintroduced here after being banned, after heavy lobbying.
Ladies - note - these are dangerous for your health.....
I have heard, in my life, many implausible statements from government officials, but never have I heard or seen anything quite as egregious as what I witnessed as a guest on the BBC's Newsnight program on 7 February 2012. Twenty-five frightened and suffering women had agreed to appear in the studio to ask questions of Anne Milton, a health minister for the UK coalition government. They had all been implanted with PIP (Poly Implant Prothèse) breast implants, which had been withdrawn from the EU market in 2010, after revelations of high rupture rates and confirmation that substandard – believe it or not, industrial – grade silicone had been used.
In December of 2011, French authorities advised that these PIP implants be removed; other countries' health authorities took similar action. Britain was not one of them. French authorities, according to the World Health Organization global advisory, "also found that the gel containing non-approved silicone was an irritant to tissue, and when leaking could give rise to inflammation and pain."
When I was researching The Beauty Myth, in 1991, I was reading British medical journals that informed me about the terrible health problems caused by silicone breast implants. I was shocked to see that even as women's magazines were promoting the hell out of them, the medical journals – which women would not see – were offering doctors insurance on implants because the rate of rupture was 30-70%. The side-effects were right there in the journals: up to 70% of implants would harden "like golf balls" and rupture, sending silicone into parts of women's bodies, with unknown consequences.
Similar warnings paid off in the US: silicone implants were banned in 1992. But Britain never followed suit. Now, though, British women like the ones in the Newsnight studio are facing the nightmare that they were never informed of the dangers of silicone by any government body, even as private, Harley Street doctors made fortunes continuing to push implants.
13/ Fabulous video of underwater diving in Fiji.....great piano sound track, HiDef images, 4 minutes.......quite beautiful.....
14/ Fascinating little tale about a scandal in Wellington, Palm Beach County, where the [very rich indeed] founder of the Polo Club got drunk, killed a young man by hitting him with his Bentley, is going on trial for manslaughter and has adopted his 42 year old girlfriend - yes, 42! - to protect his fortune from the lawyers.....
Juicy enough for you? Read on.......
MIAMI — In a well-heeled community not far from Palm Beach, where some of the world’s wealthiest people gather every winter to watch and play world-class polo, notoriety is not a welcome guest.
This is especially true when a scandal encircles one of its own — the Texan who helped revitalize the town of Wellington and its polo culture.
Two years ago, John Goodman, the multimillionaire founder of the polo club here, got behind the wheel of his black Bentley convertible after a night of bar hopping and smashed into the car of a young man driving to visit his mother. The man’s crumpled Hyundai flipped and landed in a drainage ditch.
Investigators say that Mr. Goodman was drunk and speeding when he ran a stop sign, and then fled the scene of the accident on foot, waiting an hour to call 911. The young man, Scott Wilson, a 23-year-old engineering graduate, lay unconscious in his car. He drowned in the early morning of Feb. 12, 2010.
It is a devastating picture, one that Wellington, with its rambling horse farms and equestrian pedigree, will be forced to revisit soon. On March 6, Mr. Goodman is expected to go to trial on charges of manslaughter while driving under the influence, vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a crash. He faces up to 30 years in prison.
Mr. Goodman, 48, the founder of International Polo Club Palm Beach, is also being sued for punitive damages by Mr. Wilson’s parents in a case that has taken a Kafkaesque twist as lawyers continue to wrangle over Mr. Goodman’s millions.
“There is a constant chatter about this,” said Kenneth Braddick, a Wellington resident who founded a Web site about dressage. “It’s a very small, insular community, and he is very well known to everyone in it.”
The latest events in the civil case bewildered even the jaded. Mr. Goodman has legally adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend. And while the adoption of an adult is not uncommon, the adoption of a girlfriend certainly is.
By becoming Mr. Goodman’s daughter, his girlfriend, Heather Hutchins, will share in a trust worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Mr. Goodman’s two minor children. The adoption permits Ms. Hutchins, who lives in Atlanta with her own two children, to begin receiving yearly payments of $250,000 to $5 million, court documents show.
In this way, Mr. Goodman, who is unhappy with the firm managing the trust, will have greater oversight of the money if he goes to prison, or is otherwise indisposed, as his lawyers have said. They assert that he will not have access to the money.
Opposing lawyers disagree, calling it an outright money grab.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
15/ An excellent Stephen Colbert - he riffs on the contraception "controversy", and gets in some really funny zingers.....it you like Colbert, you'll love this 6 minute segment.....
President Obama's mandate to have all employers -- including religious institutions -- cover contraceptives in their insurance plans is not sitting well with conservative Christians, making it the perfect hot-button issue for Stephen Colbert's satire/analysis (Satirlysis?)
On Tuesday night's "Report," Colbert poked holes in the right's argument against the mandate with a look at what the Good Book says about procreation and whether or not birth control is really prohibited by Catholicism when 98% of Catholic women use it.
"When you use contraception, you are not only sinning, you're c*ck-blocking the almighty!" Colbert joked.As you can imagine, this segment is full of ridiculous innuendos, from Colbert saying that Republicans aren't taking this lying down "or even doggie style" to him citing Rick Santorum's opinion that the mandate puts our rights on a slippery "or lubricated" slope.
But words simply weren't enough for Colbert last night. Watch the full segment above to see him take his innuendo a step further by whipping out a banana, a condom and mini-guillotine. We think you know where this is going.
16/ So you live on a recreational lake in Florida - you see some good ole boys with shotguns shooting the ducks and firing towards your house. You call the cops, but guess what? They can't do anything......the Republicans in the legislature, owned by the National Rifle Association, passed an incredible law last year that made it illegal for any city to have tougher laws than the toothless State laws.....astonishing......
Good article from Lauren Ritchie in the Orlando Sentinel.....by the way this incident was on West Crooked Lake in Eustis....
Hmm.......wonder if it's legal to fire back.......
Sudden shotgun blasts recently shattered the quiet of the homes that line West Crooked Lake inEustis.
Boom! Boom! Madelaine Lock was visiting with her neighbor, and together they ran toward the lake. Boom! Doors flew open, and residents streamed outside. Five of them dialed 911 to summon police.
They needn't have bothered.
Out on West Crooked Lake, three happy hunters displayed the carcasses of five dead ducks. Eustis officers snagged the hunters and began to remonstrate with them. They needn't have bothered, either.
Remember the ordinances cities typically enacted that prevented people living close to one another from pulling out their weapons and firing willy-nilly?
Gone, thanks to the Legislature. That's what happens when big boys with guns want more room to play and the very powerful National Rifle Association pushes relentlessly.
During last year's session, state lawmakers passed a fiasco of a series of gun bills, one of which prevents any local government from enacting rules about guns that are more strict than state laws. It provided for fines up to $5 million for doing so.
That left cities across the state scrambling to repeal everything that even smelled like a law restricting firearms. Lake County, for example, repealed a law banning firearm advertisements in its parks.
The county also got threw out its law about not bringing guns to libraries. Thank heavens! A patriot can't be too careful. You never know when terrorists are Googling "how to brew a bomb" on the Sorrento library's computers.
And then, there was Eustis.
Its law, which is typical of cities, stated that no one shall discharge a firearm in the incorporated area "over, around, through or so near the occupied structures, livestock, pets, chattels or person of another, that might reasonably be expected to do harm." The ordinance specifically stated that no one had to be hit to prove that "harm" was in play and that firing within 150 yards of a house was a flat-out no-no.
Then, officers instantly could have cited the hunters who were firing from a boat 300 to 400 feet toward Lock's beach, where her family likes to relax and her Jack Russell terriers scamper about, snuffling for lizards through the water weeds.
Todays video - Mrs Brown and the condom......very funny from the BBC.......
Todays redneck joke
(Don't make me come splain this to you! Read the last line again, slowly.) |
Todays joke for married men
A man and his wife were driving home one very cold night when the wife asks
her husband to stop the car.
There was a baby skunk lying at the side of the road, and she got out to
see if it was still alive.
It was, and she said to her husband, "It's nearly frozen to death. Can we
take it with us, get it warm, and let it go in the morning?"
He says, "OK, Get in the car with it."
The wife says, "Where shall I put it to get it warm?"
He says, "Put it between your legs. It's nice and warm there." "But what
about the smell?" said the wife.
He says, "Just hold its little nose."
The man is expected to recover, but the skunk she used to beat him with died
at the scene.....
Another married men joke
"Doc, you've gotta help me! My wife just isn't interested in sex
anymore. Haven't you got a pill or something I can give her?"
"Look, I can't prescribe..."
"Doc, we've been friends for years. Have you ever seen me this
upset? I'm desperate! I can't think; I can't concentrate; my life
is going utterly to hell! You've got to help me."
The doctor opens his desk drawer and removes a small bottle of
pills. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't do this. These are experimental;
the tests so far indicate that they're VERY powerful. Don't give
her more than ONE, understand? Just ONE."
"I don't know, doc; she's awfully cold..."
"One. No more. In her coffee. Okay?"
"Um... okay."
He thanks the doc and heads for home where his wife has dinner
waiting. When dinner is finished, she goes to the kitchen to
bring dessert. He pulls the pills from his pocket and drops one
into his wife's coffee. He thinks for a moment, hesitates, then
drops in a second pill. And then he begins to worry. The doctor
did say they were powerful.
Then an inspiration strikes... he drops one pill into his own
coffee. His wife returns and they enjoy their dessert and coffee.
Sure enough, a few minutes after they finish, his wife shudders a
little, sighs deeply and heavily, and a strange look enters her
eyes. In a near-whisper and in a tone of voice he has never heard
her use before, she looks at him seductively and says, "I need a
man... Right now!!"
His eyes glitter, and his hands tremble as he replies,
"Me too..."
Todays final married guy joke
The wife told me to go to the doctors and get some of those tablets that "help" get an erection. You should have seen her face when I came back and tossed her some diet pills ! I am still looking for a place to live. |
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