Cool Guy With Gun At Airport

Check out Jim Cooley.

He's really cooley, I guess, because he likes to carry his AR-15 at the airport. And then he likes to complain about being harassed by the police. Gosh, I can't imagine why...

Perhaps he and victim George Zimmerman should start a club!

Climate Change Won't Make Plants Grow Faster

One of the tenets of climate change deniers is that as the world warms -- when they admit that it is warming -- plants will grow more quickly. It turns out, not surprisingly, that's a lie:

“There is more to climate change than just temperature,” says Camilo Mora, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Hawaii in Mānoa, who led the work. Drought and limited sunlight will undermine any gain from a warmer atmosphere. By 2100, Mora says, “there could be an 11 percent reduction in the plant growing season worldwide.”

Specifically:

One primary reason is that heating the Arctic will not bring pineapples to Alaska. There is insufficient sunlight year-round at high latitudes to support lush vegetation. In addition, the tropics will lose up to 200 “suitable growing days” a year—days when temperature, soil moisture and sunlight favor growth rather than retard it—because of excessive heat and drought. Overall, “the decreasing number of suitable growing days in the tropics will offset optimistic projections at mid- and high-latitudes,” the study concludes. 

And the idea that increased carbon dioxide levels will make plants grow faster because it's "plant food?" Not true.

Greater levels of CO² made no difference one way or the other. At higher temperatures plants open their pores, called stomata, to capture the elevated CO², which boosts photosynthesis, greening the leaves. But plants also tend to close their stomata in warmer temperatures to prevent water loss. Mora says that on balance the two effects cancel out.

Plants don't like extreme heat, and just like people, they die when they get too hot. There's a reason that the hottest places in the world -- deserts -- have so few plants.

The interesting thing is that the study was instigated by climate deniers:

Mora did not expect this result when he began the study, inspired by notes he swapped with a climate denier. In 2013 Mora published a high-profile study in Nature showing that climate change would harm plants and animals in the tropics sooner than it would hurt them in the Arctic. He says he received numerous e-mails and phone calls attacking the results. “In one such phone call I decided to talk to the person,” he explains. “The guy, one of the so-called climate deniers, claimed that climate change would actually be good for the planet.” The argument is known as the greening effect—that warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere would increase plant growth. Mora found several serious papers reaching that conclusion.

But Mora, who grew up in Colombia and saw plants struggle under high heat and low rainfall, had a hunch that there was more to the story. He and his graduate students calculated the number of days, from now through 2100, when plants would have favorable temperature, moisture and light to grow. They found that at high latitudes plants in the future could not “profit” from warmth because sunlight is limited much of the year. In the tropics temperatures got too hot for numerous plants and drought rose, adding stress to already overtaxed ecosystems. Broadleaf forests there would take the biggest hit, losing as much as three months of suitable growing days annually. 

Nonetheless, Mora sees an upside to climate deniers:

Mora sees two big lessons from the new analysis. One, “that nothing good can come from messing with the Earth’s climate.” And two, “that engaging climate deniers could be good for scientific productivity.” 

If climate deniers were all just harmless cranks making scientists cross their t's and dot their i's, that would be one thing. But when they're employees and shills for oil and coal companies that spend billions of dollars suppressing and distorting the truth, dictating government policy and sucking up hundreds of billions of our tax dollars through direct and indirect subsidies, it's a whole other can of worms.

Without Comment

That Face You Get When...

Young American Taliban

Check out this photo:

It's from a collection of photos that were found in Nancy Lanza's home after the policed searched during the Sandy Hook investigation. It is not known whether this is Adam or not. Either way, I find this to be profoundly disturbing. What kind of seriously fucked up mentality brings you to a place like this?

Oh, right....the same as this one...

So, how much longer are we going to put up with this ideology?

Fantastic Words!

From a recent question on Quora...

I've long suspected that a lot of modern christianity is the result of people who want to be admired and respected like Jesus, but in their hearts they know that they have no intention of living up to Jesus' examples of humility, compassion, sacrifice and tolerance - 

So, the only way they can be "like Jesus" is by pretending, at each and every opportunity, that they're being tortured and vilified for their wonderfulness, by jealous moral inferiors. This is why they react with the righteous anger and the teeth gnashing and the wailing and the hysterics whenever they don't get their way - Every time somebody tells them "No, you can't do that", what they pretend to hear is "I HATE YOU AND I WILL CRUSH YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND INTO NOTHING !" 

Maybe it's best explained with this wonderfully accurate phrase that I once heard used by an arrogant prick, in a story by Mr. Howard Chaykin: "You can't talk to me that way ! Don't you know who I think I am ?!"

That last line from Mr. Chaykin pretty much sums up every conversation I've ever had with a conservative in general, let alone Christian!

Christians Under Attack?

I think there are several reasons why conservatives like to play the victim as detailed here by Bill Maher. The main one is they generate support by fomenting anger, hate and fear. What better way to do it then the garbage Bill points out?

'Tis a bizarre world in which they live. I'm very, very glad I don't go through life constantly feeling persecuted and under attack. Oh well...at least they have guns to fight off the imaginary monsters:)

The 411 On The Clinton Foundation

The attacks and childish taunting against the Clinton Foundation have gotten pretty silly of late. The right wing bubble has been spinning some pretty ridiculous yarns (see: lies) about the organization so I think it's way past time we examine the objective reality.  A good starting point is the foundation's site itself. Follow any of the links above the top banner and you can see all the work that they do in the world. It's pretty impressive and helpful to a lot of people...which is exactly why conservatives hate it as much as they do. As one begins to dig deeper into the foundation, several things become apparently quickly-all of which torpedo the myths about the organization we have heard so much about from the right wing bubble.

First, this isn't a personal, family organization. It is a large not-for-profit philanthropic entity that solicits contributions, establishes and runs programs and serves as a vast convening vehicle to mobilize other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and private corporate assets to efficiently solve heretofore unsolvable, major world problems.

Second, Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with many other people, work for the foundation. It's not their personal organization. It's a communal one...something conservatives always have had trouble understanding:) They earn zero income and receive no benefits from the foundation. In fact, they donate much of their own personal money to the foundation along with many Democrats and Republicans as well as putting in many hours to ensure that objectives in helping people are met.

Third, contrary to the lies being told about the Clinton Foundation's lack of transparency, the organization is very open about the source of its contributions. Even though they are not required by law, the still post the contributors to the foundation. This is a great illustration as to exactly what happens when you are more forthcoming with information. They basically make shit up. No wonder she doesn't want to release her private emails.

Fourth, 88% of the monies collected by the Clinton Foundation are spent on programs and direct activities that benefit people in need in this country and around the world. Between the Foundation and its subsidiary organization, the Clinton Global Initiative, more than 400 million people in 180 countries have benefitted from its activities since its inception in 2002 - again: that's 400 million people! It has been committed to meeting a number of major world challenges and has active programs addressing climate change, economic development in some of the world's poorest nations, health, including the deliver of HIV/Aids medications at low cost to victims in the world's impoverished countries, general health and wellness and improving opportunities for women and girls. The Foundation has had a major impact on improving the Haitian economy both before and after its terrible earthquake.

This runs contrary to the mostly false statement that the Clinton Foundation spends very little on actual charity. The foundation is not set up like a regular charity that farms out its aid to other workers. They hire workers in house and pay them a salary. That's why their administrative costs are so high. As is most typical of right wing blog commenters, the wordsmithing and monkey word games are hauled out in the hopes of a "gotcha."

I'm wondering if this is going to backfire at some point, though. The continued attacks on Hillary Clinton will inevitably increase the image of her as a victim.

Walker Raising Taxes?

Scott Walker recently announced a $500 million dollar stadium deal for the Milwaukee Bucks, half of which will be funded by taxpayers. Somewhat perplexing, no? After all, isn't this the same Scott Walker who is "battle tested" and fighting for lower taxes? I guess $250 million dollars of corporate hand outs are OK:)

I guess funding basketball is OK but not education.

No Hiatus

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report saying that has been no hiatus in global warming after all. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration readjusted thousands of weather data points to account for different measuring techniques through the decades. Their calculations show that since 1998, the rate of warming is about the same as it has been since 1950: about two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit a decade.

The so-called hiatus has been touted by non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science. Those claims have resonated; two years ago, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change felt the need to explain why the Earth was not heating up as expected, listing such reasons as volcanic eruptions, reduced solar radiation and the oceans absorbing more heat.

"The reality is that there is no hiatus," said Tom Karl, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

One key to claims of a hiatus is the start date: 1998. That year there was a big temperature spike; some of the following years were not as hot, though even hotter years followed in 2005, 2010 and 2014, according to NOAA, NASA and temperature records kept in England and Japan. This year is on pace to break last year's global heat record. The key here is this spike date which is exactly how the church of the climate deniers wordmith and right wing blog comment their way into some sort of an argument.

Remember, the linked report above is peer reviewed science (see: objective reality). The comments sections of a right wing blog is not (see: inferiority complex, envy of success and accomplishment).

Oh, and I had an email request to link this site again for those of you out there who want to torpedo the climate deniers with the detailed science. Click on the intermediate and advanced tabs and use that information in your next conversation. Witness the cognitive dissonance.

Remember, it feels like they are being physically attacked! 

Why Can't America Win Wars Anymore?

Why Can't America Win Wars Anymore? This question has been asked in many forms for many years (in MinnPost, the Atlantic, Ricochet, The Daily Beast, The LA Times, etc.). So let's look at the wars that we've won, and the wars that we've lost and see what we can learn.

We "won" the Libyan civil war, in that we bombed Qaddafi's military forces and helped the rebels overthrow and kill the dictator. But the place is falling apart now as various Libyan factions bicker with each other and ISIS is moving in to cause havoc.

We "won" the Iraq war, in that we destroyed the Iraqi military, killed lots of civilians, installed a puppet government and killed Saddam Hussein. But that puppet government turned out to be a puppet of Iran, not the United States. Now Iraq is falling apart again as ISIS fighters take over large swaths of Iraqi territory that the Shiite government can't hold because they have been treating the Sunni inhabitants of those areas like animals.

We won the Gulf War straight up: we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait, crushed his army, placed a no-fly zone over the entire country and neutered his territorial ambitions for a decade. Some people think we "lost" because we didn't take Saddam out at that time.

But it was Dick Cheney, of all people, who so expertly explained why we had to leave Saddam in power in 1993: if Iraq fell apart, then Iran would gain power and then Syria would start falling apart, and then the whole Middle East would go to hell. It turns out the 1993 Dick Cheney was dead right: all the bad things the 1993 Cheney said would happen did happen when the 2003 Cheney invaded Iraq.

We lost the Vietnam war straight up. Yet for all the screaming about dominoes and the moaning about the blow to our prestige, "losing" in Vietnam has had a far more positive outcome than "winning" in Iraq. Communism has been defeated across the globe: China and Vietnam are now capitalist countries, with communist governments in name only.

The Korean War was a draw: we kept South Korea free, while the Chinese and Russians kept North Korea captive. North Korea is now a rogue state: a tyrannical feudal monarchy run by a deranged despot, with a ruling class that serves at the whim of the Supreme Leader and can be executed for offenses as trivial as falling asleep in a meeting.

We like to think we won WWII straight up. We freed western Europe and North Africa from the Germans. We freed Asia and the Pacific from the Japanese. But eastern Europe fell under Soviet control, and shortly thereafter China and much of Asia fell under communist rule.

To make sure we sustained our wins in South Korea, Germany and Japan we had to embark on a huge program of reconstruction and nation-building. We had to occupy these nations for years, babysit them while they wrote new constitutions, build numerous bases at tremendous expense and station troops there for up to 70 years -- and counting.

We like to think we won WWI straight up: we ejected Germany from the rest of Europe. But Russia fell to the Bolsheviks, and Germany fell into a terrible depression, partly due to an unreasonable treaty forced upon them by the victors, and 20 years later Germany started another war. WWI was supposed to the war to end all wars, and clearly it did not.

We "won" the Civil War in the United States, but to this day there are millions of Americans who celebrate the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America and a traitor to this nation. And these are the same people who today claim to be the "real Americans."

What do our victories and losses tell us? We can win wars to eject invaders and free people from slavery. We used moral suasion to convince the citizens of Germany and Japan that the Holocaust and the war crimes committed by the Japanese were wrong, and got them to change their ways. Stationing hundreds of thousands of troops there for decades made it stick.

But we lose wars that we have no moral standing in, or wars that prop up corrupt allies like South Vietnam. And wars never change anyone's minds about the rightness of their cause, or that a "way of life" based on the enslavement of human beings was worth fighting for. Incredibly, I'm talking about the American South, not Nazi Germany.

How does this apply to our current conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria?

We invaded Afghanistan to get rid of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. We did that in short order, and therefore "won," but then we decided that we also had to get rid of the Taliban. We've been stuck there for 13 years now. (The Soviets were stuck with the same problem in the 1980s but called it quits when their country fell apart.)

We can't win in Afghanistan for two reasons: one is military, the other cultural. Militarily, Pakistan has been undercutting us from Day One in Afghanistan. For some reason Pakistan believes that an Afghanistan mired in eternal turmoil somehow diminishes the power of India, their sworn enemy. Now Pakistan is besieged by their own Taliban terrorists, who kill children by the hundreds. Both Afghan and Pakistani Talibans are essentially untouchable in their mountain aeries in western Pakistan.

Culturally, we have no traction in Afghanistan: we are perceived as invaders and Crusaders, an image perpetuated by American conservatives who keep making this a war between Islam and Christianity. The Afghan Taliban is not an invading force, they are native Afghan Pashto Muslims who have lived there for centuries. Yes, they're an evil misogynistic pack of scumbags, but it's still their country.

There the Americans are the interlopers, the ones using drones to shoot Hellfire missiles into wedding parties and bombing houses filled with children. Unlike the Germans and the Japanese, the Taliban didn't invade another country. We invaded them to get at a few foreign terrorists who were hiding out there. Our bombardment of an entire country to root out a small number of criminals puts us in a very poor light there.

And by the way. We were the ones who financed the Taliban and forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan. As Jon Stewart noted in "Learning Curves are for Pussies," the CIA says it's the only time doing such a thing worked.

It's the same story in Iraq. We are viewed as foreign invaders there. Some locals want to use us to destroy their enemies, but they don't like us, or trust us, or believe in democracy or the rule of law. If we destroy ISIS in the Sunni areas of Iraq, the Shiite government will send troops into those areas and kill the Sunnis for cooperating with ISIS. It's a lose-lose proposition.

We have even less standing to meddle in Syria, where our mortal enemy the Iranians are allied with our mortal enemy Assad who are fighting against our mortal enemy ISIS, and we're allied with people who used to say we were their mortal enemy, but now they'll only cop to despising us and cursing us for not giving them enough money and guns.

Viewing our successes and failures over the past century, it becomes clear that the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are not wars that we can win militarily. This is because these countries are made of ethnically and religiously diverse populations who have been at each others' throats for centuries, with lapses of atrocities when dictators like Saddam and Assad used their brutal powers to put a temporary stop to the internecine bickering.

To "win" these wars, we would have to replace the governments of these countries with an American-backed puppet government, along the lines of the post-WWII German and Japanese governments. We would have to segregate these countries into several separate provinces along ethnic and religious lines (Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish, Pashto, Turkmen, Alawite, etc.) , and forcibly repatriate millions of people into the "right" provinces. Doing this fairly is impossible because natural resources such as oil, water and farmland are not evenly distributed. We would have to trust the American government -- which Republicans keep telling us is incapable of doing anything right -- to pick ethnic and religious losers in a foreign country.

And then we'd discover that we already tried that a hundred years ago when the British divvied up the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Look how well that worked out!

We would have to spend a trillion dollars a year and station one or two hundred thousand troops in these countries for the next century in an attempt to force them to see reason. Meanwhile, our fighting men and women would face a constant barrage of IEDs and sniper fire as the local population tried to oust the foreign invaders.

You might think I'm making this all up, but Lindsey Graham's plan for the Middle East is what I outlined above, except he ignores the exorbitant cost and the number of American casualties. The South Carolina senator, Republican presidential candidate and self-proclaimed national security "expert" told NBC's Chuck Todd that we need to invade Syria and Iraq, and that we'll never get out. He has deluded himself into thinking that we can do this on the cheap, getting Turkey and Egypt to do all the heavy lifting, and that the people who have been attacking us for the last 13 and a half years in Afghanistan will simply stop shooting and bombing American soldiers in the Middle East if he's elected president.

This was George W. Bush's plan for Iraq. He pretended he could do it on the cheap, insisting that Iraqi oil would pay for it all. But he spent whatever moral currency America might have had in the Middle East by invading Iraq on false pretenses.

Military might can be used to eject foreign invaders like Germany from France, or Saddam from Kuwait. But it can't make people see reason, treat fellow citizens fairly or adopt a liberal democracy unless that's what they want. And right now, all anyone on any side in the Middle East wants is revenge.

U.S. Corporations Outsourced National Security to Russia

Yesterday I carped about how American companies have been outsourcing manufacturing and tech jobs overseas, and how they've begun firing Americans working in tech jobs and are replacing them with immigrants with H-1B visas.

Russian RD-180 Rocket Engine Being Test-Fired at NASA

It's gets worse. To boost profits and shorten development time, American aerospace companies outsourced the construction of rocket engines for launching U.S. military and intelligence satellites into space. But here's the rub:

After Russia annexed Crimea last year, Congress passed legislation that forced the Pentagon to stop buying Russian rocket engines that have been used since 2000 to help launch American military and intelligence satellites into space.

Now, that simple act of punishment is proving difficult to keep in place.

Only five months after the ban became law, the Pentagon is pressing Congress to ease it.

I'm all for cooperation in space -- the joint missions at the International Space Station with Russia, Japan and Europe are a great way to advance human understanding of the cosmos. But outsourcing the engines for our military rockets is stupidly greedy.

Of course, conservatives are all bent out of shape by this. After vacillating between hardons and hatred and for Vladimir Putin, they are blaming it all on Obama:

“I don’t know what the Pentagon’s position can be, except for them and the Obama administration trying to placate Putin,” Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said. He predicted that the legislative fight would intensify in the months ahead.

But corporate greed and laziness are responsible for this debacle. The Republicans' pals in the defense industry decided to put profit before national security.

The companies that formed United Launch Alliance, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that has a monopoly on military and intelligence launches, decided to buy rocket engines from a state-owned Russian company called Energomash in the 1990s. They didn't want to continue to build their own engines for the Atlas rockets -- they could make more money by using cheap Russian labor to build engines for our military rockets.

You know how American rocket scientists and engineers are -- they're all worried about safety and stuff, and they live in liberal California where houses cost a million bucks. They're so arrogant, they think they know everything and you have to pay 'em so much. It's much cheaper using Russian engineers who get paid peanuts, drink nothing but vodka and live in barracks in Samara (yeah, I'm just making that last part up).

Fortunately, SpaceX, the upstart company founded by Elon Musk, has now been cleared to compete with ULA for launching these sensitive payloads. And Musk's launch vehicles -- made in America -- are cheaper than ULA's Russian-based rockets.  If Congress doesn't pass a bill to allow ULA to buy Russian rocket engines, ULA will be out of a job and SpaceX will have the monopoly on launches.

Rocket engines aren't the only place we have a technological vulnerability. Our entire computing infrastructure is dependent on semiconductors, computers and networking hardware made in foreign countries, primarily China.

The United States invented semiconductor and networking technology, but to increase profits corporations sent the vast majority of semiconductor manufacturing overseas, mostly to China. Design centers soon followed, and now the United States is totally dependent on Asia for our computing hardware.

There's no way to know whether the state-owned Chinese corporations that build this equipment have installed backdoors in the chips, computers, and network routers our military is buying.

The lesson? Corporations have no loyalty to America. They're in business -- they keep telling us -- only to "increase shareholder value." Can you really trust people with our national security when they tell you straight to your face that the only thing they care about is money?

This is another reason not to be so trusting about free-trade treaties -- not only are we forcing American workers to compete with low-wage workers in countries like Vietnam, but are we opening the door for them to compete on contracts for critical military infrastructure? We don't know -- the treaty's secret!

The Criminalization of Joy and the Legalization of Intimidation

Once you think law enforcement in the South has reached the nadir of stupidity, someone in Georgia, Alabama, Florida or Mississippi turns around and shows that their intelligence and morality can sink even lower into the muck:

[T]hree people are facing charges and the prospect of $500 fines and six-month jail terms after they were accused of cheering during the [Senatobia High School] graduation ceremony, held at Northwest Mississippi Community College on May 21.

“We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done,” Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police and a Senatobia High alumnus, said Wednesday. “And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people.”

As I read this, I immediately suspected that the people charged would be black and the perpetrators of this idiotic waste of taxpayer dollars would be white. As it turns out, Jay Foster, the superintendent, and Zabe Davis, the chief of campus police, are white. And, yes, the accused are African Americans, according to the report from WREG TV, which also indicates that the number of people charged was four rather than three.

Don't the cops in Mississippi have better things to do than put people in jail for expressing happiness?

Meanwhile, in Texas the governor is about to sign a bill that will allow people to carry guns on college campuses. But Texas is behind the times: Mississippi passed a similar law in 2011, and Northwest Mississippi Community College is one of the schools where you can pack heat as long as you got your certified instruction from the NRA.

That makes Mississippi the state where you can go to jail for shouting someone's name, but intimidating people with guns on college campuses is a God-given right, dammit!

It makes you wonder: if someone had shot those people for disturbing the peace in such an undignified fashion, would the cops have taken them in for questioning? Or would they believe it to be a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide?

I guess these proud family members -- instead of shouting the graduate's names -- should have fired their shootin' irons into the air in celebration. Who could possibly object to gunfire? It's a Second Amendment right! Freedom of speech is just the First Amendment, and everyone knows two is greater than one!

This is what white people just don't get about the situation of African Americans in this country. They have to put up with kind of crap every ... single ... day of their ... entire ... lives.

Firing Americans and Hiring Foreigners

For decades American manufacturing jobs have been going to places like Mexico, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and so on. Part of this was facilitated by NAFTA, but most of it is due to the vagaries of international trade, which is generally considered a Good Thing for our economy.

In recent years non-manufacturing jobs have also been fleeing these shores: many call centers and help lines have been outsourced to India (which American customers absolutely detest because they can't understand the accents), much software development has been outsourced to eastern Europe and India. Even legal research and medical image analysis have been outsourced overseas.

I have personal experience with this. In the early 2000s, after the company I worked for was bought by a British multinational, a policy came from on high that all American software contractors be replaced with Indian programmers from a specific contracting company.

But American corporations, like Disney World, aren't satisfied with this solution because some jobs just can't be outsourced to foreign countries. The employees need to be in-country. The solution? Bring in foreigners with H-1B visas and replace American workers with them.

[A]bout 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

Yes, Disney (as well as other companies such as Southern California Edison and Fossil) is firing Americans, hiring foreigners for the exact same job and then forcing Americans to train their foreign replacements. For that last ignominy, they get a 10% severance bonus. Nice, huh?

What are H-1B visas?

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.

These companies are clearly lying to get foreign workers: they're laying off qualified people and replacing them with foreigners using the H-1B program. This isn't about finding qualified workers: it's about firing Americans and hiring foreigners for less money.

And American companies still aren't satisfied. The US Chamber of Commerce wants to double or triple the number of H-1B visas. They say they can't find enough qualified American engineers and programmers: what they really mean is they don't want to pay American-level salaries.

To make it worse, the H-1B program is a nightmare for many of the people who get the visas: they are essentially indentured servants. The Indian "in-sourcing" companies that snatch up many of the H-1B visas create phantom jobs and then try to shop around the employees they bring in on false pretenses. They tell the immigrants to falsify their resumes to get jobs they're not qualified for and then force the employees to pay the fees the companies are supposed to pay to get H-1B recipients into the country.

Now, I'm not some whack-job nativist who thinks that furriners are destroyin' Merica and we gotta take it back! In the 1990s I worked with several people from India and Pakistan who had H-1B visas. They were competent and deserving of the jobs.

But the H-1B program clearly has become a cesspool of corruption and greed. It must be radically reformed. But how?

The H-1B visa holders I worked with were directly hired by the company to work for the company. The corruption in the H-1B program is due to the way American companies treat workers: they don't want long-term employees, they want low-cost slaves they can dismiss at a whim.

So companies like Disney and SoCal Edison hire consulting firms and staffing companies, which are usually based in India, to find disposable employees at the lowest possible cost.

These corrupt middlemen should be eliminated. If a company can't find the employees it needs in the United States, then it should find and hire foreign workers themselves. If these companies need employees that badly, then they should be required to make a long-term personal commitment to them, to ensure that they remain gainfully employed for several years and won't be taking other Americans' jobs.

Right now these companies can bring in foreigners, employee them for a couple of months, and then lay them off. At that point the workers will be competing with Americans for any job, not just the one they were hired for. Companies are even using the H-1B program to fill low-wage jobs, not just tech specialists.

If American companies can't find Americans with the skills to do the jobs, they should be investing in the American education system and training Americans to do the job.

American companies like Disney have huge profit margins and are sitting on huge piles of cash. Instead of whining that they can't find enough programmers and have to get them from India, they should endow scholarships at American colleges and universities in the specialties they need.

Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, was paid $46.5 million dollars last year. That's enough to endow 2,000 scholarships at American public universities.

Instead of trying to get Congress to pass laws to allow them to import more wage slaves from India, or expecting someone else to create employees for them for free, American companies should be investing in the future of this country.

What Conservatives Want

Check out this video from a recent Iowa focus group comprised entirely of Republicans...



Let's see....

They are overwhelmed by the number of candidates

It needs to be winnowed down...no strong candidate seen

Don't care if the candidate attracts more women voters

Don't care if the candidate attract more minority voters

Scott Walker is "battle tested"

College degree doesn't matter

Marco Rubio is hot and the American Dream

Barack Obama has no integrity and has pushed things through

No one knows what Common Core is

Country should be run like a business

Huckabee will stick to the Constitution and Founding Fathers

Iowa pick is too conservative for the country


As I have always said, just let them speak...no spin is needed.

Secession Talk=Crickets

Like the adolescent who bitches about the roof over their heads, they all end up crying to mom and dad for help.

The Republican Brain Part Five: Smart Idiots

The next section of Chris Mooney's book, The Republican Brain, is called "Smart Idiots" and it's honestly one of the most depressing sections of the book. It begins with a study of why motivated reasoning, which we talked about last time, occurs in individuals. Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale, has a classification system based on how people reason with their moral and political values. Imagine a Cartesian plane like this one:

Now, imagine that the X Axis is a measure of individualism on the right and communitarians on the left. With the Y Axis, imagine egalitarians on the bottom and hierarchicals on the top. Broadly speaking, Kahan discovered that US conservatives are in Quadrant 1 (individual, hierarchical) and US liberals are in Quadrant 3 (communitarian, egalitarian). It's important to note here that individuals are really scattered all over the place and we're just talking about general groups.

Still, this explains so much to me personally. I've always wondered how a group of people who are so obsessed with individual rights are also so authoritarian. Now we know. They believe that a chief organizing principle for society is hierarchies, with the "right" people at the top. With so many US conservatives from the South, this clearly goes back to the Antebellum and all of its mythical structures.

So, how do these classifications apply to the issues of the day? One of Kahan's studies took groups of people and had them imagine helping a friend make a decision about three important topics: whether global warming is caused by human beings, whether nuclear wasted can be stored safely underground, and whether letting people carry guns either deters violent crime or worsens it.  The study subjects were then shown fake excerpts from a variety of "experts" on each topic.

The results were very telling. Only 23% of individual-hierarchicals agreed that any of the experts knew what they were talking about while 88% of communitarian-egalitarians accepted the experts as being knowledgeable and trustworthy. Right here is that instant and most adolescent reaction to people who are in authority and knowledgeable of which I always speak. Why? I simply don't get it. Are they that insecure about themselves?

What tends to happen in examinations of these issues is what Mooney calls the "My Expert v Your Expert" battle. Even worse....

When they deny global warming, then, conservatives think the best minds are actually on their side. They think THEY'RE the champions of truth and reality; and they're deeply attached to this view. That is why head-on attempts to persuade them usually fail. Indeed, factual counterarguments sometimes even trigger what has been termed the backfire effect: Those with the most strongly held but clearly incorrect beliefs not only fail to change their minds, but hold their wrong views more tenaciously after being shown contradictory evidence or a refutation.

This is very key information to have when having a discussion with a conservative these days. Remember, they feel like they are under physical attack. If they have very strongly held views, it will be worse due to the backfire effect.

Now, what's interesting about the backfire effect is that applies to conservatives only. Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and Jason Reifler of Georgia State found that when conservatives were shown more and more evidence that Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs and that tax cuts do not increase revenue, they were MORE likely to believe the claim than before. I can personally attest to tax cut-revenue BS sadly being valid. Yet, when liberals were shown evidence in the same study that refuted claims that George W Bush "banned" embryonic stem cell research (he never did), liberals didn't backfire. They weren't more likely to believe the claim and, in fact, wavered more given the new information.

What this tells us quite simply is that liberals are generally more reflective and tend to be more open to new information. Consider the basic definitions of each word in objective reality

liberal: not opposed to new ideas or ways of behaving that are not traditional or widely accepted

conservative: not liking or accepting changes or new ideas

I'm always willing to accept valid, unbiased and verifiable data regardless of whether or not it supports my ideology. I am speaking of information that the cold and rational part of the brain can analyze. I haven't seen any such data from conservatives on most of the issues I discuss and quite honestly dismiss nearly all of it as wacky, ideological nonsense. Speaking of which...

The split over whether Iraq had the touted

 "WMD," and whether Saddam and Osama were frat buddies, represented a true turning point in the relationship between our politics and objective reality. In case you missed it: Reality lost badly. Conservatives and Republicans were powerfully and persistently wrong, following a cherished leader into a war based on false premises-and then, according to these studies, finding themselves unable to escape the quagmire of unreality even after several years had passed.

The "cherished leader" line echoes what I have said previously about President Bush and conservatives. He was their savior...their white knight... yet, on his watch, we suffered the worst attack on our home soil in history, a city fell into the sea, and the economy collapsed. By any metric in objective reality, he was a colossal failure. Much of the anger toward Barack Obama comes from the massive cognitive dissonance occurring within their brains.

At this point, we come to the most depressing part of the chapter and the origin of its title. Mooney posits that there is a "smart idiots" effect when it comes to many of these issues. One would think that the more educated a person is, the easier it is for them to accept objective reality. In fact, the opposite is true. It is because they are extremely intelligent that they can come up with intricate counter arguments and employ confirmation bias to convince themselves that their belief system is solid. Never was this more true than with global warming.

Humans, since the industrial revolution, have been burning more and more fossil fuels to power their societies, and this has led to a steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, and especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. At this point, very simple physics takes over, and you are pretty much doomed, by what scientists refer to as the "radiative" properties of carbon dioxide molecules (which trap infrared heat radiation would otherwise escape into space), to have a warming planet. Since about 1995, scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place,  but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they exist, can't explain what we are seeing. The only reasonable verdict is that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and smokestacks.

This is a great example of objective reality and thankfully one that is more reliable than people, especially the educated ones. Pew polls over the years have shown that Democrats accept this objective reality and Republicans do not. Worse, the more educated a Republican is, the more likely he is to reject the theory of man caused global warming. Astonishing...

Mooney offers further explanation of why this is the case. Even smart conservatives, for example, chiefly consume conservative news sources like Fox News. So, like anyone else, they are being conditioned. The more intelligent they are, the more resistant which does hold some good news for the rest of us in objective reality. We can, at least, attempt to persuade the less intelligent conservatives because the studies and the data show that they are easier to persuade.

What's even more vexing about this is that Kahan's studies sprinkled in other questions that were scientifically based but not very political. Nearly all respondents, despite their cultural background, answered the question with their colder and more rational System 2 brain. In fact, those who scored higher on the non political scientific questions but were individual-hierarchical distrusted climate science in greater numbers. Stunning!!

One big takeaway from all of this is the liberal line of "educate more people" needs to be retired. Becoming more knowledgeable will actually make it worse so the old idea about converting people with more education needs to go away forever. It won't work. They will just get worse.

In wrapping up this first section of the book, "Politics, Facts, and Brains,"  Mooney warns...

Motivated reasoning poses a deep challenge to the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, which assumes that voters will be informed about the issues-not deeply wedded to misinformation. We're divided enough about politics as it is, without adding irreconcilable views about the nature of reality on top of that. 

Add in all of the new media of the last two decades and it truly exacerbates the problem.

The next section of the book is called "The Nature Hypothesis: Dangerous Certainty." It looks to be an even deeper explanation of the problem which is sort of a drag. At this point, I'd like to get to some solutions on how to go forward!

A Conservative Paradise

Reports are coming out of Iraq about life under ISIL. And it's a conservative paradise.

The Sunni Muslim terrorists appear to be following the same blueprint as they have in other conquered parts of Anbar Province: seize territory, execute “apostates” and “traitors” in a bloodbath, and then reassure terrified civilians by producing goods and services that surpass those provided by the Shiite Muslim-led government in Baghdad. 

But they're not all bad:

Quietly, quickly, the jihadists also are working to provide fuel for heavy generators, ordered shopkeepers to reopen, and have begun demolishing old checkpoints to make it easier to get around, according to telephone interviews with residents. 

Like Republicans, the ISIL terrorists are strict law and order types:

[They] imposed a long list of rules that can seem endless: no English teaching, no smoking, no unveiled women, no price gouging, no skipping prayers, and so on.

 And they're trying to restore some sense of normalcy as well:

Seven schools are operating, he said, teaching math and science along with religion, but abolishing English, history and any mention of evolution. 

Do the last two remind you of, say, Texas and Louisiana?

Are Republicans riled up about ISIL because the Islamic terrorists a real threat, are they just jealous that ISIL is able to do everything American conservatives can only dream about: shoot anyone they don't like, force women to obey their every whim, rewrite history and ban the teaching of evolution?

Same Number of Liberals As Conservatives

Gallup has been seeing some interesting polling numbers lately. First there was the abortion poll and now they have one that says, for the first time in their polling history, there are just as many people who identify as liberal as there are who identify as conservative.

“The broad trend has been toward a shrinking conservative advantage, although that was temporarily interrupted during the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency,” Gallup noted. “Since then, the conservative advantage continued to diminish until it was wiped out this year.” It also seems to be affecting people who identify as Republican: only 53% of respondents said their views were socially conservative, “the lowest in Gallup’s trend”, and correlates with a rise in self-identified socially moderate Republicans (34%).

Hmm...I wonder why:)

Socially Liberal But Fiscally Conservative

I've always hated it when people say, "Well, I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative."

Really? How exactly are you fiscally conservative? Invariably the answer is that they think the government spends too much money. When pressed for details on where they would implement spending cuts and what that would mean to people and the economy, they get flustered.

This happens because they don't really know what the fuck they are talking about. They heard a bunch of people say the line and this is their (lazy) way of trying to sound relevant in a political conversation. There's no real problem on the first part. Most people are socially liberal these days. Check out this recent poll on abortion. Other than the 89 people running for the GOP nomination, who wants to be socially conservative?

But the fiscally conservative part is giant crock of shit. No one really is fiscally conservative...even conservatives!! They may talk a good game about cutting the budget but even your most hard core base member won't cut defense, medicare, or social security...AKA where most of our money is being spent. What they will cut is taxes to make it seem like the government will just have to make do with less money. The result of this is an increase in deficit and debt which is sort of like putting out fire with gasoline.

Here's a great piece Greta Chrstina about how crap this line is and how people that say it, really don't understand it.

Paging John Connor

Tad Simons recent piece in the Strib should give more than a few people pause. Why aren't more of us thinking about the dangers of artificial intelligence? Our minds quickly turn to seemingly more immediate concerns at first glance, no?

Sit and think about it for a minute. Gates, Hawking and Musk are all correct. We need to be thinking about it now.

Another Reason Nuclear Power Is Risky...

The headline in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune read:

Fired power plant worker arrested with explosives, ammunition

Contract employee at a nuclear power plant faces 4 terroristic threat counts.

It's sensational and misleading, to be sure: the worker wasn't targeting the nuclear power plant. He was targeting the local union rep:

Johnson told police he was upset with paying $3,500 a year for the union’s representation and that there would be trouble at the union’s meeting. He also denied that he planned to shoot anyone or threatened anyone.

But it does point out another serious problem with nuclear power.

Remember the Germanwings pilot a couple of months back who committed suicide by crashing his plane into a mountain? Suppose he had aimed his plane at a skyscraper in Düsseldorf instead of a mountain in France. It could have been Germany's 9/11, killing thousands instead of just (!) 150 passengers and crew.

Last fall a despondent FAA contractor set fire to the FAA radar facility in Aurora, Illinois, in a failed suicide attempt. The fire ground the air traffic control system to a halt (the contractor is expected to plead guilty).

Now, suppose the angry contract worker at the Monticello nuclear plant had completely lost it, but instead of  focusing his ire on the union, he decided to end it all by blowing up the nuclear containment at the plant, or the dry casks where the spent fuel is stored. They say the containment and those casks are strong enough to take a direct hit from an airplane. But how about a shaped charge planted by a deranged technician who has access to the guts of the plant?

This is the problem with nuclear power, and any technology that concentrates a huge amount of energy in a single location. How can we be sure that there are sufficient safeguards at our nuclear facilities to prevent a single disgruntled or suicidal employee from wreaking major havoc? We know right now that our aircraft are vulnerable to lone wolf attacks from the inside. By putting impenetrable doors on the cockpit to stop terrorists, we made it easier for suicidal pilots to kill hundreds.

Obviously it's not just planes and nuclear power plants that are vulnerable to insider attacks: are the nuclear and conventional explosives on Air Force bombers safe from suicidal pilots who might commandeer the aircraft and fire on an American city? Could our hydroelectric dams be blown up by nut jobs from the inside? The Johnstown flood killed 2,200 people when the dam broke after several days of rain. How many of our cities are sitting below large reservoirs?

Lots of people are worried about terrorists attacking our critical infrastructure, blowing up refineries, oil depots, chemical plants, etc., but very little has been done to mitigate these risks. Partly that's because the United States has had relatively few terrorist attacks in the last decade, and we've put it on the back burner. But we've had a slew of psycho suicidal whack jobs who have shot up movie theaters, malls, schools and so on.

By focusing on terrorist threats, are we missing a much greater danger from suicidal insiders? How sure are we that our nuclear power plants are safe from angry, unstable, underpaid contractor workers who are trusted to monitor the safety of the facility?

To quote the comics, Who watches the watchmen?

Zombie Scandals

With Hillary Clinton now firmly in the running for president in 2016, it's inevitable that all the old ghosts of the 1990s are going to come out of the woodwork looking to reclaim their 15. Like Bill Maher's Zombie Lies, these Zombie Scandals will never die...especially when you consider that conservatives love TMZ as much as they love Fox News.

Joe Conason has a great piece up over at Politico about this and I urge all of you to read it. His prediction is the same as mine.

I feel confident predicting that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the committee chair, will find nothing to substantiate the fantasies marketed by his staff to the Times, which set the stage for Blumenthal’s subpoena and deposition in a political show trial that will unfold sometime in the coming weeks. Sid passed along information that he thought might be useful to his friend, the secretary of state—someone he has known for nearly 30 years and with whom he worked closely in the Clinton administration.

Yep.

The Ever Filling and Never Empty Clown Car

Two more candidates have thrown their hats into the GOP clown car-Rick Santorum and George Pataki. I have to say that at this point...who isn't running for president on the GOP ticket in 2016? Clearly, several of the candidates (declared or about to declare) have no hope of winning and are hoping to increase their brand in the cottage industry of conservative punditdom.

Of course, the problem still exists regarding the debates. You can't have 15-20 candidates on stage vying for talking time, can you? It appears that the RNC and the networks have come up with a solution.

Fox has come up with a fair and balanced formula for picking the 10. Five national polls will be averaged, and the top 10 finishers will be allowed to debate. Fox News Executive Vice President Michael Clemente told POLITICO’s Dylan Byers: “If there is an apparent tie for 10th place, we will examine the more granular data to determine who is ahead. If it’s an absolute tie, we will add a podium.”

Ooo...sounds all official and stuff....granular data...whatever. And hilarious that they are relying on those "unreliable" polls I hear so much about...:)

Consider this scenario for a moment. The poll averages come out and coming in at #11 is Carly Fiorina. Who gets to be the lucky one to tell the only woman in the race that she's out? And how will that look to the general voting public?

Maybe CNN has a better idea.

The CNN folks, on the other hand, have gotten crafty and decided to have two groupings of debates, one for the “smart” candidates and one for the “slow” candidates. That’s my interpretation anyway. The official CNN criteria are just this side of gibberish. 

“The first 10 candidates — ranked from highest to lowest in polling order from an average of all qualifying polls released between July 16 and September 10 who satisfy the criteria requirements … will be invited to participate in ‘Segment B’ of the September 16, 2015 Republican Presidential Primary Debate,” says the network. “Candidates who satisfy the criteria and achieve an average of at least 1 percent in three national polls, but are not ranked in the top 10 of polling order will be invited to participate in ‘Segment A’ of the September 16, 2015 Republican Presidential Primary Debate.” 

Wait...what? There's an A Team and a B Team now? Wow...that's going to be fun:)

And remember all that hoo hah about getting conservative moderators only? So as not to reveal too much the sheer insanity that is the GOP today?

Oops.

Fantastic Words

I've been posting in a conversation about the minimum wage over at Real Clear Politics. Check out this gem from a fellow posting under the title "Actual Moderate Conservative."

Minimum wage laws address imbalances in bargaining power due to an oversupply of labour at lower level positions. While capitalism is by far the superior economic system, that imbalance is a natural outcome of capitalism, like it or not. Many things are a natural outcome of capitalism, and yet reasonable people (excluding hard libertarians, of course) will agree that our social compact dictates that we maintain laws to prevent some of them - monopolies, child labour, unsafe work conditions, etc. It is for this reason that America, and every other western nation, has always had a mixed economy of mostly capitalism, with some limitations (such as those above) mixed in to facilitate capitalism. 

Most even-handed people that i know fully acknowledge that minimum wage laws are necessary as part of that package of laws that establish limits on the natural outcomes of capitalism and maintain social order. If that is the case, then it is not a matter of having a minimum wage or not. It is, rather, what that level should be. To do that, one must establish what one is trying to accomplish with it - in other words, go back to first principles. 

Most of the posts here are simply arguing about issues like the impact of minimum wages as if there was no data on the subject. There is plenty, and there are plenty of real-world examples in the US AND (I cannot emphasize this enough) around the world. While the data is mixed, it seems clear from the evidence that minimum wage increases - at least at the levels that have actually been done, rather than silly $1,000/hour thought experiments - are washed out in the economy, as there are too many moving parts in any modern economy. 

So you have something that has virtually no macro impact but affects the real lives of hundreds of thousands of people. My suggestion is that people should be talking not about what the impact is, so much as they should be thinking about what the purpose of minimum wage laws are, and whether the current levels are accomplishing that goal.

I wish there were more conservatives out there like this person!

He Don't Wanna!

Check this out.

Man Who Would Rather Go Blind Than Get Obamacare Now Going Blind

Anyway, Lang is now stuck in a position where, suddenly having come around on this whole insurance thing with the impending loss of his eyesight, it’s too late for him to sign up under what his wife calls “The Not Fair Health Care Act.” Furthermore, his income has dropped now that he’s out of work, making him ineligible for a federal insurance subsidy. (What about Medicaid, you ask? Well, South Carolina was one of 17 states that opted out of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.)

This is my favorite part.

Lang has set up a GoFundMe page, and people are donating—

Ah well...as long as the feddle gubmint and that secret Muslim Obama don't give out the charity.

Great Words

From a question on Quora...

It sounds likely, though I hope Mooney remembered to point out that such a reaction applies to anyone at any point on the political spectrum, not just Republicans. As a bit of anecdotal support--I used to be registered as a Republican. It was the intransigence, the belligerence, and--as badly as I hate to say it--the racism present in some members of the Republican Party when President Obama was elected that drive me away. 

I am now registered as "Unaffiliated" ... but when a friend of mine started making the argument (during the campaign, and before I changed my registration) that there were racist elements in the Republican Party, it felt like a gut-punch.

I wish there were more conservatives like this guy!

The Republican Brain Part Four: Denying Minds

The next section in Chris Mooney's book, The Republican Brain, is called "Denying Minds." Recall my last post on this subject in which we examined the Marquis de Condorcet and his failing to recognize that having more factual information available doesn't always mean that reason will win. More avenues of data does not equal greater acceptance. Clear refutations of false claims does not mean they will be discredited and prevented from hanging around like zombie lies (e.g. supply side economics, tax cuts increase revenue etc). Why?

To understand exactly how the human brain denies facts, Mooney turns to the example of the Seekers. The Seekers were a UFO cult that were studied by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger in the 1950s. They believed that on a specific date, a UFO was going to come rescue them and take them away. When that day came and they weren't taken away, Festinger took great pains to note how all members of the group were able to change their story, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, so their belief system continued unabated. He dubbed what they experienced cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. An individual who experiences inconsistency (dissonance) tends to become psychologically uncomfortable, and is motivated to try to reduce this dissonance—as well as actively avoid situations and information likely to increase it.

This is exactly what happens to conservatives when they are confronted with information that is psychologically uncomfortable. They avoid situations and information that makes this sense of discomfort continue. Like the Seekers, they goalpost shift when their now completely refuted claims meet their demise. All too often, the goalpost shift takes the form of a personal attack against the person who refuted their claim. This makes complete sense because they feel themselves feel like they are under attack.

Worse, they table turn and, in typical adolescent fashion, they accuse liberals of having cognitive dissonance and goal post shifting. I've always seen this as simple and rudimentary reaction-a dodge to avoid responsibility. On certain issues, liberals do experience cognitive dissonance on certain issues (corporations, nuclear power, GMOS etc) but not to the degree that right wing bloggers and commenters claim they do. Conservatives have such a large collection of prior beliefs and commitments that cognitive dissonance is much more acute with them. So, when facts disrupt their lives, they seek to achieve consistency as a protection mechanism. This is what Festinger discovered that the Seekers did when their prophecy failed to come true.

Mooney notes that similar things happen with smokers who rationalize their habit. "It keeps me thin" or "I'll quit when my looks don't matter so much." I think this type of denial occurs every day within the Gun Cult. "Accidents won't happen to me. I'm responsible. So are all my gun buddies." "We aren't responsible for other people's stupidity." And so on...

Mooney notes...

Neuroscientists now know that the vast majority of the brain's actions occur subconsciously and automatically. We are only aware of a very small fraction of what the brain is up to-some estimates suggest about 2 percent. In other words, not only do we feel before we think-but most of the time, we don't even reach the second step. And even when we get there, our emotions are often guiding our reasoning.

That's why I've always been amused by conservatives who caterwaul about "feeling" liberals and "rational, thinking" consservatives." Once again, they head off at the pass, table turn, and redirect any attention away from what is really going on with them...an emotional reaction driven by cognitive dissonance. In essence, we are talking about motivated reasoning. People tend to believe information that fits within their psychological make up (nature AND nurture...physiology and environment and there is scientific evidence that proves that they do this.

So why do people behave like this? Why do conservatives do it more often? Mooney notes that what is really going on here is a response by our primitive brain (subcortex, the limbic regions) that ends up overwhelming our more evolved, rational brain. These are the areas that deal with emotional and automatic responses whose purpose has been to keep us safe from danger for so many millenia. The newer parts of the brain (prefrontal cortex) that controls abstract reasoning never really kicks into gear because of the rapid response of the primitive brain. Frustratingly, these newer parts of the brain are responsible for mankind's greatest innovations yet they rarely "drive the show," as Mooney puts it. Perhaps it's simply a matter of convenience or we have become too lazy but we don't stop to really think things out.

System 1, the older system, governs our rapid fire emotions; System 2 refers to our slower moving, thoughtful, and conscious processing of information. It's operations, however, aren't necessarily free of emotion or bias. Quite the contrary: System 1 can drive System 2. Before you are even aware you are reasoning, your emotions may have set you on a course of thinking that is highly skewed, especially on a topic you care a great deal about.

So, the spreading activation occurs after the emotional response and reason is often overwhelmed. Again, the example of the Gun Cult applies here. Their primitive brain is driving the show and they are not taking the time to think rationally about the fallout from their ideology. They worry about piles of dead bodies in a gun free zone and completely fail to recognize the mounting piles of dead bodies every year with out of date gun laws...completely irrational and highly rooted in just such a spreading activation.

Here's another example of how this plays out.

Consider a conservative Christian who has just heard about a new scientific discovery-a new hominid finding, say, confirming our evolutionary origins-that deeply challenges something he or she believes ("human beings were created by God;" "the book of Genesis is literally true"). What happens next, explains Stony Brook University political scientific Charles Taber, is a subconscious negative (or "affective") response to the threatening new information-and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations that are called into the conscious mind based on a network of emotionally laden associations and concepts. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs" says Taber, "and that will lead them to construct or build an argument and challenge what they are hearing."

We see this on a daily basis with the president's policies. Every time he succeeds at something, the motivated reasoning wheels start to click into place for conservatives. Suddenly, an improving economy becomes the fucking apocalypse with their primitive brain driving the whole thing.

What this means is that conservative aren't reasoning, they are rationalizing. They aren't being scientists, they are being lawyers. They are winning the case within themselves by giving in to confirmation bias, offering greater weight to information (Fox News, right wing blogs etc) that bolsters our beliefs. They also give in to disconfirmation bias by hungrily trying to debunk any other information that interferes with their belief system.

So when good arguments threaten core belief systems. something very different happens as opposed to the reaction to the statement "2+2=5." The primitive brain doesn't come into play because there is no emotional response. We logically conclude error. We don't suffer from Francis Bacon's "idols of the mind." We are indeed capable of "cold" reasoning but all too often, this doesn't happen.

Mooney notes how this develops over one's lifetime. We are driven personally in how our brains were made (nature) and how we were brought up. We are driven beyond our own identity to hang out with people who think the same way we do. For conservatives, this is very deeply true. The beliefs that come out of this are physical, mind you, and not some floating entity next to their bodies. When they are attacked, it's no different than a physical assault. This is a very key point that everyone must understand when debating conservatives these days. It's no different than if someone invaded their home and threatened them.

And it explains so much. Now we can begin to understand why they take the positions they do. They favor loose gun regulation because they want to protect themselves. They favor tough immigration laws because they want to protect themselves. They want less government because they want to protect themselves. Consider every position they hold and ask this question...are they simply trying to protect themselves? Is that why they are being so irrational? The answer is yes. Now, I truly understand the motivation behind all the personal attacks I've experienced over the years. I am fucking up their shit and they view me (and all other liberals, really) as an invader threatening their way of life.

More importantly, we can understand, through scientific evidence, why this occurs more often with conservatives than with liberals. At the end of the chapter, Mooney notes Drew Westen's of Emory University's study on strong political personalities and their reaction to information that directly challenges their views. Westen presented respondents with an example of Bush flip flopping on something and Kerry flip flopping on something. Conservatives bent overbackwards to excuse the former and filet the later. Liberals did the reverse. Yet, Westen noted that Democrats were more likely to see hypocrisy in their own candidate and Republicans were less likely to see it in their candidate. The authors conclusion?

A small but significant tendency to reason more biased conclusions regarding Bush than Democrats did towards Kerry.

And while all of this was happening, respondents were having their brains scanned. None of them were using parts of the brain associated with cold and logical thinking. All of them were using the regions associated with emotional processing and psychological defense. As Mooney notes,

These people weren't solving math problems. They were committing the emotional equivalent of beating their chests.

A Complete Failure To Grasp The Obvious

Whenever I see articles in the paper about education, I am invariably driven even further to the brink of insanity. This recent piece in the Strib on suspensions in the Minneapolis School District may send me even further. Why?

District officials could not explain the dramatic increase but say they remain committed to reducing suspensions and point to a reduction in suspensions from previous years.

Suspension numbers typically increase, even dramatically, during the spring. Educators are also studying the reason suspensions go up in the spring.

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? They really don't know!!??

Good grief...

Adolescents, Wordsmiths and The Right Wing Blogsphere

The New York Times has an interesting piece in today's paper about the "four words that imperil" the Affordable Care Act...interesting in that it fails to address the real problem with King V Burwell. It seems some parties concerned are most befuddled at how a simple phrase could lead to a Supreme Court Case that could ultimately lead to the removal of health care subsidies for all those states which do not have their own exchange. Well, when you understand these assholes...

and the fact that they live  most of their lives in the comments sections of blogs vainly attempting to wordsmith and fallacy their way into a "win," you grasp the origin of the problem. The drafting error of the ACA that led to the use of the words "the state" was the sweetest crack cocaine for the conservative base which is filled with adolescent losers that one frequently sees trolling various online forums. After all, nothing sends these children into a tantrum like the words "the state." 

Shit...every right wing blogger from here to Timbuktu sprung a boner at the thought of being able to finally "get" Obama and those liberals in the ULTIMATE FLAME WAR. The lead attorney and all the plaintiffs in this case are classic examples of the mouthfoaming conservative who endlessly try to find some way to wordsmith and bamboozle their opponents into defeat. Of course, it can never actually be about the law itself because they have fucking lost on that every single time. It has to be some sort of hyper obsessive focus on a word that will ultimately spell "doom" for those evil statists.

Then, they can merrily dance their happy dance with one another, issuing imperial declarations at how we've all been told many times how right they have been all along, revealing the inner authoritarian they pretend doesn't exist. 

I suppose this is finally their day in the sun and they should get to enjoy one last chance at denying success to their mortal enemies. Consider what joy their lives will be filled with should SCOTUS rule in their favor. The adolescent glee in the air will be almost palpable....

...until reality sets in...:)

Always Remember...

A few months back in my US History class (sophomores), I was showing the film Saving Private Ryan. In the middle of the first sequence, which depicts Omaha Beach, I saw one of my students turn to another student, shake her head, and put her hands over her eyes. I was standing near both of them and noticed she was crying. Knowing that I was in an "enduring understanding" moment, I kneeled down next to her and whispered,

"Do you understand the sacrifice they made?"

She nodded.

"You honor them and all the others that have died in service to this nation by never forgetting" I added.

She won't.

So should we all.

A Christian Scientist

Republicans are constantly telling us how little they know about science. Conservatives like Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Mitch McConnell are constantly prefacing their remarks about scientific issues such as climate change with, "I'm not a scientist, but..." and then they proceed to issue an opinion contrary to established scientific facts.

Now that the pope is preparing to release an encyclical on climate change, Republicans aren't at all happy. Republican Catholics like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal are claiming the pope's acceptance of settled science is a "political opinion," and has no religious authority on this issue.

But the fact is, climate change isn't just an "opinion." It's not just some abstract measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, ocean temperatures, decreasing arctic sea ice and the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet. We can see it happening in our daily lives, with massive floods, killing droughts, and destructive storms.

Furthermore, when people inflict death and destruction on each other it is by definition a moral issue, whether intentional or accidental:

“Obviously, when it comes to science, the pope is not infallible. Galileo proved that,” said Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and Washington-based analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, though he noted that Francis did earn a master’s degree in chemistry before entering the seminary. “When it comes to, however, the question of the impact of climate change on humanity, this is a moral issue. We’re talking about death and destruction on an apocalyptic scale.”

Mankind is on the verge of making irrevocable environmental changes to the planet that will raise sea levels, kill off large segments of sea life, displace billions of people from their homes near the sea, and cause massive famine and disease over large segments of the planet. That's a profound religious and moral issue. We're causing this destruction incidentally, as a byproduct of our quest for ever-growing economies and industry, and the convenience of driving to work in our separate cars. But that doesn't make the destruction any less immoral.

After years of drought, Oklahoma and Texas are right now getting hammered by tornadoes and record floods. These are not solely due to climate change, but climate change is definitely making them worse. Instead of getting three inches of rain in 24 hours, they're getting six or seven inches of rain in a single day. Why? Climate change increases the air temperature. Warmer air holds more moisture. Which means when it rains, it rains a lot more.

But Republicans like Bobby Jindal refuse to acknowledge the reality of basic scientific facts like the evolution of species -- which the Catholic Church accepts. Jindal insists that government should accept the pope's admonitions against abortion, birth control, premarital sex and other issues. Yet Jindal thinks the government should ignore the pope on climate change, because it's "just politics." Might this have anything to do with the fact that Louisiana and the Republican Party get hundreds of billions of dollars from the petroleum industry?

Unlike Jindal and the rest of the Republican rabble, Pope Francis has had scientific training, like many Jesuits. He worked as a chemist and has a master's degree in chemistry.

So when the pope says that climate change is a threat, he has a hell of lot more scientific, moral and religious authority than all of those Republican climate change deniers put together.

Thinking OF Another Group

As well as conservative Christians...:)