Abortion Is Here To Stay

Abortion foes may feel like they've scored some victories of late but a recent poll of the American people shows that 77% want Roe V Wade upheld. The simple fact is that when US citizens have things taken away from them, they don't like it. And the Roberts court is not going to overturn precedent.

Bill Clinton once famously said, "Abortion should be safe, legal and rare." I agree and that's my position. How we make it rare is the discussion we need to have right now and that needs to focus on the women who get the majority of abortions in this country, middle to upper class single white women in their 20's. Figuring out why they are so reckless and, quite frankly, dumb is the key here. Birth control is readily available everywhere and yet they have an unplanned pregnancy. Why?

We need to figure it out.

Gun Humpers Dealt Another Blow

The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear a case regarding a ban on gun silencers, thus leaving a lower court ruling in place. States can continue to force registration for them or ban them altogether.

Given all the problems the NRA is having, the ongoing victories by Moms Demand Action, and the multiple states that now have outright bans on assault weapons (e.g. New York, Connecticut, California), the era of expanding guns rights is now officially over. We have now entered the era of Gun Rights contraction. 

I hope it lasts a while:)

The Republican Brain Part Nine: Are Conservatives From the Amygdala?

The last time we looked inside Chris Mooney's insightful and amazing book, The Republican Brain (and I realized it's been far too long...*lowers head sheepishly*), we looked at some of the possible issues with his overriding theory. We poked holes in it and wondered if the science really held up. It did.

The next chapter is the fourth and final part of the "Nature" section of Mooney's book and is titled, "Are Conservatives From The Amygdala?" The short answer is yes, they are. The simple fact is that conservatives have a larger right amygdala and liberals have more gray matter located in their anterior cingulated cortex (ACC). What does this mean? It means that conservatives allow the amygdala, which plays a key role in our emotional responses to threats and stimuli that evokes fear, to drive their reasoning. Liberals' reasoning, however, is driven by ACC which has been shown to detect mistakes and errors, leading one to make a corrective response. This is also known as "conflict monitoring.

All of this was confirmed by multiple studies, beginning with an MRI study of 90 University College of London Students in 2011. A University of Nebraska-Lincoln study from the same year showed that conservatives had a more pronounced startle reflex. Another "political brain scan" study was conducted by Darren Schreiber of the University of California-San Diego in 2010. This study showed that political conservatives have much higher activity in the amygdala when perceived risks are thrown at them.

So, as Mooney notes on page 114, "All in all, that's a fair bit of evidence connecting conservatism to the amygdala." In so many ways, this explains Donald Trump. For as much of a dumb ass as he is, he knows how to appeal to fear. And there is plenty of it physiologically located in the brains of conservatives. It's why they follow him no matter what he does. They are completely driven by emotion, not logic. Of course, you can tell this is true because of their strategy of attacking liberals for the very thing they do all the time (see also: trolling).

But what about the other side? The ACC? In 2007, John Jost, David Amodio, and several other NYU neuroscientists showed that liberals have far more active ACC's and are able to weed out faulty information. This would be why liberals can't watch Fox News for more than a few minutes without cringing. They quickly recognize faulty information because of their increased gray matter in their ACC.

Since Mooney's book was published, there have been multiple studies along these same lines. Here's a study from 2016 that illustrates how conservatives are all about negative emotions. Here's another study (from 2014) that shows that single stimulus data can reliably classify liberals from conservatives. Dr. Hibbing has even created a political physiology lab at Nebraska.

Now that we know that political ideology is inherently explained by physiological differences, what next? Is there anything we can do to counter the negative effects of what conservatives are naturally experiencing? Yes. Towards the end of the chapter, Mooney notes that children's politics are set in motion at a very early age. This is where the nurture part comes in and that's where Mooney is going in his next section, Enter The "Environment": Turning Against Change.

*Please click on the tag "The Republican Brain" if you want to review my previous summaries. 

The Poison of the Alt-Right

The main story in today's Times illustrates just how much the alt-right is poisoning our country.  How familiar does this sound?

Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.

Reminds me a lot of the assholes from Kevin Baker's site. Make no mistake about it, folks, they are a CULT. And the propaganda they peddle is a great danger to our nation's security. They claim to be fighting for "freedom" but what they really want is an authoritarian state where they can subjugate anyone who they perceive as a threat.

Threats, of course, originate from most of the rest of us who want our society to evolve from the Neanderthal-like mentality they currently espouse. They are so petty and vindicative that making the world a better place somehow mushes up in their mind as a boiling pit of sewage. They can't see that it's their own personality disorder and ongoing mommy/daddy issues that cause them to see good things as evil.

Cain talks about being brainwashed. It looks likes it's time to start deprogramming...

Other Things That Have Heartbeats

The Great Nazi Make Believe Game

The next time someone you know or are debating on the internet under reacts to Trump and his supporters clearly behaving like Nazis, show them this video.

 

And then tell them to fuck off. We are on to them and will be D Daying their asses every step of the way.

Trump Admits Russia Got Him Elected

After years of denying reality and calling the intelligence community and Democrats liars, Donald Trump finally admitted that Russia got him elected:

And it's not just "helping him to get elected." He won by such a narrow margin that Russia's sabotage of the American electoral process was the critical factor that put Trump over the top, by alienating Bernie supporters and discouraging black voters from going to the polls.

How can Republicans continue to back this corrupt, senile, tax-dodging racist piece of garbage?

Stop Apologizing For Nazis

GOP Lawmaker: Impeach Trump

Michigan GOP Representative Justin Amash is the first Republican lawmaker to come out and admit the obvious: President Trump has engaged in impeachable behavior. He also accused Trump personal attorney masquerading as our attorney general William Barr of intentionally misleading the public. Here his principal conclusions:

1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report. 
2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct. 
3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances. 
4. Few members of Congress have read the report.

The last one really sucks. The report is only 400 pages. C'mon, people! This is our country we are talking about!!

A True American

Take That, China!

The Gun Cult Threatens Our National Security

The Gun Humpers can add some more bodies to their domestic terrorism enterprise with two school shootings last week. The first was at the University of North Carolina and the second was in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. After a few weeks, each of these incidents will be lost in the giant pile of mass shootings that we now have to endure every day because a minority of insecure, fat ass fucks with inadequacy issues need a firearm to help them through life.

It sickens me to no end that this has now become normal. I used to be of the mind that we could have a few laws here and there that could help prevent this. No longer. Because this has become a regular occurrence, the only thing that will truly prevent it is a complete repeal of the second ammendment and a ban on the civilian use of all guns. All other civilized nations have done this. We must follow suit if we want to save lives.

Further, we need to start jailing supporters of the NRA as domestic terrorists. This week saw Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America, receive. multiple death threats from NRA members. Take a look at some of these, folks. These are your gun rights supporters.

Time to Gitmo their asses.

Arrest Trump, says all these federal prosecutors

Over 400 former federal prosecutors have said the following.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;

· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and

· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

And the number continues to grow...

The Real Terrorists

Minnesota Pronunciations

Here's Some Clarity on Donald Trump

1. He owes the Russian mob a lot of money.

2. He is laundering it through Deustche Bank

3. All of this is in his financial records (taxes, bank statements) and that’s why he doesn’t want any of it publicly disclosed.

4. All of this is why he is buddy buddy with Putin.

5. The Russians helped Trump win the election and members of the Trump team helped them do it.

6. Trump obstructed justice and should be charged on multiple counts of this.

7. The last two points are crystal clear to anyone who reads the ENTIRE Mueller report and doesn't phone it in.

It's a Question of Fairness

A common refrain among conservatives is that Democrats want illegal immigrants flooding into the country because they want more people to vote Democratic.

This, of course, is bogus. Illegal immigrants can't vote, and it takes at least five years to become a citizen after you get a green card, if you stay in the US consecutively. So bringing in new people won't help the Democrats in the near future. (Plus, most immigrants are socially conservative, and if Republicans weren't always scapegoating them, they'd probably vote Republican.)

The real reason Democrats oppose Trump's tyrannical policy on immigration is that it's all just grandstanding to whip up anger among the white supremacists that make up the majority of Trump's dwindling base.

Trump's administration just increased the number of H2B visas, allowing thousands more foreign workers into the country. His own companies are hiring hundreds of workers on those visas because he doesn't want to hire Americans, because Americans expect permanent jobs that pay well. And Trump just wants employees he can treat like slaves that he can threaten with deportation to keep them in line.

We're building a house, and most of the work crews (siding installers, roofers, masons) are Hispanic. They were nailing siding on our garage in the dead of winter when it was snowing and 10 below zero.

These people are not lazy bums looking for a handout. They're working jobs that Americans don't want. These workers aren't stealing jobs from Americans -- Americans are doing the skilled craftsman jobs that pay a lot more -- architects, designers, managers, electricians, plumbers, HVAC installers, tile installers, and framers.

The arguments Trump is levying against immigrants from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are exactly the same arguments that were levied against Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, and against Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants in the early 20th and late 19th centuries, and against Germans and French immigrants in the early 19th century.

Donald Trump's German grandfather and Scottish mother would never have made it into this country if the people like Trump had had their way -- they were dirty, diseased Huns and Gaels and weren't pure English blood.

A lot of our Irish, German, French and Italian ancestors were escaping famine and war in Europe, just like Latin American immigrants are trying to escape social chaos in their home countries. Democrats don't think it's right to use innocent people looking for a better way of life as scapegoats for race-baiting demagogues.

This country is not full. My dad, who is a big Trump supporter, recently went into the hospital for a heart procedure. He was so weak that he couldn't take a piss by himself. He needed help to hobble to the bathroom, and who got him there? An African immigrant orderly.

We can't find enough people to do the jobs that American-born citizens won't do. We need immigrants to do that work, especially considering the low birth rate and huge wave of retirements that's coming down the pike as baby boomers age out of the workforce.

It's really a question of fairness: our ancestors had the chance to come to America. As long as we need people to do the jobs Americans don't want to, we should give them the same shot my dad's Norwegian father got.

Because modern Norwegians sure aren't lining up in droves to help my dad take a piss.

Easter Morning Reflection

This year on Easter, I'm thinking about the fact that the number of US citizens that belong to a church has plummeted 20 percentage points over the last two decades. We now stand around at around 50% of this country that affiliate themselves with churches. From the link.

Among Hispanic Americans, church membership dropped from 68% to 45% since 2000, a much bigger decline than for non-Hispanic white and black Americans. 

There was a big discrepancy over that 20-year period in regard to political affiliation: Church membership among Democrats fell from 71% to 48%, compared to a more modest drop from 77% to 69% among Republicans.

David Campbell, a University of Notre Dame political science professor who studies religion's role in U.S. civic life, attributed the partisan divide to "the allergic reaction many Americans have to the mixture of religion and conservative politics." 

"Increasingly, Americans associate religion with the Republican Party – and if they are not Republicans themselves, they turn away from religion," he said.

Indeed. And I would add in the fact that the ongoing issues with the Catholic church and raping boys doesn't really help at all either.

This cultural shift is a stunning development when you consider how, during the Bush years, we were all worried about the growing evangelical movement and how that would affect politics. No longer. Mega churches are closing down, regular sized churches struggle to retain families, and the number of people that identify as "unaffiliated" in this country now stands as the majority.

That would be me. I consider myself a libertarian Christian. I don't need someone who is insecure about their faith screaming to me about what the Bible really means. I'm a smart guy. I can figure it out for myself. I can read, after all:)

Further, while I enjoy the fellowship of churches and the communities they serve, I'm very wary of sharing faith with people. It should be more private in my view...kinda like taking a shit. It's a moment when you are vulnerable and there shouldn't really be anyone else witnessing it. Adding more people tends to muck it all up as they bring all their nonsense into the mix. Dilution of Christ's simple message invariably happens after that.

You can still have the community without the church. As I write this, I'm hanging out with my in laws in rural Iowa. We have around 30 people coming over for a family meal and Easter egg hunt. Very few of them are heading to church. Most of us just want the family time and the fun of being together.

We are all people of deep faith and we don't need a building to have those core convictions.

People Who Aren’t Victims and Why Volume #3: Puppet Offense Takers

If a person is not offended by words or an action that another person takes toward them, YOU are not allowed to be offended for them.

Everyone has different morals, sensitivities, and likes/dislikes. That’s what makes our planet and the people on it fun and interesting. Taking personal offense for someone else is actually a giant fuck you to the person who you think should be upset. Shouldn’t you be considerate of their feelings? If it doesn’t bother them, what’s it to you? Kindly, get over yourself.

More importantly, deal with the obvious problem of jealousy and inadequacy that you feel because you aren’t the one getting the attention.

Getting Rid of Trump Doesn't Matter