People with left wing views may have their political opinions controlled by a "liberal gene", according to scientists.The research suggests that some people have an inherent bias against conservative thinking, that is independent of their education or upbringing.The effect is caused by a [receptor] in the brain called DRD4 which could be stimulated by the novelty value of left of centre opinions, say US researchers.In people who are naturally outgoing, the feature encourages them to seek out companions with unconventional views as they grow up.This in turn means they tend to form less conventional political viewpoints as adults, according to the study by the University of California and Harvard.
Associations have been reported of the 7-repeat (7R) allele of the human dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene with both the personality trait of novelty seeking and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so common.The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' "
The oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, though without troubling to consider Terence's question, and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism.
Away from the face-off between the two candidates, something smells as bad as trash-truck juice on a Death Valley summer day in California’s 47th.
In search of the olfactory offense, I point the reader to a Van Tran mailer masquerading as a fragrance sampler, making its way to the mail boxes of likely voters in Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Anaheim.
Don’t judge this book by its cover; it’s no ordinary fragrance sampler:
Note that the mailer says: “Open for a Free Sample Fragrance of: Loretta, The Scent of Washington.You have to read the rest to see what happens when the mailer is opened! Later on in the piece I describe Van Tran campaign HQ, it's a pretty neat story:
Please read the rest, comment, Facebook 'like' it and pass it along to friends - especially those of you that live in California. And please, above all, support Van Tran and other conservative candidates in the closing days of the 2010 midterm election.The folks in the Van Tran campaign were a pleasant bunch. After meeting them I could sense that they are having fun (easily evidenced by the humorous mailer too), working hard, and ready to win. At the same time, I gathered that they were perfectly able and willing to go back to normal life if the election doesn’t go their way on Tuesday.
Central command for Van Tran is set up in a foreclosed Blockbuster building in Garden Grove, a city of 175,000 in northern Orange County. The building was essentially stripped of most things that one would associate with the past life of movie rentals such as shelving and other interior structures. Although the sign had been removed, the outline of the letters B-L-O-C-K-B-U-S-T-E-R were still clearly discernible on the building’s stucco exterior.
It was somewhat dirty inside, a proverbial makeshift campaign war room with folding tables set up for walk-in volunteer phone bank folks. Van Tran signs were strewn graciously and haphazardly across the walls, and there was a constant buzz of activity. The accommodations were functional but not flashy.
The story last night is so familiar to U.S. political reporters: the business community and other elites line up behind one candidate, but the opponent rallies the conservative base with talk of rolling back government spending and no more taxes. The press mocks the latter candidate for off-hand comments and what they consider simplistic rhetoric. But the political grass-roots is more emboldened than ever and people are fed up with and nervous about government in general and take a chance on the “risky” candidate.It could have been Nevada, Alaska, or any of the states and races where the “tea party” movement emerged triumphant last year. But, instead it was Toronto, Canada, where voters last night resoundingly rejected the “establishment” choice for mayor and instead went with “outsider” candidate Rob Ford. With nearly half the eligible voters turning out, 41-year-old City Councilor Ford rolled up a landslide win over “establishment” favorite George Smittherman, who had the backing of the business community and organized labor.In reporting the stunning win of the outspoken Ford, the Financial Times this morning likened the mayor-elect to a “tea party” candidate. Indeed, Ford campaigned on an agenda to cut city spending and roll back taxes, his cogent slogan being: “Stop the Gravy Train!”
Ford drew 47 percent of the vote, compared to Smitherman's 35 percent, with no other candidate getting more than 12 percent, according to official vote tallies...Toronto, with a population of 2.6 million, is Canada's financial capital. In federal elections, the city tends to vote Liberal or for the left-leaning New Democrats, while many of its suburbs vote Conservative.Ford capitalized on voter resentment over high taxes and an ugly municipal workers' strike, while generating support for his own penny-pinching and accessibility. He vowed to abolish Toronto's vehicle-registration tax and land-transfer tax.
CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”
What works in South Carolina and Delaware may not work in Maine. We all have different views. We're independent," Snowe responded, "I can't go back to the people of my state and say, excuse me, I have to be one hundred percent ideologically pure because someone has dictated that from another state. It just wouldn't wash," she said.
“As you know, they have been dumping tens of millions of dollars of secret money into these campaigns,” Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview. “I would say the outside groups have shuffled the deck in a number of these races.”
Un-freaking-believable.Cable news blogger Johnny Dollar red-flagged NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik’s Twitter feed, which announced tonight that liberal NPR analyst/Fox News contributor Juan Williams’ contract was terminated — over comments Williams made about Muslims on The O’Reilly Factor. He gave his honest opinion: “[W]hen I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country...NPR said in its statement that the remarks “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
NPR should address the fact that one of its news analysts seems to believe that all airline passengers who are perceived to be Muslim can legitimately be viewed as security threats," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. "Such irresponsible and inflammatory comments...should not pass without action by NPR.
[T]he Islamophobes are clearly not those who publicly defy Islam's threats and attacks and who just go ahead and publicly criticise it anyway and publicly mock it anyway. Where's the "phobia" in that? No, the phobia - the fear - is being shown by those who refrain from such criticism and such mockery, because they are afraid, and are afraid even to admit that they are afraid (because that too might be interpreted as an implied criticism of the thuggishness of that which they are refraining from criticising or mocking).Although I have long been irritated by the suggestion that to fear Islam is in any way irrational, I had truly never thought of this particular point. Next time you dare to criticise Islam for being, oh, I don't know, evil, or something along those lines, and somebody says you are an Islamophobe, say: "Well, yes, I am a little bit scared of Islam because it is indeed scary. But you are even more scared of it, so scared that you dare not admit the truth of what I am saying. You are even more of an Islamophobe than I am."
SPIEGEL: Is the Tea Party movement a repeat of the Reagan Revolution?Rove: It's a little bit different because the Reagan Revolution was driven a lot by the persona of one man, Ronald Reagan, who had an optimistic and sunny view of what the nation could be. It was also a well-organized, coherent, ideologically motivated and conservative revolution. If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek. Rather, these are people who are deeply concerned about what they see happening to their country, particularly when it comes to spending, deficits, debt and health care.
They are unsophisticated in the ways of DC, and they demand 100 percent of what they want and now.”He continued: “Most of them are generally proud they are not from Washington — or wise in its ways...
I got a note today from a friend, "Why would Karl be saying this, Rush? You know Karl. Why would he be saying this? Why doesn't Karl learn to keep his mouth shut?"I said, "Karl means to say this. Mike Murphy, all these guys, they think this."It's not easy for me to say here, folks, it really isn't. But it's what ought to be a euphoric period still indicates that on the Republican side there are divisions and jealousies and egos and competition. And the simplest explanation is that the Tea Party cannot be claimed as credit by anybody. Nobody can say, "I am the Tea Party." Nobody can say, "I started the Tea Party." Nobody can say, "I saw the Tea Party coming, and I steered it." Nobody who makes a living generating political support, generating political donations, nobody in that business can point to the Tea Party and say, "I did it." So it's a threat.It's a genuine effervescent, grassroots effort. Nobody has any control over it, nobody can honestly claim any credit for it, and therefore it's a threat.Folks, I could give you the greatest analogy I ever could, but I would probably end my career doing so in talking about this program in its early days. None of the experts -- and they were all very nice people -- none told me it would work. They all told me it wouldn't work. Therefore when it did, none of them can say they had anything to do with it. So there was ambivalence about it while people were happy about it at the same time.Same thing with the Tea Party movement. Any time people that are considered unprofessional or outside the professional realm enter somebody else's professional realm and shake it up, you have a bit of a threat there. And I think it's partially what's going on here.
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While the amendment is clear on the government establishing a religion - no doubt driven by previous events in England, the amendment itself does not mandate that all religion be driven out of government. Separation and establishment are two distinctly different things.
The First Amendment was designed to protect religion from governmental interference and obstruction. Today, by contrast, the courts seem intent on protecting the people from religion.Thus the ACLU and other far-left groups use the courts to banish religion from the public square. Christian conservatives like O'Donnell naturally find this disconcerting. The First Amendment, after all, protects the free exercise of religion. Yet the courts increasingly have been infringing upon this basic Constitutional liberty.So while the elites cluck in disapproval at what they believe is O'Donnell's faux pas, the reality is she knows and understands the Constitution better than they do.
O’Donnell was later able to score some points of her own off the remark, revisiting the issue to ask Coons if he could identify the “five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.”Coons named the separation of church and state, but could not identify the others — the freedoms of speech, press, to assemble and petition — and asked that O’Donnell allow the moderators ask the questions.“I guess he can’t,” O’Donnell said.
I have noticed a trend in the MSM that goes like this: the press decides that certain candidates on the right are idiots (Palin and O’Connell come to mind, and Bush before them). There is then a sort of lying-in-wait for the absurd utterance to reveal the utterly moronic nature of that person. However, since the press and pundits are not necessarily brilliant critical thinkers themselves, the utterance they fasten in is often (not always, but often) actually more intelligent than they realize. They may not agree with it, but it is seldom based on nothing, and they reveal their own ignorance in their laughing derision of it.
The Alaska Dispatch is not much more than the equivalent of a Lefty blog playing pretend journalists. They embarassed themselves when they came at me over the Murkowski cocaine allegations and appear to have a vested interest in trying to hurt Joe Miller's campaign for the Senate. At one point, this Tony Hopfinger was a HuffPo contributer, so it should be no surprise that they're covering Hopfinger's unhinged nonsense, too. You can Google him to see his many links to progressivism.
Yesterday afternoon I attended the Joe Miller Town Hall and it was a good event until it ended. When I attend these events, although I support Miller, I will hold a critical eye.I will also stay in the back to observe the audience to see their reaction and I will also watch how the press act...Here is what actually happened - Hopfinger was aggressive in his pursuit - Miller's security was trying to keep Hopfinger from Miller's path and at a distance so Miller could leave. As Miller's security tried to push Hopfinger out of Miller's path and keep him at a distance, Hopfinger kept pushing in on Miller.Miller then reversed course and as he did, Tony began to follow Miller - two men in Miller's security detail stayed back and the scuffle between Hopfinger and the security detail began as a shoving match.At that point Miller was gone from the scene....There comes a point to where a person passes the point of getting answers to then becoming a person who is harassing an individual. And Tony Hopfinger crossed the line when it was clear Miller changed his direction because of Hopfinger engaging Miller's security detail in what started off as a shoving match.What I also found interesting was the set-up that took place between blogger Jesse Griffin - who when leaving was asking where Tony was. Notably - Griffin was with the individual who asked the question on why Miller was a Welfare Queen.And leave it to political hacks like Andrew Halcro to say Miller ordered the arrest - when Miller wasn't even there when the security team detained Hopfinger.
While I've gotten used to the blog Alaska Dispatch's assault on me, I never thought it would lead to a physical assault. It's too bad that this blogger would take advantage of a "town hall" meeting to create a publicity stunt just two weeks before the election.The Miller campaign was required by the facility to provide security at the event. Even though Joe had spent more than 40 minutes answering questions from those in attendance, the blogger chased Miller to the exit after the event concluded in an attempt to create and then record a "confrontation" with the candidate. While Miller attempted to calmly exit the facility, the blogger physically assaulted another individual and made threatening gestures and movements towards the candidate.At that point, the security personnel had to take action and intervened and detained the irrational blogger, whose anger overcame him."
