Politics & Government - 10 September 2007

"Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain"

[Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

2007-09-10 02:19:14 · 9 answers · asked by ideogenetic 7 in Politics

do some people get special privileges?

2007-09-10 02:15:25 · 12 answers · asked by polly 1 in Government

2007-09-10 02:14:44 · 21 answers · asked by Monk 4 in Other - Politics & Government

then does that mean it should be illegal for atheists to get married?

How come there are no laws for that?

2007-09-10 02:14:36 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law & Ethics

I respect that other countries do things differently and that in the UK the police often get things wrong, but I feel that the Portugese Police give the impression of being so incompetent: For example they did not preserve the scene of crime, they missed vital clues. What do you think the "new developments" they say they are about to release will be?

2007-09-10 02:11:13 · 14 answers · asked by Modern Man 4 in Law Enforcement & Police

2007-09-10 02:01:59 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law & Ethics

I hear this argument used to prohibit homosexuals from getting married. I don't understand how someone else's marriage 49 states away has any impact whatsoever on one's personal vows. Wouldn't really the only things that would undermine YOUR vows be infidelity and divorce?

2007-09-10 01:58:32 · 15 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

Really? He is alive and that is the best he could do? A tape were the audio runs over a frozen frame for several minutes and is grainy as heck? Why not appear with the second in command? Can he not afford a better camera? He can plan 911 but can't get one of his goons to run over to Radio Shack? If the CIA says its authentic it means one of two things-

A) It's fake and they know it OR they made it themselves- and are trying to fool us.


B) they are incompetent and the organization needs to be shutdown

given past history, it would have to be A- which is horrible for us as a country. At least B would mean they were honest.

2007-09-10 01:56:03 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Politics & Government

My friend works for a hair salon and she made friends with someone else there. when that someone else quit, my friend got her the names of her clients that liked her so she could take them with her to her new salon. The salon owner found out that one of the girls gave the info and they are going after the girl that quit to get to the girl that gave her the names. What is going to happen to my friend. She thinks she will be fired but what else could happen.

2007-09-10 01:54:54 · 5 answers · asked by mmmm.cake 3 in Law & Ethics

Democrats have just as much right to live here as Republicans. Democrats pay taxes, perform civic duties, fight in wars, but somehow the Republicans view them as less patriotic. What's up with that?

2007-09-10 01:47:21 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

I would honestly like to know what General Petraeus did to deserve being called a traitor by this organization. Can someone tell me please.

2007-09-10 01:44:42 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Politics & Government

At present their efforts are concentrated mostly on Middle East, however over the past 100 years pretty much all of the worlds regions, except Europe, has exprerienced some form of American inteference, which resitricts the freedoms and idependence of nations to their populations suffering.
American oppression can take many forms, from assassinating or removing leaders who had support of their
people and replacing them with torture trained dictators, economic black mail, sponsoring and encouraging vile militias to rape and murder, sending their own army and marines to rape and murder, Sanctions, and basically a whole range of underhanded or blatant, evil policies which aim to control all regions who hold strategic locations, and or, valuable resources. My question is how can we defeat this threat who like Hitler, aims to control the world and make us subservient to it?

2007-09-10 01:38:26 · 13 answers · asked by MoeJoe 2 in Politics

i guess telling the truth is all it takes nowadays. why havent politicians learned that yet.

2007-09-10 01:37:48 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Other - Politics & Government

Sounds like another study that explains the obvious.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070909/hl_afp/scienceneuroscience_070909173324

2007-09-10 01:36:58 · 27 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

Your company's high deductible plan is a great solution to your problems - and it already exists! Your company just doesn't tell you about it because it's a FREE plan, that's right - NO monthly premiums. you get the same discounts as people with a PPO plan, only you pay nothing. Your deductible is $2200 a year per person, family plans are an even better deal if you have 3 or more people participating because there's a household cap. Traditional PPO requires a $2000 medical and $1000 prescription deductible - totally separate from each other, where the high deductible plan is combined.
Again NO monthly premiums, same benefits as PPO's, same doctors, same choices. How do you pay for this if there's no deductible? You can enroll in a government savings account - again, free of cost, tax-free even! You earn interest on the money you don't use, and you can keep it for the rest of your life. You get a debit card so you have instant access to your money. You can save up to the deductible..

2007-09-10 01:36:46 · 5 answers · asked by Roland'sMommy 6 in Elections

"The Lord said unto me, 'I will take my rest and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs.' " -- Isaiah 18:4-5

Herb (marijuana) is a Godly creation from the beginning of the world. It is known as the weed of wisdom, angel's food, the tree of life and even the "Wicked Old Ganja Tree". Its purpose in creation is as a fiery sacrifice to be offered to our Redeemer during obligations. The political worldwide organizations have framed mischief on it and called it drugs.

I don't smoke marijuana, but If I was to get caught with Marijuana and I was arrested.. i think I would sue the Police department for "Discrimination of Religion."

2007-09-10 01:33:00 · 10 answers · asked by Bad Boy 300 3 in Law & Ethics

In the run up to the anniversary of 9/11 should moderate societies consider making the practice of Islam illegal, should it be listed as a dangerous & fanatical cult & banned? If any religious or political philisophy promotes the extreme views voiced by Islam is it not only just & right have it quashed & its followers prosecuted(did we not do this with nazism, another extremist cult?)? Or should we tolerate Islam for the sake of being politically correct? What do you think?

2007-09-10 01:29:32 · 36 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

I would like to get a job somewhere overseas that allows me to live there for a few months, but also be able to come home fairly often.

2007-09-10 01:25:47 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Embassies & Consulates

2007-09-10 01:21:53 · 12 answers · asked by basport_2000 5 in Immigration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDh_pvv1tUM

2007-09-10 01:17:04 · 10 answers · asked by Terri C 2 in Government

Grecian 2000 maybe?

I used Grecian 2000 once and I ended up looking like a 2000 year old Greek!!

I really hope Grecian 2000 is an international product and not just domestic Australian otherwise not many of you will understand this!!

2007-09-10 01:15:44 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

Get this: Union City, GA bills itself as "the Progressive City." What an embarrassment! I wonder if the employee was an African American. Georgia is notorious for treating their minorities badly.

Or is this just another example of someone with a "real job" treating a worker in the service industry like crap. No doubt this cop is a petty tyrant and a petty bourgeoisie. He's probably on the take.

Where is the justice?

2007-09-10 01:08:31 · 17 answers · asked by Anonymous in Law Enforcement & Police

Whenever I see images of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Katherine Harris and other minions of, or apologists for, the corrupt, inept, mendacious and venal Bush dictatorship, I am immediately reminded of this line from John Carpenter’s classic horror movie Halloween: “What is living behind [their] eyes is purely and simply evil.”

Yet in America there is a great reluctance to use the term “evil” when describing the cabal of thugs, hypocrites and war criminals who stole the White House in 2000 and 2004. Although singer/activist Harry Belafonte courageously proclaimed a few years ago that the Bush dictatorship was “possessed of evil,” it wasn’t until recently that others in positions of prominence began to acknowledge the veracity of Belafonte’s statement. A recent episode of the animated comedy Family Guy, for example, showed cartoon portraits of an inanely grinning Bush shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and, ultimately, the “Super Devil” (a being more evil than Satan).
Prior to this, most of the statements concerning the inherent evil of the Bush dictatorship came from foreign sources: Russian President Vladimir Putin indirectly suggested that Bush’s foreign policy was analogous to Hitler’s Third Reich; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez compared Bush to Satan; and the Mayan Indians felt compelled to “spiritually cleanse” a sacred site after Bush visited it earlier this year.
But even though more Americans feel emboldened to criticize the Bush dictatorship, there is still a reluctance to acknowledge and denounce its evil. This reluctance often affects some of the dictatorship’s most outspoken critics: Former American President, and Nobel Laureate, Jimmy Carter recently retreated from his clearly accurate assertion that the Bush dictatorship has been the worst administration in United States history, claiming his words were “careless or misinterpreted.” And syndicated columnist Gwynne Dyer rejected the notion that Bush and/or his minions possessed the evil required to orchestrate the attacks of 9/11, even stressing that Dick Cheney was morally incapable of sanctioning the murders of over three thousand Americans simply to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq.

I disagree. While the Bush dictatorship is the domicile for many monsters cloaked in human attire, Cheney is arguably the monster most likely to promote mass murder for the sake of war profiteering. His very character endorses this reality. He possesses the attributes of many mass murderers—a sadist who often kills defenseless animals in “caged hunts” (where they have no means of escape), and a coward who, during the Vietnam war, obtained deferment after deferment to avoid facing an adversary capable of shooting back, only to become a vociferous warmonger once the prospect of being drafted into military service no longer confronted him.

But even if one does not subscribe to the theory that character presages deeds, the Bush dictatorship still cannot be absolved from culpability in the 9/11 attacks. In the legal realm, crimes can be committed through act or omission. It is undisputed that Bush, shortly after his coup of 2000, planned to invade Iraq. It is also undisputed that several warnings about the possibility of airline hijackings, some provided by foreign governments, were forwarded to the Bush dictatorship.
What most likely occurred was that Bush and his minions were aware of the planned attacks, but underestimated their magnitude, believing any hijacking would be of the “traditional” variety: An American aircraft would be forced to fly to an unplanned destination, followed by a lengthy standoff between the hijackers and the Bush dictatorship. Allowing a hijacking to occur would give Bush the opportunity to blame Iraq, and incite the American media and public into a jingoistic frenzy.
So the question becomes, “Why are Americans so willing to acknowledge the presence of evil when it comes to foreign governments, but so unwilling to acknowledge the presence of evil within their own government?”
One explanation may be the “arrogance syndrome.” Americans want to believe they are somehow more “civilized,” and therefore less gullible, than other nations of the world. Unfortunately this belief simply makes them more susceptible to being led into unjust and illegal wars. Also, since many Americans possess short-term memories as selective as the one possessed by Alberto Gonzales (America’s corrupt attorney-general, who recently answered “I cannot recall” over seventy times during his testimony before Congress), they can be duped into supporting such wars time and again.

Although most corporate-controlled media now refer to the illegal invasion of Iraq as an “unpopular war,” just a few years ago these same media were salivating at the ratings and profit potential this war would bring. Reporters and entertainers who criticized, or even questioned, the motives for war or other policies of George W. Bush were fired from their jobs and oftentimes blacklisted. Pro-war rallies drew record numbers of people, and these rallies frequently treated war criminals like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld as deities.

Another reason why evil is rarely acknowledged in America is simply because too many powerful people profit from it. Sadly, this has been the case throughout history.
A recent movie, Amazing Grace, recounted how British politician and abolitionist William Wilberforce often invoked the tenets of Christianity during his campaign against the slave trade in the early 1800s. This compelled many so-called Christians to embrace the film as a paradigm of how good can triumph over evil.
Forgotten in this zeal, however, is the sad reality that many Americans used (and in the case of racism continue to use) the Christian faith to justify bigotry and slavery. American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, in his book The Life of an American Slave, describes how a preacher/slaveholder often justified the whipping of his slaves by stating, “He who honors his master must wear his stripes.”
Today it is America’s military-industrial complex that profits from economic slavery and the exploitation of the poor and middle-class, who fight and die in wars waged by the rich and powerful. And as long as those in power can reward their cronies with lucrative rebuilding contracts, as long as war can be used to divert attention from government criminality and corruption (as demonstrated by the father of George W. Bush, who invaded Panama to divert attention from the “Savings and Loan” scandal that cost taxpayers billions of dollars), and as long as war can be used to increase the ratings and profit potential of the corrupt corporate-controlled media there will be little incentive to denounce evil in America.
A third reason for the failure of Americans to acknowledge evil in their own country is the uncanny ability of human beings to rationalize anything. When I was in law practice, I often noticed that there was little difference between “law breakers” and “law makers.” Both demonstrated an enormous capacity to rationalize their actions, no matter how much those actions defied morality or commonsense.

The incentive to rationalize is particularly prominent in today’s “sound bite” culture. Corporate-controlled media incessantly select the most “controversial” statements for repeated airplay, often taking them out of context. Meanwhile complex topics, if they are covered at all, are covered only superficially; therefore laypeople often do not have the political or historical background necessary to develop well-informed viewpoints, and thus erect their opinions on tenuous foundations that are frequently devoid of facts.

For example, a recent editorial on the CNN website argued that Americans would be remiss if they failed to honestly debate Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s contention that American foreign policy, particularly its proclivity to dominate or overthrow foreign governments for the sake of corporate profits, played a role in the build-up to the 9/11 attacks.
But it is unlikely that such a debate will ever transpire, particularly since former New York Mayor turned presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani has already demonstrated that he will continue to exploit the emotions surrounding 9/11 for his own self-aggrandizement, just as he has opportunistically done in the past.
The final explanation for why the existence of evil in America is often ignored is because the terms “good and evil” often take one into the realm of religion. When science and logic fails, faith often prevails.
But faith can be a positive force or negative force. Since it cannot be disproved, a person does not require logic or science to acquire faith. But without such logic or science, people can often be deceived into believing concepts that have no factual basis at all. Hating another person because of his/her skin color, for example, is as illogical as hating one flower because it’s red and loving another because it’s yellow, particularly since neither possessed the ability to choose what color it would be. Yet racism is alive and well in America.
This is why charlatans often exploit the faith of others. If a situation has a positive outcome, they can claim it was because of the “strength of their faith,” and if a situation has a negative outcome, they can claim it was because their followers “didn’t believe deeply enough.”
It was this type of faith that made many Americans embrace the lies of the Bush dictatorship, naively believing that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and that war against Iraq would only be used as “a last resort.”
This exploitation of faith has been the modus operandi of the Bush dictatorship and its apologists—strategically designed to conceal their ineptitude, arrogance, dishonesty and evil. It has been so effective that many so-called “Christian” colleges and universities have invited members and supporters of the Bush dictatorship, including Bush himself, to be guest or commencement speakers.
Since I began this essay with a quotation from a movie, I will end it with one as well. In Bryan Singer’s remarkable film The Usual Suspects, a character named Verbal Kint remarks, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Sadly, this trick will continue to be effective as long as Americans refuse to acknowledge that their nation is being controlled by people who are “purely and simply evil.”

2007-09-10 01:06:25 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous in Government

"If an married male specialist is has been sleeping with mulitiple females in his unit (same rank or lower married and single) including a female specialist who is married to a sgt who is deployed to iraq will he get in trouble? What type of proof is needed to turn this creep in?" The unit knows this is happening but chooses to ignore the situation.

2007-09-10 00:54:18 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Military

2007-09-10 00:39:41 · 22 answers · asked by alphabetsoup2 5 in Politics

There are some things you just gotta do yourself. Someone else can’t lose your weight, quit your addiction, parent your kids, or confess your sins.
You have to do it. And, just as you can’t buy indulgences that allow you to go right on sinning without any consequences, you can’t buy carbon offsets that allow you to go right on polluting without any consequences, either.

Neither God nor science works that way.
Yet, the selling of “voluntary carbon offsets”—eco-indulgences—is a $55 million per year industry, involving over three dozen companies worldwide. Total sales are anticipated to double both this year and next, and entrepreneurs are clamoring all over themselves for a piece of the action.
And it’s all a scam.

2007-09-10 00:38:25 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics

I have several friends thath they are ligaly in this country and they feel frustraded because evrybody focus in the iligals more that the people is alredy in thsi country and they didnot brake the law

2007-09-10 00:28:15 · 7 answers · asked by TIBET 2 in Immigration

2007-09-10 00:27:17 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Civic Participation

Are Americans leaving the US because there are more freedoms in Europe?

2007-09-10 00:25:03 · 17 answers · asked by Anonymous in Civic Participation

Are Americans leaving the US because there are more freedoms in Europe?

2007-09-10 00:24:33 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics