Day: September 10, 2007
Rudy’s Groundhog Day: ‘For Me, Every Day Is Sept. 11’
Rudy Giuliani played his over-played trump card again last week in Florida:
“For me every day is an anniversary of Sept. 11…If we don’t talk about Sept. 11, you can’t prepare to try to avoid another Sept. 11.”
“Sept. 11, Sept. 11, Sept. 11.” Got it?
Should Florida Democrats Change Parties?
If the Democrats don’t want my Florida votes, they can’t have my Florida money.
That’s what I’m telling everyone who calls or emails me for support — and I’m on a lot of calling and email lists — until the party makes up its mind whether to count Florida’s votes in the coming primary.
Maxwell: I figure if your party won’t count your vote, join one that will
The presidential preference election was moved by the Florida legislature to Jan. 29,* putting it ahead of four other states and causing the DNC to turn all red in the face like your dad did when you came home late and woke him up. They threatened to ground us until the general election by denying us delegates at the national convention. They also forced Democratic candidates to agree not to campaign in Florida, although that hasn’t stopped them from coming here for fundraisers.
Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell is putting forth an even bolder solution than my purse strings strategy: change parties. Maxwell points out that the RNC, while also upset about the primary move, is only threatening to take away half of Florida’s GOP delegates.
I figure: If your party won’t count your vote, join one that will.
Seriously, Democrats. March down to your elections office and become a Republican.
That way, come January, you can vote — for the Republican you like best, the one you dislike the least or, if you wanna be sneaky about it, you can even vote for the Republican that you think would be the easiest for a Democrat to beat in November.
Whatever way you do it, your vote will count — at least more than it would as a Democrat if the national folks follow through with their threat.
What’s more, after you vote Republican, you can switch back — and vote in the regular Democratic primaries in September…
Admittedly, the Florida Democratic Party wasn’t too keen on my idea.
Said party spokesman Mark Bubriski: “I don’t know how any Democrat, no matter how understandably angry they may be, could justify switching to the party of Katherine Harris, Larry Craig, David Vitter, Bob Allen, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom Feeney, et cetera based on an internal party dispute over a primary election.”
That’s not a bad sound bite. Too bad hardly anyone’s going to hear it.
That’s because the Democrats seem too busy doing what they often do so well: becoming their own worst enemy.
I have news for Mark. This is more than an internal party dispute since it affects whether my vote will count. And in many ways, the primary is more important than the general election. That’s the very reason it was moved up. But that attitude by our party leaders is why most of us rank and file Democrats are as fired up as my dad used to get when he caught me coming in after midnight.
Update: Thanks to my new BFF, Anonymous, for noting the correct date of the presidential preference primary. The post has been edited accordingly.
Neuroscience Study: Smart Brains Have Liberal Bias
A new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience not only suggests that the brains of liberals and conservatives are wired differently — as many have long suspected — but also that liberals’ brains are more adept at processing new ideas:
The study suggests that liberals are more open to new social, scientific and religious ideas.
Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.
The results show “there are two cognitive styles — a liberal style and a conservative style,” said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.
The study asked subjects to rate their political leanings on continuum of 5 (conservative) to -5 (liberal). The experiment required the subjects to
make quick decisions:
Out of the 500 trials that each subject completed, he or she was presented with the same letter 80 percent of the time. This meant that the participants felt compelled to press the same button repeatedly.
“You keep seeing the same stimulus over and over, so when the opposite stimulus comes on it’s always a surprise,” says [David Amodio, the study’s lead author].
When the less common letter did appear on the screen, the people who identified themselves as more conservative (rating themselves somewhere between 1 and 5 on the initial questionnaire) pressed the “usual” button 47 percent of the time instead of switching to the correct button.
By comparison, the “liberals” who placed themselves between -5 and -1 on the questionnaire responded more readily to the new signal and achieved the slightly lower error rate of 37 percent.
Brain recordings taken using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology showed that liberals had twice as much activity in a deep region called the anterior cingulate cortex. This area of the brain is thought to act as a mental brake by helping the mind recognize “no-go” situations where it must refrain from the usual course of action.
Liberals were much better at dealing with and resolving conflicts in the experiment:
Analyzing the data, [Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study] said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.
The study suggests that liberals are more open to new social, scientific and religious ideas, Sulloway said. He pointed to the historical record, saying, “There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science.”
Speaking up for conservative brains, study author Amodio said it would be a mistake to conclude that liberal brains are better than conservatives’. He suggested that the tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing, depending on the situation.
Really? That is an interesting assertion because it is impossible to imagine a situation in which ignoring pertinent information could produce a useful analysis.
The study seems to verify another assumption many on the left have made about conservatives: They are easily fooled.
