Day: April 13, 2011
Conservatives Have Bad Brains
Well, now it’s official. What we liberals always suspected has been proven by science — conservatives’ brains are messed up, which is why they think and act the way they do.
According to a new study published in Current Biology, there is a marked contrast between liberal and conservative brains:
Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2,3]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala.
OK, since I don’t subscribe to Current Biology and I don’t want to pay $31.50 for a paper that confirms what I’ve thought all along — i.e., that conservatives have bad brains — I had to do some research to figure out what the abstract above really means.
Public Already Fed Up with House Republicans
43%
Of voters think that House Republicans are doing a worse job now than the Democrats did, compared to only 36% who think the GOP has brought an improvement, while 19% think things are about the same, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey. The study concludes that House Republicans “have fallen so far out of favor with the American public that it’s entirely possible Democrats could take control of the House back next year.” Independent voters now say they’d vote Democratic for the House by a 42% to 33% margin, representing a 28-point reversal in just five months.
Republicans Won’t Even Contemplate a Tax Increase on Rich
If the president begins the discussion by saying we must increase taxes on the American people — as his budget does — my response will be clear: Tax increases are unacceptable and are a nonstarter.
— House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by USA Today, not waiting for President Obama’s planned speech tomorrow on reducing the national debt.
Romney Distances Himself from Birthers
I think the citizenship test has been passed. I believe the president was born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office. The man needs to be taken out of office but his citizenship isn’t the reason why.
— Mitt Romney, in an interview on CNBC, firmly distancing himself from the birthers.
Voter Remorse, Cont’d: Poll Finds 28 Point Shift Away from GOP among Swing Voters Since November
Just a week after the respected pollster Charlie Cook wrote a column spotlighting rising concern among establishment Republicans about their party’s collapsing support among swing voters, a new survey from Public Policy Polling finds a 28-point shift away from the GOP since November among independents :
62 percent of voters say Republicans have either made things worse or failed to improve Congress.
The key to this strong movement back toward the Democrats right now is the same as the key to the strong movement away from the Democrats last year — fickle independents quickly growing unhappy with the party in power. Exit polls showed independents supporting the GOP by a 19 point margin last year at 56-37. Now only 30 percent of those voters think that the Republican controlled House is moving things in the right direction, compared to 44 percent who think things were better with the Democrats. Given those numbers it’s not much of a surprise that independents now say they’d vote Democratic for the House by a 42-33 margin if these was an election today, representing a 28 point reversal in a span of just five months.
The poll found no good news for the GOP:
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