Conservatism, Religion & Violence

……”It appears that conservatism has pathological dimensions manifested in violence and distorted psycho-sexual development” (Boshier, 1983, p. 159). This is supported by a study conducted by Walker, Rowe, and Quincey (1993) in which there was a direct correlation between authoritarianism and sexually aggressive behavior. An investigation done by Muehlenhard (1988) revealed that rape justification and aggression toward subordinate individuals was much higher in traditional (conservative personality) than non-traditional personalities.

[...]

McClosky (1958) noted that in Western society conservatism tended to be indicative of certain people: social isolates, people thinking poorly of themselves (low self-esteem), those uncertain of their values and who lack a clear sense of direction. That certainly fit the pattern of most of the offenders within the criminal justice system. The above was affirmed by Boshier (1969) when he suggested that those persons who were high in self-esteem were low in conservatism. He further noted that the individual with low self-concept scored high on conservatism. The offender certainly fit the criteria of having a low self-concept and, therefore, being high on the conservative scale. Boshier noted that by scoring high on the C-Scale, the conservative seemed to be demonstrating his hostility toward others, which was also a characteristic demonstrated by most criminal offenders.

[...]

Persons who had a dogmatic belief in religions and adhered to the teachings of absolutist and perfectionistic religious groups, tended to be more frequently and more intensely emotionally disturbed than those who followed less dogmatic religion (Ellis, 1986). Authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism were positively correlated, with scores on authoritarianism significantly related to those on ethnic and racial prejudice, hostility toward homosexuals, and punitiveness in prison sentencing (Wylie & Forest, 1992). According to Parker (1990), dogmatism and orthodox belief were incompatible with ethical acuity.

  Change in the Conservative Personality Equals Change in the Offender with a Resultant Reduction in Recidivism by Michael D. Parsons and Jennifer G. Parsons

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

It's Snowing in Houston

That is just not right. We will stay a little warmer by temp than Houston since we are on - i mean, in - the Gulf (I like to say we are south of Texas), but it's cold, very windy, and raining, so when night falls, if it is still raining....

All the hot air is in D.C.

No One Could Have Imagined

For the past six years, [Blackwater/Xe's Erik Prince] "appears to have led an astonishing double life," writes Adam Ciralsky. "Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s CEO and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the CIA’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into 'denied areas'—places US intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies."

  Raw Story

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Former Bush Official Reacts

Dan Senor, a former Bush spokesman in Iraq: "If you would have said to me that a year into this administration that he would have doubled our troop presence in Afghanistan... Plus not reduced our troops meaningfully in Iraq. And if you had told me he would have fired General [David] McKiernan and replaced him with General [Stanley] McChrystal (a surge proponent)... I would have had a hard time believing it. So I am pleasantly surprised."

  HuffPost

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Regarding Obama's "Defining" Speech

[T]his whole speech was just one extended exercise in flim-flammery.

[...]

"Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground."

Just as we have done in Iraq – hundreds of thousands of deaths later. Why am I not feeling reassured?

[...]

Those who were hoping for some real change in our rhetoric, if not our foreign policy, with Obama in the White House are no doubt sorely disappointed right now, because George W. Bush could just as easily have spoken these very same words – and, indeed, he did utter endless variations on this identical theme when justifying our actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the truth of the matter is that there are barely one-hundred al-Qaeda fighters in the whole of Afghanistan – so what are we doing there?

Blogging Obama's More War Speech

Blah, blah, blah, blah....

Like Chowderhead before him, in front of an audience of troops - better yet, future troops (West Point cadets).

We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for - and what we continue to fight for - is a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity.

  speech text

Now, would you like to buy a bridge?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Happy Birthday

Wish you were here.

Still Refusing to Live in Reality

W wasn't the only one.

According to the official narrative, poverty, ignorance, and isolation from modernity are the reasons for the stubborn refusal of the Afghan people to support their American and NATO liberators. The solution, by this administration’s lights, is to construct what has never really existed in Afghanistan: a unified, modern nation-state. Building "infrastructure," it seems, is the liberal-progressive answer to humanity’s problems worldwide, and in Afghanistan, too, where roads, hospitals, schools, networks of mass communication, and the very fabric of modernity itself must be built from the ground up.

The sheer arrogance of American policymakers and military theoreticians blocks them from recognizing the simple reality of the insurgents’ motivation, which is nothing more nor less than aversion to the conditions of military occupation. Short of withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, there is no way to satisfy the central demand of the Afghan insurgents – who resist the American-NATO occupation not because they are ignorant savages who hate us for our freedoms, but because they seek their own version of freedom – which, understandably, does not involve kowtowing to an American viceroy.

[...]

The nation-building program advanced by advocates of COIN [counterinsurgency doctrine] – one leading enthusiast exulted that COIN has the potential to "change entire societies" – is derived from [the option of] building a "political machine" to rival the insurgency for the affections of the people. In the case of Afghanistan, however, this "machine" is oiled by drug money and lorded over by the Karzai brothers, whose names are veritable bywords for corruption in the region.

[...]

Indeed, the great problem in building up a government in Afghanistan is that the Taliban and their sympathizers are likely to take it over from within.

[...]

[Sending] in troops in sufficient numbers to annihilate or drive out the main body of insurgents, and reinforce these with enough to keep the enemy from returning – are what’s behind Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s call for 40,000 more troops. The stage is then set for [...] sending these soldiers into the villages and hamlets of Afghanistan to live side-by-side with the people, thus presumably gaining their confidence.

  Justin Raimondo

If you haven’t already, you really must see “Obama’s War” to understand how this is simply pie in the sky. In that documentary, you can see American garrisons where no Afghanis will interact, due to fear of reprisals and lack of cultural understanding. Wherever the American troops have set up camp to ‘protect’ markets, the markets become deserted and shopkeepers go elsewhere.

[T]he same narrative informs a certain view of the Vietnam War, where – or so the legend goes – once again defeatist politicians got in the way of a military leadership that was on the verge of defeating the enemy. Obama is deathly afraid of being characterized in this way by Republicans – and pro-war Democrats – and this underlies much of the rhetoric about Afghanistan being a "war of necessity," i.e., a political necessity.

Obama better grow some cojones before, by continued military spending, he destroys our country, in addition to two in the Middle East. At this point, even laying waste to them entirely, which is what an army is really designed for, would not work, because the whole of the world has now been involved.

We could have paid for the oil we are trying to control many times over with the money we have spent trying to control it.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

I Could Have Told Them That Would Be the Case

But I thought we'd done with Mr. Bush.

From Politico:

Sorry.

There Goes Germany?

The future of Germany's mission in Afghanistan was thrown into doubt today after a government minister resigned under growing pressure to admit his involvement in a campaign of misinformation over an air raid in which civilians were killed.

Franz Josef Jung, defence minister at the time, quit as labour minister a day after the army's chief of staff, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, resigned over the incident with the deputy defence minister, Peter Wichert.

  UK Guardian

Deeper Than the Party Crashers

I know you’ll be seeing way more of the latest “Reality TV mongers” - the Salahis - than you want. But, what is this?

Salahi is on the board of the American Task Force on Palestine, a DC lobby group closely tied to the Palestinian Authority government of Mahmoud Abbas.

  TPM

And, the Secret Service is “deeply embarrassed.” Pardon me for suggesting, but it doesn’t seem to me like the Secret Service is all that intent on protecting Obama. I think he should hire some personal body guards. Seriously.

This post analyzes an apparently deliberate security breach at the Obama rally held in Reunion Arena in Dallas on Wednesday, 2/20/08.

[...]

Failing to inspect purses and packages that might contain weapons is, obviously, a security breach. According to the Star Telegram, the breach occurred when Secret Service personnel were ordered to stop searching, showing that the breach was deliberate at some level. The fact that the Secret Service is denying the incident, rather than investigating it, indicates high-level culpability.

  Democrats.com

A company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Barack Obama's helicopter, NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh reported Saturday.

Employees of Tiversa, a Cranberry Township, Pa.-based security company that specializes in peer-to-peer technology, reportedly found engineering and communications information about Marine One at an IP address in Tehran, Iran.

  MSNBC

A major security breach has occurred involving Barack Obama's confidential passport details. Two State Department employees have been fired and another suspended following an investigation, which began after it was learned that his computer file had been accessed.

  UK Independent

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

For the Love of Pete

The health care plan would take away your guns!

Gun Owners of America have been raging against the Senate health care bill for all sorts of imagined threats to the Second Amendment.

[...]

"Special 'wellness and prevention' programs (inserted by Section 1001 of the bill as part of a new Section 2717 in the Public Health Services Act) would allow the government to offer lower premiums to employers who bribe their employees to live healthier lifestyles -- and nothing within the bill would prohibit rabidly anti-gun HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from decreeing that 'no guns' is somehow healthier."

The White House says: "Section 2717 [...] creates guidelines for insurers to report on initiatives that improve quality of care and health outcomes, and it specifically lists what types of programs would be involved - such as smoking cessation, physical fitness, nutrition, heart disease prevention. There is no mention of guns, and there is no language that could result in higher premiums for gun owners or lower premiums for people who do not own guns."

  TPM

....but hey, believe what you want....you will anyway.