So it turns out that those with strong religious beliefs worry less than those without. According to New Scientist, researchers in Toronto ran test on college students and found that

“The students with strong religious beliefs…exhibited less ACC activation [anxiety] than students with less fervent beliefs.” and that “Even after accounting for self-esteem, intelligence and other personality traits, Inzlicht’s team found that religious devotion predicted volunteers’ ACC activity [anxiety levels on the tests administered].” The article also notes that ” A previous study that used similar methods found that politically conservative Americans exhibit less ACC activation than liberals.”

None of that comes as any real surprise to me. I bet if you tested my 5-year-old cousin, she’d have incredibly low anxiety levels as well - because she doesn’t know any better. She has a limited understanding of the world around her, and she is incapable of really grasping the concepts that would lead to real concern on her part. To her, the world is a small, simple place where things either go her way or she pouts.

I know it sounds like I just described Rush Limbaugh and his army of ditto-heads, but that’s only because the parallels are so obvious. I’ve long maintained that religion is a mental crutch - people use it to stand when the strength of their ideas or beliefs aren’t strong enough to stand on their own - and contrary to what you might think, I don’t hate religious people.

I’ve always understood why people choose to be religious, because I’ve often wished that I could be. I would love to just “know” that everything is going to be alright in the end. I would love the sense of security that comes with “knowing” that some higher power was watching and caring about the outcome of my life. Unfortunately, I can’t lie to myself like that.

No one is watching over us, and no one cares, and it’s a terrifying thought. If you don’t know that, then you’re deluding yourself. I guess that’s why they say ignorance is bliss.

So Politico has reported that Jindal’s Katrina story may not have been entirely accurate. The response from Jindal’s people: “This is liberal blogger B.S. The story is clear.”

In this case, I actually agree with them. The story is clear - clearly intended to mislead the listener. It’s not just his warping of space-time either, Media Matters is reporting that there’s nothing specifying money for a train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles (let alone Disneyland), despite how cool that would actually be.

Now I’m not calling Jindal a liar, I’m just pointing out that he didn’t tell the truth.

In other news, the right sure does love themselves some porn.

After watching Bobby Jindal’s response to Obama’s State of the Union yesterday, I’m afraid it seems like more of the same old rhetoric - ‘Tax cuts good, spending bad!’ - only delivered by a fresh face. I think the general consensus was that Jindal’s speech fell short - here in L.A., his effectively calling our entire city ‘Disneyland’ in an attempt to mock a rail proposal really struck the wrong chord - but what really hit me was late in the speech when he proudly (and rather convincingly) proclaimed we had ‘won the struggle for Civil Rights’. Seriously? I have a few gay friends who would disagree with you.

What an incredible world of make believe the Republicans live in. I’ve often felt that the Republican party is the defacto choice for bigotry and xenophobia, but I always assumed it was a conscious choice. I figured the truly intelligent and capabale people in the party used fear and ignorance to manipulate the throngs of uneducated, racist masses that I feel make up the Republican base. It never really occured to me that someone of Jindal’s position in the party could just be delusional and therefore blind to the reality of what his constituants actually believe.

For most of the speech, Jindal tore into inefficient government, while using examples of government failures that occurred while his own party was in power. For instance, he pointed out that the government was no help during Katrina, and people had to save themselves. Really? You actually want to remind people that FEMA was being run by an idiot? That it was a Republican-run Federal government that couldn’t get water to people for 5 days? Just moments before that, Jindal had criticized the stimulus package for having funds allocated to ‘Volcano Monitoring’. Because obviously there are no volcanoes anywhere in the U.S. - we should cut off Hurricane monitoring as well then, cus who need to know when a Hurricane is coming, right?

It reminded me of something Bill Maher said - ‘Republicans spend alot of time telling us how government doesn’t work, and then when they get into office, they prove it.’

Other parts of the speech were less nonsensical, though no less old rhetoric. We want everyone to have access to affordable health care (but fail to mention that affordable is a relative term, and ‘having access to’ is not the same as ‘having’), we want our children to get a ‘proper’ education (read proper as ‘Christian’), we don’t want to cut military spending (even though Obama isn’t suggesting that), and that raising taxes is bad (even though most people aren’t going to see their taxes raised at all).

Chris Rock has a pretty funny routine in which he comically presents Robitusson as a cure-all for any medical problem. I’ve noticed that talking to Republicans about Government or Finance is pretty much the same routine, only their cure-all is Tax Cuts. Economy got you down? Tax Cuts! Lost your job? Tax Cuts! Largest deficit of all time? Tax Cuts! You get the idea.

So after reading this article about John Thain’s resignation from BofA today, I did some quick Google work to see what info was out there regarding the Andrew Cuomo’s investigation into bonuses that Merrill Lynch paid to its executives just before its sale to Bank of America. While I didn’t find anything particularly interesting on that topic, I did find an article detailing the $1.22 million Thain spent redecorating his office in early 2008.

So from the Bloomberg article we have:

Merrill had hired Thain … in late 2007 with a $15 million signing bonus. Replacing E. Stanley O’Neal as Merrill’s CEO, Thain pledged to live up to his reputation as “Mr. Fixit,” the sobriquet he earned while rescuing the NYSE.

And:

“There was a certain surprise that the Merrill losses were as steep as they were,” said James Post, a professor of corporate governance and business ethics at Boston University School of Management…

That seems like a rather ridiculous statement when the C.E.O. Merrill brought in to be their saviour spent $131,000 on area rugs. It doesn’t take much common sense to realize that if your company has $40 billion dollars tied up in failing sub-prime bonds, that your first priority should not be redecorating you private dinning room.

Then again, he is a Republican.

_

Update: The Bloomberg article has been edited to mention Thain’s spending $1.22 million. I think that makes the following quote, which was included in the original article and not changed in the update, rather amusing:

“On top of that, I think Lewis didn’t think Thain was doing as much as he could to control the expenses and minimize the losses.”

Ya think?

The following video made the front page of Digg today, so You’ve probably seen it. I just thought I’d comment quickly on how it perfectly encapsulates the problem with Republican thinking.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Ann Coulter says that if she could be anyone in history, she would be F.D.R. so that she could prevent the New Deal. Al Franken, who is also at whatever event this was filmed at, responds that he would be Hitler, so he could prevent the Holocaust.

As is usual, the Republican has a ridiculously self-centered and biased view of the world, which, in this case, is that the worst thing that could possibly have happened in history is the New Deal, resulting in some small portion of her tax dollars going to feed someone without a job (gasp). On the other hand, you have a liberal thinker who immediately wishes he could prevent one of the greatest (if not the greatest) tragedies in human history.

In short, Ann Coulter is a stupid bitch, Al Franken is not.

I have maintained for some time now that Bush will readily be regarded as the worst president in American history. I mentioned this to my room mate and, being a history major, he was quick to spit out the “We’ll never know” & “Future generations are the only ones who can make that determination” lines, but I’ve always felt that such statements are gutless. Certainly historians in the future will have their own take on what happened now, but can any historian actually tell me what it was like to live in Rome during the reign of Julies Ceasar? Can they know what it felt like to be a citizen during the American revolutionary war? No.

150 years from now, historians may have more facts about Bush’s presidency (assuming Cheney doesn’t have everything shredded), but they will be no more qualified to evaluate Bush’s failures than I am right now - and I’m willing to say he’s failed monumentally.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently, Mary Beth Buchanan has decided her political aspirations allow her to do whatever the fuck she wants.You can read all about it here.

Have I mentioned that I hate Republicans recently?

Not too long ago a posting on Craig’s list for a Palin look alike with the following text was being shot around the office:

Looking for a Sarah Palin lookalike for an adult film to be shot in next 10 days. Major adult studio. Please send pix, stats etc. ASAP Pay: $2000-3000. No anal required.

Turns out the request was real, and by none other than Larry Flynt via Hustler. At the time, TMZ.com reported the following details:

The faux Sarah is Lisa Ann, who “will be nailing the Russians who come knocking on her back-door.” In another scene — a flashback — “young Paylin’s creationist college professor will explain a ‘big bang’ theory even she can’t deny!”

Flash forward to today and a porn director from Florida, Cezar Capone, has offered Palin herself $2 million dollars to star in an adult feature. He’s also offered her husband Todd $100,000 to co-star in the production.

While I think this is a pretty funny story, I usually wouldn’t bother reporting it here, since it’s being reported everywhere else already. However, I figured I would share just so that I could repost this comment I found on Current.com:

I’m a maverick ooouuugh! I’m a maverick oooouuugh!

So the elections over and, while I generally find gloating to be a weaker aspect of human behavior, after such a bitter political race it’s hard to refrain from smiling broadly at the people in my office who gave me shit for being a liberal and supporting Obama.

Now that even FOX has begun to report on how incredibly inept Sarah Palin is, I almost feel almost like I’ve been vindicated. I mean, I know they’re doing it to use her as a scapegoat for their party’s loss, but seeing them levy the same criticisms that the “Liberal” media was reporting weeks prior is rather satisfying.

–

I found this pic posted on a message board I frequent, and I think it sums up Tuesday pretty nicely (and I promise no more gloating after this one):

–

If you’re interested in a free Obama sticker featuring the image below, you can sign up for one here:

–

I recently discovered the ‘Brand New’ portion of Under Consideration and, though I’m no design major, I find it really interesting. Also, I would never have realized how much the new Pepsi bottles look like a wrinkled penis were it not for one of their commenters.

So much for the staff at the villiage voice. The absolute best parody of the Obama Hope Posters has got to be this one by artist James Lillis.