Bush supporters' aftermath thread

[I didn't comment on "repugnant" re your leadership, as you noticed ]

Emory study reveals the political brain
ATLANTA, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Emory University scientists say political partisans of both parties apparently don't let facts interfere with their judgments on political issues.

The investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study a sample of committed Democrats and Republicans immediately prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

The participants were asked to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate while undergoing fMRI. The scientists say what they found was striking.

If you think that jets are scrambled every time a passenger liner goes off course, at least prior to 9-11, I have a nice bridge I would like to sell you. I have a close relative who flew for Braniff before they closed down and another who flies for Frontier. They have to write a Looooooooong report explaining WHY they got off course when or if they do, but no fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem.

This link that I posted last night is a well written article that compares the 9-11 commission report to the facts among other things:

When Cycloptichorn and I agree on something: Call your bookie and accept odds up to ten to one that we're correct.

Foxfyre wrote:

If you think that jets are scrambled every time a passenger liner goes off course, at least prior to 9-11, I have a nice bridge I would like to sell you. I have a close relative who flew for Braniff before they closed down and another who flies for Frontier. They have to write a Looooooooong report explaining WHY they got off course when or if they do, but no fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem.

You prove my point with "fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem".

Do you really expect reasonable people to believe that 4 passenger jets being not only off course but circling back toward major cities was not an indication of a prolem?

I think I will pass on your bridge since it's probably in the same condition as your argument.

Thomas, I know what I wrote. I also know that no one has shown any other time before or since 9-11 that an airplane veered off course that it was not intercepted in a matter of minutes.

Magginkat wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

If you think that jets are scrambled every time a passenger liner goes off course, at least prior to 9-11, I have a nice bridge I would like to sell you. I have a close relative who flew for Braniff before they closed down and another who flies for Frontier. They have to write a Looooooooong report explaining WHY they got off course when or if they do, but no fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem.

You prove my point with "fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem".

Do you really expect reasonable people to believe that 4 passenger jets being not only off course but circling back toward major cities was not an indication of a prolem?

I think I will pass on your bridge since it's probably in the same condition as your argument.

You wrote

Quote:

Thomas, I know what I wrote. I also know that no one has shown any other time before or since 9-11 that an airplane veered off course that it was not intercepted in a matter of minutes.

Well I think you'll have a really tough time showing that passenger liners were considered much of a threat prior to 9-11 and that all who veer off course are intercepted in a matter of minutes. Which is what I said. According to my commercial pilot relatives, my argument is in pretty good shape. How's yours?

Foxfyre wrote:

Magginkat wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

If you think that jets are scrambled every time a passenger liner goes off course, at least prior to 9-11, I have a nice bridge I would like to sell you. I have a close relative who flew for Braniff before they closed down and another who flies for Frontier. They have to write a Looooooooong report explaining WHY they got off course when or if they do, but no fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem.

You prove my point with "fighter jets come looking for them unless there is indication of a problem".

Do you really expect reasonable people to believe that 4 passenger jets being not only off course but circling back toward major cities was not an indication of a prolem?

I think I will pass on your bridge since it's probably in the same condition as your argument.

You wrote

Quote:

Thomas, I know what I wrote. I also know that no one has shown any other time before or since 9-11 that an airplane veered off course that it was not intercepted in a matter of minutes.

Well I think you'll have a really tough time showing that passenger liners were considered much of a threat prior to 9-11 and that all who veer off course are intercepted in a matter of minutes. Which is what I said. According to my commercial pilot relatives, my argument is in pretty good shape. How's yours?

...................................................................................

Amazing how you Repugs always have the appropriate friend, doctor, lawyer, relative, etc., who have just the right info to supposedly prove your point, no matter how rediculous it may be. To you and your "commerical pilot relatives" I refer you to a piece written by Doug Thompson at Capitol Hill Blue:

If you don't think the rights-robbing, privacy-invading, Constitution ignoring administration of George W. Bush is anything less than a Hitler-style Gestapo then you've got your head stuffed so far up your a** that all that brown stuff is blinding you.

America, once hailed as the land of the free, has - under the tyranny of King George - become Amerika, reviled as a global thug that doesn't give a damn about anyone's rights, especially those of its own citizens.

Protest if you want. Spout the Republican Party line is you can without gagging. I don't give a damn. If you believe George W. Bush is anything less than an American Hitler then you're too damn dumb and stupid to argue with anyway.

Bush is an evil man, a power-grapping despot who believes in absolute rule, a madman so wrapped up in his perceived role as "a wartime President" and "Commander in Chief" that he believes no law applies to him or his rotting, corrupt, administration. The Constitution? Why it's just "a goddamned piece of paper" to this insane megalomaniac.

The only cretins who support this dictator are the brain-dead Republicans who put power above the law and party loyalty above their country.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_doug_tho_060123_an_american_hitler_a.htm




Bring on the screams of righteous indignation all the while ignoring what that scoundrel is doing to you and to the country.

And this has to do what with interception of passenger planes?

Foxfyre wrote:

And this has to do what with interception of passenger planes?

Nothing, Foxy. But it's an anti-Bush screed so she obviously felt this thread was the appropriate place to post it.

If you don't think the rights-robbing, privacy-invading, Constitution ignoring administration of George W. Bush is anything less than a Hitler-style Gestapo then you've got your head stuffed so far up your a** that all that brown stuff is blinding you.

Emory study lights up the political brain
When it comes to forming opinions and making judgments on hot political issues, partisans of both parties don't let facts get in the way of their decision-making, according to a new Emory University study. The research sheds light on why staunch Democrats and Republicans can hear the same information, but walk away with opposite conclusions.
The investigators used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to study a sample of committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. The Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Westen and his colleagues will present their findings at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Jan. 28.

Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

During the study, the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry). The first statement was followed by a second statement that documented a clear contradiction between the target's words and deeds, generally suggesting that the candidate was dishonest or pandering.

Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person's words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to which the target's words and deeds were contradictory.

Behavioral data showed a pattern of emotionally biased reasoning: partisans denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate that they had no difficulty detecting in the opposing candidate. Importantly, in both their behavioral and neural responses, Republicans and Democrats did not differ in the way they responded to contradictions for the neutral control targets, such as Hanks, but Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush.

While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness and moral accountability.

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion). The finding suggests that the emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments likely occur outside of awareness, and are distinct from normal reasoning processes when emotion is not so heavily engaged, says Westen.

The investigators hypothesize that emotionally biased reasoning leads to the "stamping in" or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's "revisionist" account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen says.

The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making, Westen says. "Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,' " Westen says.

Coauthors of the study include Pavel Blagov and Stephan Hamann of the Emory Department of Psychology, and Keith Harenski and Clint Kilts of the Emory Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.