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Category: Psychology
OK, Eric Massa is Nuts
OK, look at the video, and it’s clear that this guy has some very real problems.
That being said, Massa’s vote against the House healthcare bill was from the left, he felt that it was too weak, and so the idea that the Obama administration in general, and Rahm Emanuel in particular, might have a personal interest in taking him down.
There is nothing more than Rahm likes than cock punching DFH’s,* and so I am reasonably certain that he’s high-fiving over this development, but the talk of a conspiracy I is premature.
I can see how Rahm might be inclined to do this, I just don’t think that he did.
As I have said before, I think that too many Dems remember the Mark Foley, and when this came up, the Democratic leadership did the smart thing.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
Holy Crap! I’m Not in Boston Today!
Note: I’m post dating this to keep it on the top of the post for the weekend. Scroll down for new posts.
In February 1985, I went to my first science fiction convention. In October, I ran a fiction convention, NotJustAnother1 Con (NJAC). I did it again in 1986, and then started Arisia, Inc. and ran the first two conventions 1990 and 1991.
About 4 years ago, I realized something important: I don’t like science fiction conventions.
When I go to a con, I don’t go to program items, I either work the con, or I self medicate.*
What’s more, my involvement with running a con completely subsumes my life, and I have a family now, and, quite honestly, it’s a destructive addiction thing to me, and no one wants to work with a self-destructive addict, and I don’t want to be one.
It only took me 20 years to realize that I hated my hobby/obsession, and, honestly, I’ve always found the community rather unremarkable.†
So I cut my losses, and following a remarkably unpleasant exchange with Arisia, Incorporated and the for-profit database vendor to whom they have outsourced their attendance and mailing list management, I had my information, and that of my wife and children, expunged from the Arisia database.‡
Maybe, the next time I think about calling someone “#@&ing stupid”, perhaps this experience will make me a bit kinder.§
In any case, I was driving to pick up my Son, and his drum kit, from school today, and there was an announcement for a Martin Luther King day symposium, and I realised, “MLK’s Birthday? Is it Arisia again?”
So I called up their web page, and yes, it is this weekend …… Though it’s technically in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston.
The first few years after I severed ties with the con, and the 501(c)3 corporation, I worried about it sucking me back in, but I hadn’t thought about the con in months, and only made the connection because the MLK birthday announcement triggered a connection.
I find this amazing, because just a year ago, I was contacted regarding a potential dispute with an artist, whose graphic art work is the official artist, and I found that it left me pissed off for a week.
If anyone from Arisia is reading this, I will paraphrase what I said about the time:
Please note that this is NOT intended to prohibit or discourage any individual to contact me personally in a purely social context, I just don’t want to discuss, or be involved with Arisia.
I would sooner give Dick Cheney a sponge bath than get sucked back in.
*Mammoth, some would say legendary, drunken binges.
†Which anyone who has ever discussed SF Fans with me knows.
‡What part of “remove me from the list” is so hard to understand? Needless to say, this Further justified my sense of ambivalence toward science fiction fans.
§NoT!!!. I’ll still judge them harshly. Let’s be honest here. I’m going to be calling people who do stupid things while I still have two brain cells left to rub together.
An Interesting Analysis of Obama and Geithner
Mark Ames, of the ExileD, has a piece on Alternet which provides some very interesting theories about the President and the Treasury Secretary.
Generally, I consider this analysis to be of little use, though it can be interesting, and I think that this applies to this analysis.
His thesis is that Obama and Geithner will avoid conflict, even when avoiding conflict is an immoral thing to do.
In the case of Geithner, Ames uses his actions in the case of the racist Dartmouth review:
The Review lambasted what it called Dartmouth’s liberal bias and its minority admission policies, riling many students. During gatherings in which some students said D’Souza should be attacked, Geithner calmed them down, proposing that they start an alternative publication, says Rudelson, the former roommate. Geithner kept his distance from the new publication, called the Harbinger, occasionally taking photos for it.
In the case of Obama, it’s a conflict over affirmative action at the law review:
Presiding over an assembly of 60 mostly white editors in a law school classroom, Obama listened to impassioned pleas and pressed conservatives to explain their reasoning and liberals to sharpen their thinking. But he never spoke about his own point of view or mentioned that he believed he had benefited from affirmative action. “If anybody had walked by, they would have assumed he was a professor,” said Thomas J. Perrelli, a classmate and former counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. “He was leading the discussion but he wasn’t trying to impose his own perspective on it. He was much more mediating.”
Obama was so evenhanded and solicitous in his interactions that fellow students would do impressions of his Socratic chin-stroking approach to everything, even seeking a consensus on popcorn preferences at the movies. “Do you want salt on your popcorn?” one classmate, Nancy L. McCullough, recalled, mimicking his sensitive bass voice. “Do you even want popcorn?”
So Ames thesis is that these are people who are fundamentally unwilling to participate in a confrontation, and instead will go through back-flips to avoid it.
It may be true.
It may be that Obama and Geithner actually believe in the rather right wing ideas that they have put forward in terms of financial reform and healthcare.
I don’t know, you don’t know, Mark Ames doesn’t know.
And at the end of the day, it does not matter unless you could use this information to make them do the right thing.
The question, “Why are they governing like this?” is the wrong question.
The right question is, “What levers and tolls can be used to get them to do the right thing?”
Still, it’s a good read. Ames both provocative and eminently readable.
Roger Ailes as a Bed-Wetting Coward
The New York Times has a profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes.
I glanced at it, and was not particularly impressed, but Jonathan Chait teases what I think is a nugget of truth about the media mogul:
Second, Ailes comes through in the article as paranoid (quite possibly in the clinical sense) regarding his own personal vulnerability to terrorism:
National security had long been a preoccupation of Fox News, and it was clear in the interview that the 9/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes. They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.
On the day of the attacks, Mr. Ailes asked his chief engineer the minimum number of workers needed to keep the channel on the air. The answer: 42. “I am one of them,” he said. “I’ve got a bad leg, I’m a little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.
“We had 3,000 dead people a couple miles from here. I knew that any communications company could be a target.”
His movements now are shadowed by a phalanx of corporate-provided security. He travels to and from work in a miniature convoy of two sport utility vehicles. A camera on his desk displays the comings and goings outside his office, where he usually keeps the blinds drawn.
I appreciate Mr. Chait’s eye for detail, but I disagree with his diagnosis, with the obvious caveat that neither he nor I are mental health professionals.
This is not paranoia. This is hysterical unreasoning terror, and, as strange as it souncs, it actually decreases the level of contempt that I feel for him.
I used to think that Fox News was the We’re all gonna die!!!!!!! network (it’s on one of the screens when I ride the exercise bike) because Ailes was trying to score partisan political points, but I was wrong.
He’s not being a hypocrite, he just is a sniveling coward.
H/t Paul Krugman.
Why the Air Force as an Independent Service Should be Abolished: Part 32
Matthew Yglesias reports that retired USAF Lieutenant General Tom McInerney has just called for mandatory strip searches of all Muslims aged between the ages of 18 to 28 in an interview with (who else)Fox News.
This guy is bats%$# insane, but his insanity is endemic with the Air Force, as has been noted in a number of stories regarding a pervasive atmosphere of religious harassment at the Air Force academy.
(I’ve done a couple of posts on the problem generally.)
The problem here is not that he was in the Air Force. Any organization will have its share of crazies, criminals, and incompetents.
The problem is that he made it to 3-stars, despite being clearly unhinged, and there is way too much of that in the US air force.
In fact, in the video below, it’s clear that it’s so crazy that the interviewer on Fox feels the need to call him out on this, because of the hostility it would engender:
Bootnote: It looks like Al-Jazeerah is already covering it, so congratulations general, you just murdered a dozen or so US troops over the next few months.
An Insight into the Mind of Ayn Rand
Mystery/thriller writer Michael Prescott has looked through the journals of Ayn Rand, and he finds her musing on one William Edward Hickman, who said, “What is good for me is right,” which seems to pretty classical Randian Objectivism.
She is enthused about this person, and his philosophy, describing it as, “The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I have heard.”
While Mr. Hickman is fairly obscure these days, unless you are a lawyer, in which case it is one of the earliest attempts at an insanity defense, he was well known during his day, basically 1927 and 1928, because he kidnapped a 12 year old girl, ransomed her, and dismembered her.
And Ayn Rand calls what he did a, “Real man’s philosophy.”
If there were any doubt as to her being evil, it is ended. If there were any doubt as to her sanity, those doubts are reinforced.
I will leave you with the last two ‘graphs, but please read the rest, but be warned, the specifics of the murder are grisly:
By the appraisal of any normal mind, there can be little doubt that William Edward Hickman was a vicious psychopath of the worst order. That Ayn Rand saw something heroic, brilliant, and romantic in this despicable creature is perhaps the single worst indictment of her that I have come across. It is enough to make me question not only her judgment, but her sanity.
At this point in my life, I did not think it was possible to significantly lower my estimate of Ayn Rand, or to regard her as even more of a psychological and moral mess than I had already taken her to be.
I stand corrected.
If Southerners Do Not Want To Be Cast As Ignorant Bigots
Then when people try to ban atheists from sitting on the city council, the response should be a question along the lines of, “Are you on drugs?”:
North Carolina’s constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.
Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.
Voters elected the writer and builder to the council last month.
“I’m not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he’s an atheist, he’s not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.
It should be noted that H.K Edgerton flipped out some time ago, and can now can be found at Civil War reenactments wearing a Confederate uniform and waving a Confederate flag.
There is a point where you treat “Gums, the village idiot”* as “Gums, the village idiot,” or, by taking him seriously, you become a village of idiots.
*Virtual Kewpie doll for anyone who gets the reference.
The Crazy Will Not End
A 52% Of Republicans believe that ACORN stole the election for Barack Obama in 2008.
This is not going to end well. These people are even stronger than the folks who claimed that Ross Perot stole the election for Clinton in 1992.
One needs to understand the difference between the opposition and the enemy, and understand that you cannot negotiate with the former.
Unfortunately, you can count the former in without running out of fingers.
Quote of the Day:
From, “A conservative Republican House member, speaking on the condition of anonymity,” regarding the resignation of Michelle Marston as Michelle Bachmann’s chief of staff:
“When your captain’s crazy, it’s time to find a new ship,” the lawmaker said.
Heh.
Here’s a Shocker
People who got laid off from Boeing have better mental health than those who remained:
Would it surprise you to learn that survivors can suffer just as much, if not more, than colleagues who get laid off? It certainly surprised a team of academic researchers who embedded themselves at Boeing (BA) from 1996 to 2006, a tumultuous decade during which the company laid off tens of thousands. The results of the study will appear next year in a Yale University Press book called Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers. “How much better off the laid-off were was stunning and shocking to us,” says Sarah Moore, a University of Puget Sound industrial psychology professor who is one of the book’s four authors. “So much of the literature talks about how dreadful unemployment is.”
…
In the greatest surprise of all, the researchers discovered that the people who had been laid off often were happier than those left behind. Many had new jobs, even if they didn’t always pay as well. Over and over, Moore says, average depression scores were nearly twice as great for those who stayed with Boeing vs. those who left. The laid-off were less likely to binge drink, often slept better, and had fewer chronic health problems.
(emphasis mine)
Boeing is claiming that morale has improved since they got the new company president it, but I kind of doubt that.
BTW, this kind of morale is one of the reasons that they are having the problems that they are having with the 787: When you outsource basic engineering to another firm, people in your firm, don’t make the extra effort to examine things that look funny to them.
That Explains It, Conservatives Cannot Get It Up
Look at the graph. It appears that Obama’s election victory actually depressed testosterone levels in Republican men.
They tested hormone levels in spit throughout the evenint.
I always thought that there was an element of the fear of emasculation in the Republican response, but I am shocked that we actually have clinical data to support this.
So, We Just Learned Something About the Abortion Nut Who Got Shot
I posted about it when James L. Pouillon got killed, and it now appears that his family speaks, at least his son, James L. Pouillon, and it ain’t pretty:
It will be impossible for some to believe, but my dad really didn’t care about aborton.
He did this to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone.
After my mom finally left him and he lost his favorite punching bag the violence and abuse that was always contained within our 4 walls was unleased on the people of Owosso.
My dad used the pro-life movement and 1st Amendments foundations to defend him, support him, and enable him. He fooled them all.
He was at the high shool because my niece was there, and female family members were always his favorite targets.
Again, my dad didn’t care about abortion. He wanted to hurt people, upset people. He enjoyed making people suffer.
His goal was to be shot on a sidewalk. His goal was to make someone so angry, to make them feel so terrorized, to make them feel the only way they could make him stop was to kill him.
His pro-life stance was the most perfect crime I personally know of. He hid behind the 1st Amendment and was allowed to stalk, terrorise, harass, be obsene, ect. These things are crimes. Offending people isn’t a crime, and having different political views isn’t a crime, but he committed several crimes over the last 20 years and got away with it.
Yes I really am his oldest son. Owosso is now rid of a mad man.
One wonders if he is the exception rather than the rule for right wing extremists.
Same as It Ever Was
Same as it ever was,
same as it ever was,
same as it ever was
Here we go again. The flying monkeys are looking to impeach Barack Obama, with the usual suspects penning an article, titled, “Is it time to whisper the word ‘impeachment’?”
They claim that there is a, “The groundswell of calls for the impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama is growing” but those calls are the voices in their head.
This is what happens to people who believe that God has personally anointed them to rule, and I don’t think that you could drive Tom Delay’s penis between the mental space separating them from Osama bin Laden.
I am Reproducing This in Full Because the Cache Will Expire
H/T Below The Beltway for the screen shot (click for full size)Some background:
Remember when I suggested that recent rhetoric about Barack Obama was really about encouraging someone with the, “Psychological stability of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the shooting ability of…well…Lee Harvey Oswald (he was a Marine) to whack Obama?”
I also mentioned the Facebook “Assassinate Obama” poll.
It seems like it was only yesterday when I mentioned these….Hold on, it WAS yesterday when I mentioned this.
The tinfoil hat crowd is a bunch of very busy people this week.
Well, another part of the right wing sewage brigade, Newsmax published an article explicitly calling for a coup to overthrow him. Don’t click the link though, once the cowards at Newsmax realized that it was getting play, they pulled it, but here is the Google Cache.
In any case, I think that it is crucial that his word remain alive on the net in their entirety, so here is his article, in all its Fascist glory:
Obama Risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:35 AM
By: John L. Perry
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:
Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.” Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized. They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office. They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments. They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home. They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag. They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time. They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before. So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do? Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?
Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?
What happens if the generals Obama sent to win the Afghan war are told by this president (who now says, “I’m not interested in victory”) that they will be denied troops they must have to win? Do they follow orders they cannot carry out, consistent with their oath of duty? Do they resign en masse?
Or do they soldier on, hoping the 2010 congressional elections will reverse the situation? Do they dare gamble the national survival on such political whims?
Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America’s military leadership is lost in a fool’s fog.
Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?
Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.
Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.
Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”
In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.
John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for Newsmax.com.
(emphasis mine)
I guess it might read better in the original German. In the Confederate States of America dialect of English, it’s a lot shorter, of course, “Lynch the n*gg*r.”
My first thought was to register LiberalsWithGuns.org, but someone has already beaten me to it, so I sent them an email offering my very poor HTML coding skills.
What the Republican Crazy Talk is About
So I’m on the Stellar Parthenon BBS, and Unmutual notes that Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) is saying that, “The President Is an enemy of humanity.”
He muses that this kind of Batsh&% insane simply stupid:
Yep, continue this kind of idiotic rhetoric against the most popularly elected president in recent memory, surely that’s going to get you more supporters than reaching across the isle and actually trying to get stuff done.
I think that he is an optimist. This is not stupidity. This is done with a purpose.
The goal here is to get someone with the psychological stability of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the shooting ability of…well…Lee Harvey Oswald (he was a Marine) to whack Obama.
Seriously. There are two group of people speaking for the Republican party: Those who are batsh%$ insane, and want Obama dead, and those who think that his getting killed would be good for them in 2010.
I’m not sure which group scares me more.
Video below:
Well, That Explains all the Bullsh$# When I Was Single
Someone asks behavioral economist Dan Ariely if she should put out to a guy that she is dating. She “Unsure” is seriously into “George”, and wonders if the rule about making him wait is true.
Well, Dr Arieli says that according to behavior economics research, the rule is true:
The classic experiment here comes from psychologists Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith, who had participants perform a boring task and then paid them either $20 or $1 to convince someone else that the task had been great fun. Everyone then rated the task, with the result that the $1 participants rated the task more positively than did the $20 crew. While the $20 group could explain away the dissonance between their action (“I told someone the task was riveting”) and their belief (“It actually bored me to tears”) via money (“I was paid to promote the task”), the $1 individuals could not because they could not justify misleading others for such a small amount of money– so they changed their initial belief (“I must really like the task, to have promoted it”) and they ended up rating the task more positively.
To give you an example that is closer to our social life, look at fraternities: loyalty to frats increases with the amount of hazing, since pledges tell themselves, “I did a lot of embarrassing stuff for my frat – it must really matter to me.”
So, the advice to, “In other words, make him work, and he will rationalize it by deciding he loves you,” is supported by studies.
It does explain my favoring women who are can sometimes be described as “high maintenance,” though I feel compelled to note that each moment with Sharon,* is unalloyed bliss.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.†
†I know what you are thinking, he’s just writing that because he knows that she could read this on the net. My response is that Sharon* is a deeply passionate woman, and she has knives, and some of them are dull…..Mama did not raise no fools.
Deep Thought
Demotivator Edition
God Bless the Onion
This is the best way that I can imagine to commemorate 911.*
Americans Observing 9/11 By Trying Not To Masturbate
*By “This”, I mean watching this video, not any action, or non action, regarding one’s genitals.†
†September 11, 2001 was the start of a period of prolonged insanity for the United States, and while there are indications that psychological recovery is on the way, we really need to stay on our meds.