Go Tito!

Great points by the "average Tito!"

Someone asked why [construction business owner Tito] Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys [the press],” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn’t want to report on Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber? “How come that’s not in the news all the time?” Munoz said. “How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I’m talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN.”A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. “Tell me,” she said to Corn, “why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!”

“I am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”

How Lies Live and Grow in the Brain

I find this article by brain researchers very interesting in light of Theophostic Prayer Principles.

June 27, 2008
Op-Ed ContributorNew York Times
Your Brain Lies to You
By SAM WANG and SANDRA AAMODT

FALSE beliefs are everywhere. ...

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why...it [can take] some weeks for [a smear campaign] to have an effect [on a candidate's] standing in the polls.

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like “I think I read somewhere” or even with a reference to a specific source.

In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility.

Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position.

Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.
Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to “stop the smears,” a [political] campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize [a non-truth], it may be more effective to stress [the opposite truth].

Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students’ impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.

In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true.

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes’s ideal.

Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, are the authors of “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”

Why Unemployment is Up

Well said!

"It wasn't Bush, it wasn't greedy corporations, or free trade, or history's most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month. Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs?

The answer to all of these questions is same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy---hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of Spring? That's right---students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they're not finding it. Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans {including then-Congressman Bobby Jindal}) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25.

Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment---that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people's house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America's pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase.

Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls---rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable."

---Jerry Bowyer

Shopping for Love

"[People] shop for love like they shop for the perfect knickknack for the mantel: someone, somewhere to fit perfectly with the decor. Only it doesn't work that way. We humans aren't brass wall sconces. We're putty, constantly being shaped by the world around us, the Creator above and the loved ones beside us. Love is not a destination, but a process. The more we share with one another, the more we're molded, ever so gradually, into loving vessels."
-- Paul Asay, of Focus on the Family's Plugged In

12?

"We know how to do 500 people really well. But we don't know how to do 12 people really well. Jesus modeled the latter." - Gary Goodell

Miracle in Jerusalem

Worth reading when you have some quiet time during the holiday blitz...

Miracle in Jerusalem:
http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001635.cfm

7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe

Myth: We use only 10 percent of our brains.

Fact: Physicians and comedians alike, including Jerry Seinfeld, love to cite this one. It's sometimes erroneously credited to Albert Einstein. But MRI scans, PET scans and other imaging studies show no dormant areas of the brain, and even viewing individual neurons or cells reveals no inactive areas, the new paper points out. Metabolic studies of how brain cells process chemicals show no nonfunctioning areas. The myth probably originated with self-improvement hucksters in the early 1900s who wanted to convince people that they had yet not reached their full potential, Carroll figures. It also doesn't jibe with the fact that our other organs run at full tilt.

7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071221/sc_livescience/7medicalmythsevendoctorsbelieve

Quran: Book of hate

Interesting to see what's in the books of the "Religion of Peace"

The following are direct quotes from the Quran and the Hadith:

Quran 4:89: "They (infidels) desire that you should disbelieve as they
have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not
from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but
if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them,
and take not from among them a friend or a helper."

Quran 8:12: "Instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers;"

Quran 2:191: "... kill the disbelievers wherever we find them …"

Quran 22:19-22: "… for them (the unbelievers) garments of fire shall be
cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby
whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be
punished with hooked iron rods."

Quran 8:12: "Your Lord inspired the angels with the message: 'I will
terrorize the unbelievers. Therefore smite them on their necks and every
joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of
their fingers and toes.'"

Quran 8:7: "Allah wished to confirm the truth by His words: 'Wipe the
infidels out to the last.'"

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59031

All Four Stanzas

The Story Behind All Four Stanzas of the Star Spangled Banner

The Way of Suffering

. . . but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings . . . —1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way.

You say, "Oh, I can’t deal with that person." Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way.

The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people. He suffered "according to the will of God" ( 1 Peter 4:19  ), having a different point of view of suffering from ours. It is only through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us.

When it comes to suffering, it is part of our Christian culture to want to know God’s purpose beforehand. In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People have sought to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering— the way of the "long road home."

Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud.

We never realize at the time what God is putting us through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— "God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!"

Partakers of His Suffering
> From Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest