Oregon Against USA Patriot Act

The Oregon State Senate has passed Senate Joint Memorial 7 which calls for limits and changes to the USA Patriot Act. If the House passes the resolution Oregon will join Vermont, Alaska and Hawaii in expressing our concern about the USA Patriot Act. The bill specifically calls for support of US Senate Bill 1552.

Please urge your state representative to support Senate Joint Memorial 7.

News Story : http://www.dailytidings.com/2003/news0826/082603n3.shtml

SJM7 text : http://www.leg.state.or.us/03reg/measures/sjm1.dir/sjm0007.intro.html

SB1552 text : http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.1552:

Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1017546,00.html

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The study is available at

http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/Jost/_private/Political_Conservatism_as_Motivated_Social_Cognition.pdf

Fair and Balanced

Tom Tomorrow and Atrios have renamed their websites "Fair and Balanced" in honor of Al Franken's book and Fox News' wonderful publicity stunt. Remember when Harper's pulled "Stupid White Men" and threatened to shred the 50k copies that were printed. Well the publicity of that stupidity shot the book to Amazon and NYTimes #1 position for *months*. And now with Fox's help, Franken's book
"Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" will be widely read and the last laugh will be ours.

The Undemocracy of the Pentagon

The Undemocracy of the Pentagon

Is it any surprise that an organization armed with money, guns, missiles, ships, bombs and self-righteousness, would invade a defenseless country and bring chaos, murder and mayhem. Is it any surprise that world leaders would lie about the reasons, lie about the expenses and trick a majority of the world population into compliance and acceptance. Is it really surprising that once the invasion completes that the soldiers behave like judge, jury and executioner, haplessly murdering criminals in the streets, in their homes and with out regard for innocent bystanders. Are we surprised that Iraq is looking more and more like Palestine? Are we the people who fund and allow this atrocity of justice to occur in our name?

The Pentagon acts as if they are above the laws of this country, above the laws of the UN, above the laws of the international community. Above the Constitution of the United States, and moreover above the principals which creates our country.

It is preposterous to watch the news and accept the behavior of US soldiers in Iraq as they hand out their brand of justice by bullet while the citizenry and media sits idle and allows it to happen. We did not bring democracy to Iraq - we bring murder and mayhem.