The North LOST the Civil War... it seems

I received this recycled email from a friend of mine in California which compares various aspects of the "RED" and "BLUE" States.

It occurred to me that had President Lincoln with the help of most of my grandfathers, lost the Civil War and we had become two separate nations, i.e.:  The Confederate States of America, and The United States of America, we wouldn't be having the political problems we are facing today.

The winning of that war has perpetuated the clash between the two very different cultures which through necessity established our nation -- those fundamentalist Anglican Puritans in Massachusetts now controlled by the 1st Amendment in our Constitution, and the  class conscious English manor-driven elite who settled in the Virginia colony giving rise to plantations and slavery.

Unfortunately, there is no way we could have established our independence from England in 1776 as divided colonies. The Civil War in 1861 should have resulted in the separation of those cultures rather than the mass killing of many thousands of Americans on both sides. However, that is, as they say, "Water over the damn"!

Those of us who share "Blue" politics will enjoy reading the following with a little tongue-cheek tossed in for spice:

Dear Red States:

We're ticked off at your Neanderthal attitudes and politics, and we decided we're leaving.

We in New York intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the rest of the Northeast.

We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A).

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. You get Bobby Jindal and Todd Akin.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

 We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

 We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

 We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.

 You get Alabama.

 We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.

With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven  Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

 With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US  mosquitoes [?], nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes [?],  99%  of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush  Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of 
Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory,  53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards  believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

 We're taking the good weed too. You can have that crap they grow in Mexico.

 Sincerely,

Citizen of the Enlightened States of America

Obama > Harvard Law Review, 1990 NYT

This post is not a total waste of time because I've often wondered what law reviews are, and how and why Mr. Obama was elected to be Harvard Law's first black editor who coincidentally followed their first oriental editor!

With all of the obfuscation about President Obama's birth and education and despite protests to the contrary including Obama's own two books, 'Dreams from My Father' - Crown, 1995 - and 'The Audacity of Hope' - Crown, 2005, the silliness of grand-stander, Donald Trump seems unrelenting so I've decided to post this article from the February 6, 1990 issue of The New York Times. At least Mr. Trump should not doubt the existence of this publisher! 

First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review

By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times, Published: February 06, 1990 

Correction Appended

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.
The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.

''The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress,'' Mr. Obama said today in an interview. ''It's encouraging.
''But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance,'' he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment.

What a Law Review Does
Law reviews, which are edited by students, play a double role at law schools, providing a chance for students to improve their legal research and writing, and at the same time offering judges and scholars a forum for new legal arguments. The Harvard Law Review is generally considered the most widely cited of the student law reviews.
On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: ''I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I'm fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.''
Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a ''forum for debate,'' bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.

A President's Future
The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.

Professors and students at the law school reacted cautiously to Mr. Obama's selection. ''For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,'' said Prof. Randall Kennedy, who teaches contracts and race relations law. ''But I hope it won't overwhelm this individual student's achievement.''

Change in Selection System
Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.
Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.

Blacks at Harvard: New High
Black enrollment at Harvard Law School, after a dip in the mid-1980's, has reached a record high this year, said Joyce Curll, the director of admissions. Of the 1,620 students in the three-year school, 12.5 percent this year are blacks, she said, and 14 percent of the first-year class are black. Nationwide enrollment by blacks in undergraduate colleges has dropped in recent years.

Mr. Obama succeeds Peter Yu, a first-generation Chinese-American, as president of The Law Review. After graduation, Mr. Yu plans to serve as a clerk for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Mr. Yu said Mr. Obama's election ''was a choice on the merits, but others may read something into it.''
The first female editor of The Harvard Law Review was Susan Estrich, in 1977, who recently resigned as a professor at Harvard Law School to take a similar post at the University of Southern California. Ms. Estrich was campaign manager for Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts in his campaign for the Presidency in 1988.

Correction: February 7, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final 
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the election of Barack Obama as president of the Harvard Law Review misidentified the United States court on which Patricia M. Wald is Chief Judge. It is the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, not for the Federal Circuit.

A friend from Lockheed emailed this to me....

They built them strong at Boeing. B-17 in 1943 A mid-air collision on February 1, 1943, between a B-17 and a German fighter over the Tunis dock area, became the subject of one of the most famous photographs of World War II. An enemy fighter attacking a 97th Bomb Group formation went out of control, probably with a wounded pilot then continued its crashing descent into the rear of the fuselage of a Fortress named All American, piloted by Lt. Kendrick R. Bragg, of the 414th Bomb Squadron. When it struck, the fighter broke apart, but left some pieces in the B-17. The left horizontal stabilizer of the Fortress and left elevator were completely torn away. The two right engines were out and one on the left had a serious oil pump leak. The vertical fin and the rudder had been damaged, the fuselage had been cut almost completely through connected only at two small parts of the frame and the radios, electrical and oxygen systems were damaged. There was also a hole in the top that was over 16 feet long and 4 feet wide at its widest and the split in the fuselage went all the way to the top gunners turret. Although the tail actually bounced and swayed in the wind and twisted when the plane turned and all the control cables were severed, except one single elevator cable still worked, and the aircraft still flew - miraculously! The tail gunner was trapped because there was no floor connecting the tail to the rest of the plane. The waist and tail gunners used parts of the German fighter and their own parachute harnesses in an attempt to keep the tail from ripping off and the two sides of the fuselage from splitting apart. While the crew was trying to keep the bomber from coming apart, the pilot continued on his bomb run and released his bombs over the target.  When the bomb bay doors were opened, the wind turbulence was so great that it blew one of the waist gunners into the broken tail section. It took several minutes and four crew members to pass him ropes from parachutes and haul him back into the forward part of the plane. When they tried to do the same for the tail gunner, the tail began flapping so hard that it began to break off. The weight of the gunner was adding some stability to the tail section, so he went back to his position.

Allied P-51 fighters intercepted the All American as it crossed over the Channel and took one of the pictures shown. They also radioed to the base describing that the empennage was waving like a fish tail and that the plane would not make it and to send out boats to rescue the crew when they bailed out. The fighters stayed with the Fortress taking hand signals from Lt. Bragg and relaying them to the base. Lt. Bragg signaled that 5 parachutes and the spare had been "used" so five of the crew could not bail out. He made the decision that if they could not bail out safely, then he would stay with the plane and land it.

Two and a half hours after being hit, the aircraft made its final turn to line up with the runway while it was still over 40 miles away. It descended into an emergency landing and a normal roll-out on its landing gear.  The turn back toward England had to be very slow to keep the tail from twisting off. They actually covered almost 70 miles to make the turn home. The bomber was so badly damaged that it was losing altitude and speed and was soon alone in the sky. For a brief time, two more Me-109 German fighters attacked the All American. Despite the extensive damage, all of the machine gunners were able to respond to these attacks and soon drove off the fighters. The two waist gunners stood up with their heads sticking out through the hole in the top of the fuselage to aim and fire their machine guns. The tail gunner had to shoot in short bursts because the recoil was actually causing the plane to turn. Allied P-51 fighters intercepted the All American as it crossed over the Channel and took one of the pictures shown. They also radioed to the base describing that the empennage was waving like a fish tail and that the plane would not make it and to send out boats to rescue the crew when they bailed out. The fighters stayed with the Fortress taking hand signals from Lt. Bragg and relaying them to the base. Lt. Bragg signaled that 5 parachutes and the spare had been "used" so five of the crew could not bail out. He made the decision that if they could not bail out safely, then he would stay with the plane and land it. Two and a half hours after being hit, the aircraft made its final turn to line up with the runway while it was still over 40 miles away. It descended into an emergency landing and a normal roll-out on its landing gear. When the ambulance pulled alongside, it was waved off because not a single member of the crew had been injured. No one could believe that the aircraft could still fly in such a condition. The Fortress sat placidly until the crew all exited through the door in the fuselage and the tail gunner had climbed down a ladder, at which time the entire rear section of the aircraft collapsed onto the ground. The rugged old bird had done its job

I love stories about America 's past.......pass this on to someone you know will appreciate this story.

No Moderate Party

I recently received a newspaper editorial submitted by a Mary Ross of Cambria, California. It is brief, so well written and matches my own convictions, that I'm posting it here:

"Today's moderate Republican is facing an unfortunate truth: Their party is gone. Their party has been surrounded by an unreasonable fringe that has worked its way to the center.

If you are a middle-class American, to vote Republican today is to vote against your own best interests. You will vote for lower taxes on the obscenely wealthy while you will pay more for less. You will opt for destruction of programs which keep people in your income bracket afloat: Medicare, support for education, affordable health care for everyone, women's rights, to name just a few.

You will admit to believing the propaganda fed to you by those politicians, commentators, lawmakers and lobbyists bought and paid for by the rich who wish to remain so. You will respond to the waving flags, the patriotic oratory and the religious hyperbole without ever seeing the hypocrisy behind it all.

And sadly, you will consider yourself a good citizen in support of your country." 
---- Mary Ross, Cambria, CA

Also, let me interject that Mary's thoughts probably apply to many who consider themselves to be "independent" voters, but who lack the analytical skills to separate fact from fiction and dogma.
AlG

Home this spring

Scarcely a breath of wind with the giant mills in the distance facing west and slowly revolving. It is almost 100, 98 to be exact... but it is a dry heat!... only 4% humidity, a hell of a lot cooler than Phoenix... and kinda nice if you don't move around too much... there is a breeze of soft fluffy air about you.

A cottontail bunny, braving the lowering sun has ventured out to help mow our contrived lawn which we installed several years ago to combat the idea living exclusively in a desert. ...and a mourning dove has just lit upon the plastic frog in the center of the K-mart special ceramic bird bath at the edge of the lawn. It hops down to the rim and repeatedly dunks its head into the warm water, only slightly disturbed by the red breasted house finch who decides a sip of water would be good and dips his head into the same honey bee infested waters. Neither seem concerned by the caws of a nearby crow.

It has been a beautiful spring here in the desert with the smaller cacti blossoming first with their red flowers while myriads of well-documented and listed flowers of desert weeds show off their blue, yellow, white, and orange dainty flowers to be pollinated by anything interested in their bounty. They all seem to take turns as we find the big guys like the joshuas with their large white conical clusters, and the smaller bright red clusters at the tips of the “coachwhip” ocatillo, and, of course, the white flowers which blossom much later in clusters about the top of the giant sugarros. We have only one of those who is too young to have an arm, yet.

By now, the hummingbirds have returned from South America flying up the Colorado River to visit the southwestern desert for the season. They especially love the ocatillos while they await the blooming of the Mexican birds of paradise bushes which regrow from their roots in this climate. They grow aggressively from the ground to about six feet high into large bushes which are abundantly flowered with beautiful blossoms throughout the summer season. Quite often a hummer will hover before our faces while it quizzically decides why we’re there watching it. Finally it feeds on the obviously wonderful nectar of the “BOP” and pays us no mind.

Not to forego our foreign interests, we have planted on our acre, five pine trees of different persuasions, a desert willow with its purple flowers, a weeping willow and two catalpas which are small bushy trees which thrive in arid locations and are covered with delicate whitish/purple flowers all season long. 

All in all, we have a paradise which relies on the native wonders of the desert with its many critters and birds and yet introduced a broader spectrum of plants which seem to thrive with just a bit of water.

When you add to our local splendor, the view at the base of our eight thousand foot high Hualapai mountains and can view the city of Kingman below along with the Cerbats across the valley... What better can it get?

Attrocities by American troops in Afghanistan

The latest in a series of atrocities committed by our military really has to be the end of our engagement with terrorists in Afghanistan. Far too often innocent Afghan civilians have become 'collateral victims' in our war against terrorists which is now centered on the Taliban who are Islamic fundamentalists since we effectively removed the a-qaida from Afghanistan. I might add that if we really wish to bring religious fundamentalism into this century, it might be wiser for us to start in our own country!

Our military behavior over the past ten years is certainly NOT the way to introduce a primitive peoples to the 21st century! We must stop our habitual attempts to 'nation-build'  the 3rd world! This is just another time when our military has been totally wrong in how we should defend our nation from its enemies, Vietnam being a prime example. Therefore it is time for my President and commander-in-chief, Obama, to quickly negotiate and accelerate the removal of our military from that nation. As long as we stay there, things will get worse because we have burned our bridges and have no hope, no matter how socially justified, to have any future success with that nation.

I understand that there are many social adjustments we would have liked to have performed, especially for women and girls, such as education and equality, but under the circumstances we will never be able to 'free' those people.  We blew it!  We need to leave that country as soon as possible.

Hopefully we'll be wiser next time when we decide to change the world into our image.

Bring the Troops Home

It’s time to stop the madness in Afghanistan
US News and World Report

By Michael Shank and Raúl Grijalva
(Shank is U.S. vice president at the Institute for Economics and Peace. Grijalva is a Democratic U.S.representative from Arizona.)

That the U.S. military is burning Korans and urinating on dead bodies is, without question, bad diplomacy—really bad, in fact—but it does not constitute bad military strategy, nor does it necessarily warrant a call for a more immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. We had plenty of reasons already to withdraw. This is why nearly two dozen U.S. senators and nearly 90 members of the House of Representatives are calling for an expedited withdrawal ahead of NATO’s May meeting in Chicago. This is also why a majority of Americans, according to the latest Pew poll, want troops out as soon as possible.Entering our 11th year of engagement in Afghanistan, the latest diplomatic unrest has reached a new low and has inspired thousands of Afghan employees on the U.S. payroll, working at Bagram Airfield, to protest. This is significant and unprecedented. Yet the Koran burning was only a tipping point, allowing an increasingly hot pot of frustration to finally boil over.What’s the real issue then? Simple: U.S. strategy failed in the past, is failing now, and will likely fail in the future. Consider the ways: On strategy, cost, accountability, and perception, we continue to miss the mark.

On strategy, the Pentagon has pursued new policies in two-to-three-year spurts, each time under different,equally optimistic leadership. First, immediately after the invasion, they aided and abetted warlords and corrupt officials in Afghanistan—essentially anyone who would help the U.S. agenda, no matter how much blood was on their hands. Then they tried bolstering Kabul and the central state, figuring that legal and licit state-building was wiser. Now, they’ve given that up and are experimenting with pilot projects like propping up locals with munitions and monies and calling them the Afghan Local Police, a nonofficial title. This latest strategy comes with incredible risk. Flooding villages with financial bribes and bombs is likely to backfire and create more civil war.Those arms will eventually be used against us (see similar strategy in Iraq). That attacks on U.S. troops rose substantially in recent years is a reflection of how NATO and the United States have focused their efforts.By primarily pursuing military options for the last 10 years, furthermore, we failed to assist Afghanistan’s socioeconomic security, be it better trade, more jobs, functional markets, schools with teachers, or hospitals with doctors and medicine. For a lot less money, we could have helped Afghanistan fix problems, like the fact that only27 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water and 5 percent to adequate sanitation, and that only 30percent of Afghans have access to electricity. These are devastating realities in light of the hundreds of billions of dollars America has already spent on the country.

Speaking of cost, the over $325 million we still spend every single day we remain in Afghanistan, or $120 billion yearly, makes this aforementioned socioeconomic security oversight even more appalling. Keep in mind these are monies that America does not actually have; we have to borrow it. In fact, this war is entirely debt-funded. Politicos in Washington, who are concerned about our burgeoning deficit or our rising debt ceiling, would be wise to trim here first.

On accountability, Afghanistan has become a sea of untraceable taxpayer dollars. As an example of the corruption involved and the U.S. officials getting rich off this war, take a scan of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s latest quarterly report from January: One U.S. Army sergeant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and theft of approximately $210,000 in government property, while a captain in the Army National Guard was sentenced to 15 months in prison for receiving bribes from military contractors in return for the award of Defense Department contracts during his deployment to Bagram Airfield. These are just two samples from a long report detailing U.S. fraud, waste, and abuse. No wonder the Afghan employees at Bagram are protesting. They see the U.S. corruption all around them.

On perception, the United States is about as far from winning Afghan hearts and minds as we have ever been. The U.S. military continues the night house raids and drone and air strikes, which Afghans at all levels of society vehemently protest. The only thing strategic about these raids and strikes is their ability to spark furor in the hearts and minds of Afghans. It has now led to a nationwide culture of fear: A majority of Afghans, according to the Asia Foundation’s latest poll, fear for their personal safety, hardly something for the Pentagon to write home about after a decade of war.

Going forward, what should America do besides promptly reducing its military footprint? Herein lies the answer: In the Asia Foundation’s poll, an overwhelming majority of Afghans, at 82 percent, support the government’s attempts to address the security situation through negotiation and reconciliation with the armed opposition. America’s recent support for this must continue, as it’s the only hope for political stability. If some U.S. policymakers do not want to leave Afghanistan in shambles while drawing down our military, then we suggest allocating at least one month’s worth of existing funding, or $10 billion, for one of the few national development programs that has been effective in rebuilding Afghanistan these last 10 years. This $10
billion would not only fund the National Solidarity Program and its Community Development Councils for the next decade, but also allow them to significantly scale up their laudable reconstruction and stabilization efforts.

Washington must countenance the fact that one or two or 10 more years at war won’t bring success. We’ve been at it nearly 11 years and to no avail. It is time to stop this madness and bring the troops home.

Have a Heart Warming Valentine's Day!

Special Report
The Brain Chemistry of Love
Your heart is racing and nothing else matters? Blame the storm in your head
By Courtney Rubin

Never mind that the song contends you can’t hurry love—science says you don’t actually need to. It takes all of a fifth of a second for that truly, madly, deeply feeling to register, says a report published in the October 2010 Journal of Sexual Medicine. That’s faster than your average resting heartbeat.

Given the heart’s popular role in romance, it may be a surprise that falling and being in love are actually more of a cerebral upheaval. Research into the wonders of passion has found that a concert of chemicals act on about a dozen parts of the brain all told (not to mention countless other body parts) to create that intense rush experienced as love. In fact, those neurotransmitters flood the system so fast that it appears “your brain knows before you do that you are in love,” says Stephanie Ortigue, the Syracuse University assistant psychology professor who led the study of how fast the brains of people passionately in love lighted up when presented with the names or pictures of their significant others.

The physiological process all begins with a face. “Constituting only 5 percent of your bodily surface, it carries 95 percent of your allure,” writes anthropologist David Givens in his book Love Signals. When the eyes fall upon an engaging countenance, sensory neurons fire up in the temporal lobes, located about ear level on either side of the brain. They send signals to the thalamus, bulb-shaped masses about 2½ inches long in the lower brain where sensations like sight and touch are processed. The thalamus then sends arousal and pleasure messages to the frontal lobe, the area of the brain that helps people decide on the best course of action. Testosterone and dopamine (the neurotransmitter that’s involved in making you happy) work together to cause the lovesick person to become aroused. Palms get sweaty, the heart beats faster, a blush arises as these chemicals work on various parts of the body, including the sweat glands and genitals, and blood flow increases, explains Maryanne Fisher, a psychology professor at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and author of The Chemistry of Love.

A pea-sized clump of cells located at the base of the brain lights up, too, researchers revealed in a 2005 brain-scanning study of people newly in love. That cell clump, the ventral tegmental area, is part of the brain’s reward and motivation systems, and, as the central refinery for dopamine, sends the powerful neurotransmitter “to higher regions, creating craving, motivation, goal-oriented behavior, and ecstasy,” says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University who conducted the MRI scans of people in early-stage romantic love. It’s a bit harder to suss out “why Jack as opposed to Joe,” she adds. “That’s a metaphysical question.” Meanwhile, surging norepinephrine and dopamine induce euphoria. Norepinephrine is a stimulant, which explains “why you might notice that the sky looks brighter, or music is louder, or basically that the world seems more alive,” says Fisher.

The whole love cocktail, which also includes oxytocin, adrenaline, and vasopressin, essentially triggers several of the same systems that are activated when a person takes cocaine, says Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University in New York, who has studied love. (Indeed, a 2000 study using functional magnetic resonance imaging at University College London showed that love activates the same areas of the brain as drug abuse.) Oxytocin, the cuddling chemical, is love’s superglue (it bonds mothers to their infants), adrenaline is responsible for racing hearts and restlessness, and vasopressin raises blood pressure. Vasopressin also might encourage bonding tendencies in men. In male voles, at least, it created urges for bonding and nesting when injected and when naturally activated by sex.

One key structure operating during this initial thrill of love is the nucleus accumbens, a knot of neurons in the forebrain that is part of the body’s reward system. Sex, a good dose of chocolate, and a hit of cocaine are all the sort of pleasurable trigger linked with an increase in dopamine in this region (and it’s been studied for its role in addictions). Next, the love signals jolt the two shrimp-sized caudate nuclei near the center of the brain that house 80 percent of all brain receptors for dopamine. When the caudate is flooded with dopamine, it sends signals calling out for more. “The more dopamine you get, the more of a high you feel,”says Lucy Brown, a professor in the department of neurology and neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. As the reward system of the brain kicks into high gear, “anything that the object of one’s lust does, like their touch, or even a thought of them,” causes that intense reaction, says Fisher. Signs that this is happening include a focused attention, tons of energy, mania, elation, and “needing, craving more,” she says. At the same time, the dopamine deluge lowers serotonin levels by up to 40 percent. It’s serotonin that’s in the driver’s seat when it comes to regulating impulses, unruly passions, and obsessive behavior, and a reduction can enhance the feeling of being out of control. Lowered serotonin levels, which also occur in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, “may explain why we concentrate on little other than our partner during the early stages of a relationship,” says Domeena Renshaw, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

While all this neuronal firing is going on, the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex—the worry and caution centers—practically go into hibernation. So negative emotion is dulled, as is critical judgment. Says Brown: “When you’re in a relationship, you’re aware of the other person’s flaws, but your brain is telling you it’s OK to ignore them.” In other words, science is now revealing that centuries of poets have had it right: Love is blind.

Buy your copy of Secrets of Your Brain today! www.usnews.com/amazon.

The New Hampshire Republican Debate

Did any of you watch the all-men's choir last night? Not that Michele would have made any difference.

Actually, of all of the debates I've watched (or were available for me to watch on the tube), this was the most informative and, to me, definitive.

Of course, a disclaimer is warranted here that in no way would I ever vote for a Republican who espouses the fundamentals that the party now represents. Let me say that there were, in the past, some reasonably good Republicans, starting with Lincoln and probably ending with Teddy Roosevelt. And, of course, there was General Ike who did a yeoman job on our nation's infrastructure (he'd have been shot down by today's congress). And I even liked a lot of Nixon without really liking him, if you know what I mean. His policies were better internationally than locally.

But then along came a former Democrat from Hollywood's "B" movies who ventured into California politics, became governor and quickly put the state's crazies out onto the streets by closing down the mental institutions in order to save money. With the notoriety of his fiscal austerity, he was then elected president of the United States at the expense of our most humanitarian and perhaps wisest president, Jimmy Carter. As president, he escalated the 'cold-war', proclaimed all sorts of 'star-wars' types of weapons which were not technically possible, against the evil empires of this planet!  He exploded our national debt, but at the same time bankrupt the USSR who tried to keep up and justifiably went broke! His memorable battle cry in Berlin was "Take down that wall!" which sounds good, except that enemy had already been defeated economically because they didn't have Visa credit.

And, of course, the voice of the people also produced a new economic method which would ensure stability of our nation's economy.... the "trickle-down-theory" or "Reaganomics". It turned out to be a disaster and even the economist who wrote the book which had become the Republican Bible recanted his own works! ....and when his Vice President ran for office, he rightly called the theory, "Voodoo Economics"! The first George Bush was surprisingly not a bad president!... much better than his predecessor.... and much, much better than his son who really screwed things up! We won't list his screwups here.

So now we have a Republican party still clinging onto the defunct "Reaganomics" while thumping the Bibles of their Southern "born again", pro-Israeli, yet racial bigotry, trying valiantly to rouse the American people to their cause which is their election back into power.

Now, if you haven't already gone to sleep, lets return to the debate:
The structure of the debate was refreshingly relaxed so that those who had something to say could say their 'thing', or even avoid the posed question without penalty.

Aside from the expected attacks on Obama and the conduct of his presidency and "how any one of them could be a better President", I was shocked to learn that aside from Huntsman and Paul, the candidates for President were ready to not only send troops back to Iraq to shore up that regime, but to rattle our swords at Iran and Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia which has its faults, but is at least an ally.  I suspect that they simply don't like Muslims!

Huntsman was certainly the most cautious concerning alienating the rest of the world through a grandiose display of American military superiority the others seemed to swarm to.  Of course Paul, wisely, thought we should stay home and mind our own business and balance our budget. And in this, he's right, the others would have us in a new war in no time!

Of course, Romney, Gingrich and Santorum were different in their approaches to the questions, but the most talkative and perhaps the most dangerous of the three was Santorum who is an unabashed bigot with righteous  fervor whether it be race, sex or class.

The New Hampshire primary should be interesting in our quest to find out who our President will be up against. I think that Santorum would be an easy win for Obama. Romney, the perceived candidate would be difficult because of his mercurial style, in other words his pragmatic adaptability. I don't think Gingrich, although very clever, will survive.






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