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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A Quest to Cultivate Jobs and Citizenship By Kira Zalan

The Occupy movement says big government is in bed with big business. But House Democratic Senior Whip Mike Honda [Japanese-American], who represents California’s Silicon Valley, says he advocates for the 99 percent. The six-term representative from the Golden State’s 15th District serves on the House Appropriations and Budget committees, is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and chairman emeritus of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. He recently spoke with U.S. News about his education bill, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States, and standing up for Muslim-Americans. Excerpts:

Are there jobs open in the Silicon Valley?
Oh yeah, lots of jobs. There are probably a couple of thousand at least. I talked to Oracle and they said they had something like 1,500 jobs globally, and a good part of that was located right in the Silicon Valley.

Can these positions be filled?
The kind of jobs we have available require more training and education.

Are the needs of the high-tech job market not being met?
There’s two things. One is how we view education, and that’s why the bill I’m pushing out there addresses making sure that our youngsters get exposed to science, technology, engineering, math [STEM] issues and processes. Two, the immigration system is so screwed up right now. Ever since 9/11 we have stopped inflows of graduate students, scholars, professors from other countries. People who wanted to go to our graduate schools are now opting to go to other countries.

What is the purpose of the STEM bill?
To produce youngsters who are STEM-ready, to start in pre-kindergarten and make sure that every child has an opportunity to understand that science and technology happens every day in our homes. When you freeze water or you boil eggs, you’re doing chemistry. When kids fix their cars, they’re doing physics, putting cars on bricks rather than using jacks. You’re doing science all the time and [kids] start to readjust their understanding of what they do on a daily basis, and all of a sudden science is not a mystery anymore, and that’s the key for STEM. 

You have authored several federal education proposals. Meanwhile, some members of the Tea Party have advocated to shut down the Department of Education.
Of course they want to, because they don’t want an electorate that’s going to think, that’s going to be able to be more critical.

Is the Department of Education functioning the way that it should?
You know, [Jimmy] Carter started the Education Department because our society had reached a point where we needed to look at our public school system in a comprehensive way. We had achieved a society that’s able to communicate in real time across this country and yet we’re not achieving the equity that we need for each child. And now because it’s not been as successful, the Tea Party people want to give it up rather than achieve that dream that each child will have the right and exposure to equal opportunity education. And that should be our goal.

Is there a future for manufacturing in America?
Our companies started looking overseas to get cheaper labor and thinking that cheaper labor will give us cheaper products, and we can export our jobs overseas and then import the products. OK, that was a start, but also our country did not make [the business] environment the most productive and the most friendly because we were concerned about the environment and all that stuff. Well, we’re at a point where we understand all these things and so we can make it more streamlined.

How would you bring manufacturing back?
We can encourage manufacturers to stay in this country by providing tax credits for those companies that want to build their products here. And if we give them the proper incentives, they will stay here. If we make the environment in this country more amenable for manufacturers, then we should be able to do that.

Is this a realistic goal in an innovation-focused economy?
What Steve Jobs had done, and he’s a good example of keeping the innovation here, he created the iPod, then next came the iPhone, then next came the iPad. So he kept the innovation here, but the production of these things went overseas. So what would happen if we kept it all here—the innovation, the product development, and the manufacturing? If we kept it all here, then we’d have more jobs created here and we’d become more globally competitive.

How did the Congressional Progressive Caucus come up with the People’s Budget?
We went out and gathered information from all these viable polls that people took and we looked at it and we started hammering together a budget that was reflective of the needs of the people. Because a budget is a product and reflection of our values, and so those values are the motivation for putting the People’s Budget together. And so we put together our own budget and said this is a product that’s based upon the response of people.

Does it address entitlement programs?
We’re not going to minimize, we’re not going to voucherize, we’re not going to privatize the three things that people really don’t want to see touched. We don’t want to minimize, but strengthen Medicaid. We don’t want to voucherize Medicare, we want to build it up and make it stronger. And we don’t want to privatize Social Security. Those things remain intact because they are a contract between the people and its government.

Why is President Obama’s jobs bill stalled?
The Republican leadership don’t want him to succeed. That’s a quote from [GOP] Sen. [Mitch] McConnell. He says our goal is to make sure that President Obama is not successful. Well, if you have that in mind as the motivation, then people in this country are not part of their motivation. Their job is to make sure there’s a barrier and obstruction to what is good for this country. So everything that’s coming out of the Senate under their leadership, we can expect that it’s not going to be good. Because whatever’s good for the country is good for the president’s reputation, and something they therefore don’t want to support.

You’ve recently called attention to the congressional hearings on Muslim-American radicalization. Why?
The Japanese-Americans in 1942 were vilified because of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. We became targets and they looked at us as enemy aliens. And they wouldn’t let  us be in the military and they called us the enemy within. Now this is the same thing that [Rep.] Peter King is espousing through his use of this office and inciting fear, hysteria, and mistrust towards people who are different. A commission in 1986 said the reason why the Japanese-Americans were incarcerated was because of racial discrimination, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership. And I’ll be damned if this happens under my watch.

Any advice for the 99 percent?
The people have to go to the polls to really exercise their franchise. Every citizen has that responsibility to make sure that they cast their vote, and their voice is going to be the conscience of this country.

  U.S.NEWS WEEKLY | December 16, 2011

Christmas and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

With the Christmas season upon us, I, of course, watched the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Choir on PBS tonight! As usual they were wonderful.... but, actually I have seen greater performances from them in earlier years. So guess you can’t win ‘em all. But even so, there is no other spectacular as spectacular as they! They are as perfect and as in unison as the cells in our bodies or as in the rest of nature.

I’m a Humanist. I know for certain that there is not a God as most religions envision. There is no creator nor more importantly, one who “watches down upon us” nor “cares for us”.  ....sadly, nor is there a place for us after we die.

Yet.... there is a spirit, not terribly mystical, but which does bind us together as humans. It is simply us. Yes, us! Even as other animals herd do we, especially in times of trouble. We really are very little different.

We can read a book, see a play, watch a movie... and we respond as the book, play or movie touches our memories or feelings and aspirations... and we laugh, get angry or cry depending upon the story. We are all very much alike, you see.  Yes I cry when the program says to.

So at Christmas time, the time of the winter solstace, when the nights are the darkest and the sun’s warming has ebbed, we humans band together not only for warmth, but for the light and sounds of our joy of new year and the reassurance of our survival.

The Mormon Tabernacle choir fills that need more than any other single effort for joy in humanities’s darkest hours. I love watching the show every year!

Try to have a merry Christmas, everyone and may your next year be better than the last!

The Animal In Us

A new model of empathy: the RAT
By David Brown, Published: December 8
My comments:  [opinion]

At the very least, the new experiment reported in Science is going to make people think differently about what it means to be a “rat.” Eventually, though, it may tell us interesting things about what it means to be a human being.  [primarily that we're not that different]

In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.  [the thing that is surprising is that the rat could figure out how to free the other rat - not that it actually wanted to]

The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat.  [if we accidentally step on the tail of one of our cats.... all of the others are very concerned]

The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.

“There is nothing in it for them except for whatever feeling they get from helping another individual,” said Peggy Mason, the neurobiologist who conducted the experiment along with graduate student Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal and fellow researcher Jean Decety.

“There is a common misconception that sharing and helping is a cultural occurrence. But this is not a cultural event. It is part of our biological inheritance,” she added.  [I think that we would actually find that our 'culture' would and does harden us to uncontrolled empathy very often... hence wars and casualties]

The idea that animals have emotional lives and are capable of detecting emotions in others has been gaining ground for decades. Empathic behavior has been observed in apes and monkeys, and described by many pet owners (especially dog owners). Recently, scientists demonstrated “emotional contagion” in mice, a situation in which one animal’s stress worsens another’s.

But empathy that leads to helping activity — what psychologists term “pro-social behavior” — hasn’t been formally shown in non-primates until now.

If this experiment reported Thursday holds up under scrutiny, it will give neuroscientists a method to study empathy and altruism in a rigorous way.

Do age and gender affect empathic behavior? Will a rat free a rat it doesn’t know? Is more help offered to individuals an animal is related to, either directly or as a member of the same genetic tribe? What are the genes, and their variants, that determine whether one animal helps another and how much? Answering those questions becomes possible now that there is an animal “model” for this behavior.

“The study is truly groundbreaking,” said Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University who has written extensively about empathy. What is particularly interesting, he said, is there appears to be no clear cost benefit trade-off going on.  [in other words, rats aren't capitalists!  ....what else is new?]

“We are entering a distinctly psychological realm of emotions and reactions to the emotions of others, which is where most human altruism finds its motivation.”

Jeffrey S. Mogil, the McGill University neuroscientist who showed emotional contagion in mice in 2006, said that “what is amazing about this is that it shows empathy in such a robust way. This is not something that rats would otherwise be doing.”  [really?]

A major question that needs to be answered next is whether the free rat liberates the captive one to relieve its own stress or the stress of the other animal.

“It’s more likely to be the former,” Mogil said. “But even if it is the former, I’m not sure that’s so different from humans.”  [We usually call that "guilt"]

In the new experiment, the pairs of rats were put in the experimental condition for an hour a day for 12 days. (They had previously spent two weeks together in a cage and knew each other.) The rat opened the door to the trapped rat’s cage by chance the first time, usually freezing in fright when it fell over noisily. In an average of seven days, however, it had learned to open the door intentionally and was no longer spooked when the door fell over.

In 13 percent of the sessions, the trapped animal gave an alarm call, but vocalized distress was clearly not necessary to put the free rat to work. When the cage was empty or occupied by a rat doll, the free rat sometimes opened it, but over the course of days lost interest in doing so.

After liberation, the rats nuzzled and explored the experimental arena. But when the setup was changed so that the captive exited into a different area, the free rat still opened the door for the captive one.

When a cage with five chocolate chips was added to the arena, the free rat opened it, too. That animal consumed all the treats if the other cage was empty. But if it contained a captive rat, the free rat shared the chocolate about half the time, letting its compatriot have 11 / 2 pieces on average.

“To actually share food — this is a big deal to a rat,” Mason said. “I didn’t think they would do that.”  [Capitalist!]

Mason sees two processes at work. The first is one animal’s ability to identify and share another animal’s stress. But equally important is the ability to control the “acquired” stress and keep from becoming overwhelmed. But that was something not every rat could do. All six female rats in the experiment learned to open the captive’s cage, but seven of 26 males never did.  [guys never cry]

“I don’t think it’s because they didn’t have empathy. I don’t think they had the ability to down-regulate their own stress and act on the empathy,” she said.

Mason thinks that empathy and altruism evolved with females caring for helpless offspring. Natural selection favored those maternal traits, which then became generalized to both sexes. They helped forge social bonds that aided the survival of individuals and groups. She suspects the behavior is “sub-cortical” — closer to a reflex than a thought, and driven by ancient parts of the brain. De Waal, who in 2009 wrote a book called “The Age of Empathy” whose cover featured a chimpanzee shaking hands with a man, agrees up to a point.  [Most of us function day-to-dat using only the ancient parts of our brains... yes, we can think on higher planes, but only when necessary or for entertainment]

“It is an intelligent response, but the motivation is, as in humans, an empathic process that is fairly automatic,” he said.  [as I said before, it feels like guilt]

Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Washington State University who wrote an accompanying commentary in the journal, said that many people still doubt that animals have emotional lives that can be studied.  [I feel sorry for them never having had animals for friends... even best friends]

“Some skeptics are bound to say that this interpretation is a bit far-fetched,” he said in an interview. “What this provides is reasonably good evidence for empathy, and a model system to study the underlying processes further.”

A Peaceful Revolution

I would really hate to see my nation involved in any form of armed rebellion. It was necessary for us to become independent from the British Empire but I think we were unwise not to allow the Confederate States to secede from the United States if they so wished... I think they had the right and the societal differences between the North and the South were very great! So now I worry that there is much too much power in the hands of those who promote the idea of unfettered Capitalism... otherwise known as pure Greed... where the few gain at the expense of the many.

Fortunately, I don't think this will come to military action where as in our Civil War, families were split apart depending upon which side mirrored their beliefs. There is the peaceful power of passive resistance exercised by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and for example the demonstrators in Egypt, which simply, through discipline and numbers, allowed justice to prevail!

I think the hope for our present economic crisis can be settled by the Occupy movement which is gradually maturing and learning to walk and speak. Eventually, I think it will prevail and I hope our president is wise enough to support the effort. I found the following very enlightening piece posted on Yahoo News: 
 
Yahoo News:
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?
"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."
Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share."
Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do's and don'ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement.
1. Don't say 'capitalism.'
"I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."
2. Don't say that the government 'taxes the rich.' Instead, tell them that the government 'takes from the rich.'
"If you talk about raising taxes on the rich," the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But  "if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes."
3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the 'middle class.' Call them 'hardworking taxpayers.'

"They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the 'middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending 'hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage."

4. Don't talk about 'jobs.' Talk about 'careers.'
"Everyone in this room talks about 'jobs,'" Luntz said. "Watch this."
He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a "job." Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a "career." Almost every hand was raised.
"So why are we talking about jobs?"
5. Don't say 'government spending.' Call it 'waste.'
"It's not about 'government spending.' It's about 'waste.' That's what makes people angry."
6. Don't ever say you're willing to 'compromise.'
"If you talk about 'compromise,' they'll say you're selling out. Your side doesn't want you to 'compromise.' What you use in that to replace it with is 'cooperation.' It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you're selling out those principles."
7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: 'I get it.'
"First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system."
Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.
8. Out: 'Entrepreneur.' In: 'Job creator.'

Use the phrases "small business owners" and "job creators" instead of "entrepreneurs" and "innovators."
9. Don't ever ask anyone to 'sacrifice.'
"There isn't an American today in November of 2011 who doesn't think they've already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to 'sacrifice,' they're going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how 'we're all in this together.' We either succeed together or we fail together."
10. Always blame Washington.
Tell them, "You shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it's the policies over the past few years that have created this problem."
BONUS:
Don't say 'bonus!'
Luntz advised that if they give their employees an income boost during the holiday season, they should never refer to it as a "bonus."

"If you give out a bonus at a time of financial hardship, you're going to make people angry. It's 'pay for performance.'"

The South and Religious Tolerance?

I've had for many years, a jaded view of Southerners, their culture, and especially their intolerance of racial and religious differences. So I was very surprised in reading my "This Day in U.S. Military History" calender for November 21, 1861 about Judah Benjamin.

Judah was a Sephardic Jew from South Carolina.  As a young man he moved to a Jewish community in New Orleans.... and married the daughter of a wealthy Catholic family!

Benjamin practiced law, bought a sugar plantation near New Orleans, and became a representative in the Louisiana state legislature in 1842.  In 1852 he was elected to the U.S. Senate where he became a close friend to Jefferson Davis from Mississippi!

After the South's secession from the U.S., Davis selected Benjamin to be the Confederacy's first Attorney General and was Davis' most trusted adviser. After the disastrous battle at Bull Run the then Secretary of War, Leroy Walker resigned and Davis appointed Benjamin to that post despite his having no military experience! By so doing, President Davis was able to dominate the Confederate military.

In our present day of investigative reporting, the Internet, and TV news which is forced to keep on talking when there is nothing left to say, I'm not certain that such a relationship between Jew and Gentile could take place in the South considering that even a "Christian" and a Mormon can't find common ground.... but who knows?  Perhaps the South will bend once more in the style of Benjamin/Davis in view of their impending Armageddon which is just after the 2012 elections.

Immigration -- Illegal, of course....

As a relatively independent observer of American politics and immigration policies in that I am certainly as American as anyone else in this nation and I'm not personally affected by how many immigrants, legal or otherwise, this nation has, I feel quite free to express my unbiased opinion on this subject. I should mention that my ancestors were here well over one hundred years before the United States became a nation since they arrived here in the mid 1600's when we were yet an English colony.  

Over the couple of centuries our nation has existed, there have been many influxes of immigrants, legal and otherwise to help create the nation we now have. Peoples from all over the world, blacks from Africa, usually against their will, Chinese who helped build our western railroads, Germans and Russian Jews, and many other peoples, especially the Irish in the 1850's  who were starving after they lost their potato crops in Ireland and the English didn't attempt to help them. And then there were the indigenous folks called Indians who were incessantly forced at gun point west by American settlers who proclaimed that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian"! I heard this as a child in Montana where I lived across the river from a reservation, so we're not talking about ancient history!

We fought wars with Spain and then with Mexico to gain even more land, and even [reluctantly after three refusals] allowed the nation of Texas to join our confederacy of states. But we had nothing but disdain and contempt for the Indians of those lands we had acquired.

So when they cross the Mexican border because they are so impoverished in Mexico, despite their willingness to work hard at very menial jobs, we call them 'illegal immigrants' regardless of the fact that these lands which we stole from them were originally their homelands!

So, of course, we can pass all sorts of laws which justify their illegality, but we can't do so without proving to ourselves and the rest of the world that we are a merciless, greedy people who are only interested in our own welfare at everyone else's expense! ....after all, we are Americans and are certainly better than anyone else!  I'm sure the folks in Rome thought the same as they put Christians in the ring with the lions.

So, finally, there was this article in US News and World Report which prompted my reflections above.

A Divided Country
By Kira Zalan  [US News and World Report,  10-28-11]

For the second year in a row, a record number of illegal immigrants, nearly 400,000, have been deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Obama administration credits the expansion of its Secure Communities program, a law enforcement information-sharing tool. The Warren Institute at the University of California–Berkeley School of Law used government data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to analyze recent immigration enforcement statistics. The report’s lead author and director of immigration policy at the Warren Institute, Aarti Kohli, recently spoke with U.S. News about its findings, which include evidence of racial profiling, lack of due process in deportations, and the social implications of these trends.

What was the catalyst for this report?
Immigration enforcement programs in the interior of the United States have increased exponentially in the past decade. And we feel like these programs are understudied. There’s very little academic research on how they work, what the impacts are.

What did you find?
One of the most disturbing findings was that U.S. citizens were being arrested under the [Secure Communities] program. Approximately 3,600 U.S. citizens have been apprehended by ICE. We also found that almost 40 percent of the people identified for deportation programs have a U.S. citizen family member, either a spouse or a child.

Why is that important?
This is a really disturbing finding. Anecdotally, you hear a lot about family separations. I think for society at large it’s important to understand what are the future consequences of having these divided families. You report that a majority of those deported don’t have access to counsel. Is that legal? It is legal and what we call into question is not the legality of it but whether that comports with our system of justice and fairness. It’s very problematic that these people are being deported without due process of law.

Did you find evidence of racial profiling?
What we found was that Latinos are highly overrepresented in our samples. There have been other community groups who have raised this issue that perhaps some police are engaging in pretextual arrests because they know, once I get this person to the jail there will be an immigration check. So if an officer is interested in engaging in racial profiling, or targeting “illegals,” then this is a tool for that person.

What’s the problem with racial profiling?
We have more than 40 million lawfully residing Latinos in this country and they have dispersed demographically So you have new communities who have been exposed to a lot of rhetoric about immigration but may not understand all the realities and that a fair number of Latinos are actually lawfully residing here.

Is immigration politicized?
The reality is we have approximately 11 million undocumented people living in this country. Eighty percent of these people entered before the year 2000. Undocumented immigrants are an easy population for some politicians to demonize, but the reality is many of them have been and continue to be members of our society and have roots here.

Does this affect President Obama’s popularity among Latino voters?
I think the high number of deportations and this targeting of individuals at the local level is a real issue for the Latino community. There are a lot of questions about this strategy and its efficacy. So I think it’s a real issue for the administration.