Mr. Obama, You Disappoint Me Big Time

I am absolutely appalled that our President is following through on his threat to bulk up our force in Afghanistan.

After all that wonderful campaign charisma, I find him reduced to being yet another desperately-insecure male grabbing for the"war president" moniker. How pathetic.

I can't help but perceive this as sheer cowardice, his highness afraid of being called a wimp by the bigots on the right (not to mention that he has never so far made any attempt to show any distance from the military-industrial complex DDE warned us about and which seems to actually be in charge of our country these days).

And, of course, he has been every bit as pitiful when it comes to standing up for actual health care reform. Yes, we are closer to some sort of change than was ever the case when Bill was the boss, but this seems pretty thin gruel given the consistently cowardly behavior of the democratic congresswimps. I give our President a C- for having made health care reform such a priority that we may actually get some pathetically watered-down change.

But can you think of a single instance where this president has actually forsworn the egregious over-reaching executive branch powers fomented by that war-crime-fomenting friend-shooting asshole Cheney? The truly criminal behavior of the last administration has lowered the bar so much that our once-golden new administration does not seem to feel they have to bother to behave themselves.

Mr. Obama, I am extremely disappointed. To put it mildly. I doubt you will have a second term, given your cowardly, ineffective attempts to schmooze with those bigots across the aisle. Any more of this crap and you won't even have my vote.

"We May Be Born With an Urge to Help "

That's the headline on an intriguing NYT article.

I can't resist pointing out that, with the help of Beck and Limbaugh, et al, at least many on the right seem to have been readily able to sink far below those "tawdry" socialist urges. They will no doubt pick up on the clues even in this first passage as to this new sham being promulgated on the American People. Can you pick up on them, too?

What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.

But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human.

The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help.

When infants 18 months old see an unrelated adult whose hands are full and who needs assistance opening a door or picking up a dropped clothespin, they will immediately help, Michael Tomasello writes in “Why We Cooperate,” a book published in October. Dr. Tomasello, a developmental psychologist, is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior.

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OK, what did you notice there? Your pattern-matching filter might have picked up on "evolutionary" and "teaching," not to mention several of those disturbing and confusing terms ending in "ist," which suggest that those nasty scientists had a hand in this - and you should have also caught several other clues to the plot here. With that sort of subversive influence on these youngsters it will be a miracle if they can avoid turning out to be humanists, counselors, or, deity-forbid, peace-advocates. Luckily, I suspect we have plenty of beck cultists currently home-"schooling" their children in a fashion that will produce plenty more war-mongering sadists.

If children are naturally helpful and sociable, what system of child-rearing best takes advantage of this surprising propensity? Dr. Tomasello says that the approach known as inductive parenting works best because it reinforces the child’s natural propensity to cooperate with others. Inductive parenting is simply communicating with children about the effect of their actions on others and emphasizing the logic of social cooperation.

“Children are altruistic by nature,” he writes, and though they are also naturally selfish, all parents need do is try to tip the balance toward social behavior.

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Those scientists are destroying our children!