Shocking Revelation: Politicians Share Same Personality Traits As Serial Killers!!!

This was sent to me by Mary Swoboda of Crazy Politics. All things considered, I'm not exactly sure what to think about it, but thought it was worth sharing.

Violent homicide aside, politicians often show many of the exact same character traits as criminal psychopaths, according to Jim Kouri in a recent Seattle Examiner article.

Criminals are psychologically capable of committing their crimes without any concern for social, moral or legal consequences and with absolutely no remorse. "This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want," Kouri wrote. "Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders."

THIS IS PRICELESS! We vote for 'em, pay their salaries and perks and trust them to spend our money wisely... Who are the fools?

Politicians exhibit traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others. These traits, according to Kouri, are common to psychopathic serial killers. "While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government."

This causes me to wonder... Will Janet Napolitano show the same exuberance profiling and marginalizing career serial politicians as she did radical "right-wingers?" Her job will be made easier if this report on mind reading is true. Within the next 3-5 years the ability to know what we common folk are thinking will be in hands of our "big brother" government. Then the Homeland Security czar will just have our minds scanned to determine if we are a threat to the "Obama Nation," then administer the appropriate "treatment."

You know what? I think I'll pop some popcorn, grab a beer and watch Minority Report, followed by Conspiracy Theory.

A Couple of Points To Ponder

"The Second Amendment guarantees the First"

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
— Winston Churchill

Are “Conservatives” Single-Largest Ideological Group?

This came across the Editor's Desk and I thought it might make for some insightful reading

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

Percentage of “liberals” higher this decade than in early ’90s

By Lydia Saad
Thus far in 2009, 40 percent of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 21 percent as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21 percent calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

These annual figures are based on multiple national Gallup surveys conducted each year, in some cases encompassing more than 40,000 interviews. The 2009 data are based on 10 separate surveys conducted from January through May. Thus, the margins of error around each year's figures are quite small, and changes of only two percentage points are statistically significant.

To measure political ideology, Gallup asks Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. As has been the case each year since 1992, very few Americans define themselves at the extremes of the political spectrum. Just 9% call themselves "very conservative" and 5 percent "very liberal." The vast majority of self-described liberals and conservatives identify with the unmodified form of their chosen label.

Party-Based Ideology
There is an important distinction in the respective ideological compositions of the Republican and Democratic Parties. While a solid majority of Republicans are on the same page — 73 percent call themselves conservative — Democrats are more of a mixture. The major division among Democrats is between self-defined moderates (40 percent) and liberals (38 percent). However, an additional 22 percent of Democrats consider themselves conservative, much higher than the 3 percent of Republicans identifying as liberal.

True to their nonpartisan tendencies, close to half of political independents — 45 percent — describe their political views as "moderate." Among the rest, the balance of views is tilted more heavily to the right than to the left: 34 percent are conservative, while 20 percent are liberal.

Gallup trends show a slight increase since 2008 in the percentages of all three party groups calling themselves "conservative," which accounts for the three percentage-point increase among the public at large.

Thus far in 2009, Gallup has found an average of 36 percent of Americans considering themselves Democratic, 28 percent Republican, and 37 percent independent. When independents are pressed to say which party they lean toward, 51 percent of Americans identify as Democrats, 39 percent as Republicans, and only 9 percent as pure independents.

Ideological tendencies by leaned party affiliation are very similar to those of straight partisan groups. However, it is worth noting the views of pure independents — a group usually too small to analyze in individual surveys but potentially important in deciding elections. Exactly half of pure independents describe their views as moderate, 30 percent say they are conservative, and 17 percent liberal.

As reported last week on Gallup.com, women are more likely than men to be Democratic in their political orientation. Along the same lines, women are more likely than men to be ideologically "moderate" and "liberal," and less likely to be "conservative."

Still, conservatism outweighs liberalism among both genders.

The pattern is strikingly different on the basis of age, and this could have important political implications in the years ahead. Whereas middle-aged and older Americans lean conservative (vs. liberal) in their politics by at least 2 to 1, adults aged 18 to 29 are just as likely to say their political views are liberal (31 percent) as to say they are conservative (30 percent).

Future Gallup analysis will look at the changes in the political ideology of different age cohorts over time, to see whether young adults in the past have started out more liberal than they wound up in their later years.

Bottom Line
Although the terms may mean different things to different people, Americans readily peg themselves, politically, into one of five categories along the conservative-to-liberal spectrum. At present, large minorities describe their views as either moderate or conservative — with conservatives the larger group — whereas only about one in five consider themselves liberal.

While these figures have shown little change over the past decade, the nation appears to be slightly more polarized than it was in the early 1990s. Compared with the 1992-1994 period, the percentage of moderates has declined from 42 percent to 35 percent, while the percentages of conservatives and liberals are up slightly — from 38 percent to 40 percent for conservatives and a larger 17 percent to 21 percent movement for liberals.

Survey Methods
Results are based on aggregated Gallup Poll surveys of approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, interviewed by telephone. Sample sizes for the annual compilations range from approximately 10,000 to approximately 40,000. For these results, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/Conservatives-Single-Largest-Ideological-Group.aspx

A Salute To Flag Day

If you like Robin Williams and you love America, you'll love this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_L1vLv84vs

Thoughts On The Bankruptcy of GM

Being a car guy, I read with some interest the Seattle Times story on the Bankruptcy of General Motors. What I found especially disturbing were the reader comments, and what passes for intelligent commentary. The distainful and polarizing disrespect for opinion seems to be universal, as any reader of the Kitsap Sun blogs already knows.

The obvious fiscal conservatives commenting on this story were quick to focus on President Obama's total inexperience in business, and condem his willingness to take over a major American industrial corporation to further his eco-focused political agenda — as well as bail out the UAW.

The liberals had a field day vilifying their favorite object of scorn, George W. Bush, while going as far back as Ronald Reagan, and blaming him for GM's problems.

In my view, GM has been in a downward spiral since the 1970's — before Toyota, Honda and Nissan began kicking its ass by building cars that were dependable, stylish, and functional, with fit and finish that didn't chip the paint when you closed the door, hood, or trunk, while arguing with customers who complained about such problems. It didn't have anything to do with Bush or Reagan, but everything to do with what the UAW and GM jointly termed "acceptable quality" back in that era. After re-reading the Times posts a couple of times, I came to the conclusion that perhaps many of the posters aren't old enough to have actually experienced any of that, and are simply regurgitating the anti-Republican sentiment their parents indoctrinated them with.

Another poster went on at some length in several posts stating that GM could have solved all its financial problems simply by building eco-friendly hybrid cars, instead of gas-guzzlers. Obviously, he or she is clueless about the law of supply and demand. If gas guzzlers didn't sell in huge numbers, building them wouldn't be profitable. The bottom line is, hybrids don't sell in sufficient enough numbers for an auto manufacturer to be sustainable if that's all they make — a lesson I'm fearful the Obama administration (read, we taxpayers) will learn the hard way once it begins dictating GM's product mix.

Meanwhile Toyota is selling a heck of a lot more Lexus' and full-size Tundra and Tacoma trucks than it is of the Prius. That's why you can get a rebate or other incentive to buy a Prius. Hybrids are simply one component of an overall product mix that addresses the wants and needs of the car-buying public. The main failure of GM isn't that it didn't build hybrids, it's that its product mix was boring, and didn't include a wider variety of cars and trucks that people from all walks of life want and need.

The takeover of GM by the government should scare the hell out every thinking American. GM shareholders were totally wiped out to preserve the UAW's stake in all this — demonstrating the Obama administration's total lack of understanding of how the economy actually works. How many mutual funds do you think held shares of GM for example, and what is the result of their loss of net worth on the economy as a whole? This is the nationalization of a major industrial company by the government. How long before the government starts dictating to Microsoft the functionality of the software it makes?

Finally, according to the Times' story, the UAW will end up owning 17.5 percent of the "New GM." I would have liked to see Obama hand over the entire company to the UAW so it can experience firsthand — and deal with — the economic train wreck it has perpetuated on the American taxpayer.