Is Power a Neurotoxin?

In the six years that he practiced medicine, Owen came into close contact with doctors treating prominent politicians and observed firsthand the toll that political life takes on public figures. Thus began his interest in health and power, which culminated in The Hubris Syndrome. This book, published in 2007, argues that being in power brings about changes in one's mental state and leads to hubristic behavior, and that hubris is not merely a personality characteristic but a pathological state. Mental illness, Owen notes, "may need to be redefined to include a hubris syndrome."


The entire article from Foreign Affairs can be viewed here.

Scylla and Charybdis

Dude!

Eighteenth Century Brains

Everyone's a Little Racist

Making Sense

For Further Consideration

After watching the above, please take a look at this.

Joe Christmas

Never Could See It Coming

This from the formidable Temple3:


You are about to bear witness to the resilience of a tremendous people. You didn't see Reconstruction back in the day -- but you're about to see a wave of Black folk in elected office. You're about to see more federal contracts go to faces that simply cannot ROTFLMWA. And you won't see the ReBirth of your nation because you don't have the numbers or the sufficient consciousness to close your borders.

Nope...it's already a wrap. And to think, Lothrop Stoddard wasted all that good ink warning you dupes as early as 1920. Time for you to get your fornication-reproduction game together (holla at ya boy Ben Wattenburg) and beat a hasty retreat to a territory you can HOLD with guns.

South Africa is done. The US is next. Dominoes, just dominoes. Will you be heading to Sweden where you can knock up as many as you can muster without a ring OR will it be off to the Fatherland?

I believe obsolescence fits you well. And you're concerned about nuclear families...that's funny. You're going to need more than that to survive the economic and energy upheavals facing this society...haven't you heard about the limitations of "nucular"?

I Just Hate This

Clayton Bigsby - Click here for another funny movie.

Ahead of His Time

And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready, to see a black President

-Tupac Amaru Shakur

Uppity

According to Big Don "the Coefficient of Uppitiness, out there on the street, has definitely ratcheted up a couple of notches."

Remember When

My first day back to work since the election. I'm going to need extra water for all the salty crackers that I will encounter.

Swagger Like Us

Good Morning

Lesson Learned

From The New York Review of Books:

The vice-presidential search in the spring of 2000 was characteristic of the co-presidency to come in one other way. It involved the collection of information for future use against political rivals. In this case, the rivals were the other potential VPs, among them Lamar Alexander, Chuck Hagel, and Frank Keating. They had been asked to submit exhaustive data concerning friends, enemies, sexual partners, psychological vicissitudes (noting all visits to therapists of any kind), personal embarrassments, and sources of possible slander, plus a complete medical history. Each also signed a notarized letter that gave Cheney the power to request records from doctors without further clearance.

All this information would prove useful in later years. Barton Gellman reveals in Angler that soon after Frank Keating was mentioned as a likely candidate for attorney general, a story appeared in Newsweek about an awkward secret in his past: an eccentric patron had paid for his children's college education. No law had been broken, and nothing wrongly concealed; but the story killed a chance for Keating to be named attorney general; and the leak could only have come from one person. Doubtless most of the secrets in Cheney's possession were the more effective for not being used.

Entire article can be found here.

My Inner White Boy

I blame Ed Dunn.

Left Wing Racists