Megan Fox's Belly Button: The Key to Understanding Politics?

Okay, as fine as is her midriff, most of you probably don’t list Megan Fox’s belly button as her first, um, attribute worth pondering. But bear with me–her belly button IS key to understanding why the Massachusetts senate seat just went to a Republican, and why Democratic efforts to reform our healthcare system are now all but history.
In the old days, you see, if a piece of legislation garnered 59 votes in the Senate, it was rightly perceived as the product of a national consensus. Landslide kind of stuff. The will of the people.
However, in the old days, the two major parties were much more diverse. The Democratic Party included Southern conservatives, while the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, included Yankees who, today, would at most be centrist Democrats.
Then … along came Megan Fox’s belly button?
No, be patient gentle readers. Fox will enter our story soon. But first came another person, someone whose belly button was, to my knowledge, not a focus of anyone’s lascivious mind. Along came Lyndon Johnson, a Southern conservative at heart, but a power-seeker to the core. And to consolidate his power, Johnson had to find a way to convince Southern conservative Democrats to support civil rights legislation. In doing so–in cajoling conservative Democrats to vote against their long term opposition to such legislation–Johnson effectively began the slow re-sorting of the two parties. Ronald Reagan accelerated this re-sorting. And eventually the Republican party pulled Southern conservatives away from the Democrats, while the Democratic party became, itself, more uniformly liberal.
And that is almost when Megan Fox’s well-toned abs began to grab the attention of my peri-adolescent son. But she’s still not ready to enter the story.
First, one more thing happened that I want to tell you about. Barack Obama became President of the United States, and the Republican Party–now almost uniformly conservative–pulled together in opposition to any and all Democratic legislation, cheered on the sidelines by conservative websites and cable news organizations. The result is that we now have a politics of us versus them, of Republican/Conservatives versus Democrats/Liberals.
In the old days, if you pulled together all the conservatives in Congress to craft a piece of legislation, you would have to grab a mix of Republicans and Democrats. The same would have gone for liberal legislation–you would need a mixture of Midwestern Democrats and Northeastern Republicans.
But now, with the parties so unified ideologically, politics is like belly buttons–innies are good, and outies are bad. For all of Megan Fox’s beauty, if she had a serious outie, her agent would be working overtime to hide this part of her body from photographers. We relate to people the way we judge belly buttons. It really matters to us whether we consider the other person to be an innie or an outie–what social scientists call “in groups” and “out groups.”
If you place orange dots on half the kids in a fourth grade classroom, and green dots on the other half, pretty soon the orange kids will start excluding the green ones from their play groups. In no time, in fact, friends will be torn apart by this artificial in group/out group manipulation. You literally will have fights on your hands, simply because the green kids will perceive the orange kids as some kind of competing group.
The American public is not famous for its knowledge of politics. That’s why when most people judge upcoming legislation, it matters less to them what the legislation proposes as who proposes it. If George Bush had proposed health care reform that resembles the current Democratic plan, it would have been perceived as some kind of ultra-conservative legislation by Democrats. “There he goes, helping out greedy insurance companies again.” But instead, the same legislation proposed by the Democrats is viewed, by Republicans, as Socialism. Innie and outie–so much of politics depends on this single perception.
In the old days, a liberal Democrat might propose a piece of social legislation to one of his conservative Democratic colleagues, and the conservative would at least consider the merits of such legislation as a favor to someone who is in his own political party. Even if this conservative ultimately decided not to support the legislation, he would be unlikely to filibuster (as long as it didn’t have anything to do with Civil Rights) because he wouldn’t want to stand in the way of his own colleague’s legislation.
Today, legislation stalls not just because it lacks 60 votes in the Senate but, more importantly, because those votes rarely cross party lines. It is easy to filibuster someone who belongs to an out group–who has the wrong colored dot on his head.
The unification of our two parties into tighter ideologic entities is thwarting our ability as a nation to tackle the challenges we face. We need to cut the umbilical cord that tethers ideology to partisan politics.
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Fixing Healthcare Means Maintaining Infrastructure

It is pothole season in Michigan, with roads crumbling under the pressure of winter cold. Then again, with the condition of our state’s dismal economy, pothole season is becoming a year-round phenomenon here in the Great Lake State. Michigan’s government can no longer afford to fix roads like it used to, and the same goes for bridges, water mains and other infrastructure. And don’t even get me going on budget cuts to our public education system.
While Michigan’s auto-based economy is the main cause of our fiscal distress, physician that I am, I cannot help but see MRIs lurking at the bottom of the sports-car-sized pot holes that litter the roads on my daily commute. An MRI costs a few thousand dollars a pop, you see, and we doctors order such tests almost unthinkingly. Back bothering you? Shoulder pain lasting more than a week? And that blip on your liver enzymes? We need to make sure nothing terrible is going on. Time for an MRI!
Our willy-nilly use of MRIs occurs in part because we doctors don’t pay for these tests. In fact some of us (but not me!) actually make money by ordering these tests.
The same goes for medical procedures. A primary care physician like me makes a token amount of money during a routine (and frequently time consuming) annual checkup. But if we can bring that same patient back for a skin biopsy, that ten-minute visit smells to me like a college tuition payment!
So we physicians order tests and procedures, and other folks pay — sometimes insurance companies, sometimes patients themselves, and increasingly often, the government through Medicare or Medicaid. Eventually, of course, we all pay for these tests and procedures. Our crazy health care system is basically a huge transfer of income from the general public to people in the health care industry.
States like Michigan are facing enormous budget pressures in the face of the recession. But even before this recession hit, many states were starting to buckle under the strain of Medicaid inflation, leaving huge SUV-sized holes in their annual budgets.
We need healthcare reform because we need to control health care costs, or we will end up with an infrastructure that would embarrass a third world dictator.
And the Democratic party needs to tell us more about how its reform efforts, should they succeed in the face of the Massachusetts senate debacle, will control costs.
And the Republicans need to stop whining about healthcare rationing, if they actually care about the future of this country.
We are facing a serious challenge. If politicians don’t meet this challenge, we will all have lots more to worry about than potholes.
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Mark McGwire: New Poster Child for Cognitive Dissonance

Answer = Himself
Question = Who is Mark McGwire trying to deceive?
It’s laughable, isn’t it.
• He took steroids for “health reasons”
• The drugs “didn’t help him” hit home runs
• The “steroid era” made him do it
Mark McGwire’s belated confession to using performance enhancing drugs was only surprising in his determination to call them “health enhancing drugs.” And even that wasn’t all that surprising.
I could easily go off on what a total jerk McGwire is. But I’m a big believer in trying to understand where people are coming from before judging them. And here is my most generous take on McGwire’s story.
1. He didn’t lie to Congress: Did you hear that, Manny Sosa?
We all know that when McGwire took the 5th in front of Congress, he was indirectly admitting steroid use, but trying to avoid criminal charges. It was a pathetic moment, no doubt, but it actually takes real courage to make such a jerk out of yourself. The cowardly way out would have been what other people did-lie in front of Congress. See: Op cite to Mr. Sosa!
2. He admitted to using “andro” while still playing baseball. So it’s not like he thought people were unaware of his use of performance enhancing drugs. (OK: he only confessed to using andro after reporters saw a bottle in his locker. Score this one a C-.)
3. He undoubtedly convinced himself that it was okay to use steroids. This is the power of cognitive dissonance, people.
• He always knew himself as a great homerun hitter: “They are still talking about my high school homeruns for gosh sakes.”
• It is easy for people to slide into immorality. He undoubtedly strained some muscle, somewhere, sometime in his career, and was itching to get back to full health. His use probably started around then, with a dash of andro, maybe a teaspoon of HGH. This is how good people end up doing bad things-one step at a time.
• Self-justification is so human: “Everyone was doing it”, or so it seemed. To not take performance enhancing drugs (oh I mean, health enhancing drugs!) would have felt, to McGwire, like it was putting himself at a disadvantage.
• Having taking these steps, he was in full cognitive dissonance mode. He knew he was a good guy, heck-he visited children’s hospitals in his free time. So it must, therefore, be okay to use these drugs.
4. He has now had more than a decade to develop a story that solves all his internal contradictions-that makes his steroid use something that a “good guy” can do.
So here is my final and overly generous version of Mark McGwire’s life story: The guy probably is a good guy. He’s a cheater and a coward, and he is self-delusional. And he never (!) could have beaten Roger Maris’ single-season home run record without the help of home run enhancing drugs.
But the steroid era in baseball was a time of mass delusion. Fans, baseball officials and players all convinced themselves that comic-book physiques were the result of advanced weight lifting techniques, and not the result of new drugs.
I don’t admire McGwire, but I don’t completely condemn him either, given that the majority of his colleagues were doing things as bad or worse than he was back then. But I pity him for his self-delusions.
Now if you don’t mind, I need to step into the kitchen for a dose of an alertness enhancing drug, which I have deluded myself into thinking of as a cup of coffee.
View original post and comments at Scientocracy

Underwear Bombers and the Politics of Invisibility

Easy to criticize the Obama administration, isn’t it?
Look at the unemployment rate, for example. And have you seen the tax hikes they’re going to need to pay for healthcare reform? Oh yeah, and they did a great job with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn’t they?-his dad told us he was going rogue, and then when he buys a ticket with cash and doesn’t check in any luggage, we look the other way. Time to say this in unison now, folks, with your most sarcastic tone of voice: “Great work Obama!”
Or is it too soon for such sarcasm?
Folks, before we start blaming the government for all these terrible things, we need to remember that hindsight is not even close to 20/20, and that we cannot accurately judge what our government is doing or not doing for us until we pay attention to what I call “the Politics of Invisibility.”
You see, there is some invisible stuff we need to pay attention to.
Let’s start with our unemployment rate. I live in Michigan, and I’m one degree of separation away from a hell of a lot of unemployment. I am not at all happy about our nation’s economy. And I’d like to have seen us make more progress over the past year in addressing our economic woes. But before we criticize Obama’s economic stimulus plan-on the grounds that it has not ended unemployment as we know it-take a moment to ponder the invisible: ask yourself what the employment rate would have been if Obama hadn’t pushed his stimulus plan through a reluctant Congress. Don’t know the answer? Welcome to the Politics of Invisibility.
How about the taxes we will pay to fund healthcare reform. At first glance, it seems that there’s nothing invisible there. But take a closer look. Do you have any idea how much of your current income has been funneled into the healthcare industry? Consider that “free” healthcare benefit your employer gives you. That benefit comes out of your income. Many middle-salary wages, in fact, have stagnated in recent decades in the U.S., largely because employers have been taking what would be salary increases and pushing them over to cover the spiraling cost of healthcare benefits. And that tax break we get for our employer-based health insurance? That’s not free either. That contributes to government deficits, and ultimately forces the government to raise taxes. Nothing is free. But because of the Politics of Invisibility, we find ourselves whining about healthcare taxes at the same time we overlook the way healthcare insurance has already shrunk the size of our paychecks.
Finally, let’s revisit the TSA’s performance in the recent underwear bomber fiasco. I admit to being shocked, with the rest of the nation, at how many clues the Feds overlooked in allowing this man to board a plane with a bomb strapped to his crotch. But a moment’s reflection on the Politics of Invisibility forces us to take a more cautious view of the TSA. Consider one of the smoking guns that critics of TSA have been discussing vehemently in the blogosphere-that this terrorist stepped onto the plane WITHOUT CHECKING ANY LUGGAGE.
Ummmm, I think he means he placed his luggage into the overhead bin. You know, like half of his fellow passengers!
Now I understand that most of those other passengers’ fathers hadn’t recently told the CIA that their son was becoming radicalized. And that most of them hadn’t paid for their tickets in cash. But I don’t know, as an ordinary citizen, just how many people would have fit the underwear bomber’s profile. How many young men have come under the influence of passionately radical Imams and then boarded planes after paying for tickets with cash? I don’t know that number. I expect the number is in the tens of thousands, if not more. (And is paying in cash really that significant? If we started scrutinizing cash payments, wouldn’t terrorists simply start using credit cards? For that matter, wouldn’t they start checking luggage, if that turned out to be a security red flag?)
What’s invisible here is the denominator-how many people, if they try to blow up a plane tomorrow, would have a string of “clues” that would have made the bombing attempt look inevitable? It may very well be that very few people were as risky-looking as the Underwear Bomber. But frankly, that information is invisible to me, as it is to most of the general public.
Before we get all high-and-mighty about the terrible job that security experts are doing, we need to ponder the Politics of Invisibility, and remember that it’s easy to criticize what we see, even as we ignore what we can’t.
Peter Ubel is George Dock Collegiate Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan, and author of Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature is at Odds with Economics-and Why it Matters (Harvard Business Press, 2009). Visit https://www.peterubel.com/ for more blogs and research updates.
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