Check your carnist ideology

Did you realize that you may be a carnist?  It sounds rather like a medieval theological stance but it is not.  It simply means that you eat meat.  All sorts of weirdos wash up on the shore of Psychology and strict vegetarians are among them.  So the research below is designed to find something wrong with "carnists'.

And it succeeded.  It found that carnists tend to be conservative!  And there is nothing worse that that to a Leftist.  And most psychologists are Leftists.  So from now on lots of Leftists will be sadly eyeing platters of bacon and eggs as they tuck in to their tofu burgers.

The research is actually rubbish.  One of their measures of conservatism (the RWA scale) does not correlate with voting for conservative candidates and the other is largely a measure of racism.  See here and here.  So the conclusions may be correct but the data is insufficient to show it.

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Why do right-wing adherents engage in more animal exploitation and meat consumption?

Kristof Dhonta &  Gordon Hodson

Abstract

Despite the well-documented implications of right-wing ideological dispositions for human intergroup relations, surprisingly little is understood about the implications for human–animal relations. We investigate why right-wing ideologies – social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) – positively predict attitudes toward animal exploitation and meat consumption. Two survey studies conducted in heterogeneous community samples (Study 1, N = 260; Study 2, N = 489) demonstrated that right-wing ideologies predict greater acceptance of animal exploitation and more meat consumption through two explaining mechanisms: (a) perceived threat from non-exploitive ideologies to the dominant carnist ideology (for both SDO and RWA) and (b) belief in human superiority over animals (for SDO). These findings hold after controlling for hedonistic pleasure from eating meat. Right-wing adherents do not simply consume more animals because they enjoy the taste of meat, but because doing so supports dominance ideologies and resistance to cultural change. Psychological parallels between human intergroup relations and human–animal relations are considered.

SOURCE

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The Arrogance of ObamaCare

ObamaCare hit a milestone Monday, as the Obama administration announced that five million people have now enrolled for health insurance under the law. That's approaching the six million that the Congressional Budget Office projected would enroll by March 31. But there's more than meets the eye here.

The White House still won't say how many people have paid their premiums (i.e., actually enrolled). It also won't tell us how many enrollees were previously insured. Millions of Americans saw their health plans cancelled because of the law's regulations. The law says plans must cover all kinds of “comprehensive” things, so when a plan changed slightly after the law went into effect, it then had to comply with all of ObamaCare's regulations – hence the cancellations. If new enrollments are substantially made up of previously covered but subsequently cancelled people, that's hardly a success. In fact, it's often replacing a decent plan with a worse one that costs more.

According to one recent survey, one in three uninsured Americans plans to remain that way. That's in large part thanks to skyrocketing premiums that will double in some parts of the country. The sticker shock is deterring many and causing those who do sign up to choose the bottom-rung “bronze” plans. Folks would rather pay the fine (ahem, the “tax”) of 1% of adjusted gross income and only sign up when they get sick. Who can blame them when the administration keeps delaying any penalties?

The White House has taken to entertaining, nagging and cajoling the young people ObamaCare must enroll in large numbers in order for it to “work.” To subsidize the old and sick, the law depends on 40% of enrollees being young and healthy. But only about 25% of enrollees are young and it's a safe bet they're not as healthy on average as their age suggests, which means they won't balance the additional costs of the old and sick.

One of the core problems with ObamaCare is the designers' arrogance. Congressional Democrats thought that in a nation of more than 300 million people only they were smart and benevolent enough to design a health care law to fit everyone. But it will only work if participation is mandated. It's hard to think of something more antithetical to the principles upon which the nation was founded. And it's no wonder it isn't working.

 SOURCE

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Vermont Democrats Labeling State's Single-Payer Health Plan a Failure

In 2011, Vermont passed the nation's first single-payer healthcare system, "Green Mountain Care." While the law was supposed to be fully enacted by 2017, it has become apparent that there's no solid plan in place to actually pay for the healthcare of all Vermont residents. Democratic lawmakers, citing missed deadlines and past failures, have begun to call for Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin to "shelve" the plan.

“The deadlines for proposing financing have been missed two years in a row now, so to me that’s very disappointing. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that there is no financing plan,” Condon told Vermont Watchdog.

The cost of one year of Green Mountain Care is estimated to be anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2 billion dollars. This is equal to the entire tax revenue of the state of Vermont.

Sen. Bobby Starr, another Democrat who voted against Act 48, told Vermont Watchdog in January there’s “no way” single-payer can work without new taxes. Indeed, no lawmaker has introduced any bill that would finance single-payer health care without also raising taxes.

It's foolish for Vermont to even entertain the thought of a single-payer system when its attempt at implementing an Obamacare exchange didn't go so well. Green Mountain Care is way too expensive for the state, and raising taxes is going to make an already business-unfriendly state even worse.

SOURCE

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They Even Regulate Transparency

According to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama has far surpassed his predecessors when it comes to regulation. Under Obama, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which is the “codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register,” has expanded by some 17,522 pages – an 11% increase. That's an average of 3,504 pages every year – and he still has three long years left in office.

Those regulations have cost the economy billions of dollars, heaping on additional burdens and making the Obama “recovery” historically sluggish. The president remains stubbornly determined to use his pen whenever Congress doesn't conform to his will. It's all part of his effort to “fundamentally transform” America, and he'll do it regulation by regulation.

At the same time, Obama and his red tape bandits have for years declared this White House the “most transparent in history.” We're shocked – shocked – to report that this claim just isn't true. A new report from Cause of Action, a watchdog group, says that in 2009, Barack Obama basically rewrote the Freedom of Information Act, and, oddly enough, he did so to limit the freedom of information.

As Cause of Action explains in the report, “FOIA is designed to inform the public on government behavior; White House equities allow the government to withhold information from the media, and therefore the public, by having media requests forwarded for review. This not only politicizes federal agencies, it impairs fundamental First Amendment liberties.”

With an administration that's cranking out regulations left and further left, transparency is sometimes the only warning. And the “White House equities” exemption frees the administration of uncomfortable news within the 20 days otherwise required by FOIA. Cause of Action notes that it's “still waiting for documents from 16 federal agencies, with the Department of Treasury having the longest pending request of 202 business days. The Department of Energy is a close second at 169 business days. The requests to the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services have been pending for 138 business days.” A lot of damage can happen in the interim, and the White House can now take as long as it wants.

SOURCE

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Opposing Voter ID Laws in the Name of Race Is Insulting to Minorities

This is a headline we should never see in the United States: "Federal Judge: Yes, Arizona and Kansas Can Require Voters To Prove Their Citizenship."

The fact that this issue would be disputed at all is astonishing. That it is legally contested is stunning. That the prime mover in initiating the legal challenge is our own federal government, which has a compelling interest in ensuring the integrity of the election process, is mind-blowing.

Who would have imagined just a few short years ago that in 2014 the executive branch of the federal government and a good chunk of its legislative branch would be dominated by radical community organizers wreaking havoc on the rule of law and our cherished principles of equal protection under the law and the impartial administration of justice? I feel like I'm living inside some Red-conspiracy fiction novel that could never get published because it's too unlikely to survive the incredulity even of readers with a generous willingness to suspend disbelief.

Both Kansas and Arizona passed new voter-ID legislation requiring new voters to provide a birth certificate, a passport or other documentation to prove their citizenship. But the U.S. Election Assistance Commission rejected requests from these two states for help in changing federal election registration forms. The existing federal registration form doesn't require proof of citizenship, only that new voters sign a statement declaring their citizenship.

How do you think the Internal Revenue Service would respond if we all said it would have to take our word for our income and expenses based on our "declarations" and we were not going to furnish 1099s, W2s or expense receipts?

What would the NSA say if all airline passengers simply refused to show their driver's licenses at airport security checkpoints?

Is the integrity of our elections so unimportant to President Obama, Attorney General Holder and the rest of the Democratic cabal that they refuse to impose the slightest checks against voter fraud?

Well, some horrendously naive people take these leftists at their word that they believe voter fraud is a "rare" phenomenon, even though 46 states have prosecuted cases of voter fraud since 2000. Do you think they don't know about the pernicious activities of ACORN, with which they were joined at the hip?

Some people also take Democrats at their word that they believe initiatives for voter-ID laws are being driven by "racist" conservatives who want to suppress minority turnout in elections. This, too, is maliciously twisted thinking, most likely born of liberal projection. Democrats need look no further than their own consistent efforts to suppress the military vote.

I know a lot of conservatives, and I've never met one who thinks this way. What we want is to make sure the election process is fair, that only people who are eligible to vote are allowed to vote and vote just once.

I wish more minorities would vote for Republican candidates, but neither I nor any other conservative or Republican I've ever met would support suppressing minority votes just because they vote disproportionately Democratic.

Guy Benson of Townhall reports that after Georgia implemented its voter-ID law in 2007, which was upheld in court, the state saw an increase in minority voter participation in the next two election cycles.

How could any intellectually honest person maintain that it is unfair, unreasonable or unconstitutional to require all voters to provide documentation to verify that they are who they say they are before being allowed to vote?

What you need to understand is that with this bunch of Democrats everything is about politics. For them, the end justifies any means, and their paramount end is to get Democrats elected, and so they will pursue it, even at the expense of the integrity of the system. This is undeniable given their opposition to voter-ID laws.

What other conclusion can we draw from their opposition than they want to increase Democratic votes with voters who abuse the election process?

Unless you have a very low opinion of minorities, how could you conceivably argue that it is racist to require that all voters prove their identity as a condition to voting? If anything racist is involved here, it is in the suggestion that minorities are too incompetent to furnish their IDs. How could you disrespect minorities any more that that?

If people can't muster their ID — I don't care who they are — then they don't deserve the privilege of voting, and people who want to protect their right to do so without ID are on their face suspect.

It is a crying shame that our federal government is run by partisan Democrats who are waging war against the integrity of the election process, the rule of law and the sovereignty of the several states. I pray more people wake up to this reality.

More HERE

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