Free Republic

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Stephen Colbert beautifully exposes in this VIDEO a couple of typical OWS GroupThink NUtcases. According to press reports, the "male-bodied person" half of this team is Justin Wedes who is originally from the WEALTHY Michigan neighborhood of Huntington Woods. As for the "female-bodied person" dope, what can you say about someone who calls herself "Ketchup?" I absolutely guarantee that she is also from a wealthy background who, along with Justin, is playing a game of Fantasy Slumming by attending these OWS protests despite the fact that both of them are One Percenters. Most laughable are the silly hand and...

Watch this video of strange group behavior. Effects of drug use? Mob rule psychology? Really strange people in control.

“Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is Director of the Global Change Institute. He is an active research scientist working on coral reef ecosystems and environmental change, for which he receives Australian Research Council support,” boasts his bio. I’m not sure what “global change” means, to be frank, or what an “active research scientist” is. I do know what an activist research scientist looks like, however. His name is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. In “The Conversation” a website dedicated to promoting Labor-first groupthink (my wild guess) the “active research scientist” actively attacks critical thinkers from his (my second guess) high-energy office. Hoegh-Guldberg preaches: The science...

Born in London in 1928 of Jewish heritage, I grew up during the Second World War and knew that members of my extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. The puzzlement at how this could happen affected me from my earliest years. How could an otherwise civilized society like Germany become so completely immersed in what appeared to be a madman leading a nation in a trance? This was no ordinary madness; trains ran on time, children went to school, the opera performed—the veneer of patriotic normalcy was everywhere and yet the people fought to the death for the beast...

I'm just curious what the official Free Republic stance is on Obama's birth certificate with respect to the 2012 election. Is demanding Obama produce his long form birth certificate a requirement of every prospective candidate? Is it the litmus test for supporting a candidate? So where Mitt Romney is rightly persona non grata around here it is OK to push Donald Trump and defend his positions because he is pushing the birth certificate issue? And write off true conservatives like Mark Levin and Michele Bachmann?

I remember being grouped together with other students as early as the first grade. Rather than being arranged in rows of individual desks, we were clustered in groups of four, facing each other. We were given work to do as a group, rather than as individuals. I despised the practice then, and I continued to all the way through college. It didn't seem right to have to compensate for others and share a grade. The result was always the same. I did less and worse than I would have individually. It was far more work to pull others along than...

National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg -- legendary (or infamous) for championing Anita Hill's unsubstantiated sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas, and then yawning at all harassment claims against Bill Clinton -- is hiring the daughter of liberal Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards as a summer intern...

The 10:10 Climate Change Campaign in the UK Released Their 'No Pressure' Campaign Video, But Had to Remove it After Violence Complaints

(Another Freeper suggested I Post this...) Folks keep looking for “truth” in the words and statements coming from the progressive MSM, where quite frankly none is expected. It’s damned aggravating. Here is how they operate. It’s quite simple and explains everything they say and do. It hangs on their office walls. Irving Janis was a Psych professor at Yale (ring a bell). He researched groupthink and developed eight groupthink behaviors. I recast them a little below as commandments of the progressive left. I Thou shalt create an illusion of invulnerability shared by most members to foster excessive optimism and encourage...

godless righteousness… Posted on May 23, 2010 by billrandles Do you remember the social and moral revolution of the 1960′s? The youth movement of the left were destined to break all of the rules, and liberate society from the dreary bondage of the past. They were going to show us how to do it the right way! As an anthem from that day proclaimed,”All the world over so easy to see, that people everywhere just want to be free“. Isn’t it ironic that those same revolutionaries, now come of age, have created a society that is vastly more restricted than...

Eddie, why am I reading your vanity? Because I am going to share a discovery with you that explains everything the left says and does. First, let me introduce you to Irving Lester Janis (26 May 1918 - 15 November 1990). He was a research psychologist at Yale University and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most famous for his theory of "groupthink" which described the systematic errors made by groups when taking collective decisions.So what Eddie? Groupthink is a tired slur that gets tossed around, make this quick or I’m outta here. Wait! Groupthink...

As we celebrate Independence Day, I, perhaps like many others today, find myself pondering its significance. While many may be thinking back to the 1770s and the great many personal sacrifices and contributions American families made at the time toward the establishment of the United States, I have found my thoughts to be rooted in present times and, at the core, the seemingly ongoing trend away from independence. I believe there to be a fatal flaw in today’s groupthink. The flaw may simply be that there is too much groupthink. For a country founded in the spirit of autonomy, it...

Lawmakers in Michigan are preparing to call on the carpet leaders of taxpayer-supported universities across the state after top officials at Eastern Michigan University expelled from a counseling program a Christian student who refused to argue in support of the homosexual lifestyle. As WND reported, trouble began for master's program student Julea Ward when she refused to accept a client whose issue concerned a homosexual relationship.The school expelled her from the counseling program March 12, 2009, for refusing to abrogate her own personal religious beliefs and support the homosexual lifestyle.

All hail the new political class!!! LOL

<snip>2.4 Diagnosis #4: The Attraction of Magnificent Academic Trusels. A "trusel" is an idea or a finding that is widely perceived to be true, but which is largely useless (or even of negative value). (The idea that a truth may lack value may be disturbing, but it is true, although it is not a trusel and probably will not be thought to be magnificent.) A "Magnificent Academic Trusel" (MAT) is a trusel that has been widely acknowledged for its intellectual content (explicitly or implicitly), but without a corresponding amount of attention being given to its utility or even to its...

Barbara from Harlem and her co-host discuss some critical issues in their new on-line only broadcasts entitled "Invisible Shackles" and "Stand up and Speak Out." Issues such as black people always using racism as an excuse and President Obama's attempt to demonize his opposition are discussed. I believe these 2 broadcasts are important to listen to, digest and share with others. Due to the fact that Barbara's family has voted as Democrats since the 1930s and Barbara herself was involved in local democratic party politics, her insights and analyses about what is plaguing inner-city America are particularly useful. However, "Invisible...

When Barack Obama said that the Henry Louis Gates affair was a teachable moment, he spoke truly. But the key is ensuring that the right things are taught and the right people learn. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. There is no need to rehash the events of July 16 chapter and verse. We all know about how the Harvard professor flew into a rage of racial accusations and haughty posturing after Sergeant James Crowley appeared at his Cambridge home to investigate a report of a possible break-in. We've heard that Gates called Crowley a "racist" and said he was...

Those who plot people and issues along the political spectrum of left, right, and in-between may be late to perceive a new wind blowing from outside their perspective. It blows invisibly, this wind. We can't see it, only what it occasionally stirs up. It's gaining velocity across the nation. When it blows hard enough, it will move The Spectrum. Big media plots politics and politicians along The Spectrum. That's all they know. It's how they think. How they entertain. Sell ads. In their delivery, they imitate the characters of courtroom theater. Prosecution v Defense leads to Jury decision. Mostly, they...

In a windowless room at the Westin Hotel in downtown Denver, leading business journalists and editors explained how the media “blew it” in covering the economic meltdown. They admitted, on one hand, to falling under the sway of free-market ideology and celebrating risk-taking financial leaders and, on the other, to missing the complex story of the rupturing system by only reporting it in parts and to almost no effect for the past decade. Although not planned as confession, the discussion, which kicked off the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), quickly descended into an...

When Washington makes a big decision—to pass the PATRIOT Act, to invade Iraq, to bail out Wall Street, to spend hundreds of billions "stimulating" the economy—the most important stage of the debate isn't the final agreement on what to do. That's just a bunch of details about portions and timing. The key stage comes in the initial rounds, when the acceptable radius of disagreement is established. Your sharpest critics are often your most radical critics, so it's important that their arguments be confined to the foreign press, the blogosphere, and other backwaters. Once those boundaries are ratified, you must police...

(CNN) -- You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others? Imaging techniques help scientists look at the basis for principles of social psychology in the brain. Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view, even if that view is objectively incorrect. Now, scientists are supporting those theories with brain images. A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their...

Viewing the United States through the eyes of a foreign national is one thing. And viewing the United States through the eyes of foreign media professionals is another thing. So as we close-out 2008, and begin a new year with the soon-to-be President Obama, the view from the “foreign news desk” may shed some light on some of the ways in which the world misunderstands both our country, and our President-elect. I don’t have any “McCain scandal” to tell. No tabloid-style inside scoop about John McCain and Sarah Palin squabbling behind the scenes on election night, or Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s...

If Sen. Barack Obama loses the presidency or wins by far narrower margins than the double-digit lead some mainstream media polls predict, his weak performance will not be the result of the so-called “Bradley Effect,” which holds that black candidates underperform at the polls due to latent racism. Rather, the true culprit will be something public opinion scholars call the “Spiral of Silence Theory.” In the 1970s, German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann introduced a provocative and startling theory of mass communication she called the “Spiral of Silence.” Noelle-Neumann argued that when mass media create an impression that the majority of...

Poe: "They are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system," and "they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public." Understanding the Alinsky Method of "Community Organizing" Written by Bob Dill Sep 24, 2008 at 12:00 AM Meet the Real Obama and Cult of Alinsky " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV) It is becoming readily apparent that the "change" being proposed vaguely by Sen. Barack Obama is...

The problem most of our less than intelligent trolls have in coming to a Conservative website in order to spread discord and dispirit the troops is their own leftist insticts to throw bombs. Poeple, people, people, you can't ALL be Bill Ayers! The world would be a terribly anarchistic hell-hole if everyone was throwing bombs. Some of you have to learn subtlety, in infiltrating the ranks of the Conservative Right -- infiltrate and form a fifth column from within. Allow me to explain how it can be, and has been done. Selecting a screen name When selecting a screen name...

The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global warming is a swindle misrepresented the views of some of the world's leading climate scientists, the media watchdog is expected to rule next week. In a judgment at the end of a 15-month enquiry, Ofcom is expected to censure the channel over The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast in March last year. The film sparked outcry from environmentalists and led to a complaint from a group of senior scientists about apparent errors, distortions and misrepresentations. It is thought that complaints about privacy and fairness from the Government's former chief...

Obama called a reporter sweetie. Gasp. The pundits are divided on whether he should attend sensitivity training to correct his thinking or whether his coerced apology will suffice. The debate swirls, the opinions proliferate. The lesser pundits anxiously await the position paper from the National Organization of Women before commiting themselves to a firm stance on this vital issue. The rest of the world news takes a back seat. Welcome to another national conversation. Non-stop news coverage of experts, pundits and elites opining on someone else's opining. As in, "What he really meant to say was...", and "He said that...

A professor of anthropology calls for a million Mogadishus, a professor of Arabic and Islamic Science tells a girl she isn't a Semite because her eyes are green, and a professor of Persian hails the destruction of the World Trade Center as the castrating of a double phallus. The most recent tenured addition to this rogues' gallery is to be an anthropologist, the principal thrust of whose magnum opus is the suggestion that archaeology in Israel is a sort of con game meant to persuade the unwary that Jews lived there in antiquity... from Columbia... Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism......

Darwinian Dictatorship by: Malcolm A. Kline, November 30, 2007 Want tenure? Learn to love Charles Darwin. Want to keep your tenure? Work his name into your license plates. Want to keep your job? Never, never cast aspersions upon academia’s favorite butterfly expert. “We need to caution young people and let them know there are consequences for expressing doubt about Darwin,” biologist Caroline Crocker said recently in remarks at the Family Research Council. “I’m going on 50, my career is over.” “I can start over but for young people it can be devastating.” Dr. Crocker was fired from George Mason University...

It occured to me I can not be the only Freeper with inlaw issues that are driving a wedge between myself and other family members, in my case my inlaws. On a side note, my mother in law lives in AZ and went to high school with Harry Reid. She claims a personal relationship with him and is a complete groupthinker, informed = 0, believes everything he says, all others need not apply, father in law hoping to continue to get some agrees with her. Fall out from the recent Reid lies are driving a wedge between family members. Considering...

John Hugh Gilmore, guest column: Mob rule, not academic freedom, at Baylor http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2007/10/07/10072007wacgilmore.htmlSunday, October 07, 2007 To its proponents, intelligent design is nothing more than a sophisticated, comprehensive critique of the theoretical and scientific foundations of Darwinism and its progeny. In other words, the theory of evolution should be put to the test. Like Marx. Like Freud. To the opponents, intelligent design — ID — is an intellectual crime. Or so we must assume by the actions of Baylor University. As counsel for Baylor Distinguished Professor Robert J. Marks II, I was amazed and discouraged by the controversy surrounding his...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

Hey this is Ben Marble. I am the guitarist/vocalist in the "supergroup of cyberspace" aka dR. O. You may also recognize me as the guy who quoted The Dick to The Dick by saying "Go F*** yourself Mr. Cheney". Well enough about me..... The bottom line is this: I have too many guitars in my collection and my wife is going to cut off my testicles if I don't get rid of a few of them so now it is time to 'thin the herd'.

Civilization WatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card October 8, 2006 Groupthink and the Intellectual Elite One of the most amusing things about the movement to force immigrants to speak only English is that we have a much more serious language problem on our hands -- and it's centered in the universities. There are whole departments where English has been effectively banned and replaced with "Theoretics," a language designed so that the speaker can make the listener feel stupid without the speaker actually having to be smart. I will give you a genuine...

A report released on Wednesday on the political views of faculty members accuses professors of liberal "groupthink," a stance that the report says puts them at odds with the beliefs of most Americans on national and international issues. The report, by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, was based on an online, nationally representative survey of 1,259 professors at four-year colleges and universities in the spring of 2005. It found that, in general, professors are critical of American business and foreign policy and are skeptical of capitalism. Professors, says the report, are at the "forefront of the political divide"...

One in three Swiss thinks it is "definitely false" that humans developed from earlier species of animals, according to an international survey on evolution. How seriously should we take the news that only Austria is less enlightened among "old" European countries? Is it simply a reflection of Switzerland's religious history and dislike of change – or a serious failure of the education system? The journal Science recently published a survey by Jon Miller at Michigan State University which put the following statement to more than 34,000 people in 32 Europe countries, the United States and Japan: "Human beings, as we...

It is now firmly established, repeated ad nauseam in the media and elsewhere, that the debate over global warming has been settled by scientific consensus. The subject is closed. It seems unnecessary to labour the point, but here are a couple of typical statements: "The scientific consensus is clear: human-caused climate change is happening" (David Suzuki Foundation); "There is overwhelming scientific consensus" that greenhouse gases emitted by man cause global temperatures to rise (Mother Jones). Back when modern science was born, the battle between consensus and new science worked the other way around. More often than not, the consensus of...

I'm heading home in a bit after an enjoyable event at Oberlin College kicking off the Ronald Reagan Lecture Series. It was refreshing to see a healthy, engaged group of College Republicans on campus, and some wonderful professors on their side grounded in reality. C-SPAN covered the speech, which will probably air in the next week or so. I think "Unhinged" is having the salutary effect of making liberal students very self-conscious about their behavior at conservative speakers' events. Before I spoke, students passed around anonymous flyers, which read in part: This flyer is written to inform you that the...

Liberals have been suffering from conservative envy for several years now. Oh, they don't envy us our evil ways, our penchant for extreme cruelty or the fact that we smell like cabbage. They envy us our toys and success. The liberal Center for American Progress was founded explicitly to be the Left's answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation. The lefty radio network, "Air America," was launched to copy the success of Rush Limbaugh & Co. Today, deep-pocketed liberals are scrambling to copy conservative foundations, even though liberal foundations have always had more money. Most conservatives I know snicker at all...

It's official. Conservatives are losing their monopoly on complaints about media bias. In the wake of Newsweek's bungled report that U.S. military interrogators "flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," here is Terry Moran, ABC's White House reporter, in an interview with radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt: "There is, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media, one that begins from the premise that the military must be lying and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong." Moran thinks it's a hangover from Vietnam. Sure, but the culture of the newsroom is a...

“America is reaping the consequences of the destruction of traditional education by the Dewey-Kilpatrick experimentalist philosophy…Dewey’s ideas have led to elimination of many academic subjects on the grounds that they would not be useful in life…The student thus receives neither intellectual training nor the factual knowledge which will help him understand the world he lives in, or to make well-reasoned decisions in his private life or as a responsible citizen.” -- Admiral Hyman Rickover [The Tablet, August 11, 1959]John Dewey, an educational philosopher, first applied his experimental philosophies in a model school at the University of Chicago prior to 1900...

You see it in daycare centers, and you see it in the public schools, from kindergarten to high school. Group projects abound, shoving together individuals who have no formal bonds, yet are banded together for the purpose of collective decision-making. Universities, both public and private, are not immune to this affliction. In fact, if you attend a business college today, you’ll think it’s the newest rage, but it’s been the rule for decades. Most university programs may not use group projects, but undergraduate and graduate programs in business are full of them. It is our contention that group projects are...

Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual By MARK BAUERLEIN Conservatives on college campuses scored a tactical hit when the American Enterprise Institute's magazine published a survey of voter registration among humanities and social-science faculty members several years ago. More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that diversity and pluralism abound in higher education. Further investigations by people like David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, coupled with well-publicized cases of discrimination against conservative professors, reinforced the findings and set "intellectual diversity" on...

Compulsory Mental Health Screening is Coming For Adults and Children Preschool and Up... August 23, 2004 by Sharon Hughes There is a new major U.S. mental health initiative on the docket, based on a report of the New Freedom in Mental Health Commission, which recommends mental health screening for adults and children as young as preschool age, in primary care health settings, schools, and correctional facilities. It also includes expanding school-based mental health programs requiring specific treatments for specific conditions, including the use of specific medications. Despite a growing public opposition to universal mental health screening, states are being encouraged...

I have a brother who has some real personal problems from his past that has gotten involved with an organization called Landmark Forum. This has been going on for over a year, maybe two and has never been and issue with anyone in the family - until recently. He called us late one night and said that he wnated to throw a birthday party for "Bette" which, for our family, means that he is talking about our mom. Part of his problems had to do with a very painful split from our family, so this wasn't too much of a...

[...] As before, US policymakers as well as legislators base their policy decisions on the analysis provided to them by independent analysts. The robustness of the analysis, therefore, is critical to prevent poor decision-making. The intelligence analysis leading up to the 9-11 attacks, as well as the WMD-program in Iraq are classic examples of where the data was analyzed to fit what was thought of as “common sense” conclusions. In both cases, the holes in the analysis have themselves been subject to further analysis. However, it does not appear that the fundamental mistakes underlying poor analysis are being corrected. The...

Home is no place for schoolWed Sep 3, 6:49 AM ET By Dennis L. Evans  The popularity of home schooling, while not significant in terms of the number of children involved, is attracting growing attention from the media, which create the impression that a "movement" is underway. Movement or not, there are compelling reasons to oppose home teaching both for the sake of the children involved and for society. Home schooling is an extension of the misguided notion that "anyone can teach." That notion is simply wrong. Recently, some of our best and brightest college graduates, responding to the altruistic...

We reveal our collective feelings by what we take for granted. New York Times writers, for instance, assume that George W. Bush is considered so gauche that his name can serve as a synonym for clumsiness. On Sunday, a story about inept business jargon quoted an anonymous executive's memo: "Cascade this to your people and see what the push-back is." The article wasn't even about politics, but the writer knew what to say next: "If that sentence were a person, it would walk like George W. Bush." Among liberal opinionmongers, including TV comics, Bush is a punchline. Garrison Keillor on...

<p>June 24, 2003 -- Is the United States to be a nation of individuals engaged in the pursuit of happiness - or an agglomeration of hostile groups each eternally seeking advantage at the expense of the others?</p> <p>Hard to say, based on yesterday's Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action.</p>