VOTE!

Best $5 I ever spent!

This arrived via email and is just too much fun not to share:

Instead of (or in addition to) sending around more emails about how horrible Sarah Palin is as a potential vice president, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood... in her name.

When you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.

You'll need to fill in the address to let Planned Parenthood know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street, 1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Make sure to chose the "Honorary or Memorial Donations" link on the left side of the page at:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/donate/donate-89.htm

I just made a donation. The thank you email I received in response says:

Your contribution to Planned Parenthood Federation of America is tax deductible to the fullest extent allowable under law. IRS regulations require us to state that we did not provide any goods or services to you in consideration of your contribution.

However, I believe I was provided a wonderful service for my contribution. It's called poetic justice. Priceless!

Misinformation Study

There's No Arguing With Conservatives... No, Seriously...

A new study out of Yale University confirms that offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies with greater vigor. In essence, schooling conservatives makes them more ignorant. (Or is that ignoranter?) From the September 14th Washington Post article on the study:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003.

Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse. A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation.

Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.

** The added links are my doing and did not appear in the original Washington Post article or the forwarded email I received. ~ Alessia

Advocacy

I have been told that it's bad for business to mix political (or any other) advocacy with my work as an author.

If current or future book sales are more important to an author, then s/he can choose to remain neutral. Perhaps s/he will reconsider when those books start disappearing from public libraries.

I refuse to put career before conscience. And, I'm exceptionally proud of my partner for choosing to make his views known as well.

peace & passion,

~ Alessia

The Slippery Slope... or WWOD?

Let me preface this post by stating that I am a staunch supporter of Barack Obama.

Here comes the "but" ...

But, lately, I have been observing behavior in his disciples (yes, that word choice was intentional) that is alarming to me.

It looks, smells, and sounds a whole helluva lot like the if-you-criticize-you're-not-patriotic attitude that we (meaning the liberal left) received when voicing our objections to the war in Iraq, when speaking out against torture at Guantanamo, when demanding accountability for corporate graft.

When criticism is viewed as blasphemous, when every opinion is countered with spin, when people on the same team start questioning the devotion of others, it's time to get off our knees and take a step away from the altar.

I'd like to believe Obama's camp is too smart to fall into the sort of behavior patterns that have resulted, under the current administration, in the weakening of our constitutional rights. Obama himself is undoubtedly bright enough, but is his fan club seeing clearly enough to avoid the hypocrisy seeping into their rhetoric?

What Would Obama Do?