Karl Rove, Booing and Laughter

First, some laughter:

* The concept of laughter as a cure for disease lacks scientific support, but humor may indeed have significant effects on the psyche.
* Laughter relaxes us and improves our mood, and hearing jokes may ease anxiety. Amusement can also counteract pain.
* Cheerfulness, a trait that makes people respond more readily to humor, is linked to emotional resilience—the ability to keep a level head in difficult circumstances—and to close relationships. Life satisfaction may increase with the ability to laugh.

[...]

Additional studies have shown that laughing at a funny film can cause a drop in the blood’s concentration of the stress hormone cortisol (although other stress hormones appear to be unaffected). Because chronically elevated cortisol levels have been shown to weaken the immune system, this mechanism could conceivably help ward off disease. Indeed, experiments have indicated that laughter increases the activity of immune cells called natural killer cells in saliva in healthy subjects.

In some cases, though, laughter may dampen inappropriate immune responses. In a 2007 study allergy researcher Hajime Kimata of Moriguchi-Keijinkai Hospital in Japan measured levels of the hormone melatonin in the breast milk of nursing mothers before and after the subjects watched either a comic Charlie Chaplin video or an ordinary weather report. Melatonin regulates the sleep-wake cycle and is often disturbed in the allergic skin condition atopic eczema, which all of the 48 babies in the study had. Kimata found that laughing at the funny film, but not hearing the weather report, increased the amount of melatonin in the mothers’ milk. In addition, the laughter-fortified breast milk reduced the allergic responses to latex and house dust mites in the infants. Thus, making a nursing mom laugh might sometimes serve as an allergy remedy for her baby. [...]

Humor’s analgesic effect requires enjoyment but not necessarily laughter, according to a 2004 study by Ruch, along with his then graduate students Karen Zweyer and Barbara Velker. The researchers asked 56 women to submerge a hand in ice-cold water before, immediately after and 20 minutes after a funny seven-minute film. In response to the film, some of the women were instructed to get into a cheerful mood without smiling or laughing; others were asked to smile and laugh a lot; the rest were told to create humorous verbal commentaries on the film while watching it.

As expected, seeing the funny film did boost pain tolerance in all the women: after exposure to the comedy, all the participants required a longer exposure to the water to feel pain and could tolerate longer submersions before pulling their hand out. These changes in pain perception were lasting, persisting for 20 minutes after the film ended. Smiling, but not necessarily laughter, seemed to be most important for the pain-suppressing effect. The women who were asked to refrain from smiling in response to the film generally felt the most pain, and the members of that group who failed to suppress a grin showed more pain tolerance than the others did.

I’ll have to keep that in mind this weekend.

(hat tip: 3 quarks daily)

Booing: 3-quarks daily points to an article which discusses booing at the end of theater productions. This part is interesting:

Booing, on the other hand, sends a different message, one that isn’t necessarily all bad. Francesca Zambello’s deliberately provocative Met production of “Lucia di Lammermoor” was booed when it opened in 1992. “It isn’t fun to be booed,” Ms. Zambello later told me, “but sometimes it’s also a badge of success.” Why? Because the people who booed Ms. Zambello’s “Lucia” and Ms. Zimmerman’s “Sonnambula,” unlike the ones who spring to their feet at the end of a third-rate musical, were making it clear that they’d paid attention to what they saw and heard. No, they didn’t care for it, but at least they were involved with it, and such involvement can be the first step toward a deeper, more thoughtful response. “As soon as I detest something,” the music critic Hans Keller once said, “I ask myself why I like it.” Keller’s words may seem paradoxical, but in fact they’re wise. While anger may turn out to be love in disguise, indifference is rarely anything more than indifference.

I hasten to acknowledge, however, that booing can hurt. Few artists are thick-skinned enough not to be stung to the quick by public rejection. Henry James was so devastated by what he described as the “hoots and jeers and catcalls of the roughs” that greeted the 1895 premiere of “Guy Domville,” his most ambitious play, that he turned his back on the stage to concentrate once again on the writing of novels. “You must spare my going over again that horrid hour, or those of disappointment or depression that have followed it,” he wrote to his brother William four days later. We know now, of course, that James made the right decision, but might he possibly have gone on to write a first-rate play had he not been crushed by the boos that greeted “Guy Domville”? We’ll never know.

Karl Rove: Rove is one of the most skillful liars that I’ve ever seen. Here is one of his latest articles:

By KARL ROVE

The Pew Research Center reported last week that President Barack Obama “has the most polarized early job approval of any president” since surveys began tracking this 40 years ago. The gap between Mr. Obama’s approval rating among Democrats (88%) and Republicans (27%) is 61 points. This “approval gap” is 10 points bigger than George W. Bush’s at this point in his presidency, despite Mr. Bush winning a bitterly contested election.

Part of Mr. Obama’s polarized standing can be attributed to a long-term trend. University of Missouri political scientist John Petrocik points out that since 1980, each successive first term president has had more polarized support than his predecessor with the exception of 1989, when George H.W. Bush enjoyed a modest improvement over Ronald Reagan’s 1981 standing.

But rather than end or ameliorate that trend, Mr. Obama’s actions and rhetoric have accelerated it. His campaign promised post-partisanship, but since taking office Mr. Obama has frozen Republicans out of the deliberative process, and his response to their suggestions has been a brusque dismissal that “I won.”

Compare this with Mr. Bush’s actions in the aftermath of his election. Among his first appointments were Democratic judicial nominees who had been blocked by Republicans under President Bill Clinton. The Bush White House joined with Democratic and Republican leaders to draft education reform legislation. And Mr. Bush worked with Republican Chuck Grassley to cut a deal with Democrat Max Baucus to win bipartisan passage of a big tax cut in a Senate split 50-50 after the 2000 election.

Mr. Obama has hastened the decline of Republican support with petty attacks on his critics and predecessor.

Petty attacks? President Obama saying “hey, I won”?

Here is a little reminder (video)

(text)

Rove, the architect behind President Bush’s election victories, on Wednesday night told a gathering of the New York Conservative Party that “Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.” Conservatives, he said, “saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.”

And remember President Bush’s remarkable claims about “spending his political capital” after his oh-so-narrow victory in 2004?

Re-elected US president George Bush today said he intended to spend the “political capital” he earned campaigning for the White House.

In his first press conference since the election he acknowledged he had to “explain the decisions I make” but said he had every intention of following through with a second term agenda stretching from an overhaul of the tax system to “spreading freedom” in the Middle East.

“The people made it clear what they wanted,” he said. “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and I intend to spend it.”

Gee, how did the 2004 election turn out?

Electoral College: 286-251, or 62 million to 59 million.

The 2008 election:
Electoral College: 365-173, or 69.5 million to 59.9 million.

Obama’s margin was THREE TIMES LARGER than Bush’s.

So, we know that Mr. Rove is an unrepentant hypocrite.

But you know what else? His analysis is very faulty, though he makes some factually accurate statements.

About that approval rating break down:

The latest CBS News/New York Times poll showed President Obama receiving a 66 percent approval rating from the public, his highest since taking office in January. How does that compare to other presidents’ approval ratings?

It is certainly higher than the approval ratings of recent Presidents George W. Bush (53 percent) and Bill Clinton (55 percent) at this point in their presidencies, but it is by no means the highest that polls have recorded. Presidents Reagan, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower and Truman all received higher marks than President Obama at comparably early points in their presidencies.

EARLY JOB APPROVAL RATINGS

Barack Obama (4/2009) ……….66%
George W. Bush (4/2001) …….53%
Bill Clinton (3/1993) ………………55%
George H. W. Bush (4/1989) …61%
Ronald Reagan (4/1981) ………67%
Jimmy Carter (4/1977) …………..64%
Gerald Ford* (11/1974) ………….47%
Richard Nixon* (4/1969) ………..61%
Lyndon Johnson* (1/1964) …….76%
John Kennedy* (4/1961) ………..78%
Dwight Eisenhower* (4/1953) ..73%
Harry Truman* (10/1945) ……….82%

(* Gallup data)

Not all Americans are fans of the new president. Just 31 percent of Republicans now approve of the job President Obama is doing, and a CBS News poll conducted just after the president took office found only 36 percent of Republicans approving. President Obama’s high approval rating is the result of widespread approval among Democrats and strong approval from independents.

There is also data from a Pew Poll which is similar:

So, Rove is right about President Obama being more partisan than President Bush?

Well not so fast: here is another factor:

The balance of party identification in the American electorate now favors the Democratic Party by a decidedly larger margin than in either of the two previous presidential election cycles.

In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans.

The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.

The Democratic Party has also built a substantial edge among independent voters. Of the 37% who claim no party identification, 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, and 12% have no leaning either way.

By comparison, in 2004 about equal numbers of independents leaned toward both parties. When “leaners” are combined with partisans, however, the Democratic Party now holds a 14-point advantage among voters nationwide (51% Dem/lean-Dem to 37% Rep/lean-Rep), up from a three-point advantage four years ago.

In short, now 27 percent describe themselves as Republcian whereas in 2004, 33 percent did.
That is, the current Republicans are going to be more extreme in their views than the ones in 2004 were. On the other hand, the percent calling themselves Democrats has remained mostly constant (35 percent in 2004, 36 percent in 2008; the change is well within margin-of-error).

That explains this phenomenon better than anything else I’ve seen.

Update:

Day Prior…9 April 2009

Workout notes 2 mile walk last night (easy); stretching this morning.

Science

Conservation Report: has an interesting article about an isolated population of wolves. Evidently inbreeding has lead to a sharp increase in the percentage of birth defects, and scientists are weighing the possibility of introducing new wolves to the population to help things out. On another note, the warmer weather has lead to weaker moose hence the moose are being hunted more successfully by the wolves.

Lungless Frog: Jerry Coyne’s blog has an interesting article about a frog having evolved so as to lose its lungs. It breathes though it skin; other frogs can do this but this frog breathes this way exclusively.

Religion This article contains a video (and I can’t seem to embed MSNBC videos) where Christopher Hitchens debates a right wing fundamentalist about the nature of religion in today’s US society. The wingnut doesn’t seem to understand that the US was founded as a secular state, though many of the early Americans were indeed Christian.

Politics We will be watching the tea-baggers, mostly to make fun of them.

Inhofe: the Dumbest Member of the US Senate

Listen to Senator Inhofe: (R-Oklahoma)

Inhofe bellows on about the cut in defense spending. There are a couple of problems:

1. It isn’t true.

The big news from yesterday (still settling in across Washington) is that President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates teamed up to propose a sweeping overhaul of the defense budget–calling for the elimination of unnecessary systems and spending the savings on special forces, intelligence equipment, and other tools of counterinsurgent warfare.

In other words, by retooling the Pentagon, Obama and Gates plan to move a lot of money around, but they also plan to increase the overall defense budget. In the final year of the Bush administration (and excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) the defense budget was $513 billion. In FY 2010, if Gates and Obama get their way, it will be $534 billion–$534 billion that will be spent much differently than last year’s outlays were.

2. The wars themselves are budgeted differently

On September 12, the Senate Appropriations Committee will consider the fiscal year (FY) 2008 Defense Appropriations bill, which funds the Pentagon’s annual basic operations. The House has already passed its version of this legislation (H.R. 3222), which includes $460 billion for the Department of Defense, $3.5 billion below the Bush Administration’s request and nearly $40 billion above current levels. Like the House, the Senate is NOT planning to include any additional funding to support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in this legislation.

Traditionally, wars are funded outside the normal annual appropriations process. This is because the federal budget process, which can take well over two years to enact funding for a single year, is simply too cumbersome to respond to unanticipated emergency spending needs, such as disaster assistance and wars. But last year, Congress required the Administration to include the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of their annual budget request, arguing that after five years in Afghanistan and three years in Iraq the Pentagon should have at least some idea of the costs of these operations. The request for war-related costs for FY 2008, which begins on October 1, was estimated by the White House back in February at roughly $142 billion.

The decision by Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) to follow the example set by his House counterpart Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and separate out Iraq funding from the DoD base budget spending bill means the appropriations bill should be able to move smoothly through Congress, possibly before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Meanwhile, the Iraq debate will be focused on the additional supplemental funding bill, which Sen. Inouye and Rep. Murtha believe will begin moving in mid-October after current funding legislation expires.

Note: the article that I am quoting for is critical of Democrats in Congress. But the point was to show that the defense bill that Senator Inhofe was complaining about isn’t the bill that funds military operations in war.