The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

...

In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers (PDF). Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end—winning our "case"—and is shot through with biases. They include "confirmation bias," in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and "disconfirmation bias," in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.

(Excuse me for a moment while I laugh inside: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...Ha!)

You'll remember that there are recurring Kandahar offenses, all of which are and have been hailed as 'turning points in the war'.  Well, a new one was imminent, and would have changed the calculus dramatically...  Plus the Taliban claim the number was 541, 106 Taliban Commanders.  Now personally I'm losing track about the Good Guys v. Bad Guys thing, and have just been tracking some of the sickest evidence that there is no 'winning', and that it is all so Kestone-Kops-esque that it's reached way past absurd levels.  Just think how many people on all sides are being destroyed over this farce.

"In a deft propaganda ploy, the Taliban gave a gripping description of the prison break in a statement they sent out to the news media ahead of any comment from the security authorities who were just in the process of discovering the tunnel.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in the statement: “We have planned and worked on this for five months, and the tunnel is 360 meters long,” he said. “This was very important for us; we were trying to not leave anyone behind, not even one sick or old political prisoner.”

“Our mujahedeen worked in a very careful way” so as not to be discovered, Mr. Mujahid said. The tunnel wound under security check posts outside the prison and under a main highway."

Good God all-Friday.

Florida House of Representatives tells the EPA what it can do with its obsession about polluted water. Bill is now in committee in the Senate.

The Florida House has passed legislation to prohibit state, regional and local government agencies from implementing federal water pollution regulations.

The bill (HB 239) won approval 90-27 after the House placated environmentalists by removing provisions that would have weakened current state regulations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed nutrient limits for Florida to settle a lawsuit by environmental groups.

The EPA rules are designed to reduce algae blooms that are choking rivers, lakes and other water bodies in the state.

Last night, Rachel Maddow looked at the competing fights to recall various Wisconsin state legislators in the wake of Governor Scott Walker’s (R) moves to strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. And, while Democrats are looking to recall some Republican state Senators in districts that are now trending more Democratic, Republicans did get enough signatures to put some Democratic state Senators through recall fights themselves.

Though, as Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post first reported, there’s just a slight problem with some of those petitions: out-of-state signature collectors may have bought those votes in exchange for shots. It’s legal, apparently, but doesn’t make the Republicans look any better.

The desperate search for missing honors student Phylicia Barnescame to a heartbreaking end Thursday, after an autopsy determined that a body pulled from the Susquehanna River was that of the North Carolina teen who vanished from Baltimore in December.

Two law enforcement sources said the autopsy revealed that the body was Barnes; state police later confirmed the finding and said a press conference has been scheduled for 8 p.m.

Earlier Thursday, The Sun reported that Baltimore police had provided Barnes' dental records to the state medical examiner's office for comparison to a body found in the river, one of two found Wednesday in the waterway that splits Harford and Cecil counties about 40 miles northeast of Baltimore.

An apparent tattoo on the body appeared to match a tattoo of a rose that Barnes had on her lower right leg, increasing speculation that the teen's body had been discovered after months of fruitless searching.

[Her disappearance has been a big mystery here - such a shame]

The impoverished former industrial town of Benton Harbor has become a flashpoint in the controversy over the new law that allows the governor to appoint Emergency Managers with virtually unlimited authority over local governments.

On Thursday the state-appointed Emergency Manager Joe Harris used the expanded powers granted by the new law to issue an order banning the city commission from taking any action without his written permission.

Benton Harbor City Commissioner Juanita Henry says her constituents are angry and looking for help, but without the power to hold meetings the city commission can’t even provide an official venue for citizens to ask questions and get answers.

“They are using Benton Harbor as a test case,“ Henry said. “If they have disenfranchised the people so badly they just don’t respond to anything, they can do this all over the country.”

Community activist Rev. Edward Pinkney said that many Benton Harbor residents only learned that their city government had been sacked by reading about it in the paper days later.

[I wonder if this would have been done if Benton Harbor was predominantly white ?]

It’s in this light that the behavior of the two main American political parties over the last thirty years needs to be understood. Since 1984, the Democrats’ strategy has been to denounce the Republicans during each presidential campaign and then, once in office, copy GOP policies letter for letter, with the occasional sop thrown to their erstwhile allies now and then for form’s sake. The hangdog, foot-scuffing spinelessness displayed repeatedly by Democratic politicians in the face of Republican pressure, I’ve come to believe, has its roots here; it’s hard to stand firm against the opposition if you’re covertly imitating all its policies.

The Republicans, for their part, have traveled an even longer road from their roots than the Democrats. Fifty years ago, the GOP was the party of small government, fiscal prudence, local autonomy, and a healthy distrust of foreign military adventures; for that matter, from the founding of the National Parks by Theodore Roosevelt to the sweeping environmental reforms enacted by Nixon, the GOP had at least as good a record on environmental issues as the Democrats. Had a delegate to a 1960 GOP county convention proposed today’s Republican policies, in other words, he would have been thrown out of the hall with enough force to leave a faceprint on the pavement. The near-total betrayal of its historic commitments and ideals by today’s GOP has left deep scars; I suspect that the shrill fury with which so many Republican spokespeople denounce everyone else comes from the deep and unadmitted discomfort they feel at that betrayal, and their own complicity in it.

More consequences of the Citizens United ruling will be popping up this year; things that most of us weren't quite snidely enough to imagine the most snidely characters can think up.

I think most of us here at Dagblog always suspected it was really Canada's fault…