According to them, I'm a newcomer because I was born in Germany and then came over here with my parents in the early fifties. (You don't think I came over by myself now, do ya?)
But, my sister, who is five years younger than I am, was born in Windsor, Ontario ................., so that makes her "old stock!" (At least I think that's how it works!)
Go figure!
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A lot of people still seems confused about whether animals really think ....., or not!
Let me tell ya kids, not only do they think, but they're a lot more like us than you can imagine!
SCIENCE USUALLY STEERS firmly away from questions about the inner lives of animals. Surely they have inner lives of some sort. But like a child who is admonished that what he really wants to ask is impolite, a young scientist is taught that the animal mind — if there is such a thing — is unknowable.
Permissible questions are "it" questions: about where it lives, what it eats, what it does when danger threatens, how it breeds. But always forbidden is the one question that might open the door: Who?
"Who" animals know who they are; they know who their family and friends are. They know their enemies. They make strategic alliances and cope with chronic rivalries. They aspire to higher rank and wait for their chance to challenge the existing order. Their status affects their offspring's prospects. Their life follows the arc of a career. Personal relationships define them. Sound familiar? Of course. "They" includes us. But a vivid, familiar life is not the domain of humans alone.
I traveled to observe some of the most protected creatures in the world — the elephants of Amboseli in Kenya, the wolves of Yellowstone in the United States, and killer whales in the waters of the Pacific Northwest — and in each place I found the animals feeling "human" pressures that directly affect what they do, where they go, how long they live, and how their families fare.
Do other animals have human emotions? Yes, they do. Do humans have animal emotions? Yes, they're largely the same. Fear, aggression, well-being, anxiety, and pleasure are the emotions of shared brain structures and shared chemistries, originated in shared ancestry. They are the shared feelings of a shared world.
http://theweek.com/articles/577618/what-animals-think
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I keep hoping that Bernie Sanders wins the Presidency in the States next year and he sure has the momentum going forward!
He did a great interview on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, but before he come out for that Stephen did a warm up with the audience, and this is how it went!
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Speaking of politicians, we may have hit upon Donald Trump's weak spot this week.
Trump has obviously surprised everybody (but himself) by surging to the head of the polls despite jarring statements about Mexican rapists, our stupid political leaders and Carly Fiorina’s face. Trump’s undoing, however, might be hiding in plain sight—the four corporate bankruptcies his companies have declared.
Trump says these Chapter 11 filings are nothing more than a shrewd businessman using “the laws of this country” to his advantage. It’s true that bankruptcy is considered a legitimate way to restructure a troubled company and give it a second chance, instead of just liquidating it. But it’s also a last-resort option when all else has failed, and it is hardly a mark of success.https://www.yahoo.com/politics/donald-trump-on-anti-muslim-questioner-129419459981.html
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AND FINALLY, since we seem to gravitate towards U.S. politics today:
Are Democrats and Republicans talking about the same country?
To listen to the Republican candidates is to hear an entirely different campaign — one that centers on defeating Islamic State terrorists, deterring a nuclear Iran, restricting abortion, and debating whether to deport illegal immigrants and construct a wall to keep them out.
At a political moment of pitched voter anxiety, candidates in both parties talk in dark, sometimes apocalyptic tones — but about different issues, as if they’re addressing two different countries.
“Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus,” Republican strategist Ari Fleischer said. “The gulf between the two parties has grown wider in the last decade, not smaller.”
The contrast was brought into sharp relief this week. Republicans sparred in a three-hour debate Wednesday over issues of national security, abortion and immigration, but had little to say about middle-class economic growth. On the campaign trail, Democrats focused on liberal economic and social agendas, but barely touched on terrorist threats and the cultural issues that have become conservative rallying cries.
David Winston, a Republican pollster unaligned in the presidential race, said the economy is the top issue for all voters. “Whenever the candidates are not talking about jobs and the economy, they’re off on the wrong topic,” he said.
Some difference in emphasis is to be expected, considering that each party’s base voters are animated by different issues. At this stage in the race, the candidates are playing to those bases in an attempt to win the nomination. But the gulf in the 2016 campaign has grown particularly noticeable.James Pethokoukis, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, studied the transcript of Wednesday’s prime-time GOP debate. He found 10 references to the Middle East and four to the middle class; 23 to defunding Planned Parenthood and three to single parents; seven to a border wall and five to economic growth.
“As a casual viewer watching this show, what did they get out of it? They got, once again, a Republican Party that doesn’t have much to say about their concerns,” Pethokoukis said. “What should be the core Republican themes — growth and opportunity, upward mobility — didn’t get much play. There were 11 on stage, and they could’ve seized control and talked about these things, but it didn’t happen.”
Some Republican strategists said they were frustrated that the debate moderators did not ask questions about a broader array of subjects, though CNN had signaled in advance that the debate would focus heavily on foreign affairs. And they said comparing what Republicans say in answering questions at a debate with what Democrats say in their stump speeches is unfair.
“I shook my head, thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’ve spent 20 minutes talking about birthright citizenship,’ ” Wehner said. “But it’s a product of the questions that were asked. Marco Rubio would love to talk about college affordability and student debt. And Jeb Bush, I don’t know that there’s any issue he’d rather talk about than social mobility.”
Sanders and Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton seized on the differences to paint Republicans as out of touch with the electorate. During the debate, Sanders tweeted: “Waiting, waiting, waiting. Will we hear anything about racial justice, income inequality or making college affordable?”
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters assembled at her New York headquarters on debate night: “Carly Fiorina got her biggest applause when she went on a tirade against Planned Parenthood. . . . They have a completely out-of-date and out-of-touch philosophy. It’s hard for me to see through their prism on some of these things.”
On Friday, Clinton told a crowd in Durham, N.H.: “You’ve got to understand, this is an ideological divide. Let’s make no mistake about it.”
Joel Benenson, Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, said in an interview that by running in what he dubbed “the Fox News network primary,” the Republican candidates are alienating working- and middle-class voters.
“At the moment, it certainly seems that the Republicans are talking to a more narrow slice of America,” he said. “I’m not going to say it’s two different Americas because I think we’re one country, but they are talking to the base of their party, not a broader swath.”
Economic and family issues such as college affordability, the minimum wage, executive compensation, early child care and paid sick days that have formed the foundation of the Clinton and Sanders campaigns have largely been absent in the Republican discussion. Benenson said that this is a mistake and that Clinton and her campaign will try to exploit it.
“If you’re not addressing it, that’s your choice, and that’s what the Republicans are doing,” Benenson said. “They are missing the mark on what’s really affecting people’s lives and what people care most about.”
Some Republican candidates have tried to emphasize these issues, however.
“Jeb’s whole campaign is all about economic growth. . . . He rolls out the most significant piece of his plan to get us rolling at 4 percent, and it’s ignored. That’s unfortunate,” Edward Lazear, who served as President George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, told a group of reporters this week at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
At Wednesday’s debate, some candidates became visibly irritated by the focus on what they considered diversions from the core concerns of middle-class voters.
“Listen,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fumed. “While I’m as entertained as anyone by this personal back-and-forth about the history of Donald and Carly’s career, for the 55-year-old construction worker out in that audience tonight who doesn’t have a job, who can’t fund his child’s education, I’ve got to tell you the truth.
“They could care less about your careers,” he continued. “They care about theirs. Let’s start talking about that on this stage and stop playing games.”
John Wagner in Durham, N.H., and Anne Gearan in New York contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/are-democrats-and-republicans-talking-about-the-same-country/2015/09/18/7e6de048-5e32-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html
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