The Real Reason Why Police Cage Peaceful Protestors

With Occupy Wall Street protesters kettled on the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend, we look at how kettling was used on protesters during the London riots earlier this year.

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Van Jones on America's Uprising: It's Going Be an Epic Battle

Jones talked to AlterNet about the growing social movements for change, running real progressives in 2012, and how we can train a million new leaders.

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Why the Kochs (Tea Party) Want to Make Chris Christie President

Neither Romney nor Perry has done the one thing that truly excites the Koch brothers and their fellow deep-pocketed Christie fans: take on the public sector unions in a big way.

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Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Other Right Wingers Want to Turn Back the Clock to 1900 -- What Was Life Like Back Then? | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet

Thank goodness for the progressive era, the New Deal and the Great Society, and heaven (or the founders) help us if we allow the demolition of their gains.

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By Cutting Taxes on the Rich, We've Incentivized Greed--How Do We Return to Fairness?

The Right wants to return to the "happier days" of the 1950s--but forgets that one of the main reasons for that era's prosperity was very high taxes on the wealthy.


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What Awful Reality TV and Suburban Living Have to Do with the Tea Party's Lack of Empathy

The Tea Parties are partly a product of the suburbs, where social isolation leaves communication about social mores to reality TV. Is it any wonder the movement lacks empathy?

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Why the Anti-Science Creationist Movement Is So Dangerous

They want to wipe out all the findings of hundreds of years of scientific investigation and have taken to schools, the courts and political leaders to get things done.


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The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To See

The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To See

10 Signs God Is Furious With the Right | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet

Whatever disaster strikes, there's always an upside in religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. Let's turn the tables.

September 16, 2011  |  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor's note: the following is satire... for the most part.

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Americans Actually Like What's In the American Jobs Act | AlterNet

 The New York Times/CBS News poll, released in full last night, has plenty of results you'd probably expect to see. President Obama's support continues to slip; Congress' support has fallen off a cliff; Dems are slightly more popular than Republicans (though both are unpopular); and an increasingly pessimistic public wants policymakers to work on jobs and the economy, not deficit reduction.

 But we knew all of that. What I found far more interesting are the specific economic policies the American mainstream supports.

On President Obama's American Jobs Act, for example

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Gardasil HPV vaccines found contaminated with recombinant DNA that persists in human blood

(NaturalNews) In seeking answers to why adolescent girls are suffering devastating health damage after being injected with HPV vaccines, SANE Vax, Inc decided to have vials of Gardasil tested in a laboratory. There, they found over a dozen Gardasil vaccine vials to be contaminated with rDNA of the Human Papillomavirus(HPV). The vials were purchased in the United States,.....

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Exclusive book excerpt: David Richo | Soul's Code

According to one of the leading psychotherapists and spiritual authors in the United States, trust is a four-fold path......

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Toronto Hearings to examine 'state crime' of 9/11

TORONTO — As people across Canada and the United States publicly remember the tragedy of 9/11 in the lead-up to its tenth anniversary this weekend, a small group in Toronto began a series of hearings Thursday to examine another angle altogether: the "myth" of 9/11 ......

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Auto industry loans worked, Cantor angry about that

Rep. Eric Cantor wishes the Ford Focus was still being built in Mexico.

Cantor's plan........

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Is Rick Perry's Budget Feeding Texas Wildfires? Local Fire Departments Suffer $23 Million in Cuts

In a summer of record drought and heat, did climate-change-denier Rick Perry's budget imperil public safety with millions in cuts to volunteer fire department coffers?
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The Bin Laden Cover-up / Pentagon Scrubs Documents to Hide Truth

Whistleblower says he was told to stop tracking Bin Laden and suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in the months prior to 9/11.

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Would God Be A Republican Or Democrat?

Would God Be A Republican Or Democrat?

The Power of Authentic Smiles / Guy Winch, PhD

Published on December 2, 2010 by Guy Winch, Ph.D. in The Squeaky Wheel

Because we view complaints as acts of self-assertion rather than the requests for help they indeed are, we often fail to utilize the most effective tool we have for eliciting help in complaint situations-conveying an implicit optimism about getting the outcome we want by using authentic smiles.
How smiles affect helping behaviorAuthentic smiles convey optimism and strong confidence that the complaint reciient will respond favorably to the issue we're presenting, thus making them more likely to do so. It all boils down to how authentic smiles effect our mood and the mood of those who are exposed to them. Authentic smiles have the power to elicit a reflexive response in the recipient-they smile back. Consequently, we can induce a better mood in others simply by flashing them authentic smiles. Smiles can be a powerful tool in complaint situations because people tend to be far more helpful when they are in a good mood.
The impact of mood on helping behavior has been demonstrated using mood enhancing devices such as sunshine and even cookies. Smiles are equally effective in inducing good mood and they have the added advantage of being readily available, glycemic friendly and weatherproof. The problem is that flashing an authentic smile is not necessarily easy after we've waited fifteen minutes to speak to the service representative we view as responsible for the fact that our new auto-drip coffee maker refuses to drip.

But let's think about that for a moment; is it fair to be angry with the service representative?

The person who can solve our problem is rarely the one who created itAlthough customer service employees do represent the company, their job is merely to resolve our complaints to the best of their ability using predetermined guidelines. Certainly, they did not manufacture the defective toaster oven that lobs our toast seven feet into the air, nor were they responsible for our St. Patrick's Day sweater arriving in pink instead of green. Similarly, the manager of the restaurant was not the one who spilled the beet soup on our wife's white dress and the municipality clerk was not the one who composed the 600 page permit application for repaving driveways.
Reminding ourselves of these facts will help us manage our frustration so we can flash an authentic smile at the manager or service representative and increase their motivation to help us. Authentic smiles are also called Duchenne smiles, for the French physician Guillaume Duchenne, who studied the physiology of facial expressions in the nineteenth century. The question is how does one tell the difference between an authentic smile and a forced one?
Why crow's feet are good for happiness despite what the Botox industry thinksTake a trip down memory lane and look at your class yearbook pictures from middle school (if your pictures are from the 70s or the 80s, try not to get too distracted by the hair...). It shouldn't take long for us to realize that we can indeed distinguish between authentic smiles and smiles that appear forced even if we cannot put our finger on exactly what it is that makes a smile seem un-authentic (and no, it's not the acne).
So, what does make a smile authentic? One basic thing-crow's feet. When the muscles around our mouth and lips try to go it alone by saying "Cheese!" our smile looks forced. But when we involve the muscles around our eyes and cheeks and create crow's feet, our smiles appear natural and authentic and they truly light up our faces.
Duchenne smiles are highly associated with happiness and not just because they affect our mood for the better. Studies found that people who displayed deeper crow's feet in their childhood pictures were less likely to divorce as adults than those whose childhood pictures had less intense crow's feet. And a study of smiles in pictures of baseball players found that players with deeper crow's feet lived five years longer on average than those with non-Duchenne smiles.
The steps for using authentic smiles in complaint situationsTo elicit good will in a complaint recipient our smiles must be authentic because only authentic smiles elicit authentic smiles in return. However, Duchenne smiles are not easy to fake and they can require some rehearsal to deliver convincingly. Following these steps will make you more likely to get the result you want and they will also make the entire complaint process far more pleasant for all concerned.
1. Start by practicing in the mirror. If making faces in the mirror makes you self-conscious, use a cell-phone camera to assess your progress. Try to involve your cheek muscles by thinking happy optimisitc thoughts such as I'm going to get a refund! or I hated that white dress anyway!2. The true test of any Duchenne smile is whether it elicits one in return. Take your Duchenne out for a spin. Practice on neighbors, colleagues or sale associates in stores (avoid sample sales-way too cutthroat and Darwinian). If your smile has deep crow's feet, theirs will too.
3. Once you've perfected your Duchenne smile and a complaint situation presents itself, make eye contact, say hello and flash the service representative or manager your best Duchenne smile. Then present your complaint in a calm and civil manner.
Smiles, like many effective complaining techniques, are simple tools we can all use. Indeed, once we acquire the right skill set, becoming an effective squeaky wheel, getting results and reaping emotional rewards by doing so, is often easier and more worthwhile than we realized.

Read my website blog to find out about my adventure practicing authentic smiles with the scariest worker at my local Post Office branch.
Follow me on Twitter @GuyWinch
Copyright 2010 Guy Winch
Abel, E. L., & Kruger, M. L. (2010). Smile intensity in photographs predicts longevity. Psychological Science 21 (4) 542-544
Hertenstein M.. J., et al (2009), Smile Intensity in Photographs predicts Divorce later in Life: Motivation and Emotion 33 (2) 99-105,

Rick Perry: Selling Sixth-Grade Girls' Health to the Highest Bidder? | | AlterNet

Perry's mandate of an HPV vaccine for young girls is part of a larger pattern of doing favors for campaign contributors--risks and conservative principles be damned.




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This Week, Another Racist Execution Is Set to Take Place in TX Under Rick Perry | AlterNet

This Week, Another Racist Execution Is Set to Take Place in TX Under Rick Perry | AlterNet