{"id":3678,"date":"2010-02-09T13:55:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T18:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3678"},"modified":"2010-02-09T17:13:14","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T22:13:14","slug":"maybe-democratic-budget-writers-have-brain-lesions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3678\/maybe-democratic-budget-writers-have-brain-lesions\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe Democratic Budget Writers Have Brain Lesions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, maybe the progressive elites currently running the federal government aren\u2019t insane so much as handicapped.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSN0823962020100208 \" target=\"_blank\">A new study <\/a>finds that people with a certain type of brain lesion are less inhibited to take extreme risks with money than those with brains functioning normally.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>They studied two women with a rare genetic condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease, which damages the amygdala, the almond-shaped center in the brain that controls fear and certain other acute emotions.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers compared the women&#8217;s responses to 12 people with undamaged brains. They noted this kind of study usually involves only a few people as it is not possible or ethical to deliberately damage a person&#8217;s brain to see what happens.<\/p>\n<p>The volunteers were asked to make gambles in which there was an equal probability they would win $20 or lose $5 (a risk most people will take) &#8212; or would win or lose $20 (one most people will reject).<\/p>\n<p>The two patients with damaged amygdalas fearlessly risked a $50 pot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The researchers concluded that \u201cthis shows that the amygdale is critical for triggering a sense of caution toward making gambles in which you might lose.\u201d\u00a0 But how about those occasions when you <em>know<\/em> a certain decision will lose money?\u00a0 Like, for example, intentionally proposing a $1.3 trillion budget deficit?\u00a0 Or pushing a health care \u201creform\u201d bill taxing citizens for years before it starts delivering care?\u00a0 Or how about imposing an energy tax on carbon emissions with the primary effect being less economic output?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to this study, there is finally a rational explanation for such behavior: Democratic leaders may have brain lesions. \u00a0Whew!\u00a0 Here I thought they were insane; turns out they\u2019re just suffering from a diseased brain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, maybe the progressive elites currently running the federal government aren\u2019t insane so much as handicapped.\u00a0 A new study finds that people with a certain type of brain lesion are less inhibited to take extreme risks with money than those with brains functioning normally. They studied two women with a rare genetic condition called Urbach-Wiethe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,828,70,195,465],"class_list":["post-3678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-brain-lesion","tag-budget","tag-energy","tag-health-care-reform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3678"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3686,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3678\/revisions\/3686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}