From The Independent:
How psychopaths hide in plain sight
Filming in Wichita, driving to all the key locations and deposition sites, and talking with the police, court staff and the journalists who worked the case, and with Rader’s former neighbour, I could see that he was almost the “perfect” psychopath. Think of psychopathy as a personality disorder defined by a cluster of traits centred around three different factors which, over time, have become ingrained as beliefs and behaviours.
First, is their inter-personal style, which allows the psychopath to be glib, grandiose, dishonest and manipulative; they are always arrogant and deceitful in their day-to-day dealings. Second, as far as their behaviour is concerned, psychopaths will be sensation seeking, impulsive, reckless to the point of stupidity – seemingly having no thought for their own safety. Finally, psychopaths will have defective emotional responses so that they lack remorse for their manipulative, reckless behaviours and find it impossible to truly understand why it is that you might actually find their behaviour wrong. In short, they just don’t get it; they operate in a totally different moral universe.
Christian evangelist Franklin Graham on Facebook:
More succinct and less trying to get into someone else’s head ….. or heart.
Mark Steyn, one of my favorite writers, asks:
“One way to look at the current “leader of the free world” is this: If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?”
@Nanny G & Retire05:
I read Mr. Graham’s list as:
1. Obama pointed out that the vast majority of Muslims are NOT at war with the United States, and he supports them in this regard.
2. Obama pointed out that Christians aren’t perfect, and that they have done their share of mischief.
3. Obama has rebuked Israel for its heavy-handed treatment of Palestinians and for playing dirty politics with congressional Republicans regarding negotiations with Iran.
4. (a lie.) Obama has NOT made “friends” with ANY of our enemies.
5. Obama supports equal rights for law-abiding gay American citizens.
6. Obama does NOT support the government’s right to tell a woman what to do with her body.
7. (another lie.) Obama has nothing to do with the religious freedoms of American citizens. The judiciary – an arm of the US Government independent of the executive – adjudicates disputes regarding the rights and freedoms of the citizenry.
ALL of the items Nanny attributed to Mr. Graham amounted to a bunch of words.
If Obama was “working for the other side,” he wouldn’t be using words. He’d be launching cyber attacks on the Pentagon or the CIA, he’d be shipping arms to Ukrainian separatists, he’d be flying airplanes into American office buildings, and he’d be doing everything that he could do – as the Republicans are encouraging him – to launch the United States into a global conflagration of holy war against Islam, a thermonuclear war against Russia (and North Korea AND Iran), and an economic war against our second biggest trading partner – China.
I’m wondering who the traitors really are…
Like the vast majority of Japanese and Germans were NOT at war with the United States. A Democrat president still bombed them.
Dude, that was, like, so 5 centuries ago. (to paraphrase an Obama sycophant)
In spite of you not knowing the history of Palestine, I must admit that all those Israeli children marching with guns in their hands shouting “Death To Palestine” should bother one a lot. Oh, wait……………………..
Erdogan.
Yawn………………………..except when he didn’t..
Pregnancy is the result of a previously made choice like a hangover is the result of a previously made choice.
Nah, Obama didn’t try to force those who have religious beliefs and own companies to provide abortifacients against their religious beliefs. Can you say “Hobby Lobby?”
The answer is in your nearest mirror.
Serbian military forces killed some 80,000 Bosniak civilians. That was, like, between 1992 and 1995.
Bosnian Genocide
Then there’s the small matter of Adolf Hitler, which was somewhat less than 5 centuries ago.
@Greg:
Adolf Hitler was not a Christian. If you bothered to do a little research, instead of showing your idiocy, you would know that Hitler simply used Christianity in the early days as a platform, a platform that once in power he quickly abandoned.,
You’re an idiot.
@retire05:
That’s quite a convenient trick you employ to escape the fact that Christians commit crimes: “The fact that people commit crimes MEANS that they are NOT Christian – BY DEFINITION!”
That sort of circular reasoning allows you to forgive Christians of all crimes they ever commit. You certainly are in good company, though, as GOD forgives ALL of Man’s sins so long as Man accepts Jesus’s salvation.
“Religious Freedom” isn’t a free pass to do anything that you want to do in the name the assemblage of dogmatic beliefs of your choice. The Old Testament is a significant part of The Holy Bible, and as such provides a rational basis for people who might believe it and follow its instructions under the umbrella of religious freedom. Yet such believers are NOT free to own slaves (as the Old Testament encourages), are NOT free to own multiple wives (as the Old Testament encourages) and are NOT free to stone “sodomites” to death, or children who talk back to their parents, or women who cut their hair etc., etc., etc., AS THE OLD TESTAMENT ENCOURAGES.
The “religious freedom” of one individual pertains first and foremost to that individual’s right to BELIEVE whatever he or she chooses, without state interference. But when an individual begins to ACT upon his or her beliefs in ways that infringe on the civil rights of OTHER individuals, “religious freedom” becomes problematic, and the courts are right to limit such behavior. It is this intrusion of one person’s belief upon another’s that has caused the courts to grant gay marriage rights against the objection of many Christians. As I explained before, Warren Burger foretold this decision many decades ago as the right one, but for “the fullness of time,” and I am delighted that “the fullness of time” is upon us at last.
How shall the emergency room doctor who refuses to treat a gay patient be handled? How about the orderly who refuses to deliver food to a gay patient in a nursing home? A court-appointed lawyer who refuses to represent an indigent gay defendant? What do you do if the entire straight 98% of the population decides that for religious reasons they are free to refuse services, housing and employment to the other 2% of the population on the grounds that they religiously object to them? Isn’t THAT a “slippery slope”?
@George Wells: Couple comments on your #7.
Crime is NOT institutionalized in Christianity.
Criminals who happen to be Christian are ostracized by their congregations.
In fact, in the Hebrew Scriptures no one is allowed to own a slave in perpetuity.
There was a ”Jubilee Year,” every 50 years when ALL ”slaves” had to be freed by their Jewish owners.
So, that system was more of an indentured survitude for a specified time that both parties agreed to BEFORE the person went to work for the ”owner.”
At the Jubilee, not only were all ”slaves” freed, but they were GIVEN land and housing as a start so they might never fall into poverty necessitating their selling themselves into”slavery” ever again.
When you say the ”Old Testament” enourages taking multiple wives, you are ignoring Mosaic Law which discouraged this. Prophets referred to king’s heard-heartedness as why THEY took multiple wives, it was hardly ”encouraged.”
None of the other things the ”Old Testament” ”encourages” are practiced today because Jews today are CIVILIZED.
The Koran is over 1,000 newer than the most recent part of the Hebrew Scriptures, yet it not only encourages barbaric behavior, its followers to this day obey its calls for such behaviors!
Institutionally, Muslims are stuck in their seven-hundreds when their books were compiled.
Only individually are some Muslims civilized enough to be disgusted by ISIS and al Qaeda and Hamas, (etc.) brutal practices in the name of allah.
You then ignore Islam’s treatment of gays under Sharia and try to make an imaginary case (straw man because no one in the USA turns sick homosexuals away from hospitals for being homosexual) that is simply not happening.
As to areas of peripheral importance, like selling personalized cakes, florals, etc., I had some time back suggested catalogues.
Let customers peruse a catalogue and pick out a cake or floral arrangement, and buy it if that’s what they want.
@Nanny G #8:
“None of the other things the ”Old Testament” ”encourages” are practiced today because Jews today are CIVILIZED.”
No, Nanny, the archaic proscriptions and the corresponding punishments found in the Old Testament are not practiced today because WE (not just “Jews,” but MOST of us) have advanced out of the stone age, the period when the Old Testament myths were concocted, and WE have OUTLAWED such primitive punishments. (No, not Muslims, AMERICANS.) WE have also LEARNED what the Old Testament authors did not know about many things, and WE have developed a more gracious and generous tolerance for the diversity of Man, whether as a result of Christ’s teaching or in spite of it.
That does NOT void the fact that there are still Christians – in America – who would prefer to live by the literal word of the entire Bible, ALL of the obvious contradictions notwithstanding. I have a cousin who lives with his TWO WIVES and thirteen daughters in a “religious” cult in Oklahoma, and they THINK that they live by the ENTIRE Bible. He preaches and preaches, and he sees abominations lurking in every shadow. He teaches his daughters that the Earth is 6000 years old. He won’t let his mother see her grandchildren because he thinks she (an incredibly spiritual Baptist Republican) is inhabited by the Devil. None of them leave the commune, which does not have a television set. One wonders what future those children have…
So, MAYBE more people are civilized today than they were 6 thousand years ago, but certainly not ALL of them are.
“You then ignore Islam’s treatment of gays under Sharia and try to make an imaginary case (straw man because no one in the USA turns sick homosexuals away from hospitals for being homosexual) that is simply not happening.”
First, ISLAM has nothing to do with the rights and freedoms guaranteed in OUR Constitution. Keep Islam out of this.
Second, “simply NOT happening”?
Perhaps you have forgotten how many doctors refused to treat AIDS victims, an ugly bit of bigotry that many gays encountered back in the 1980’s. Kaposi’s sarcoma was a “dead” give-away. Yeah, that was 35 years ago, but compared to the Biblical time-line, it was just yesterday. Thirty five years ago we were “primitive,” but NOW we’re “civilized”? More importantly, where does the line get drawn? If a baker can refuse to bake a cake for a gay, but a doctor CAN’T refuse to treat a gay, what law defines the point that differentiates what discrimination is allowed and what discrimination is NOT allowed? I know of no such law. Republicans have steadfastly refused to pass the ENDA legislation that would protect gays from SOME discrimination, so exactly WHAT discrimination WOULD Republicans outlaw? ANY? The doctor refusing to treat a dying gay? Does it have to be a life-and-death situation before a gay can get equal rights?
“Let customers peruse a catalogue and pick out a cake or floral arrangement, and buy it if that’s what they want.”
You have GOT to be kidding! REALLY????
Can a gay person get a job out of a catalog? Housing?
Do you think that your catalog suggestion would go over well with Black patrons being refused admission to a restaurant or a movie theater because they were Black?
Can’t you see the similarity between your “catalog” solution and the “Blacks Only” water fountains of the segregation era? “Here, this is a “separate-but-equal” provision that should satisfy you…”
You evidently have a very limited view of what the term “equal rights” means.
Stop hiding behind discriminatory Band-Aids and spell it out:
What discrimination should be illegal and what discrimination should be legal, and WHY.
@George Wells: George, are you and Obama having an affair?
@retire05:
Is there an echo in here? Does that sound familiar? Do we know any other politician that pretended to be a Christian until he got elected? How about it Greg, sound familiar?
@George Wells:
How does the emergency room doctor know the patient is gay? Do homos have “gay” tattooed on their body somewhere? Do they wear a medical emergency bracelet?
Again, how does the orderly know the patient is “gay”? Is there a notice on the door? Is the ‘gay’ persons doing something that is ‘advertising’ his persuasion?
Is there an issue here, or a manufactured one?
@George Wells:
Is there an insinuation that ‘only’ gays got Aids?
There’s a hell of a lot of difference in a situation where the person wanting a cake baked has plenty of time to select a person to bake a cake and an emergency victim being admitted to an emergency room. “assuming the victim doesn’t have’ GAY stamped on their forehead. Even with ‘GAY’ stamped on their forehead, they still don’t have time to make a selection of physicians, vs a cake baker.
@Redteam #12:
“How does the emergency room doctor know the patient is gay? Do homos have “gay” tattooed on their body somewhere? Do they wear a medical emergency bracelet?”
That is a reasonable question for a third grade child to ask, so here’s the answer:
When MOST people have a primary care physician, that physician collects all of their essential medical information, including any advanced medical directives, medical powers of attorney, and next-of-kin information. This information is also necessary for the admitting facility to grant appropriate spousal visitation privileges.
If the last name given on a medical power of attorney or next-of-kin is different from the patient’s, the person collecting this information will ask what the relationship is between this person and the patient. The same thing is true if the insurance card bears the name of the covered employee AND NOT THE SPOUSE’S NAME. (My insurance card has Paul’s name on it, not mine.) For legal reasons, it is ill-advised to lie at this point, and when the correct information is submitted, it becomes part of the patient’s permanent medical record. This permanent medical record is accessed every time a person gets medical attention, (or else it has to be collected each time a patient is admitted) whether in a hospital emergency room or at a satellite “urgent-care” retailer. The provider need only have access to the network in which the information is stored in order to obtain this information. Regardless of how or when this information is obtained, care isn’t dispensed until the information is in the facility’s hand. Medical information is rarely “tattooed” onto a patient.
Are you REALLY this ignorant? Don’t you have medical services where you live? Have you ever WATCHED TO SEE what is happening when someone goes in to get medical attention? I mean, besides to a Bayou Witch Doctor…