Monterey Bay Forum

Let’s imagine what might happen were President Obama given an ADOS assessment. An ADOS is administered one-to-one — not done here.

What the ADOS is: The ADOS assesses for autistic spectrum disorders. Adolescents or adults assessed with an ADOS are asked to do various tasks including: 1) play interactively with the person who is assessing; 2) demonstrate how to do an activity; and 3) tell a story based on a picture book which has no words.

One ADOS task is engaging in interactive play that involves joint attention and ability to change based on what the other person does. President Obama seems to engage in a lot of “my way or no way” behavior which is not interactive. When President Obama got the stimulus bill signed he immediately turned it over to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to figure out how to distribute the “pork”. President Obama did not wield his mighty pen and interactively “cut” out pork. Overall global assessment: As Obama’s abilities to interactively “play” appear low, he gets a score of 2 for the joint interactive task.

A second task on the ADOS: The person must demonstrate both verbally and non-verbally how to do something in daily life. Getting bills such as ObamaCare passed has been part of President Obama’s daily life. Can you imagine President Obama — without a teleprompter — explaining with use of gesture and words how he got ObamaCare passed? On the demonstrate a Daily Activity task Obama scores another 2. The total score is now 4 points.

A third task on the ADOS: The person assessed must tell a story based on a picture book that has no words. So, imagine a picture book showing the Tea Party movement at various rallies. How might Obama tell that story? Can Obama see a series of pictures and make a coherent story about a major political event, i.e. the Tea Party movement? Doubtful. Hence, on the Tell a Story task President Obama gets another score of 2.

On just three ADOS tasks Obama is already up to a total score of 6. There are about 12 or so tasks on the ADOS.

Let’s hypothetically assume that President Obama can meet the ADOS cutoff score for a possible diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder. More information is necessary to assign a diagnosis of autism or some variation.

The foregoing gives you an idea of the kind of tasks persons must perform during an ADOS assessment. (more…)

Hillary: The Movie is a harshly critical 90-minute documentary. It was deemed a criminal act to show it on cable tv during the 2008 presidential primaries. Why? Because there was a federal law.

During the 2008 presidential primaries, the FCC denied permission to view Hillary: The Movie on demand cable. Back in 2008, to distribute in movie form an extremely vituperative expression of disdain for Hilary as a candidate was a criminal act. Cearly this was control of political content by the government.

That has now changed. The Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission by a 5-4 decision that corporations have free speech the same as individual citizens.

It is no longer a criminal act for a non-profit (or for profit) corporation to express political free speech. The right for a group of people — such as a corporation — to express political speech is the same as for an individual.

This decision that corporations have freedom of speech makes sense. Freedom of assembly obviously means groups of people gathering together. Surely, groups of people gathering together as a group have freedom of speech. That goes for the ACLU as well as for Coke. What say you? written by Cameron Jackson DrCameronJackson@gmail.com