Paul M. Jones

How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

I submit that had Palin or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice or Jeb Bush or John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney proposed doing even half of those things in 2008, you'd have declared them unfit for the presidency and expressed alarm at the prospect of America doubling down on the excesses of the post-September 11 era. You'd have championed an alternative candidate who avowed that America doesn't have to choose between our values and our safety.

Yet President Obama has done all of the aforementioned things.

via Dear Andrew Sullivan: Why Focus On Obama's Dumbest Critics? - Conor Friedersdorf - Politics - The Atlantic.

Physicians in India have identified a form of incurable tuberculosis there, raising further concerns over increasing drug resistance to the disease1. Although reports call this latest form a “new entity”, researchers suggest that it is instead another development in a long-standing problem.

...

“The cases are a story of mismanagement,” says Migliori. “Resistance is man-made, caused by exposure to the wrong treatment, the wrong regimen, the wrong treatment duration.”

via Totally drug-resistant TB emerges in India : Nature News & Comment.

A 23-year-old died of cervical cancer because doctors said she was too young for a smear test, her devastated family have claimed.

Mercedes Curnow, from Cornwall, first went to her GP at 20 years old but her mother says her symptoms were 'ignored' because of her age.

After a year of doctors visits, Ms Curnow was taken to A&E by a family member and diagnosed with cervical cancer in April 2010.

But by then it was too late and, after 33 radiotherapy sessions and nine months of chemotherapy, she died at home in her mother's arms on December 14 last year.

See the article for a pic. Yet another reason to be against government health care. Via Woman, 23, died of cervical cancer 'because doctors said she was too young for a smear test' | Mail Online.

This is *so* hot: How To Carry a Concealed Gun in a Dress | The Firearm Blog.

In cities all over the country, protesters are drawing the battle line between the top 1% and the rest of us in the bottom 99%. Too much economic power is in too few hands.

It's unfortunate indeed that the Occupiers have so far ignored the country's most egregious concentration of economic power.

In 2010, a tiny cabal of 535 individuals -- just 0.00017% of the population -- spent $3.5 trillion, or about 23% of the $14.5 trillion U.S. economy. That leaves 77% for the other 99.99983% of us.

I don't expect Congress to do much about this. Via Congress: The Country's Most Egregious Concentration Of Economic Power - Investors.com.

Two top U.S. hurricane forecasters, famous across Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice of making a seasonal forecast in December because it doesn’t work.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no predictive value.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run.

A key point:

"Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill.”

Just because you have a model that fits the *past*, does not indicate it will fit the *future*. This also applies to stock markets. Via Hurricane experts admit they can’t predict hurricanes early; December forecasts too unreliable.

Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptics Position (studio version) from Warren Meyer on Vimeo.

VIa Catastrophe Denied: The Science of the Skeptic’s Position | Climate Skeptic.

One of the hardest things for men to understand or even recognize its significance is female solipsism. What this means is that most women view everything from their own perspective. And by everything, I don't mean everything that directly or indirectly involves them, I mean everything. This, for example, is where the Team Woman concept comes from. As most observant individuals recognize, women aren't team players and habitually sabotage their female friends and relatives.

(No, you're not fat, in fact, you're TOO skinny... have another piece of cake! It would look so cute if you cut all your hair off. And definitely break up with your CEO husband who used to be a pro athlete, you can do so much better than him!)

And yet, a man can't make a negative comment about lesbian Finnish women with PhDs in Mongolian Horse Milking without straight American women who never went to college leaping to their defense and taking great personal umbrage that anyone might dare to suggest that Dr. Piia-Noora Kiviniemi-Damdinsüren could be anything less than fabulous. This is because even though a woman has absolutely nothing in common with Dr. Kiviniemi-Damdinsüren and possesses absolutely no opinion whatsoever on Mongolian Mare Milking, she nevertheless identifies with the other woman and therefore feels that your negativity towards the doctor is actually somehow an attack on her.

This is, of course, insane.

via Alpha Game: The utility of solipsism.

Since this regulatory role of insulin in fat metabolism was established in the 1960s, a viable alternative explanation for the cause of obesity has been that it is caused by a dysregulation of insulin signaling.  By this logic, the way to treat obesity is not by eating less and exercising more, as Ms. Parker-Pope implies, but by reducing insulin levels, perhaps as low as possible. That is accomplished most efficiently by severely restricting the carbohydrate content of the diet and removing, in particular, refined grains and sugars that have the greatest effect in stimulating insulin secretion.

The implication of this basic endocrinology is that obesity is caused not by eating too much and sedentary behavior, but by a disruption of the hormonal and enzymatic regulation of fat tissue caused by the easily digestible, refined carbohydrates and sugars that we do eat. Indeed, by this logic, calorie-restricted diets – starvation and semi-starvation diets as used in the studies Ms. Parker-Pope discusses – can be thought of as particularly counterproductive ways to reduce carbohydrate consumption and so insulin levels, starving the body, as they do, of the energy required to effectively run metabolic processes. 

In the past decade, clinical trials have repeatedly demonstrated that when obese and overweight individuals consciously restrict the carbohydrates they eat, but not calories, they not only lose weight, on average, but their heart disease and diabetes risk factors improve significantly.  Their insulin resistance, in effect, resolves. Those of us who have lost weight ourselves and witnessed the effect of these diets on our patients can confirm that this is exactly what happens. 

Emphasis mine. Via Petition Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, in response to "The Fat Trap" (Jan 1, 2012).

Given my interest in health economics and graphic novels, I was initially hopeful about Jonathan Gruber's graphic novel, entitled Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, How It Works. But in all honesty, the book is awful. Gruber crafts his argument like a salesman, not an economic educator. He's careful to avoid outright mistakes, and makes a couple of awkward disclosures. Yet he omits a long list of crucial, damaging points.

via Sins of Omission: What's Wrong With Gruber's Health Care Reform , Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.