Piper's Lament

by Mark Steyn

Mark Levin was on cracking form the other day on the superiority of certain cultures and what he calls "the decomposition of this society". This passage will strike a chord with SteynOnline readers:

"They're putting in place laws and programs and bureaucracies to smother us, so the social engineers can manipulate. Come this fall many of you with young children going to public schools, you're going to see a change in the bake sales at your schools because the federal government, the First Lady has determined that your kids shouldn't be selling cupcakes. And your kid should be eating cupcakes."

Now, I've said this before: a government that has the power to dictate whether or not your kids can sell or eat cupcakes as a result of late local bake sale is a tyranny. It is a government way, way out of power, out of sync. And it's gonna get worse. It's not gonna get better.

I'm with the Great One on this. We reported here recently on a modest victory against the Cupcake Comissars, but it was an exception that proves the rule. I've got a whole section on bake sales et al in After America (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available, etc, etc, he pleads pitifully with an eye to his current lawsuit) - because, as Mark says, it's not a small thing. Page 89 of my book:

"No matter how you slice it, this is tyranny. When I first came to my corner of New Hampshire, one of the small pleasures I took in my new state were the frequent bake sales – the Ladies' Aid, the nursery school, the church rummage sale. Most of the muffins and cookies were good; some were exceptional; a few went down to sit in the stomach like overloaded barges at the bottom of the Suez Canal. But even then you admired if not the cooking then certainly the civic engagement. In a small but tangible way, a person who submits to a state pie regime is a subject, not a citizen – because participation is the essence of citizenship, and thus barriers to participation crowd out citizenship. A couple of kids with a lemonade stand are learning the rudiments not just of economic self-reliance but of civic identity."

I mentioned one of these stories on Rush a year or two back and some guy responded, "Why are you talking about this? It's not important." That's why I'm talking about it. Because if you won't push back against the small-scale stuff, by the time they come for the big things you'll no longer know how to rouse yourself. In old, settled societies, tyranny starts at the edge and works its way inwards. And the essence of tyranny is its capriciousness. It's easy to say, "Well, I don't go to bake sales, so what do I care?"

Every day in this country tyranny's whimsy descends on some law-abiding person out of the blue. You buy an imported vintage car, and you wake up with Homeland Security agents surrounding your home and confiscating your property. This weekend it was two of my fellow Granite Staters - 17-year-old Campbell Webster and Eryk Bean, of Concord, New Hampshire.

Instead of enjoying meth and twerking like normal well-adjusted teens, they like bagpipes. Master Webster comes from a long line of bagpipers: his father Gordon was pipe-major for the 1st and 2nd Batallion the Scots Guards and personal piper to the Queen. So he passed on the 1936 family bagpipes to his son, and young Campbell uses them to play in pipe championships in North America and around the world. So this weekend he was returning to New Hampshire from a competition in Canada, which is how a newspaper story comes to open with a sentence never before written in the history of the English language:

"BAGPIPERS have expressed their fear over a new law which led to two US teenagers having their pipes seized by border control staff at the weekend"

They can chisel that on the tombstone of the republic. On the northern border, bagpipers are "expressing their fear", while on the southern border gangbangers have no fear and stroll through the express check-in. Putin has no fear of American power, the mullahs have no fear of American power, the Chinese politburo has no fear of American power, ISIS has no fear of American power, but the world's bagpipers fear it, and with good reason.

The figleaf of a pretext for seizing Messrs Webster and Bean's bagpipes is what The Scotsman (as usual, any real news about America has to be gleaned from the foreign press) calls "new laws" introduced a month ago. By "laws", they don't mean something passed by the people's representatives in a legislature - there's not a lot of that going on these days - but a little bit of regulatory fine-tuning by some no-name bureaucrats at the Department of Paperwork. The upshot of which is that, if you own a vintage bagpipe containing ivory and you wish to take it to a competition in Montreal, you have to get a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) certificate from the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Got that? You have to get your musical instrument approved by Fish & Wildlife.

Oh, but Messrs Webster and Bean were on top of that. They'd gone to Fish & Wildlife, gotten their CITES certificates, and presented them to the US Customs & Border Protection agent upon returning to the United States via a Vermont border crossing (presumably either Highgate or Derby Line, both of which I use frequently).

At which point the Commissar of Bagpipes said, "Ah, yes, the CITES certificate is valid but..."

Here it comes, boys and girls! Stand well back; it's the Bollocks of the Day from your friendly all-American Bureau of Compliance:

"The CITES certificate is valid but...it's only valid at 38 designated ports of entry." And this wasn't one of them. So he confiscated the bagpipes.

Why don't they just put a big sign up on the border? "US Government Paperwork Not Accepted At This US Government Border Post."

So Customs & Border Protection will wave through "unaccompanied minors", but if the minor's accompanied by a bagpipe the guy in the full Robocop will seize it and tell the kid he's "never going to see them again". And then the Robocop goes home having done a full and rewarding day of work.

Americans should be ashamed at what Mark Levin calls the "decomposition of the country". In all manner of areas from banking and health care to bake sales and bagpipes, US citizens now enjoy less freedom than those of countries they regard as socialist basket cases. When I've said as much before, I get emails from readers saying, "Ah, yes, but we have the First Amendment and the Second Amendment." But they're meant to be bulwarks against tyranny, so, if you never actually use them to defend liberty, eventually they have no more real-world meaning than all the theoretical freedoms listed in the Soviet constitution. It's easy to say, "I don't do home-baking. Or buy imported cars. Or play bagpipes" - or whatever next week's provocation is. But by the time they come for something you value, it will be too late. As Mark Levin says, "It's gonna get worse. It's not gonna get better." And then he adds a further point:

"Have you heard a single Republican in leadership talk to you the way I'm talking to you? Have you heard a single Republican in leadership talk about the seriousness of what this nation is facing? Have you heard any guests for the most part on our favorite cable channel, FOX, discuss this in any logical way? Nope... The problem is Republican administrations participate in the deconstruction of the country, in the decomposition of the country. They're not ideological about it and in some ways they're unwitting about it. Very few tried to push back. Very few try to unravel this federal leviathan that's been created over the last century."

Have any of my somewhat unsatisfactory roster of New Hampshire Senate candidates said anything about their constituents' bagpipe seizure? America has a two-party system in which one party is committed to making things worse and the other party isn't committed to making things any better. And, like the Great One, I'd like a bit more of a choice than that.

To be sure, a lot of these things are kinda fringey activities. Why can't the vintage-car guy drive a Toyota Corolla like a normal person? Why can't the bagpiper get into rap like a regular kid? Increasingly in America any deviation from the norm is enough to attract the attention of the punitive bureaucracy. But a society that agrees to be that cowed and compliant will not be a dynamic or innovative one, and eventually will be in steep and terminal decline.

The degeneration of "law" into regulation is a problem. The post-constitutional order is, too. But something bigger is in play. To remain free, a people need something more basic - the spirit of liberty. Once you've lost that, there are no easy roads back.

SOURCE

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Fed court ruling: Police can kick in your door and sieze guns without warrant or charges

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals may have just dealt a serious blow to the U.S. Constitution

In a unanimous decision earlier this month the Court determined that law enforcement officers are not required to present a warrant or charges before forcibly entering a person’s home, searching it, and confiscating their firearms if they believe it is in the individual’s best interests.

The landmark suit was brought before the court by Krysta Sutterfield of Milwaukee, who had recently visited a psychiatrist for outpatient therapy resulting from some bad news that she had received. According to court records Sutterfield had expressed a suicidal thought during the visit, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, when she said “I guess I’ll go home and blow my brains out.” This prompted her doctor to contact police.

For several hours the police searched for Sutterfield, speaking with neighbors and awaiting her return home. They received an update from her psychiatrist who said that Sutterfield had contacted her and advised that she was not in need of assistance and to “call off” the search, which the doctor did not agree to. Police eventually left and Sutterfield returned home, only to be visited later that evening by the lead detective on the case:

    Sutterfield answered Hewitt’s knock at the front door but would not engage with her, except to state repeatedly that she had “called off” the police and to keep shutting the door on Hewitt. Sutterfield would not admit Hewitt to the residence, and during the exchange kept the outer storm door closed and locked. Unable to gain admittance to the house, Hewitt concluded that the police would have to enter it forcibly.....

    Sutterfield called 911 in an effort to have the officers leave; as a result of that call, the ensuing events were recorded by the emergency call center. Sutterfield can be heard on the recording telling the officers that she was fine and that she did not want anyone to enter her residence....

    After informing Sutterfield of his intention to open the storm door forcibly if she did not unlock it herself, Berken yanked the door open and entered the house with the other officers to take custody of Sutterfield pursuant to the statement of detention. A brief struggle ensued.

    Sutterfield can be heard on the 911 recording demanding both that the officers let go of her and that they leave her home. (Sutterfield would later say that the officers tackled her.) Sutterfield was handcuffed and placed in the officers’ custody...

    At that point the officers conducted a protective sweep of the home. In the kitchen, officer James Floriani observed a compact disc carrying case in plain view. He picked up the soft-sided case, which was locked, and surmised from the feel and weight of its contents that there might be a firearm inside. He then forced the case open and discovered a semi-automatic  handgun inside; a yellow smiley-face sticker was affixed to the barrel of the gun, covering the muzzle. Also inside the case were concealed-carry firearm licenses from multiple jurisdictions other than Wisconsin. Elsewhere in the kitchen the officers discovered a BB gun made to realistically resemble a Glock 29 handgun.

    The contents of the case were seized along with the BB gun and placed into police inventory for safekeeping.

    Berken would later state that he authorized the seizure of the handgun in order to keep them out of the hands of a juvenile, should a juvenile enter the house unaccompanied by an adult while Sutterfield remained in the hospital.

Sutterfield subsequently filed a lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee with the district court, a case that was initially dismissed. She then filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th District claiming that her Second and Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

In a 75-page opinion the court, while pointing out that the intrusion against Sutterfield was profound, sided with the city of Milwaukee:

    “The intrusions upon Sutterfield’s privacy were profound,” Judge Ilana Rovner wrote for three-judge panel.

    “At the core of the privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment is the right to be let alone in one’s home.”

    But the court also found, that on the other hand, “There is no suggestion that (police) acted for any reason other than to protect Sutterfield from harm.”

    “Even if the officers did exceed constitutional boundaries,” the court document states, “they are protected by qualified immunity.”

As noted by Police State USA, the court may have just created a legal loophole for law enforcement officials around the country, giving them immunity from Constitutional violations if they merely suggest that exigent circumstances exist and that they are acting in the best interests of the health and safety of an alleged suspect, regardless of Constitutional requirements:

    In short, Sutterfield’s privacy (which was admittedly encroached upon) was left unprotected by the Bill of Rights because of the “exigent circumstances” in which police executed an emergency detention — with no warrant, no criminal charges, and no input from the judiciary.   Similarly, the gun confiscation was also deemed as acceptable due to the so-called “emergency” which police claimed had been taking place for 9 consecutive hours.

    The federal ruling affirms a legal loophole which allows targeted home invasions, warrantless searches, and gun confiscations that rest entirely in the hands of the Executive Branch. The emergency aid doctrine enables police to act without a search warrant, even if there is time to get one.  When the government wants to check on someone, his or her rights are essentially suspended until the person’s sanity has been forcibly validated.

The implications of the courts legal decision are alarmingly broad. Though this particular case involved exigent circumstances in which an individual suggested she wanted to commit suicide, albeit tongue-in-cheek, the court’s opinion suggests that such tactics can be applied for any “emergency” wherein police subjectively determine that an individual may be a danger to themselves or others.

Under new statutes passed by the federal government these emergencies and dangers could potentially include any number of scenarios. Senator Rand Paul recently highlighted that there are laws on the books that categorize a number of different activities as having the potential for terrorism, including things like purchasing bulk ammunition. Last month, when a group of concerned citizens assembled at Bundy Ranch in Nevada to protest government overreach, Senator Harry Reid dubbed them “domestic terrorists.” Even paying with cash or complaining about chemicals in water can land an American on the terror watch list.  Non-conformists who do not subscribe to the status quo can now be considered mentally insane according to psychiatrists’ Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders.

Law enforcement has an almost unlimited amount of circumstances they can cite to justify threats to one’s self or others, and thus, to ignore Constitutional requirements when serving at the behest of the local, state or federal government.

Has the Federal Court’s latest decision made it possible for these vaguely defined suspicious activities to be molded into exigent circumstances that give police the right to enter homes without due process, confiscate legally owned personal belongings, and detain residents without charge?

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Obamacare



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Business Startups Dwindle as Government Jobs Thrive

Rabi Molla at the Wall Street Journal notes, "Nearly 1 in 6 jobs in the U.S. are working for the government, more than any single private industry." The number actually peaked in 2009, then took a bit of a nosedive that caused panic—not in the streets, but in punditry hallways. But it's rising again, largely because of state and local government hiring. By contrast, at the beginning of the 20th century, "one out of 24 workers was on a government payroll," according to an economic paper published in 1949, with only 1 out of 15 taking goverment paychecks right after World War I.

So, blips aside, the state has been a growth industry.

The people taking government jobs certainly aren't matched by counterparts starting new businesses. The U.S. economy is increasingly dominated by older, established firms, according to a new Brookings Institution study.

Like the population, the business sector of the U.S. economy is aging. Our research shows a secular increase in the share of economic activity occurring in older firms—a trend that has occurred in every state and metropolitan area, in every firm size category, and in each broad industrial sector.

The share of firms aged 16 years or more was 23 percent in 1992, but leaped to 34 percent by 2011—an increase of 50 percent in two decades. The share of private-sector workers employed in these mature firms increased from 60 percent to 72 percent during the same period. Perhaps most startling, we find that employment and firm shares declined for every other firm age group during this period.

What's causing the ossification of American enterprise? Authors Ian Hathaway and Robert Litan say "a secular decline in entrepreneurship is playing a major role." What they refer to as "business dynamism" has been on the decline for three decades.

Hathaway and Litan don't have a clear explanation for the decine in entrepreneurship, though they note that business failure rates have been on the rise for younger firms, while flat for already established businesses. That suggests that starting and running a new firm has become more difficult than in the past.

Hathaway and Litan refer to this development as "especially disturbing" because of the innovative breakthroughs made by startups. They suggest we "find ways to encourage and make room for the startups of the future," but don't go into detail about what that means.

It's worth pointing out here that the United States has been sliding on both major international rankings of economic freedom. The Index of Economic Freedom puts the U.S. in 12th place, behind Estonia, and notes, "The U.S. is the only country to have recorded a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years."

The Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World: 2013 Annual Report (PDF) is even tougher, noting that the U.S. slid from third place to 19th place from 2000 to 2011. While there was widespread slippage, the biggest problem, noted the report, was with eroding government respect for legal systems and property rights.

Is declining economic freedom smothering the entrepreneurial spirit that once made the United States such a hotbed of innovation? That looks suspiciously likely. And we'll all suffer if, instead of creating new businesses, Americans flock to safe government sinecures instead—paid for by whoever remains in the sclerotic private sector.

SOURCE

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Live by Big Government, Die by Big Government

Given that our commander in chief is a surprisingly decent firearm salesman, it’s a little odd that one of America’s most prolific gun manufacturers might soon be facing an agonizing financial death. But, that’s exactly where Colt’s Manufacturing Company is headed if things don’t change drastically.

It takes a very specialized form of failure for a gun company to miss out on the President Obama-inspired run on guns, the “assault weapon” craze of the 2000s, and the proliferation of concealed carry in the 1990s, but that’s exactly what happened. And, worse, this isn’t Colt’s first foray into fiscal failure.

In fact, this tendency of Colt to stumble onto hard times has a name in the industry: It’s called the “Colt curse.” It’s been around since Samuel Colt first bankrupted his hopeful arms company in the 1830s. God may have made man, and Samuel Colt may be credited with making men equal; but, it has always been an uphill battle. It turns out Colt was pretty good at making guns, but he was a failure at marketing and selling his contribution to the world of weaponry.

Lucky for Colt (and the generations that would later benefit from his contribution to the industry), the war with Mexico broke out in the 1840s. The aspiring gunsmith quickly found an audience in the U.S. Army for his innovative firearm designs. Realizing the full potential of crony-capitalism, the entrepreneur almost went broke entertaining politicians, generals, and frontiersmen. He was, undoubtedly, the Solyndra lobbyist of his day. With the helpful contract from America’s military, Colt quickly etched his name in America as the creator of the “gun that won the West.”

The company, however, was never quite capable of shaking their addiction to government contracts. In fact, it quickly became a centerpiece of their business model.

In the 1970s firearm manufacturing in the U.S. was adopting the model of America’s automotive giants. Unionization was prolific, and innovation was an afterthought. It didn’t work out for Detroit, and it almost ended in disaster for the firearm industry as well.

While most American companies scrambled for ways to avoid the Union-led decline into mediocrity, Colt happily hummed along with the help of military contracts and large government shipping orders.

The iconic manufacturer’s business was booming, right up until the moment that unions decided to do what they do best: go on strike. By 1988, the company had lost a number of high-dollar contracts, and the end of their beginning was clearly at hand.

In the decade to follow, their competitors warmly embraced America’s new-found fascination with the civilian market, concealed carry, and home defense. Colt, on the other hand, decided to take a more pragmatic approach. And, by pragmatic, I mean liberal approach:

A wealthy industrialist from the heart of a non-gun-owning Manhattan family decided he could steer the company to better times. With a man who knew nothing about guns at the helm, Colt embarked on their reimagined path to prosperity by introducing (and supporting) the idea of smart guns and federal gun permits.

As strange as it might seem, telling your most ardent customers that they should ask a fickle and hostile federal government for permission to handle your product isn’t a great business practice.

The new CEO (the last one was fired pretty quickly) still decided to put civilian ownership on the back-burner as he focused on appealing to the same Pentagon cronies that nearly drove the company into the trash-bin of history. There are only a handful of industries that relish the advent of war, and they all have something in common: they work for the Pentagon. As the Iraq War picked up, and with their sudden boom in government contracts, it looked like good times might finally be on the horizon.

In fact, good times seemed inevitable. Well, at least in theory. But if Colt had proven anything in its 178 years of existence, it’s that turning a profit is kinda tough sometimes. The company’s decision to whittle their civilian division down to a few obligatory 1911s wasn’t really doing them any favors, given that their competitors were rushing to fill the demand of a gun-hungry republic.

While Vice President Joe Biden, Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) rambled on about gun control, Colt casually dismissed the idea of focusing on the civilian market. Heck, it was only within the last few years that Colt finally got around to deciding that a pocket pistol (the .380 Mustang) might be a good idea.

Today, the industry is seeing a decline from last year’s boom in sales. Colt’s civilian offerings are proving to be “too little, too late” for a market that is currently saturated with high-quality alternatives. And so, with a very specialized degree of failure, Colt has managed to paint itself into near bankruptcy. Their corporate bonds are rated as junk, and they’re continuing to pile on millions of dollars’ worth of debt.

The company might still survive. After all, they represent a history, a quality, and a heritage that is rare in today’s world. Their guns are quality products (even if you do pay a premium for those ponies on the slide) and their reputation is strong. But the company embraced too many values of the Left to survive long in a world that has proven to be hostile to their industry.

In the end, there are really only three things that are responsible for killing Colt: cronyism, support for gun control, and unions. You would think a gun manufacturer would know better than to sleep with government. I guess nobody shared that lesson with Colt’s management.

SOURCE

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Federal Court Refuses To Block N.C. Voter ID Law

At Netroots Nation, liberals slammed voter ID laws, labeling them something akin to “Jim Crow” laws. Yesterday, the U.S. District Court For The Middle District Of North Carolina refused to block the state’s voter ID law, which will be enforced in the upcoming midterm elections.

Here's what the Court said in their opinion:

"After careful consideration, the court concludes that Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings should be denied in its entirety. Plaintiffs’ complaints state plausible claims upon which relief can be granted and should be permitted to proceed in the litigation. However, a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy to be granted in this circuit only upon a “clear showing” of entitlement.

After thorough review of the record, the court finds that as to two challenged provisions of SL 2013-381 [ NC’s voter ID law], Plaintiffs have not made a clear showing they are likely to succeed on the merits of the underlying legal claims. As to the remaining provisions, the court finds that even assuming Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits, they have not demonstrated they are likely to suffer irreparable harm - a necessary prerequisite for preliminary relief - before trial in the absence of an injunction. Consequently, the motions for preliminary injunction and the United States’ request for federal observers will be denied. This resolution renders the motions to exclude expert testimony moot."

Over at PJ Media, J. Christian Adams, who served as an election lawyer in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote that the DOJ actually spent tax dollars on a "turnout-doesn’t-matter-because-life-is-harder" expert to help make their argument:

"The Justice Department had actually argued that even if black voters turned out at higher rates under voter ID (which they do), because blacks have to take the bus more and their life is generally harder, then voter ID and curtailing early voting violates the Voting Rights Act....

The Justice Department actually used your tax dollars to pay for an expert to introduce the turnout-doesn’t-matter-because-life-is-harder argument. Enterprising folks will submit a Freedom of Information request to find out how many tens of thousands of dollars that nonsense costs you.

Hans von Spakovsky, former DOJ voting official, says it is going to be a very bad weekend for lawyers at the Justice Department Voting Section. “Eric Holder has been beaten now twice in the Carolinas on voter ID. Today’s ruling shows just how wrong he is when it comes to election law.”

SOURCE

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Three Reasons Why It's No Surprise Hamas Violated the Latest Ceasefire

I think they continue to attack because they are enraged by the neutering of their tunnel strategy -- JR

(1) By my unofficial count, this is the seventh ceasefire or truce that Hamas has rejected, violated, or broken since the current conflict began last month. The genesis of this war, by the way, was the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, perpetrated by a Hamas-funded terrorist cell in the West Bank. When Israeli entered the West Bank in search of the perpetrators (local Palestinians pelted the ambulance carrying the boys' bodies with rocks), Hamas stepped up its rocketing campaign targeting Israeli civilians. That bombardment has been going on for years, ticking up ever since Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

Israel responded with force, culminating in the land incursion aimed at destroying Hamas' network of terror tunnels -- the purpose of which was to bypass Israel's weapons blockade, and to allow militants to slip into Israel to carry out attacks. The tunnels were built over a period of years, using supplies earmarked for projects such as schools and infrastructure construction. Child labor was reportedly exploited to built the passageways, reportedly resulting in approximately 160 deaths during the treacherous process.

(2) Hamas explicitly warned that it was preparing to resume its rocketing as soon as the latest 72-hour ceasefire expired. In fact, it looks like a miscue may have accidentally blown up a few of their own men in preparation for the resumption of hostilities. They ended up not just breaking the pause, but outright violating the temporary truce. Again. Perhaps they don't have functioning clocks, or perhaps they had itchy trigger fingers, or perhaps Hamas doesn't have control over the hive of violent radicals that pervade the Gaza strip.

Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Egyptian government were all in favor of an unconditional extension of the truce. Hamas said no. Israel is now fighting back.

By the way, a New York Times analysis of recent casualties in Gaza determines that the most disproportionately represented demographic group among the dead are…young men in their 20's -- a.k.a. the people most likely to fit the militant profile. Women and children under the age of 15, meanwhile, "were the most underrepresented." Why, it's almost as if Israel has been going to extraordinary lengths to narrowly target terrorists and avoid civilian collateral damage -- even as Hamas uses the latter group as human shields, firing salvos from crowded neighborhoods, storing rockets inside UN schools, and using a crowded hospital as a command center.

(3) The most depressing and most elementary reality is this: The Hamas radicals don't want peace. Their demands are slippery and ever-shifting; most recently, they're insisting that Israel lift its blockade in such a way that would allow Hamas to re-arm, unfettered, so they could gear up for the next war. (Israel already allows food, medicine, fuel, and legitimate commercial goods to pass through. Israel also provides much of the strip's electricity).

The spokesman that Hamas has selected to represent them in Western media has been unable to answer questions about his own insane blood libel against Jews, nor has he backed away from they group's charter, which openly calls for genocide. If Hamas would simply acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and renounce violence, they would have peace. But they don't. People who reflexively blame Israel for the other side's genocidal hatred are flat-out siding with terrorism and barbarity over pluralism, peace and democracy.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Useful idiot’s Gaza Holocaust

While no civilian casualties are good, reports are now emerging that strongly question the number of civilian casualties in Gaza. The BBC's head of statistics highlighted that the figures presented are highly improbable. He explains that, "some of the conclusions being drawn from them may be premature."

and (remember this is the BBC's head of statistics)

"Nonetheless, if the Israeli attacks have been "indiscriminate", as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women"

With that, the Hamas's illusion begins to crack. The reality behind it is far uglier, and far more dangerous, than many have realised.

Far away from the Middle East there are two additional sets of victims, neither Israeli not Palestinian. The first are Jews, faced raising antisemitism. The second group of victims includes many of those spewing out antisemitism. They too are victims as they act against their values in aid of a greater purpose. Those who have fallen into this trap will explain the uniqueness of the current conflict, and reflect on the reported number of civilian casualties. Their call to arms, however, rests on a carefully manufactured illusion.

It seems, statistically speaking, that the high civilian casualty rate in Gaza is very likely concealing many Hamas combatants. This is no surprise as a similar situation occurred in Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) when Hamas, at the time, claimed only 50 fighters were killed but later admitted to a figure of between 600 and 700 fighters, a figure almost identical to Israeli reports during the conflict.

The supposedly disproportionate civilian casualty rate has been used not only to justify and mobilise hostility to Israel, but also to defend outright antisemitism including comparisons to the Holocaust. How dare you raise the issue of antisemitism when so many people are being killed! One former Facebook friend wrote to me. If the number of civilian casualties is in fact similar to other conflicts, or proportionally less than other conflicts, when comparing the rate of civilian to combatant casualties, then a lot of people have been working off a false premise.

The reliance on a false premise led many to the conclusion that Israel deserved unique condemnation, and the issue deserved priority above all else on the international agenda. If the conflict was not exceptional, there was no basis for this special treatment.

As I write this, rockets have resumed and the IDF just announced they are about to take action to eliminate the threat. One Twitter user, with a free Palestine image, responded saying that another Nuremberg was waiting for Israel. This Holocaust analogy is a spectacularly bad analogy, and deliberately antisemitic. I've seen that Gaza Holocaust analogy repeated so many times is becoming a Big Lie. And therein lies the second crack in the Hamas illusion.

The antisemitic imagery used in this conflict is beyond anything we have seen before. It looks like a deliberate social media strategy of Hamas, and one that follows perfectly from the antisemitism in their mainstream media channels, including on children's TV shows like  Tomorrow's Pioneers . When you realise Hamas has form for such media strategies, it's time to dig deeper.

The treatment of all casualties as civilians and the overt antisemitism, particular the comparison of Gaza to the Holocaust, are it now emerges, part of a coherent Hamas social media strategy. The strategy has been openly promoted to activists via official Hamas channels, in Arabic of course.  MEMRI translated this guide in mid July, but it seems it didn't get enough attention.

Let's consider what we're seeing in light of two points taken from the guide:

"Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel's crimes against Palestinian civilians"

"Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don't forget to always add 'innocent civilian' or 'innocent citizen' in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza."

Our cracks suddenly open into fissures, and ground on which Hamas's illusion rests should by all rights start to fall way. Both these point from the guide are being repeated time and time again in social media. Only some of that repetition is from hard core Hamas supporters who may have seen the guide. Much of it comes from people who have no idea about the ideology of Hamas, never mind Hamas's social media war strategy.

There is a technical term for those people who have been suckered in to support the Hamas social media strategy, and therefore Hamas more broadly, without their knowledge. That term is "useful idiots". Rich Lowry has written a great piece about the impact of these useful idiots, but missed the Hamas strategy to deliberately create more of them. I previously noted that Facebook was caught in a social media war, but I missed how antisemitism and the creation of useful idiots was part of this strategy.

In recent days I've explained the problem with the Holocaust analogy a number of times. Eventually I created a resource page to help others explain it. Some, including Muslims friends, quickly saw the problem. Others, anti-racism activists with no specific connection to the conflict, refused to see it.  For them raising antisemitism was trying to dodge the issue of the casualties and the criticality of stopping Israel. Having not yet seen the fissures in the Hamas illusion, I felt I was staring down a rabbit hole. Comparisons between Israel and the Nazis are given explicitly as an example in the Working Definition of Antisemitism. It's not a matter of interpretation or debate, it's a matter of recognising what's right in front of you.

They way people around the world have been mislead as part of a deliberate Hamas run propaganda strategy is deserving of anger. The real civilian deaths, inevitable in any armed conflict, are still a tragedy, but to use support for human rights as part of a war strategy is morally reprehensible. We knew they were doing it with the living, now we see they are doing it with the dead as well. To promote Holocaust trivialization as part of a war strategy is also utterly reprehensible. Hamas advocates genocide of Jews in its charter, but how did anti-racists come to adopt this vile poison?

Those who have fallen for the Hamas propaganda strategy have fallen hard. Many have been told their comments are antisemitic, and reacted strongly against this. These people have been not only misled, but led to act entirely against their values. Hamas have turned anti-racism activists into tools promoting the agenda of genocide.

Many have dug themselves in deeply, defending their position and use of antisemitic language with reference to the "unique nature" of the current conflict. With that premise exposed as a deliberate illusion, a propaganda construction, they have a very bitter pill to swallow. Many will seek other ways to validate their actions, at least to themselves. In doing so many may fall further into the arguments of racism which not only Hamas, but antisemites of all flavours, are currently flooding across social media.

I don't have a solution, but unless people stop and take stock, Hamas may well achieve its real purpose, harm not to Israel, but to harm Jewish people around the globe. The rise in antisemitism is a key outcome of this war, and it seems it is far from an accident.

SOURCE

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Muslim Opinion Polls

A "Tiny Minority of Extremists"?

Have you heard that Islam is a peaceful religion because most Muslims live peacefully and that only a "tiny minority of extremists" practice violence?  That's like saying that White supremacy must be perfectly fine since only a tiny minority of racists ever hurt anyone.  Neither does it explain why religious violence is largely endemic to Islam, despite the tremendous persecution of religious minorities in Muslim countries.

In truth, even a tiny minority of "1%" of Muslims worldwide translates to 15 million believers - which is hardly an insignificant number.  However, the "minority" of Muslims who approve of terrorists, their goals, or their means of achieving them is much greater than this.  In fact, it isn't even a true minority in some cases, depending on how goals and targets are defined.

The following polls convey what Muslims say are their attitudes toward terrorism, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 attacks, violence in defense of Islam, Sharia, honor killings, and matters concerning assimilation in Western society.  The results are all the more astonishing because most of the polls were conducted by organizations with an obvious interest in "discovering" agreeable statistics that downplay any cause for concern.

(These have been compiled over the years, so not all links remain active.  We will continue adding  to this).

ICM Poll: 20% of British Muslims sympathize with 7/7 bombers
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1510866/Poll-reveals-40pc-of-Muslims-want-sharia-law-in-UK.html

NOP Research: 1 in 4 British Muslims say 7/7 bombings were justified
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/14/opinion/main1893879.shtml&date=2011-04-06
http://www.webcitation.org/5xkMGAEvY

People-Press: 31% of Turks support suicide attacks against Westerners in Iraq.
http://people-press.org/report/206/a-year-after-iraq-war

YNet: One third of Palestinians (32%) supported the slaughter of a Jewish family, including the children:
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/04/06/32-of-palestinians-support-infanticide/
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4053251,00.html

World Public Opinion: 61% of Egyptians approve of attacks on Americans
32% of Indonesians approve of attacks on Americans
41% of Pakistanis approve of attacks on Americans
38% of Moroccans approve of attacks on Americans
83% of Palestinians approve of some or most groups that attack Americans (only 14% oppose)
62% of Jordanians approve of some or most groups that attack Americans (21% oppose)
42% of Turks approve of some or most groups that attack Americans (45% oppose)
A minority of Muslims disagreed entirely with terror attacks on Americans:
(Egypt 34%; Indonesia 45%; Pakistan 33%)
About half of those opposed to attacking Americans were sympathetic with al-Qaeda’s attitude toward the U.S.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/feb09/STARTII_Feb09_rpt.pdf

Pew Research (2010): 55% of Jordanians have a positive view of Hezbollah
30% of Egyptians have a positive view of Hezbollah
45% of Nigerian Muslims have a positive view of Hezbollah (26% negative)
43% of Indonesians have a positive view of Hezbollah (30% negative)
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/

Pew Research (2010): 60% of Jordanians have a positive view of Hamas (34% negative).
49% of Egyptians have a positive view of Hamas (48% negative)
49% of Nigerian Muslims have a positive view of Hamas (25% negative)
39% of Indonesians have a positive view of Hamas (33% negative)
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/

Pew Research (2010): 15% of Indonesians believe suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified.
34% of Nigerian Muslims believe suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified.
http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/

16% of young Muslims in Belgium state terrorism is "acceptable".
http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/1275/Islam/article/detail/1619036/2013/04/22/Zestien-procent-moslimjongens-vindt-terrorisme-aanvaardbaar.dhtml

Populus Poll (2006): 12% of young Muslims in Britain (and 12% overall) believe that suicide attacks against civilians in Britain can be justified.  1 in 4 support suicide attacks against British troops.
http://www.populuslimited.com/pdf/2006_02_07_times.pdf
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/07/more-survey-research-from-a-british-islamist

Pew Research (2007): 26% of younger Muslims in America believe suicide bombings are justified.
35% of young Muslims in Britain believe suicide bombings are justified (24% overall).
42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall).
22% of young Muslims in Germany believe suicide bombings are justified.(13% overall).
29% of young Muslims in Spain believe suicide bombings are justified.(25% overall).
http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf#page=60

Pew Research (2011): 8% of Muslims in America believe suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified (81% never).
28% of Egyptian Muslims believe suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified (38% never).
http://www.people-press.org/2011/08/30/muslim-americans-no-signs-of-growth-in-alienation-or-support-for-extremism/

Pew Research (2007): Muslim-Americans who identify more strongly with their religion are three times more likely to feel that suicide bombings are justified
http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf#page=60

ICM: 5% of Muslims in Britain tell pollsters they would not report a planned Islamic terror attack to authorities.
27% do not support the deportation of Islamic extremists preaching violence and hate.
http://www.scotsman.com/?id=1956912005
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/07/more-survey-research-from-a-british-islamist.html

Federation of Student Islamic Societies: About 1 in 5 Muslim students in Britain (18%) would not report a fellow Muslim planning a terror attack.
http://www.fosis.org.uk/sac/FullReport.pdf
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/07/more-survey-research-from-a-british-islamist

ICM Poll: 25% of British Muslims disagree that a Muslim has an obligation to report terrorists to police.
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2004/Guardian%20Muslims%20Poll%20Nov%2004/Guardian%20Muslims%20Nov04.asp
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/07/more-survey-research-from-a-british-islamist

Populus Poll (2006): 16% of British Muslims believe suicide attacks against Israelis are justified.
37% believe Jews in Britain are a "legitimate target".
http://www.populuslimited.com/pdf/2006_02_07_times.pdf
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/07/more-survey-research-from-a-british-islamist

Pew Research (2013): At least 1 in 4 Muslims do not reject violence against civilians (study did not distinguish between those who believe it is partially justified and never justified).
http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Religious_Affiliation/Muslim/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf

Pew Research (2013): 15% of Muslims in Turkey support suicide bombings (also 11% in Kosovo, 26% in Malaysia and 26% in Bangladesh).
http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Religious_Affiliation/Muslim/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf

See also: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics_(Terrorism) for further statistics on Islamic terror.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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the true extent of the hamas tunnels .... the true extent of the strategic israeli victory in its attack on gaza ....

Some good comments below  from another blogger.  I have retained his aversion to capital letters

a friend sent me an article that caused me to search out an article entitled "stories from the battlefield: hamas tunnels used to target israel's kindergartens," by mordechai ben-menachem, dated 07.27.2014, at  the daily caller

now, maybe i have been inattentive and have simply missed the publication of the facts set forth in this post, but, for the first time i have seen the true scope of the hamas plans involving the use of the tunnels, and understand for the first time the true extent and importance of the israeli victory over hamas.  [as i neared completion of this article, "live links" started to pop out all over about these tunnels.   obviously, this story is known in the blogosphere, even if not reported on abc, nor nbc nor cbs.:jjj.]

and, maybe this article will convince you of the true perfidy of the mass media, and its utter complicity in the goals of destruction hamas intends someday to deliver upon israel.   if this article by mordechai ben-menachem is known by me, it is known by the media types, and they are not coughing it up.   not in america, at least.   the reason is simple.   the facts in ben-menachem's post run counter to the left's meme on the israeli-hamas struggle.

quite simply, the western media is evil.  it is state-sponsored, ideologically driven, evil.

the tunnels were designed to launch attacks on israeli children, the attacks set to attack on sept. 24, 2014.   the tunnels are not little rat holes, but, shored up structures large enough to drive vehicles through.   and, large enough to move a considerable number of troops through, in a hurry.   they went from gaza into israel, and stopped at israeli settlements underneath and near israeli schools.

they were designed to deliver attacks upon israeli children, during the israel high holidays.

they were equipped with explosives, ammunition, and with tranquilizers to subdue any israeli prisoners that might have resulted from their operations.



this tunnel is reinforced w/ steel beams and heavy materials for shoring.   it is also supplied with electricity, and there is considerable conduit for the same, seen in the photo.   it addition, this section of the tunnel is connected by a shaft to some location above ground, for the use of bringing in a lot of material, and presumably, troops.

there are lots of stores in this tunnel.  no provision for civilians to take shelter, but, lots of stores.

but, in a larger sense, this story is very important.   because now, we are being treated to the inevitable spin of the mass media, about how this was not an israeli victory, and that hamas has tricked them and prevailed in the "land war" between hamas and israel.  and, that israel has suffered a "strategic defeat," even if it operated with impunity on a tactical level.

the story of these tunnels renders any such assertion as nonsense.

hamas had planned a major attack on israel.   israel has thwarted that attack, rendered its possibility a nullity, and has destroyed hamas's ability to utilize the tunnels, even as it continues to destroy the tunnels.  israel has dealt to hamas a very crippling blow.

and, israel has exposed the complicity of governments and private concerns related to the digging of these tunnels.  someone came in and showed hamas how to construct them, and supplied the material and stores by which to arm them.  and, someone financed the construction of the tunnels.  (hint: that would be the united nations, the obama administration and the euro leftist behind these bullshit schemes, and, quite obviously, the russians.  in other words, the usual group of thugs intent on israel's destruction.)

in sum, israel suffered no defeat.   israel enjoys, this day, a major victory.   and, you should know about it, and understand it.

SOURCE

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Nanny-State Mindset Leads to Police Brutality

By Scott Rasmussen

In Florida recently, police pulled up to a young boy playing in the park and asked where his mother lived. According to a report on WPTV, the mom was then arrested for "allowing her son to go to the park alone." Her son had a cellphone, and she would check in with him along the way. The mom believes "he's old enough, but Port St. Lucie Police disagree."

There is a tendency to dismiss stories such as this as a silly mistake by an overzealous police officer, but sadly it's part of a larger problem. In fact, a similar story of arresting a mom for not supervising her child 24/7/365 took place a few weeks back in South Carolina. A Washington Post column reported these incidents as part of a series on "the increasing criminalization of everything and the use of the criminal justice system to address problems that were once (and better) handled by families, friends, communities and other institutions."

This abuse of governmental authority is the natural extension of nanny-state efforts such as the crusade to ban large sugary drinks. Once you accept the premise that so-called experts should decide what's best for the rest of us, the only question remaining is how to deal with people who don't comply.

It's the same mindset that believes the National Security Agency should be allowed to read all our emails and monitor our phone calls in the name of national security. Just trust us, they say. We're from the government, and we're here to help.

How's this for help? In Georgia, a SWAT team broke into a house searching for drugs and threw a flash-bang grenade inside a child's crib.

The excessive force was disgusting to begin with. Even worse is the fact that the police had the wrong house and there were no drugs. The child is in critical condition.

Amazingly, the local sherriff and other Georgia authorities said the officers didn't do anything wrong. That's ludicrous. They deployed a grenade developed for war in a private home and sent a child to the hospital fighting for his life. Something is terribly wrong.

It's important to note that most police officers are great public servants. Just a few years ago, a local officer in my hometown literally saved my life and the lives of my family. We called him a hero. He said he was just doing his job. Naturally, we have tremendous respect for the job that such officers do and the courage they display.

However, a National Review article correctly notes that "respecting good police work means being willing to speak out against civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after brutalizing citizens." That means speaking out against stories like this:

"On Thursday in Staten Island, an asthmatic 43-year-old father of six, Eric Garner, died after a group of policemen descended on him, placing him in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him for allegedly selling cigarettes."

Stories like these are not random exceptions. They are the natural result of a governing philosophy that believes government experts should dictate how the rest of us live. If we want to reign in such over-the-top police actions, the first step must be to get rid of the nanny-state mindset. This means recognizing every American has the right to make decisions about how to live his or her own life.

SOURCE

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Nine Things Voters Can Learn From Michelle Nunn's Campaign Strategy

Last week, National Review gave the Washington beltway a juicy tidbit of afternoon reading. Somehow, its reporter Eliana Johnson got her hands on a leaked copy of U.S. Senate Democrat candidate Michelle Nunn’s campaign plan.

The 144-page memo rips the curtain away from the modern campaign. For us writing about Washington outside the beltway, we see this document as a guidebook on political communication. Think of it as the Democrats' strategy to win friends and influence people.

In the next few months, the midterm elections will gear up and candidates all around the country like Michelle Nunn will run television spots, pose for photo-ops and kiss babies. By understanding Nunn’s strategy, we understand more of how the politicians are trying to convince us that they should be the ones going to Congress next year. We also learn how the Left, specifically, targets certain demographics and plays certain groups to accomplish its goals.

Here’s what we learned reading through the document:

The modern campaign takes a lot of science and number crunching. This may be a no-brainer. However, the memo starts off by looking at the history of voter turnout in Georgia and estimates how many votes the Nunn campaign should rake onto their side. The Feldman Group wrote, “[W]e need 1,378,001 votes to win. Rounding up reduces the risk and so 1.4 million is my recommended goal.” For this purpose, the Georgia Democratic Party keeps a massive voter list, probably with data such as voter history and the like. In fact, voter data is big, shadowy business.

The Nunn campaign was researching to find out what voters wanted to hear. When this memo was written in December, Nunn didn’t define much of her message. Only a few months later, when her challenger would be decided in the Republican primary, would she forge the details of her running platform. For us not living in the swamp along the Potomac, this shows a candidate is not motivated by integrity, but by what tickles the ears of the voters during election season. They certainly ride the winds of opinion.

The Nunn campaign said it was looking for groups of Republicans to endorse Nunn. The Nunn campaign created two political groups to help lend some weight to their campaign. The groups, Republicans for Nunn and Independents for Nunn (we’re sure there is no pun intended), would be on call to be quoted in the media. This was an effort to reach demographics that Nunn herself was not comfortable reaching in person – like conservative, rural folks.

The Nunn campaign, in conjunction with Georgia’s Democratic Party, has a Voter Protection Program, which is there to deploy people to monitor the campaign, work the polls, and deal with any “voter protection incidents.” Election law is no joke. Mess with ballots, or manipulate voters, and you are manipulating the democratic process itself. For this reason, the Nunn campaign wanted to recruit lawyers or law students. For the non-law types, it was going to create an outline for those people to bone up on their election law, then turn around to advise the campaign. Go figure.

What kind of voter you are depends on what message you’ll hear. In the memo, there was a PowerPoint slide labeled “CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY” in which it identifies three kinds of audiences. First, there are the “Strong supporters.” In their mailboxes, Facebook accounts and online ads, they see messages reminding them to vote, give money or volunteer. Second, the “Drop-off voters” are probably people who support the candidate but somehow don’t make it to the polls. They need more persuasion when it comes to getting out and voting. Third, “swing voters” need to be persuaded about the candidate.

If the campaign were to get dirty, Nunn would be prepared. Early on, her campaign was compiling books of information about her possible Republican opponents. Her staff would gather all the information the public record had to offer on her opponent. Furthermore, the Democrat Party of Georgia hired a tracker. His or her job is to show up at press conferences, county fairs, fundraisers and videotape the opposition candidate whenever possible. The footage would be transcribed and analyzed for quotes, developments in the opposition’s campaign and for possible attack ads hitting the airwaves. The campaign’s research also went into debate preparation – policy documents refuting the arguments Nunn’s opposition would make.

Nunn’s memo bluntly goes through several demographics and their use to the campaign. Like a typical liberal, Nunn planned to use blacks and Latinos for their votes, and she targeted Jews, homosexuals, Asian-Americans and CEOs for their money. But these are not the only groups the Nunn campaign targeted. Her campaign viewed religious leaders as “validators” – people that she could leverage to get voters, especially Latino voters. For gun owners, Nunn herself wouldn’t reach the Second Amendment crowd (probably not her type of person). Instead, she would target the group around hunting season, releasing a newspaper ad or two, using people who did own guns as endorsers of her campaign.

When it came to Veterans, Nunn’s campaign had plans for them too, using them as “validators.” In her memo, the campaign wrote: “The veterans community will be organized primarily as validators. The campaign will work to recruit leaders in all areas of the military community and release their support prior to the primary. Following the primary, the campaigns will release their names of a larger number of military supporters, thus showing growing support.” Like many politicians, the Nunn campaign only gives veterans lip service in exchange for more votes. Such respectful treatment for the people who chose to bear the responsibilities of uniform!

Finally, the campaign has a love-hate relationship with the media because much of the outreach to voters is played out in the media, which can write whatever it wants. The campaign’s goal is to stick to a set of campaign talking points and repeat them again and again until Election Day. The media is hounding the campaign for any crack or deviation in the message. “In fact – in 21st century campaigns with wall-to-wall media coverage and super-pacs able to put millions of dollars behind video behind a single cellphone video – a slight deviation from the agreed upon message could end up being very damaging to the campaign,” the memo said. The communications team even rehearses the stump speech. Part of the team’s job is to “push back against negative research hits” using the strategy to “kill or muddy the story.” Remember that the next time you read a political piece on a candidate.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Obama's half-brother writes memoir contradicting 'Dreams from my Father' and exposing their common father's chronic drunken physical abuse

Barack Obama's Ivy-League educated half-brother is publishing his autobiography next month, painting a dramatically different picture of their few meetings from the one the president related in his best-selling 'Dreams from My Father' memoir.

Mark Obama Ndesandjo includes an appendix in his book, cataloguing what he says are factual errors in 'Dreams' – including words falsely attributed to his mother, a Jewish woman named Ruth.

'A lot of the stuff that Barack wrote is wrong in that book, and I can understand that,' he told the Associated Press last year when he planned to self-publish his book.

'To me,' Ndesandjo said then, 'for him the book was a tool for fashioning an identity and he was using composites. I wanted the record to be straight. I wanted to tell my own story, not let people tell it for me.'

His book, 'An Obama's Journey: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery across Three Cultures,' is due in stores September 16 and published by Globe Pequot Press.

Describing a two-day stretch in 1988 when the two half-brothers first met and shared a next-day lunch, Ndesandjo, who bears only a vague family resemblance to the president, writes that 'overall, it was a very awkward, cold meeting.'

Barack Sr., he explains, was someone he tried not to think of since he had divorced Ruth years earlier and descended further into alcoholism and a downward career spiral.

But with Barack Jr. suddenly in his living room, brought for a visit by the future president's aunt, avoiding thoughts about their common father became uncomfortably impossible. It was, he writes, as 'though the skeleton that no one ever talked about had strayed into the middle of a family party.'

Ndesandjo, according to a writer at WND.com who obtained an advance copy of the book, 'described their lunch together during that second day as filled with tension, as Barack struggled to embrace the African heritage of a father Ndesandjo had rejected.'

The author 'had refused even to use the Obama name, unable to forget, as a child, experiencing the alcoholism and brutality of their father.'

The elder Barack was a blithely self-involved alcoholic, once killing a man in a DUI auto accident and dying at age 46 while driving drunk.  His viciousness is largely absent from the president's 'Dreams' – President Obama met Barack Sr. just once after his infancy, at age 10 – and is relegated to Obama quoting his half-brother criticizing Barack Sr.

'You think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots, that sort of thing,' Ndesandjo tells the future president in 'Dreams.'

'Well, you're right. At a certain point, I made a decision not to think about who my real father was. He was dead to me even when he was still alive. I knew that he was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife or children. That was enough.'

In 'Dreams,' Obama casts himself as the all-seeing observer trying to connect himself back to his Kenyan roots. But Ndesandjo now recalls details that never made it into the president's 1995 book.

'My impression at the first meeting,' he writes, 'was that Barack thought that I was too white, and I thought that he was too black.'

'He was an American search for his African roots. ... I'm an American but I was living in Kenya, searching for my white roots.'

'I remember that when I spoke with him about the heroes of Western culture, he rolled his eyes impatiently,' he has told Maariv, an Israeli newspaper.

'My feeling was that, here is an American who in many ways is trying to be a local Kenyan youth. This is something I tried to flee my entire life.'

Ndesandjo says his effort to escape his African cultural roots was furthered in part by a desire to escape the legacy of his violent father.  'His self-hatred and tendency toward self-sabotage was passed down and became part of my identity,' he acknowledges in his new book.

'My mother's lily-white skin and my father's ebony-black visage come to symbolize an eternal incompatibility in my mind's eye. For a long time I hated to have anything to do with what my father represented, whether it was him personally, or even the positive aspects of African culture.'

'In violent reaction to him,' he concludes, 'I turned passionately toward Western culture and music, which brought me a measure of solace.'

After earning degrees in physics from Brown and Stanford Universities, Ndesandjo honed his artistic talents in China where he lives with his wife.  He is an accomplished pianist and recording artist who often gives lessons to orphans in the Chinese boom town of Shenzhen.

More criticisms of Barack Sr. surfaced in 2009 when the new president visited China during his first year in the White House.

That's when Ndesandjo published his first book, an autobiographical novel titled 'Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Tale of Love In The East.' It paints Barack Obama Sr. as an abusive drunk who repeatedly beat him and his mother in episode after rage-filled episode.

'There were some thumps as of someone falling,' reads one passage that Ndesandjo wrote in the third-person.  'His father's angry voice raised itself. ... He didn't remember what they were fighting about, but his stomach felt sick and empty.'  'His mother was being attacked and he couldn't protect her. "You bastard!" he remembered her screaming out. And that was just one night. There were many more.'

One of those nights, Ndesandjo writes in 'An Obama's Journey,' resulted in his blitzed father holding a knife to his mother's throat after she obtained a restraining order against him.

'We Obamas have big hands. They can be used to create or to debase,' reads one portion.  'My hands enable me to comfortably reach across twelve keys and play piano well. My father would use his big hands to knock my mother down when he came home from a night of drinking.'

'I would move protectively toward her and clutch her legs, crying,' writes Ndesandjo. 'I know now why I mostly remember her legs, not her torso, or even her face.'

His parents met when Obama Sr. was a graduate student at Harvard University. They moved to Kenya in 1964, where he and his brother David were born. David later died in a motorcycle accident.

Obama Sr. had earlier divorced President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, following Obama's 1961 birth.

Ndesandjo's mother later divorced the elder Barack Obama and married another man, whose surname both mother and son also took.

SOURCE

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Victory over Operation Choke Point

Gun retailers are no longer on a hit list deemed “high risk” by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. after the banking regulator formally withdrew Monday the list it put together that outlined what merchants may be considered risky for banks to do business with as part of the Obama administration’s “Operation Choke Point.”

The agency said its explanatory warning list “led to misunderstandings” about how it’s supervising banks’ ties to third-party payment providers, according to Bloomberg News. The regulator said it never meant to prevent banks from doing financial transactions with the types of businesses on the list.

“Those that are operating with the appropriate systems and controls will not be criticized for providing payment-processing services to businesses operating in compliance with applicable law,” the FDIC said in its updated industry guidelines, issued Monday.

Richard Osterman, the agency’s acting general counsel, admitted to the American Banker newspaper Monday that the list had been “misinterpreted” by financial institutions.

Republican lawmakers have criticized the FDIC for unfairly targeting legitimate businesses that operated in its so-called high-risk category, including gun retailers and payday lenders. The Washington Times reported in May that many banks were dropping businesses in these high-risk industries as the bankers wanted to avoid higher scrutiny from the federal regulator.

The FDIC has been helping the Department of Justice run “Operation Choke Point,” which is intended to combat online fraud by cutting off fraudsters’ access to payment systems. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, California Republican, has said the effect of the program has been to squeeze out legitimate businesses.

“If you empower the government to pick winners and losers within lawful enterprises, then there’s no place to stop,” Mr. Issa said this month in an appearance at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Industry advocates pushing to repeal Operation Choke Point said the FDIC did not go far enough Monday.

“Altering a website is window dressing and doesn’t end the unjust practices associated with Operation Choke Point,” said Brian Wise, a senior adviser for the U.S. Consumer Coalition, which is seeking an end to Operation Choke Point.

“While we support the FDIC’s decision to remove the list of ‘high-risk merchants’ from the FDIC website, damage has already been done to countless businesses across the country who have already lost their bank accounts,” he added. “Whether the list is published on the FDIC’s website or not, we expect banks will still be fearful of doing business with these lawful industries.”

SOURCE

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GOVERNMENT HAS GROWN OUT OF CONTROL!

Imagine waking up to the sight of armed police officers raiding your house. You know you’ve done nothing wrong, but yet you are terrified just the same.

You look out your window and see an entire column of police cars and Department of Homeland Security vehicles race towards your house with sirens blazing.

When they arrive, they don’t head for the door, nor do they go after any individual. The go right to your car, lift the hood to read the VIN number, and then tow it away.

For Jennifer Brinkley, this was her reality. What was her crime? She wasn’t a drug dealer and she wasn’t accused of hurting anyone…



No, her crime was that she owned a 1984-5 Land Rover SUV that, according to Homeland Security, violated the Clean Air Act. The above picture shows the model that the government has apparently decided is illegal to own…

This isn’t a joke. Jennifer Brinkley had her North Carolina home raided by Homeland Security because her vintage SUV apparently violated the Clean Air Act.

What the hell is this country coming to???

We have thousands of illegals crossing the border every day, bringing drugs, diseases, and God knows what else into the country. But Obama won’t use Homeland Security resources to seal the border. No, he would rather use the full weight of the Federal Government to shake down a woman for owning an old SUV known for crummy emissions!

Tell Congress to STOP the administration’s wanton targeting of American citizens! Homeland Security should be used to secure the border, not to raid and shakedown citizens!

When police and Homeland Security arrived at Jennifer Brinkley’s home, they compared the VIN on the car to a list they had and determined that the SUV may violate the Clean Air Act.

This is a law that requires all vehicles to maintain a certain emissions standard. But the agents didn’t even test the car’s emissions… they just looked at the VIN and assumed that it wasn’t in compliance.

Not only is this a ridiculous reason to have an armed raid and impound a motor vehicle, but also the officers involved weren’t even sure if the Land Rover did violate the law.

The owner contends that she put $60,000 into restoring the car and that she was close to getting it inspected. Once done, she completely expected it to pass its inspection, including the emissions section of the test.

But before she had a chance to bring her car in to be inspected, Homeland Security swooped in and seized it right out from under her!

Words can’t describe how angry this makes me. This woman had her property seized by government forces sworn to protect her interests. Instead, she had her liberty and property rights trampled on.

To this day, Jennifer Brinkley has no idea where the government has taken her car. According to agents, her car was just one of forty that Homeland Security was seizing on that day alone.

This is what our government has come to… Instead of honoring their oath and defending the American people, government agencies like Homeland Security look for every chance to catch Americans violating some random law or statute.

Why the hell was Homeland Security even involved in the raid? Agents admitted that Jennifer Brinkley had not done anything else wrong, so why was Homeland Security – an agency charged with combatting drug smuggling and terrorism – involved in an EPA raid?

If you look up “out of control government” in a dictionary, this story should show up.

There are so many laws on the books that it is impossible for any average citizen to stay on the right side of the law. Judges will always claim that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But it has gotten to the point that if you actually took the time to read every law on the books, by the time you finished you’d have to start over because laws would have been added and changed!

Ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but it is also inexcusable to have entire government agencies built around fining and penalizing citizens for running afoul of the law!

We have a Homeland Security Agency that leaves the border unsecure while it targets an SUV owner for violating emissions standards!

We have an FDA that uses SWAT teams to go after farmers for selling raw milk and unpasteurized cheese products!

We have an EPA that fines homeowners thousands of dollars for creating unlicensed ponds on their property!

We have a Bureau of Land Management that tries to shakedown cattle ranchers to make them pay grazing fees to use public land!

The DOJ has openly admitted to targeting gun stores and forcing banks to drop them as customers!

The government has grown far too big and too powerful! And it is up to us to right the ship!

For a government agency to use an environmental law to seize a $60,000 car should be a shock. But the sad thing is, this happens every day across America. This is merely the symptom of the larger disease…

If it can happen to Jennifer Brinkley, it can happen to anyone.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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With or Without the Subsidies, Obamacare May Fall Apart

The Obamacare subsidies depend on Halbig’s outcome, and whether millions of Americans can afford their healthcare plans depends on the subsidies. At least, that’s the narrative. Commentators warn of a coming “death spiral” of extraordinary costs and insufficient incoming premiums as people cancel their plans without the subsidies. But what they’re ignoring is that Obamacare is on track to fail regardless of what the court decides.

What people aren’t grappling with is that with or without the subsidies, health insurance under Obamacare is simply too expensive. The hundreds of pills and procedures every insurance plan is now federally required to cover has bloated premiums beyond what most Americans want to, or often can, pay. That’s why Obamacare subsidizes the plans.

The whole point of Obamacare was supposedly to make health insurance more affordable. The problem is that Obama’s promise that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” never squared with his plan to replace so-called catastrophic care plans with comprehensive coverage. Companies can’t cover breast implants and Viagra for the same price as covering cancer and car wrecks only.

Subsidies were the answer for affordable care. The federal government pays up to 100 percent of the premiums for certain insurance plans for people with low incomes. In total, the administration claims 6.7 million people will receive tax credits to pay their premiums and 70 percent, or 4.7 million, are using a federal exchange.

However, even with Medicaid expansion and subsidies, Obamacare still failed spectacularly to reduce premiums. Instead of reducing what every American family pays for health insurance by $2,500 per year, as candidate Obama promised in 2008, insurance premiums increased for millions of Americans once Obamacare made their existing plans illegal. Families can expect to pay 32% more per year to stay covered under Obamacare. And that’s with the subsidies.

Money for subsidies has to come from somewhere. Here’s where things really get tricky for Obamacare. The entire premise is that, even with subsidies, young, healthy people’s premiums will subsidize care for the sick and elderly. Turns out that young people don’t really want to do that. And why should they? The plan hoses young, relatively poor people right when they least need high bills for services they’re not using. And it helps older, relatively rich people who should be able to afford the care they need.

Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy have pointed out for Reason magazine that today’s seniors are far wealthier than today’s young adults. While, 36% of millennials are still living under their parents’ roof, 83% of elderly households own a home. Poverty rates for those over 65 years of age are much lower than most other demographics. Households headed by people 65 or older have 22 times the wealth of households headed by people under 35.

Not only are many young people either unemployed or underemployed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that people under 40 owe 67% of the roughly $1.4 trillion that Americans owe on school loans. That’s on top of an average of several thousand dollars of credit card debt.

Obamacare forces people who can scarcely afford the extra cost to subsidize care for people who absolutely can afford to pay for their own health services. Obamacare’s solvency also requires that people who aren’t eligible for subsidies sign up. That, too, doesn’t really appear to be happening. Shockingly, people aren’t into paying a lot for services other people use more than they do. The plan will fail to reach solvency because it’s too expensive for the very people the plan needs on board in order to stay solvent.

Obamacare only works if many more young, healthy, and wealthy people get insured than were insured previously. Instead, Obamacare has only reduced the percentage of uninsured Americans by 3%, from a peak of 18 percent last year to 15 percent. And most of the signups are sick, poor, old people.

If the Administration prevails, 7.3 million people will continue to get subsidies, according to recent analysis from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, 83% of Obamacare plans are subsidized to some extent. Subsidizing the vast majority of health insurance plans without signing up a lot of new, healthy, unsubsidized payers simply does not work out, mathematically.

The Halbig case is certainly interesting. But even if the Administration gets its way, they’re a long way from out of the woods when it comes to Obamacare.

SOURCE

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Obamacare: Will Mandates for Doctors Come Next?  Central planning is replacing individual choice

John Foust, a Democrat running for the 10th congressional seat in Northern Virginia, is—like Gov. Terry McAuliffe and other state Democrats—gung-ho to expand Medicaid. His wife’s position is, shall we say, a bit more nuanced.

Foust has slammed his opponent, Republican Del. Barbara Comstock, for her opposition to expansion. He has spoken of the need to “make health care available to 400,000 Virginians,” insisting it is “the right thing to do.”

Foust’s wife, Dr. Marilyn Jerome, practices with Foxhall OB/GYN in northwest Washington, D.C. Six of its physicians made Washingtonian magazine’s list of “Top Docs,” and one of them—Nichole Pardo—was featured on the cover. Not too shabby.

The practice is notable for another reason as well: It doesn’t accept Medicaid patients.

This draws attention to an under-covered aspect of the debate over Medicaid expansion. While advocates speak of it as “making health care available” to the needy, what it really does is make coverage, rather than care, available to them. A newly enrolled Medicaid patient can get the money to pay a doctor. But can she get the doctor to take it?

On his website, Foust blasts insurance companies that “hiked insurance premiums and gouged consumers. … Insurance companies denied care to those with pre-existing conditions … and refused coverage to those who needed it most. … We cannot go back to the days when insurance companies could arbitrarily … deny coverage.” In a commentary on the Foxhall practice’s website, Dr. Jerome praises the Affordable Care Act—particularly because now “women cannot be denied insurance” and because the plan’s standards mandate coverage for a wide variety of treatments.

Doctors, however, can operate under a much different set of standards. They can deny care all they want. Statewide, roughly one in five physicians will not accept new Medicaid patients—usually because Medicaid pays only two-thirds as much as private insurance does, on average.

The point here isn’t to shame physicians or to provoke a marital spat. The incongruity goes to a much broader issue—regarding individual responsibility in a system that is becoming increasingly collectivized.

You might have read recently about the blowback some pharmaceutical companies have been getting for charging stratospheric prices for new wonder drugs, such as Sovaldi—a life-saving treatment for Hepatitis C. Two U.S. senators, Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Charles Grassley, are demanding the company that makes Sovaldi justify its $84,000 price tag. Similar questions have been raised about Kalydeco, a life-saving treatment for cystic fibrosis that costs more than $300,000 per year.

Prices like that provoke a lot of anger. Many people think it’s wrong to charge more than patients can pay. Much of the outrage also comes from insurance-company self-interest. The trade group AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) routinely cranks out diatribes against what it considers unjustified prices and profit margins in the pharmaceutical industry.

This is a sore spot for the insurance industry. Under Obamacare’s medical-loss-ratio rules, insurers must spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars to pay for treatment (rather than, say, for overhead). Drug companies face no such government-imposed caps. Yet.

Indeed, insurance companies now face a whole raft of mandates governing whom they must insure and what treatments they must cover. The rationale for such requirements is that to deny someone insurance because of a previous medical condition, or to decline to pay for certain categories of medical care, is immoral.

Obamacare also imposes obligations on individuals: Everybody must obtain insurance coverage, or pay a hefty fine (or, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts calls it 50 percent of the time, a “tax”). This is partly for people’s own good, but mostly the requirement exists to make Obamacare work. Without the individual mandate, the rules on insurance companies would bankrupt them, and the whole system would collapse.

Abiding by the individual mandate therefore constitutes what President Obama, in another context, recently called “economic patriotism.” He was castigating companies that use overseas mergers to avoid U.S. taxes. “You know,” he said, “some people are calling these companies corporate deserters.”

Ominous language. Treating private enterprise as a conscript in service to the State is a philosophy with an ugly lineage. In liberal democracies, government is supposed to be the servant—not the master. In health care, however, the relationship is growing increasingly inverted. As a result individuals are forced to buy insurance, and insurance companies are forced to accept them. Now many people want to force drug companies to cut prices. And so on.

Forcing doctors to accept Medicaid patients would be an obvious, logical extension of these trends. If insurance companies can’t turn people away, then why should physicians be allowed to? If drug companies can’t charge more than people can afford, then why should doctors? So far, no elected officials have yet proposed reining in the limited liberty that doctors still enjoy. But such proposals could very well come, one of these days. Though probably not from John Foust.

SOURCE

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How the Media Craft Victory for Hamas

On Tuesday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer hosted Hamas spokesman Osama Hamden. The week before, Hamdan labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a new image of Hitler" on the network. But now, for some reason, Blitzer stumbled into a random act of journalism: He asked Hamdan about comments he had made suggesting that Jews used Christian blood in matza. Hamdan stumbled around and blamed the Jews for their action in Gaza.

Blitzer called Hamdan's comments an "awful, awful smear."

The very fact that this represented a unique moment in the media coverage of the Israel-Hamas Gaza war demonstrates the malpractice of the media. The first questions on the media's collective tongue should have been: What does Hamas stand for? What are its goals? Why does it use women and children as human shields? Why does it hide military resources in civilian areas?

But that had to wait for a month.

In the meantime, CNN viewers saw an unending stream of dramatic images from Gaza of Palestinian Arab suffering: heavy blasts from Israeli ordinance, screaming women, bleeding children. Every so often, CNN punctuated its coverage with death toll statistics -- never mentioning that it received those statistics from the Palestinians themselves, and neglecting to mention the Palestinians' regular practice of classifying dead terrorists as civilians. Then CNN asked questions about Israeli "proportionality" and wondered aloud about whether Israeli strikes were sufficiently "targeted."

If you want to know why the conflict between the dramatically overpowering Israeli military and the sadistically brutal Hamas has continued for weeks, look no further than CNN and its like-minded media brethren. Hamas' goals in this conflict did not include military victory; Hamas may be evil, but it is not stupid. Its main goal was to shore up its base by achieving small concessions from Israel and Egypt, as well as the Palestinian Authority; those concessions could only be achieved if Israel could be portrayed as an international aggressor against a terror group.

And that's where the media manipulation came in. Hamas placed heavy restrictions on journalists and even threatened them. Hamas put women and children and mentally ill people in harm's way for the cameras, and as a deterrent to Israeli military action.

And the media went right along with it, proclaiming balance all the way. When I was on CNN this week with Alisyn Camerota, she maintained that CNN provided balance by presenting "both sides," to which I responded that presenting both sides in a battle between Hamas and Israel is not balance, but anti-Israel bias. No Western media member would, in 1944, have assumed that balance meant quoting both Winston Churchill and Julius Streicher. To do so would have been to forward propaganda.

But that is precisely what the media have done. They have turned balance into a synonym for amorality. In doing so, they have handed a propaganda victory to evil.

SOURCE

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New research questions calorie counting

The results of the research, which examines the effects of the balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate on metabolic health, ageing and longevity in mice, were published in March in the prestigious scientific journal Cell Metabolism. Their work showed that:

A high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet resulted in reduced body fat and food intake but also led to a shorter lifespan and poor cardiometabolic health.

A high-carbohydrate, low-protein diet resulted in longer lifespan and better cardiometabolic health, despite also increasing body fat.

A low-protein, high-fat diet provided the worst health outcomes, with fat content showing no negative influence on food intake, leading to obesity.

Food intake is regulated primarily by dietary protein and carbohydrate, and not by the number of calories consumed.

“To the extent that this research on mice reflects the situation in humans, it has enormous implications for how much food we eat, our body fat, our heart and metabolic health, and ultimately the duration of our lives,” said Professor Simpson. “We have shown explicitly why it is that calories aren’t all the same. We need to look at where the calories come from and how they interact.”

Co-author Professor David Le Couteur added: “this represents an enormous leap in our understanding of the impact of diet quality and diet balance on food intake, health, ageing and longevity. We now face a new frontier in nutrition research.”

By examining mice fed a variety of 25 diets, the research team used an innovative state-space nutritional modelling method developed by Professors Simpson and Raubenheimer to measure the interactive effects of dietary energy, protein, fat and carbohydrate on food intake, cardiometabolic health and longevity.

The results suggest that lifespan could be extended in animals by manipulating the ratio of macronutrients in their diet – the first evidence that pharmacology could be used to extend lifespan in normal mammals.

Although mice were the subjects of this study, Le Couteur said the results from the study aligned with previous research in humans, but with a much larger number of dietary treatments and nutritional variables.

“Up until this point, most research has either concentrated on a single nutritional variable, such as fat, carbohydrate or calories, so much of our understanding of energy intake and diet balance is based on one-dimensional single nutrient assessments,” he said.

“The advice we are always given is to eat a healthy balanced diet, but what does that mean? We have some idea, but in relation to nutritional composition we don’t know terribly well. This research represents an important step in finding out.”

In terms of practical advice, the researchers predict that a diet with moderate amounts of high quality protein (15-20 per cent of total calorie intake) that is relatively low in fat and high in good quality complex carbohydrates will yield the best metabolic health and the longest life.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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