Genetic determination of social class

Using twin studies, Charles Murray showed 2 decades ago that IQ is mainly genetically inherited and that IQ underlies social class.  The rich are brighter;  the poor are dumber.  The findings below reinforce that. The researchers were able to identify the actual DNA behind that relationship.  High IQ people and high status people had different DNA to low status and low IQ people.

The research also showed something else that people find hard to digest: That family environment matters hardly at all.  That repeatedly emerges in the twin studies but flies in the face of what people have believed for millennia: That your kid's upbringing matters.  It may matter in some ways (value acquisition?) but it has no influence on how bright the kid will be.  So now we have confirmation from a DNA study which shows that both IQ and social status are genetically determined.  Home environment has nothing to do with it.  The genes which give you a high IQ are the same ones that lead to high social status.

People can perhaps accept the genetic determination of IQ but accepting the genetic determination of social status will be more jarring.  The wise men all tell us that a good upbringing will make you more likely to get rich.  It won't.  What you have inherited in your genes (principally IQ) is what will make you rich or poor

To specify exactly what was found:  In a representative sample of the UK population, children from high status homes were found to be genetically different from children from low status homes -- and the DNA differences concerned were also determinant of IQ

Genetic influence on family socioeconomic status and children's intelligence

Maciej Trzaskowskia et al.

Abstract

Environmental measures used widely in the behavioral sciences show nearly as much genetic influence as behavioral measures, a critical finding for interpreting associations between environmental factors and children's development. This research depends on the twin method that compares monozygotic and dizygotic twins, but key aspects of children's environment such as socioeconomic status (SES) cannot be investigated in twin studies because they are the same for children growing up together in a family. Here, using a new technique applied to DNA from 3000 unrelated children, we show significant genetic influence on family SES, and on its association with children's IQ at ages 7 and 12. In addition to demonstrating the ability to investigate genetic influence on between-family environmental measures, our results emphasize the need to consider genetics in research and policy on family SES and its association with children's IQ.

SOURCE

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Let’s Try Honest Healthcare Reform

When MIT economist Jonathan Gruber testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday, don’t expect the Obamacare health-policy advisor to double-down on the remarks that landed him in hot water—quips about the “stupidity of the American voter” and comments about tax subsidies being available only through the state-based exchanges. But don’t expect Gruber to retreat from his support for Obamacare or to put forward new ideas on how to restore confidence in the American healthcare system, either. For such insights, look instead to the economist that top-tier news media should be interviewing daily: Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman. As Goodman explains in a recent op-ed, sound healthcare reform doesn’t require deception; it requires honesty. And honesty means prioritizing the worst problems in our broken healthcare system, and offering solutions that might rub collectivist ideologues and other special interests the wrong way.

In particular, three honest reforms would go a long way toward fixing the worst of Obamacare’s problems, according to Goodman. For starters, replacing the Affordable Care Act’s complex and arbitrary schedule of mandates and subsidies with a universal tax credit that is the same for everyone (“about $2,500 for an adult and $8,000 for a family of four”) would bypass the many problems that plague the online insurance exchanges. That’s because those problems arise from a single cause: the technically complex challenge of corroborating an applicant’s eligibility for tax subsidies by pulling data from the IRS, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Labor, and state Medicaid programs.

Second, Goodman calls for allowing Medicaid (or private-insurance equivalents) to compete with other insurance; low-income enrollees shouldn’t be relegated to a low-performing system. Third, Goodman calls for denationalizing and deregulating the Obamacare exchanges. Deregulating them and lifting the mandates would end the insurers’ “race to the bottom,” i.e., their offering policies meant to attract healthy customers and avoid the sick. Ending the mandates and implementing a uniform, universal tax credit for the purchase of health insurance would also lift the perverse incentives for employers to stifle job growth or limit their workers’ hours. Goodman writes: “There you have it: Three easy-to-understand, not very difficult changes, and millions of problems vanish in a heartbeat.”

SOURCE

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Obama has made the American security services into a new Stasi (the social control apparatus of the old East Germany)

This column has provided much evidence that government has institutionalized waste, fraud and abuse. None is more chilling than what former CBS television journalist Sharyl Attkisson describes in her new book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington. Unlike most of what emerges from the old-line establishment media, her reports on the Benghazi scandal were at odds with Obama administration propaganda that a video caused the death of four Americans, including ambassador Christopher Stephens.

Attkisson describes writing on her computer when it is suddenly taken over and material starts to disappear. She has the presence of mind to grab her phone and take a video. Experts conclude that her computer has been infiltrated by means of spyware proprietary to government agencies such as the CIA, FBI and NSA, now conducting surveillance against all Americans. She also finds the intruders planted classified information on her computer. That adds “the possible threat of criminal prosecution” to the author’s list of delay, denial, obstruction, intimidation, retaliation, bullying, and surveillance from the government. The supposedly transparent Obama administration has transformed U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies into a Stasi deployed against Americans. The author notes that federal snoops knew about the Boston Marathon bombers but did nothing. But when it comes to a persistent journalist, they take action to intimidate and silence.

Stonewalled also notes the waste from the government public-relations hacks who “thinks they personally own your tax dollars.” She finds teams of “taxpayer funded media and communications specialist” including 1200 at the USDA. A White House hack named Dag Vega even tries to strong-arm C-SPAN.

For their part, the old-line media tend to believe that government is always benevolent, and they tend to recycle what the government hands them on everything from “Fast and Furious” to Obamacare. As the author notes, CBS removed from her story the information that HUD’s own inspector general had found $3.5 billion in waste and fraud at the federal agency in a single year. CBS bosses also deleted a fraud case in the same story. Attkisson doesn’t work at CBS any more, and the nation is much better off as a result.

SOURCE

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California version of Obamacare has huge problems too

As we have noted, Covered California is the Golden State’s wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare and similarly dysfunctional, insecure, and wasteful. Even so, some people managed to sign up, the largest group ages 55 to 64. Now, according to Emily Bazar of the Center for Health Reporting, many are finding it impossible to leave. Enrollees secured the tax credits available under Covered California, but when they turn 65 and go on Medicare they become ineligible for those same tax credits. As Bazar explains, “you will owe money to the government if you keep getting the credits after Medicare begins.” That could be $1,000 a month.

Bazar advised people to cancel their Covered California plan. Unfortunately, she explains, “I’ve heard from Californians and insurance agents across the state who have tried mightily—and failed—to do just that. Instead, their premiums just keep on coming.” One reader had been trying since August and says “This is a NIGHTMARE!” One insurance agent found that “terminating coverage with Covered California has proven impossible.”

Bazar learned that Covered California controls eligibility and cancellation of its health plans, “which means plans must wait for direction from the agency before terminating coverage.” They have not done so, likely because that would lower the numbers of people Covered California can claim are enrolled. People can simply stop paying their premiums, but they still face a “grace period” of 90 days, and that method of cancellation reflects badly on the individuals themselves.

Covered California blames a “programming problem” with the agency’s troubled $454 million computer system. So it’s all just another glitch. Those wishing to cancel should contact Covered California. “How helpful,” says Bazar, “That’s exactly what these consumers tried to do.” So here’s the deal.

Those consumers couldn’t keep the plans they like before Obamacare. Now they have to keep the Covered California plan they don’t like and need to cancel. A statist scheme stripped individuals of their freedom to choose, so no surprise that it should throw up a Berlin Wall to keep those people captive. Doubtless, it will soon be leaving sick people to get well on their own or just drop dead.

SOURCE

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Latest Federal Mandate On 'Fair Housing' Is Anything But

In the eyes of the Obama administration, Americans are not the best judges of where they should live and raise their families

Patrick Henry, an ardent supporter of a smaller, local government, once said: "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." Something tells me that he would not utter such a statement were he alive in 2014.

Henry and many other Founding Fathers are likely rolling over in their graves as a result of the incessant intrusion into local affairs by our current president and the federal government.

In the eyes of the Obama administration, Americans are not the best judges of where they should live and raise their families. At least that's the message coming from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Just when you thought the administration's Orwellian sovereignty had reached its limits, HUD has declared that our nation's suburbs aren't diverse enough and that local governments may not be the best arbiters of housing and zoning regulations.

To remedy this perceived cultural malaise, the administration has issued a new proposed regulation that mandates a barrier for individuals and families on where they can choose to live.

In so doing, the president and his administration are encroaching on the rights of local governments and again needlessly injecting race into public policy issues, setting the stage for even further division and animosity.

To accomplishing this goal, the president has proposed a rule known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which according to Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, will "push Americans into living how and where the federal government wants.

"It promises to gut the ability of suburbs to set their own zoning codes. It will press future population growth into tiny, densely packed high-rise zones around public transportation, urbanizing suburbs and Manhattanizing cities."

The administration fails to appreciate a unique American value: mobility. We practically invented the modern open road, symbolizing our freedom to choose where we live. The president's rule would restrict that freedom.

Washington bureaucrats would tell us where we can live and whom we can live next to, all in the name of social justice and ideological utopianism. Nothing could be more wrong and un-American.

Just like we don't need the government choosing our doctors, neither do we need it choosing our neighbors.

The 1968 Fair Housing Act already makes discrimination illegal in the "sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin." The act was amended in 1988 to add disability and familial status as covered conditions.

But apparently that's not enough to provide everyone with equal opportunity in housing. What the administration wants is equal outcomes, and the only way to achieve that is for the federal leviathan to force itself on local jurisdictions.

No one should ever be targeted for exclusion from a neighborhood because of their ethnicity or any other protected category. But neither should there be quotas for neighborhoods to achieve some sort of racial balance that would not happen naturally. A level playing field that lets Americans choose where they live gives zoning authority to local governments is the wisest policy.

To curb this federal overreach, I sponsored an amendment in the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would block funding for the president's rule on AFFH.

Some colleagues and I have issued a new call to action, asking appropriators to include the same defunding language that passed the House of Representatives in any appropriations package we vote on and send it to the president. If the rule is implemented and municipalities do not comply with AFFH, community development grant money will be withheld.

The sad truth about this Obama social engineering proposal is that HUD conducted its own study in 2011 that concluded that moving people living in poor neighborhoods into suburban neighborhoods neither helps children do better in school nor decreases their family's dependence on welfare — the goal of the proposed AFFH rule.

A compelling reason to defund this regulation is that it will have the opposite impact on the people it is intended to assist, increasing their likelihood of government dependency.

This is an encroachment into the domain of local governments, even bypassing state governments, and violates the basic intent of our Founders. So if you hear reports of a minor earthquake near Patrick Henry's resting place in Charlotte County, Va., it should be easy to locate its epicenter.

SOURCE

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Something to cheer us all up



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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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MEGA-PESKY for the Left!  Republicans found to be brighter than Democrats

Leftists never give up asserting that they are the brightest but the research results below are well founded and are clearly against them.  The findings even held among whites only.  And the ardent Democrats were dumbest of all!  The author is a bit apologetic about measuring mainly verbal ability but verbal ability is the best proxy for IQ as a whole so that need not detain us.

The final comment below about different types of Republicans is just a speculation.  It was not examined in the research.

The differences found were slight, however so are not something for anyone to hang their hat on.  The findings are primarily useful for shooting back at Leftist claims of superiority -- claims which are in fact intrinsic to Leftism.  They claim to "know best"

For my previous discussions of  IQ and politics see here and here and here and here

Cognitive ability and party identity in the United States

Noah Carl

Abstract

Carl (2014) analysed data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), and found that individuals who identify as Republican have slightly higher verbal intelligence than those who identify as Democrat. An important qualification was that the measure of verbal intelligence used was relatively crude, namely a 10-word vocabulary test. This study examines three other measures of cognitive ability from the GSS: a test of probability knowledge, a test of verbal reasoning, and an assessment by the interviewer of how well the respondent understood the survey questions. In all three cases, individuals who identify as Republican score slightly higher than those who identify as Democrat; the unadjusted differences are 1–3 IQ points, 2–4 IQ points and 2–3 IQ points, respectively. Path analyses indicate that the associations between cognitive ability and party identity are largely but not totally accounted for by socio-economic position: individuals with higher cognitive ability tend to have better socio-economic positions, and individuals with better socio-economic positions are more likely to identify as Republican. These results are consistent with Carl's (2014) hypothesis that higher intelligence among classically liberal Republicans compensates for lower intelligence among socially conservative Republicans.

SOURCE

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The good that results from US 'boots on the ground'

by Jeff Jacoby

IT HAS ALWAYS made Americans uncomfortable to think of their nation as the world's policeman.

John Quincy Adams avowed nearly two centuries ago that the United States "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy"; today, Barack Obama declares that America's focus must be on "nation-building here at home." A broad swath of public opinion shares that view — 52 percent of Americans in a Pew survey last winter agreed that the US should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own."

Influential Americans regularly argue that US intervention abroad does more harm than good. "Every time the US touches the Middle East, it makes things worse," insists Harvard's Stephen Walt in a recent essay. The same has been said about America's military involvement everywhere from Latin America to Indochina. Samantha Power, currently the US ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in 2003 that America is justifiably seen as "the very runaway state international law needs to contain," resented for its "sins" and "crimes" in using its power to harm others.

Tim Kane, an economist at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, begs to differ.

In an eye-opening essay in the current issue of Commentary, Kane refutes the notion that American military deployments have been a force for ill. That view isn't just wrong, he emphasizes, "it is tragically wrong." He backs up his claim with data: "Having compared growth and development indicators across all countries of the world against a database of US 'boots on the ground' since 1950, I've discovered a stunning truth: In country after country, prosperity — in the form of economic growth and human development — has emerged where American boots have trod."

America's war record has certainly been mixed, acknowledges Kane, an Air Force veteran who has written — sometimes controversially and at book length — about the military's stifling personnel policies and its strategic shortcomings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Troop deployments haven't always ended well. US forces haven't always lived up to our highest standards.

But American military engagement worldwide goes far beyond battlefields. Between 1950 and 2010, more than 30 million US troops were stationed overseas, Kane writes, and except for four years at the height of the fighting in Vietnam, most troop deployments were not to nations at war. The great majority have typically been in "allied countries, stationed in permanent bases, and cooperating in peace." Some host countries are well known: Japan, Korea, Germany. But Americans in uniform have been based in many other countries, too, from Bahrain to Kyrgyzstan to Panama to the Philippines.

And when the data is crunched, what emerges is extraordinary: US boots on the ground are a startlingly robust predictor of higher growth rates and longer lives.

Since the 1950s, research by Kane and economist Garett Jones of George Mason University has shown, "countries hosting more American forces experienced much faster economic growth than their peers" — an increase in per-capita growth of about 1 percentage point per year, after controlling for other numerous other factors linked to economic growth. The statistical correlation between US military presence and economic growth is found even when "high-growth outliers," such as South Korea or Germany, are excluded.

Just as dramatic is the rise in life expectancy and reduction in child mortality in countries where US service personnel are based. The effect shows up, Kane says, even for countries growing at the same rate. To be sure, life expectancy has increased almost everywhere over the past two generations. "But it improved more quickly in countries that hosted American troops, and more slowly elsewhere."

What Kane dubs the "good country effect" isn't entirely understood. Why, for example, should a tenfold increase of US troops over 20 years in a typical host country lead to a reduction in children's mortality by 2.2 percentage points and a 1 percentage point gain in life expectancy? Access to more US dollars isn't a sufficient explanation: The improvements remain statistically significant even after accounting for economic aid. And plainly the United States doesn't undertake military deployments in pursuit of an imperial growth scheme aimed at creating wealth. "There was no material advantage to saving South Korea, a bloody and costly war that ended well," Kane observes. "And there was nothing to be exploited in Vietnam, an even bloodier and more costly war that ended badly."

The empirical advances in human welfare spurred by the presence of US forces can be linked to factors as specific and tangible as the proliferation of telephone lines, which — besides being necessary for military communications — helps connect remote rural communities with medical workers and emergency assistance. They may also be linked to the proliferation of cultural ideas and civic institutions. With American military engagement come American ways of doing business, of training police forces, of resolving local disputes, of strengthening democracy and the rule of law.

Economic analysis won't end the debates over America-as-Globocop, nor should it. Foreign and national-security policymaking is complex, and every deployment of troops must be justified on its own terms.

Nevertheless, the data underscore a reality we ought not lose sight of: The projection of US power has been a remarkable force for good in the world. Where American boots tread, prosperity and better lives generally result.

SOURCE

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When the Law Is a Drag

In the Ferguson disaster, the law was the greatest casualty. Civilization cannot long work if youths strong-arm shop owners and take what they want. Or walk down the middle of highways high on illicit drugs. Or attack police officers and seek to grab their weapons. Or fail to obey an officer’s command to halt. Or deliberately give false testimonies to authorities. Or riot, burn, and loot. Or, in the more abstract sense, simply ignore the legal findings of a grand jury; or, in critical legal theory fashion, seek to dismiss the authority of the law because it is not deemed useful to some preconceived theory of social justice. Do that and society crumbles.

In our cynicism we accept, to avoid further unrest, that no government agency will in six months prosecute the looters and burners, or charge with perjury those who brazenly lied in their depositions to authorities, or charge the companion of Michael Brown with an accessory role in strong-arm robbery, or charge the stepfather of Michael Brown for using a bullhorn to incite a crowd to riot and loot and burn. We accept that because legality is becoming an abstraction, as it is in most parts of the world outside the U.S. where politics makes the law fluid and transient.

Nor can a government maintain legitimacy when it presides over lawlessness. The president of the United States on over 20 occasions insisted that it would be illegal, dictatorial, and unconstitutional to contravene federal immigration law — at least when to do so was politically inexpedient. When it was not, he did just that. Now we enter the Orwellian world of a videotaped president repeatedly warning that what he would soon do would be in fact illegal. Has a U.S. president ever so frequently and fervently warned the country about the likes of himself?

What is forgotten about amnesty is that entering the U.S. illegally is not the end, but often the beginning of lawlessness. Out here in rural central California we accept a world where thousands drive without insurance, licenses, and registration. Fleeing the scenes of traffic accidents earns snoozes. There is no such thing as the felony of providing false information on government affidavits or creating made-up Social Security numbers. Selling things without paying taxes and working off the books while on assistance are no longer illegal. The normative culture is lawlessness.

Amnesty, granted through a lawless presidential act, will not stop but only encourage further lawlessness. If someone has become used to ignoring a multitude of laws without consequences, there is no reason why he should suddenly cease, given that punishment for breaking the law is still considered a politically-incorrect rather than a legal act — and that even with amnesties it will still be far easier and cheaper to break than obey the law. Who will deport an illegal alien beneficiary of amnesty when he again breaks the law? Amnesty will be seen as both reactive and prophylactic, a waiver for both past and future behavior.

More disturbingly, we have engendered a strange culture of justifiable lawlessness: those who are deemed exploited in some ways are exempt from following the law; those without such victim status are subject even more to it. Executive authorities compensate for their impotence in not enforcing statutes for some by excessively enforcing them on others.

I accept that if I burn a single old grape stake that has been treated with a copper-based preservative, I will be facing huge fines by environmental protection agencies, whose zeal will not extend to nearby residents who have created illegal compounds of rental Winnebagos with jerry-rigged wiring and stop-gap sewage or who dump wet garbage along the side of the road. In the old days the dumpers at least used to sift out incriminating documents with names on them; now they leave them in, without worry over the consequences.

Our bureaucrats thirst for the single infraction by the law-biding citizen who can pay — to compensate for their impotence amid endless crimes by the law-breaking who are deemed unable to pay. That idea of redistributive enforcement permeates the entire federal government.

When Americans receive that dreaded letter from the IRS in the mail, demanding that they pay additional taxes with interest — or else — they cannot act in the way the IRS now acts: ignoring government requests, losing documents, hiding emails, taking the Fifth Amendment. If Americans were to follow the lawless culture of Lois Lerner and her associates at the IRS, then the IRS and the entire system of voluntary tax-compliance would simply implode. Try the following when the IRS calls:

“Sorry, I need two more years to find those documents.”
“You never sent me that tax notice!”
“My accountant, not me, did it.”
“Oh, oh, I lost that receipt.”
“I plead the Fifth and can’t give you that information.”
“Nope, those are private communications and I won’t hand them over.”

Indeed, the problem with the Obama administration is that the government’s own bureaucracies — the IRS, VA, Secret Service, GSA, EPA, Justice and State Departments — have so serially broken their own statutes and lied about their misconduct, that it is now almost impossible to reassure Americans that they, too, cannot do what their own government sees as some sort of birthright.

The fuel of lawlessness is untruth. What amazes about President Obama is not that he occasionally misstates facts — every president has done that — but that he so serially says things that are untrue and yet he must know are so easily exposed as untrue. When the president on over 20 occasions swears he cannot legally grant amnesty and then does so, or when he swears he cannot comment on an ongoing criminal case when he habitually has done just that, or when he insists that Obamacare will not result in higher premiums and deductibles or loss of doctors and health plans when it does precisely that, or when he asserts to the world that a mere demonstration over a video caused an attack on our consulate in Benghazi when he knew that it did not, or when he utters iron-clad red lines, deadlines, and step-over-lines that he knows are mythical or denies he has done just that — when he does all this, then almost everything he asserts must be doubted.

We now live in an era when we expect a federal bureaucrat — whether the attorney general or the secretary of Defense or the secretary of Labor — to illegally jet on family or political business at the public expense, or the president of the United States to pick and choose which elements of the law he finds useable and therefore are to be enforced and which bothersome and therefore ignored.

For this administration, the law is a drag.

What separated the United States from a Peru or Nigeria or Mexico or Laos or Russia was the sanctity of the law, or the idea that from the highest elected officials to the least influential citizen, all were obligated to follow, according to their stations, the law. Under Obama, that sacred idea has been eroded. We live in a world of illegal immigration and amnesties, Ferguson mythologies, and alphabet government scandals, presided over by a president who not only does not tell the truth, but also seems to be saying to the public, “I say whatever I want, so get over it.”

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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Church-goers are NOT dumber

That people are religious because they are stupid has been a  frequent assertion, particularly from the Left.  Some recent high-quality research (below), however, refutes that.  They found no association between church-going and IQ but did find a weak association between non-committed religiosity and IQ.  And religious people are also NOT more likely to go ga-ga as they get older.  See also here and here

Religiosity is negatively associated with later-life intelligence, but not with age-related cognitive decline

Abstract

A well-replicated finding in the psychological literature is the negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. However, several studies also conclude that one form of religiosity, church attendance, is protective against later-life cognitive decline.

No effects of religious belief per se on cognitive decline have been found, potentially due to the restricted measures of belief used in previous studies. Here, we examined the associations between religiosity, intelligence, and cognitive change in a cohort of individuals (initial n = 550) with high-quality measures of religious belief taken at age 83 and multiple cognitive measures taken in childhood and at four waves between age 79 and 90.

We found that religious belief, but not attendance, was negatively related to intelligence. The effect size was smaller than in previous studies of younger participants. Longitudinal analyses showed no effect of either religious belief or attendance on cognitive change either from childhood to old age, or across the ninth decade of life.

We discuss differences between our cohort and those in previous studies – including in age and location – that may have led to our non-replication of the association between religious attendance and cognitive decline.

SOURCE

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A dark cloud with a silver lining

Obama is amazing. He is rebuilding the American dream!

1. Obama destroyed the Clinton Political Machine, driving a stake through the heart of Hillary's presidential aspirations - something no Republican was ever able to do.

2. Obama killed off the Kennedy Dynasty - no more Kennedys trolling Washington looking for booze and women wanting rides home.

3. Obama is destroying the Democratic Party before our eyes! Dennis Moore had never lost a race. Evan Bayh had never lost a race. Byron Dorgan had never lost a race. Harry Reid - soon to be GONE! These are just a handful of the Democrats whose political careers Obama has destroyed. By the end of 2014, dozens more will be gone.

Just think, in December of 2008 the Democrats were on the rise. In two election cycles, they had picked up 14 Senate seats and 52 House seats. The press was touting the death of the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party. However, in just one year, Obama put a stop to all of this and gave the House and the Senate - back to the Republicans.

4. Obama has completely exposed liberals and progressives for what they are. Sadly, every generation seems to need to re-learn the lesson on why they should never actually put liberals in charge. Obama is bringing home the lesson very well: Liberals tax, borrow and spend. Liberals won't bring themselves to protect America. Liberals want to take over the economy. Liberals think they know what is best for everyone. Liberals are not happy until they are running YOUR life.

5. Obama has brought more Americans back to conservatism than anyone since Reagan. In one year, he has rejuvenated the Conservative Movement and brought out to the streets millions of freedom loving Americans. Name one other time when you saw your friends and neighbors this interested in taking back America!

6. Obama, with his "amazing leadership," has sparked the greatest period of sales of firearms and ammunition this country has seen. Law abiding citizens have rallied and have provided a "stimulus" to the sporting goods field while other industries have failed, faded, or moved off-shore.

7. In all honesty, one year ago I was more afraid than I have been in my life. Not afraid of the economy, but afraid of the direction our country was going. I thought, Americans have forgotten what this country is all about. My neighbors and friends, even strangers, have proved to me that my lack of confidence in the greatness and wisdom of the American people has been flat wrong.

8. When the American people wake up, no smooth talking teleprompter reader can fool them! Barack Obama has served to wake up these great Americans! Again, I want to say: "Thank you, Barack Obama!" After all, this is exactly the kind of hope and change we desperately needed!!

9. He made Jimmy Carter happy since Jimmy is no longer the worst president we've ever had.

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It’s official: America is now No. 2

Chinese economy overtakes the U.S.’s to become the largest

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.  It just happened — and almost nobody noticed.

The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will this year produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.A.

As recently as 2000, we produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese.

To put the numbers slightly differently, China now accounts for 16.5% of the global economy when measured in real purchasing-power terms, compared with 16.3% for the U.S.

This latest economic earthquake follows the development last year when China surpassed the U.S. for the first time in terms of global trade.

I reported on this looming development over two years ago, but the moment came sooner than I or anyone else had predicted. China’s recent decision to bring gross domestic product calculations in line with international standards has revealed activity that had previously gone uncounted.

These calculations are based on a well-established and widely used economic measure known as purchasing-power parity (or PPP), which measures the actual output as opposed to fluctuations in exchange rates. So a Starbucks venti Frappucino served in Beijing counts the same as a venti Frappucino served in Minneapolis, regardless of what happens to be going on among foreign-exchange traders.

PPP is the real way of comparing economies. It is one reported by the IMF and was, for example, the one used by McKinsey & Co. consultants back in the 1990s when they undertook a study of economic productivity on behalf of the British government.

Yes, when you look at mere international exchange rates, the U.S. economy remains bigger than that of China, allegedly by almost 70%. But such measures, although they are widely followed, are largely meaningless. Does the U.S. economy really shrink if the dollar falls 10% on international currency markets? Does the recent plunge in the yen mean the Japanese economy is vanishing before our eyes?

Back in 2012, when I first reported on these figures, the IMF tried to challenge the importance of PPP. I was not surprised. It is not in anyone’s interest at the IMF that people in the Western world start focusing too much on the sheer extent of China’s power. But the PPP data come from the IMF, not from me. And it is noteworthy that when the IMF’s official World Economic Outlook compares countries by their share of world output, it does so using PPP.

Yes, all statistics are open to various quibbles. It is perfectly possible China’s latest numbers overstate output — or understate them. That may also be true of U.S. GDP figures. But the IMF data are the best we have.

Make no mistake: This is a geopolitical earthquake with a high reading on the Richter scale. Throughout history, political and military power have always depended on economic power. Britain was the workshop of the world before she ruled the waves. And it was Britain’s relative economic decline that preceded the collapse of her power. And it was a similar story with previous hegemonic powers such as France and Spain.

This will not change anything tomorrow or next week, but it will change almost everything in the longer term. We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. since at least 1945 and, in many ways, since the late 19th century. And we have lived for 200 years — since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 — in a world dominated by two reasonably democratic, constitutional countries in Great Britain and the U.S.A. For all their flaws, the two countries have been in the vanguard worldwide in terms of civil liberties, democratic processes and constitutional rights.

SOURCE

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LA Landslide: Republican Bill Cassidy Gains Ninth GOP Senate Seat in Win Over Landrieu

The 18-year long reign of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has finally come to an end in Louisiana. In a landslide victory in Saturday’s runoff election, Republican Bill Cassidy defeated the incumbent and captured the ninth Senate seat for the GOP, capping off a victorious midterm election for his party. Cassidy pulled in 56 percent of the vote, to Landrieu's 44 percent.

The road was rocky for Landrieu from the start. The public found out about her improper use of taxpayer funds, then the fact she doesn’t even own a home in Louisiana. Then, she dissed her constituents. Because of all her missteps and Cassidy’s growing lead, Democrats quickly gave up on Landrieu after the general election on November 4. Now, it’s clear Louisianans have given up on her as well.

And with that, this very long midterm election is over.

SOURCE

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Progressivism Claims Another Life

Eric Garner died in July because he resisted arrest, forcing police to take him down the way they take down thousands of suspects daily. Only Garner wasn’t an average suspect. He had allowed himself to become morbidly obese and had diabetes, heart disease and who knows what other self-imposed health problems. Still, he never should have died that summer day.

Big government killed Eric Garner. Police were just the weapon.

Garner was selling “illegal cigarettes” that day, or “loosies” – individual cigarettes from a pack. Why would anyone buy individual cigarettes? Because government, in this case New York, both city and state, have, through exorbitant taxation, made buying a whole pack too expensive for many.

Government’s heavy hand incentivized the creation of a black market for cigarettes. But government’s heavy hand also made selling cigarettes outside of its approved, and taxed, avenues a crime. Government, like the mafia, doesn’t like competition. The mafia will execute you; the government will arrest you.

In Garner’s case, he resisted that arrest and died because his body could not tolerate the force he brought on himself from police. But the police would not have been there had progressive officials and activists not made what Garner was doing into a crime.

Had reselling cigarettes, individually or in packs, not been criminalized by a government wanting its “taste of the action,” Eric Garner still would be alive.

Police have better things to do with their time, more important crimes to investigate, than selling cigarettes individually. But, unlike the newly discovered powers of the president to pick and choose which laws to enforce, when cops get a call, they have to respond—no matter how stupid they may think the “crime” is.

The race-baiting progressives saw an opening in the Garner case and took it. The media, either unwilling or incapable of seeing their philosophy caused this and many other deaths and arrests, followed their lead and made this story about race. Garner is still dead, and repealing the laws that led to his death isn’t even being discussed.

Neither Mayor Bill De Blasio, President Obama nor Attorney General Eric Holder killed Eric Garner. Progressive governance that criminalizes everyday activities did. And so did Garner himself. He didn’t deserve to die by any stretch of the imagination, but he did it to himself.

Not the selling of “loosies.” He didn’t create the stupid law he was breaking, but he resisted arrest. Once he started flailing his arms, he sealed his fate.

If you watch the video, the officer did not put Garner in a “chokehold.” He hooked under his right armpit and around his neck. That is a restraint, not a chokehold. Garner’s right arm was incapacitated, leaving the others to deal with only his left arm. Garner’s decision to continue to struggle caused the officer to lose his grip, which he re-established around his neck.

The officer was perfectly in the right to do that as Garner was fighting, not complying. Letting him go at that moment would’ve put every officer involved in danger. It wasn’t held long, and it wouldn’t have happened at all had Garner, who was no stranger to police or arrest, not caused it to happen.

It’s an inconvenient truth, and a truth very few people want to admit. But it’s a truth nonetheless.

But the deeper truth still holds—it was progressive big government, the overregulation and taxation of everything—that was the first domino to fall in the events that caused Eric Garner’s death.

The mayor of New York is pushing “re-education” of the police so they can “better” interact with minority communities. That sounds an awful lot like “separate but equal” application of the law. Black people have different melanin levels, they aren’t a different species. But to progressives they might as well be.

It’s a sick, sad “soft bigotry of low expectations” that would make Goebbels blush. Goebbels famously said, “The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

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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Kids from affluent families start out smarter than the poor and the gap between them and the poor widens further as they grow up

It has long been known that the rich are smarter.  Charles Murray got heavy flak when he showed that two decades ago but it's logical that people who are in general smart should also be smart with money.  But the gorgeous Sophie von Stumm has amplified that in the research below.  My previous comments about some of her research were rather derogatory but I find no fault with the work below.

Explaining the finding is the challenge.  An obvious comment is that measuring the IQ of young children is difficult  -- but not impossible -- and that the widening gap simply reflected more accurate measurements in later life.

I would reject the explanation that the better home life in a rich family helped improve the child's IQ -- because all the twin studies show that the family environment is a negligible contributor to IQ -- counter-intuitive though that might be.

The present findings do however tie in well with previous findings that the genetic influence on IQ gets greater as people get older.  People shed some environmental influences as they get older and become more and more what their genetics would dictate


Sophie von Stumm

Poverty affects the intelligence of children as young as two, a study has found - and its impact increases as the child ages.  Deprived young children were found to have IQ scores six points lower, on average, than children from wealthier families.

And the gap got wider throughout childhood, with the early difference tripling by the time the children reached adolescence.

Scientists from Goldsmiths, University of London compared data on almost 15,000 children and their parents as part of the Twins Early Development Study (Teds).  The study is an on-going investigation socio-economic and genetic links to intelligence.

Children were assessed nine times between the ages of two and 16, using a mixture of parent-administered, web and telephone-based tests.

The results, published in the journal Intelligence, revealed that children from wealthier backgrounds with more opportunities scored higher in IQ tests at the age of two, and experienced greater IQ gains over time.

Dr Sophie von Stumm, from Goldsmiths, University of London, who led the study, said: 'We’ve known for some time that children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds perform on average worse on intelligence tests than children from higher SES backgrounds, but the developmental relationship between intelligence and SES had not been previously shown.  'Our research establishes that relationship, highlighting the link between SES and IQ.

SOURCE

Socioeconomic status and the growth of intelligence from infancy through adolescence

By Sophie von Stumm &  Robert Plomin

Abstract

Low socioeconomic status (SES) children perform on average worse on intelligence tests than children from higher SES backgrounds, but the developmental relationship between intelligence and SES has not been adequately investigated. Here, we use latent growth curve (LGC) models to assess associations between SES and individual differences in the intelligence starting point (intercept) and in the rate and direction of change in scores (slope and quadratic term) from infancy through adolescence in 14,853 children from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), assessed 9 times on IQ between the ages of 2 and 16 years. SES was significantly associated with intelligence growth factors: higher SES was related both to a higher starting point in infancy and to greater gains in intelligence over time. Specifically, children from low SES families scored on average 6 IQ points lower at age 2 than children from high SES backgrounds; by age 16, this difference had almost tripled. Although these key results did not vary across girls and boys, we observed gender differences in the development of intelligence in early childhood. Overall, SES was shown to be associated with individual differences in intercepts as well as slopes of intelligence. However, this finding does not warrant causal interpretations of the relationship between SES and the development of intelligence.

SOURCE

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Hollywood Hypocrites

The actor and comedian Russell Brand has certainly tried to brand himself. "Messiah Complex" was the name of his last tour. His new book is titled "Revolution." On "The Tonight Show," he told Jimmy Fallon he's inspired by Jesus, Gandhi, Malcolm X and Che Guevara. He thinks he's like them. In Tinseltown, they're the Fab Four revolutionaries for the downtrodden.

So it's shocking to him — and no surprise to us — when he gets exposed by the British press as a fraud. He's just another champagne socialist playacting.

On Dec. 1, he led an angry march to No. 10 Downing Street in London to take a petition to the prime minister's residence protesting skyrocketing rents in the city. In particular, he was protesting for tenants of the New Era apartments, recently bought by an American investment company. The demand for downtown real estate has caused prices to soar, leaving the middle class in dire straits.

Raise a glass to Paraic O'Brien of Channel Four, a publicly owned channel with a crusading edge that could teach a lesson or two to their American counterparts. He put the question directly to Brand: "Part of the problem is the super rich buying property in London. Isn't it? How much did you pay for your place?" Brand said his place is rented, as if that answered anything. So O'Brien asked how much he paid a month in rent.

Brand took offense and became mighty defensive, sticking his face inches from the reporter and replying passionately, "I'm not interested in talking to you about my rent, mate! I'm here to support a very, very important campaign. And you, as a member of the media, have an important duty to help represent these people, not to reframe the argument!"

That's just priceless: He believes the media's role is to promote for what he's not, not expose him for what he is. O'Brien wasn't intimidated in the slightest and kept pushing: "You're part of that problem, aren't you?" Brand said "absolutely not...I'm part of the solution!" He then claimed not to know how much he paid in rent.

Maybe we can jog his memory a bit. Brand lives within a mile of the trendy apartments he was protesting about — in a fancy loft that rents for $8,000 a month. He sold his house in northwest London for $3.5 million in 2010, and last October, he bought a $2.2 million Hollywood mansion that once belonged to Sir Laurence Olivier. Not exactly "struggling," are we, mate?

It sounds a lot like documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, that great baseball-capped American populist whose recent divorce revealed he felt his wife was a "spendthrift" who embarrassed him by building a lakefront mansion in northwestern Michigan. The radical Moores were mocked for their act of conspicuous construction. Divorce papers showed that "The couple's real estate holdings include a total of nine properties in Michigan and New York. The duo co-owns a Manhattan condo that was created through the combination of three separate units."

Being "a voice for the voiceless" is so rewarding — financially rewarding — as long as no one pries too much into just how rewarding it gets.

The late radio star Casey Kasem really demonstrated this type 25 years ago as he organized a "Housing Now" march on Washington for the homeless. The Los Angeles Times reported with a wink that Kasem and his wife Jean "turned their opulent $20,000-a-month, seven-room apartment at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel into the headquarters" for this cause. While they demanded more tax money for the poor, "They drive matching black Mercedes equipped with car phones. ... And this summer, Kasem bought his wife a little something for her birthday — specifically, a three-bedroom, five-bath mansion in Holmby Hills complete with tennis court and swimming pool and $6.8-million price tag." Reportedly they proudly declared they'd sent the leftovers down to the street for the homeless.

The Times called them "penthouse progressives." The rest of us call them Hollywood hypocrites.

SOURCE

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Racist Cops -- or Liberal Slander?

We have found the new normal in America.  If you are truly outraged by some action of police, prosecutors, grand juries, or courts, you can shut down the heart of a great city.

Thursday night, thousands of "protesters" disrupted the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, conducted a "lie-in" in Grand Central, blocked Times Square, and shut down the West Side Highway that scores of thousands of New Yorkers use to get home.

That the rights of hundreds of thousands of visitors and New Yorkers were trampled upon by these self-righteous protesters did not prevent their being gushed over by TV commentators.

Watching cable, I saw one anguished man cry out from a blocked car that he was trying to get his sick dog to the vet. But his rights were inferior to the rights of protesters to block traffic, chant slogans and vent their moral outrage to TV cameras.

From New York to Washington to Oakland, crowds acted in solidarity to block main arteries at rush hour.

Has President Obama condemned this? Has Eric Holder?

Remarkable. Underlings of Gov. Chris Christie have been under investigation for a year for closing off lanes to the George Washington Bridge. Contrast liberal indignation at Christie, with liberal indulgence of the lawbreaking Thursday night, and you will see what people mean when they talk of a moral double-standard.

What were these protests about? A grand jury on Staten Island voted not to indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner last July. As the video that has gone global shows, Pantaleo sought to arrest Garner, a 6'5", 350-pound man arrested many times before.

What was Garner doing?  Selling cigarettes one by one on a main street, a public nuisance for the stores and shops in front of which he plied his trade, but not a felony, and surely not a capital offense. A misdemeanor at most.

As Garner backed away and brushed aside attempts to handcuff him, Pantaleo grabbed him from behind by the neck to pull him down, as other cops swarmed in.

Repeatedly, Garner cried, "I can't breathe!" On the ground he again cried, "I can't breathe!" And he died there on the sidewalk.

Undeniably, terrible and tragic. Undeniably, not a natural death. And, undeniably, the way Garner was brought down and sat upon, an arm around his neck, contributed to, if it did not cause, his death.

Yet Garner did not die by strangulation.  According to the city medical examiner, he died from the "compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police."  The cops were holding him down by sitting on him.

As Rep. Peter King said Thursday, "If [Garner] had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, he would not have died." The Washington Post reports that the medical examiner seemed to confirm this, describing "Garner's asthma and hypertensive cardiovascular disease as contributing factors."

Why would a Staten Island grand jury not indict Pantaleo for murder or manslaughter in the death of Eric Garner?

In a word, intent.  Did Pantaleo intend to kill Eric Garner when he arrived on the scene? Did Pantaleo arrive intent on injuring Eric Garner? No and no.

Pantaleo was there to arrest Garner, and if he resisted, to subdue him and then arrest him. That was his job.

Did he use a chokehold, which the NYPD bans, or a takedown method taught at the police academy, as his lawyer contends?

That is for the NYPD to decide. The grand jury, viewing the video, decided that the way Pantaleo brought down Garner was not done with any criminal intent to kill or injure him, but to arrest him.

Garner's death, they decided, was accidental, caused by Pantaleo and the other NYPD cops who did not intend his injury or death, with Garner's asthma and heart disease as contributing factors.

Now that grand jury decision may be wrong, but does it justify wild allegations of "racist cops" getting away with "murder"?

This reflexive rush to judgment happens again and again.  We were told Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a white vigilante for "walking while black," and learned that Trayvon, when shot, had been beating a neighborhood watch guy nearly unconscious, "martial arts style," while sitting on top of him.

We were told that Ferguson cop Darren Wilson gunned down an unarmed black teenager for walking in the street, and learned that Michael Brown just robbed a convenience store, attacked Wilson in his patrol car, and was shot trying to wrestle away the officer's gun.

Liberals are imprisoned by a great myth — that America is a land where black boys and men are stalked by racist white cops, and alert and brave liberals must prevent even more police atrocities.

They live in a world of the mind.  The reality: As of 2007, black-on-white violent crime was nearly 40 times as common as the reverse. But liberals can't give up their myth, for it sustains their pretensions to moral superiority. It defines who they are.

SOURCE

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Why Cops Focused on Garner

Another twist in the Eric Garner saga. According to New York Congressman Peter King, “The district attorney of Staten Island is a man of unimpeachable integrity. … The highest ranking officer at the scene was an African-American female sergeant [Kizzy Adoni]. She was there the whole time. The reason that the cops were there that day is the local merchants – this is a minority neighborhood, these are minority business people – went to police headquarters and the chief of the department, who is an African-American.

They complained that Eric Garner was disrupting the area and preventing people from coming into their stores. [Police] were there at the request of minority shop owners, under the direction of an African-American police chief, and under the supervision of an African-American sergeant.”

King added, “I’ve seen a number of people taken down – this was a takedown. If someone is resisting arrest it often takes four or five cops to get them down. You have to subdue the person on the ground. The officers said, ‘Put your hands behind your back,’ and he wouldn’t. … I’ve seen guys held down. … If they had let up on the tension and he got up it would’ve started all over again.” If those facts don’t undermine the Left’s race-bait narrative, we don’t know what does.

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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The Mediterranean myth again

For years health freaks have been claiming that a Mediterranean diet increases your lifespan.  So how come Australians are one of the world's longest-lived groups (longer than any Mediterraneans) and yet traditionally live on a diet that is just about opposite to a Mediterranean one?

A traditional breakfast often includes fried bacon and eggs -- and steak and eggs was pretty common once too, particularly in country areas. Lunch is big on hamburgers, beef pies and sausage rolls (which often ooze fat). Dinner consists of "meat and 3 veg" -- meaning various forms of red meat, usually fried, plus boiled vegetables. All accompanied by bread and butter and followed by "pudding" -- a very sugary dessert of infinite variety.

And the result?  Almost all Australian families have (or have had) a nonagenerian tottering around among them -- after having lived all their lives on the diet I have described.  Japan has its centenarians.  Australia has legions of nonagenarians.  And the result in both cases is long and roughly comparable average lifespans.

The Australian diet has of course changed in recent years but not perhaps as much as one might think.  I asked one of my young stepdaughters last night what she mostly cooked for dinner.  She promptly replied "meat and 3 veg".  So both her kids and her husband could live to 90!

So what is the foundation of the claims below?  It follows the unfortunate precedent set by Ancel Keys long ago.  It looks at just part of the picture rather than the whole.  Keys showed that Mediterraneans have much less frequent heart attacks but forgot to look at other causes of death

The Harvard galoots below looked at telomere length only, which is even more specific than what Keys did.  There is indeed some correlation between telomere length and lifespan but it is miles short of a 1 to 1 relationship -- leaving plenty of room for other factors to come into play  -- including "meat and 3 veg"!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A Mediterranean diet increases life expectancy by protecting the DNA from damage, research shows

Harvard academics studied 4,676 middle-aged women comparing their typical eating habits with the make-up of their cells.

Importantly, they looked at their telomeres – biological caps which are found at the ends of chromosomes that protect the DNA inside.

As we get older, our telomeres get progressively shorter, causing the DNA to become damaged and raising the odds of age-related illnesses such as Alzheimer' s, diabetes and heart disease.

The research – published in the BMJ – found that women whose diets were generally low in fat and high in fruit and veg had longer telomeres.

But this was even more pronounced for those who followed a Mediterranean diet rich in fruit, veg, nuts and pulses.

SOURCE

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Those who live in glass houses...



The presidential pardon of a turkey or two every Thanksgiving is just one of the silly events the Washington elite do every year – just like the softball games in summer and the cherry blossom princesses in the spring. But let’s not blame Barack Obama’s daughters Malia and Sasha Obama for being bored by the event.

Elizabeth Lauten, the Communications Director for Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN), critiqued the two teens on Facebook, writing, “Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play.” It was a cheap shot, but the Leftmedia jumped down Lauten’s throat: How dare someone say such a thing to the children of the president. Lauten apologized and then resigned from her position.

Yet her criticism was nothing compared to the mockery Slate spewed about Rick Santorum’s daughters, and let’s not forget how the Leftmedia cackled over the Palin family’s birthday party brawl or speculated over Trig Palin’s parentage. Double standard much?

SOURCE

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Leftists can do no wrong

If real estate mogul and deep-pocketed White House donor Terry Bean were a Republican, he’d be a household name by now.

Bean’s face would be splashed all over the covers of grocery-stand newsweeklies. The garrulous hostesses of ABC’s “The View” would be haranguing the GOP to return his campaign contributions. Child-welfare advocates would be demanding his resignation from top political advocacy and civic groups.

Media satellite trucks from NBC’s “Today” show would be parked outside the Lane County, Ore., Circuit Court on Dec. 3 for his first appearance.

And The New York Times archives would be teeming with thousand-word editorials and multiple lead stories about his grand jury indictment on horrifying sexual abuse allegations involving multiple victims – including a 15-year-old boy.

Instead, a search for “Terry Bean” on the left-wing paper of record’s website on Tuesday yielded exactly one story dated Jan. 16, 1880, about a Westchester County, N.Y., elder with that name – plus a sponsored advertising link to retailer L.L. Bean.

So, who is Terry Bean? He’s a wealthy, high-flying liberal and celebrated gay-rights activist who co-founded the influential Human Rights Campaign organization. He is also a veteran member of the board of the HRC Foundation, which disseminates Common Core-aligned “anti-bullying” material to children’s schools nationwide.

Bean shelled out more than $500,000 for President Obama and the Democrats in 2012. He was rewarded with an exclusive Air Force One ride with Obama. The president also gave the developer a special shout-out at an opulent fundraiser in Portland, where Bean’s family had established a longstanding political and corporate fiefdom. Bean gleefully rubbed elbows with first lady Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton – and made sure everyone on his Flickr photo-sharing site knew it.

A relentless schmoozer, the campaign finance bundler introduced the commander in chief to his 25-year-old ex-boyfriend, Kiah Lawson. The pair posed for a cozy snapshot beneath an august portrait of George Washington in the White House library in 2013.

Late last month, however, the former lovebirds posed for a seedier set of pics: their creepy mug shots at the Multnomah County, Ore., Detention Center. After a sweeping investigation led by the Portland police department’s sex crime units and two county district attorney’s offices, authorities charged Bean with two felony counts of third-degree sodomy and one misdemeanor count of third-degree sex abuse. Lawson was indicted on third-degree sodomy and third-degree sexual abuse.

Allegations of Bean’s lurid sexual trysts with young men, which Lawson says the Democratic donor secretly videotaped, first surfaced in the local Willamette Week newspaper in June. Police say the pair enticed a 15-year-old boy to a hotel in Eugene, Ore., after meeting him through the iPhone app Grinder, which helps men locate “local gay, bi and curious guys for dating.”

Consider this: Harry Reid has taken to the Senate floor to repeatedly demonize GOP donors and upstanding businessmen Charles and David Koch for exercising their First Amendment rights. Hollywood celebrities Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner, Jason Alexander and Stephen Colbert have all targeted conservative Citizens United for its historic role in protecting political free speech. All are mute on a powerful Democratic donor actually accused of heinous sexual abuse crimes against a child.

While The New York Times has spilled gallons of ink on the campus rape epidemic, the GOP’s Mark Foley underage page scandal and the Catholic Church’s pedophilia problem, it has remained silent the past six months on the alleged child rape scheme of one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent campaign contributors and activists.

On Tuesday, the paper saw fit to run a 652-word A-section story on an obscure GOP aide who was forced to quit her job after criticizing Obama’s daughters on her Facebook page.

Nothing on Terry Bean.

SOURCE

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Can Racial Discrimination Explain Much?

In the medical profession, there is the admonition primum non nocere, the Latin expression for “first, do no harm.” In order not to do harm, at the minimum, requires accurate diagnostics. Suppose a patient presents with abdominal pains, and the physician diagnoses it as caused by the patient’s ingrown toenails. If that isn’t the cause, the physician can spend all the resources he wants treating the patient’s ingrown toenails and not remedy the patient’s abdominal pains.

The decency of accurate diagnosis should be given to analyzing the problems of a large segment of the black community. Very often, major problems are erroneously seen as being caused by racial discrimination. No one argues that racial discrimination does not exist or does not have effects. The question that’s relevant to policy, as well as resource allocation, is: How much of what we see is caused by discrimination?

Let’s apply this question to the tragic state of black education. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the nation’s report card, the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader. In some cities, there’s even a larger achievement gap. If, as some people assert, this is the result of racially discriminatory education funding, then demonstrations, legal suits and other measures might be taken to promote funding equity. Also, resources could be spent to politically organize and elect black people as mayors, city councilors and school superintendents.

If the cause of the black/white achievement gap has little to do with racial discrimination, then focusing on discrimination will lead us to ignore or downplay factors that do affect black education. In some school districts, 700 teachers are annually assaulted and threatened. At one time, Philadelphia employed 500 school police officers. Similar stories of school violence can be told in other cities with large black populations, such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Oakland, California, and Newark, New Jersey. How useful is it to spend resources on discrimination while allowing unsafe and chaotic educational environments to exist?

Whether a student is black, white, orange or polka-dot and whether he’s poor or rich, there are some minimum requirements that must be met in order for him to do well in school. Someone must make the student do his homework. Someone must see to it that he gets eight to nine hours of sleep. Someone has to fix him a wholesome breakfast and ensure that he gets to school on time and respects and obeys teachers. Here’s my question: Which one of those basic requirements can be accomplished through a presidential executive order, a congressional mandate or the edict of a mayor, a superintendent of schools or a teacher? If those basic requirements aren’t met, whatever else that is done in the name of education is for naught.

Spending more money on education is not a substitute. If it were, black academic achievement wouldn’t be a problem. For example, in 2012, Washington, D.C., public schools led the nation in spending per pupil, at $29,409. In terms of academic performance, “the nation’s report card” shows that over 80 percent of D.C.’s predominantly black eighth-graders scored either “basic” or “below basic” in reading and math. “Basic” indicates only partial mastery of the knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at grade level, and “below basic” means that the student doesn’t even have partial mastery.

Other devastating problems that are faced by many blacks and cannot be attributed to racial discrimination are a high crime rate – featured by a homicide victimization rate of 51 percent – over 70 percent of blacks being born to single females and only slightly more than 30 percent of black children being raised in two-parent households.

Solutions to these truly challenging problems will not be found in the political arena or in government programs. For black politicians, civil rights leaders, the intellectual elite and others to blame racial discrimination for the problems of today is dereliction. If a medical practitioner made the same kind of incorrect diagnosis, we’d indict him for malpractice.

SOURCE

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Americans Are Spending 42 Percent More on Health Insurance Than They Did in 2007

Data on consumer spending show that spending on health insurance surged 42 percent from 2007 to 2013, according to analysis by the Wall Street Journal. The rise reflects the increasing cost of health insurance and the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that everyone buy extensive health insurance.

Another feature shown by the data is the movement away from home ownership and associated costs. Families are more likely to rent than in 2007, so mortgage spending is down and rent spending is up. Some of the other categories where spending fell – appliances and furniture – are complements to home-owning.

Spending increases are not the same as cost increases. Home internet and mobile phones are the fastest growing expenditure categories because new services are available, not because of rising costs on old services. It’s a good thing when increased spending comes from more people choosing to buy better services.

As any Black Friday shopper can tell you, consumers are happy when they get more goods for lower unit costs. Congress can augment buying power by repealing policies that raise costs, such as trade barriers, the fuel ethanol mandate, and of course Obamacare. Reducing the cost of food, gasoline and health insurance would give American consumers more choice and extra disposable income.

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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Progressivism's Last Gasp

Early Sunday morning, 32-year-old Bosnian man Zemir Begic was killed in a hammer attack in the Bevo Mill neighborhood of St. Louis, MO. The murderous assault was perpetrated by three or four teens, described as “black and Hispanic.” Approximately 50 people, mostly, if not all Bosnians, staged a demonstration on Gravois Avenue at Itaska Street on Sunday night to protest the killing. No stores were burned, no businesses were looted. The mainstream media was nowhere to be found.

A picture of Begic can be seen here. And while he is clearly of the Caucasian persuasion, the media that have covered the story prefer to use the term “Bosnian” to describe him. More than likely that is the case because the word “white” would force them to consider the possibility that Begic was killed because of his race, or as a spillover reaction to the jury verdict and subsequent rioting in Ferguson.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson immediately dismissed those possibilities when he spoke with the protesters. He insisted Begic was not targeted because of his race or ethnicity. "There is no indication that the gentleman last night was targeted because he was Bosnian,“ Dotson said. "There’s no indication that they knew each other.”

One is left to wonder how Dotson could reach that conclusion so quickly. Two of the four suspects, ages 15 and 16, are in custody, and police claim to know the nickname of a third suspect still at large, and believe a fourth man may have been involved in the carnage as well. Thus it stands to reason the only way Dotson can be sure there was no racial motivation involved in this murder is to take the word of the alleged murderers themselves in that regard.

One is reminded the entire “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” movement, that reached the heights of absurdity when members of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams entered the field for Sunday’s game with their hands in the air, was based on similar reassurances from eyewitness Dorian Johnson. It was Johnson who insisted that “gentle giant” Mike Brown had been shot in the back while he had his hands up in surrender. And it was the mainstream media, for whom truth and accuracy take a back seat to ratings-driven heat and light, that ran with the lie repeated often enough it became the truth.

Suad Nuranjkovic, 49, was with Begic when he was killed. They were heading home from a bar when Begic’s car was surrounded by at least five teens who began banging on it. Nuranjkovic fled to a nearby parking lot and hid. “I was afraid that if one of them had a gun, they were going to shoot me, so I didn’t know what to do,” he explained. Begic’s wife of six months, Arijana Mujkanovic, was also at the scene and witnessed her husband’s death. “The last thing he did before he actually died was pull me out of the way and put himself in front of me, basically giving up his life for me,” she revealed.

Begic was beaten with hammers, striking his head, face and abdomen. After the attack he was taken to SLU Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries and died.

Remarkably – or perhaps predictably – Begic was not the first victim allegedly attacked by this group of thugs. Seldin Dzananoic, 24, was also targeted by a group of teens with hammers on the same street about an hour earlier. He escaped with only minor injuries. “I’m just lucky,” he said. “God is on my side.” And in true keeping with today’s media, it remains unclear if there was a third victim. According to St. Louis’s NewsChannel 5, they spoke with a man who encountered “one of the groups,” who insulted one of his family members. The victim, who asked not to be identified, claims someone struck him with a hammer when he went after them.

His statement following the encounter was chilling. “One of them told me they were doing it for fun, just for the heck of it,” he said. “I’m shaken because it’s the first time I’ve got into a confrontation. I was just trying to protect my family, that’s all.”

Perhaps the most pathetic assessment of this murder and subsequent protest by the Bosnian community was perpetrated by the Huffington Post. “The demonstrations over Begic’s death join the nationwide protests over the grand jury decision to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown on Aug. 9,” the Post stated.

Really? People protesting a clear-cut case of murder by black and Hispanic thugs are part of the nationwide protests engendered by an out-and-out lie, along with a grand jury’s courageous effort not to be intimidated by a bloodthirsty mob? “We’re just angry because we’re trying to protect our community,” said protester Mirza Nukic, 29, of St. Louis. “We’re just trying to be peaceful.”

Begic’s sister, Denisa 23, of Sioux Falls, S.D., illuminated the bitter irony attached to her brother’s death.  "We come from Bosnia because we were getting killed and our homes and families were getting destroyed,“ she said. "Never in my life did I think he would get murdered.”

Denisa also displayed a remarkable sense of proportion in the face of tragedy. "(Zemir) loved everybody. I don’t know what to think of it. It’s so wrong what they did. They didn’t just hurt Zemir’s family. They also hurt their own family because I’m pretty sure their moms will never see them again,“ she said. "I hope justice is served for my brother because he didn’t deserve this at all,” she added.

Justice has a split personality these days. The racialist undertones that from the heart of the Ferguson protests have already been dismissed here. The same media that descended on Ferguson en masse, in all their fact-free, hysteria-inducing, narrative-perpetrating glory, will be nowhere to be found. The thugs who roamed the streets with hammers, “just for the fun of it,” will never have a bounty placed on their heads, or be forced to go into hiding in fear of their lives. Attorney General Eric Holder will not descend upon the scene to determine the motives of those thugs, or conduct a follow-up investigation to see if Begic’s civil rights were violated.

Al Sharpton and his traveling band of racial arsonists will make no grand gestures or statements about the black American thug culture that drives such attacks. Attacks whose percentages dwarf those of every other ethnic group. Attacks in which black-on-white murders far outnumber white-on-black murders. President Obama will not inject himself into the incident, nor will he hold three separate White House meetings to address the concerns of a Bosnian community living in fear. There will be no white equivalent of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan urging his followers to “tear this goddamn country apart!” or telling the parents of white teenagers to “teach your baby how to throw the bottle if they can,” in reference to Molotov cocktails.

Instead Begic will have a quiet funeral held in Iowa, funded in large part by a GoFundMe page on the Internet set up for that purpose. Perhaps at some later date, there will be minimal media coverage of the trial, buried in the back pages of the local papers, or posted on relatively obscure Internet sites. Soon after that, Zemir Begic will be completely forgotten – which is exactly what happens to countless victims whose narrative cannot be exploited by an American left whose pathways to power and relevance rely upon keeping Americans at each other’s throats, irrespective of facts, common sense – or common decency.

Yet in the midst of the current mayhem, I remain very hopeful. Hopeful because the despicable over-reach of the American left remains on display, day in, day out. It is a display that reeks of progressive desperation and hysteria, aided and abetted by a media that no longer hides its affection for it. Either you’re with the mob, or you’re racist collaborator hiding behind “anachronistic” concepts such as law and order, innocent until proven guilty, or resisting the siren song of looting and pillaging. Looting and pillaging, according to Time Magazine’s execrable columnist Darlena Cunha, that are “a necessary part of the evolution of society” and peaceful protesting “is a luxury only available to those safely in mainstream culture.”

It is precisely that mainstream culture rightly appalled by the latest outburst from the usual suspects. One that has no interest in the "fundamental transformation" of their nation into a Third World banana republic as "atonement" for the "sin" of being the greatest nation on earth. It is they who will ultimately prevail, people of all ethnicities, religions, and genders, tired of being told what to think by those who believe they’re too “stupid” to think for themselves. Progressive bankruptcy is unsustainable and headed for the ash heap of history.

One race-bating, riot-inciting demagogue after another.

SOURCE

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Opinions Versus Facts

Thomas Sowell

Everyone seems to have an opinion about the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri. But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, “You’re entitled to your own opinion but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”

Soon after the shooting death of Michael Brown, this 285-pound young man was depicted as a “gentle giant.” But, after a video was leaked, showing him bullying the owner of a store from which he had stolen some merchandise, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed displeasure that the video was leaked. In other words, to Holder the truth was offensive, but the lie it exposed was not.

Many people who claimed to have been eyewitnesses to the fatal shooting gave opposite accounts of what happened. Some even gave accounts that contradicted what they themselves had said earlier.

Fortunately, the grand jury did not have to rely on such statements, though some in the media seemed to. What the grand jury had, that the rest of us did not have until the grand jury’s decision was announced, was a set of physical facts that told a story that was independent of what anybody said.

Three different medical forensic experts – one representing Michael Brown’s parents – examined the physical facts. These facts included the autopsy results, Michael Brown’s DNA on the door of the police car and on the policeman’s gun, photographs of the bruised and swollen face of policeman Darren Wilson and the pattern of blood stains on the street where Brown was shot.

This physical evidence was hard to square with the loudly proclaimed assertions that Brown was shot in the back, or was shot with his hands up, while trying to surrender. But it was consistent with the policeman’s testimony.

Moreover, the physical facts were consistent with what a number of black witnesses said under oath, despite expressing fears for their own safety for contradicting what those in the rampaging mobs were saying.

The riots, looting and setting things on fire that some in the media are treating as reactions to the grand jury’s decision not to indict the policeman, actually began long before the grand jury had begun its investigation, much less announced any decision.

Why some people insist on believing whatever they want to believe is a question that is hard to answer. But a more important question is: What are the consequences to be expected from an orgy of anarchy that started in Ferguson, Missouri and has spread around the country?

The first victims of the mob rampages in Ferguson have been people who had nothing to do with Michael Brown or the police. These include people – many of them black or members of other minorities – who have seen the businesses they worked to build destroyed, perhaps never to be revived.

But these are only the first victims. If the history of other communities ravaged by riots in years past is any indication, there are blacks yet unborn who will be paying the price of these riots for years to come.

Sometimes it is a particular neighborhood that never recovers, and sometimes it is a whole city. Detroit is a classic example. It had the worst riot of the 1960s, with 43 deaths – 33 of them black people. Businesses left Detroit, taking with them jobs and taxes that were very much needed to keep the city viable. Middle class people – both black and white – also fled.

Harlem was one of many ghettos across the country that have still not recovered from the riots of the 1960s. In later years, a niece of mine, who had grown up in the same Harlem tenement where I grew up years earlier, bitterly complained about how few stores and other businesses there were in the neighborhood.

There were plenty of stores in that same neighborhood when I was growing up, as well as a dentist, a pharmacist and an optician, all less than a block away. But that was before the neighborhood was swept by riots.

Who benefits from the Ferguson riots? The biggest beneficiaries are politicians and racial demagogues. In Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young was one of many political demagogues who were able to ensure their own reelection, using rhetoric and policies that drove away people who provided jobs and taxes, but who were likely to vote against him if they stayed. Such demagogues thrived as Detroit became a wasteland.

SOURCE

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ObamaCare isn't working: Americans are putting off medical care on cost grounds

Though President Barack Obama and administration officials still insist that ObamaCare is keeping healthcare costs down, the percentage of Americans who have put off seeking medical care for themselves or family due to cost concerns has reached an all-time high, according to a survey released last week by Gallup.

In an October speech at Northwestern University, President Obama touted the "dramatic slowdown in the rising cost of healthcare," tying the phenomenon to ObamaCare. The suggestion, repeated ad nauseam by supporters of the law, is misleading to say the least. An analysis published this summer in Health Affairs concluded that the slowdown in healthcare spending is primarily a result of the Great Recession.

Still, though, the myth continues to be pushed. "[B]ecause the insurance marketplaces we created encourage insurers to compete for your business, in many of the cities that have announced next year's premiums, something important is happening – premiums are actually falling," said President Obama. "That's progress we can be proud of."

Gallup, however, finds that 33 percent of Americans have put off medical care because of cost, the highest figure in the 14-year history of the question. "Last year, many hoped that the opening of the government healthcare exchanges and the resulting increase in the number of Americans with health insurance would enable more people to seek medical treatment," writes Rebecca Riffkin of Gallup. "But, despite a drop in the uninsured rate, a slightly higher percentage of Americans than in previous years report having put off medical treatment, suggesting that the Affordable Care Act has not immediately affected this measure."

Among the most notable findings is percentage of Americans with private health insurance who are putting off treatment. The survey found that 34 percent of those with private health coverage put off medical care in 2014, up from 25 percent in 2013.

While fewer households earning less than $30,000 are putting off medical care, Gallup shows that more middle class Americans are. Thirty-eight percent of Americans earning between $30,000 and $74,999 and 28 percent earning $75,000 or more report foregoing care in the last 12 months, up from 33 percent and 17 percent last year.

Though most of the focus has been on premiums and subsidies, health plans on the exchanges are notorious for eye-popping out of pocket costs, the average of which increased by 42 percent compared to pre-ObamaCare plans. An Associated Press survey released in October found similar results, noting that Americans with high-deductible plans were more likely to forgo seeking care in the event of a major medical problem. For its part, Gallup notes that the percentage of those with private coverage putting off care "may reflect high deductibles or copays that are part of the newly insured's plans."

No one disagrees that healthcare costs needed to be addressed, but ObamaCare -- with its expensive mandates and overbearing regulations -- only exacerbates the problem, creating a dangerous atmosphere for patients who have real medical needs that may go unaddressed because they're been priced out of seeking care.

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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