JustOneMinute

I Second That Emotion

Ed Rollins tells us that Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. I particularly agree with this:

Ms. Palin, serious stuff needs to be accomplished in Washington.

If you want to be a player, go to school and learn the issues. Put smart people around you and listen to them. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious. You've already got your own forum. If you want to be a serious presidential candidate, get to work. If you want to be an imitator of Ronald Reagan, go learn something about him and respect his legacy.

Two years ago Ms. Palin was in a bit over her head, which was fair enough considering she had been plucked from relative obscurity.  But I am troubled that in the two years hence she has not been studying the briefing books.

Keeping Fear Alive - A Flashback!

Following TSA Opt-out Day, the artillery exchanges in Korea, the WikiDump, and the bombing of two Iranian scientists, I am having a flashback and wondering whether Stephen Colbert is having trouble keeping fear alive.

Into The Trashbin With Medical Science

This Atlantic article will shatter whatever is left of your faith in medical science:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science.

I will add this caveat: just as scientific journals favor interesting results, news journals favor provacative leads.

Hillary Out? As If

Jack Shafer of Slate argues that Hillary's credibility as Secretary of State is beyond repair:

WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton, and the Smoking Gun
The leaked cables make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to continue as secretary of state.

A U.S. diplomat must possess patience, poise, and tact. He must also be attentive to cultural differences, a good observer, and proficient in several languages. When called upon, he must use his skills as a negotiator in the national interest. And, as the latest dump of WikiLeaks tells us, if the dip works for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he must also be prepared to spy on his fellow diplomats.

Yeah, our diplos used to have to convince people they don't secretly work for the CIA; now they have to convince people they don't secretly work for Hillary Clinton.  Our guys and gals are good, but are they that good?

Shafer completely sidesteps the only issue that is important to Hillary - how would her resignation affect Operation Enduring Viability for her 2016 (or 2012!) Presidential run?  Hillary would love to jump in a lifeboat and abandon the SS Titanic Barack, but she can't leave as a failure and under a cloud.  Unless she and Barack can engineer a face-sacing success that can be pointed to as the capstone of her foreign policy efforts (supplanting her heroism in Bosnia!), she has to stick around.

TO STATE THE OBVIOUS: Obama can't fire her.  But maybe Eric Holder could indict her?  Would he offer her a civilian trial in NYC?

It Lives!

The Virginia judge upheld the individual mandate in the new health care law:

A federal judge in Virginia on Tuesday rejected a legal challenge to the healthcare reform law, the second time the law's mandate that people buy insurance has been ruled constitutional.

The lawsuit was brought by Liberty University, which also argued that the law violates the First Amendment by requiring people to buy insurance that could cover abortions.

"I hold that there is a rational basis for Congress to conclude that individuals' decisions about how and when to pay for health care are activities that in the aggregate substantially affect the interstate health care market," ruled U.S. District Judge Norman Moon, a Clinton appointee. "Nearly everyone will require health care services at some point in their lifetimes, and it is not always possible to predict when one will be afflicted by illness or injury and require care.…

"Far from ‘inactivity,’ by choosing to forgo insurance, Plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now, through the purchase of insurance. As Congress found, the total incidence of these economic decisions has a substantial impact on the national market for health care by collectively shifting billions of dollars on to other market participants and driving up the prices of insurance policies."

Hmm. If Congress next obliged me to buy a Chevy Volt, why couldn't they argue that almost everyone participates in the transportation market at some point?  And clearly, my decision to buy Japanese, or Korean, or a gas-guzzler, affects other markets.  I guess people will now ask the same question about Congress that they ask about bacon - is there anything it can't do?

Secondly, if my hobbies were skydiving, drag racing and snorting crystal meth and my best friend was Dr. Kevorkian, I might not be so sure I was going to need to worry about my old age end of life care. 

Or, if I was young, healthy, and spending every spare dime raising a few kids I might think that saving for my own old age was both selfish and misdirected.  Let's see - should I buy the kids a laptop to help them get ahead in school or plunk down a few grand to subsidize some geezer's health care today and make sure that I will be cared for in forty years? Tough call!  I understand that Obama specifically and Democrats don't trust my ability to make these decisions (and would rather create dependency by buying my kids a laptop and someday providing my healthcare), but this is still the land of the free.  Or was.

WikiLeak du Jour

Today the Times takes their WikiLeak tour to Gitmo:

Cables Depict U.S. Haggling to Find Takers for Detainees

More witnesses to the sausage making.  But I like their picture of a setting sun:

Mr. Obama won praise from around the world when, shortly after taking office in 2009, he ordered the Guantánamo Bay prison closed within a year, saying it was contrary to American values and a symbol for terrorist propaganda.

By then, the Bush administration already had transferred more than 500 of the detainees it had sent to Guantánamo, and the Obama administration has since winnowed the population to 174 from 240, with help from Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and other countries. But Mr. Obama missed his deadline, and the goal has faded as a priority, with domestic opposition to moving some detainees to a prison inside the United States and with other countries that condemned the Guantánamo prison reluctant to take in detainees.

While Mr. Obama went to Norway to collect a Nobel Peace Prize, for example, the Norwegians called resettling Guantánamo detainees “purely a U.S. responsibility.” Germany and several other European countries that had criticized the prison eventually accepted a few detainees but balked at taking as many as the United States had hoped.

Obama won praise for agreeing to quit smoking, too.  I guess the international community cooled to that as well.

Vitamin D - Just Hype?

The NY Times covers some pushback against the latest "it" vitamin, but I don't buy it:

Extra Vitamin D and Calcium Aren’t Needed, Report Says
By GINA KOLATA

The very high levels of vitamin D that are often recommended by doctors and testing laboratories — and can be achieved only by taking supplements — are unnecessary and could be harmful, an expert committee says. It also concludes that calcium supplements are not needed.

The group said most people have adequate amounts of vitamin D in their blood supplied by their diets and natural sources like sunshine, the committee says in a report that is to be released on Tuesday.

“For most people, taking extra calcium and vitamin D supplements is not indicated,” said Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, a member of the panel and an osteoporosis expert at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute.

Dr. J. Christopher Gallagher, director of the bone metabolism unit at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., agreed, adding, “The onus is on the people who propose extra calcium and vitamin D to show it is safe before they push it on people.”

Over the past few years, the idea that nearly everyone needs extra calcium and vitamin D — especially vitamin D — has swept the nation.

Hmm. We are talking about a vitamin whose role in bone health was discovered a long time ago, but which has recently been linked [or here, or here] to diabetes, obesity, cancer, brain development (maybe!), athletic performance and other things.  Yet the Times is quoting two bone guys to tell me there is nothing to the hype.  Unconvincing!

Secondly, I am applying a bit of common sense here (often risky when science is involved, but away we go).  The first humans to leave Africa were dark-skinned.  In the higher latitudes and reduced sunlight of Northern Europe, selective evolutionary pressure favored white skin.  Was that exclusively about bone health?  And more importantly, could modern urban blacks in northern latitudes really be getting enough Vitamin D strictly from food supplements? And is it just poverty that explains the many grim health statistics for the black community?

I am continuing to back the hype.

ERRATA:  The report will be released and available online at 10 AM Tuesday.  The brief is here.

AHEAD OF THE PUSHBACK CURVE: Ms. Parker-Pope of the Times had a 'not-so-fast' story expressing skepticism about the Vitamin D fad last February.  However, let me pluck this:

But don't start gobbling down vitamin D supplements just yet. The excitement about their health potential is still far ahead of the science.

Although numerous studies have been promising, there are scant data from randomized clinical trials. Little is known about what the ideal level of vitamin D really is, whether raising it can improve health, and what potential side effects are caused by high doses.

And since most of the data on vitamin D comes from observational research, it may be that high doses of the nutrient don't really make people healthier, but that healthy people simply do the sorts of things that happen to raise vitamin D.

The absence of studies is not the same as the study of absence.  Or something like that... Anyway, telling us that a theory has not been confirmed is different from saying it has been refudiated.

THE FUTURE IS NOW:  But where is the Future Pundit on this?  Without my go-to guy I am nowhere.

 

Direct Action In Tehran

OK, this escalation is making me nervous:

Blasts target Iranian nuclear scientists

Reporting from Beirut —

Two separate explosions killed a nuclear scientist and injured another in the Iranian capital Monday morning, official news outlets reported.

Both scholars' wives and a driver were also injured in the attacks, according to the news agencies. The slain scientist, Majid Shahriari, was a member of the nuclear engineering team at the Shahid Behesti university in Tehran, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA.

No one claimed responsibility for the attacks and no arrests have been made, Iranian officials said. But they prompted a stern warning by the normally cool-headed head of Iran's atomic energy agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, who described Shahriari as a former student.

"Do not play with fire," he said, according to IRNA. "There is a limit to the Iranian nation's patience and if we run out of patience the enemy will suffer adverse consequences. Of course we still maintain our patience."

The injured scholar, Fereydoun Abbas, also taught at Shahid Beheshti, one of Iran's most prestigious institutions of higher learning.

And the method was right out of the movies:

The assassins, riding motorcycles, tossed bombs at -- or attached them to -- vehicles of the two Shahid Behesti University professors as they drove with their spouses en route to work between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m..

"A Pulsar motorbike drove close to Dr. Shahriari's car and stuck a bomb on his car which after a few seconds exploded," Tehran police chief Hossein Sajednia was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.

"Experts are examining the incidents," Sajednia said. "The type of the bombs and explosive materials and the extent of damage have not been determined yet."

I suppose that some dissident Iranian faction could have pulled this off but the money bet has to be the Israelis.  (Hmm, might the Russians be on the board?  They could be playing both sides, publicsly sorta-supporting Irana while privately getting worried about a nuclear crazy on their border.)

Compounding the puzzle:

A powerful and still mysterious Jan. 11 explosion killed Iranian physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi near his home. The attack led to speculation that Iran's international adversaries were targeting scientists as a way of slowing its nuclear research program. But others said he might have been killed for supporting the political movement opposed to the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 

Wikileaks

Yikes!  The spies have taken over.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an interesting twist on the leaked documents - this is a subtle ploy by Obama to undermine Iran.  Geez, is Obama that good?

TEHRAN — In Iran’s first official reaction to leaked State Department cables quoting Arab leaders as urging the United States to bomb Tehran’s nuclear facilities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the documents as American psychological warfare that would not affect his country’s relations with other nations, news reports said.

The documents seemed to show several Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival for influence in the Persian Gulf, displaying such hostility that King Abdullah repeatedly implored Washington to “cut off the head of the snake” while there was still time.

Nonetheless, Mr. Ahmadinejad said at a news conference on Monday that Iran’s relations with its neighbors would not be damaged by the reports.

“Regional countries are all friends with each other. Such mischief will have no impact on the relations of countries,” he said, according to Reuters.

“Some part of the American government produced these documents,” he said. “We don’t think this information was leaked. We think it was organized to be released on a regular basis and they are pursuing political goals.”

Maybe Obama and Hillary are that crafty.  As if. 

I think the era of frank discussions with the rest of the world has now ended.  I just thank Heaven we don't that moron cowboy in the White House antagonizing people.

In Case You Missed It (As I Almost Did...)

The Saturday Times is a must-read because it is the graveyard for stories that the editors feel obliged to cover without vexing their Upper West Side readership.  Yesterday's treat was this:

Health Law Faces Threat of Undercut From Courts
By KEVIN SACK and ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration presses ahead with the health care law, officials are bracing for the possibility that a federal judge in Virginia will soon reject its central provision as unconstitutional and, in the worst case for the White House, halt its enforcement until higher courts can rule.

The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance, which takes effect in 2014.

Although administration officials remain confident that it is constitutionally valid to compel people to obtain health insurance, they also acknowledge that Judge Hudson’s preliminary opinions and comments could presage the first ruling against the law.

“He’s asked a number of questions that express skepticism,” said one administration official who is examining whether a ruling against part of the law would undermine other provisions. “We have been trying to think through that set of questions,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case freely.

While many newly empowered Republican lawmakers have vowed to repeal the health care law in Congress, a more immediate threat may rest in the federal courts in cases brought by Republican officials in dozens of states. Not only would an adverse ruling confuse Americans and attack the law’s underpinnings, it could frustrate the steps hospitals, insurers and government agencies are taking to carry out the law.

The Times eventually gets to the vexing severability question:

Virginia’s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a Republican who filed the Richmond lawsuit, argues that if Judge Hudson rejects the insurance requirement he should instantly invalidate the entire act on a nationwide basis.

Mr. Cuccinelli and the plaintiffs in the Florida case, who include attorneys general or governors from 20 states, have emphasized that Congressional bill writers did not include a “severability clause” that would explicitly protect other parts of the sprawling law if certain provisions were struck down.

An earlier version of the legislation, which passed the House last November, included severability language. But that clause did not make it into the Senate version, which ultimately became law. A Democratic aide who helped write the bill characterized the omission as an oversight.

Without such language, the Supreme Court, through its prior rulings, essentially requires judges to try to determine whether Congress would have enacted the rest of a law without the unconstitutional provisions.

The Justice Department, which represents the Obama administration, acknowledges that several of the law’s central provisions, like the requirement that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions, cannot work unless both the healthy and the unhealthy are mandated to have insurance. Otherwise, consumers could simply buy coverage when they needed treatment, causing the insurance market to “implode,” the federal government asserts.

The challenge to the individual mandate recently survived a Federal judge's scrutiny in Ohio, as well.

 

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Away we go.

And In Honor Of Tiger Woods...

As a special first anniversary tribute to Tiger Woods' infamous Thanksgiving fat lip, Barack Obama himself takes the thumping across the face.

Too Subtle For The TSA

I know the TSA has a difficult job, what wth patting down nuns and six year olds and all.  I am contemplating the difficulty of constructing a terrorist profile that would successfully pick out a guy like this:

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.

The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.

Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.

"The threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale,"

I assume this incident will have zero impact on the ongoing production of Security-Diversity Theater.

(Red) America's Sweetheart

Sarah Palin wishes all 57 states a Happy Thanksgiving, as do I.