Category Archives: Media Criticism

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Why I Eat Saturated Fats

31 Comments

Because they taste good, and they have essentially no relationship with coronary risk:

Overall, the literature does not offer much support for the idea that long term saturated fat intake has a significant effect on the concentration of blood cholesterol. If it’s a factor at all, it must be rather weak, which is consistent with what has been observed in multiple non-human species (13). I think it’s likely that the diet-heart hypothesis rests in part on an over-interpretation of short-term controlled feeding studies. I’d like to see a more open discussion of this in the scientific literature. In any case, these controlled studies have typically shown that saturated fat increases both LDL and HDL, so even if saturated fat did have a small long-term effect on blood cholesterol, as hinted at by some of the observational studies, its effect on heart attack risk would still be difficult to predict.

Actually, I have a simpler explanation — it’s simply an appealing theory, from a common-sense standpoint. You are what you eat, right?

Of course, it’s always dangerous to rely on “common sense” when it comes to complex topics like biochemistry. And yet the FDA builds such murderous concepts as the food pyramid on such shoddy research and thinking. Not to mention agri-industry lobbying, of course.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Educating Ezra

53 Comments

When we last heard from Ezra Klein, he was explaining that it’s hard to understand the constitution because it’s over a hundred years old. Now, Jen Rubin takes the juice boxer to school on the nature of the judicial branch.

[Update a while later]

Losing a battle but winning the war against ObamaCare:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a statement stressing that Republicans had kept “their promise to seek repeal of the job-destroying health care law.” The House and Senate Republicans’ unanimity on ObamaCare repeal is an important message to the base and to independents who fret that politicians don’t keep campaign promises. Moreover, we now have a clear demarcation between the two parties on a central issue. If elections are about choices, voters will have a clear one in 2012. Republicans seem very happy about that. The Democrats? Not so much.

Well, they weren’t so unhappy as to not vote in lockstep with a political loser. People like Joe Manchin will have a tough reelection fight. That vote may have been suicidal, particularly after his campaign rhetoric.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Remember Those Noble Rabbis?

11 Comments

They’re being repudiated by those they cited. They’re hypocrites with a double standard:

While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.

Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself—bizarrely timed for release on United Nations’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to “wipe Israel off the map,” surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.

It’s not about anti-semitism — it’s about shutting down the opposition and anyone who would out and criticize the left, and George Soros, a truly malevolent player on the world stage.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

When Did The Left Turn Against Free Speech?

63 Comments

The answer is that the left has never been in favor of free speech, except for themselves.

[Update a few minutes later]

I should add that I used to be a great fan of Robert Wright. I thought that The Moral Animal and Non-Zero were truly great books. So I am quite disappointed to see that he seems to suffer from Beck derangement.

[Update a few minutes later]

As someone notes in comments over at Ann’s site, this is a perfect example of why leftists aren’t entitled to the label “liberal.”

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Caught With Their Briefs Down

35 Comments

As I wrote yesterday, I was utterly unsurprised by the ruling on ObamaCare (well, OK, I was a little pleasantly surprised at its scope in basically shutting down the entire enterprise). We had, after all, been telling these totalitarians for many months that what they proposed was clearly far beyond the reach of the Commerce Clause. But Jen Rubin notes that apparently the left had been paying no attention to us (“Are you serious? Are you serious?!“) and was very surprised, to the point that they are incoherent and have no actual arguments against it:

The ruling is. . . um. . . thinking of a case liberals hate. . . um. . . just like Bush v. Gore! (Except it has nothing to do with the Equal Protection Clause or any other aspect of that case.) It is, we are told, “curious,” “odd,” or “unconventional.”

These are complaints, not legal arguments. And they suggest that the left was totally unprepared for the constitutional attack on their beloved handiwork. After all, the recent mocking by the left of conservatives’ reverence for the Constitution suggests they are mystified that a 200-year old document could get in the way of their historic achievement. They are truly nonplussed, and so they vamp, not with reasoned analysis but with an outpouring of adjectives.

Once again, we see that the beliefs of the left are hot-house plants. They are nurtured in the protective cocoons of academia, the leftstream media and Manhattan and DC salons, where they are never challenged, and thus never develop proper defenses against the day that they must confront the real world. Non-leftists, on the other hand, must continually make their cases and hone their arguments, which makes the inevitable confrontation all the bloodier when they are ultimately exposed to harsh reality. And of course, some of the most exsanguinatory encounters occur on Fox News, because it’s the only place that puts them both in the same room.

[Update a while later]

The Constitutional moment: ObamaCare meets Madison and Marshall.

This crowd has needed a “constitutional moment” for about century.

I wish that the court would overturn Wickard, but that may have to await some new Justices from a Republican president who actually believes in originalism.

[Update a while later]

As for those on the left who are accusing Judge Vinson of “judicial activism,” they only demonstrate their ignorance of the meaning of that phrase. Simply put, “judicial activism” is the making of new law out of whole cloth via judicial ruling (Roe v Wade being almost a canonical example), not declaring a law unconstitutional.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

I’m Confused

8 Comments

OK, for years, people who claim to be my intellectual betters on foreign policy (and pretty much everything else), and particularly about the Middle East, have been telling me that the root cause of the problems in the Middle East is the “occupation” of disputed territories in the West Bank and Gaza, and that we won’t be able to make any progress without solving that issue. It is what motivates Arab anger, and animates their protests.

Well, surely if this is the case, with all of the apparent anger and ongoing revolt in Cairo, we should be seeing many reports on the ground of protesters with angry signs against the Zionist entity, right? Or have I just missed them somehow?