Category Archives: Political Commentary

Is John McCain A Complete Economic Idiot?

Sometimes it seems like it:

In front of a roomful of 500 General Motors employees — of all places — John McCain paraded his radical Green credentials this morning. McCain embraced California’s lawsuit against the EPA demanding that states be allowed to set their own auto mileage standards.

“I guess at the end of the day, I support the states being able to do that,” he said at the town hall meeting at GM’s Technical Center in Warren, Mich.

California’s policy is strongly opposed by the auto industry because of the nightmare patchwork of regulatory standards such a proposal would set. The industry prefers national standards — a position that McCain had supported until this morning. McCain’s flip-flop on the issue (assuming he meant what he said, and his campaign doesn’t quickly move to correct the gaffe) would put him at odds with the Bush administration and longstanding Republican policy.

No way he has a prayer of winning Michigan (and probably not Ohio, either) if he persists in this stupidity. And it’s not going to give him California, either.

Power Corrupts

Lord Acton seems to have gotten it right:

…when recently denied free coffee from new management, Garvin allegedly told managers that he could change the police department’s response time if they refuse to give him complimentary drinks.

Garvin is accused of saying, “If something happens, either we can respond really fast or we could respond really slow. I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve been getting whatever I want. I’m the difference between you getting a two-minute response time, if you needed a little help, or a 15 minutes response time.”

Some have more resistance than others, but this should be cautionary for people who want bigger government. Unfortunately, it’s the new problem we have in Iraq, now that the war seems to be over.

Another Nail In The Coffin

…of the low-fat diet myth:

Although participants actually decreased their total daily calories consumed by a similar amount, net weight loss from the low-fat diet after two years was only 6.5 lbs. (2.9 kg) compared to 10 lbs. (4.4 kg) on the Mediterranean diet, and 10.3 lbs. (4.7 kg) on the low-carbohydrate diet. “These weight reduction rates are comparable to results from physician-prescribed weight loss medications,” explains Dr. Iris Shai, the lead researcher.

The low-fat diet reduced the total cholesterol to HDL ratio by only 12 percent, while the low-carbohydrate diet improved the same ratio by 20 percent. Lipids improved the most in the low-carbohydrate, with a 20% increase in the HDL (“good”) cholesterol and, 14% decrease in triglycerides. In all three diets, inflammatory and liver function biomarkers was equally improved. However, among diabetic participants, the standard low-fat diet actually increased the fasting glucose levels by 12mg/dL, while the Mediterranean diet induced a decrease in fasting glucose levels by 33mg/dL.

I’ve blogged about this before, but I continue to be amazed and frustrated at the ongoing ignorance in the medical and dietetic community about this. They persist in thinking that it is a simple thermodynamics problem–all calories are equal–and will not accept the notion that what we eat can affect our metabolism (how fast we burn energy, and how much it influences how we burn body fat).

It’s why I pay no attention to either physicians, or nutritionists (or the FDA), when it comes to dietary advice. As Glenn says, it’s fortunate that I also like a Mediterranean diet.

A Faux Pas

Defined, of course, as a politician accidentally blurting out the truth.

Shocked, shocked I was to read that Sen. Boxer, in complaints about possible Democratic defections on the question of opening up California waters for drilling to help alleviate the nation’s energy crunch, complained “This is our ethanol!”

Of course, Senator Boxer, being one of the dimmest bulbs in the upper house (quite an achievement, considering the competition), has no idea how revealing her comment is.

Asymmetry

Some follow-up thoughts on Lileks’ bleat today. If people aren’t aware, this is what Kuntar did, as described by the remaining family member, the wife and mother:

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

But the next part is the most tragic, and it illustrates the point I made the other day with regard to shouting out to the universe:

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

In any event, had an Israeli, soldier or civilian, deliberately shot an Arab parent to death in front of his young child, and then smashed in her skull with a rifle butt, in front of eyewitnesses, he would have been arrested, tried, and probably sentenced to life in prison, by the Israeli government. He would have also been condemned by Israeli society as a vicious monster. In contrast, this bloodthirsty psychopath was welcomed as a hero in Lebanon.

As long as this asymmetry of attitude toward wanton and deliberate murder, and worship of death and those who brutally bring it persists in the Arab world, there will be no peace in the Middle East, regardless of how much we appease them, even if we allow them their only true goal, which is the destruction of the state of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. As someone once said, Arabia has always had bloody borders.

[Update in the afternoon]

“Bodies’ abuse made ID difficult.”

Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF, who was present during the transfer of the fallen soldiers yesterday, said that “the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I’ll leave it at that.”

What is he complaining about? It’s not like they had women’s panties on their heads, or a Torah was flushed down a toilet.