August 12, 2024

August 11, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

JEFFREY CARTER: The Onslaught. “Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a coordinated effort by the media, and especially in social media, to show that Kamala Harris is popular and can beat Trump. It’s designed to break the spirit of Trump voters who were very fired up after the botched assassination attempt. They want you to think there is no chance and you should stay quiet and especially stay home.”

Related: A friend writes: “Democrats are hilarious. Everyone, them included, thought Kamala Harris was embarrassing. Now she is a mix of Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher.”

Posted at 9:05 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT KEEPS GETTING WORSE:

First the chaplain, and his replacement sergeant, now this. Can Tim Walz stay on the ticket? Or is he the 21st Century’s Thomas Eagleton?

And regardless, given that choosing him as her running mate was her first executive decision, Kamala’s not looking so good.

Posted at 8:04 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HMM: Do Anxiety Pills Have a Dark Side? Research Reveals Dementia Risks. From reading the article, though, it seems that — as I have suspected for a while — the anxiety is associated with dementia, and the use of benzodiazepenes is more of a marker for anxiety than a cause. I suspect the same is true of Benadryl, which has shown a similar association with dementia, since lots of people use Benadryl as an OTC anxiety/sleep med.

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S ALL ABOUT WHO HE REGARDS AS A THREAT TO HIS POWER:

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SCIENCE: The abstemious scientists accused of using ‘flawed’ research to tell you to stop drinking.

Dr Tim Stockwell’s work – which has been published in The Lancet, among other esteemed organs – has inspired a new crackdown on alcohol that has seen daily drinking guidelines slashed in Canada and Australia. The US may next year follow suit, and the UK anti-alcohol lobby is using Dr Stockwell’s work as it warms up for a similar fight.

But many of Dr Stockwell’s respected peers say it is far from settled science and have cast doubt on his research. They question his motives and accuse him of being a front for a worldwide temperance lobby that is secretly attempting to ban alcohol.

Plus:

The research was widely reported without a hint of the row it had triggered in the scientific community. In common with other news outlets, The Daily Mail stated baldly that the longstanding belief that one or two drinks a day is good for you was based on “flawed” scientific research.

However, it was the final straw for many fellow academics and experts who told The Telegraph they read the report in disbelief, concluding it was yet another example of Dr Stockwell “cherry picking” the evidence to suit his agenda.

Former British government scientist Richard Harding, who gave evidence on safe drinking to the House of Commons select committee on science and technology in 2011, told The Telegraph that Dr Stockwell had wrongly taken a correlation to be causal.

“Dr Stockwell’s research is essentially epidemiology, which is the study of populations,” Dr Harding said. “You record people’s lifestyle and then see what diseases they get and try to correlate the disease with some aspect of their lifestyle. But it is just a correlation, it’s just an association. Epidemiology can never establish causality on its own.

“And in this particular case, Dr Stockwell selected six studies out of 107 to focus on. You could say he cherry picked them.”

Seems like the vegetarians have been running something like this for years.

Posted at 2:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: The Working Woman’s Newest Life Hack: Magic Mushrooms. For a select group of moms in high-powered jobs, microdosing psilocybin has become the answer to a packed social and professional calendar with no time for hangovers

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Biden: Can’t Even Say How Old I Am.

To be fair to Joe Biden, he did follow up the remark about not being able to say how old he is by saying, “It’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth.” So what did he mean? Is he sometimes unable to remember his age? (He’s still 81, for the record. He’ll turn 82 a couple of weeks after the election.) I can relate to a certain extent. I’m getting ready to turn 65 and I sometimes have to pause and figure out my current age. This might also have been an admission that he realizes he trips over his words sometimes and he’s not sure if he would pronounce his age correctly. The most charitable interpretation would be that he knows how incredibly old he is and he finds it difficult to say it aloud. It’s left to the viewer to decide for themselves.

Also in the interview: Biden admits he was pushed out of presidential race, name-drops Pelosi in first interview since exit.

“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he told “CBS News Sunday Morning.”

“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president. I can’t even say how old I am — it’s hard for me to get out of my mouth,” he went on, adding that it was a combination of those factors and a key priority of “maintaining this democracy” that underpinned his decision.

But was it “his decision?” Pissed Off Top Biden Adviser Spills the Beans on What Really Happened and WHO Really Pushed Biden Out.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll