Archive for 2016

I FEEL SO SAFE: Doctor listed on psych-evaluation carried out on Omar Mateen by G4S says she never saw him and was not living in Florida at the time it was conducted. “A doctor who is listed on the psychological evaluation for Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, said she did not see him and she was not even living in Florida at the time when G4S security firm ordered the evaluation. Psychologist, Dr Carol Nudelman, who now lives in Colorado, said in a statement released through her attorneys to the Miami Herald that she never evaluated Mateen nine years ago for G4S, a security firm that was known as Wackenhut at the time. However, Nudelman’s name appears on the document in Florida’s state records, which cleared Mateen to carry a firearm as a private security guard.”

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Collapsing Obama Doctrine: Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama’s past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda. “If a J.V. team puts on Lakers’ uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant” (January 2014). “[C]ore al Qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated” (August 2013). “So, let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding” (September 2011).

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is “ending” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as though wishing made it so. His rhetoric has now come crashing into reality. Watching the black-clad ISIS jihadists take territory once secured by American blood is final proof, if any were needed, that America’s enemies are not “decimated.” They are emboldened and on the march.

The fall of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Tikrit, Mosul and Tel Afar, and the establishment of terrorist safe havens across a large swath of the Arab world, present a strategic threat to the security of the United States. Mr. Obama’s actions—before and after ISIS’s recent advances in Iraq—have the effect of increasing that threat.

On a trip to the Middle East this spring, we heard a constant refrain in capitals from the Persian Gulf to Israel, “Can you please explain what your president is doing?” “Why is he walking away?” “Why is he so blithely sacrificing the hard fought gains you secured in Iraq?” “Why is he abandoning your friends?” “Why is he doing deals with your enemies?”

In one Arab capital, a senior official pulled out a map of Syria and Iraq. Drawing an arc with his finger from Raqqa province in northern Syria to Anbar province in western Iraq, he said, “They will control this territory. Al Qaeda is building safe havens and training camps here. Don’t the Americans care?”

Our president doesn’t seem to.

No, he doesn’t. He seems perfectly happy with what’s going on.

WAIT, I THOUGHT IT EMPOWERED THEM: Exactly 2 Premarital Sex Partners Ups Divorce Rate: For women, that is.

A new study out of the University of Utah finds that women with either no sexual partners or one—most typically, her future spouse—before marriage are the least likely to get divorced within five years; women with 10 or more are the most. A closer look at the numbers, though, reveals what researcher Nicholas H. Wolfinger reports on the Institute for Family Studies’ blog to be a “complicated picture of the association between sex and marital stability that ultimately raises more questions than it answers.” That is, in part, because women who’ve had exactly two sexual partners before getting married are more likely to get a divorce than women who’ve had three to nine, and in the 1980s and ’90s they were actually more likely to divorce than women with 10 or more sexual partners.

“In short: If you’re going to have comparisons to your [future] husband, it’s best to have more than one,” Wolfinger says in a Newswise statement. In the 2000s, about 33% of women in the 10+ category saw their marriages end by year five; that fell to 30% for two partners, roughly 25% for three to nine partners, and just over 20% for one. Virgin marriages had just a 6% divorce rate.

Anecdotally, most of the people I know with long-lasting marriages, both male and female, actually had rather a lot of action before marriage. But it’s not a random sample.

THERE’S NO OTHER WAY TO SAY IT: MINIMUM WAGE LAWS ARE RACIST.

Well, the people who initially created them certainly were. In addition to the Davis-Bacon Act of the 1930s, which John Ellis mentions in his article at PJM, E. A. Ross (1866-1951), who coined the “race suicide” theory as an early “Progressive” intellectual, gave his justification for a minimum wage in starkly racist terms at the turn of the 20th century: “The Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him.” He wasn’t alone amongst his “Progressive” peers in espousing such justifications.

On the other hand, such laws are leading to dramatic new advancements in robotics, so they’ve got that going for them…
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JONAH GOLDBERG: Why Can’t the Left Distinguish Conservative Christians from Islamic Terrorists?

The essence of serious thinking is the capacity to distinguish s*** from shinola, by which I mean that intelligence boils down to the ability to make meaningful distinctions. There’s a reason Barack Obama had to go back to the Crusades to compare the West to Islam in his notorious effort to talk Christians down from their “high horse”: Because in the world we actually live in right now, and by the standards of not just modernity but also of the secular Left, the West is simply better. That’s right, better, by which I mean superior.

The notion that American Christians, even the most ardent Christian conservatives, are indistinguishable from Islamists — or even the typical “moderate Muslims” of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. — in their attitudes and practices with regard to homosexuality is not just stupid and ignorant; it is almost literally insane. If you doubt that, read Andy McCarthy’s piece from earlier this week. Or look at global surveys of public opinion on homosexuality. Or look at the list of ten countries where homosexuality is punishable by death.

I understand why gays can’t stand it when some American Christians talk about “curing” homosexuality. But (a) that is not the law in America and (b) no matter how you slice it, wanting to “save” gays from perceived sin is just plain different from wanting to kill them. No seriously, you could look it up. Wanting to maintain the traditional definition of marriage is different from throwing gay people off buildings or crushing them with stones. Does anyone doubt that a gay Afghan would rather move to the U.S. than take his chance on being outed in Kabul?

Moreover, it simply will not do to hide behind the euphemism of “organized religion” because not all organized religions are equal in beliefs or actions. I have yet to read a sentence that began, “Another Amish suicide bomber killed . . .” or “Lutheran militants claimed responsibility for an attack on . . .”

Israel is a country with organized religion. Gays have parades there. Iran is a country with organized religion. Gays do not have parades there. If you can’t see this, you are destined to spend your life stepping in s*** and thinking it’s shinola.

Read the whole thing.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can You Train Yourself To Need Less Sleep? Mostly, I think you can train yourself to ignore the symptoms of less sleep. That’s not the same thing.

BUT I THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Pig Corpses Poor Model For Establishing Time Of Death In Humans:

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Centre – better known as the Body Farm – examined how 15 pigs, rabbits, and humans decomposed in the same environment. To pull this off, the team broke the experiment into three trials, leaving five of each type of corpse outside during winter, summer, and spring.

In the end, they found that all of the test subjects decomposed a vastly different rates – with pigs decomposing faster than humans on average – and that the human body varied more wildly from body to body than the rabbits or pigs did.

Forensic science in general seems to be much less precise than was advertised for decades.

WHY PEOPLE LIKE THE AR-15:

To Champion, the AR-15 has wide appeal because everyone from hobbyists to hunters enjoy shooting it.

“What’s good about it is that the ammo is cheap – 30 cents on the dollar compared to any hunting round – it’s accurate from 200 yards, you can hunt with them, they’re versatile, they’re good for home defense, it’s easy to maintain, easy to take down, you can spiff it out with new quad rails, lights, lasers – it’s a fun thing to do,” he says.

Yes, it’s a geek’s gun.

Meanwhile, although Patrik Jonsson, who reported this piece, is an honest reporter who’s done good gun coverage, I note this:

The notion that guns make society safer is much-debated. John Lott is a primary proponent of the claim. A study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015 polled 150 scientists who study gun violence and found that 84 percent disagree.

Lott has analyzed extensive data on crime and shootings. A poll of “scientists who study gun violence” isn’t at all comparable.

SO MUCH FOR ‘THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED:’ The Truth About Common Beauty Myths — Science produces lots of research about beauty, from ideal waist-to-hip ratio to symmetry in faces, but the conclusions are seldom as simple as they seem.

PUBLIC RADIO’S EXISTENTIAL CRISIS:

Old hosts die hard in public radio.

When 73-year-old Garrison Keillor retires as host of “A Prairie Home Companion” next month, he’ll leave more than 3 million weekly listeners loyal to a show that began more than 40 years ago. Elsewhere on the dial, “Car Talk” ranks near the top of National Public Radio’s ratings even though co-host Tom Magliozzi died at age 77 nearly two years ago—his jovial cackle still echoing in “best of” versions of the show on more than 600 stations nationwide. Later this year, Washington talk-show doyenne Diane Rehm, 79, who boasts one of NPR’s 10 largest weekly audiences, will end more than three decades on the air.

“We’ve known that the so-called old guard would eventually have to retire,” said Mike Savage, general manager of public-radio station WBAA in West Lafayette, Ind., which has aired all three shows for decades. “There’s concern because these programs are well-known and well-loved.”

Public radio is facing an existential crisis. Some of the biggest radio stars of a generation are exiting the scene while public-radio executives attempt to stem the loss of younger listeners on traditional radio. At the same time, the business model of NPR—the institution at the center of the public-radio universe—is under threat: It relies primarily on funding from hundreds of local radio stations, but it faces rising competition from small and nimble podcasting companies using aggressive commercial strategies to create Netflix-style on-demand content.

Why, It’s as if public radio is a Great Society-era socialist dinosaur in an era of endless podcasts, Sirius-XM, and other forms of multimedia. (Many of which can now be created quite easily in a home studio with a couple of mics, software and perhaps a modicum of acoustic treatments. Want to create your own culture? The tools are out there, much to old media’s chagrin.)