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Archive for 2017
January 11, 2017
GUARDING PRISONERS: The latest in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge photo series. The photographer found a superb angle to take the picture– good visual story telling.
HEALTH: 200 percent increase in kids’ use of artificial sweeteners concerns scientists.
The results, published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, observed a 200 percent increase in consumption of the artificial sweeteners among children, and a 54 percent increase among adults, from 1999 to 2012. In 1999, only 8.7 percent of children reported consuming low-calorie sweeteners, but in 2012, that number jumped to 25.1 percent, the study found.
“The findings are important, especially for children, because some studies suggest a link between low-calorie sweeteners and obesity, diabetes and other health issues,” lead study author Dr. Allison Sylvetsky, assistant professor of exercise and nutrition sciences at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, said in a news release.
According to the release, the study offers the most recent data regarding the U.S. population’s consumption of low-calorie sweeteners in foods, beverages and packets.
A well-balanced diet, particularly for kids, shouldn’t require artificial anything.
GEORGE KORDA: Five-year-olds, the presidential election, and the Pride of the Southland Band. “One such example of this no-Trump movement is a petition calling for the University of Tennessee Pride of the Southland Band to not participate in the presidential inaugural parade.”
THE GREAT GASOLINE PRICE WAR EXPOSES MEXICO’S CORE PROBLEMS: My latest Creators Syndicate column.
SHOT: America will miss Barack Obama’s decency.
CHASER: A Divisive Obama Warns of Threats to National Unity in Farewell Speech.
HANGOVER:
It’s going to be with us for a long time.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Another Double-Digit Homicide Spike:
Since Donald Trump started to make the crime uptick a centerpiece of his campaign (often invoking inaccurate or exaggerated data), many journalists and fact-checkers have made a point of noting that Americans are actually safer than they have been for most of the past several decades. And this is true—since the crime wave broke in the mid-1990s, the murder rate has fallen dramatically. Fewer Americans are killed every year now than were when President Obama took office.
But as with most social phenomena, including immigration and the economy, what matters when it comes to public perception of crime is not the absolute level but the rate of change. And the last two years have seen more than a 25 percent increase in the rate of killing, according to FiveThirtyEight data. This is a significant surge, and it’s not surprising that Americans’ concerns about crime and violence are at their highest than at any time since 2001.
While Trump has pushed crime to the center of the public debate, he has offered more bluster than policy proposals for reducing the number of killings. Meanwhile, journalists and experts who should be thinking about policy fixes have been busy scoffing at Trump or declaring concerns about rising murder rates to be a front for bigotry. It’s time for this issue to be taken seriously as a failure of governance—for wonks and policymakers to put the difficult task of crime control at the top of their agenda. And that probably means hiring more cops and detectives and helping police departments build better relationships with the communities they protect.
Words not included in this item: “Ferguson effect.”
FAKE NEWS: 4chan Claims It Invented the Trump Golden Showers Story.
Did 2017 just jump 2016’s shark?
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:
I’ve said several times on Right Angle that Trump ought to bring Scott Walker on board as his Pushback Czar or whatever he’d want to call it, for Walker’s experience in taking on the Deep State — and winning. It’s going to be a full-time job, and the President’s attention is always spread thin. Walker could be Trump’s point man on hitting back hard.
It isn’t bad advice.
OBAMA: The First Javanese President? Actually, I think the better (unmentioned) analogy is to Javanese regarding themselves as superior, and everyone else (“not yet Javanese”) as deplorables.
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AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
Also, shop today’s Kindle Daily Deals.
Plus, today’s Digital Deals.
And don’t miss today’s deals in Grocery and Gourmet Food.
I WONDER WHY THE DNC DIDN’T WANT THE FBI TO SEE WHAT WAS ON ITS SERVERS? Comey: FBI denied repeated requests to access DNC servers, Podesta’s device. (Bumped).
OF COURSE HE IS: Army Leaker Chelsea Manning on Obama’s ‘Short List’ for Commutation.
ASIA PIVOT: China Sends Aircraft Carrier Into Taiwan Strait.
President Obama supposedly “pivoted” the focus of our diplomacy and military towards Asia in 2012, but it’s China making all the moves.
READER BOOK PLUG: From Emily Esfahani Smith: The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters.
BECKET ADAMS: Yet Another Terrible Media Analysis Of The Chicago Kidnapping.
There have been some really awful media reactions written in response to a story last week of a disabled white man who was kidnapped and tortured in Chicago by four African-Americans.
The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers responded by writing an article bemoaning the violent incident could embolden Trump supporters.
The New York Daily News’ senior justice writer Shaun King argued that he wouldn’t waste any time speaking on behalf of the kidnapping victim, because white men get justice.
Now we have a Time magazine op-ed arguing that the story is bad for several reasons, most notably that it distracts from the plight of abused African-Americans.
“[T]he unrelenting media focus on this random incident, is, to my mind, unbalanced and unwarranted,” PBS’ Tavis Smiley wrote. . . .
Smiley incorrectly suggests people who are genuinely concerned about equality are incapable of focusing on more than one injustice. It’s possible to raise hell for both the kidnapped white man and the unarmed African-American male gunned down by a police officer. It doesn’t have to be an either/or.
Sadly, the rest of Smiley’s column follows in the vein of thought that the kidnapping story is troubling, sure, but that there are more important things in the world.
The main thrust of his op-ed can be summed up as this: “Kidnapping and torture is bad, but what about these other bad things?”
Well, okay then.
JAMELLE BOUIE: “Our first black president has an unyielding faith in the goodness of America. It got him elected. And it will cost him his legacy.”
What’s with all the America-hate from the Left this week?
SHOCKER: Judicial Watch: Airport Shooter Converted to Islam, Identified as Aashiq Hammad Years Before Joining Army. “The Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter is a Muslim convert who years before joining the U.S. Army took on an Islamic name (Aashiq Hammad), downloaded terrorist propaganda and recorded Islamic religious music online, according to public records dug up by the investigative news site of an award-winning, California journalist. This is pertinent information that the Obama administration apparently wants to keep quiet.” (Bumped).
LINDA STASI: Meryl Streep’s speech was annoying, elitist and full of lies.
And:
So how could Streep, who makes $5 million a movie, and will reportedly be making $825,000 per episode for a new TV show, cluelessly face that dazzling room of the luckiest people on the earth, and declare that they all “belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press.” What?
That’s three lies in a row — four if you count the one about Mixed Martial Arts not being an art.
All would be forgiven if Streep would just apologize for abusing her reputation to trick me into sitting through 20 minutes of Ricki and the Flash.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S REAL LEGACY: DONALD TRUMP? “Nothing he did during his presidency is more responsible for this Trump moment than his demonization of Mitt Romney as an extreme racist recklessly bent on reigniting the Cold War with Russia.”
Choose the form of your Destructor!
THE TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN GETS ANOTHER BOOST: Missouri Democrat Puts Police-As-Pigs Painting Back Up. Plus, threats of violence:
A painting by a constituent of Missouri Democrat William Lacy Clay in the Capitol’s high school art competition has been removed twice by House Republicans.
“We might just have to kick somebody’s ass and stop them,” Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric L. Richmond said when asked if it needed security personnel to protect it.
Well, okay then.
TRUE: Ted Gup: Universities Are Not Competent To Judge Student Rape Cases.
Stanford and all other institutions of higher learning are woefully unprepared to handle the complexity of rape cases, lacking sophisticated evidentiary processes, forensic skills and the compulsory force of the law required of such cases. University hearings are invariably shrouded in secrecy, lack transparency, fail to produce an accessible transcript or mechanism for appeal, and are riddled with procedural quirks and flaws that range widely not only from campus to campus but also from administration to administration. There is little standardization and ample room for chicanery, backroom deals and institutional bias. Neither the accuser nor the accused enjoy the rights accorded by a court of law and the Constitution. For both sides in such a tribunal, due process matters.
Indeed it does.