HMM: Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) in older men with hypogonadism may be safe and even improve cardiovascular risk. “It seems to be safe with the meta-analyses and the recent data from a cardiac and prostate cancer perspective. However, we still have to do more due diligence to say that it’s absolutely safe.” Well, absolutely safe is setting the bar pretty high.
Archive for 2015
May 31, 2015
AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.
Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.
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ROSS DOUTHAT: The Prospects for Polygamy. “I feel safe predicting that polygamy will not be legally recognized, with fanfare and trumpets, in 2025. But it might be recognized in 2040, with a shrug.”
HIS HAIR IS, BUT NOT HIS ARTICLE: Bernie Sanders tries to explain his bizarre fictional sex story, “Man and Woman,” as “Something like Fifty Shades of Grey.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What’s that tiny hole in airplane windows? Good to know–was always curious about that thing.
The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.
In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.
Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.
Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.
By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.
The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.
A 20-year decline in violent crime reversed in six months. Fundamentally transformed.
THAT’S NOT NICE: Cat Lick Blamed For Woman’s Blindness.
THE WASHINGTON DC FOLLIES: Democrat Senate leadership is going to the mat on a Sunday for the Patriot Act. Just soaking this up. All of it.
And: I’m so old, I remember when the @SenateDems opposed the Patriot Act.
Of course, there are quite a few Republicans going along.
ACTUALLY, IT STUNK PRETTY BADLY FROM THE GET-GO: The New York Post editorial today, “As Five Taliban Officials Walk Free, Bergdahl Deal Stink Grows.”
[R]etired Gen. Stanley McChrystal revealed last week for the first time that he’d been informed almost immediately after Bergdahl’s 2009 capture that the soldier “walked off [his base] intentionally.”
Yet years later, in the runup to Obama’s trade, National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed Berghdal had been “captured on the battlefield” after serving “with honor and distinction.” The State Department dismissed claims he’d deserted as “rumors.”
Under the terms of the deal, the five were shipped to Qatar, where they were banned from travel and subjected to monitoring. That arrangement expires today. . . .
The danger can’t be overemphasized: These were all senior commanders — one a deputy defense minister, another head of intelligence. At least one has been in touch with the Taliban and two others have met with the al Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani network in the past year.
Now these five terrorists, let go to bring an accused deserter home, may be free to once again target American soldiers. Some bargain, Mr. President.
Treasonous, frankly. And as I’ve written about before, illegal.
BUT THE PROCESS IS THE PUNISHMENT: Laura Kipnis Is Cleared of Wrongdoing in Title IX Complaints. And that process-as-punishment makes this angle particularly self-serving:
In a post on the philosophy blog Daily Nous, Justin Weinberg, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, took issue with Ms. Kipnis’s portrayal of the Title IX cases as overreach. “It turns out that the process she had been demonizing — which of course may have its flaws — pretty much worked, from her point of view,” Mr. Weinberg wrote.
Should Mr. Weinberg find himself the subject of such a complaint, he may take a less rosy view.
I’LL TAKE “SHAKEDOWN MONEY” FOR $100, ALEX: National Review has an intriguing report on the shady activities of a non-profit headed by Al Sharpton’s daughter, Dominque Sharpton, called Education for a Better America.
Even as Ms. Sharpton runs an organization focused largely on college preparedness and college education, it’s not clear that she herself is a college graduate. National Review confirmed that she has completed three semesters at Temple University but could find no indication that she obtained a degree. . . .
According to non-public tax records released by EBA to National Review, the bulk of the nonprofit’s $195,500 in 2014 revenue derived from corporate donors, many of which have also made hefty contributions to National Action Network.
It sounds like a boondoggle to me. The EBA’s website suggests it participates in a bunch of semi-useless career planning workshops and events that are co-sponsored with her father’s organization, National Action Network— you know, the one that gets “contributions” from big companies desirous of avoiding Sharpton’s ire.
ON THE OTHER HAND, IF IT’S DRIVING SYPHILIS RATES UP, MAYBE THAT’S JUST AS WELL: Technology Is Making Us Socially Awkward.
ELON MUSK’S BUSINESS STRATEGY: Take full advantage of government subsidies. Green tech is always subsidy-dependent, because it’s just not very good.
TITLES OF NOBILITY ARE ILLEGAL: Windsor Mann: Stop grovelling to civil servants.
Government employees are suffering from low self-esteem and high self-regard. That was the unintended message of Public Service Recognition Week (May 3-9), which lasted six days longer than Memorial Day. This year’s theme, “Government Works,” was both true (the federal government employs more than two million civilians) and truly risible. It is one thing to have a job, quite another to get the job done.
It should come as no surprise that most of the people who celebrated Public Service Recognition Week were public “servants.” The most recognizable of them, President Obama, hailed government employees as “exceptional leaders” who operate in “a political climate that too often does not sufficiently value their work.” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) praised “the heroic work” of federal employees, many of whom reside in his district, and encouraged members of the public to thank bureaucrats via email ().
I would like to thin their herd substantially, which might render the remaining government employees more admirable.
POINTS AND FIGURES: The Third Wave. “Steve Case saw the first two waves of the internet. Now he is predicting a third. But, it’s not going to happen overnight. . . . The third wave will be more disruptive to our daily lives than the first two. Just imagine what driverless cars could do to an urban environment. Imagine all the current jobs that will go away. Now, try to imagine what kinds of jobs will be created in that kind of environment.”
UNDER THE RADAR: Ted Cruz Gets Fmr NH Speaker Bill O’Brien Behind Him. “Oddly enough when I googled his news there was not much reporting on it, a Union Leader Story, a NH public Radio story and WMUR but I think this is a pretty big deal, particularly combined with Senator Bob Smith as co chair and a large field.”
SENATE HAS VOTES TO EXTEND NSA “METADATA” COLLECTION: The Senate is back in session today, trying to reach compromise on the controversial provision of the Patriot Act–section 215, which has been used to collect cell phone “metadata” (phone numbers called; time/duration of calls). This provision of the Patriot Act will expire automatically at midnight (June 1) if the Senate fails to do something.
Senator Rand Paul is still withholding consent to move forward on the measure, and this may mean the provision will expire, at least temporarily, though there is a majority of Senators who now appear willing to approve the House version of the reauthorization, which would allow such metadata to be collected and stored by private phone companies rather than the NSA.
UPDATE: More on Paul’s procedural maneuvering here.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Syphilis Soars 79% in RI Thanks to … Social Media.
BECAUSE THEY’RE SO SPECIAL: California lawmakers have a special staff of two employees whose job is to drive drunk state senators home. The special drivers are paid over $2,500 per month, at taxpayers’ expense. Can’t they just call a cab like everyone else?
MOVE US EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM?: Jeb Bush told reporters on Saturday that the U.S. should move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as he agrees that it is the capital of Israel. The issue is controversial because, although there is a federal law that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the past three presidents, including Obama, have waived the law under their constitutional authority to receive foreign governments under Article II, section 3. The disagreement between the legislative and executive branches on the status of Jerusalem has caused the issue to reach the Supreme Court, which is presently considering the case of Zivotofsky v. Kerry, involving a plaintiff’s desire to have his U.S. passport list his place of birth as “Jerusalem, Israel.”