Friday Fun Fact

Fried foods are back in! (ht Maggie’s farm.….why oh why did I remove Black and Right from daily reading…? Time to freshen up)

This from a commenter over there at WTF of the Day:

So shall we recap the recent “discoveries”?

Fried food: not as bad as they said.

Cholesterol: not as bad as they said.

Salt: not as bad…

Oats: not particularly beneficial.

Second hand smoke: not as bad…

Why are these pronouncements of doom given any creedence by anyone anymore? It’s just like all the Gore-bull warming crap, the CFC scare, DDT, etc., etc., etc.

I’m pretty sure I could live a pretty content life if I didn’t have to hear from another “expert” about anything, least of all one employed and/or empowered by the federal government!

I started reading the Gary Taubs book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and am amazed at how similar our food warnings/definitions/rules/priorities are like the man made Global Warming warnings. One flawed study back in the way back went mainstream and every study after that just followed from that basic yet potentially flawed premise.

Wired magazine (probably a ht to Maggie’s Farm…I can’t remember) has a very good article on the limits of science as we move from simple systems/answers to completely complex things. (picture moving from the study of an ant to the study of the ant’s entire watershed) Bold is mine:

This assumption—that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system—is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information, by our ceaseless accumulation of facts. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism. ……………
he truth is, our stories about causation are shadowed by all sorts of mental shortcuts. Most of the time, these shortcuts work well enough. They allow us to hit fastballs, discover the law of gravity, and design wondrous technologies. However, when it comes to reasoning about complex systems—say, the human body—these shortcuts go from being slickly efficient to outright misleading.

Newt

She’s skipping over some of his handicaps, but this is as compelling a reason to vote Newt as I’ve ever read.

(no, I haven’t decided)

Those New Yorker Memos

The Washington Post has a list and the House Energy and Commerce Committee threw down the gauntlet. The bold is mine. (ht JG)

White House Releases Information to News Outlet Previously Withheld from Congress

January 25, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC – Leading members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee are formally requesting that the White House turn over internal memoranda previously kept shrouded from Congress and the public’s view after the information was disclosed to The New Yorker for a January 30, 2012, article entitled, “The Obama Memos.” For more than two years, members of the Energy and Commerce Committee have sought access to this information, which details previously undisclosed tactics the Obama administration employed in conjunction with special interest groups as it was working to pass the controversial health care law. The members wrote yesterday to outgoing White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley and Chief of Staff Designee Jacob Lew reiterating previous requests for information and expressing concern that this information would be shared extensively with a single member of the news media, but that Congress and the American public had been denied the same ability to understand how critical – and controversial – decisions were made in crafting the law.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA), Health Subcommittee Vice-Chair Michael C. Burgess, M.D. (R-TX), and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL) wrote:

“The White House has consistently refused our legitimate requests for information regarding this important piece of legislation, notwithstanding the fact that the President promised many times during the 2008 presidential campaign that the meetings and debates on any health care legislation would be broadcast to the public, and once in office promised to run the most open and transparent administration in history.

“It is outrageous that despite our multiple efforts to obtain information about the negotiations and deals entered into by the White House, Congress has only been provided with material previously made publicly available, while the administration selectively provides such information to The New Yorker.

“Finally, while the White House has so far studiously avoided asserting executive privilege and has simply refused to provide the requested information, by voluntarily providing this information to a reporter the White House has waived any right to refuse production of these materials based on claims of privilege. The White House should provide these documents to Congress immediately.”

The members requested the White House provide these memoranda by February 1.

Herman Cain on the SOTU

Via Protein Wisdom.

YAY!!

Congratulations to our Special Forces (again) in their rescue of two people captured by Somalis!

U.S. special operations forces have rescued a kidnapped American aid worker and her Danish colleague in Somalia, U.S. officials said Wednesday. During the raid, all nine of their captors were killed.

A Contest

Go on over to ThreeSources and give them your one word description of the SOTU Speech last night.

All I could think of (besides my own one word answer) was that we HAVE to win in November. We have to.
Bret Stephens doesn’t think that we will. He even places some of the blame on those “A listers” who have decided not to run. Yet those A listers have yet to be vetted Daniels, I like. Christie is very left. Ryan is cold. Jeb Bush….give me a break. Haley Barbour – i don’t know anything about.

Can we win with Newt? I sincerely doubt it. He has a LOT of quotable moments that belong in the ashcan of memory. “The people” don’t watch the debates and Obama will agree to 1, not 3 and certainly not a sit down and casually talk it out sort of debate.
Is he more conservative than Romney. Not a bit.
Does he use better words than Romney. A lot better.
(here is a link about the Gingrich “ethics” problem. It doesn’t look like much to me.)

Can we win with Romney? It’s looking very iffy.
He can not seem to defend himself with the passion he needs. Bain created jobs. Firing companies that are not serving you IS fun. Living off of investments is a better way to live. For everyone, not just the rich. He is the candidate with the least to be embarrassed about (except ahem Romneycare) but he acts like everyone should just see that and he doesn’t need to share.

The MOST important thing to know about all of this……we HAVE to win both houses. No matter what.

Newt and why he Resonates

Laura at Ace of Spades gets it as does one of her commenters who regarding Romney notes:

That’s one of the things that’s bugging me about Romney. He’s not making a case for there to be MORE people like him.

Go read the whole thing.
ht National Review online

Obama: Behind the Curtain

So I read this piece out of the New Yorker and found it to be the MOST butt kissing piece of dribble I have ever read about the man. (ht Maggies Farm and Keith Hennessey’s email and JG)
Every factoid available was used to spin Obama as a moderate, fiscally conservative, good and thoughtful guy. No fact contrary to that spin was used in the making of the article. It truly is an amazing piece.

Today we’re getting a bit more specifics pulled out of the article.
Politico notes that based on the private (yet apparently shown to the author) memos, Obama was happy to fiddle with the numbers to make his plans look good.

Keith Hennessy notes that while his economic advisors were suggesting “highly stimulative” money (shovel ready in today’s parlance) Obama wanted to do big things. “Moon shot” things. And so squandered 60 billion. Since I think it was all a waste I don’t really care, but others do.

If Mr. Lizza’s reporting is correct, over the objection of his economic advisors President Obama replaced $60 B of “highly stimulative spending” with a slow-spending but “inspiring” $20 B for high-speed trains and $40 B in pork for his Senate Democratic allies. And this is starting from a point at which he knew that his advisors thought that not more than $225 B of the $826 B total was high-quality, fast-spending, efficient stimulus.

But here is the real kicker. During times when oversight committees are trying to get access to memos for investigations that they are constitutionally entitled to, this President handed memos over to a New Yorker reporter to get his ass kissed in a very big way.

What President Obama has forgotten is that there are other out here that used to work in the White House. Keith Hennessey is one of them. The smoochy article has a lot of insight for those in the know. Here is Mr. Hennessey again:

This post shows why you don’t release to the public memos written to the President by his senior advisors. Presidential advisors are supposed to protect the advice they give to the President. The decision to give Mr. Lizza access to so many confidential memos to the President was either blindingly stupid or shockingly disloyal, and it damaged the institution of the Presidency.

QOTD

I love this truism from Michael Walsh via Instpundit (who has other links regarding Newts big win):

“What counts is passion. The 2010 midterms proved that, but the GOP bonzes seemed embarrassed by the Tea Party’s success.”

I sincerely hope that Romney learned from this blowout that he needs to start acting and speaking like he believes what he says AND does/did vs having memorized the words. That is a requirement of leadership. Fidelity and sanity less so.

Why did the request for his taxes surprise him? Why is 15% a bad number? Why was liking to “fire people” a gaffe? Stand up for yourself dude! The Republican establishment coronated Mitt, but the voting public gets the final say. Get yourself voted in, not placed there.

UPDATE: Here is Mark Steyn’s take. It’s worth a read.

And where, among all the dough he’s handing out, is the rapid-response team? Newt’s “spontaneous” indignation at John King was carefully crafted by Gingrich himself. By contrast, Mitt has a ton of consultants, and not one of them thought he needed a credible answer on Bain or taxes? For a guy running as a chief exec applying proven private-sector solutions, his campaign looks awfully like an unreformable government bureaucracy: big, bloated, overstaffed, burning money, slow to react, and all but impossible to change.

Government Gifts

Kwik net search
Condoms: Box of 12: $1.00/ each (though I found some fancy ones for about $30/box of 12)
IUD: $500/5 years – $1700/5years
The Pill: $15-$50/month ($180-$600/year)
Diaphram: $25-$40 plus the spermicide used at $8-$10 per tube. Replace every 2 years.
Cervical Cap: $60-$75 plus the spermicide used at $8-$10. Replace every 2 years
The Sponge: $9-$15 for three
Hormone patch: $15-$80/month
Implant: $400-$800 for three years
DepoProvera shot: $35-$75 (exam is extra) for three months
Morning After Pill: $10-$70
Abstinence: Free

I know what I use, but what exactly will I be buying for you?
And why would any R&D team continue to come up with all of these alternatives if the government only covers X?
(ps – The IUD is most cost effective assuming you have regular intercourse. It also has a ton of side affects.)