Author: Mark Noonan

That Second Hand Smoke Thing? Yeah, it Was BS

Mark Noonan19 Comments

From Reason:

Several years ago I was talking to an epidemiologist who is skeptical of the idea that smokers pose a mortal threat to people in their vicinity. Although he supported workplace smoking bans, he was frustrated by the willingness of so many anti-tobacco activists and public health officials to overlook or minimize the weakness of the scientific case that secondhand smoke causes fatal illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease. He wondered when it would be possible to have a calm, rational discussion of the issue, one in which skeptics would not be automatically dismissed as tools of the tobacco industry. I suggested that such a conversation might take place once smoking bans became ubiquitous, at which point the political stakes would be lower. Judging from a recent article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, headlined “No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer,” that conversation may have begun.

The article describes a large prospective study that “confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke.” The study tracked more than 76,000 women, 901 of whom eventually developed lung cancer. Although “the incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in current smokers and four times higher in former smokers than in never-smokers,” says the JNCI article, there was no statistically significant association between reported exposure to secondhand smoke and subsequent development of lung cancer…

This is what I knew from the get-go: it was always nonsense to think that second hand smoke was a huge killer – or even a risk, at all.  Certainly no more of a risk than going outside on a smoggy day in Los Angeles and just breathing.  The amount of tobacco smoke a person would inhale via second hand smoke – even if they lived with a smoker – would be so tiny as to be inconsequential as a health risk. Remember, even for very heavy smokers, not all of them get lung cancer – smoking increases the risk of cancer, but it isn’t a 1 for 1 thing.  If you smoke, it doesn’t mean that smoking will kill you.

Hopefully this will open up a debate – and get us away from the idiot idea that smoking is some sort of massively hideous thing which needs to be banned.  Smoking is just a thing you can do – like eating cheeseburgers or having a coke.  Not the healthiest choice.  Not something any doctor would recommend, but it is something to do – for pleasure.  You know, to enjoy life.  Probably be better if all of us smokers ditched the cigarettes and switched over to pipes as we’d probably end up smoking far less (and mostly smoking much higher quality tobacco), but its still just one of the pleasures of life that someone may engage in.  And like all things in life, there is a risk involved.  Of course, the rule is, “eat right, exercise, die anyway”.  Main thing to remember about life is that no one gets out of it alive.  At some point certain, in a more or less painful manner, we will all exit this world.  And if before I go I can have a smoke, that’ll make it more pleasant than going, as I must, without a smoke.

Monday Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Today is the 69th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge.  Hitler’s last – and monumentally stupid – last gamble for victory in the Second World War…but showing that even an idiot, cornered, can still cause grief.  We lost 19,500 dead in five weeks of battle.  We lost 4,486 over the 9 years of the Iraq campaign.  Some times, it does seem like we’re living in a different country.  That we simply don’t have the courage and the leadership we once had.  Its not that anyone is stupider – or more or less likely to make mistakes (the Battle of the Bulge was so costly mostly because of American mistakes, after all) – but that we don’t have the grit and determination to carry a thing to a conclusion.  I wonder, given our current leadership (and this is not a slam at Obama, per se; he’ll be gone in the by and by – this is a concern about the whole lot of them, military and civilian from top to bottom) if we ever can or will fight a battle to a finish?

Looks like we might be partnering up with al-Qaeda in Syria.  More of that “smart diplomacy”.

Spanish government, faced with protests, proposes anti-protest law.  That will work well.

A judge has ruled that NSA spying violates the 4th Amendment.  Obama, if he were reached for comment, would say, “who cares?”.  Its not like he’s obeying any of those tiresome, old amendments anyways.

Slow-witted, hack Democrat woman Senator endorses equally slow-witted, hack Democrat woman for President.

The President still hasn’t signed up for ObamaCare.

Hope you are all having an excellent Holiday season – as for me, I’m enjoying Christmas time.

What Media Bias? Part 196

Mark Noonan27 Comments

A story in the New Republic about western reporters self-censoring themselves in China:

The visa question has insidious ways of sowing the seeds of self-censorship,” Dorinda Elliott, the global affairs editor at Condé Nast Traveler, wrote on ChinaFile last month. “I am ashamed to admit that I personally have worried about the risk of reporting on sensitive topics, such as human rights lawyers: what if they don’t let me back in?” Elliott is a longtime China hand who worked as Newsweek’s Beijing bureau chief in the late 1980s. “My decision to not write that story—at least not yet—proves that I am complicit in China’s control games,” she continued. “After all, there are plenty of other interesting subjects to pursue, right?”

The most shocking thing about Elliott’s statement is its honesty. Western journalists are not supposed to make any concessions to China, and even when they do, they rarely admit it. Many people were thus horrified by recent reports that Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, spiked an investigative piece about one of China’s richest men out of fear of offending the government. (Winkler denied killing the piece and said it is still under consideration.)

People are understandably angry about the Bloomberg reports, but they shouldn’t be surprised. This is all part of a larger story. China may force some two dozen correspondents from The New York Times and Bloomberg News to leave the country by the end of the year, apparently in response to their investigative reports on the familial wealth of the Chinese leadership. “Chinese officials have all but said that American reporters know what they need to do to get their visas renewed: tailor their coverage,” The New York Times wrote. On Thursday, Vice President Joseph Biden, who was visiting Beijing, said he had “profound disagreements” with China’s “treatment of U.S. journalists.” As China more harshly intimidates foreign reporters, incidents of Western self-censorship will only increase. Bloomberg is not the first case, and it will not be the last…

Not the first case, indeed.  In fact, self-censoring is something that journalists are actually rather prone to do.  There are two reasons a reporter/editor will self-censor:

1.   They back a particular policy/party/politician and don’t wish to cause any trouble.

2.  They fear that reporting the truth will result in a denial of access to a particular party or politician.

For China, it is the latter that is operational – reporters and editors are worried that if they report the unvarnished truth about China (which is pretty bad, all the way down) then the Chinese government will deny them access to China and so they won’t be able to further report on China from first-hand knowledge.  It amazes me that this is even an issue – if I were a reporter or editor, I would report the truth as best as I could and if I got kicked out, I’d file one, last first-hand report about China indicating I was kicked out for telling the truth and then, whenever I reported about China from second-hand sources, I’d point out that the only way anyone can be reporting from China is if they are willing accomplices of the Chinese government in suppressing the truth.  This doesn’t mean no useful information will come out of China, but it would show that everything from China should be taken with a grain of salt and that my competitors who remain in China are just hacks shilling for a corrupt and inhuman oligarchy.  I’d take that as a badge of honor.  I guess having badges of honor, though, doesn’t commend itself to reporters and editors these days.

I bring this up because it shows that in the slew of “news” we get each and every day, this has to be taken in to consideration: are the reporters and editors playing a double game?  We see it all the time, after all, with American MSM reporting on Obama – they both support Obama and are fearful of losing access to Obama, and so they tailor their reporting (with a very, very few shining exceptions) to please Obama.  Generally, to get to the truth about Obama, we have to take Obama statements and news reports and then dig around to see how they square with the truth (and almost invariably, they don’t).

The fundamental weakness of the MSM lies in the fact that they are not devoted to the truth – the objective truth.  They don’t, in fact, believe that such a thing exists.  Given this, it is natural that they will craft their reporting in the manner which best advances the MSM, itself.  The MSM wants a Chinese bureau and if the price of getting and keeping it is to downplay negative reports and some times put out a puff piece on China, then they’ll do it.  The MSM wants Obama to be a success and if the price of Obama’s success is to conspire with Obama to suppress the truth and slander the opposition, then that is hardly anything which can be thought of as a “price” to be paid for Obama’s success.

The bottom line is to presume that anything which comes over the transom is not 100% correct.  Don’t assume its all a lie – somewhere deep down inside the truth does exist; but don’t take it at face value.  Question everything which is stated as fact – find a second or third source, if at all possible (but, be wary!, there are kook sites out there which will use an MSM lie merely to advance the credibility of a kook site lie…”see, the MSM is lying about “Aspect A” of the situation, therefore my absurd claim about situation is correct!”).  Understand that the MSM is not on your side – they are first and foremost on their own side (so they’ll lie to please China so they can keep their bureau open in China), secondly on the side of liberalism in general (so they’ll lie to protect Obama and the Democrat party).

It is my hope that eventually a group of wealthy genuine conservatives will found a new, media empire – with standard-fare television, television news, internet and print news; all with an absolute commitment to truth above all, regardless of whom is offended.  That will be the day when we really slay the beast of falsehood which has stalked and disturbed our land for a century.

New Rule for Dealing With Liberal Stories

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Recently we had a story claiming that a gay server was denied a tip because the family was a pack of homophobic bigots as well as a story about an alleged poor woman who essentially had to live like an idiot because of the bad, mean, nasty way America treats poor people.  There were two commonalities in these stories:

1.  They supported the liberal narrative about the United States (we’re just bad, bad people) and so were embraced and spread widely by liberals.

2.  They were complete nonsense.

The people who did the actual perpetration of the stories were likely just con artists who knew their target audiences.  For the first story (the gay server denied a tip) it was probably an attempted replay of an earlier story claimed by a black woman of being denied a tip by racists, and she picked up a pack of money from sympathetic people. For the poor woman, it appears a more straight-forward scam: she was asking for people to help her out financially and appears to have succeeded (at least temporarily) in picking up a bucket of money.  The con artists aside, what this tells us about the left is that they will readily believe anything as long as it confirms them in their world view.  There is no bit of nonsense too absurd for them – think about it: they actually believed that someone would (a) find out what sexual orientation their server was and then (b) go out of their way to insult the server.  The left bought it because it confirmed their view that Christians are just hateful bigots who go out of their way to insult people of different views.

The left will never cease to be suckers about this sort of thing.  There seems to be some sort of malfunction in the liberal brain – while some can start to think (and thus wind up as Libertarians or Conservatives), most of them never seem to form a single, independent thought in their lives.  But there is a lesson for us on the right:  whenever you hear a story which tends to confirm the liberal narrative about life in the United States, our first and best course of action is to presume it is a lie.  Don’t go out on a limb and definitely call it a lie, but you’ll be safe if you immediately search for holes in the story and start pointing them out.  As for the gay server thing, I saw that on a liberal website some weeks ago and immediately pointed out that it is highly unlikely that a group of patrons would know the sexual orientation of their server – so even if they were a pack of hideous homophobes, they would not likely have opportunity to give vent to their all-consuming hatred.  The story seemed false from day one for me – but the comments from the liberals were all shocked and hurt about how this hateful thing had happened and applause for the “courage” of the gay server (with no explanation of how it is courageous to be untipped).

It could be, from time to time, that in a nation of 317 million people that a set of circumstances will occur which confirms some part of the liberal narrative.  The law of averages does work that way – but the plain facts are that the United States is not a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant nation.  We are not cruel to the poor, nor indifferent to the plight of those who suffer.  We are tolerant and mostly very polite about things and don’t give vent to our feelings for the most part (and in some cases, it would be better if we did).  We’re pretty nice people, all in all.  And, so, the chances of there being a true story confirming liberalism are very, very small.  When confronted with such stories – demand proof; independent verification and always keep a few links of liberal BS stories handy to slam back liberals who claim that this story is sure to be true.

Global Warming Hoax Update

Mark Noonan2 Comments

Interesting:

Critics of those who claim that man-made global warming is a serious threat to the planet and settled science frequently point to the fickleness of scientists on the issue, noting that in the 60s and 70s scientists were warning of just the opposite. It now appears the critic’s claims may have merit as a new consensus is beginning to once again return to the global cooling model…

Of course, this won’t stop our liberals – they’ll just say  its “climate change” and that it’s still all the fault of humans, especially Americans.

The bottom line of all this, however, is what I’ve been saying for years:  we don’t know what is exactly happening with the climate because our data are insufficient; if the world is warming (or, as it turns out, cooling) we simply do not know the primary culprit; finally, if it is changing and even if it is our fault, there’s not much we can do to stop it at this point so we’re just going to have to adapt to changing conditions…as life on this Earth has done again and again over the ages.

The reason I’ve called it a hoax is not because it is impossible for our climate to be changing, but because a hoax is a con…and people are trying to con us out of or wealth and our liberty.  This is, bottom line, a mere attempt by self-selected “leaders” to take charge of all aspects of our lives…and for these leaders to live very well while dictating to the rest of us.  It is just one in a very, very long line of scams.

Filibuster Follies

Mark Noonan31 Comments

As for the filibuster, itself, I am just not that concerned.  After all, the real mutilation of the Senate came when we started to elect Senators by poplar vote instead of through the State legislators. The Senate is supposed to be the representative of the States, as sovereign institutions – by making the election of Senators direct, we simply turned the Senate in to a smaller, more exclusive House of Representatives.  If anyone wants to restore the Senate to its ancient glory, I’m all with you and let’s set about repealing the 17th Amendment.  But, still, this is a change – and a permanent one.  While the filibuster still technically exists in certain cases, it is in fact a dead letter…any time a Senate minority attempts to use it, the Senate majority will just do away with it, as Harry Reid’s majority just did.

The only thing I can find as a reason for this end of the filibuster is a desire on the part of Democrats to pack the courts with as little fuss as possible – especially the DC Court as it is in charge of dealing with regulatory matters.  Democrats want smooth sailing for whatever Obama and minions say in regulating our lives in to the ground, and this is their way to get it.  Seems a bit short-sighted, though – not a very good reason for giving up the filibuster, especially as Democrats are in grave danger of losing their majority in the 2014 mid-terms (I figure its 50/50 the GOP will win the necessary 6 seats…but even if we don’t in 2014, we will eventually have a Senate majority again, and Democrats will be rather backs against the wall).

And when we have a full Congressional majority and control of the White House, then the Democrats will feel the full force of their mistake.  No longer will the basic premises of Big Government reign supreme because it takes 60 votes to close off debate.  No longer will one or two RINOs be able to ensure that the legislative desires of the GOP are blocked.  All it will take, with a GOP President, is a mere 50 GOP Senators to agree, and our will is law…end of the Department of Education; end of the Department of Energy; and so on.  218 House members, 50 Senators, one President with a Vice President to break the tie in the Senate.  That is not a very high bar.  100 years of Progressive politics can now be undone in a few months.  To be sure, a returned Democrat majority can attempt to re-cobble it all together again…but after four or five years without it, it might not be politically possible to do.  And the certainty is that whatever is done can be easily undone.  And if Progressive politics are in bad odor then a non-Progressive campaign reminding the people that a victory for the left means mere re-imposition of the things we just got rid of, then the non-Progressive side will win.

It could be that when the history of our times are written, it will be revealed that Obama and Reid did away with the filibuster simply because they were frustrated they couldn’t immediately get 100% of their way…that they gutted their own protection because they simply didn’t want to get 90% of their desires.  If so, then it will be just another bit of proof that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

The Knockout Game

Mark Noonan30 Comments

I’ve seen reports on this sort of activity for some time, but I guess it is getting rather widespread as even the MSM is starting to report on it.  For those still unaware, the “Knockout Game” appears to be something which mostly involves groups of young African-Americans who set out to “knock out” a victim with a punch – and it appears to be that you “win” by doing it in one punch.  While we cannot say for certain that there hasn’t been a group of white, Latino or Asian kids doing it, I’ve seen no reports of such.  Additionally, most of what I’ve seen is that the victims are non-black (whites, Jews, Asians, etc). 

The activity neatly encapsulates the entirety of our civilization’s collapse: it is almost a certainty that these young people have no fathers worthy of the name; it is almost a certainty that all of them have been heavily exposed to the glorified violence of popular culture; it is almost a certainty that none of them have been instructed in any religious faith, let alone the Christianity which is in the ancestry of nearly all of them; given that they are minority youth, it is almost a certainty that they have been fed a pack of lies about how white America is out to get them; it is almost a certainty that a very large number of them – and perhaps a majority – have never lived in a household where one or both parents work for a living on a regular basis; it is almost a certainty that whatever education they have is via the public schools and thus there is a high probability they are functionally illiterate and almost entirely ignorant of history.  These kids simply know no better – still responsible for their actions, but where was their instruction on how to live a decent life?

Now it is time to be very blunt:  these kids are the product of liberalism.  Yes, they are filled with rage and hopelessness and our liberals will tell us that is because of racism…but they are actually so filled by liberalism, itself.  The liberalism which broke down the family, ruined the education system, denigrated religious faith, preaches hatred of the United States, and so forth. These are the children of liberalism.

But aside from that, I find something very odd and very worrying – you would expect kids who have had their lives ruined to, well, be bad…but why such a cowardly and cruel activity?  I’ve seen some of the videos and its not like they are challenging someone to a fight and then winning.  They are sneaking up on people and whacking them in a cowardly, underhanded attack.  Where did that particularly nasty aspect of it come from?  Who is teaching them to be cruel and cowardly?  That is something I would look in to: where did this come from?

Other than that, the only fix for this is to entirely defeat liberalism – destroy it and remove every last liberal from any position of power and influence.  Only then can we start to fix our society and slowly build back towards a place where a young kid simply wouldn’t dream of doing something like the Knockout Game.

 

Cooking the Books?

Mark Noonan9 Comments

John Crudele at the New York Post reports an astounding accusation:

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it…

It is, at the moment, an unsubstantiated allegation – but it is a credible allegation, as well.  The next, logical step is to bring those named later in the report before Congress to testify – under oath – as to what happened.  We can’t rely upon internal investigators, nor investigators of the Justice Department.  The accusation here is that data was faked in the service of the Administration – specifically to help Obama get re-elected last year.  Because of the nature of the accusation, absolutely no one in the Obama Administration can be trusted to investigate.

To make myself clear – I don’t know if this accusation is true.  It needs to be completely investigated.  Fearlessly investigated – and that is our problem: does the Congressional GOP have the sheer guts to look in to this?  I don’t know.  For the sake of peace, maybe they’ll let it slide, as they’ve let so much else slide.  Hopefully there will be some courage.

After Obama: Some Proposed Reforms

Mark Noonan30 Comments

I’ve pointed out over the past few years to many that the only thing stopping a President from acting like a king is his own character.  There are a mere three limitations on the President’s power:

1.  His term of office.  It ends at a date certain – no matter what else happens, after 4 or 8 years, on a certain January 20th, he’s no longer President and can’t order a White House orderly to so much as pick up a piece of paper.

2.  He cannot spend money without Congressional authorization.

3.  He may be impeached.

When our Founders gathered in 1787, they had in their collective memory the forms and ways of lots of different government systems – monarchy, republic and democracy.  While a lot of my fellow TEA Parties argue the Founder created a Republic, that is not quite true.  The Founders created a hybrid combining what they figured was best about a monarchy, a democracy and a republic.  The House is Democracy; the Senate is Republic; the Presidency is Monarchy.  Elective monarchy, to be sure – but monarch none the less.  Back in the 1920’s when Winston Churchill was writing his stupendous The World Crisis about the First World War, he described to what was mostly a foreign audience the American system of government – and he noted that the President of the United States had, in practical terms, more power than any other potentate on earth.  Keep in mind that Churchill was writing about a time when there was a Czar in Russia and a Kaiser in Berlin.  He was not at all wrong – even a theoretical autocrat like the Czar was hemmed in and limited in the exercise of his power by more systems of law and custom than was – or is – the President of the United States.  The United States was lucky first in having the magnificent character of George Washington as our first President, and then in the fact that even his most flawed successors – until just recently (ie, 2009) – tried to in some manner mold themselves in to the example provided by Washington.  Washington never abused his overwhelming authority and his successors until Obama refrained, from the most part, from so doing (and, no, Nixon wasn’t the most abusive – it is actually rather a three way tie between Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR).  But now that the monarchist cat is, so to speak, out of the bag, I think we need some reforms.

We must, of course, have an executive who can act – and act independently of Congress and the Courts, especially during a time of national emergency.  But with that, we must curb the power of the presidency to ensure it more closely conforms to the ideals of the Founders and the example of George Washington.  Given this, I propose the following:

1.  Conviction in an impeachment trial to require 57 votes in the Senate rather than 67.  Its still a high bar, but not nearly as high as 67, which is just about impossible to attain (as is seen by the fact that in more than 200 years, no President has been removed via impeachment – though it is true that Nixon resigned because he was told there would be 67 votes to convict…but, still, we should have removed four or five presidents by now).

2.  Employees of the executive branch agencies – from highest to lowest – are all to serve at the pleasure of the President.  This does, in a very real way, increase Presidential power – but it also lets everyone working in the executive branch agencies know that come four to eight years hence (at the latest) there will be a new President in town who can fire them at will.  This, I think, will induce a measure of caution in to bureaucrats – make them less likely to just blindly follow the commands – direct or indirect – of a President to, say, break the law as the IRS did recently in its attacks on TEA Party groups.

3.  No money shall be drawn from the Treasury for offensive military action save upon an official declaration of war against an identified nation or nations.  No more going to war with “Congressional authorization” (Iraq) or without (Libya).  If a President wants to war on someone, he has to go down to Congress and request a declaration of war.  No more half wars; no more quasi-wars; no more police actions.  War is war, period.

4.  Limit the power of pardon to only those convicted of a crime prior to the President’s term.  In other words, no more January 19th pardons of political cronies as a President exits.

5.  Annually, Congress shall vote on the issue “Resolved: the President has in the previous 12 months faithfully executed all of the laws of the United States”.  If it passes, then nothing happens.  If it is defeated, then articles of impeachment are to be voted on in the House.  Congressmen are to be held legally responsible for this vote: if it is found at any time that they voted in favor of the resolution when they knew it was not correct, they can be sent to jail for 20 years.  This is an annual “impeachment jeopardy” for the President – and a massive risk for the Congressmen.  Better think carefully, Mr. President, about not enforcing laws you don’t like…and Congresscritter, how’s about 20 years in jail if you’re just being a partisan hack and backing the President because he’s in your party?

Anyways, those are some of my ideas – please bring forward any you can think of.

UPDATE:  Congressional Republicans are looking in to curbing Presidential power:

Congressional Republicans are considering various options to curb President Obama’s use of executive powers, which they say are excessive.

GOP officials have long claimed that the president has violated the law and the Constitution through administrative actions on issues ranging from immigration to nominations to the U.S. military involvement in Libya.

But the president’s recent move to change ObamaCare through an administrative fix has sparked a new round of discussions within the conservative base and Republicans on Capitol Hill…

It is, in a sense, a shame we have to do this – but given that Democrats will continue to nominate people like Obama who have no sense of what a law is, we have to make certain that future President are not able to do the illegal acts Obama has done.