You Are What You Eat

There's always a tendency for people to use scientific studies to justify their preconceived notions. Such is the case with the recent Stanford study that found that organic food doesn't provide any more nutrition than conventionally produced food. Writers like Roger Cohen of the New York Times call it the "Organic Fable."

There's a lot of hype about organic food, but no more than any other product. Reasonable people buy organic food not because they think it has more nutrients (though the study actually did find some organic food to be consistently more nutritious), but because organic food contains fewer contaminants and poisons.

The study found that conventional vegetables and fruit contain many more pesticides, while conventional meats contain hormones such as BGH and antibiotics used solely to increase weight. Similar studies have found that simply keeping animals in clean environments increases weight by just as much. The problem with using antibiotics in healthy animals is that it's creating superbugs, undermining the most powerful tool in our arsenal against disease. In fact, the Stanford study found:

[O]rganic meat contained considerably lower levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria than conventionally raised animals did, but bacteria, antibiotic-resistant or otherwise, would be killed during cooking.

And since cooks never touch the meat they're preparing, and everyone loves their steak well-done, it's impossible to be infected by such bacteria. Right?

Cohen falsely claims that the Stanford study found the level of pesticides "safe." The study only found pesticide concentrations to be within federal guidelines. Whether those federal guidelines are really safe is a different question. Cohen trusts that government regulators, who  are constantly under pressure by farmers, politicians, and lobbyists from the pharmaceutical, agriculture and chemical industries, have made all the right decisions. But unlike the authors of the study, regulators do not make decisions based solely on the science: they take into account production costs and accept that a certain number of deaths, diseases and deformities are inevitable.

Thus, there's a great deal of reasoned debate whether those federal guidelines for pesticide levels are too high, especially for pregnant women. Developing fetuses are extremely sensitive to environmental contaminants, especially herbicides like atrazine, which mimic sex hormones and can cause reproductive system deformities.

There are many other reasons to prefer organic production. Genetically engineered crops are modified to improve their resistance to pests or herbicides. There is evidence that such genetic modifications can jump to other species, specifically the weeds that herbicides are intended to kill. Insects and weeds also evolve resistance to pesticides and herbicides very quickly, even without cross-species pollination. These conspire to force the production of new and stronger chemicals, which present significant risks when these toxins are consumed by humans and animals.

Organic foods are typically produced in many varieties, including "heirloom" varieties. Most conventional tomatoes, for example, are a monoculture engineered for color, shipability and delayed ripening. Selecting for these characteristics often comes at the cost of taste and nutritional value, producing the infamous cardboard tomatoes. The use of a wider variety of plants in organic agriculture means that the risk of an entire crop being wiped out by disease is lower.

Conventional agricultural practices are extremely energy-intensive, using vast quantities of oil for tilling and fertilizers. Many organic practices are based more on traditional farming methods.

The question really is: would you rather eat food produced with minimal contaminants, or food that contains widely variable levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, pesticides, drugs and synthetic hormones that ultimately have unknown effects on your body and the bodies of your children?

Perplexed

I don't understand why the Right is up in arms over the disagreement over whether or not the word "God" should be included in the Democratic Party Platform. Or the disagreement over whether or not Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Huh?

It's a surprise that there are people in the Democratic party who believe God is a fairy tale for infant minded people? Heck, there are people in my comments section that think that.

It's a surprise that the Democratic party has Muslims in it that feel that the Palestinians have been treated unfairly by the Israelis? Perhaps here there is a hope that some undecided voters will be scared off by the Moose-lems!

Or is it a surprise that Democrats don't march in lockstep on an issue?

I guess my initial thought is that it's none of those things and the Right is simply doing what they always do...not taking responsibility for something (their own truly awful platform) and bloviating, "Well, their's is worser and stuff!!!!" in typical juvenile fashion.

I really don't get it. What's the dig supposed to be?

Hauling The Fucking Nail

The 42nd president took the stage last night at the DNC and reminded everyone why he has a 69 percent approval rating. Bill Clinton's speech, which can be seen in its entirety below, illustrated in detail the great job President Obama has done in his first term.

The Big Dog also showed what happens when you rip his party: you get taken out to the fucking shed. As I watched him completely demolish every single Republican talking point from the last four years, I couldn't help but wonder why the current administration has been out to lunch on this for the past four years. They've been putting out too many campaign surrogates (Axelrod, Plouffe, Cutter) and not enough elected leaders (Castro, Patrick, Strickland). Bill Clinton is proof positive that this is how the rest of the campaign should be run.

Two things stood out for me from President Clinton's speech last night...the first very serious and the second, not so serious but eerily familiar. His quiet moment describing what is going to happen to Medicaid if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have their way with it was seriously depressing. The "pro-life" party was shown to be the complete lie that it is as many families  will lose a very valuable resource in caring for those loved ones who cannot care for themselves. What is the GOP answer to this?

The second was my favorite quote from the night (which was extremely tough, given there were so many from which to choose).

When Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as “the biggest, coldest power play,” I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Key cuts that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of medicare savings that he had in his own budget. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.

Dude, that's the exact story of every political discussion I've had for the last 10 years! (see: Heading Off At The Pass). I still can't figure out if they do this on purpose or not but I do know that it's a vain attempt to make up for the fact that they have no substantive plans of their own.

There is no doubt in my mind that this speech will go down in history as one of the greatest political speeches of all time. Every high school speech and/or debate club should be using it as a shining example of perfection.

Uh....

And that would be why they call him the Big Dog...

Remember George Bush?

Remember George Bush? He's the guy who's responsible for this mess:

American senators visiting Iraq warned the Baghdad government Wednesday that it risked damaging relations with the U.S. if it is allowing Iran to fly over its airspace to deliver weapons to Syria.

An Iraqi government spokesman responded by saying Iran has told Baghdad the flights to Syria are only delivering humanitarian aid. He said the onus is on the U.S. to offer up proof that Tehran is shipping weapons.

Senator Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, said Iraq’s failure to stop the flights could threaten the long-term relationship with the U.S. as well as aid Iraq could receive as part of a 2008 strategic pact between the two nations.

Come to think of it, Joe Lieberman was also one of those guys who pushed so hard to invade Iraq on the pretext that they had weapons of mass destruction and were involved in 9/11. Turns out they were dead wrong on every count, got almost 5000 Americans killed, tens of thousand crippled for life, and perhaps hundreds of thousands affected by traumatic brain injuries.

Iran and Iraq used to be bitter enemies before Bush and the neocons orchestrated the 2003 invasion. Now they're best buds. Turns out that the entire case for the invasion came from a phony informant named "Curveball," a guy the Germans had warned us was lying. And it turned out that the Iraqis pushing the US government to invade Iraq were led by Ahmed Chalabi, who was an Iranian spy. And the worst thing: the neocons that were behind that invasion are the same guys giving Mitt Romney foreign policy advice.

Republicans today are asking "Are we better off now after four years of Obama?" A better question is, "Are we better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain or any Republican?"

According to John McCain, if he had been president for these four years, he would still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq. He would be still be "surging" in Afghanistan instead of winding down. He would have sent ground troops into Libya, and that would have mushroomed into a major conflict. He would have started an air war against Syria, and we'd be well on our way to sending in troops. He would have either greenlighted an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, or had the USAF do it for them, starting us down a fifth war in the Middle East. And we would pay for all these wars by cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Mitt Romney had been parroting the McCain line on the Middle East, but they're recently been mum on foreign policy because it involves bombing anyone who looks at us sidewise.

Except for Ron Paul, Republicans have never met a war they didn't like. Is it because all their pals are defense industry lobbyists? Do they have daddy issues? Phallic dimension disorder? Or they really think that bombing people back to the Stone Age spreads democracy?

Can They Outdo Themselves?

Compare the first night of the Democratic Convention to the first night of the Republican convention. Notice any differences? I sure did.

The first one was apparent immediately: energy level. I don't think the conservative base is all that enthusiastic about Mitt Romney. In contrast (and despite "liberal media" reports), the democratic base is very enthusiastic about the president.

We heard President Obama's name mentioned several times throughout all the speeches. The keynote address by Julian Castro, for example, talked about the strength of Obama's accomplishments whereas the keynote at the GOP convention, by Chris Christie, barely mentioned Mitt Romney at all.

And can anyone look at the two speeches delivered by Michelle Obama and Ann Romney and not wonder why such a poor job was done writing the latter? Ms. Romney did a great job delivering her speech but she still had to work with the words which were very short on content. She insisted that her husband understood the middle class but didn't really share, as Ms. Obama did, the stories that illustrate that.

Deval Patrick's speech was the best of the night. He hit on all the reasons why I am a Democrat.

The question is: What do we believe? We believe in an economy that grows opportunity out to the middle class and the marginalized, not just up to the well connected. We believe that freedom means keeping government out of our most private affairs, including out of a woman's decision whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy and everybody's decision about whom to marry. We believe that we owe the next generation a better country than we found and that every American has a stake in that. We believe that in times like these we should turn to each other, not on each other. We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody's life but in helping people help themselves to the American dream. That's what Democrats believe.

Fucking A right!

Mr. Patrick, on the president's accomplishments.

This is the president who delivered the security of affordable health care to every single American after 90 years of trying. This is the president who brought Osama bin Laden to justice, who ended the war in Iraq and is ending the war in Afghanistan. This is the president who ended "don't ask, don't tell" so that love of country, not love of another, determines fitness for military service. Who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land. This is the president who saved the American auto industry from extinction, the American financial industry from self-destruction, and the American economy from depression. Who added over 4.5 million private sector jobs in the last two-plus years, more jobs than George W. Bush added in eight. 

It remains to be seen whether the rest of the convention will go as well as last night. With Big Dog going tonight and the president tomorrow night, can the Democrats actually outdo themselves?

I think we can safely say, though, that they will do a better job than the Republicans.

A North Carolina Primer

It's the Democrats turn this week and you can be certain that you will hear a lot about how we are better off now than we were four years ago. Here's why, with the most current information.

• The government reported Thursday that Americans spent at the fastest pace in five months in July, and personal income rose as well.
• Home prices rose in the first half of 2012 for the first time in nearly two years. Sales of both new and previously occupied homes also are up. 
• Employers added 163,000 jobs in July, the most since February. 
• U.S. exports, retail spending and factory production are all up.

Something else I hope the Democrats will highlight is this. 

Applications, a proxy for future work, rose to an 812,000 annual rate, exceeding the highest estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg and the most since August 2008. “Housing is one of the bright spots in the economy,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

This simple fact alone shows that the economy is turning around and the president has helped our country towards that end.

Expect to hear more about these facts throughout the week.

Back To Stiglitz

Being that it is Labor Day, I thought we'd jump back to my analysis of Joseph Stiglitz's book, The Price of Inequality. And, before I get to the next section (Chapter 3), I want to detail the four myths (per Stiglitz) that are perpetuated by the Right regarding inequality. These are pretty important to look at before we continue.

First, the Right argues that when inequality is examined, it is done so in a snapshot sort of way. If one looks at lifetime inequality, then it's not so bad. People start off poor and then they get rich. In fact, the opposite is becoming increasingly true. Chances are if you are born poor, you are going to stay that way the rest of your life. Lifetime inequality is, in fact, very large and it's almost as large as it is in each moment of time.

Second, the Right says that our poor must not have it that bad because they have Flat Screen TVs and X Box. That may have been a measure of wealth in 1980 when those items weren't made cheaply in China and sold at Costco but it's certainly not a measure by today's standards. As at National Academy of Sciences panel pointed out, one can't ignore relative deprivation. Rural India, for example, has enormous poverty but they have access to television and cel phones. How would selling a TV or cel phone provide for long term needs like food, access to decent health care and education? The value of these things aren't really that great in today's world.

Third, the Right likes to pick nits about statistics. They say that inflation may be overestimated and growth in income underestimated. Yet Americans are working longer hours and sometimes two or three jobs just to make ends meet. These jobs aren't very secure either. Details like this aren't really measured in quantitative analyses and that's why those studies must be juxtaposed with qualitative work. Clearly, the problem is growing worse as we saw in the latest Census report in 2010: poverty went up from 15.2 percent to 16 percent.

Finally, (and this is what is going to tie into my post about Chapter 3), the Right insist that it is moral for society to be unequal, even at ever increasing levels. Doing anything would "kill the golden goose," as Stiglitz puts it. This argument has two sides and both are wrong. The first is that if we tax the higher rate folks they will lose their incentive to work and tax revenue will drop. As Greg Mankiw (one of Mitt Rommney's main economic advisers), the Laffer Curve proved to be inaccurate. The second part of this argument states that helping the poor will only lead to more and increasing poverty. They too will not be properly incentivized. The poor have only themselves to blame, right? Why should they take away the "hard earned money" of the wealthy?

We aren't going to get anywhere with addressing these issue of inequality until we dispense with these four myths. They are not rooted in fact nor are they rooted in evidence. Moreover, they are detrimental to solving the problem of lessening inequality, the result of which (as Stiglitz notes) will create a more dynamic economy.

Well, It Had To Happen

I saw this one coming from a mile away.

Now, when we don't like facts, we attack the people that relate them. Then there is a big argument over bias that ultimately results in a lot of wasted time and before you know it, the actual debate over the issue is gone and replaced with a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

It's almost as if they can't admit fault and have no real solutions of their own....hmm....

Creatures of Hollywood

The Republican Party has long pretended to disdain Hollywood, alternately blaming it for the decline of American moral standards and filling children's heads with a communistic concern for the environment.

Republicans have decried frivolousness of Hollywood celebrities, implying that their party is too serious and substantial for fluff. But Republicans have elevated Ronald Reagan, a total creature of Hollywood, to godhood. Reagan, a former Democrat and union president, was apparently already suffering from Alzheimers in his first term when he told Yitzhak Shamir in 1983 that he helped free Jewish prisoners from concentration camps, though he never left Hollywood during WWII. He made a movie about it, so it must have been true.

Republicans love to rewrite Reagan's history. These days when they tell the story of his inauguration day they say that the Iranians released the hostages from the US embassy because Iran was afraid Reagan would nuke Tehran (which would have, of course, killed those same hostages). They neglect to mention that Reagan secretly exchanged seven hostages for hundreds of TOW missiles with the Iranians in 1985 and 1986 (Israel helped too), while at the same time publicly supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. They neglect to mention that after the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 299 American and French servicemen, tough-guy Reagan pledged never to back down, but within a few months he ordered American forces out of Lebanon.

And though they disparage celebrity endorsements, Republicans constantly coo about John Voight, Ted Nugent, Clint Eastwood and Jenna Jameson's endorsements of Mitt Romney.

And the "special guest" at the Republican convention? Clint Eastwood, talking to an empty chair.

Starting in Reagan's first term the Republican Party completely dispensed with reality, replacing it with fanciful Hollywood scripts: supply-side economics is a Christmas fantasy in which Santa collects lower taxes but receives more revenue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a Bob Hope Road pic that paid for themselves with the scads of oil money the Iraqis would repay us for liberating them. The global recession was a Mel Gibson conspiracy flick in which the entire world economy was intentionally destroyed by Barney Frank and several thousand black people who got adjustable-rate home loans they couldn't pay back.

The ethical basis for Paul Ryan's budget was created by Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre and Hollywood script writer. In the pre-Reagan age this atheist crusader against altruism and ardent supporter of abortion rights would have been roundly denounced by Republicans as a cold-hearted, selfish, self-serving bitch.

Finally, the selection of Mitt Romney himself is the ultimate Hollywood Republican script. Nobody, except maybe his family, actually wants Mitt Romney to be president. All the Republicans hate him because he's a closet liberal, he's the godfather of Obamacare, he's a Mormon, his dad was born in Mexico. You get the picture.

But Romney is the guy from central casting that looks like a leading man, so he beat out terribly flawed character actors like Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Rick Perry. Now that the Romney script gone through several rewrites—from Mormon draft dodger in France, to heartless executive at Bain, to savior of the Olympic games, to moderate governor of Massachusetts—Republican script writers have finally retooled the robotic Romney character into a T1000 Terminator that can morph into any shape required to win the election.

But in their heart of hearts Republicans all know what happened to that T1000 at the end of that movie. And they expect Romney to tank in November like a bad sci-fi flick.

Open Mic Night

Well, the GOP convention has come to a close and it's time for the post mortem? What were the highlights? The lowlights? The good, the bad, and the ugly?

Mainly, I thought that it was not very well done. Compared to 2008, it really sucked. At least in that year, we saw good speeches that stayed on message with no real head scratchers. Sarah Palin may have been (and still is) not intelligent or competent but she gave a great speech and hadn't flopped yet.

This year, however, seemed like open mic night for 2016. Chris Christie's keynote address was awful. He didn't even mention Mitt Romney until the very end of his speech. And it didn't contain any of the colorful attitude that he has displayed previously in public. He looked too restrained. Several new stars (Kelly Ayotte, Rick Santorum, and even Paul Ryan) seemed to be there for their own purposes, not Mitt's.

Speaking of Ryan, he wasn't the only one lying his ass off this week. John Thune said


The big-government bureaucrats of the Obama administration have set their sights on our way of life. Instead of preserving family farms and ranches, President Obama’s policies are effectively regulating them out of business. His administration even proposed banning farm kids from doing basic chores!

Obama's also building an army of killer robots with the express purpose of stealing our luggage! The Washington Post has the truth on this (ahem) issue. 

Rob Portman also had this ditty

Then you have Barack Obama, who never started a business — never even worked in business.

Not true.

He worked briefly at Business International Corp. in New York after college, and then also was an associate and a partner at a law firm for 11 years.

Now, Paul Ryan's private sector experience is very minimal and has been a life long politician so I'm not sure why he brought this up.

And then there was the weird. First up, Clint Eastwood....WTF??!!?? I love the guy but perhaps he should have talked about how, as a senior, Mitt was going to help him with his benefits while the president wouldn't. Instead, we got the empty chair. I love Clint and all his films (even the ones with the monkey) but seeing an old man scold an empty chair pretty much sums up the demographic of the GOP in 2012.


Another weird one...I had no idea what Mike Huckabee was talking about when he ripped Deb Wasserman-Schultz. Her VOICE is irritating? Really? And then to follow it with "bless her heart"...good grief...

If there was any good to be found, I thought the Ron Paul folks really made it known that they are the future of the party when the geezers sail off into the sunset. Ann Romney's speech was great. Why isn't she running? Condi Rice brought a touch of class to the week that was sorely needed.

Otherwise, though, I thought it was terrible. The placing of the non white convention goers in the most prime camera spots was hilariously illustrative of how the GOP is really shitting themselves over their demographics problem. Time is indeed running out...

Lyin' Ryan

Paul Ryan unleashed a giant load of wordy squirts last night that truly bring new meaning to breaking the ninth commandment. From FactCheck.org

• Accused President Obama’s health care law of funneling money away from Medicare “at the expense of the elderly.” In fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law “substantially improves” the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings. 
• Accused Obama of doing “exactly nothing” about recommendations of a bipartisan deficit commission — which Ryan himself helped scuttle. 
• Claimed the American people were “cut out” of stimulus spending. Actually, more than a quarter of all stimulus dollars went for tax relief for workers. 
• Faulted Obama for failing to deliver a 2008 campaign promise to keep a Wisconsin plant open. It closed less than a month before Obama took office. 
• Blamed Obama for the loss of a AAA credit rating for the U.S. Actually, Standard & Poor’s blamed the downgrade on the uncompromising stands of both Republicans and Democrats.

And this is they guy who the right thinks is thoughtful and intelligent?

Well, at least the "liberal" media has decided not to fall asleep on this one.