Cross Dressing

Conservative pundit Jon Swift takes a look at the presidential candidates ability to dress in the opposite sex's clothes.

Back in the days when girls were girls and men were men (except when they were kidding around at USO shows, in Bohemian Grove or in prison), Republicans were Republicans and Democrats were Democrats. But in the 2008 Presidential campaign it seems like all the nominees are a bunch of political crossdressers, and I'm not just talking about Rudy Giuliani.

Read the whole thing. Hilarity ensues.

Pottersville Is Not Dead

It seams the bank has not killed JP yet. JP is still ranting. This is a good thing.

Think about this: 65-75 years ago, some of our biggest banking institutions were openly acting as America’s most prominent financiers and corporate bedfellows with Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party.

The single biggest financier, as posterity reluctantly tells us, was Prescott Bush, Dubya’s granddad. He was permitted to do this, undermining the war effort, until the Roosevelt government finally woke up in 1942 and seized some of the assets of Bush’s Brown Brothers Harriman that was doing more than playing footsie with Hitler and his fascist empire that was already well on its way to murdering over 6,000,000 Jews, homosexuals and other "deviants".

Fast-forward those 65-75 years and look around you. The Third Reich is a bad, shameful memory and what’s left, the neo-Nazis, have been relegated to fringe status living on through a bunch of moronic skinheads.

But the ironic thing is that now every one of our banking institutions, the latter-day descendents of the banking industry that had cheerfully handled Hitler’s blood money, reserves the right not to do business with hard-working middle class American citizens simply for standing up for their dignity and calling a spade a spade.

Edwards Makes A Good Video

Greg Sargent over at the Talking Points Media Empire has been covering the lack of coverage that Edwards has not been receiving.

Not Surprising

The first ex congressman charged with terrorism is a republican. The have no moral consistency. Republicans will take anyones money and do there bidding if they think they can get away with it.

What Do You Eat?

Here is a link to what people spend on food a week. Nice pictures of a weeks worth of Food. In Bhutan they spent $ 5.03. It looks like a lot of food too.

Stop Crime Ban College Football

Over at Freakanomics they have a post about college football and crime. It seems drunk people on the street cause crime. Pissed drunk people cause more crime.

What Is It Good For?

The FDA. Many drugs have no good effects on people. Most placebos work on a third of test participants. That means that the group getting the medication will respond at that level to. Drug researchers do not want to publish bad results. They should be forced to.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Nearly a third of antidepressant drug studies are never published in the medical literature and nearly all happen to show that the drug being tested did not work, researchers reported on Wednesday.
n some of the studies that are published, unfavorable results have been recast to make the medicine appear more effective than it really is, said the research team led by Erick Turner of the Oregon Health & Science University.[...]

Of the 74 studies that started for the 12 antidepressants, 38 produced positive results for the drug. All but one of those studies were published.

REWRITTEN STUDIES

However, only three of the 36 studies with negative or questionable results, as assessed by the FDA, were published and another 11 were written as if the drug had worked.

"Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome," said the authors.

Do not trust the drug companies.

Citizens Bank Sux

A fellow blogger is having trouble with his bank.

No, I'm not walking away for good, either for a novel or otherwise. This could be Pottersville's final dispatch because my former bank, Citizen's, has not only shut down my checking account but the branch manager with whom I spoke just told me that they've already shut down my blog.

It seems the reports of Pottersville's demise are not exaggerated but premature.

Read the whole thing and post it on your blog.

John Edwards

Via Susie we find that John Edwards is invisible. But, He does have hair.

Impeach

Join Wexler's call for impeachment hearings. Via Crooks and Liars and The Politico.

Worst Moderators Ever

That is the Carpet Baggers headline. I am glad, I did not watch the debate. CB says they did not discuss the issues for the first 40 minutes. The media does not want to discuss the issues because then you will know. That is unacceptable. People might find out that they have the same views as democrats. Democratic positions are popular. I want to highlight this part of CB's article.

About a half-hour into the debate, an angry man started shouting, interrupting the event while security personnel intervened. Usually, these protestors are easy to dismiss as random nuts, but in this case, the heckler had a legitimate beef.

About 22 minutes into the Nevada Democratic debate, a heckler in the audience interrupted the proceedings, saying “these are f**cking race-based questions coming from you two, these are race-based questions…”

There was silence from the candidates and the moderators for about eight seconds with no mention of the heckler. Tim Russert, continued with his question for Sen. Hillary Clinton which focused on her characterization that Sen. Obama “is raising false hopes.”

I’ve seen debates in which hecklers jeer candidates, and I’ve seen debates in which hecklers take a stand for one issue or another, but this was the first debate I’ve seen in which a heckler went after a moderator. Worse, I think the guy was probably right.

Within a few minutes of the interruption, Ezra said, “It’s almost impossible for me to convey the damage Tim Russert and Brian Williams are doing to the republic this evening…. It’s literally the worst moderation I’ve yet seen. It’s not moderation. It’s trivialization. 28 minutes in, there’s not been a question about any issue, any cause, any problem.”

Franken Food

I just do not like the idea of cloned food. it appears that cloning is expensive and cloned animals will just be used for breeding purposes. I still do not like it.

Perhaps most angered by the FDA's decision were congressional opponents, including Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski. The Maryland Democrat has been pushing legislation to delay action.

"If we discover a problem with cloned food after it is in our food supply, and it's not labeled, the FDA won't be able to recall it like they did Vioxx - the food will already be tainted," Mikulski said in a statement, referring to the drug removed from the market in 2004 after reports of serious side effects, including deaths, among users.

I know. I sometimes rag on Ms Mikulski but she is in the right side of the issue this time.

Lion King

Pork Chops

Judged by The Results

Via Maha

Why?

Via Avedon, we get Thers wisdom:

As a matter of strict accuracy, nobody is quite clear on precisely why Democratic campaign managers and consultants are hired, especially repeatedly. Whatever the explanation, it is certainly a gross exaggeration to say that their purpose is to "win." It instead seems more their function to lose in a humiliating fashion and afterwards to collect fat paychecks and then go on TV and talk smack about the Democratic Base.

Eat Like Michael Pollan

You Know the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense Of Food. It is pretty much common sense. From the planetgreen:

His prescription: Make your own dinner. "By giving time back to our meals," he says, "you'll gain in the education and civilization of your children, you'll gain in terms of health and you'll also gain pleasure. Maybe there's a reason why, for most of human history, food has been close to the centre of life. And maybe there's much to gain by putting it back where it belongs." Here's how to eat, the Michael Pollan way:

Read the whole thing.

Drug Has No Benefit

This is what the makers say. It seems they are spinning it in their best interest. The drug Zetia may actually cause more harm.

While Zetia lowers cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent in most patients, no trial has ever shown that it can reduce heart attacks and strokes — or even that it reduces the growth of the fatty plaques in arteries that can cause heart problems.[...]
patients taking Vytorin actually had more growth in fatty plaques in their carotid arteries than those on Zocor. The carotid artery runs through the neck and delivers oxygenated blood to the brain.(My note Vytorin is Zetia with a combanation of other drugs)

One might ask where was the FDA. According to the Reagan/Bush doctrine they were doing their job. The FDA's job is to speed the process of getting drugs to the market. It has an added bonus, that when the drug fails or kills, It shows that the government does not work. They will even approve drugs for diseases that do not exist.

Body Found

A body was found on Mt Tamalpais. It was in the area where IRS agent Veronica Ruiz went missing.
Update: Authorities are saying that it was Ms Ruiz.
My condolences to her family and friends.

Wine

The more the wine costs, the more people enjoy it, a new study has found. This is not surprising in the least. People will talk themselves into all manner of things.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.

Their study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that expectations of quality trigger activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure. This happens even though the part of our brain that interprets taste is not affected.[...]

We have known for a long time that people's perceptions are affected by marketing, but now we know that the brain itself is modulated by price," said Baba Shiv, an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and one of the authors of the study.

"Marketers are now going to think twice about reducing the price," Shiv said.

According to the study, if an experience is pleasurable, the brain will use it to help guide future choices. That conclusion has important implications for marketing that aims to influence perceptions of quality such as expert ratings, peer reviews, information about country of origin, store and brand names and repeated exposure to advertisements.

It reminded me of this study done in France about the objectivity of wine tasters.

In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

I do however believe that some wines are so bad that even experts can tell they are not to good. Like this prison wine. Really, you should read this one.

Remembrance

I was not going to do any more updates about Meredith Emerson or her killer. Today, I ran across a nice piece of writing.
Update: More Hilton mayhem.