COVID19 update June 3, 2020: serological study in Israel; Surgisphere data scandal [UPDATED]

(1)  Israel is planning to test a sample of 70,000 people for antibodies. Earlier, preliminary result from a smallish sample of 1,709 Israelis found that 2.5±0.5% had antibodies for the virus. With official infection numbers (positive tests in RT-PCR) reaching only 0.2% of the population, this implies a Dunkelziffer  (stealth infection rate) of 10-15 times the official one — not dissimilar from what Prof. Hendrik Streeck found in Germany or the team of Ioannides, Bendavid et al. found in Santa Clara County, CA. [For non-American readers: Santa Clara County is almost synonymous with Silicon Valley.] 

With just 291 dead out of 17,377 confirmed cases — a raw case fatality rate (CFR) of 1.67%, this implies that the infection fatality rate is just 0.11–0.17%. This is considerably lower than even the drastically downward-revised CDC figures,  (IFR of about 0.26%), but Israel has a much younger population pyramid than the USA, and is sunny enough that vitamin D deficiency should not be as prevalent as in  northern US states.

Meanwhile, Israel is seeing a flare-up of cases in schools that has some people speaking of a second wave, although it might actually be more like a ripple, or a round of the dance in Tomas Pueyo’s “Hammer and Dance” strategy. Rungholt blogs in German about her experience as a kindergarten teacher in a kibbutz in the far North of the country.

(2) h/t: Cathe Smith: several papers, including the one that led to suspension of the hydroxychloroquine trials, now under a cloud owing to suspect medical database

On its face, it was a major finding: Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly. A study published on 22 May in The Lancet used hospital records procured by a little-known data analytics company called Surgisphere to conclude that coronavirus patients taking chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine were more likely to show an irregular heart rhythm—a known side effect thought to be rare—and were more likely to die in the hospital.

Within days, some large randomized trials of the drugs—the type that might prove or disprove the retrospective study’s analysis—screeched to a halt. Solidarity, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) megatrial of potential COVID-19 treatments, paused recruitment into its hydroxychloroquine arm, for example. (Update: At a briefing on 3 June WHO announced it would resume that arm of the study.)

But just as quickly, the Lancet results have begun to unravel—and Surgisphere, which provided patient data for two other high-profile COVID-19 papers, has come under withering online scrutiny from researchers and amateur sleuths. They have pointed out many red flags in the Lancet paper, including the astonishing number of patients involved and details about their demographics and prescribed dosing that seem implausible. “It began to stretch and stretch and stretch credulity,” says Nicholas White, a malaria researcher at Mahidol University in Bangkok.

Today, The Lancet issued an Expression of Concern (EOC) saying “important scientific questions have been raised about data” in the paper and noting that “an independent audit of the provenance and validity of the data has been commissioned by the authors not affiliated with Surgisphere and is ongoing, with results expected very shortly.”

Hours earlier, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) issued its own EOC about a second study using Surgisphere data, published on 1 May. The paper reported that taking certain blood pressure drugs including angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors didn’t appear to increase the risk of death among COVID-19 patients, as some researchers had suggested. (Several studies analyzing other groups of COVID-19 patients support the NEJM results.) “Recently, substantive concerns have been raised about the quality of the information in that database,” an NEJM statement noted. “We have asked the authors to provide evidence that the data are reliable.”

A third COVID-19 study using Surgisphere data has also drawn fire. In a preprint first posted in early April, Surgisphere founder and CEO Sapan Desai and co-authors conclude that ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, dramatically reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients. In Latin America, where ivermectin is widely available, that study has led government officials to authorize the drug—although with precautions—creating a surge in demand in several countries.

Chicago-based Surgisphere has not publicly released the data underlying the studies, but today Desai told Science through a spokesperson that he was “arranging a nondisclosure agreement that will provide the authors of the NEJM paper with the data access requested by NEJM.”

UPDATE (h/t LIssa Hailey): much more at The Guardian (archive copy here) “Governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company”

A search of publicly available material suggests several of Surgisphere’s employees have little or no data or scientific background. An employee listed as a science editor appears to be a science fiction author and fantasy artist. Another employee listed as a marketing executive is an adult model and events hostess.

[…] Until Monday, the “get in touch” link on Surgisphere’s homepage redirected to a WordPress template for a cryptocurrency website, raising questions about how hospitals could easily contact the company to join its database.

[…] At a press conference on Wednesday, the WHO announced it would now resume its global trial of hydroxychloroquine, after its data safety monitoring committee found there was no increased risk of death for Covid patients taking it.

The article refers to an earlier expose at MedicineUncensored.

The “perfect Aryan poster baby” was actually Jewish

[repost from my Facebook writer page]

The cover of the January 1935 issue of “Sonne ins Haus” (“sun in the house”, a Nazi magazine for mothers) featured the winner of the “most beautiful Aryan baby” photo contest.

Cover of “Sonne ins Haus”, January 1935

There was only one problem with the undeniably beautiful baby Hessy Levinsons: she was Jewish.
When her mother Pauline had taken Hessy to Hans Ballin’s photography studio for a baby portrait, the photographer had asked her if he could enter said portrait for the “most beautiful Aryan baby” contest. Pauline, flustered, felt obliged to inform the photographer that both parents were non-Aryan. The photographer’s answer: “I know. I want to make the Nazis look lächerlich” [ridiculous].

Recounting the story 80 years later, Hessy Levinsons Taft, now a chemistry professor emeritus at St. John’s University in New York, says she can laugh about it now, but realizes she might not have been alive today if the Nazis had known.

As it happens, following her father arrest and brief imprisonment in 1938, the Levinsons got the message and fled to France. After the Nazi invasion, they made it to Nice in the unoccupied zone (a.k.a., “Vichy France”). In 1941 the husband was able to bribe a Cuban consular official for visas, and with that visa they were presumably able to get a transit visa to Portugal, as they traveled to Lisbon shortly after. In 1942, they were finally able to make it to Havana, where Hessy and her sisetr Naomi attended a British school .
Come 1949, the family relocated one last time to New York City, where Hessy attended a more sciences-oriented high school and immediately was hooked on chemistry. She studied the subject at Columbia and stayed on for her doctorate, during which she met her husband, a mathematics instructor and future professor Earl J. Taft, as in “Taft-Hopf algebra”.)

The exigencies of raising small children made her leave the lab for a while, but she did continue working in science, just on the educational rather than the research side: she oversaw the development of the AP Chemistry test at Educational Testing Services in Princeton, NJ. Later she did return to research, now focusing on water treatment and sustainable water supply. Here is a very recent review article that she co-authored on the subject: http://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.8b05859

Would an editor chide me for putting this “unrealistic” story in a novel? Possibly, since unlike history, fiction has to make sense. She isn’t the only “Aryan poster boy/girl” used by the Nazis who was Jewish in whole or in part, BTW: Werner Goldberg, the “Ideal Wehrmacht Soldier” whose picture was used for recruiting posters, had a Jewish father. [I will cover his story in a future post.]

Let’s raise a glass wishing Hessy many more healthy and fulfilling years. Ad meah ve’esrim!

[For further reading: http://www.bild.de/regional/berlin/adolf-hitler/berliner-juedin-hessy-taft-war-hitlers-propaganda-baby-36611794.bild.html (in German) and https://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i36/Hessy-Taft.html (in English) If you do not read German fluently, check out the amazing Deep Learning-based machine translator DeepL]

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! An alert commenter there points out that “Sonne ins Haus” predates the Third Reich and wasn’t originally a Nazi periodical — merely Gleichgeschaltet [literally: “switched in line”, idiomatically: “made to conform”] after the National Socialist takeover.

I was unable to find any online pre-1933 issues, but it seems the owner of the publishing house was a Leipzig-based entrepreneur named Kurt Herrmann (German wikipedia page). Summarizing in translation, Herrmann was a close friend of Hermann Göring [y”sh] and even acted as a witness at Göring’s remarriage to Emmy Sonneman. Already wealthy, he leveraged his pull with the Nazi top to enrich himself enough through forced “Aryanizations” — the forced sale of Jewish-owned firms to new “Aryan” owners for a tiny fraction of their value[*] — that he became the richest man in Leipzig. Near the end of the war, her fled to Liechtenstein. His firm was expropriated after the war by the Communist East German regime and Gleichgeschaltet for the second time. Herrmann himself got off lightly in his denazification trial, being classified only as category 4: Mitlaufer (fellow traveler).

[*] One of these plundered firms was the venerable sheet music publisher C. F. Peters, then owned by Henri_Hinrichsen (Hamburg 1868—Auschwitz 1942). After the war, the Communist East German government expropriated the Leipzig firm again and ran it as a state enterprise; Hinrichsen’s sons Max and Walter, who had set up the London and New York branches of the company, recreated the private company in Frankfurt. After German reunification, the company was reunited as well.

Real, not alternate history: the Battle for Castle Itter, the one time when US Army and Wehrmacht fought together against the SS

On May 5, 1945, just three days before VE-Day, Castle Itter[*] in Northern Tyrol became the scene of a most improbable battle. 
Since 1943, this castle had been converted by the SS into a kind-of “VIP prison” for prominent inmates from occupied France. These included two former French PMs (Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud); Charles de Gaulle’s sister Marie-Agnès; General Maurice Gamelin and his successor Maxime Weygand; Michel Clémenceau, son of the WW I-era prime minister; former French ambassador to Germany André François-Poncet; and many others. 
The place was administratively an Aussenlager (satellite camp) of Dachau (where another group of “prominents” was held in the main camp itself). A group of lower-status Dachau inmates carried out menial work.
The commander, SS-Hauptsturmführer [i.e., captain] Wimmer, was under orders to shoot the prisoners if capture by the Allies became imminent. He supposedly promised a prisoner delegation he would not implement this order, but the inmates placed no trust in this promise.
The camp electrician, a Yugoslav inmate, was sent out on an errand as a cover to go looking for US troops. He found a reconnaisance patrol nearly 70 km away near Innsbruck. The SS garrison did meanwhile flee, but the prisoners feared a roving SS unit would come to the castle.

The Americans sent a small team (14 men under Lt. “Jack” Lee, including crews of two Sherman tanks, “Besotten Jenny” and “Bochebuster”), which joined up with about 20 Wehrmacht soldiers led by a defector to the Austrian resistance, Major Josef Gangl.
Lee posted “Besotten Jenny” at the castle and “Bochebuster” at the bridge. The meager force’s ranks were swollen by a number of the French prisoners who had taken arms from the armory — and even one wounded SS officer who decided to switch sides. On May 5, the castle came under attack from a force of about 100-150 SS soldiers. The much smaller defending force held the SS at bay for most of May 5, until relieved in the late afternoon by a company of the 142th US Infantry Regiment. Major Gangl was killed by a sniper, but the others managed to survive. Gangl was honored posthumously as an Austrian resistance hero, while Lee got a DSC and a promotion to Captain.[**]

The Swedish power metal band Sabaton [***] often has lyrics based on actual war history and feats of wartime heroism. Their song “The Last Battle” (see below) is a pretty straight-up retelling of the event.  Kudos to the band for introducing many young(er) listeners to bits of war history they are unlikely to learn in school or from books.

The Sabaton song “The Last Battle” commemorates the Battle of Castle Itter

History is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose… (with apologies to JBS Haldane)…

[*] The castle has a musical connection: the female concert pianist and conservatory teacher Sophie Menter (a former pupil of Liszt) owned the place from 1884 until the early 1900s. Tchaikovsky was her guest at the castle and wrote works there.

[**] Mark Felton has a more detailed video here. Felton notes one other situation where a similar Wehrmacnt-US Army ad hoc coalition former against the SS — this time to rescue the precious Lipizzaner horses.

[***] Despite its superficial similarity to the Hebrew word Shabaton (sabbatical), a “sabaton” is the armored shoe or boot of a medieval suit of armor

Stranger than fiction: 3rd Reich abolished German “Fraktur” blackletter script as being “of Jewish origin”

In the popular imagination, “Fraktur” letters are quintessentially Teutonic. [*] Indeed, the “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck famously used to return books to sender if they were printed in Roman type, insisting German printers should use German type (i.e., Fraktur).

Example of German Fraktur script from C. P. E. Bach’s “Essay on the true art of playing the keyboard”, Berlin, 1762

Some neo-Nazi groups do use Fraktur fonts in logos, banners, and tattoos, with the predictable result that some groups who affect them (or superficially similar blackletter scripts) for other reasons are falsely accused of National Socialist sympathies.

Imagine my surprise when, during “world-building” research for Operation Flash, I discovered that Fraktur fonts were actually banned in the Third Reich by a January 3, 1941 circular, which was signed by Martin Bormann but communicated a decision by the Führer himself. This “Normalschrifterlass” (standard script decree) claimed that Fraktur had actually been invented by Jews from Schwabach, and therefore now only Antiquaschrift (i.e. the standard Roman script used outside Germany) was now to be used and taught as “Normalschrift” (standard script).

There is a Dutch-language novel [**] that contains the passage: “The Germans have discovered that Pythagoras was a Jew, so now they have to call his theorem the Hermann Goering Rule instead.” As it was then and as it is now, ideological fanatics defy the satirist’s imagination.

Consensus nowadays is that even the Nazi top themselves did not believe this “pretzel logic” argument, and that they in fact made the switch on practical grounds: as they still imagined themselves ruling over a large part of Europe for an extended period of time, they had no more use for a script that nobody outside the German-speaking lands was familiar with. (The fact that the transition took the form of a phase-out rather than a book-burning-and-replacement action would seem to corroborate the theory of a pragmatic motivation. So does a February 2, 1941 entry in the diary of Josef Goebbels, where it is noted with approval that German elementary schoolers now would only have to cope with four kinds of letters — uppercase and lowercase versions each of Antiqua and cursive — rather than eight.[***])

Early on in the Third Reich, an attempt to demand Fraktur typewriters had met with failure, as typewriter manufacturers could not agree on the specific variant. Interestingly, Hitler (y”sh) himself — who had always disliked Fraktur –subsequently made a reference in a 1934 speech to misguided attempts “by backwards-lookers” to reimpose Fraktur.

In the postwar era, Fraktur never made a comeback: nowadays only Amish and Pennsylvania “Dutch”[****] printers use it as a standard printed script.

But I am still wrily amused by claims that Hebrew square script somehow stood at the cradle of Fraktur…

This video gives a good brief summary in movie form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLwZ2pyPNAs

[*] Technically, Fraktur is just one specific member of “Gebrochene” [broken/disjoint] scripts, i.e. German blackletter scripts. In common German as well as English parlance, Fraktur has become the term for all German blackletter.

[**] “Cis de Man” (“Frankie as a man”), by Piet Bakker. It’s the sequel to the popular coming-of-age novel “Cis de Rat” (“Frankie the street rat”), following the now-adult protagonist as he is a soldier in a Dutch artillery company before and during the Nazi invasion. Both the original and the sequel are peppered with the earthy Dutch sense of humor, but remain PG-rated.

[***] The fourth script type was Kurrentschrift, the German cursive counterpart of Fraktur. One stylized variant of that, Sütterlin script, was used for cuff titles on Wehrmacht and Waffen SS uniforms throughout the war.

[****] The Pennsylvania community in question are of course of “Deutsch” (German) rather than “Nederlandse” (Dutch) origin. Dutch is on a dialect continuum with Low German (Plattdeutsch), and in the Middle Ages the language called itself “Diets” rather than “Nederlands”. This archaic term survives in the Dutch expression “iemand iets Diets maken”, freely: “tell it to somebody like it is, in plain English”.

Independence Day post: An unintentional back-handed tribute to the USA

Via “masgramondou”, comes a mindblowing story. Sure, it’s VICE, so full of SJW virtue signaling and hand-wringing. But in a nutshell: there are lawyers for illegal immigrants who are actively trying to get their clients incarcerated at Riker’s Island in order to avoid deportation.

Let that sink in. They would rather sit in jail in the USA than be free outside the USA. Only in America, folks.

Happy Fourth of July! Don’t miss these tributes by Sarah Hoyt and Nicki Kenyon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OLxcpKQcw4

Flemish doctor refuses to treat 90-year old Jewish woman with broken rib, tells her to “Go to Gaza”

Having lived in Europe for basically half my life, I’ve grown inured to reports of kid-glove and more overt judeophobia on the part of the “natives”. However, this story managed to shock even me (as it would anybody who is a doctor or ever contemplated becoming one).

Times of Israel liveblog:

 

Belgian doctor refuses treatment to Jewish woman

 

A Belgian physician who refused to treat a Jewish woman with a fractured rib suggests she visit Gaza to get rid of the pain.

 

The physician makes the remark on Wednesday while manning a medical hotline in Flanders, Belgium’s Flemish region, whose capital, Antwerp, has a sizable Orthodox Jewish population, the local Jewish monthly Joods Actueel reports Thursday.

 

The woman, Bertha Klein, had her son, who is American, call the hotline at 11 p.m.

 

“I’m not coming,” the doctor reportedly tells the son and hung up. When the son calls again, the doctor says: “Send her to Gaza for a few hours, then [her pains will be over: corrected translation, NCT]” According to Joods Actueel, the doctor confirmed the exchange, saying he had an “emotional reaction.”

 

Health ministry officials were looking into the incident, according to the monthly’s online edition. According to Joods Actueel, the doctor knew the patient was Jewish because of Klein’s son’s American accent.

 

The family calls a friend, Samuel Markowitz, who is an alderman of the Antwerp district council and a volunteer paramedic. He calls the doctor to confirm the exchange, and also records their conversation.

 

Hershy Taffel, Bertha Klein’s grandson, files a complaint with police for discrimination.

 

“It reminds me of what happened in Europe 70 years ago,” Taffel tells Joods Actueel. “I never thought those days would once again be repeated.”[…]

 

While the ToI generally do due diligence about such stories (unlike some of the Hebrew press), I read the original article (in Dutch) and can confirm the story is not as bad as reported, but worse. For one, the poor woman is 90 years old.

 

Any doctor in Belgium is supposed to have sworn the Hippocratic Oath . Denying treatment to anyone for any reason other than sound medical judgment or lack of specific expertise (the Oath specifically gives the example of surgery by a non-surgeon) is a direct violation of the Oath. 

 

[Jewish doctors in Israel swear the similar Oath of Assaf the Physician). And no matter how heated the conflict with our neighbors, this oath is taken seriously. Arabs from all over the Middle East — even from countries technically at war with Israel — travel to Israel’s Top Four hospitals for specialist medical treatment. Not to mention countless patients from the West Bank and Gaza that are beyond the help of the local medical facilities.

Even hardened Hamas terrorists for whom a bullet would be too merciful get full and proper medical treatment in hospitals. Why? Because. That. Is. What. A. Fecking. Doctor. Does, No Ifs, No Ands, No Buts. The fact that several Arab patients of the infamous Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein (a medical doctor) testified after the Hebron Massacre that he had saved their lives when they were his patients speaks volumes — not in favor of his character, but about the seriousness with which the Oath is taken.]

 

I do not care how much this “dokter strontzak” will apologize or grovel to keep his/her job. Nothing less than permanent revocation of medical license is an appropriate punishment in this case. Anybody behaving like he/she did — denying treatment to a 90-year old woman for no other reason than being Jewish — is not worthy of the name “doctor”/”doctor”/”geneesheer” and only sullies the title.

 

Then again, I happen to feel the same way about any “doctor” committing involuntary euthanasia . — another practice in direct violation of the Hippocratic Oath (not to mention murder statutes)…

Sandy Hook massacre and the ASD canard

[On screen] One Adam Lanza, age 20, shot and killed his mother, and then went to the Connecticut grade school where she taught and gunned down over two dozen more people, 20 of them children. He subsequently took his own life. No manifesto, no suicide note, no obvious motive.

Note that no “assault weapons” were involved: he used two handguns, and left a third weapon (a .223 rifle) unused in the car.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the bereaved and we wish a speedy and full recovery to the wounded.

Ace is all over the story. The usual predictable politicization by gun control advocates (and the power and control freaks posing as same) he masterfully rebutted with stories about a 2009 school slaughter in Leipzig, Germany (despite extremely tough gun control laws) and of a knife-wielding maniac slashing 22 students in China.

But also he left a prescient comment: he notes that the surviving brother told authorities the shooter “is autistic or has Asperger syndr0me”, and mentions “Which, of course, will hopefully not demean other people with autism or Asperger’s.”

The comment was prescient, in that the usual airheaded mediots (but I repeat myself) are starting to blame it on, you guessed it, Asperger’s. The pseudonymous “Elise Ronan”, who has two sons with Asperger’s and blogs extensively about it, has some choice comments on her twitter timeline.

Obviously, by the inane “logic” of Piers Morgan, I could “prove” that CNN journalists are likely to go on “Dick Quest” in Central Park with meth in their pockets and ropes tied around their other heads, but let’s get a little more serious.

This isn’t the first time this type of claim about ASD was made: last time I can recall was about the Amy Bishop “Tenure denial massacre” which we covered here at length (see sidebar). In fact, hers was almost a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder, probably with some other cluster B disorders thrown in.

I would not categorically exclude that she is also on the “autistic spectrum” (which runs left of “neurotypical” from “geek” over “Asperger’s” to autism), for the simple reason that science academia is probably the single most congenial environment for people with ASDs.

Elise reports that on Good Morning America, somebody claimed that people with Asperger’s “lack empathy”. This is a very common misunderstanding among laymen. To use a musical analogy: a person with Asperger’s may be as musical as anybody but is hard of hearing. A person who truly “lacks empathy” would have no concept of music. And yes, I would not want to feed all the musicians who have gotten hard of hearing (including, sadly, my other half). But nobody would seriously argue that Beethoven’s late works were “amusical” because he was stone deaf at the time he wrote them?!

To put it another way (I, sadly, have personal experience in these matters). To a sociopath, other people’s concerns simply do not exist, other than perhaps as potential levers for manipulation for their own benefit. To a narcissist, other people only exist as potential sources of ‘narcissistic supply’ or competitors for same. To an “aspie”, the emotions of others are as real as for a “neurotypical”, but opaque. They have no trouble identifying (with) abstract concerns or specific material needs of others, but have extreme difficulty “reading” the emotions of others, not even at the level a neurotypical is able to. It is like the difference between having trouble reading a book because of poor eyesight, and being utterly uninterested in any book.

A commenter at “Ace” has a much more plausible theory.

criminologist & behavioral analyst
casey jordan

– will continue to be called a school shooting, but that is not what it was

murderer known as: a family annihilator
(wants to destroy those they love)
– school was a theater for his massacre because it was his mothers workplace
– but, not direct connection to the school
– the rest of the killing is to get attention
– and, he wants everyone to know, if he is going to die, that everyone knows his name and how upset and how disgruntled he was

UPDATE: Elise Ronan takes no prisoners: “And so it begins, blood-libeling those with autism [spectrum disorders]”

CNN pop shrink declares we have a disorder now

 

 

Correspondence Committee reports that the CNN pop shrink now has tips for ‘Republicans depressed by the election outcome’. Yes, we have a ‘disorder’ now. Gee, diagnosing refractive political disagreement as a disorder: what could go wrong?

Tell her to look up ‘gaslighting‘, which is what her own employers have been perpetrating on the American public:

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

The term “gaslighting” comes from the play Gas Light and its film adaptations, in which a husband secretly dims the gas lights in the house and, when his wife remarks on it, he claims that she is mistaken. This is done to convince the woman that she cannot trust her own judgment, and so will not be believed if she tries to report other strange things that are genuinely occurring, which the husband wishes to keep secret. The term is now also used in clinical and research literature[…]

On a lighter note (ahem), here is Steely Dan live with “Gaslighting Abbie”:

United Steel Workers defending Koch Brothers?!

This rates as the flying pig moment of the day. While the (doctrinaire libertarian, not conservative) Koch Brothers have become the bugbear of the left in general and of the unions in particular, Red State’s Labor Union Report reports a defense of the Georgia-Pacific owners from a very unlikely source: Jon Geenen, VP of the United Steelworkers union.

In a post entitled A Well Intentioned Bad Idea on the union’s website, Geenen points out that, among other things:

• while he does not defend the Koch brothers’s political positions, these are hardly news, as they have been at this for 40 years (continuing the anti-Communist activism of their father who learned first-hand what Communism was like, trying to run a factory in the former Soviet Union)
• their plants are actually highly unionized, they pay their many employees very well, and management and unions have traditionally had a very good relationship
• they are among the few major employers in manufacturing that actually choose to create and maintain jobs in the USA rather than outsource them overseas
• as the company is privately held and there are no stockholders to frighten, a boycott would be a pointless exercise in self-gratification at best (which, of course, I increasingly suspect to be the true essence of left-liberalism)

Go read the whole thing. Keep in mind, of course, that Geenen represents the dwindling private sector unions, and takes a position at variance with other unions that primarily represent government and quasigovernmental employees. Outside the USA as well their positions are not always in lockstep.

Hawaii, tipping, and cultural misunderstandings

Fox News had a segment on about how restaurants in Hawaii are now proposing to add a 15% surcharge to the bill for Japanese tourist.
You say: “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” The rationale is: since Japanese tourists don’t tip (tipping is not customary in Japanese restaurants), the customary 15% tip should be added to the bill so the waiters are not cheated out of their money.
While Japanese are of course the most numerous/visible such group, let’s remove the racial component by pointing out the numerous times I’ve had to remind Belgian and Dutch visitors to the USA about tipping. Now the alleged “excessive parsimony” of the Dutch is a common theme of Belgian jokes about them (the Dutch have similar jokes about the Scottish — neither Belgium nor the Netherlands are big on “political correctness”), but neither the Belgians nor the Japanese have a reputation for stinginess. It’s simply a cultural misunderstanding: waiters in Belgium, the Netherlands (and presumably Japan) are salaried employees and restaurant bills in Belgium, for example, typically state “VAT and service included”. If you were to add a 15% “service charge” to a restaurant bill the Belgian would pay it without a second thought. When I explained to Belgian visitors to the USA or Israel that their tips are the income of the waiters, they understood immediately.
It remains to be seen how mainland American tourists would react if Hawaiian restaurants were to add on a blanket 15% “service charge” to all bills. Yet this would, to a naive outside observer, seem to be the obvious solution…

Dogfight in the sky: terrier forces emergency landing

Weird news item of the day:

A dogfight in the skies over New Jersey forced a packed airliner to make an emergency landing yesterday.

A 12-pound Manchester terrier — apparently channeling Snoopy’s Red Baron — got loose on a US Airways flight and declared war on the passengers and crew, rampaging down the aisle, biting anybody in her way.

Mandy and her owner, an 89-year-old woman who said she was too embarrassed to be publicly identified, had boarded Flight 522 in Newark for a ride to Phoenix.

The pooch had been in a carrier under her owner’s seat. But when Mandy’s dog tranquilizers wore off, the elderly woman put the carrier on her lap and took her best friend out of it.

When Mandy refused to calm down, a man seated nearby tried petting her.

Then Mandy made her great escape.

First, she bit the man. Then she darted off, barking madly.

A heroic stewardess tried to put herself between Mandy and the passengers.

But she was no match for the hot-dogger and became a casualty herself.

The pilot made the emergency landing so Mandy’s two victims could get medical attention — treating all 122 passengers to a surprise visit to scenic Pittsburgh.

They cooled their heels for an hour before everyone — except Mandy and her owner — got back aboard.

The pair were put on a later flight.

US Airways pinned the blame on the woman.

“This passenger let their dog out of the carrier even though they’re not supposed to do that,” groused Valerie Wunder, an airline spokeswoman. “She was told not to.”

Mandy’s owner was questioned by Pittsburgh cops — who decided not to file charges.

Wunder said the airline had not decided what, if any, action would be taken against the woman, but doubted she’d be banned from future flights.

She had no comment on whether Mandy — whose ticket cost $100 — would be welcomed back.

This is what an actual Manchester Terrier (one ancestor of the recently popular Jack Russell Terrier and his American cousin, the Rat Terrier) looks like:

 

Are the VFW endorsing anti-military candidates?!

This is so insane as well as counterintuitive on every level that I just have to pull myself away from overwhelming meatspace stuff to blog about it.

Blackfive reports that VFW-PAC, the political action committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, has decided not only to endorse Lt.Col. Allen West’s opponent, but to endorse the following list of “friends” of the military (all of them Deemocrats):

Barbara Boxer, Alcee Hastings, Barbara Lee, Steny Hoyer, Barbara Mikulsky, Chris VanHollen, John Dingell, Chuckie Schumer, Pat Leahy and Patty Murray

Barbara Boxer — Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! Patty Murray — Whiskey Tango Echo Foxtrot?! Barbara Lee (D-LSD)?!? (Head explodes.) My father-in-law (z”l), who was very active in VFW, must be spinning in his grave.

The full list (via the Blackfive comments) is even more insane, if that were possible. Alan Grayson?! Jim McDermott?!?

I am asking all of you to join me in contacting the VFW to protest this development; supporting a non-vet over LTC West was the last straw.

Call the VFW at 1-202-544-5868.  Email them at: vfwpac@vfw.org.

Oh yeah, and before I forget- Remember when Obama wanted to charge wounded troops for medical care?  VFW supported him on that, too.  READ IT HERE.

VFW- we are done here.  Fix it, or be gone as a veterans organization.

As it turns out, the VFW-PAC itself is at odds with the national leadership. To wit, this VFW press release:

VFW Leadership at Odds with VFW-PAC

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Oct. 8, 2010 – The national line officers of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) are at odds with the VFW Political Action Committee (PAC), calling the methodology process used by the PAC “seriously flawed at best this year and in immediate need of extensive review,” in the wake of the recent congressional endorsements made by the committee.

“Even though the law requires that VFW-PAC be a separate organization, the acronym ‘VFW’ is attached to the committee and the natural assumption is that the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is somehow making the endorsement decisions. Nothing could be further from the truth, but perception is reality,” said National Commander Richard Eubank.

“Obviously, an organization’s political positions have to reflect the opinions of its members. But those opinions can’t be perceived as ‘off the wall,’ and the methodology used this year to grade candidates obviously is skewed in favor of the incumbent. That isn’t fair, and it actually subverts the democratic process.”

Because of the controversy surrounding the endorsements, VFW line officers have decided to bring the question of continued existence of the PAC to the floor during the 112th VFW national convention in August.

Richard L. Eubank
National Commander

Richard L. DeNoyer
Sr. Vice Commander

John E. Hamilton
Jr. Vice Commander

UPDATE 10/12/2010:

Blackfive’s “Mr. Wolf” is not impressed. More here (via C2).

Philly voter rolls reveal dead people, people under 18, convicted felons,…

An ex-DoJ lawyer crunched some numbers on the Philadelphia voter rolls and found some rather… interesting things.

• 102.5% of the citizen voting age population was registered to vote on Election Day 2004.
• Out of a random sample, at least 130 registered voters were under 18.
• 54 more in the sample had birth dates ranging from 1825 to 1899. Either the City of Brotherly Love is also the City of the Fountain of Youth, or it does not discriminate on the basis of presence or absence of a pulse.
• 12 others were incarcerated felons (not eligible to vote according to local law).
• Out of a sample of 385 registered voters allegedly born between 1900 and 1905, 51 (i.e., 13%) were listed as deceased in the Social Security Death Index.

And this is just one county in Pennsylvania.

Assume that there were just 400 or so ineligible voters from all of Philadelphia, and not just from a small sample. Philadelphia is just one of 67 counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If every county had 400 or more ineligible voters on their lists for any given election, and those voters actually voted, roughly 26,800 votes would be ineligible. Multiply that by 50 states and one would be hard-pressed to successfully argue that a problem doesn’t exist when relevant portions of the National Voter Registration Act, such as Section 8, are not enforced — as the DOJ’s Julie Fernandes instructed.

If it is true that the DOJ, as a matter of policy, will not enforce this statute, it is frightening to think of the consequences. Would anyone be able to trust the electoral process knowing that dead or otherwise ineligible voters are casting votes?

The right to vote in America is sacred and should remain as pure as our Founding Fathers intended. (Those same Founding Fathers who declared America a free and independent country during a hot summer in 1776 in … Philadelphia.)

It is time to take action. If the DOJ will not enforce the law, the people must — the Motor Voter law allows private citizens to bring suit against states and voter registrars for not properly maintaining the rolls.

Our right to vote is what gives us the power to choose the government that works for us — “consent of the governed” is a hollow phrase if voter rolls do not accurately reflect “the governed.”

Indeed.

Is 0bama losing the elites?

Via Insty, an article on the Aspen Ideas Festival where comments were anything but an 0bama-worshipfest:

“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.

“The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”

Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. [NCT: note that Zuckerman endorsed 0bama in 2008.] Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.

“We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have…are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”

Zuckerman added that he detects in the Obama White House “hostility to the very kinds of [business] culture that have made this the great country that it is and was. I think we have to find some way of dealing with that or else we will do great damage to this country with a public policy that could ruin everything.”

Ferguson added: “The critical point is if your policy says you’re going run a trillion-dollar deficit for the rest of time, you’re riding for a fall…Then it really is goodbye.” A dashing Brit, Ferguson added: “Can I say that, having grown up in a declining empire, I do not recommend it. It’s just not a lot of fun actually—decline.”

Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.” Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”

[…] In a session Tuesday morning, Silicon Valley guru Michael Splinter piled on. “From an industry standpoint, it’s below what a lot of people in industry have viewed as the solution to the jobs problem,” Splinter, president of the Applied Materials solar energy company, complained about Obama’s economic performance. He was speaking to an agreeable audience in an interview with Atlantic Media owner David Bradley. “When I talk to venture capitalists, their companies are starting to move their manufacturing operations out of the United States…Our corporate tax rate, on a worldwide competitive basis, is just not competitive. Taiwan is lowering their rate to 20 to 15 percent in order to stay competitive with Singapore. These countries have made it their job to attract industry. You don’t get that sense here in the United States.”

Say no more…

Al Gore “massagegate/Poodlegate” and the Birkenstock Tribe

Elsewhere in the same article, an item on the sexual assault allegations against ManBearPig, er, Al Gore:

Presidents of Vice
Police in Portland, Ore., are reopening their investigation into allegations that Al Gore, the U.S. vice president turned Grammy-winning pseudoscience huckster, sexually assaulted a massage therapist in 2006 while visiting the City of Roses. Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner’s Byron York detailed the allegations made by the woman, who has not been named in the press:

Gore also requested work on his abdomen. When that began, “He became somewhat vocal with muffled moans, etc.,” the masseuse recounted. Gore then “demand[ed] that I go lower.” When she remained focused on a “safe, nonsexual” area, Gore grew “angry, becoming verbally sharp and loud.”

The masseuse asked Gore what he wanted. “He grabbed my right hand, shoved it down under the sheet to his pubic hair area, my fingers brushing against his penis,” she recalled, “and said to me, ‘There!’ in a very sharp, loud, angry-sounding tone.” When she pulled back, Gore “angrily raged” and “bellowed” at her.

Then, abruptly, the former vice president changed tone. It was “as though he had very suddenly switched personalities,” she recalled, “and began in a pleading tone, pleading for release of his second chakra there.”

The Associated Press reports that Gore “welcomes” the reopening of the investigation. A spokeswoman says “that Gore ‘unequivocally and emphatically’ denied making unwanted sexual advances. She added that ‘further investigation into this matter will only benefit Mr. Gore.’ ”

The AP adds:

After the alleged incident, the woman said she was dissuaded from contacting the police by liberal friends of hers, whom she refers to as “The Birkenstock Tribe,” and of which she counts herself a member.

“It’s like being the ultimate traitor,” the woman said.

The Birkenstock Tribe evidently has rather backward ideas about the sexes. If the circumstances alleged here were to arise in a more enlightened, Western culture, the man who abused the woman, not the victim, would be regarded as a traitor to the cause.

Full disclosure: I’ve always loathed Birkenstocks or similar footwear, but the woman’s interaction with her peer group looks extremely familiar, even though I encountered it in a radically different context. Welcome to the club, ma’am.

Elsewhere, the therapist described Al Gore in terms of, how shall I put this politely,a poodle rubbing against its owner’s leg. See also here on BigJournalism.com. WARNING: you may need some brain bleach after reading the details given there.

“All poodles are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

UPDATE: On a more serious note, Ed Driscoll: “Dr. Strangegore, or How the International MSM Learned to Stop Worrying and Abandon Objectivity“

PC insanities of the day

I wish I could write “of the week”, because there’s just… so much insanity to report. Via Insty, one of today’s “winners” is from Morgan Hill, CA, near the garlic capital of the world (Gilroy):

CHANGE: Five Morgan Hill students sent home for wearing American flag T-shirts. School officials called the flag shirts “incendiary” because it was Cinco De Mayo.

Read and weep. The article notes that Mexican flag T-shirts and even face paint were much in evidence. These are supposedly not “incendiary” 😉

Another PC anocephaly: an Ann Arbor, MI organizes an elementary school enrichment trip (meet a rocket scientist) where… only black children were allowed. The principal defends this as “an attempt to close the achievement gap between black and white children”.

If this is “post-racial America”, I am a ball-bearing, on which Martin Luther King (a lifelong Republican, BTW) is spinning 6,000 rpm in his grave.

UPDATE: try being an illegal immigrant in… Mexico.

UPDATE 2: Zombie takes on the  Morgan Hill story. According to the commenters, the school district has meanwhile distanced itself from the actions of the principal. Others note that Cinco de Mayo is actually not a big deal in Mexico itself. Yet another notes that United States Code Title 4 Chapter 1, Paragraph 8b actually states wearing the US flag as apparel is an act of disrespect. Live and learn. Of course, we all know that this particular ordinance is observed more in the breach than in the observance.

UPDATE 3: Apparently there are still some voices of sanity in the CA public school establishment and/or  grassroots action gets results. Response from the school district to a commenter at WeaselZippers (h/t: Pi Guy):

Master Sergeant V–

First, thank you for your service to our country, and for your email. Yesterday, the District issued a statement immediately after the incident stating that it did not agree with the actions taken at the Live Oak High School site. Here is an additional statement released today:

“The Morgan Hill Unified School District does not prohibit nor do we discourage wearing patriotic clothing. The incident on May 5 at Live Oak High School is extremely unfortunate. While campus safety is our primary concern and administrators made decisions yesterday in an attempt to ensure campus safety, students should not, and will not, be disciplined for wearing patriotic clothing. This matter is under investigation and appropriate action will be taken.”

I’m afraid with the volume of emails I am receiving, I may not be able to reply personally to any additional comments, but I will endeavor to read everything that comes in my inbox.

Regards,

Bart Fisher

Zombie: South Park is the least of Islam’s problems

A quick introductory tour through the Muhammad Image Archive. Zombie’s comprehensive archive includes images of every type, from illustrations in medieval Muslim literature (!) via depictions in historical mainstream art via depictions on historical ephemera to deliberately offensive cartoons. Never a dull moment.

Veterans Administration discovers “menstrual disorders” in… men

Government healthcare at work! And indeed, SNAFU doesn’t begin to describe this.

Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder.

There was just one problem: The claim was submitted for fibromyalgia.

Make that two problems: The claim was submitted by Glenn McBride, a 40-year-old man from Roanoke, Va., who most definitely does not get menstrual cramps.

[…]

The Department of Veterans Affairs is notorious for bungling health care benefits, and its Roanoke regional office, which handled McBride’s claim, has long been considered among the worst.

In September 2009 a surprise inspection found the office was collapsing under the weight of its own bureaucratic incompetence. Literally.

Its filing system — floor-to-ceiling stacks of overfilled file cabinets and loose claims folders — weighed twice as much as the building’s structure allowed, threatening the lives of everyone inside. Inspectors also found missing and improperly filed, stored and processed claims, among other problems. The regional office was ordered to overhaul the health care processing center completely.

By last month, six months later, there should have been some improvement. Instead, McBride received a letter that included this perplexing request for additional information:

“On the VA Form 21-4138, Statement in Support of Claim you sent on October 8, 2009, you included menstrual disorder. Please specify what you intended to claim for this condition.”

Click here to see the VA’s menstrual letter in all its “glory”. And weep.

One really (ahem) wonders why most Americans don’t think government-run healthcare is a great idea… 😉

Unpaid Apple commercial of the year

Norwegian PM, stranded at airport, runs country from his iPad:

Like thousands of other European travellers, Jens Stoltenberg has been unable to get home due to the cloud of volcanic ash filling the skies over Europe following the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland.

He was in the US attending Barack Obama’s nuclear summit, but was unable to fly home afterwards – like in the UK, all planes in Norway are currently grounded. ‘Due to the delays, I’ll be working from New York,’ Norwegian newspapers reported him as saying.

And now a picture from the official Prime Minister’s Office Flickr stream show’s how he’s working – on a newly purchased iPad. Which is the kind of publicity you can’t buy, frankly, not that Apple really need it.

Of course, the Norwegian prime minister isn’t the only one delayed in reaching Europe – even when he does make it back, he’ll still arrive before the iPad officially does, after Apple pushed back its international release by a month. Although we don’t think that was because of a volcano.

Picture from Statsministerens kontor (Prime Minister’s office) on Flickr, under a Creative Commons licence .

There was probably some poetic license involved here. I’d imagine that typing a kajillion Emails on a virtual keyboard on a touchscreen would get stale really fast. Still, if no “real” computer is available, it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing.

Gamer kiddies to balance the US budget? [no joke]

Via JCM at Correspondence Committee, here is a story that seemed like a late April Fools joke, or a deleted scene from an Orson Scott Card novel.

As the United States continues to struggle with its deficit, a task force created by President Obama to address the situation may be turning to Microsoft to inform the public about the difficulties of balancing a federal budget.

According to USA Today, Erskine Bowles, head of the Obama administration’s budget-balancing task force, has contacted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to see whether the company could build a video game designed to allow gamers “to take a stab at balancing the budget.”

Details on the title are few and far between. Although it sounds like it will be Web-based, the publication didn’t confirm whether the PC-based game would be played online or be downloaded.

Perhaps the bigger question about the budget-balancing title is how the government plans to use it. Is the game simply a way for citizens to understand the nation’s financial issues or is it a way for the government to find good ideas and put them to use? If the government can monitor gamer decisions and use the collective intelligence of its players, maybe, just maybe, some of our larger issues could be resolved.

Of course, while this sort of crowdsourcing could work in theory, for it to work in practice presupposes that politicians are actually interested in balancing the budget rather than maximizing graft and voter buyoffs.