Jts5665

I HOPE THIS ISN’T TRUE BUT IT PROBABLY IS: Prosperity Breeds Idiots.

At the start of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel In the First Circle, a Soviet diplomat on home leave in Moscow tries to make an anonymous call to the U.S. embassy. His purpose: warning the Americans of a Soviet theft of atomic secrets. But he gets a dull-witted, indifferent embassy staffer on the line, and the call goes nowhere. Or almost nowhere. The call is monitored by Soviet security. Arrested and imprisoned at the end of the novel, the diplomat’s final thought about Americans is that “prosperity breeds idiots.”

Solzhenitsyn’s diplomat channels views that were clearly held by the author himself. Comfort and safety, enjoyed too long in the West, invite complacency—and complacency leads to stupidity. As a gulag survivor, Solzhenitsyn had a barely disguised disgust for Western elites with little experience of political murder and repression. Nor could he abide the legion of fools who seemed fascinated, from a secure and prosperous distance, with socialist thought.

Read the whole thing.

THE BABYLON BEE ON THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Political Institution Specifically Designed To Guard Against Angry Mobs Draws Ire Of Angry Mobs.

HIGH-CARB DIETS MAKE YOU FATTER, SICKER, AND DUMBER: WEIRD THAT THE GOVERNMENT PROMOTES THEM. Mediterranean-Keto Diet’s Surprising Effect On Cognitive Function.

SELF-HELP: British traveler flies plane to Spain after airline pilot doesn’t show up.

WHEN VIRTUE-SIGNALLING LEADS TO HORROR: The Terrible Truth About ‘Live Aid.’

The assignment was simple — all this money had been raised, where was it going, was it actually doing good?
He discovered it was not doing good, but, horrifically, unimaginably, the exact opposite. The Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, until then deadlocked in the war, was using the money the west gave him to buy sophisticated weapons from the Russians, and was now able to efficiently and viciously crush the opposition. Ethiopia, then the third poorest country in the world, suddenly had the largest, best equipped army on the African continent.

By this time we had all seen the pictures and TV footage of Bob Geldof, the figurehead of Live Aid, bear hugging and playfully punching Mengistu in the arm as he literally handed over the funding for this slaughter. It was on TV now alright, but as an endless, relentless reel of heroic Bob Geldof highlights. He drenched himself in the adulation and no one begrudged him it, until our investigation exposed the holocaust that Live Aid’s collected donations had help perpetrate on the Eritrean independence fighters.

Most damningly, Keating reported that Geldof was warned, repeatedly, from the outset by several relief agencies in the field about Mengistu, who was dismantling tribes, mercilessly conducting resettlement marches on which 100,000 people died, and butchering helpless people. According to Medicins Sans Frontiers, who begged Geldof to not release the money until there was a reliable infrastructure to get it to victims, he simply ignored them.

But people felt good about themselves, and that’s the important thing.

Related (From Ed): As I wrote at the Weekly Standard in 2004, when Live Aid (minus Led Zeppelin’s disastrous set) was first released on DVD, “While Live Aid was spectacular television, it was just another in a series of Big Events from people who believed that throwing money at a problem eventually solves it. Eerily, it forecast how the left would interact with Iraq: Substitute Mengistu for Saddam Hussein and it’s amazing how all the rest of the players stay the same–the BBC, the United Nations, and celebrities who believe that despots can be reasoned with to do the right thing. We won’t get fooled again? Of course you will.”

“DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION:” Poll: 73 percent of Republican students have withheld political views in class for fear their grades would suffer. When taxpayers tire of funding this, we’ll be told it’s because of “anti-intellectualism.”

TED CRUZ FOR THE WIN:

Heh, indeed.

ON THIS DAY IN 1986, FLIGHT ATTENDANT NEERJA BHANOT DIED SAVING THE LIVES OF PASSENGERS ON PAN AM FLIGHT # 73: She was just two days short of her 22^nd birthday.

Flight #73 originated in Mumbai and was ultimately bound for New York. It was initially carrying 394 passengers, 9 infants, 19 Indian flight attendants and an American pilot and co-pilot.

During a stopover in Karachi, four heavily-armed hijackers—part of the Abu Nidal Organization–stormed the plane. Alerted to the hijacking, the pilot and co-pilot escaped from the cockpit via the Inertial Reel Escape Device, thus leaving the aircraft immobilized on the ground.

Realizing that the plane was pilotless, the hijackers sought out an American passenger, eventually singling out a 29-year-old Californian named Rajesh Kumar. Kumar was ordered to kneel facing the front of the aircraft with his hands behind his head. They threatened to kill him if Pan Am’s negotiators did not send them a flight crew immediately.

Bloodthirsty and dissatisfied with the speed of the negotiators’ response, the chief hijacker shot Kumar in the head and dumped him onto the tarmac. He died before he reached the hospital. Thereafter, they told the negotiators, a passenger would be executed every 15 minutes until a pilot was produced.

The hijackers then turned to purser Neerja Bhanot, who remained calm and collected even when a gun was put to her head. They demanded that she and the flight attendants under her control collect the passports from all passengers. Believing that the hijackers intended to kill the more than 40 Americans on board, she had the flight attendants hide some of the American passports in the seats and dumped the rest of them down the rubbish chute.

For a time, the hijackers considered executing a British national instead, but ultimately did not.

Meanwhile, Bhanot surreptitiously handed a passenger the instructions, hidden in a magazine, for how to open the door and deploy the slide in case the opportunity arose.

The hijackers were stymied. By late evening, the auxiliary power unit shut down, causing all but the emergency lights to come down. At that point, the hijackers tried to set off the explosive belt one of them was wearing. If they’d been successful, they could have blown up everyone on board. Instead, the explosion was rather puny. Immediately, they began shooting their guns and throwing grenades. With bullets ricocheting off the walls, passengers were dying everywhere.

In the bloody melee, Bhanot was able to open one of the aircraft doors. She could have escaped herself, but instead one-by-one she assisted passengers out the door. She died as a result of wounds suffered shielding three children from the hail of bullets.

(The passenger who had been slipped the instructions by Bhanot got his door open too and was able to deploy the slide. So Bhanot gets credit for causing two doors to open.)

Sources differ slightly on the number of dead and injured. I am going with 22 dead, including Bhanot, and 140 injured. Without her, the carnage likely would have been a lot worse.

All four hijackers were arrested, convicted and imprisoned in Pakistan. In late September 2001, Pakistani authorities released the chief hijacker, but he was picked up by American law enforcement authorities shortly thereafter, apparently with the blessing of the Pakistani government. He is currently serving 160 years in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. His fellow terrorists were released in 2008 over the objections of the United States. One was reported dead in a 2010 drone strike, but his death is unconfirmed.

A movie called Neerja was made about Bhanot’s heroism in 2016.  (Unlike most real-life figures portrayed by gorgeous actors or actresses, Neerja Bhanot was drop-dead gorgeous herself. But beautiful or not, she had the right stuff.)

Rest in peace, Neerja.  Americans in particular have reason to thank you.

THE BABYLON BEE DOES IT AGAIN: Walmart Discontinues Auto Part Sales To Prevent Car Accidents.

I’d love to see some folks take this a step further and protest outside a Walmart auto service entrance with signs reading CARS KILL and STOP SELLING DEATH TOOLS and the like.

“EXTREME SELF-CITATION.” Some of The World’s Most-Cited Scientists Have a Secret That’s Just Been Exposed. Hey, if you won’t cite yourself, who will?

WELL, NOW IF THERE’S A RECESSION, TRUMP WILL BE ABLE TO CLAIM THAT THE FED ENGINEERED IT: ‘Grossly irresponsible’ – Larry Summers blasts ex-Fed president’s call to thwart Trump in 2020.

“For a former trusted official of the Fed, whose thinking is inevitably going to be tied to the Fed, to recommend that they … [use] rates so as to subvert the economy and influence a presidential election is grossly irresponsible, and is an abuse of the privilege of being a former Fed official,” said Summers, who formerly was Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and as an economic advisor to President Barack Obama.

A major impact of the Trump presidency is the revelation that many allegedly trusted and impartial organizations are staffed by hacks with a crude political agenda.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: If You Want Civility You Just Might Be a Neo-Confederate and Because of That the Left Really Does Want You Dead.

The opinion pages of the nation’s major newspapers never cease to disappoint. Just a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times announced that it has suddenly discovered that everything to do with everything in American history was a direct result of slavery. Now some twit writing at the Washington Post reveals that the whole call for civility by people on the right triggers her because it is exactly like the rhetoric of defenders of slavery in the antebellum South.

In January of 2011, the New York Times reported, “In Tucson, Obama Urges Americans to New Era of Civility.” Yes, Obama’s a Democrat. But I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that’s he’s not a closet neo-Confederate.

More at Commentary, where under the headline, “Truth? That’s What the Slaveholders Say!”, Jonathan Marks writes:

In fairness to the Washington Post, it has been more than twenty-four hours since it had to correct an op-ed falsely claiming that J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, had lamented a decline in white births. Perhaps its editors regret the error. But what’s truly regrettable is the impulse to publish any and every article, no matter how wrong or foul, postulating that anyone who crosses the left is a racist.

“Vote for us, you bigots,” is quite an interesting argument for Democratic Party operatives with bylines to be making during in the early innings of a presidential election cycle.

SUNLIGHT IS THE BEST DISINFECTANT: Trump can change history by declassifying three Obama-era documents.

With the last few weeks’ definitive guide and follow-up on fish, a reader asked me about trimethylamine N-oxide, or TMAO. What is it?

TMAO is the latest justification given for why eating meat just has to be bad for you. Saturated fat didn’t take. Animal protein didn’t work. Iron was a dud. IGF-1 hasn’t panned out. Methionine isn’t enough. So now they’re using TMAO to convince you not to eat that steak.

How’s it supposed to work?

How TMAO Happens

When certain gut bacteria encounter choline (found in eggs and liver) or carnitine (found in meat, especially red meat), some of it is converted to trimethylamine, or TMA. TMA is the compound that gives fish its “fishy odor.” Fish is actually extremely high in TMA, which I’ll discuss later on. Then, the liver converts a portion of the TMA to TMAO. Studies have shown that elevated serum levels of TMAO are linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, and even all-cause mortality. There’s definitely some heterogeneity among the studies, but enough have found a strong connection between TMAO and all manner of poor health conditions that researchers have focused on this compound.

Okay, so anything that contains choline or carnitine will increase TMAO, which should in theory increase your risk of heart disease. Right? Let’s go down the list.

Dietary TMAO Precursors and Their Effects On Health

Eggs. The best source of TMAO-precursor choline in our diet—eggs—should absolutely skyrocket TMAO levels. Except it doesn’t happen.

Three eggs a day has no effect on TMAO levels, even as it increases choline levels and HDL cholesterol.

Okay, so maybe the choline slipped past the TMA-producing gut bacteria in that study, but what about if you quickly switch people from eating oatmeal for breakfast to eating eggs. Surely bad things will happen, right?

No. Eating eggs instead of oatmeal has no effect on TMAO levels. It increases carotenoid and choline levels, though.

Liver. Okay, liver has to do the trick. It has high levels of both carnitine and choline. But no: feeding liver (among other foods) to men fails to increase TMAO levels above control.

Carnitine. Forget meat. What if you go straight to the offensive precursor itself and give actual human women a big daily dose of carnitine for, I don’t know, 24 weeks? Surely it will do something bad.

Nope. TMAO skyrockets, an indication that these ladies’ gut bacteria are converting carnitine to TMA and TMAO, but serum C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, L-selectin, P-selectin, vascular cell adhesion molecule-1, intercellular adhesion molecule-1 and lipid profile markers are completely unaffected. If gut bacterial conversion of carnitine to TMAO is the preeminent risk factor for heart disease, you’d think some of these ladies’ cardiovascular risk factors would have responded. They had half a year to respond. They did not.

Okay, but maybe there’s lag time between TMAO increases and deleterious changes to health. Nope. They followed those same ladies after cessation of carnitine supplementation. Their TMAO levels dropped, but their health markers stayed the same. No change.

And here’s a study where they used carnitine to increase TMAO levels in patients on dialysis. Not only did nothing bad happen, but the carnitine even reduced markers of vascular injuries. Higher TMAO, better health.

Seafood. As I mentioned earlier, fish and shellfish come pre-contaminated with the TMAO precursor TMA. It’s what gives the characteristic fishy odor, and it definitely gets converted to TMAO. In fact, a human study from a few years ago found that feeding people fish spiked TMAO levels by 60 times. A more recent study even concluded that elevated TMAO levels are a reliable marker for cod intake. The more fish you eat, the more TMAO your body will process.

If you’re going to claim that TMAO is dangerous and causes heart disease, you’ll have to make the case that fish is dangerous and causes heart disease. All the evidence we have points in the opposite direction—that fish and shellfish are protective against heart disease.

So, Why Is TMAO Linked To Poor Health Then?

How do we explain the connection between increased TMAO and poor heart health?

Here it is linked to atrial fibrillation.

Here it is linked to stroke.

Here it is predicting heart events.

The connection is there. And in animal models, TMAO even appears to mechanistically increase atherosclerosis. The mice they dosed with TMAO to increase atherosclerosis were genetically engineered to be ApoE knockouts, a strain of lab mouse that gets heart disease from almost everything, but still.

The connection isn’t causal. It’s an observation. There are no controlled studies giving people foods (or even supplements) that raise TMAO and increase disease or death. There aren’t even prospective observational studies where they track a group’s food intake, TMAO levels, and death/disease over time.

You know what I think (and have always thought)?

High TMAO can be a marker for metabolic disease. It could indicate inhibited kidney function, as the kidneys are response for disposing of excess TMAO. It could indicate poor health in general.

The latest evidence is confirming what I’ve long suspected: the reason high TMAO levels are linked to cardiovascular disease and overall mortality is that both type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease cause elevated TMAO levels. The causality is reversed.

What’s one of the kidney’s primary jobs? Excreting waste materials and toxins. What’s going to happen if the kidney begins to fail or lose its functioning? The stuff that used to be excreted starts backing up. TMAO is supposed to be excreted in the urine via the kidneys. If the kidneys aren’t working, TMAO levels skyrocket.

But even then, high TMAO isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. Check out that study I linked to earlier where women were given carnitine every day. Their TMAO levels skyrocketed but nothing bad happened. No health markers worsened. In one study, they even improved.

The Takeaways…

That’s the thing with biology. There are dozens of reasons TMAO could be elevated, some of them bad, some of them harmless, some of them good.

There simply exists no credible evidence that increased TMAO because you’re eating fish, or eggs, or liver, or meat, does anything untoward to your health. I’m not ruling it out. But the evidence just isn’t there. There’s far more evidence that eating fish, eggs, liver, and meat improve your health.

That’s it for today, folks. If you have any further questions about TMAO, leave them down below. Until then, enjoy your choline and carnitine!

Thanks for reading.

References: 

Schiattarella GG, Sannino A, Toscano E, et al. Gut microbe-generated metabolite trimethylamine-N-oxide as cardiovascular risk biomarker: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis. Eur Heart J. 2017;38(39):2948-2956.

Dimarco DM, Missimer A, Murillo AG, et al. Intake of up to 3 Eggs/Day Increases HDL Cholesterol and Plasma Choline While Plasma Trimethylamine-N-oxide is Unchanged in a Healthy Population. Lipids. 2017;52(3):255-263.

Missimer A, Fernandez ML, Dimarco DM, et al. Compared to an Oatmeal Breakfast, Two Eggs/Day Increased Plasma Carotenoids and Choline without Increasing Trimethyl Amine N-Oxide Concentrations. J Am Coll Nutr. 2018;37(2):140-148.

Zhang AQ, Mitchell SC, Smith RL. Dietary precursors of trimethylamine in man: a pilot study. Food Chem Toxicol. 1999;37(5):515-20.

Samulak JJ, Sawicka AK, Hartmane D, et al. L-Carnitine Supplementation Increases Trimethylamine-N-Oxide but not Markers of Atherosclerosis in Healthy Aged Women. Ann Nutr Metab. 2019;74(1):11-17.

Samulak JJ, Sawicka AK, Samborowska E, Olek RA. Plasma Trimethylamine-N-oxide following Cessation of L-carnitine Supplementation in Healthy Aged Women. Nutrients. 2019;11(6)

Fukami K, Yamagishi S, Sakai K, et al. Oral L-carnitine supplementation increases trimethylamine-N-oxide but reduces markers of vascular injury in hemodialysis patients. J Cardiovasc Pharmacol. 2015;65(3):289-95.

Svingen GFT, Zuo H, Ueland PM, et al. Increased plasma trimethylamine-N-oxide is associated with incident atrial fibrillation. Int J Cardiol. 2018;267:100-106.

Liang Z, Dong Z, Guo M, et al. Trimethylamine N-oxide as a risk marker for ischemic stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. J Biochem Mol Toxicol. 2019;33(2):e22246.

Haghikia A, Li XS, Liman TG, et al. Gut Microbiota-Dependent Trimethylamine N-Oxide Predicts Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Stroke and Is Related to Proinflammatory Monocytes. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2018;38(9):2225-2235.

Jia J, Dou P, Gao M, et al. Assessment of Causal Direction Between Gut Microbiota-Dependent Metabolites and Cardiometabolic Health: A Bidirectional Mendelian Randomization Analysis. Diabetes. 2019;68(9):1747-1755.

The post What’s TMAO, and What Does It Have to Do With My Health? appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

HMM: Lawfare Expects McCabe Arrest – That Explains Why CNN Hired Him…. “When McCabe is charged the media narrative will be it’s because he took the job with CNN… Trump/Barr weaponizing the DOJ and trying to kill free speech etc. CNN doesn’t have to defend their action in hiring a known liar, they’ll instead frame McCabe as a victim, a fellow traveler to the larger cause of justice – whose indictment is evidence of how far Trump and Barr will go to destroy their enemies etc.”

But:

However, it is worth remembering how this entire internecine mess was started.

Andrew McCabe lied to INSD about leaking to the media when the INSD was investigating leaks to the media. McCabe’s statements contradicted the statements of his assigned DOJ lawer, Lisa Page; who said McCabe instructed and coordinated the leaks to journalist Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal.

When confronted with two sets of competing stories, Lisa Page -vs- Andrew McCabe, it appears the IG-INSD asked Page if she could prove her side of the story. The need to prove her version of events appears to be the impetus for Page revealing her text messaging. Page’s texts proved her story, and proved McCabe was lying.

However, from that text messaging review (June/July 2017), in addition to texts between Page and McCabe, the investigation turned-up discussions between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

And that’s how that whole thing got started.

McCabe’s pretty obviously dirty here, but maybe not obvious enough for CNN to shy away from him. I mean, this is CNN.

THAT’S DIFFERENT, BECAUSE IT CAN’T BE USED AGAINST BOLSONARO AND TRUMP: More Fires Now Burning in Angola, Congo Than Amazon: Maps.

HEH: Scientists: Climate Change Killed Us Years Ago And The Trump Presidency Is Some Sort Of ‘Lost’ Final Season Situation.

I KNOW YOU’RE SHOCKED TO HEAR THIS: Footage from camera outside Epstein’s cell deemed unusable. Stuff like this should be a strict-liability crime for those responsible, like in drug manufacturing cases.

GOVERNMENT MEDICINE: I Was a Physician at a Federally Qualified Health Center. Here’s Why I No Longer Believe Government Health Care Can Work.

For example, one of the requirements for federally qualified health centers is that they must maintain a certain number of physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Rural health clinics were the first sites to receive a federal mandate to hire non-physician practitioners.

For me, this meant supervising a physician assistant from day one. And within a few months, a brand new nurse practitioner was added to my list of responsibilities. Despite this extra workload, there was no time allotted in my schedule to provide education, review charts or discuss cases—nor was I compensated for my extra duties.

Federal regulations also create massive amounts of paperwork. While the medical staff worked hard to move patients through the registration process, my schedule often ran hours behind as forms were signed and documents reviewed.

This bottleneck often led to me starting my day late and working into the evening. When I started coming in a bit later than my assigned start time, knowing that patients would not be ready for me, I was given a stern warning by administrators.

Medicine is going to get worse, as those best-qualified to become doctors decide the bureaucratic BS isn’t worth the bother.

And do read the whole thing.

THIS IS USUALLY THE CASE WITH MUCH-HYPED ENVIRONMENTAL STORIES: Everything You’ve Heard About the Amazon Fires Is Wrong.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Stop Sharing Those Viral Photos of the Amazon Burning, says…Mother Jones, astonishingly enough.

Earlier: Don’t Panic: Amazon Burning Is Mostly Farms, Not Forests.

SOCIALISM MAKES A LOT OF THINGS (AND PEOPLE) DISAPPEAR: ‘Monopoly: Socialism’ Game Disappears From Target’s Website.

IT’S ALMOST AS IF HE HAS SOMETHING TO HIDE: Michael Mann Refuses to Produce Data, Loses Case.