Fake butter popcorn flavor linked to Alzheimer's (also found in wine, margarine, more)

Photo via Shutterstock

It actually goes far beyond the fake stuff they put on popcorn at the movie theaters.

Diacetyl, already linked to lung damage in people who work in microwave popcorn factories, is also used to produce the distinctive buttery flavor and aroma of margarines, snack foods, candy, baked goods, pet foods, and even some chardonnays.

Margarine? Wine? Pet food? Okay this is rather disturbing. How do these fake chemical flavorings get approved before we know they're safe? (Hat tip, JMG) Read the rest of this post...

Iowans confused over bizarre statement of "solidarity" from Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan was visiting the Iowa State Fair yesterday when he made a peculiar comment, hoping to show "solidarity" with Iowans.

Ryan also tried to identify with the voters in this battleground state.

“I feel such kindred spirits here,” the Wisconsin congressman, 42, said. “We are united as upper midwesterners, but, you know what it is? At the end of the day, we are Americans.”

Upper midwesterners?

That may be a phrase they use in Wisconsin, Paul Ryan's home state, but I've never heard of it in Illinois, where I was born and raised, and Iowans online tell me they've never heard of it either. One Iowan writes:

I am from Iowa, and I can tell you that there is no such thing as "Upper Midwesterners"

A Wisconsin native goes on to explain the term - and it's not for Iowans:

They do use "Upper" here in Wisconsin John, but only to refer to the Upper Pennisula of Michigan. They also use youpper, to refer to someone who comes from the U.P. of Michigan.....nothing else.

When I asked if this is used to describe Iowans, I was told:

No, that is just Ryan making up his own new words

So, basically, in an effort to bond with Iowans, Paul Ryan used a word to describe them that Iowans have never even heard of.

And who says Paul Ryan isn't the next Sarah Palin? He wouldn't be the first "smart" GOPer who ended up a few fries short of a happy meal. Read the rest of this post...

Ryan was chosen to "exploit the gullibility and vanity of the news media"

That's Paul Krugman, writing from an undisclosed location (vacation). Emphasis and paragraphing mine:

So, let me clarify what I believe is really going on in the choice of Paul Ryan as VP nominee.

It is not about satisfying the conservative base, which was motivated anyway by Obama-hatred; it is not about refocusing on the issues, because R&R are both determined to avoid providing any of the crucial specifics about their plans.

It is — as Jonathan Chait also seems to understand — about exploiting the gullibility and vanity of the news media, in much the same way that George W. Bush did in 2000.

Read the rest; there's quite a bit more. I think he makes his point.

Just wanted to add this data point to the discussion. Will this be the worst year of Mitt Romney's life? If so, I wouldn't want to be the first company Bain Capital "acquires" in 2013 — or the first dog that Romney "acquires."

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Howie Kurtz is a barometer that the media isn't buying Paul Ryan

This is a fascinating piece about Paul Ryan from the Daily Beast's DC bureau chief Howie Kurtz, who is also CNN's media critic.

What's particularly interesting is that Howie is no left-wing sap. If anything, I think folks in the liberal blogosphere feel that Howie might even lean a bit right at times (I know he'd deny that he is, I'm simply reporting what the sometime perception is on my side of the aisle). So that's why this article is particularly interesting. It means that even those in the middle are starting to perceive Paul Ryan as "somewhat radical," and that's interesting (it's also not particularly good news from Romney/Ryan).

But watch out: Romney’s choice may look very different in the coming weeks.

It’s not that the mainstream media have ignored Ryan’s long record of wanting to drastically shrink and revamp government programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid, while pushing tax breaks that disproportionately favor the wealthy. But this somewhat radical agenda is wrapped in the gauzy overlay of an earnest young man who genuinely wants to keep the country from marching off a fiscal cliff.

Ryan may have energized the right—Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch appear ecstatic about his elevation—but the congressman has a long paper trail that could alienate moderate swing voters. If Newt Gingrich could assail Ryan’s Medicare plan as “right-wing social engineering,” little wonder that the Obama team is salivating over the prospect of hanging the Ryan record around Romney’s neck.

Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, adopted by the House, could wind up costing future retirees $6,000 a year as medical costs outpace the fixed benefits, according to independent studies. Conservatives are pushing back against this assessment, with National Review publishing several pieces Monday on the Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactics.

But the details—that Ryan has changed his original plan, that seniors would have a choice of plans and some would be subsidized by the government—are complicated. Kind of like the way that Obamacare is difficult to explain. And if the voucher plan didn’t cost elderly recipients a dime, how much money would it save?

Ryan’s response is that his plan is preferable to the Democratic approach of doing nothing (though how does that square with the charge he and Romney make that the president wants to cut $700 billion from Medicare?).

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Fox News: Ryan budget will increase taxes on poor, middle class

With friends like these.  From Fox News:

While claims that Ryan is slashing the budget are questionable, there are studies to back up claims that the Republicans' tax plans benefit the wealthy more than others.

A June study from the Joint Economic Committee -- which is chaired by a Democrat -- claims middle-class married couples could pay at least an extra $1,300 under Ryan's plan, while those earning more than $1 million a year could see a nearly $290,000 cut.

According to an Aug. 1 study released by the Tax Policy Center, Romney's tax plan would also include cuts that "predominantly favor upper-income taxpayers."

It projected taxpayers making more than $1 million would see tax cuts averaging $175,000. Those making between $75,000 and $100,000 would see an average tax cut of $1,800. And those making under $30,000 would see an average increase of $130, according to the report.

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Ryan was for the stimulus after he was against it

Who is John Galt?
Not me!

Guess who asked the federal government to give his constituents some porky socialism from the stimulus bill after he voted against it?

Yup. Mr. Ayn Rand himself.

Great piece from the Boston Globe:

In 2009, as Rep. Paul D. Ryan was railing against President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package as a “wasteful spending spree,” he wrote at least four letters to Obama’s secretary of energy asking that millions of dollars from the program be granted to a pair of Wisconsin conservation groups, according to documents obtained by the Globe.

The advocacy appeared to pay off; both groups were awarded the economic recovery funds -- one receiving a $20 million grant to help thousands of local businesses and homes improve their energy efficiency, agency documents show.

Ryan’s letters to the energy secretary praising the energy initiatives as he sought a portion of the funding are in sharp contrast to the House Budget Committee chairman’s image as a Tea Party favorite adamantly opposed to federal spending on such programs.

The Globe also reports that Ryan was a bit of an earmark hog as well.

Who exactly vetted this guy?  It's as if the Romney people didn't even know that Ryan authored a budget eliminating Medicare, in addition to wanting to privatize Social Security.  And now we find out taht Ryan was for the stimulus after he was against it.  Priceless. Read the rest of this post...

GOP strategist calls Ryan "Sarah Palin with a PowerPoint presentation"

Meow.  Over three dozen GOP strategists were interviewed by Politico about the feelings on the Ryan VP pick. Most were pessimistic, to put it lightly.  The article is scathing:

In more than three dozen interviews with Republican strategists and campaign operatives — old hands and rising next-generation conservatives alike — the most common reactions to Ryan ranged from gnawing apprehension to hair-on-fire anger that Romney has practically ceded the election.

The most cutting criticism of Ryan, shared only by a handful of strategists, is that Ryan isn’t ready to be president — or doesn’t come across as ready. A youthful man who looks even younger than his 42 years, Ryan could end up labeled as Sarah Palin with a PowerPoint presentation, several operatives said.

“He just doesn’t seem like he can step into the job on Day One,” said the strategist, who professed himself a Ryan fan.

And that’s just what it does to the Romney-Ryan ticket. Forget how it plays in close House and Senate races.

“Very not helpful down ballot — very,” said one top Republican consultant.

“This is the day the music died,” one Republican operative involved in 2012 races said after the rollout. The operative said that every House candidate now is racing to get ahead of this issue.
Another strategist emailed midway through Romney and Ryan’s first joint event Saturday: “The good news is that this ticket now has a vision. The bad news is that vision is basically just a chart of numbers used to justify policies that are extremely unpopular.”

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Romney visits struggling Iowa farmer... who's a multi-millionaire with an in-home art gallery

As ThinkProgress notes, the guy isn't exactly every man.

Yes, according to the Des Moines Register, Koethe owns 54 soy and corn farms. And that’s just one of his jobs.

In previous reports on his activity over the years from the Des Moines Register, Koethe is also a described as a millionaire, a real estate mogul, and a former concert promoter who booked acts like Slipknot at his 24,000 square foot event center.

Making this farmer’s life that much different from the average person, Koethe lives in a spaceship house. It might not have a car elevator like Romney’s planned home, but it’s got its own car wash bay and recreation center.

Even better, check out these photos of the poor farmer's home from the SF Chronicle (these are a few, they have more):

A modest home for ma and pa to rest after
spending a day feeding the pigs.

It figures that the only farmer Mitt Romney knows
has an art gallery in his home.

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In memoriam, Gore Vidal

To the memory of Gore Vidal.

I've been looking for a while — ever since the passing over a week ago — for a way to eulogize Gore Vidal. For my money, Vidal was one of this nation's best-of-bests: one of our best writers, best historians, and best political thinkers.

His style is a delight, his story-telling superb, and his insight in a class with Chomsky's and Zinn's.

So in memoriam Gore Vidal, I offer these.

First, from a banned (at the time) interview and portrait written for Hollywood's trade paper Variety, but never run. The occasion was the release of the stunning Tim Robbins film of 1992, Bob Roberts. My emphasis and paragraphing throughout.

On Bill Clinton:

The only plus about Clinton is that he has absolutely no principles of any sort, and he's intelligent.

Franklin Roosevelt was like that, too. A principled man, like Herbert Hoover, will stick to a balanced budget whatever happens, and the stock market will crash. Roosevelt, faced with the Depression, took us off the gold standard and put the economy back on course. ...

[But] Clinton hasn't got the character of Roosevelt — you can have character without principles.

And then the following, from an excellent eulogy by the masterful John Nichols, a Vidal fan and friend (lucky man indeed). His memorial piece should be read through; it's that good.

Here's a taste:

“Policy formation is the province of a bipartisan power elite of corporate rich [Rockefeller, Mellon] and their career hirelings [Nixon, McNamara] who work through an interlocking and overlapping maze of foundations, universities and institutes, discussion groups, associations and commissions...

“Political parties are only for finding interesting and genial people [usually ambitious middle-class lawyers] to ratify and implement these policies in such a way that the under classes feel themselves to be, somehow, a part of the governmental process.

Politics is not exactly the heart of the action but it is nice work—if you can afford to campaign for it.”

My word for "hirelings" is "retainers" — I think Vidal's is both more accurate and more impertinent. Points to him for both. (By the way, "underclasses" means "rubes." Just saying.)

Here's Gore Vidal on Shays' Rebellion, taught in "standard" (i.e., rinsed in orthodoxy) history books as the first "bad" rebellion against the "good" founders' republic:

“Property is power, as those Massachusetts veterans of the revolution discovered when they joined Captain Daniel Shays in his resistance to the landed gentry’s replacement of a loose confederation of states with a tax-levying central government,” Gore wrote in 1972.

“The veterans thought that they had been fighting a war for true independence. They did not want London to be replaced by New York.

They did want an abolition of debts and a division of property. Their rebellion was promptly put down.

But so shaken was the elite by the experience that their most important (and wealthiest) figure grimly emerged from private life with a letter to Harry Lee.

‘You talk of employing influence,’ wrote George Washington, ‘to appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to be found, or if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders. Influence is no government. Let us have one by which our lives, liberties and properties will be secured or let us know the worst at once.’

So was born the Property Party and with it the Constitution of the United States. We have known the ‘best’ for nearly 200 years. What would the ‘worst’ have been like?”

Here's what Vidal meant by the term Property Party (from elsewhere in Nichol's eulogy):

Gore imagined a “Property Party”—or, to be more precise, he renewed an old populist critique that employed variations on the term—that was made up of Democrats and Republicans with shared loyalty to their paymasters on Wall Street.

Sound familiar? (I'll have what he's having. It didn't hurt him one bit.)

Farewell, Mr. Vidal. You're horribly missed, at least in this man's estimation.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Poll: Voters were more excited with Sarah Palin as VP

Yikes. And folks hated her.

A new survey indicates that a great many Americans aren't enamored with the guy who wants them spending their golden years subsisting on ramen noodles and strenuously networking to land jobs as Walmart greeters.

Ariel Edwards-Levy: "Americans' initial reaction to Paul Ryan is decidedly lukewarm, with more rating his selection for vice president as negative than positive, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll taken after the announcement.

Ryan's ratings were less positive than those for any other vice presidential pick polled on by Gallup since 2000, including Sarah Palin, Joe Biden and Dick Cheney. The only other recent vice presidential selection to gain net negative ratings was Dan Quayle, in 1988.

UPDATE: USA Today has more:

In a nationwide survey taken Sunday, 39% of registered voters call Republican contender Mitt Romney's selection of Ryan "excellent" or "pretty good" while 45% rate it as "only fair" or "poor." Sixteen percent have no opinion.

That's the most tepid reception for a running mate since 1988, when then-vice president George H.W. Bush picked Quayle, an Indiana senator who immediately ran into questions about his draft history during the Vietnam War and whether he was prepared for the presidency.

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Video: Beware of falling cats

I love the reaction from the guy the best. UPDATE: I had no idea that the notion of "ceiling cat" was actually a famous Internet meme going back years.

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Is a judge compromised by blogging?

British judges were warned against blogging recently. And while our initial reaction might be to cry "over-reaction," I'm not convinced that the warning (below) is without merit.

The new rules are:

1. Blogging by judges is still okay.
2. You cannot identify yourself as a judge.
3. You cannot post content which might lead someone to question your impartiality.
4. These same rules apply to anonymous blogging.

Well, let's dissect this a bit.

1. They didn't ban judges from blogging all together, so that's a good sign.

2. Their concerns about anonymous blogging - that it's not a guarantee that your secret identity won't be found out - is justified.

3. Now for the thing about identifying as a judge. People aren't stupid. It's not very hard to figure out that someone's a judge if they use their real name. So, while not saying you're a judge will help keep the general public in the dark (because most people won't google you to figure out who you are), it's not a guarantee that they won't find out.

4. And now for the crux of the matter, bias. I'm always a bit conflicted on this one. People often raise the same concerns about journalists - not only concerns about their supposed bias, but concerns that the bias not show. Is that a nuance without a difference? After all, a journalist is just as biased whether he shows his bias or not. The only issue with revealing his bias is that after it's revealed, at least now we know about his bias. And isn't it better to know about the bias of journalists, and judges, than not know about it? Which also raises the point of "why just judges"? Isn't this concern relevant to a lot of professions - journalists, any government employee?

One downside of knowing someone's bias is that people could try to play the refs, as it were. If you knew a judge hated bloggers, for example, you might try to get before that judge (or avoid him, as the case may be) if you had a case involving a blogger. You also might try to craft your case to appeal to the judge's bias. Same goes for pitching a reporter if you knew their biases.

One problem I foresee - defining "bias." What exactly is it that the judges shouldn't be opining about? The guidance isn't clear.

Second problem, the guidance only applies to "blogging." What about Twitter? What about Facebook?

And finally, to cede one point to those concerned about judicial blogging, one could argue that blogging is no different than any other kind of writing, be it in a newspaper or where. So why issue special guidance? Because blogging is online, and is often done without an editor. Thus the sphincter of better judgment may be missing. Just as with emails, blogging makes it far too easy to fire off a nasty answer (or comment) to someone who ticks you off. It's an impulse you might not have followed through on, or at least would have caught it after the fact but before publication, had your comment been prepared for publication in the Sunday Times, and had to go through an editor first.

Now for the memo:

Blogging by Judicial Office Holders

Introduction

This guidance is issued on behalf of the Senior Presiding Judge and the Senior President of Tribunals. It applies to all courts and tribunal judicial office holders in England and Wales, and is effective immediately.

Definitions

A “blog” (derived from the term “web log”) is a personal journal published on the internet. “Blogging” describes the maintaining of, or adding content to, a blog. Blogs tend to be interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments. They may also contain links to other blogs and websites. For the purpose of this guidance blogging includes publishing material on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.

Guidance

Judicial office holders should be acutely aware of the need to conduct themselves, both in and out of court, in such a way as to maintain public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.

Blogging by members of the judiciary is not prohibited. However, officer holders who blog (or who post comments on other people’s blogs) must not identify themselves as members of the judiciary. They must also avoid expressing opinions which, were it to become known that they hold judicial office, could damage public confidence in their own impartiality or in the judiciary in general.

The above guidance also applies to blogs which purport to be anonymous. This is because it is impossible for somebody who blogs anonymously to guarantee that his or her identity cannot be discovered.

Judicial office holders who maintain blogs must adhere to this guidance and should remove any existing content which conflicts with it forthwith. Failure to do so could ultimately result in disciplinary action. It is also recommended that all judicial office holders familiarise themselves with the new IT and Information Security Guidance which will be available shortly.

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