The Death Rattle of Mainstream Conservatism

James Edwards nails the Glenn Beck rally. A sample:

It was about “restoring honor” or something, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Or it was a way of supporting the troops, depending on which day you listened to Beck.
Then it turned into a rally to reclaim the Civil Rights movement, and give it back to the people who Beck swears pioneered the Civil Rights movement, right wing conservatives. Yes, that’s what Beck actually claims to believe. Leave it to Glenn Beck to make white-hating black columnist Leonard Pitts look sane and reasonable. [...]

 As it turned out, the rally was actually a huge revival meeting, in which Beck implored America to turn back to the god(s) of our Jewish-Christian-Muslim-Hindu-Mormon-Voodoo-Sikh-Zoroastrian heritage that made America great. He had over 200 members of the clergy on the podium, and he stressed that they were from “all faiths” and it didn’t matter which god we pray to, as long as we pray to something or someone, singular or plural. Just pick a higher power and go with it. In other words, it was the largest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in history. Listen as Beck tells the crowd to “go back to your church, your synagogue, your mosque” and get to work on “refounding America.”

All that implicit whiteness, wasted. Beck and Palin are trying to take back the real America, and for them the real America is the one that leftists have spent the decades since 1965 turning into the one we know today, the one with white race replacement built into its very foundations. Beck and Palin are proud of their people, proud that they have voluntarily - or involuntarily, depending on your point of view - relinquished the nation controlled by their ethnic group for the great universal nation, where all are welcome - except the natives - where MLK is the only Ph.D. (other than Kissinger, perhaps) routinely styled "doctor" and who has become America's patron saint.

An anecdote: the other day when I was out shopping, I became more than usually cognizant of the large number of illegal aliens around, many of the women toting their anchor babies. The sentiment that hit me was that I lost all respect for white people for allowing this to happen. The sentiment is not entirely fair, I realize, yet the mass of apolitical whites who spend their time watching televised sports or driving around in their SUVs have, partly through their own fault, been droned into a state of stupor in which their nation is rapidly being stolen from them. Beck and Palin's rally has done nothing to dissuade me from that feeling. They, like so many white Americans, are too stupid to see what is in front of their eyes.

Scientists Scratch Each Others Backs

Nature News reports on an easy way to boost a paper's citations: include more references.

A long reference list at the end of a research paper may be the key to ensuring that it is well cited, according to an analysis of 100 years' worth of papers published in the journal Science.

The research suggests that scientists who reference the work of their peers are more likely to find their own work referenced in turn, and the effect is on the rise, with a single extra reference in an article now producing, on average, a whole additional citation for the referencing paper.

"There is a ridiculously strong relationship between the number of citations a paper receives and its number of references," Gregory Webster, the psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville who conducted the research, told Nature. "If you want to get more cited, the answer could be to cite more people."

This is akin to blogrolling, the citing of others in the hope that one gets cited in return.

Although the results represent a correlation only, and thus don't prove causation, the study calls into question whether judging a paper by the number of its citations really shows that the paper is important. Highly-cited papers may be that way only because they have included more references, not because of their intrinsic importance. Therefore, our view of what constitutes the most important science being done today, as well as who the important scientists are, could be highly skewed, giving a false depiction of scientific progress.

A Note on Hyperinflation

Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal recommends Gonzalo Lira's excellent piece on hyperinflation, which we discussed here. Wenzel points out a couple of things he believes could be different in a U.S. hyperinflation as compared to that which Chile suffered.

The one note of caution I must add is that Lira looks beyond a coming crisis for America and expects things to return to a new better normal, as it did in Chile. This may or may not occur in the United States and may take years or decades if it does return to a new normal. The real point to keep in mind is that things could be very different for the economy, very soon. Learn as much you can about volatile economies, especially those that suffered under hyper inflation, so that you have some kind of edge if such a period hits the U.S.

One other point, during hyperinflations asset prices including stocks tend to go up. The drop in the stocks in Chile during the hyperinflation is likely the result of a great fear the companies were going to be nationalized.

Lira ultimately feels optimistic that hyperinflations don't last long and that things soon return to normal, but we really don't know whether that would be the case here, nor do we know the particular factors that lead to a new normal. Presumably, conditions in a hyperinflation force the economy into new solutions. Chile had the "advantage" of a right-wing coup, which I rather doubt would happen here.

All-Male Team Trapped in Mine

While perusing some of the latest news stories about those 33 trapped miners in Chile, this reporter noticed something that the mainstream appears to have missed: every single one of those miners is a man.

I found this strange, as I would have thought that with the feminist movement and all the agitation for opening up traditionally male fields to women, that at least some of those miners would have been female. Maybe Chile is lagging in that department, and we need to invade the country so that we can bring our enlightened values of female freedom to that benighted country. We should force them to have female miners.

Wait a minute; it just now occurs to me that in every story I've ever read about mining disasters, every one of the victims was male. I can't ever recall a single female victim of a mining collapse or fire. Now that I think about it, every one of the dead on that blown oil rig in the Gulf was a man too.

So maybe we should start by invading our own country and forcing women into the mines. Break that glass mine shaft and all. The sheer bigotry of keeping women out of the mines in this day and age is appalling.

Small Blog Matter

A certain female blogger, who has since deleted her blog, once attracted quite a following writing about HBD issues. She's since revealed herself to be little more than an anti-white troll who believes that white Americans have no right to restrict immigration. She still comments on other blogs, and has a profile, the pic of which she's recently changed to a pornographic one of a mixed-race couple. See here if you can stand it - it is NSFW and very offensive. (Update: don't click through unless you can handle it; my intention is merely to provide evidence that I'm not fantasizing about the nature of the photo. Since it in no way represents the blogger, it's sole intention can only be provocation.)

Anyway, on a recent thread at One STDV on which I commented, she came along with her obscene photo, at which point I deleted my comment, as I can't have my name on the same page as that. I wrote to One, telling him about the photo and my deletion, at which point he threatened to delete her comments unless she changed the photo. She has not done so, and One has not followed through on his threat. I also wrote to him about this.

I won't be making any comments over there unless and until she's banned. I don't want to go all Auster on this and tell someone how he should run his blog, but there you have it. Tempest in a teapot, I know, but I don't believe that conservative/nationalist bloggers should be giving space to anti-white perverts.

How Hyperinflation Happens

Gonzalo Lira has penned a couple of pieces on how he believes that hyperinflation will hit the U.S.. (Part 1, part 2. They're longish, but fascinating. Anyone interested in surviving with wealth and sanity intact would do well to read them.) In the second part, he tells the following story:

Another true story: A banker friend of mine manages the assets of a fabulously wealthy 70-something gentleman, whom I'll call Alfredo. In 1973, Don Alfredo was a youngish man, just starting out, with a degree in engineering but no money—until he inherited US$3,000 from a deceased aunt. Alfredo realized that the $3,000 were in a sense worthless: He couldn’t buy anything with them, and it wasn’t enough for him to leave the country and start over someplace else. After all, even then, $3,000 was not that much money.

So he took those $3,000, went down to the stock exchange, and spent all of it on Chilean blue-chip companies: Mining companies, chemical companies, paper companies, and so on. The stock were selling for nothing—less than penny stock—because of the disastrous policies of the Allende government. His stock broker at the time told him not to buy stocks, as Allende’s government, it was thought, would soon nationalize these companies as well.

Alfredo ignored his broker, and went ahead with the stock purchases: He spent all of his $3,000 on buckets of near-worthless equities.

On September 11, 1973, the commanders in chief of the four branches of the Chilean military staged a coup d’état. Within a year, Alfredo’s stock had rebounded about ten-fold. Since then, they’ve multiplied several thousand-fold—yes: Several thousand-fold. Don Alfredo has lived off of that $3,000 investment ever since—it’s what made him a multi-millionare today.

In his pieces, Lira emphasizes not the apocalypse, but post-apocalypse. Hyperinflation would be a hellish time, but anyone prepared could see themselves doing something like Don Alfredo.

Addendum: Don Alfredo's story reminds one of John Templeton's first great score; in 1939, Templeton went to the NYSE and bought 100 shares of every company whose share price was under one dollar - there were 134 of them, including some in bankruptcy - and over the next few years "turned large profits", probably hundreds of percent worth.

Another Sign of the Times

My brother Tim, who has been classical music critic for the Orange County (California) Register for over ten years, has been taken off the classical music beat; he's been reassigned to write... the celebrity column.

In his post, Tim explains the situation, which includes both the financially dire straits of newspapers today, as well as the increasing dumbing down of everything. The Register polled its readers, and they wanted less classical music coverage and more celebrities. So Tim's editors gave him the assignment, and the readers will get it good and hard.

A couple of ironies here: one, as Tim points out, he will go from the least read writer on the paper to one of Southern California's more popular, albeit against his will. The other irony he left unsaid. Tim shares many of my curmudgeonly and reactionary qualities, so longtime readers of this blog will understand the irony when I say that this would be like me writing a celebrity column. Not a good fit. Fortunately Tim is a student of the writings of Mencken, Dr. Johnson, and Dwight MacDonald, so the celebrity-loving readers and editors of Southern California may get more than they bargained for.

The masses have revolted, and in this case they won.

Sign of the Times

From an ad posted on a gym bulletin board:

Babysitter
Ivy League educated

Excellent arts and crafts skills
Loves soccer, basketball, and other sports

TONS of experience!

Call Cybil (xxx)xxx-xxxx

Ox Goring

Here is a guy with a real bee in his bonnet about me: he refers to me as... "McAuster". Pretty funny, sounds like a TV show. His blog is loaded with imprecations against the ignorant - like me - and he liberally lards his writing with words like "retardate". Consider:

McAuster at it again.

Dennis McAuster (Mangan), the Irish (no, wait, only "1/4 Irish") Larry Auster (*) is at it again, supporting Lynn in Lynn's response to critics of his original paper.

Surprise, surprise. What to expect from someone who confidently announces on his blog that most Italian immigrants to America were from the north - a complete falsehood - with the logic that Italian outflow data show a majority of emigration from the north. After all, as we know, they all went to the USA, right?

Perhaps McAuster's interest in IQ needs to extend to a self-evaluation?


*While I agree with much of McAuster's critiques of Auster (who is really awful), there is also a bit of "projection" there. After all, Auster's "shtick" about "anti-Semitism" is that while he, Auster, is "allowed" to critique Jews, if Gentiles do the same (even using the same arguments) it is "anti-Semitism." McAuster will criticize the Irish, but god forbid anyone else does so - then he uses vulgarity and exposes his self-interested ethnic sensitivities. If called out on it, he then claims, "I'm only 1/4 Irish." If so, then what can one say except that McAuster's part-Irish identity must be really, really important to him. It must contribute predominantly to his "paleo-atlantid" (i.e., suspiciously swarthy for a northern European) phenotype as well.
Posted by JWH at 5:10 AM

There's all kinds of projection going on here. You'll have to take my word for it, but not only do I not care where in Italy most immigrants came from, I don't care what their IQs are, and furthermore I don't care who criticizes the Irish. (Though I know someone who does.) I also don't identify as Irish - I'm an American.

I'll also admit my ignorance on a lot of the genetic stuff discussed there and elsewhere on the net. I know it will be hard for the know-it-all blogger above to believe, but some of us like to to explore ideas, kick around things, and it has nothing to do with being "certain" about anything, nor about defending any ethnic identity other than white American.

I don't think anyone has ever "called me out" on being Irish, with me answering that I'm only 1/4. Complete fantasy on this guy's part. In fact, I've been excoriated in comments for offhand critical remarks about the Irish.

That alleged North-South Italian IQ gradient, judging from what I've read both at the above blog and elsewhere around the net, has really got a lot of people's goats. Probably they are the same people that have no problem with asserting the low IQs of blacks or Hispanics, but draw the line at making a judgment on Italians. Obviously there's controversy about this, but since Richard Lynn has forgotten more about IQ than most bloggers have ever learned, I naturally find his views interesting, and pass them along on this blog. He could be wrong; I don't think so, but it's possible.

The above blogger has some ideological agenda that, excuse my invincible ignorance, I can't figure out. No sane person blows his top over matters of science unless his ox is being gored.

Diseases of Civilization

The graph is from a paper, Insulin Resistance as a Predictor of Age-Related Diseases. The authors study 208 "apparently healthy, nonobese individuals", classified them into tertiles based on insulin resistance, and then evaluated them 4 to 11 years later for the "clinical endpoints" of CVA (stroke), type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, cancer, and/or hypertension. Around 70% of all endpoints were seen in the highest tertile of insulin resistance, with the rest in the second highest, and none in the lowest.

Overweight and obesity, lack of exercise, and consumption of refined carbohydrates are the main correlates of insulin resistance. All of these are associated with the modern, developed-world lifestyle, and all are in the power of the individual to change. Furthermore, the conditions promoted by insulin resistance are all associated with aging.

Moral of the story: if you don't feel like getting cancer or heart disease or otherwise dying young, cut the carbs, don't become overweight, and get some exercise. These diseases don't strike by chance.

That North-South Italian IQ Gradient

The Inductivist reports on a paper (link), that criticizes Richard Lynn's paper on North-South Italian IQ differences, which we discussed here and here. Lynn responds.

Beraldo (this issue) and Cornoldi, Belacchi, Giofre, Martini, and Tressoldi (2010) (CBGMT) have eight criticisms of my paper (Lynn, 2010) claiming that the large north–south differences in per capita income in Italy are attributable to differences in the average levels of intelligence in the populations. CBGMT give results for seven data sets for IQs in the north and south of Italy. All of these show that IQs are higher than in the north than in the south, although the differences are not as great as those I calculated. Other criticisms to the effect that the PISA tests are not measures of intelligence are refuted. The results of two further studies are given that confirm that IQs in the north of Italy are approximately 10 IQ points higher than in south.

Jason Malloy comments that other data backs up Lynn.

From what we know about human biodiversity and from Lynn's original paper and response, I'm going with Lynn.

Assimilation

Ross Douthat has a post on assimilationists and nativists:

There’s been a lot of criticism of my column’s suggestion that the idea of America as a distinctive culture — English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon and/or Western, Protestant and then “Judeo-Christian” — has driven both a positive assimilationism and a darker nativism over the years, and indeed that these two impulses are often intertwined. Many writers seem convinced that that assimilation and nativism aren’t intertwined at all, but rather diametrically opposed. “Nativism in the late 19th century was preoccupied with keeping foreigners out of the United States,” not assimilating them, Jamelle Bouie writes. “The pro-assimilation forces are on the progressive side, in the first camp Douthat mentions,” objects Phoebe Maltz, rather than having anything to do with cultural conservatives. “The assimilationists and the exclusionists aren’t and haven’t been the same people,” Jacob Levy tweets. And so forth. [...]

It would be nice, obviously, if you could draw a bright line between benighted exclusionists and enlightened assimilationists in American history. But the record doesn’t really support that kind of line-drawing. The two tendencies can be separated, and sometimes were. But they just as often coexisted in the same movements and institutions — and in the same human hearts.

In that last paragraph, Douthat seems to be using the words "benighted" and "enlightened" without irony, something that is unusual coming from a conservative, to say the least. I think that we could conclude that Douthat isn't much of a conservative, just less loopy than the usual NYT fare, i.e. someone who just wants to keep the replacement of America's population running at a slower pace than leftists.

In the whole column, Douthat makes no mention of the desirability of immigration; it's just assumed to be desirable. He only worries about whether immigrants become "assimilated" (to what, is the question), and concedes that America's "English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon and/or Western, Protestant and then “Judeo-Christian”" has played a role in assimilation.

But America is now fractured and arguably no longer even Judeo-Christian - see the Ground Zero mosque - the immigrants are changing us. Rather than have this useless discussion of how immigrants can be assimilated, better to question whether immigration is any longer even desirable. You know my opinion.

Pakistan's Floods

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – More than four million Pakistanis have been made homeless by nearly three weeks of floods, the United Nations said on Thursday, making the critical task of securing greater amounts of aid more urgent.

The U.N. had earlier said that two million people had lost their homes in the worst floods in Pakistan's history.

Aid agencies have been pushing for more funding as they try to tackle major problems such as food supplies, lack of clean water and shelter and outbreaks of disease. Link.

Isn't there something off about a nuclear-armed country that needs foreign aid to help its citizens during a flood? Why do they deserve help and money from us? Is Saudi Arabia going to pony up, or is it just us Western suckers whom the U.N. expects to fund another failed Third World country with nuclear weapons?

Of course, if we do help, they'll just hate us more than ever.

Whites Killed Christ

The old anti-Semitic trope has it that, since Jews were allegedly responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, their descendants are guilty of the crime and deserve to be hated and persecuted.

In a recent thread here, commenter Yan Shen took the view, which is shared by mainstream politically correct opinion, that whites are collectively guilty because of their participation in the enslavement of blacks and in segregation. So guilty are whites, he said, that they simply must open their borders to non-whites from around the world, and in fact do not deserve their own nation-state on the North American continent. Despite the fact that we whites had one for 200 years - it was called the U.S.A. - and despite the fact that until the past century slavery had been an almost universal institution in which virtually every country and ethnic group participated, including blacks and Orientals, and despite the fact that most whites did not engage in slavery nor benefit from it and in fact whites were instrumental in ending slavery around the world and many died doing so, and despite the fact that visiting the sins of the fathers on the children is a highly dubious concept at best, the current climate of opinion, as ably elucidated by Yan Shen, holds whites guilty for all time of the sin of slavery.

This meme of white guilt bears close resemblance to the meme of Jewish guilt for the death of Christ. The similarities include inheritance of guilt and suitability of punishment due to the past actions of some members of the group; the rewriting of history into myth; and perhaps most of all, the elevation of the "crime", whether the killing of Christ or the enslavement of blacks, into a cosmic event, one whose effects reverberate through consciousness, and one which involves the persecution of a man or a group regarded today as victimized and saintly.

The leftist or even mainstream liberal view of white guilt for slavery and segregation is in all respects the same as that of Jewish guilt for the death of Christ taken by Christian anti-Semites.

We Wanna Be Like Israel

Maybe not "we", I'm speaking only for myself.

Israeli Water Engineer discusses the anchor babies battle in Israel.

There are 2 to 5 million Eritreans and Sudanis moving from the Red Sea coast towards Israel, with the idea of infiltrating the border and find a job here. About 100,000 have succeeded and granted refugee or temporary status; the rest are crowding in the Sinai frontier. Yesterday there was an obscure incident in Sinai, the beduins that guide them wanted more money, the Eritreans refused, the Beduins tied them (about 200 of them), they escaped and took the Beduin weapons and in the shootout half a dozen were killed. Many of them have formed families in Israel and there are tens of thousands of "illegal" children born in Israel.

And from the L.A. Times we have Israel to deport hundreds of migrant workers' children:

Israel moved Sunday to deport the offspring of hundreds of migrant workers, mostly small children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never seen their parents' native countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new policy was intended to stem a flood of illegal immigrants, whose children receive state-funded education and healthcare benefits, and to defend Israel's Jewish identity.

"On the one hand, this problem is a humanitarian problem," Netanyahu said during a meeting Sunday of the Cabinet, which had debated the move for nearly a year. "We all feel and understand the hearts of children. But on the other hand, there are Zionist considerations and ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel.

"We don't want to create an incentive for the inflow of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrant workers," he said.

Wow, this Netanyahu fellow makes a lot of sense. A nation isn't responsible for the welfare of non-citizens; their parents and their home nations are. The children were born to legal immigrants, whom I assume live in Israel on the sufferance of the government, which can be withdrawn at any time. A nation isn't required to admit all and sundry, not only for Netanyahu's stated reasons, but for any reason at all.

Imagine if an American president were to make the case that the nation was in danger of losing its American character by admitting too many immigrants: it would be astounding. What we have today is the exact opposite: a policy of admitting as many immigrants, legal and illegal, as possible, mainly because the general consensus is that America is just too damned American.

Awhile back, Half Sigma remarked:

Ironic how the White Nationalists hate Israel, yet they want to make the U.S. more like Israel.

Again, speaking only for myself, and with the proviso that I've made clear my problems with the term "white nationalism", HS's remark is mistaken - besides verging on malicious, using the typical leftist trope of attributing "hate" to someone you disagree with. Israel's raison d'etre is to be the Jewish State, and at least some of the leaders there are clear-thinking enough that they're not about to let a global pity-party which wants to let the West and Israel be overrun by Third World immigrants ruin their nation and people. What I want is a nation-state for my people whose leaders have the same political will. Egypt or Turkey could take in all those immigrants, but it's odd that no one ever seems to want to move to those places.

What Awaits

An article at Zero Hedge, There Will Be No Double Dip... It Will Be A Lot Worse by Egon von Greyerz, makes the case that a calamitous decline in the world economy is now unavoidable. Nothing the Fed or any other monetary authority can do will stop it, though they will certainly try by the only expedient they know, money printing. This will lead, says von Greyerz, to a hyperinflationary depression, along with attendant social unrest and Lord knows what else. Definitely read the whole thing.

This bit struck me:

The “conventional wisdom experts” also say that it will be years before we can see inflation or hyperinflation. In our view it can happen a lot faster. The world economy is resting on a foundation of matchsticks. All that is needed is a change in confidence or psychology for this fragile foundation to crumble. Falling currencies, rising bond yields and falling stock markets could very quickly result in a vicious and fast spinning hyperinflationary circle. The frailty of the financial system could make this happen like a flash fire.

What's different now from about three years ago? Mainly, psychology. Sure, more debt has been issued, but for instance the drop in housing prices started long before that. Investors and everyone else are now less confident. The savings rate has increased.

So, the change to a worse state could happen, as the man says, in a flash. I shudder to think of the state of the country and the world when it happens. It will be much more than a matter of trying to preserve one's wealth; it will be a matter of a crumbling society and all that that entails.

Zuckerman Unbound

In today's WSJ, Mortimer Zuckerman, billionaire real estate mogul and owner of U.S. News and World Report - by the way, how's that doing? - has an opinion piece that emits that masturbatory quality seen in so many mainstream opinion pieces; what it says is, I'm a billionaire who's involved in politics, so listen to what I say even if it's damn near meaningless. The End of American Optimism. I did find something useful in it, however, namely how the American hostile elite remains implacably alienated from white America - flyover country - and how they use hoary cliches and ignorance to tell us that fundamentally nothing must change.

Given that nearly eight in 10 new jobs, according to the administration, will require work-force training or higher education, it furthermore makes no sense that we have reversed the traditional American policy of welcoming skilled immigrants and integrating them into our economy. Because of a recrudescent nativism, we send home thousands upon thousands of foreign students who have gotten masters and doctoral degrees in the hard sciences at American universities. These are people who create jobs, not displace them. The incorporation of immigrants used to be one of the core competencies of our economy. It's time to return to that successful model.

I must have missed the "reversal" of "traditional American policy of welcoming skilled immigrants", because as far as I know, we're still admitting over a million legal immigrants annually. Granted, in favor of Mr. Zuckerman's point about skills, we seem to be admitting them on no other basis than that we have to, because, well, if we didn't we'd be racist. Somali refugees and Pakistani cab drivers don't quite fall into the "skilled" category, unless we're talking their skill at milking the system and making large swathes of cities unfit for residential use.

Then there's the "recrudescent nativism": ah, here's the nub of the matter. Zuckerman wants us to forget our "nativism" so we can admit even more immigrants who allegedly "create jobs". It's (almost) all about money for him, an immigrant himself. But it's also about how much he holds white Americans in contempt for thinking that they might like a country of their own, especially the country that used to be theirs.

The following passage illustrates what I mean about the masturbatory quality of pieces like these: uninformed by critical analysis, it merely repeats a tired cliche that reinforces the status quo of huge government, as well as reveling in ignorance of why we have an education problem.

Higher education is another critical issue. As President Obama pointed out last week in his speech at the University of Texas, we have fallen from first to 12th in college graduation rates for young adults. The unemployment rate for those who have never gone to college is almost double what it is for those who have.

Education may be the key economic issue of our time, Mr. Obama said in his speech, for "countries that out-educate us today . . . will out-compete us tomorrow." To improve our performance will involve massive increases in scholarship support for higher education, and an increase in H-1B visas for foreign students who get M.A.s and Ph.D.s in the hard sciences.

We have legions of un- and under-employed scientists and others with higher educations, in part because of the very policies Zuckerman wants more of, namely more government subsidies and more H-1B visas for his beloved foreigners. There's no mention of the education bubble, nor of students overloaded with debt, nor of any inkling of why other countries might "out-compete us".

More AIDS Censorship

This morning I've had a comment from Christian Fiala, who was a co-author of the now-withdrawn paper whose main author was Peter Duesberg. This is the paper which led to the sacking of Bruce Charlton from Medical Hypotheses - in case you haven't been following the story.

Anyway, the last post I wrote on this topic, The AIDS-Industrial Complex, linked to an article by UC Berkeley scientist Malcolm Potts. Dr. Fiala has informed me that the article has been disappeared, like some victim of the Argentine secret police.

So, even UC Berkeley, Duesberg's home base and a state-funded institution supposedly dedicated to the advancement of learning, has succumbed to AIDS censorship by withdrawing an article that contained some praise for Duesberg, while even ultimately disagreeing with his conclusions.

Bishop Berkeley is spinning in his grave.

Links

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff. Some of us do.

Swine flu pandemic advisers had financial ties to vaccine makers. I'm shocked.

Plundered art: At least one European nation is refusing to return art plundered during wartime. Sweden is the nation and the war the Thirty Years War. The Czech Republic is the victim and, knowing Sweden, if the victim were Burundi or Tunisia, it would be falling over itself in its haste to return the items.

Housing crisis reaches full boil in East Point; 62 injured. Them Section 8 vouchers be dangerous. Meanwhile, flood-ravaged residents of Ames, Iowa, lined up quietly for bottled water.

Obama: "Islam has always been part of America"

Statement by the President on the Occasion of Ramadan.

On behalf of the American people, Michelle and I want to extend our best wishes to Muslims in America and around the world. Ramadan Kareem.

Ramadan is a time when Muslims around the world reflect upon the wisdom and guidance that comes with faith, and the responsibility that human beings have to one another, and to God. This is a time when families gather, friends host iftars, and meals are shared. But Ramadan is also a time of intense devotion and reflection – a time when Muslims fast during the day and pray during the night; when Muslims provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere. For all of us must remember that the world we want to build – and the changes that we want to make – must begin in our own hearts, and our own communities.

These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. And here in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country. And today, I want to extend my best wishes to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world – and your families and friends – as you welcome the beginning of Ramadan.

I look forward to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan here at the White House later this week, and wish you a blessed month.

May God’s peace be upon you. [My emphasis.]

In all his anti-American majesty and with his desire to curry favor with Muslims, Obama not only feels the need to send "a statement... on the occasion of Ramadan", but feels the need to lie about American history. Islam has not "always been a part of America", any more than Hinduism has. And he looks forward "to hosting an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan at the White House", whatever an Iftar dinner is. Will he be having the sheep's eyeballs?

Good grief. The end times are upon us.

Neocons and Anchor Babies

Neoconservatives love the idea of birthright citizenship, claiming as they do that nothing should be done about it. Writing - appropriately - in the Wall Street Journal - Linda Chavez makes the case for birthright citizenship.

Repealing birthright citizenship is a terrible idea. It will unquestionably jeopardize the electoral future of the GOP by alienating Hispanics—the largest minority and fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. More importantly, ending birthright citizenship would fundamentally change what it means to be an American.

One of the reasons that Hispanics are the largest minority and fastest-growing segment of the population is precisely because of birthright citizenship, so Chavez's recommendation has a circular quality to it. Most of us against birthright citizenship don't want a Hispanic majority, which is on the way, and if alienating the current one is the price of revoking it, then we'll just have to deal with it. Although, as Steve Sailer has pointed out many times, the Hispanic vote currently doesn't matter nearly as much as shills like Chavez say it does; for the present, whites are the majority and have the mahority of the vote.

Proponents of repeal argue that the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves, and that it was never intended to grant rights to the offspring of illegal aliens. But this argument is a non sequitur. At the time of the adoption of the amendment, there was no category of "illegal alien" because immigration was unrestricted and unregulated. If you secured passage to the United States, or simply walked across the open border with Mexico or Canada, you could stay permanently as a resident alien or apply to be naturalized after a certain number of years. And if you happened to give birth while still an alien, your child was automatically a citizen—a right dating back to English common law.

The whole argument here is a non sequitur, because we don't care whether you could simply walk across the border on those days. (It was similar in Europe: you didn't even need a passport to travel.) In no other country on earth today can one walk across the border and bear a citizen-child, except the U.S., which Chavez wants to keep firmly in the category of proposition nation.

The most serious challenge to birthright citizenship for the children of aliens came in 1898, and it involved a class of aliens who were every bit as unpopular as present-day illegal immigrants: the Chinese.

Here it is: you people are racists! Finally we got to that, which is really what it's all about.

Our history has been largely one of continuously expanding the community of people regarded as Americans, from native-born whites to freed slaves to Indians to naturalized citizens of all races and ethnicities.

Let's just get it over with and extend citizenship to the world.

Over at Commentary, Peter Wehner hates the idea of challenging birthright citizenship. Wehner basically says that the challenge doesn't stand a chance, so don't bother.

Republicans are practicing the politics of symbolism in the worst way possible. They are embracing a policy that doesn’t have any realistic chance of becoming law, that will be unnecessarily divisive and inflammatory, and that, in the long term, will be politically counterproductive.

As if birthright citizenship itself isn't "divisive and inflammatory" - to the majority of Americans.

Both Chavez and Wehner are arguing their ethnic interests, though they're too coy to say so. But so am I arguing my own ethnic interests - and I'll admit it. It would have been a lot easier and simpler for both of these commentators to state merely that eliminating the anchor baby loophole is bad for Hispanics and bad for Jews. The status quo is certainly bad for whites.

PS: 8 Percent of Babies Born to Illegal Immigrants.

Why Gold Manipulation?

Jesse's Café Américain answers the question, Why the Official Antipathy to Gold and Silver? Quoted is Edwin Vieira, Jr.:

The central economic problem plaguing this country since 1913 has been the presence of the Federal Reserve System. Without the Federal Reserve System’s debt-currency scheme having effectively supplanted the constitutional monetary system based upon silver and gold, it would have been impossible - not simply improbable, or difficult, but impossible - for politicians in the public sector and speculators in the private sector to have amassed the staggering level of unpayable, unconstitutional, and unconscionable debt that now bears down upon this country.

People are starting to wise up to the destruction of their money and the the transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the wealthy.

The Federal Reserve, whatever the original intent of its founders, has become a vehicle for the enrichment of Wall Street and its enablers. There's a reason that the Constitution prescribes gold and silver as the only acceptable money, namely to prevent the debasement of the currency. This debasement benefits certain people, notably those in government and those connected to it. There's a reason that Andrew Jackson abolished the Second Bank of the United States, and said (also quoted by Jesse):

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out. [Emphasis mine.]

The banksters and the Federal reserve know that a rising gold price is a sure sign of distrust, which is why they manipulate it, trying to keep everyone complacent while they steal the nation's wealth.

Autophagy and Longevity

Autophagy is the process used by cells in every organism to break down parts of themselves. The process is regulated and necessary for growth and development and normal health. Misfolded proteins, degenerated organelles, and intracellular organisms are all targets of autophagy.

It also appears to be promote longevity. Calorie restriction and resveratrol, for instance, seem to require autophagy as part of longevity promotion. Insulin and nutrients inhibit autophagy, fasting promotes it; all this is connected through the mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) signaling pathway. Rapamycin, the immune suppressant drug which has been shown to increase longevity in mice, promotes autophagy.

Aberrant autophagy would seem to be involved in the pathogenesis of a number of diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which are notably associated with aging and which involve the accumulation of cellular junk. Promotion of autophagy could conceivably treat or even cure these.

It follows that dietary interventions can also promote autophagy and perhaps promote longevity, calorie restriction being an example. Since amino acids strongly inhibit autophagy, restriction of protein would promote autophagy. Since protein is obviously a necessary nutrient, periodic restriction could work and could have much the same effect as calorie restriction.

The Protein Cycling Diet is a good, relatively short exposition of this, based on the idea that intermittent protein restriction could help prevent Alzheimer's and the rest.

For autophagy and pathogens, see Eating the enemy: autophagy in infectious diseases.

Sixty Thousand Anchor Babies Annually in Texas Alone

Across Texas, 60,000 babies of noncitizens get U.S. birthright:

Still, the debate could resonate in Texas, where not only 1.5 million illegal immigrants are estimated to reside but at least 60,000 babies are added to their households annually.

Parkland Memorial Hospital delivers more of those babies than any other hospital in the state. Last year at Parkland, 11,071 babies were born to women who were noncitizens, about 74 percent of total deliveries. Most of these women are believed to be in the country illegally.

State Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, accused Republicans of using the births to generate an explosive election issue.

"They're pulling the pin on the immigration grenade," he said. "It's all about the November elections and continuing to use the immigration issue as a wedge to win votes this fall."

But to Republicans, the emerging national debate is long overdue, considering that millions of immigrants have been living illegally in this country for years.

"They're violating our law, and we're giving their children the benefit of U.S. citizenship," said state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, whose 2009 bill in the Legislature would have challenged the birthright of immigrant children.

Meanwhile, Patrick Cleburne notes that House Minority Leader John Boehner has expressed interest in pursuing the anchor baby issue. While those of us on the paleo right have emphasized the crucial importance of the anchor baby issue for years now, the sudden, nearly mainstream notice of it has come as a very pleasant surprise, to me anyway. Not that there isn't a long way to go before anything gets resolved.

So, well before anything gets resolved, allow me to move beyond it. The current anchor babies, like the one in this video - notice that this is from mainstream CBS - benefit from a patently false interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and her mother patently committed a crime in order to give her child American citizenship. So this gets into the notion of collective responsibility: shall the sins of the fathers be visited unto the next generation? Or is a better way of seeing it: do the children get to keep the stolen property they received from the parents?

Oposition to Mosques

The NYT has a story about opposition to mosques around the nation, which number around 1,000. The article contained this whopper:

“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There’s no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn’t be living here.”

Right.

Sorry, you folks who oppose mosques, but this is what we get with immigration. Until you open your eyes to what's really happening, the mosques will keep getting built. Most of these Muslims are American citizens or permanent residents, and the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, so while you may win a battle once in awhile, you'll ultimately lose the war.

Stop immigration and eventually you may have a chance at stopping the mosques.

What Happens in Afghanistan

A disturbing Time cover features a photo of an 18-year-old Afghan woman who had her nose and ears cut off by her husband as punishment for running away; she's in the U.S. getting reconstructive surgery.

The accompanying cover blurb states, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan", the photo apparently being an argument that we must continue the war there. The problem with the argument is, of course, that we are already there and this sort of thing is happening.

Bad things happen all over the world, things that the U.S. and its mighty military can't stop, not unless we're willing to invade half the world and subject it to military rule. I'd bet that a good many Afghan men, and probably not a few Afghan women, approve of the woman's punishment. And if they do not, then that makes this an isolated case, hardly worth the blood of young American men and the treasure of American taxpayers. The American military's mission isn't to combat all the injustices of the world, but to defend us against our enemies.

Isn't this their culture? And aren't we enjoined to respect other cultures? Face it, some peoples are simply barbarous.

Mayor Bloomberg's Priorities

Yesterday I wrote a short post at Alternative Right on Mayor Bloomberg's priorities, noting that the man who believes that private property rights forbid opposition to a Ground Zero mosque, also believes in banning smoking and trans-fat. Anarcho-tyranny, anyone?

In any case, a commenter there pointed out that the mosque situation is really worse than I said. The Port Authority of New York has apparently been dragging its feet for years now on the rebuilding of St. Nicholas Church, a Greek Orthodox church destroyed on 9/11.

"On September 11, 2001, over 3,000 Americans, including 168 residents of our community in Suffolk County, were taken from us by the evil acts of Islamic extremists bent on destroying our freedoms.
"Amid the thick smoke and choking ashes of that fateful day, the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was reduced to dust," he said today.
The reconstruction of the church, crushed by the falling south tower, has been hampered by many delays since the attack, Demos noted, blaming the Port Authority for the holdup.

"What an outrage that our government has put roadblocks in the path of its own citizens trying rebuild their beloved Church destroyed by Islamic extremists, while Saudi Arabia, a nation that prohibits people from even wearing a Cross or the Star of David, now provokes the families of those who lost loved ones by apparently funneling money to build a mosque at the same location," he said.
The construction of the mosque, of course, has been a hot-button issue in the governor's race, where Republican Rick Lazio has repeatedly gone after Democrat Andrew Cuomo on the topic, even calling him an incompetent attorney general for not investigating the project's funding sources.
Cuomo has argued that like it or not, the mosque has a right to be there: "What are we about if not religious freedom?" he asked.

Looks like Andrew Cuomo is another proposition nation weasel, who would be perfectly happy about the spread of Islam in America, because "what are we about if not religious freedom?"

So, the good and great of New York are telling us to roll over, a mosque at Ground Zero cannot be stopped, while they put every obstacle in the way of rebuilding a church.

I just want to add a comment from the Alt Right post:

Bloomberg is the same idiot who claimed that the failed Times Square bomber was a Tea Partier upset over health care reform. Then when it turned out to be a Muslim he condemned America for it's non-existent backlash against Muslims. Heads he wins, tails we lose. To add icing to the cake it was an H-1B visa holder.... which Bloomberg is trying to expand even with 20% unemployment. I don't know any other society that could take him serious in anything but unfortunately he a perfect representation of America's hostile elite.

"An Astonishing Product of Evolution"

In the NYT, Nicholas Wade writes on new research on breast milk, specifically on the indigestible nature of sugars in the milk.

A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a purpose quite different from infant nutrition — that of influencing the composition of the bacteria in the infant’s gut.

The details of this three-way relationship between mother, child and gut microbes are being worked out by three researchers at the University of California, Davis — Bruce German, Carlito Lebrilla and David Mills. They and colleagues have found that a particular strain of bacterium, a subspecies of Bifidobacterium longum, possesses a special suite of genes that enable it to thrive on the indigestible component of milk.

This subspecies is commonly found in the feces of breast-fed infants. It coats the lining of the infant’s intestine, protecting it from noxious bacteria. [...]

The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk.

I wonder who exactly "long thought" that these sugars had "no biological significance", because that's an astoundingly bad assumption. Did actual biologists really believe that?

Dr. German sees milk as “an astonishing product of evolution,” one which has been vigorously shaped by natural selection because it is so critical to the survival of both mother and child. “Everything in milk costs the mother — she is literally dissolving her own tissues to make it,” he said. From the infant’s perspective, it is born into a world full of hostile microbes, with an untrained immune system and lacking the caustic stomach acid which in adults kills most bacteria. Any element in milk that protects the infant will be heavily favored by natural selection.

Natural selection shaped the living world, and its influence ought to be seen in everything human, from the right food to eat and exercise to perform to remain healthy, to economics, which is merely the study of human beings acting according to their incentives, to society, race, nationalism, sex, etc.

That anyone could have thought that up to 21% of the constituents of breast milk could have no biological significance seems doubly weird when you consider that milk is directly involved in survival and reproduction.

Whey

A friend emailed me, asking about what I found beneficial about whey protein - though he already bought some on my recommendation. (The power of Mangan's.)

Therapeutic Applications of Whey Protein (pdf) is a good overview of the structure, function, and therapeutics of whey. From the abstract:

The biological components of whey, including lactoferrin, beta-lactoglobulin, alpha-lactalbumin, glycomacropeptide, and immunoglobulins, demonstrate a range of immune-enhancing properties. In addition, whey has the ability to act as an antioxidant, antihypertensive, antitumor, hypolipidemic, antiviral, antibacterial, and chelating agent. The primary mechanism by which whey is thought to exert its effects is by intracellular conversion of the amino acid cysteine to glutathione, a potent intracellular antioxidant. A number of clinical trials have successfully been performed using whey in the treatment of cancer, HIV, hepatitis B, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and as an antimicrobial agent. Whey protein has also exhibited benefit in the arena of exercise performance and enhancement.

For the anabolic properties of whey, see the excellent review, Effect of protein/essential amino acids and resistance training on skeletal muscle hypertrophy: A case for whey protein.

Curing Chronic Fatigue: My Story

Here's something most of you didn't know about me: for the past 11 years, I've suffered from severe chronic fatigue. Yet in the past couple of months, I've gone through a remarkable transformation, and am now at the point where, while I'm not totally out of the woods yet, I feel that I'm on the road to a cure, or at least a normal life. (Right now it's rather difficult to discern how a man in his mid 50s who's been ill for over a decade is supposed to feel.) Hopefully, this post may help some others.

My story as well as what I believe underlies chronic fatigue syndrome is long and involved, and would (maybe will) require many blog posts, so I'll just outline the basics here and perhaps write more later. While I've had a very understanding doctor for the past 8 years, my cure has been by my own hands, accomplished through reading the scientific/medical literature, puzzling things out, and taking the appropriate action. I've read hundreds of journal articles on anything I thought relevant, but for now I'll omit references.

Before I became ill in 1999, I was a super-fit, distance-running vegetarian, which I now believe set me down the road to health disaster. Those who perform endurance exercise are over-represented among sufferers of chronic fatigue. From what I know now about protein and glutathione metabolism, how the gut functions, and a lot more, I believe that vegetarianism will also predispose to this illness.

Chronic fatigue (CFS) is characterized physiologically by oxidative stress and inflammation. Once that is understood, one can try to correct these. One of the main causes or components of CFS appears to leaky gut syndrome, as I learned from Michael Maes. Several of his papers detail how this can be treated. In my opinion - well, almost all of this is my opinion - a paleo style, low carb diet is essential. High insulin levels caused by the Standard American Diet (SAD) wreak havoc on metabolism and cause inflammation, something to be avoided at all costs. In addition, many components of the SAD, such as wheat, cause or aggravate leaky gut.

The proximate cause of fatigue in the case of CFS seems to be malfunctioning mitochondria, the organelles commonly referred to as the cell's powerhouses. Oxidative stress causes malfunction, and in turn the malfunction increases oxidative stress, leading to a vicious cycle from which it's hard to leave. So it appears that the key is to treat both the oxidative stress and mitochondrial malfunction simultaneously. This I've done through diet and supplementation.

The supplements I've found useful, if not required, include n-acetylcysteine, coenzyme Q-10, l-methylfolate, methylcobalamin, iodine, zinc, magnesium, creatine, and trimethylglycine. (Update: Paul Jaminet and others reminded me through comments of some others I inadvertently left out: vitamin D, omega-3 oils, and resveratrol. The first two at least are essential, and resveratrol may very well be. Thyroid normalization is also essential.) You can search these terms for voluminous explanations of each. Several of these are involved in the methylation cycle, and others directly aid mitochondrial function.

I went on a primal/paleo diet about two years ago, and many of the supplements I've taken for a long time - and I've tried many other supplements and meds over the many years of my illness - so one thing I started recently appears to be of key importance (so far as I can tell): whey protein. It's become clear to me that, despite what you'll read in the mainstream, relatively high protein in the diet is all for the good, making just about every physiological process perform closer to the optimum. (The right (high) amount and kind of dietary fats appear to be just as important, but that will have to wait.)

Two months ago I started hitting the gym and lifting weights for the first time since my illness, and I've gained ten pounds of mostly muscle. (I've been quite thin in the recent past, and have a way to go on that score.) I take whey protein and branched chain amino acids at least twice daily, along with my other supplements, and eat meat, eggs, and/or dairy at every meal. I no longer take vitamin R (by prescription, of course), which helped me function during my illness but which I'm now doing well without.

All of this I've outlined requires much more elucidation. Also, keep in mind that much of this is my interpretation, that virtually every authority in this area says that the causes and cure of CFS are unknown, as well as that there may indeed be multiple causes of CFS for which my prescriptions won't work. However, all modesty aside, I feel that I may have discovered something important. The illness which drove me to the edge of disability and, I'll admit, despair, appears to be in retreat.

American Decadence

Paul Craig Roberts: Let Them Eat Cake:

When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000.

The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.

Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon.

Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.

The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.
Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?

How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office? Who was Blair really serving? [...]

The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive.

The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.

And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.

In the 1870s, U.S. Grant, former President of the United States and American war hero, was broke and dying of throat cancer. In order to raise some money, he sat down and wrote his memoirs - which have become a classic - The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant.

Earlier, John Quincy Adams served eight terms in the House of Representatives after retiring from the presidency, from 1831 until his death. He had neither the desire nor opportunity to make millions, but instead thought of nothing but serving his country the only way he knew, even though serving in the House was quite a decline in status compared to the presidency.

Now, former presidents and prime ministers retire with one thing on their mind: striking it rich. That one thing on their mind must also be on their mind while they're in office, so they aim to please everyone who's in a position to reward them later. It's a thoroughly corrupt system in which, as Roberts says, a no 'count Arkansas boy with no other talent than bamboozling people becomes a multimillionaire, and his wife Secretary of State.

Economists and the Obesity Epidemic

In the WSJ, economists Tomas Philipson and Richard Posner believe that technology is the fundamental cause as well as potential cure for obesity.

The rise in obesity is attributable primarily to changes in the price of consuming, and the cost of expending, calories—changes that are byproducts of otherwise beneficial technological advances. The price of food and thus of calories has long been trending downward because of agricultural innovations that have greatly reduced the time and resources required to go from hungry to full.

The effect on weight has been reinforced by a simultaneous trend, also technology driven, toward reducing the physical exertion involved in work. Productivity gains at work, brought about by automation, have raised incomes and increased the cost of burning calories. When labor is sedentary because of automation, weight can increase even though calorie intake falls, a pattern observed in the post-World War II period.

While cheap food and automated labor could be expected to have some effect on obesity, what this article demonstrates is the danger of pontificating on subjects you don't know about, and applying economic principles to every facet of life.

Overlooked here are several things. Exercise does not in general help weight loss, though heavy exercise may be an exception. Another is that all foods are not created equal, and do not all cause weight gain; in other words, calories in vs. calories out does not explain weight gain or obesity. Therefore the cost of both food and exercise likely explains little of the obesity epidemic.

What does explain the obesity epidemic? Official government advice to eat more carbohydrates and refrain from eating fat probably contributed, although the fact that the epidemic has become nearly global mitigates against that - but the U.S. appears to have been among the first to experience it. Gary Taubes, of Good Calories, Bad Calories fame, blames increased carbohydrate consumption, which I believe is right on the mark.

But why are people all over the world consuming more carbohydrates, especially refined carbs, like in soft drinks? Soft drinks were certainly available and not all that expensive before the obesity epidemic started. Could there be a political/cultural explanation?

Abandonment of standards of acceptable behavior and appearance could partly explain this. We aren't supposed to be "judgmental", so the obese suffer less stigma from their condition. (Circus fat men and women from generations ago, so fat they were exhibited as freaks, barely look abnormal now.) In that sense, the economists have a point: the cost of obesity in terms of social effects has declined.

Another cultural cause might be the breakdown of families, with the subsequent rise of fast food as a substitute for eating with the family.