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Added Sugar Is Your Enemy, Not Aspartame

by CharlieRodgers Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Why does anyone still choose sugared sodas over artificially-sweetened sodas? One reason is taste. If you don’t like the taste of aspartame or saccharin, then that’s that. Another reason might be a rare medical condition that makes you allergic (or worse) to certain artificial sweeteners.

But that probably accounts for only a small fraction of the people who continue to drink sugared sodas. The rest are most likely convinced that artificial sweeteners are bad for you. But they’re wrong. It’s sugar that’s bad for you. Aaron Carroll brings the research:

One of the oldest artificial sweeteners is saccharin. Starting in the 1980s, Congress mandated that any product containing it be accompanied by the following: “Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.”….There was a problem, though. This link has never been confirmed in humans….Based on these newer studies, saccharin was removed from the carcinogen list in 2000. But by that time, opinions were set. It did little to make anyone feel safe.

….Aspartame was introduced in the United States around the time that saccharin began taking a beating….But in 1996, a study was published in The Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology titled “Increasing Brain Tumor Rates: Is There a Link to Aspartame?” Most people ignored the question mark….There were any number of problems with this logic….Because aspartame was approved in 1981, blaming it for a rise in tumors in the 1970s seems impossible. Finally, much more comprehensive studies couldn’t find links….A safety review from 2007, published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, found that aspartame had been studied extensively and that the evidence showed that it was safe.

….But what about sugar?….Epidemiologic studies have found that even after controlling for other factors, one’s intake of added sugars is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, with a 1.1 percent increase in prevalence for each can of sugar-sweetened soda. A study following people for an average of more than 14 years published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine found that those in the highest quintile of added sugar consumption had more than twice the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those in the lowest quintile, even after controlling for many other factors.

Anyway, that’s what science says. Unfortunately, science also says that presenting facts to people almost never changes their minds. In fact, it can do just the opposite as people respond defensively to the notion that they’ve been wrong for a long time. So I suppose no one reading this is actually going to switch to diet sodas. Instead they’ll cherry-pick studies that support their previous point of view. Or claim that all the studies exonerating artificial sweeteners are funded by big business and not to be trusted. Or perhaps make an outré claim about how aspartame interacts with gluten and animal fat to produce….something or other.

That’s life, I guess. However, I suggest that you swamp Professor Carroll’s inbox with all these insights instead of bothering me with them. He’s the expert after all. Or, just switch to water. Then you won’t have to worry about it.

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Added Sugar Is Your Enemy, Not Aspartame

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Republicans Is Weird, Summer 2015 Edition

by KishaLeatherman Posted on July 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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No, this isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about Sen. Mike Lee of Utah—who plans to offer yet another amendment to repeal Obamacare, but this time with a special super-duper secret sauce added to the upcoming highway funding bill:

Lee said he will try to re-offer the Obamacare repeal as a special amendment that is directly related to highway funding. Under Senate rules, amendments that are directly related, or germane, to the underlying legislation can pass with just 51 votes.

Lee knows that the chair of the Senate is likely to reject his logic that Obamacare repeal is germane to highway funding, so he plans to use the nuclear option. That means he will formally object to the ruling of the chair, which requires a 51-vote simple majority — then he plans to move on to the coveted simple majority vote.

….If his plan works, Lee gets to tell his supporters that he’s responsible for a major vote to kill the health care law he reviles. The House voted to repeal the law in February, so the two chambers could then theoretically conference the bills — leaving it up to Obama to veto a bill to kill his own signature policy achievement.

So the plan is simple: have Republicans declare ex cathedra that repeal of Obamacare is germane to highway funding, and then pass Lee’s amendment with 51 votes. It’s brilliant! All that’s missing are the sharks with lasers attached to their heads!

Aside from being mind-numbingly stupid1, it also won’t work. Democrats will just filibuster the entire highway bill, or else they’ll vote for it and then Obama will veto the entire mess. Result: Obamacare stays in place but our highways continue to crumble into dust. Nice work, Senator! It’s good to see that the Republican Party remains committed to the sober, responsible kind of leadership that makes our great nation the envy of the world.

1It’s times like this that I regret the recent banishment of “retarded” from polite conversation. Because I think we all know that it’s the word that really fits here.2

2Though I suppose there’s no reason to insult the developmentally disabled by comparing them to Mike Lee.

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Republicans Is Weird, Summer 2015 Edition

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It’s Not Just Social Security Anymore. Jeb Bush Wants to Destroy Medicare Too.

by SallyAbelfld Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Republicans have been talking for years about “reforming” Social Security. Usually this involves privatizing it in some way, which they insist that people will love. In fact, they’ll love it so much that, um, Republicans don’t dare suggest that their reforms should apply to current recipients. Or to people who are within even a decade of retiring. Why exempt these folks? There’s a lot of blah blah blah when you ask, but the real reason is that these people vote, and they actually pay attention to Social Security. They know perfectly well that the current system is a better deal for them. It’s only younger workers, who don’t pay as much attention and have been brainwashed—by conservatives—into believing that Social Security will never pay them a dime anyway, who give this nonsense the time of day. Even if the GOP’s reformed version of Social Security is a lousy deal, anything is better than nothing. Right?

But I’ve never really heard this argument about Medicare. Until now. Here’s Jeb Bush:

A lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something—because they’re not going to have anything.

Boom! If we don’t gut Medicare, they’ll have nothing. When they turn 65 they’ll be out on the street dying, with no one to help them. Why? Because Democrats let the system go bankrupt. Wouldn’t it be much better to offer them some crappy, rationed system instead? At least it’s something, after all.

Jesus. You’d think we were Greece. Oh wait—these guys do think that Democrats are turning us into Greece. So I guess it makes a kind of sense.

In any case, Jeb sure picked the wrong time to make this pitch. Just yesterday we got the latest projections for Social Security and Medicare. If they’re correct, the cost of both programs will top out at a combined 12 percent of GDP by the middle of the century and then flatten out. That’s about 3 percent of GDP more than we’re spending now.

So this is what Jeb is saying: Right now the federal government spends about 20 percent of GDP. We can’t afford to increase that to 23 percent of GDP over the next 30 years. That would—what? I don’t even know what the story is here. Turn us into Greece? Require us to tax millionaires so highly they all give up and go Galt? Deprive Wall Street of lots of pension income they can use to blow up the world again?

Beats me. This whole thing is ridiculous. Over the next 30 years, we need to increase spending by 1 percent of GDP per decade. That’s it. That will keep Social Security and Medicare in good shape. Why is it so hard for people to get that?

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It’s Not Just Social Security Anymore. Jeb Bush Wants to Destroy Medicare Too.

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AFFH: What You Need to Know to Keep Up With the Latest Right-Wing Outrage

by VirgilioWjd Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Conservatives have a whole laundry list of stuff they’re outraged about: Benghazi, Fast & Furious, Agenda 21, Obamaphones, etc. etc. So what’s the latest from the right wing? Stanley Kurtz tells us:

Conservative opinion has been alive with outrage over AFFH for a month now.

Huh. Never heard of it. But a few minutes of Googling will get me up to speed. Hold on a bit.

OK. So it turns out that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlaws most of the obvious forms of housing discrimination, and has done a relatively good job of enforcing discrimination rules since then. However, it also requires the Department of Housing and Urban Development to run its programs in a way that affirmatively furthers fair housing. That is, if a local community is heavily segregated, it has to affirmatively try to reduce that segregation in order to qualify for HUD funds.

It turns out that HUD hasn’t done much of anything about this particular aspect of the law, and President Obama would like them to start. So a couple of years ago HUD started developing guidelines called, uncreatively, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.” Last year they released a tool for assessing segregation and fair housing choice that can be used by community planners, and a few days ago they released the final 377-page rule.

That’s the basics. It’s surprisingly hard to get more because Google returns almost exclusively either (a) evaluations of AFFH by civil rights and fair housing groups, or (b) outraged rants from conservative outlets. Ordinary newspapers seem to have little interest (or, as Kurtz puts it, “The mainstream press has been straining to avoid AFFH”).

Obviously I’m not going to pretend to be an instant expert now that I’ve read half a dozen pieces about AFFH, but basically the concrete goals seem to be (1) providing communities with data regarding the racial, ethnic and income distribution of housing in their towns; (2) encouraging and funding affordable housing in prosperous areas; and (3) pressing communities to change zoning rules that promote segregation.

Will it work? Hard to say. HUD’s only tool for enforcing its guidelines is to withhold money for HUD programs if communities don’t comply. However, prosperous communities don’t get much HUD funding in the first place, which means HUD has little leverage in high-income suburbs. They’ll probably be able to almost entirely avoid the long arm of HUD tyranny.

Anyway, that’s that. Mostly I just wanted to let everyone know that this thing called AFFH is the latest outrage among the conservative base. It fits in perfectly with their hysteria over Agenda 21 and their general belief that Obama wants to round up every well-off white person in the country and pack them like sardines into high-rise buildings in big cities. Now you know.

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AFFH: What You Need to Know to Keep Up With the Latest Right-Wing Outrage

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I Want to Hear a Good Argument Against Obama’s Deal With Iran

by OscarBenham9 Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

Max Fisher talked to another arms control expert today, and Aaron Stein says it’s a very good agreement. The Iran nuclear deal “exceeds in all areas. It makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote.”

Fine. The technical experts are all impressed. But what about the opponents of the deal? What do they think?

Luckily, Matt Yglesias did the legwork to confirm what I had already concluded anecdotally: they don’t really have any serious arguments against the deal. Oh, they toss out a few tidbits here and there about inspection times and so forth, but it’s just fluff. The inspection regime is actually very tough. No, the problem is that conservatives simply don’t want a deal. Period. They want sanctions to remain in force forever. Or they just want to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Or they don’t say much of anything except that Iran is a bad country, and we shouldn’t do deals with bad countries.

All of this is fatuous, and the critics know it. Sanctions never last forever. If we tried to keep them in place without ever offering Iran a reasonable bargain to lift them, our allies would desert us. Bombing would be just as bad. Instead of keeping Iran in check for ten or more years, it would merely set them back two or three. And it would confirm their belief that the only defense against the United States is a nuclear deterrent. They’d be even more determined to build a bomb after that. As for Iran’s leadership not being choir boys, no kidding. You don’t make deals like this with friendly countries. You make them with antagonists. That’s the whole point.

I don’t want Iran to build a nuclear bomb. It would quite likely set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which is the last place on the planet that we want to have one. And as near as I can tell, this deal is our best chance to keep Iran nuclear free for a good long time. If any conservative can offer a better plan, I’m all ears. Either:

Describe a tougher deal that you can reasonably argue Iran would have accepted.

or

Explain why some other course of action would be better at keeping Iran nuclear free than a negotiated deal.

No name calling, no comparisons to Neville Chamberlain, no complaints that Iran hates Israel, and no blather about appeasement. Make an argument. A real argument about a course of action that would be better than the deal currently on the table. Let’s hear it.

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I Want to Hear a Good Argument Against Obama’s Deal With Iran

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Making Republicans Mad Is All Part of the Plan to Pass the Iran Deal

by ThereseAmbrose Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

Why is President Obama talking so much about the Iran nuclear deal? It’s not as if he’s likely to convince many Republicans to support it, after all. Jonathan Bernstein says the answer lies in the unusual way Congress is being forced to vote on the deal: the agreement takes effect unless Congress votes to disapprove it. Obama can veto any resolution of disapproval, and it only takes one-third of Congress to sustain that veto. In other words, all Obama needs are Democratic votes. And the best way to get those votes is to take advantage of the power of polarization:

By speaking out in favor of something, and doing it repeatedly, presidents tend to polarize public opinion along party lines. If he needed bipartisan support, the best strategy would be to keep his mouth shut.

But Obama doesn’t need any Republican help. He just needs Democrats to stick together, and not base their votes on interest-group attachments or, for that matter, on their personal views.

While Obama thinks the Iran agreement should win on its actual merits — otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to it! — not everyone sees it the same way. He can try to give swing voters in the House and Senate substantive reasons to support it. But this wouldn’t be as efficient as simply getting the Democrats to act as partisans.

As Bernstein says in his teaser sentence, “A strategy that makes Republicans mad will unite Democrats.” So Obama is talking and talking and talking, and conservative media is getting madder and madder and madder. That tends to unite liberals, even those who are strong supporters of Israel and might otherwise be reluctant to support a deal that Israel opposes.

Republicans are cooperating beautifully, aren’t they? Obama must be very pleased.

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Making Republicans Mad Is All Part of the Plan to Pass the Iran Deal

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Do Republicans Really Want to Scuttle the Iran Deal?

by ShoshanBeavers Posted on July 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent reports that Republicans are gearing up to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal:

Republicans are very, very confident that they have the political advantage in the coming battle in Congress over the historic Iran deal announced yesterday. Multiple news reports today tell us that Republicans are gearing up their “attack plan,” and those reports are overflowing with GOP bravado.

Well, of course they are. That’s just smart politics. If you want to build a bandwagon, you have to act like a winner.

In fact, though, Republicans have very little chance of blocking the deal. To do so they have to vote to disapprove the agreement, which President Obama will veto. Then they have round up a two-thirds vote to override the veto. That’s very, very unlikely.

(And why this odd procedure where the deal takes effect unless Congress disapproves it? They can thank one of their own, Sen. Bob Corker, for proposing this unusual procedure. And anyway, his legislation passed 98-1, so it was pretty unanimously the will of the Senate. The theory behind it was that Obama could simply enact any deal as an executive order without involving Congress at all, and this was at least better than that.)

But then Sargent brings up another one of those 11-dimensional chess conundrums:

But here’s the question: Once all the procedural smoke clears, do Republicans really want an endgame in which they succeeded in blocking the deal? Do they actually want to scuttle it?

Perhaps many of them genuinely do want that. But here’s a prediction: as this battle develops, some Republicans may privately conclude that it would be better for them politically if they fail to stop it. The Iran debate may come to resemble the one over the anti-Obamacare lawsuit that also recently fell short.

The idea here is that if Congress kills the deal, several things will happen. First, the rest of the signatories (UK, France, Germany, EU, China, Russia) will still lift their sanctions if Iran meets its end of the bargain. So that means the sanctions regime will effectively disintegrate. Second, our allies will blame us for tanking the deal. Third, Iran will have an excuse for pushing the boundaries of the agreement and remaining closer to nuclear breakout than they would be if the deal were intact.

And Republicans would take the bulk of the blame for all this. Do they really want that? This is an international agreement, after all. Conservatives like Angela Merkel, David Cameron, and Vladimir Putin have approved it. If we don’t, will they conclude that the US is no longer a partner worth negotiating with? These are things worth pondering, especially if Republicans expect one of their own to be president 18 months from now.

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Do Republicans Really Want to Scuttle the Iran Deal?

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Quote of the Day: The Minimum Wage is Lame, Dude

by MaritzaDesroche Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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From boring Midwestern governor Scott Walker:

The left claims that they’re for American workers and they’ve just got just really lame ideas — things like the minimum wage.

Well, there are some economists who would agree with him, but essentially no ordinary Americans. The minimum wage is almost as beloved as Social Security. In fact, ordinary Americans not only like the minimum wage, but about 70 percent of them think it should be raised. So Walker is definitely taking a bold stand here.

Oddly enough, as Steve Benen points out, this has become sort of a thing among Republicans lately. They’ve always opposed increases to the minimum wage, of course, but now a lot of them oppose the minimum wage itself. Where has this suddenly come from? Perhaps someone who follows the right-wing idea network can give us a rundown. I mean, sure, Milton Friedman opposed the minimum wage, but conservatives apparently abandoned anything remotely Friedmanesque during the Great Recession. So it can’t be that.

So what is it? Why has this suddenly jumped from mumblings in Heritage Foundation white papers to campaign platforms for presidential candidates?

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Quote of the Day: The Minimum Wage is Lame, Dude

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It’s Time to Cool It On "People Need to Work Longer Hours"

by QBIBiancadiktn Posted on July 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Maybe I’m just being naive here, but I wonder if liberals could give it a rest mocking Jeb Bush for saying “people need to work longer hours”? Yeah, he really did say it, but then again, Obama really did say “You didn’t build that.” Little snippets taken out of context can make anyone sound dumb.

In this case, Bush pretty quickly clarified that he was talking about the underemployed, people who want to work more hours but can’t get them. This didn’t sound to me like some hastily concocted excuse. It probably really was what he meant, and it just didn’t come out quite right. That’s common in a live setting.

Now, after the idiotic way Republicans plastered “You didn’t build that” everywhere short of Mount Rushmore in 2012, maybe they deserve a taste of their own medicine. And sure, politics ain’t beanbag. You get your licks where you can find them. Still, there’s a limit to how hackish we all should be. We’re pretending Bush meant one thing when we all know perfectly well he meant something else. Let’s be better than the Republicans, OK?

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It’s Time to Cool It On "People Need to Work Longer Hours"

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If Little Clouds of Doom Follow You Around, There Might Be Money In It For You!

by VioletLJGnnihr Posted on July 10, 2015

Mother Jones

Via Tyler Cowen, here’s an intriguing new paper that claims certain kinds of customers are—not to mince words—“harbingers of failure”:

We show that some customers, whom we call ‘Harbingers’ of failure, systematically purchase new products that flop. Their early adoption of a new product is a strong signal that a product will fail — the more they buy, the less likely the product will succeed. Firms can identify these customers either through past purchases of new products that failed, or through past purchases of existing products that few other customers purchase. We discuss how these insights can be readily incorporated into the new product development process. Our findings challenge the conventional wisdom that positive customer feedback is always a signal of future success.

There’s a chart, naturally, because Science™. For example, if repeated harbingers (dotted green line) account for half your sales, you’re pretty much screwed. Your shiny new product has less than a 10 percent chance of success. The reason I find this all intriguing is that I have lately begun to wonder if I myself belong to this group. I use Firefox and I think it’s great. Chrome sucks. I think Windows 8 is terrific on a tablet, far superior to either iOS or Android. And I read all my books on the Nook reader, which I like better than the Kindle reader.

Now, Firefox has had a pretty good run and may very well stay around for a while. But it’s not looking like a winner these days. Likewise, Windows tablets account for—what? Maybe 2 percent of the market, despite Microsoft’s massive marketing campaigns. And Nook, of course, is already officially dead, hanging on in limbo until it gives up the ghost for good.

So here’s the deal: I’m willing to rent out my services as a harbinger. Send me your new tech products while they’re still in testing, and then cross your fingers and hope that I don’t love them. If I do, it’s back to the drawing board.

Link:

If Little Clouds of Doom Follow You Around, There Might Be Money In It For You!

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