[luke warm]

hrothgar, on 2011-September-14, 15:06, said:

I agree that the economy had some impact on the results, however, I doubt that it was decisive. This district in New York is dominated by religious Jews and the recent gay marriage decision in New York had a MAJOR impact on

that and his perceived (let's call it) indifference concerning israel

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on 2011-September-14, 15:39, said:

that and his perceived (let's call it) indifference concerning israel

All in the eye of the beholder...

The evangelical right and Likudnics certainly believe that Obama has a profound antipathy towards Israel.
I agree that Obama policies are closer to the second President Bush than the first; however, I'd hardly call Obama indifferent let alone anti semitic.

[Winstonm]

hrothgar, on 2011-September-14, 12:06, said:

My parents would view the following comment with horror, but I think that the economy needs some inflation.

Unfortunately, I fear the die is cast, and 2012 will bring about a Republican sweep, which means we all will get to relive the 1930s.

[mike777]

Winstonm, on 2011-September-14, 17:54, said:

Unfortunately, I fear the die is cast, and 2012 will bring about a Republican sweep, which means we all will get to relive the 1930s.

I hope not.


Even with all the Keynesian economics/spending during the 30's I think unemployment was 15% -37%.

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2011-September-14, 15:06, said:

I agree that the economy had some impact on the results, however, I doubt that it was decisive. This district in New York is dominated by religious Jews and the recent gay marriage decision in New York had a MAJOR impact on voting



http://mirrorofjusti...new-york-9.html

So an Orthodox Jew lost an election because he lost the Jewish vote? Wiener was ok by them because he sent the photos to women? Can I turn off the news now?

I had not been aware of any religious aspect to all this and I was happy in my ignorance.

Oh, and yes Phil, Helene and I were both joking about Michele's favorable impact. But the joke is maybe going to be on us.

[mike777]

I have read but cannot confirm that the liberal/Reform jewish population in Forest Hills went Republican....fwiw.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2011-September-14, 20:12, said:

So an Orthodox Jew lost an election because he lost the Jewish vote? Wiener was ok by them because he sent the photos to women? Can I turn off the news now?

I had not been aware of any religious aspect to all this and I was happy in my ignorance.

http://www.theatlant...eaction/245135/

[hrothgar]

Good article by Nate Silver on 538

http://community.nyt...-election-spin/

Quote

2. New York’s Ninth Congressional District has highly unusual demographics, with a set of local issues that are unlikely to extrapolate well to the rest of the country.

On the other hand, while all Congressional districts have their quirks, New York’s Ninth is especially unusual.

First, there are the local issues — Barack Obama’s positioning toward Israel, Mr. Weprin’s endorsement of a plan to build a mosque and Muslim cultural center in Lower Manhattan, and possibly gay marriage — that will resonate more in Queens than they will in the rest of the country.

Roughly 40 percent of voters in the Ninth District are Jewish, 20 times the rate in the country as a whole. Moreover, and perhaps more important, many of those voters are Orthodox Jews, who often have starkly different political viewpoints than Reform or secular Jews, and who are extremely rare in the United States outside a few spots in the New York region.

There’s also the fact that the district was already behaving unusually in 2008. Despite having a 37-point edge in party registration, Mr. Obama won the election by only 11 points there — barely better than the seven-point edge he had nationwide. I doubt that there was any district in the country, perhaps outside a few remnants of the “Solid South,” where so many enrolled Democrats voted against Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama’s unpopularity is no doubt a huge factor in this race. But certain types of critiques are likely to be disproportionately resonant in this particular district compared with others.

3. If the polls are right, the result in Nevada should be as troubling to Democrats as the result in New York.

Although the special election in Nevada has gotten less attention, in some ways it might be the more appropriate race for drawing national implications.

Sure, Nevada’s Second Congressional District has a few oddities: it’s had fast population growth and crashing housing prices. But its demographics are otherwise fairly “normal” and heterogeneous. And in contrast to the New York district, it seems to be a place where Democrats were making a lot of progress: Mr. Obama lost it by less than a full percentage point in 2008, whereas John Kerry was beaten there by 16 points in 2004.

Democrats probably weren’t going to be favored in this district, which is still somewhat Republican-leaning. But a double-digit loss, as seems possible based on the polls, is a decidedly subpar result for them.

In addition, the national implications notwithstanding, Nevada is a pivotal state in both the presidential and Senate elections next year.

[onoway]

phil_20686, on 2011-September-13, 07:33, said:

(1) These things happen, I am confident that if we asked everyone on the forum whether event X had ever happened to them or their friends (one handshake) you could find an example of most ten sigma events.

(2) This isn't even nearly true. Pasteurization was invented with the express intentions of making milk last longer before it spoiled, and of killing disease causing microbes in milk. Louis Pastuer was not completely sure what disease could be got from milk, but it was known at that time that TB was a disease found in cattle aswell as humans. In practice TB is a normal infection in cattle similar to the common cold in severity, but some strains are extremely virulent in un vaccinated humans. Pasteurization massively reduced the incidence of TB, and scarlet fever in children, and almost entirely eliminated puerperal fever, all child-killers at that time. Raw milk can also carry, e.coli, salmonella, and diphtheria.

Pasteurization is one of the few preventative medicine techniques whose benefits are huge. Its up there with vaccination. A lot of its benefit is the fact that most diseases you can get from milk are a-symptomatic in cattle, so you would have to test literally every single cow in order to make milk "safe" without pasteurization, and you would have to do so every week or so, and even then a cow could get sick between tests. While this is "possible" it is certainly vastly more expensive.

I wasn't trying to suggest that pasteurization was invented "for" milk, only that that now ..as your post itself says..it is regarded as a way to make milk "safe" when it is presented to the general population as normally "unsafe". Your post shows to what degree this belief is held. To consider milk unsafe unless pasteurized is to consider all milking herds to be badly managed with little or no regard for cleanliness in handling the product. Undulant fever was a major concern (milk from sick cows) tb (sick cows) and the practice of pasteurizing milk was very reasonably adopted before there was any way to test the cows for such things. That is not now the case and hasn't been for well over 70 years.
Armchair Science, a British magazine of way back before WW2 had this to say:

"Pasteurization's great claim to popularity is the widespread belief, fostered by its supporters, that tuberculosis in children is caused by the harmful germs found in raw milk. Scientists have examined and tested thousands of milk samples, and experiments have been carried out on hundreds of animals in regard to this problem of disease-carrying by milk. But the one vital fact that seems to have been completely missed is that it is CLEAN, raw milk that is wanted. If this can be guaranteed, no other form of food for children can, or should, be allowed to take its place.

Dirty milk, of course, is like any other form of impure food — a definite menace. But Certified Grade A Milk, produced under Government supervision and guaranteed absolutely clean, is available practically all over the country and is the dairy-farmer's answer to the pasteurization zealots.

Recent figures published regarding the spread of tuberculosis by milk show, among other facts, that over a period of five years, during which time 70 children belonging to a special organization received a pint of raw milk daily. One case only of the disease occurred. During a similar period when pasteurized milk had been given, 14 cases were reported."
(end quote)

To say that milk CAN contain e coli and other pathogens is stating the obvious. What vegetable did they finally decide was responsible for the massive e coli outbreak in Europe some months ago?. A few years ago it was strawberries from California. WATER felled a whole bunch of people with e coli in Waterton when the treatment of contaminated water failed. (The point being if the water had not been contaminated it wouldn't have needed to be treated). Chicken is a MAJOR carrier of salmonella. Should we start to boil all our water at home, to pasteurize chickens, spinach and strawberries?

If diptheria is such a threat with raw milk why don't the thousands of people who drank it when growing up or who drink it in the few European countries where it is still legal to get it, have a higher incidence of diptheria, TB, etc. than the general population?

Now all dairy herds are routinely tested for such things as brucellosis and TB, and animals found to be suffering from such things are destroyed. Actually Canada and a number of other countries have declared themselves to be free of brucellosis as of some number of years ago. Pasteurization is a leftover from a time that there wasn't any other reasonable way to enforce that milk came from healthy cows, and handled correctly. That hasn't been the case for well over the lifetime of most of us.

As a side note, something that has been becoming more and more of an issue in hospitals is the question of infections. A head nurse in a major hospital told my sister to have a sign over her bed.."wash your hands before you touch me." and to enforce it. Perhaps another sign of people counting on technology to take care of the results of carelessness.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that a carte blanche acceptance of the government to take care of any particular segment of societal regulation isn't an especially good idea. Such a group soon develops its own momentum and needs to justify its own growth and importance. Sometimes it's far too easy to manipulate the general population into accepting regulations that are not necessarilly in the best interests of the public at large

btw...soured milk from raw milk can and is used with excellent results. Pasteurized milk cannot be used this way, it will not sour, it rots. If you want to have soured milk from pasteurized milk you have to add an acid to it.

[phil_20686]

onoway, on 2011-September-15, 13:53, said:

I wasn't trying to suggest that pasteurization was invented "for" milk, only that that now ..as your post itself says..it is regarded as a way to make milk "safe" when it is presented to the general population as normally "unsafe". Your post shows to what degree this belief is held. To consider milk unsafe unless pasteurized is to consider all milking herds to be badly managed with little or no regard for cleanliness in handling the product. Undulant fever was a major concern (milk from sick cows) tb (sick cows) and the practice of pasteurizing milk was very reasonably adopted before there was any way to test the cows for such things. That is not now the case and hasn't been for well over 70 years.

Dirty milk, of course, is like any other form of impure food — a definite menace. But Certified Grade A Milk, produced under Government supervision and guaranteed absolutely clean, is available practically all over the country and is the dairy-farmer's answer to the pasteurization zealots.

Recent figures published regarding the spread of tuberculosis by milk show, among other facts, that over a period of five years, during which time 70 children belonging to a special organization received a pint of raw milk daily. One case only of the disease occurred. During a similar period when pasteurized milk had been given, 14 cases were reported."

If diptheria is such a threat with raw milk why don't the thousands of people who drank it when growing up or who drink it in the few European countries where it is still legal to get it, have a higher incidence of diptheria, TB, etc. than the general population?

Obvious points first: Diptheria has been almost eradicated by widespread vaccination.

Your tuberculosis statistics are obviously nonsense. One case in 70 children over five years is high but believable, 14 cases from seventy children is a pandemic-level outbreak. Given that most children are vaccinated against TB (the BGC vaccine) its hard to believe you could find a group of seventy un-vaccinated children anywhere in the UK. I presume that most other countries are the same.

You seem to be dividing the world up into "safe" and "unsafe". In reality everything has a varying degree of risk. Pasteurised milk is significantly, and quantifiable safer than un-pasteurised milk. It is also both cheap and simple. Regulatory regimes in order to insure that herds are disease free are neither cheap nor easy. If you would like a case study just look to the foot and mouth outbreak in the UK. A single case of infection can rapidly run rampant. This is despite the strong regulatory framework in the UK.

There are any number of diseases that can be spread from cattle to humans via milk, that is not to say they are common, or that drinking raw milk is particularly risky in an absolute sense, but eventually a widespread infection will go unnoticed long enough to infect large numbers of people. When it does the costs are massive. Thus pasteurisation remains eminently sensible. It is up alongside vaccination in terms of a cost/benefit analysis.

Quote

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that a carte blanche acceptance of the government to take care of any particular segment of societal regulation isn't an especially good idea. Such a group soon develops its own momentum and needs to justify its own growth and importance. Sometimes it's far too easy to manipulate the general population into accepting regulations that are not necessarilly in the best interests of the public at large

I am sympathetic to this point of view, but pasteurisation is really a ridiculous example. Even seat belt legislation seems to be a better target - studies of risk compensation behaviour have repeatedly shown that people drive worse when seat belts are compulsory. (Although seat belts work well enough to more than outweigh this factor). (Mandatory) Safe® sex campaigns represent another interesting study of risk compensation. However, we are drifting a long way off topic.

EDIT: An example that might bring it back on topic is the move to objective basis for measuring risk in financial services. This was undertaken by the UK financial authorities in the late 80's because objective measures were felt to be more reliable than relying on the regulators "judgement", however, the objective measures were hard to interpret, and probably resulted in a box ticking mentatilty that actually reduces oversight.

[hrothgar]

For what its worth, I purchase significant quantities of raw milk for use in various culinary products.

I believe that the milk that I am buying is safe enough to risk consuming.
I KNOW that its a hell of a lot more expensive

[mike777]

fwiw i have read rants about an anti science party.


at this point I am starting to get a bit worried.

[onoway]

phil_20686, on 2011-September-15, 15:00, said:

Your tuberculosis statistics are obviously nonsense. One case in 70 children over five years is high but believable, 14 cases from seventy children is a pandemic-level outbreak. Given that most children are vaccinated against TB (the BGC vaccine) its hard to believe you could find a group of seventy un-vaccinated children anywhere in the UK. I presume that most other countries are the same.

There are any number of diseases that can be spread from cattle to humans via milk, that is not to say they are common, or that drinking raw milk is particularly risky in an absolute sense, but eventually a widespread infection will go unnoticed long enough to infect large numbers of people. When it does the costs are massive. Thus pasteurisation remains eminently sensible. It is up alongside vaccination in terms of a cost/benefit analysis.

My bad for thinking that people actually read something on BBO forums before labelling it nonsense. The post clearly stated that the quote was from a time that TB WAS rampant and even then they found that the incidence could not be connected to drinking raw milk.

Your last statement is a generalization which means nothing at all. Herds which supply raw milk are monitored carefully and such a statement as that is nothing but fearmongering based on who knows what. The problem is that nobody who is a blind follower of pasteurization seems to realize there IS cost to pasteurization, in that the milk no longer has all the values it had before the process. There is undoubtedly a place for pasteurization in that some farms don't want to be bothered handling the milk as carefully as they should, but to demonize ALL raw milk for what it "might" pass on (unnoticed yet??) is silly.

[blackshoe]

When I was a kid, my grandmother owned a farm. When we visited her, we drank raw milk. It was pretty tasty, and didn't hurt us a bit.

I have friends who grew up on a dairy farm. They grew up drinking raw milk. They laugh at the idea that it's inherently harmful. One of them is dead now, but it wasn't raw milk that killed him - it was gallons of Coke and a distinct aversion to exercise.

[PassedOut]

blackshoe, on 2011-September-18, 11:03, said:

When I was a kid, my grandmother owned a farm. When we visited her, we drank raw milk. It was pretty tasty, and didn't hurt us a bit.

Same here, although it was my grandmother's brother who had the farm in Minnesota. I remember going down to the barn where he would sometimes hand-milk and squirt us kids directly in the mouth with the warm milk. Nobody got sick. Of course the barn was kept very clean.

[Winstonm]

I hate to drag this conversation away from the fascinating topic of cow's tetes and raw milk (isn't the purpose of milk to turn 30lb. calves into 2000lb steers - and we want to consume this stuff?), but it has occured to me that there may be a fairly handy way to reduce healthcare costs that neither Republicans or Democrats can call one-sided.

It is obvious that the primary cost factor driver in U.S. healthcare versus socialistic systems stems from overhead - administrative costs. This is mostly eliminated by the concept of single payer. At the same time, the basic purpose of insurance is to safeguard against calamity.

Therefore, it seems as if a single payer system for routine medical treatments would solve many cost problems, while retaining insurance companies to insure against only catastrophic illness and occurences would actually lower premiums.

I visualize this as a kind of Medicare for the normal, with supplemental insurance for the abnormal.

It seems stupid for 20-30% of the cost of a routine eye exam or routine hernia repair to be eaten by administrative costs because the policy has to cover the risks to the insurer of liver cancer as well as measles.

[PassedOut]

Today the other shoe will drop: Obama to Offer Plan to Cut Deficit by Over $3 Trillion

Quote

Mr. Obama will call for $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy, through a combination of closing loopholes and limiting the amount that high earners can deduct. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. Administration officials said that the Medicare cuts would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

Senior administration officials who briefed reporters on some of the details of Mr. Obama’s proposal said that the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy.

That last sounds promising. Looks like an interesting autumn is ahead.

[luke warm]

i'm listening to his speech now... not bad, as far as campaign speeches go... of course he's said some things that just don't stand muster, but what the hell

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on 2011-September-19, 09:08, said:

of course he's said some things that just don't stand muster, but what the hell

Any specific things?

[luke warm]

well for one he used money that would not be spent in any case, or at least wasn't planned on being spent (mostly military)... his "triggers" in effect exempt a large portion, i've read more than (from here) 90%, including all discretionary spending, from being touched... and when he refers to buffet's secretary paying a higher rate that buffet himself, he's comparing apples to oranges... buffet's bracket is 38%, but obama is using the corporate rate and comparing it to someone's individual rate... as i said, good as a campaign speech (until others answer it), but not much more... he's attempting to set this up as a me vs. them type thing... he may be successful with that strategy, but then again he may not be