Weird Cardiology Science

Instapundit links to a report of medical research on a behavior that can lead to as much as a 20% decrease in heart disease. The magical behavior: catching up on missed sleep on the weekend. The study was done with UK data as access to massive health data banks is facilitated by their NHS.

With a median follow-up of almost 14 years, participants in the group with the most compensatory sleep (quartile 4) were 19% less likely to develop heart disease than those with the least (quartile 1). In the subgroup of patients with daily sleep deprivation those with the most compensatory sleep had a 20% lower risk of developing heart disease than those with the least. The analysis did not show any differences between men and women.

I find this particularly interesting, as I tend to be a “night owl.” During my professorial years I regularly engaged in late night writing sessions followed by an 8 a.m. class. Those days I got maybe 4.5 hours sleep. 

With a MWF teaching schedule I normally slept in on a Tuesday or more often a Thursday until 11 a.m. It wasn’t on a weekend but it was make-up sleep. The three years I was a bureaucrat my sleep-ins were on weekends. 

My guess is that a mental disposition that “allows” a person to sleep in is related to being less stressed and maybe to lower blood pressure. More type B, less type A (I’m a B-).

Another Auto Technology

We have some new terminology in the so-called "electric motor vehicle" field. So far we've had true EVs that ran on batteries driving electric motors. And we've had hybrid EVs, I happen to own one of these. What is new is EREV technology. Motor Trend explains the difference. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

What's EREV mean? It stands for extended-range electric vehicle, and it's distinct from the plug-in hybrids Hyundai and others more commonly offer. As the name implies, it's an EV, with a decent-sized battery powering electric motors that in turn propel the car down the road. 

The whole range-extender part comes in the form of an internal-combustion engine whose sole purpose is to act as an onboard generator for the electric bits. Simply fill the tank with gas, and you can extend the vehicle's effective range beyond a set radius surrounding an EV charger, with the engine kicking on to generate electricity when the battery's initial charge is depleted.

A plug-in hybrid operates differently, typically with far more limited EV-only range, and the gas engine not only can charge up the battery but also is a primary motivator that can directly power the drive wheels, helping propel the vehicle along.

Present day hybrids provide power to the wheels from both electric motors and their gas engines. The new EREVs will provide all power to wheels from their electric motors, and use their gas engines only to spin the generators making the electricity after their batteries run down.

The EREV advantage will be a larger battery than hybrids have, meaning the owner who has a charging station their garage will do all their around-town driving to work and shopping on battery power. The gas engine will fire up on longer trips and when away from chargers for extended periods.

Saturday Snark

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and its Comments section.

The Company They Keep

Left-wing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has never been viewed as a centrist in this country. Maybe in Cuba or the old Soviet Union, not here.

He writes in The Guardian U.S. edition a column entitled "The 'far-left' agenda is exactly what most Americans want." And he claims Kamala Harris is the means by which to achieve that agenda. 

He is wrong about what we want. He is right about Harris as the means to that execrable end.

People are known by the company they keep. While not surprising, his endorsement should be a clear signal to everyone who knows ol' Bern is a Stalinist nutcase to at minimum (a) not vote for Harris or, even better, (b) vote for the anti-Harris ... Trump.

Friday Snark

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the Week in Politics.

No Laughing Matter

Steve Hayward of Power Line is back with another chart. This one shows the history of auto loans and credit cards going into serious delinquency (more than 90 days). 

As you can see, the last time missed payments were as bad as they are now, we were headed into what was eventually called the Great Recession of 2008-9. 

In his accompanying discussion, Hayward also notes the downward "adjustment" made to Bureau of Labor Statistics job creation numbers. The earlier estimates were likely inflated to make Biden and Harris look good.

Fewer jobs, more debt, and the result is people not able to pay what they owe. Meanwhile VP Harris keeps laughing. 

Do you suppose the people being hectored for past-due debt are laughing? How about those whose cars are repossessed?

No joke, it appears there is a recession in the offing, how soon it arrives is beyond my economic expertise. 

Religion and Party

I enjoy demographics, as you've doubtless long since concluded. Today's tasty morsel comes from Steve Hayward of Power Line, and concerns religious affiliation and activity cross-tabbed with political party.

So, what do I conclude from this data? Several things. First, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have left religion behind. 

Second, the trend for both parties is away from religion. A third of Democrats never attend religious services, but nearly a quarter of Republicans likewise abstain.  Some minor proportion of both parties consider themselves affiliated with a religion but never attend, examples might be so-called "ethnic Catholics" or "nonobservant Jews."

Third, a trend away from organized religion appears to be common throughout the developed world. I know this from sources other than the above chart.

Scary Statistics

Surveys show people know crime rates are up. Democrats argue that crime rates are down, they cite arrest rates for murder, other violent crimes, and property crimes. 

The arrest rates are truly down, but the offense rates are not down, at least for large cities. RealClearPolitics argues "Law Enforcement Collapse Masks Rising Crime Rates."

FBI data shows arrest rates plummeted over the last few years, starting in 2020. For cities with over 1 million people, the arrest rate for reported violent crime averaged 41% in the 24 years from 1996 to 2019, but it dropped to 20.3% in 2022 – a 50% drop. The lowest arrest rate in the preceding 24 years before COVID-19 was 32.6%. That is still 61% higher than the rate in 2022.

The arrest rate for murder fell by 37%, rape by 58%, robbery by 50%, and aggravated assault by 54%. The collapse in the arrest rate for property crime is even more dramatic. The average arrest rate for reported property crime fell from an average of 13% in the 25 years from 1996 to 2021 to 4.5% – a 64% drop.

All of the above is for reported crime only; as arrest rates drop, so does the willingness to report crime.

If you look at arrests as a percentage of all crime (reported and unreported), in these large cities only 8% of all violent crime and 1% of all property crime results in an arrest.

And then, big city prosecutors aren't charging many of those actually arrested. Knowing this, police aren't as likely to arrest.  The enforcement of our laws is a mess, soft-on-crime prosecutors bear much of the blame.

It is no longer clear that crime doesn't pay. It is increasingly clear that certain kinds of retail businesses located in big cities suffer unsustainable losses.

How Rude!

Headline in the satirical Babylon Bee.  Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Reporter Who Asked Kamala a Question Charged With a Hate Crime.

 Not much of an exaggeration.

It Didn't Take Long

This morning I wrote that CDR Salamander's ringing condemnation of ruling class values and behavior also applied to "more than a few Bush era Republicans." As if waiting for my signal, tonight comes this USA Today report.

More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for either former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in an open letter Monday obtained exclusively by USA TODAY. (snip) At least five former aides to former President George H.W. Bush also signed the letter, which has 238 signatures in all.

The Bushes, father and son, were dreary country club RINOs, as were their minions. They did manage to get elected and, while in office, perform slightly better than Democrats would have done. The less said about losers Romney and McCain the better. 

National Consensus Absent

Power Line’s Steve Hayward looks at the abortion issue. Trump has indicated he would veto a bill making abortion illegal nationwide, preferring the issue be settled at the state level. Pro-life advocates claim this issue is one of basic human rights, similar to slavery. 

Hayward quotes the pseudonymous Lucretia noting Lincoln did not advocate an immediate nationwide ban on slavery as a national consensus did not yet exist pre-civil war.

Lincoln put together a coalition which included those who were absolutists on abolition; those who wanted to use federal power to stop the spread of slavery in federal territories; and those who were simply prejudiced or did not want to compete against slave labor. That coalition would not have held together had Lincoln insisted on a constitutional amendment to ban slavery prior to the Civil War.

Trump is aware that a majority of Americans want abortion to be available in at least some circumstances. Leaving it to the states means avoiding a national fight on the issue. 

I’d argue that the issue of abortion is much less one-sided than that of slavery. There are positive human values on both sides of the abortion issue. I’m sure many agree.

The "Men Problem"

Power Line's Steve Hayward weighs in with two charts looking at what he calls "the Dems Men Problem." I left off the possessive apostrophe because he did.

For some years now we've been snidely calling the Democrats the "Mommy Party" and the Republicans the "Daddy Party." It appears once again satire is becoming fact.

Our “Ruling Class”

The pseudonymous CDR Salamander ponders the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal three years later. His (?) conclusion rings true with me.

Our self-described "best" that claim to be the ruling class are not our best. They are not good at their jobs. Their ideas are garbage. Their ethics are fetid to the core. Their morality sold for a farthing's worth of power, fame, and influence.

That description fits most Democrats and more than a few Bush-era Republicans. Whether our once great nation can survive with them at the helm is unclear, unfortunately. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Does Human Nature Exist?

If you are ready for some deep thoughts about politics and its underlying philosophy, Power Line's Steve Hayward has for you an interview-style interaction between noted conservative political philosopher Glenn Ellmers and interviewer Tom Klingenstein. I've excerpted some portions that spoke to me, to share with you; in all cases the voice is Ellmers'.

America has not been this divided since the Civil War. (snip) The Left — the intellectual class that promotes woke ideology — has come to reject the very idea of human nature. This is about as fundamental as you can get.

We have two diametrically opposed factions in the United States today — whose differences are basically theological. One side still believes in traditional morality and the importance of the family, in the founder’s Constitution, and the idea that we are born into a world we didn’t create and can’t completely control.

Woke Leftists reject all that in the name of complete individual freedom and total personal autonomy, without any limits imposed by God or nature or anything else. The role of the government, for them, is to facilitate the ability of everyone to meet their own subjective view of personal fulfillment.

A substantial portion of Americans — no one knows exactly what percentage — has become totally irrational. They are on a holiday from reality, and it is useless trying to reason with them. Another segment of the population goes along with all the woke nonsense because it’s fashionable, or because of social pressure to conform.

Trump is not a demagogue. He could have an easy, comfortable retirement playing golf all day. Instead, he is risking his life and putting in grueling days on the campaign trail. He has nothing to gain personally, so the only explanation is that he really wants to save the country from imminent collapse. 

There is more and the whole thing is truly worth reading, if somewhat long. A perfect weekend read. Ellmers is affiliated with the Claremont Institute.

Friday Snark 2.0

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics' Cartoons of the Week.

Friday Snark 1.0

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists

on the Week in Politics.