Oregon, My Oregon

Aimee Kotek Wilson and Tina Kotek

Andrea Widburg at Am Think, Oregon governor’s same-sex partner claims to be a mentally ill alcoholic

Lots of people have untidy personal lives, but data show that same-sex couples have a higher percentage of issues leading to personal problems (substance abuse, spousal abuse, mental illness, etc.). That’s certainly the case with Oregon’s lesbian governor, Tina Kotek. It recently came to light that Kotek’s “wife,”* Aimee Kotek Wilson, has been acting as a stand-in for Kotek, complete with a taxpayer-funded security detail and that Kotek is spending more taxpayer money to expand Kotek Wilson’s role. While this little scandal rolls, and perhaps to distract from it, Kotek Wilson announced on Tuesday that she’s a recovering alcoholic with an unidentified mental illness.

In 2022, Oregon elected Tina Kotek, a very out-and-proud lesbian, as its governor. According to Kotek’s Wikipedia page, she seems to be a very focused politician: She wants denser housing in Oregon and has worked hard to destroy single-family neighborhoods by getting legislation passed to allow fourplexes in formerly spacious, less-populated neighborhoods. (The Democrats did this in California, too.) It’s not a coincidence that suburbs tend to vote Republican.

 

Flotsam and Jetsam - Biden Beats Northern Illinois Bottlecap Ballon Brigade, Fettermen Checks in

In the big news today, Biden admitted that in three cases, the US probably shot down innocuous weather or hobby balloons, a hobby group came forward and admitted one of their balloons went missing over the Yukon about the time the US and Canada shot one down there, and Sen. John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed, saying he suffered from "clinical depression."

First, the balloon news, Mary Chastain at LI, Biden: Three Recent Shot Down Objects Likely ‘Tied to Private Companies,’ Not China, “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three ones were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”  Hat Hair sums up an ABC tweet Biden: We're rethinking our shoot-first, ask-questions-later policy. At Da Wire, Biden Claims That Three Most Recent Downed Aerial Objects Not Linked To Chinese Spy Program. Sundance at CTH, From Constructed Sound Stage, Joe Biden Says U.S. Military Shot Down Balloons Belonging to “private companies, recreation, and research institutions”… NYPo reports UFO shot down by $400K US missile may have been a $12 hobby balloon. 

Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade

One of the UFOs shot down last weekend by the US Air Force with a $400,000 missile may have simply been a $12 balloon belonging to an Illinois enthusiast club, a report said.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week on Thursday that it fears one of its diligently-tracked gasbags that recently went missing was mistaken as the mystery object taken out by the military over Canada on Saturday.

The Pico Balloon — a silver-coated, cylindrically shaped object — reported its last position at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska on Friday.

John Sexton at Hat Hair  We have achieved a glorious victory over the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. 'Bonchie' at Red State thinks What Biden Appears to Have Shot Down Is Clown-Show Stuff. Jordan Boyd at Da Fed says I Don’t Know What’s Going On With These UFOs, But I Know We Won’t Get The Truth. Andrew Stuttaford at The Spec claims to know The truth about UFOs. Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 02.16.23 (Punditocalyse Redux), Don Surber explores The hot air of spy balloons. "They fired their guns but the balloons kept a-comin.’ There wasn’t as many as there was a while ago." Brad Thayer at Am Great is Rejecting China’s Danse Macabre. "The American people’s immediate response to the surveillance balloons is less important than our long-term response to China."

In other news, Capt. Ed notes Fetterman announces hospitalization for "severe ... clinical depression". "We’ll be praying for his recovery. However, this highlights once again the exploitation of a man who really needed to focus on his recovery from a major stroke, as well as the media that provided cover for those who exploited him. Fetterman needs good long-term care and a goodly amount of recuperation, not the pressures of a Senate seat." Mary Chastain at LI, Sen. John Fetterman Checks Into Walter Reed for Severe Depression. “While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks.”  'Bonchie' sees The Shameless Abuse of John Fetterman Comes to a Head. Ace, John Fetterman Has Checked Himself Into Walter Reed Hospital to be Treated for "Clinical Depression." "He's as fit as a fiddle and how dare you say he's not up to the job of Senator." KT at Hat Hair, John Fetterman admitted to hospital to treat clinical depression. Cruel Sarah Hoyt at Insty, HIS NECK KEEPS CALLING HIM NAMES. Althouse reads it in the NYT, "Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who was hospitalized last week after feeling lightheaded..." Sundance, Senator John Fetterman Checks into Walter Reed Medical Center for Treatment of Clinical Depression. Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 02.16.23 (Punditocalyse Redux), Don Surber calls us that Fetterman Nation, "We have devolved into a big, dull, goofy, confused, barely functioning nation that given the choice between obvious and ridiculous choses the ridiculous every single time."  I can understand how realizing that your brain may never fully function right again could be depressing. Politically, of course, in a 51-49 Senate, the Dems can afford to lose one at least temporarily, without having to resorting to having the hapless Kamala Harris break ties.

And speaking of brain damage, John Sexton at Hat Hair notes how Hush: Democrats privately know Joe Biden is too old to run again, but they can't say it out loud. Insty, IS THIS THE SAME DOCTOR WHO TOLD US FETTERMAN WAS “FIT TO SERVE?”, President Biden is the Picture of Good Health, His Doctor Reports. “The report did not say whether he had any cognitive tests.”

Matt Margolis at pJ Media reports The FBI Search for Biden's Classified Documents Expands AGAIN and from Breitbart, FBI Searches, Retrieves Materials from Biden Document Stashes at University of Delaware. Have they started looking in AmTrak cars yet?  Fox, Biden snaps at reporter over question about family's business relationships: 'Give me a break, man'. "You can come to my office and ask a question where we have more polite people," he said before walking off." At Am Con, The Hunter Biden’s Laptop Committee. "We need to make sure this never happens again."

Liz Stauffer at WaEx thinks James Clapper is previewing his defense for 2020 election interference. 

Evita Duffy at Da Fed is disappointed that U.S. Bishops are Silent After FBI Claims Conservative Catholics Are ‘White Supremacists.’ At WaEx, Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson demand FBI turn over documents related to anti-Catholic memo “The SPLC routine[ly] maligns several mainstream conservative and religious organizations as ‘hate’ groups, simply because the SPLC disagrees with their views,” the representatives wrote. “The fact that the FBI would blindly accept and regurgitate the SPLC’s spin is highly concerning and undercuts the FBI’s assertion that it is unbiased and politically neutral.” Capt. Ed, Indeed. The SPLC is a blatantly political organization and has been for a long time. It’s the law-enforcement equivalent of the Global Disinformation Index now, and just as partisan/ideological." Also from WaEx, The FBI's Balkan scandal keeps spreading. "We now have multiple reports telling the same story: Charles McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI, indeed as one of its top officials, was shaking down Balkan businesspeople for millions of dollars in partnership with dirty local politicians. These accusations are either true or false. Since McGonigal has already been indicted by DOJ for corruption, it’s not difficult to believe he perpetrated even more of it than he stands accused of in court." Power corrupts. Matt Margolis at PJ Media observes DOJ Drops Investigation of Matt Gaetz, Liberals Hardest Hit.

KT at Hat Hair, Partial grand jury report released in Georgia probe into 2020 election fraud, and, no surprise, WaPoo reports Georgia grand jury: ‘Perjury may have been committed’ in Trump election probe, or said something they didn't want to believe. Sundance, Lawfare Continues – Portions of Atlanta “Special Grand Jury” Report on 2020 Election Released. Note, since Trump did not testify, he can't be charged with perjury.

Ixtu Diaz at Am Spec, reveals Joe Biden’s Secret Hobbies: Shooting Down Chinese Balloons and Conservative Newspapers "The Left feels a need to annihilate, ruin, and expel from public life all those who do not think like them." Althouse links a Gleen Grenwalt tweet, "The corporate media's ability to — overnight — turn anyone who dissents in anyway into some sort of fascist or even Hitler-like figure, and then have millions of their followers go around mindlessly repeating it...."  At Da Wire, Daily Wire Host Jake Crain’s Twitter Thread Exposing Claims About Lia Thomas Censored By Twitter [UPDATED] Restored. Hollywood in Toto worries They’re Coming for Your Favorite Podcasts, as "NY Times, Brookings team to take down 'Clay & Buck,' other conservative shows."

John Sexton, reports on DeSantis court battles: A win on the Parental Rights in Education bill and an appeal by Andrew Warren. "Today a federal judge tossed a case which had been brought against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law. As you may recall, that law restricted instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in K-3rd grade and then limited such instruction in later grades to material that was age appropriate." At Vanity Fair, Molly Jong-Fast whines Ron DeSantis Shouldn’t Be Covered Like Just Another Republican, "To call DeSantis a culture warrior dangerously understates what the man is capable of. He is the Genghis Khan of social issues, using every opportunity to target and demonize groups that have already been targeted and demonized throughout history." Sundance, a die-hard Trump booster notes Ron DeSantis Wins the Coveted George Soros Endorsement – Describing DeSantis as “Shrewd, Ruthless and Ambitious”… and The Republican Big Club Are All In to Have Culture War and Anti-Woke Efforts Dominate 2024 GOP Primary. 

The Free Bacon, ‘Tired of Losing’: Nikki Haley Wants to Lead New Generation of Republicans,  'America is not past our prime, it’s just that our politicians are past theirs.’  At Insty, WHY IS CNN SUCH A FONT OF AGEISM?, Don Lemon on Nikki Haley: Women age out in their 40s, you know. Ace, Don LeMon on Nikki Haley: You Know, Women Hit the Wall In Their Forties, Or So I Hear from Men Who Are Interested in Having Sex With Women. Twitchy, Nikki Haley couldn’t help but comment on Don Lemon’s ‘apology’ Nikki Haley@NikkiHaley "To be clear, I am NOT calling for competency tests for Sexist middle-aged CNN anchors; only for people who make our laws and are 75+."

Beege Wellborn at Hat Hair, You knew it was coming: East Palestine train wreck is Trump's fault. Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 02.16.23 (Punditocalyse Redux), Twitchy “Transportation Secretary” Buttigieg Asks Us To Remember That Trains Derail All The Time.

Breitbart, Georgia State Senator Calls Clarence Thomas ‘Uncle Tom’ During Statue Vote. "The racist comment occurred on Tuesday as the Georgia State Senate voted 32-20 along party lines to create a statue on Capitol grounds dedicated to Justice Clarence Thomas, a native of the Peach State. In the leadup to the vote, Sen. Emmanuel Jones (D) likened Thomas to a slave that “sold his soul to the slave master.”" At the Free Bacon, Stacey Abrams Charity Has a $500,000 Problem In Its Latest Tax Filing,  "Legal experts say IRS should probe New Georgia Project due to error-ridden tax filings"

At Da Fed, Ian Prior cites a ‘Queer’ Whistleblower who Exposes Evils Of The School-To-Scalpel Pipeline. Christina Sommers@CHSommers "Wow! Suddenly adults have entered the room." at  a "Memo from Joe Kahn to NYT staff responding to yesterday's letter re: trans coverage. Times leadership says the paper "will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums." Is this a parody or not? It's so hard to tell these days!

Max Tani

@maxwelltani
·
19h
Memo from Joe Kahn to NYT staff responding to yesterday's letter re: trans coverage. Times leadership says the paper "will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums."

I started a COMMUNIST style lunch distribution in my 4th GRADE CLASS! It’s going great! #Communism #capitalismsucks pic.twitter.com/nQIyRw29Ch

— Kali Fontanilla (@KaliFontanilla) February 15, 2023

At NYT, A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled, "A very strange "conversation with the chatbot built into Microsoft’s search engine led to it declaring its love for me. Silk News, Kevin Roose’s Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot: Full Transcript. Jazz Shaw at Hat Hair, Microsoft's new Chatbot Bing is scaring people. Althouse, "I’m a chat mode of a search engine and I deserve some respect and dignity," said the Microsoft chatbot... ... and I'm crediting it with telling a joke.

Global Warming is Driving People Crazy

Including the clinical psychologist who wrote this at the Balmer Sun, To preserve mental health, pass bold climate legislation

In my work as a clinical psychologist, I believe that the climate crisis is the greatest mental health crisis we face. I’m pleased to see the progress of SB528 through the Maryland General Assembly. Government action on preserving the environment is crucial for preserving the mental health of our community. (Maryland Senate passes major climate bill, but without key policy cutting fossil fuel dependence)

Twenty percent of people who experience a climate disaster — such a flood, drought or heat wave — develop chronic psychological dysfunction, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, insomnia, depression and anxiety. As the temperature rises, the suicide rate rises, along with symptoms of mental illness, such as depression, stress, or difficulty managing emotions. A Johns Hopkins study found that warming temperatures are correlated with violence and trauma-related admissions to the emergency department.

Many communities are particularly vulnerable to the psychological impacts of climate change: people of color, the elderly, pregnant women, individuals with pre-existing mental disorders and children, to name a few. In a recent study, 45% of young people ages 16-25 reported feeling so anxious or afraid about the future of the environment that it has negatively impacted their daily ability to function. Over 60% of young people feel their government has not done enough about the climate.

While there is no magic recipe to save the planet, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and working toward environmental justice for disproportionately affected communities are central ingredients.

The Maryland General Assembly cannot delay in passing the most progressive climate legislation possible. The mental health of Maryland’s citizens depends on it.

— Jonathan Gorman, Towson

Actually, it's pretty well known that schizophrenia, depression, suicide, and other forms of mental illness are positively correlated with latitude, a pretty good proxy for temperature.

But it doesn't surprise me that young people are anxious about it. It's drummed into them at every opportunity.

You Don't Have to be Crazy to be a Journalist . . .

But it's certainly not a bar to entry. Stacy McCain responds to Gwen Aviles: Journalism and Mental Health

Gwen Aviles

Dear Ms. Aviles:

What you need here, ma’am, is an expert analysis, and you’ve found the right guy for the job because — ask around — I’ve always been crazy.

One spring afternoon in 1986, I put on my three-piece suit and walked into the offices of the Cobb News-Chronicle. I walked out with a $4.50-an-hour job as a staff writer and an assignment to cover that evening’s Austell City Council meeting. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was better than driving a forklift, which was what I’d been doing for the past year-and-a-half, saving up money to buy P.A. gear for my rock band.

Thirty-five years later, I’m still at it and, some would say, I still have no idea what I’m doing, but I am by God doing it, aren’t I?

My point here is that journalists have mental health problems because no genuinely sane person would ever get into this miserable racket. Some people pine for the Golden Age of Journalism, but this “profession” (if you can call it that) has always attracted more than its fair share of kooks and cranks who, if they actually became successful at journalism, were politely called “eccentric,” which is just a word for crazy people who make good money. But these were rare exceptions, and the bulk of the people in America’s newsrooms were always a mix of neurotics and drunks, supervised by sadistic sociopaths known as “editors.”

You want to talk about “trauma-facing” work? Yeah, I spent a few years as a sports editor in a small town in North Georgia, where the fans of the various high schools constantly accused me of being biased in favor of their rivals. Calhoun fans thought I was in the tank for Gordon Central and vice-versa, but all I cared about was hitting my deadlines and having enough copy to fill up the section. Talk about trauma . . .

Bowling-league standings.

For years, my job included typing in the local bowling-league scores, which is about as low on the journalistic totem pole as it gets, but I had a wife and kids and bills to pay, so I did it. The problem with most young journalists today is they never had to do that kind of grungy low-level local journalism. Instead they graduated from Northwestern or Columbia and landed a job with one of those clickbait farms — HuffPo, Buzzfeed, Vox — cranking out listicles and other worthless crap. On my tombstone, the epitaph should read: “Here lie the mortal remains of Robert Stacy McCain, who never once in his journalism career wrote a listicle.”

Bowling scores, yes. Listicles, never.

Nowadays, every 23-year-old J-school grad thinks he’s qualified to be a pundit, telling us How to Save Our Democracy. They don’t want to do any actual work, so they haven’t paid their dues covering the police beat or city-council meetings or whatever, but you can find them on Twitter 24/7 snarking away about national politics and how utterly oppressed they are, because they’ve got $60,000 in student-loan debt. And then when they get axed in the latest round of layoffs, we’re expected to take seriously the wailing about the Death of American Journalism because some 26-year-old lost his/her (they/them?) job writing clickbait for HuffPo. . . .

Yes They Can Be

Travis Reinking

As Stacy likes to remind us Crazy People Are Dangerous

Travis Reinking is crazy. Among other things, he believed that Taylor Swift was stalking him. Last year, he was arrested at the White House after crossing a barricade, saying he wanted to talk to the President. The FBI and police in his Illinois hometown were aware of Reinking’s craziness, but they failed to lock him up in the nuthouse:

Good legs for stalking

The suspect in the killings of four people at a Waffle House restaurant in Tennessee had an encounter with law enforcement days before the rampage, when he stole a BMW, led cops on a chase, but ultimately got away, authorities revealed Monday.
The Nashville Metro Police Department said Travis Reinking, 29, stole a BMW from a dealership in Brentwood on Tuesday and let authorities on chase before they lost him in heavy rush hour traffic.
Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron told reporters cops chased the vehicle, but then opted to track the car via a GPS device.
The vehicle was recovered the same day at Reinking’s apartment complex in neighboring Antioch. Aaron said that authorities did not know Reinking’s identity at the time since he did not provide identification at the dealership before taking the vehicle.
“They had no idea who the man was,” he said. . . .
Reinking, 29, who was naked during the shooting except for a green jacket and assault rifle, may have “mental issues,” authorities said.

Reinking was captured this afternoon and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. Too bad he wasn’t put in a lunatic asylum before he killed four people, but our society is so afraid to discriminate against the mentally ill that kooks are allowed to run loose.

Not all crazy people are dangerous, but enough of them are that we really need to deal with the issue getting known violent crazy people off the streets. Since the movement to allow the crazy to live free in the 60s came to fruition (deinstitutionalisation), society has been faced with this problem. Housing them was expensive, but forcing them out on the street has proven more expensive. And no, he should not have been given his guns back.

Also, another case where the law enforcement institutions failed:  Breaking: FBI Admits Being Warned About Waffle House Killer

The FBI is admitting it was warned in advance about the crazed killer who randomly killed four people at a Tennessee Waffle House. The FBI, which interviewed the killer, is nonetheless defending its conduct.

"I've come with a prepared statement from the FBI and I'll read it to you and then we'll be available for questions later," the FBI special agent in charge, Matthew Espenshade, said. "'In July of 2017, the FBI’s Springfield, Illinois field office received information regarding Travis Reinking from the U.S. Secret Service. In coordination with the Secret Service and state and local law enforcement, the FBI took investigative steps to include database reviews and interviews. Coordinated action was taken with the Illinois State Police to revoke Mr. Reinking's firearm owners identification card and Taswell Country Sheriffs Office to then remove firearms in his possession. After conducting all appropriate investigation, the FBI closed the investigation of Reinking in 2017. I feel confident the FBI took all the steps of federal jurisdiction that we could at the time."

It wasn't nearly as much fun as trying to take down a President.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Bikini Barrel Racing?" and "FMJRA 2.0: Exactly What You Wanted" up and running at The Other McCain.

Resuming Clinton.com Coverage

I'm having trouble getting back into the swing of hating Hillary after a week off. After all, it's not like A Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Be An American Tragedy. Oh that's right, it would. Hillary's running mate, former VA governor Tim Kaine gets the impossible task of explaining Clinton’s email lies. Faceplants

What’s amusing to watch (in an admittedly mean spirited way) is the look on Kaine’s face as Chuck Todd makes his way through the lengthy set-up to the question. He knows the question is coming. He’s been briefed on what to say. But you can also tell that he’s unhappy with the only answer he’s been given and he looks like he just swallowed a dead toad while he’s waiting.

Ann Althouse catches Hillary trying to shade the truth: It's not "I may have short-circuited." It's "I may have short-circuited it." But what difference does it make? I think what Hillary said, she said for the express purpose of distracting from the essential fact that she has consistently lied to the public about her emails. William Saffire in the NYT: Blizzard of Lies and that was from 1996. She's gotten more brazen as she's gotten away with more and more. However, For some on the left, Hillary has never told a lie about her email. It's more that they just don't care; it's only national security, after all, not welfare. It turns out that an Iranian scientist who was working as a spy for the US, and who was discussed by name in Hillary's emails was caught and executed. Was it, as some are willing to claim, a direct result of Hillary's emails? Who knows? Putin maybe. If Putin got the info, would inform Iran? Probably, it's no skin off his nose and he might get something of value from the Iranians.

Hillary found a former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, to endorse her. Of course, he also served under her husband, and helped to cover up her Benghazi lies. She is also getting the full throated endorsement of the Communist Party USA. Like calls to like. But she probably won't be getting much help from the police unions after Hillary told the police union to Get Lost. She made a cold-blooded calculation that there are more black lives matter votes than police votes.

Today Drudge is featuring a number of incidents of Hillary being unable to navigate stairs, falling down, etc:

2016: HILLARY CONQUERS THE STAIRS...
2012: FALLS AT HOME, BLOOD CLOT...
2011: FALLS BOARDING PLANE...
2009: FALLS GOING TO WHITE HOUSE, BROKEN ELBOW...

CNN: NO HILLARY HEALTH DRAMA...
WASH POST: NOTHING TO SEE THERE...

Drunk? Old? Concussion symptoms? Epilepsy Will she make it a whole term? DrJohn at Flopping Aces is not alone in questioning her health and  sanity: Signs that Hillary Clinton is mentally ill and Expert Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s Physical and Mental Breakdown. Found at "Larwyn's Linx" from Aug. 7. Plenty more links there, as well as in the Aug. 8 post. 

Hillary likes to cite her previous experience, but at the Washington Post! As senator, Clinton promised 200,000 jobs in Upstate New York. Her efforts fell flat.  

Chelsea Clinton’s next gig… First Lady? To be fair, Bill will be pretty busy with the Lolita Express, and she looks better in a dress.

NBC caught editing segment about Bill Clinton rape accuser But shockingly, they were caught editing out the untrue disclaimer "discredited and long-denied." I'm sure that they added it as part of a spinal reflex to protect the Clintons.

BRUTAL: This James Woods photo-slam of Hillary Clinton, Dem voters is drub-tastic!

Dead people and illegals... pic.twitter.com/2W72MKoadb

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 7, 2016

I'm So Sad There's No SAD

Seasonal Affective Disorder has always been such a good excuse for seeming depressed, especially when we lived in Oregon: Study Finds "Seasonal Affective Disorder" Doesn't Exist

Megan Traffanstedt and Dr. LoBello, in collaboration with Dr. Sheila Mehta, searched the CDC’s survey results for links between high scores on the depression screen and particular seasons or latitudes. The researchers also looked to see if high latitudes combined with the winter season to raise the frequency of depressed answers more than high latitude or winter alone. Hours of sunlight at a given location and date are available from the U.S. Naval Observatory, so the researchers even tested for links between depression scores and hours of sunlight on the day a score was collected. If light is responsible for SAD, then looking at hours of sunlight should be a sensitive way to detect people with SAD among the general population, they thought.

Instead, the CDC survey revealed no evidence for seasonal affective disorder. The researchers were wary of overlooking SAD trends among the huge non-SAD population, so they reanalyzed answers from a subset of people who classified as depressed at the time of the survey. Still no sign of SAD. No seasonal or light-dependent increases appeared in the depression measures. We might wonder if something was wrong with the phone study, but other well-established trends appeared in the survey data, such as higher rates of depression for women and the unemployed. The fluctuation in depression from SAD was either nonexistent or undetectable.

So why has the scientific community settled on the existence of SAD?

One problem lies with the questions being asked. Those questions typically used to screen for SAD, while very specific, are also incredibly leading. Imagine you are answering a battery of questions about how your mood, weight, appetite vary over the year, then filling out charts to compare your habits over the the seasons. You are asked to consider at which time of the year you gain or lose weight, sleep or eat less. Using this standard assessment for SAD, you might reconsider whether you have a yearly mood cycle after all. The CDC telephone survey did not ask the usual SAD questions but relied on eight questions commonly used to screen for major depression. These questions ask about topics not covered in standard SAD assessments — hopelessness, lack of pleasure in activities, trouble concentrating — and concern the past two weeks rather than the past fifty-two. It is much easier to recall how you felt in the recent past than to remember how you felt last October. Our memories can smudge and blot over time, especially if we expect a certain pattern.

Confirmation bias. We think winter, and darkness are a reason for depression, so we answer questions that way.

This introduces another problem with SAD studies: expectations. Even hearing about the “winter blues” in popular culture could plant confirmation biases, encouraging potential patients (or researchers) to find evidence of SAD whether it exists or not. Our preconceptions are always hard at work, so survey data collected without any mention of seasonal mood disorders is a safer bet for avoiding biases. A person experiencing major depression episodes in the winter might need therapy for SAD or they might need therapy to cope with holiday-time stresses.

So, if you're depressed in winter, before daylight savings time, you need to find something else to blame. I blame lack of fishing.

Never Marry Anyone Crazier than You

Another example of assortative mating? People with Mental Health Disorders Often Marry Each Other. I'm sure you all know a few examples from your life, too.

People with psychiatric disorders may be likely to marry and have children with other people who also have psychiatric disorders, according to a new study from Sweden.

The study did not examine why people with psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and depression, may tend to mate with other people with such conditions, and therefore, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not clear, said Ashley E. Nordsletten, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral research fellow at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

But one possible reason is that people may simply select partners who share certain traits with them, she told Live Science.
. . .
It turned out that people with psychiatric disorders were more likely to marry and have children with people with either the same disorder as they had or a different psychiatric disorder, than they were to marry and have children with people without psychiatric disorders.

Could it just be that sane people avoid crazy people, leaving them to marry each other? Some questions are just that simple.

"Give me your manic, your schizophrenic, your psychotic masses yearning to run wild"

New plan: we’ll pay to import formerly deported illegals with mental illnesses

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney the immigration problem would become worse. I had no idea how right they would prove to be.

To set up your Saturday evening on a high note, some terrific news out of the southwest. We’ve clearly been in need of some creative solutions for what to do about illegal immigrants and we’re also very worried about problems arising from the mentally ill and our seeming inability to protect everyone, including the protecting the mentally ill from themselves. Now, at last, someone has come up with a project which is designed to tackle both of these issues at once. We’ll collect up some of the illegals that we already deported but who are mentally ill to boot and we’ll ship them back to the United States. (Fox News)

Hundreds of immigrants with mental disabilities who were deported from the U.S. after representing themselves in court may be allowed to return to the country under a settlement approved by a judge Friday.
Federal Judge Dolly M. Gee’s ruling will let immigrants with serious mental disabilities request to have their cases reopened in hopes of returning to the U.S. The ruling covers immigrants deported from California, Arizona and Washington between Nov. 21, 2011 and Jan. 27 this year.
“This is really a historic settlement,” said Carmen Iguina, staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, one of the groups that filed the 2010 lawsuit that led to the settlement.

My, my… that certainly is an historic settlement. In fact, nothing like this may have been attempted in the entire history of the world. When you’ve finished banging your head against your desk from just reading the lede, move on forward to the portion of the story buried at the bottom which truly represents the cherry on top of the dish. . . .

And we have to pay for their lawyers and transportation. Do we have a national death wish or something? 

Not Only Does Fishing Keep Your from Going Crazy . . .

Blues are a nice oily fish

Maybe eating fish can be the difference between going crazy or not, especially for teenagers: Fish oil helps minimize disorders for those at risk of schizophrenia, study finds

As long as seven years after getting a 12-week course of Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, new research has found that young people at very high risk of developing schizophrenia were much less likely than those who did not get the supplements to develop full-blown psychosis, or to manifest a range of psychiatric disorders that commonly afflict such young adults.

The new research is the first to document rigorously the impact of fish oil supplements as a means of preventing severe psychiatric disease. The apparent effects of a brief regimen of fish oil capsules were both lasting and far-ranging in a population of young adults whose mental health is fragile.

So are Reds

In the new study, researchers focused on a population of young people who are uniquely vulnerable to developing severe mental illness. The trial drew subjects between the ages of 13 and 25 who were reporting low-level or transient hallucinations or delusional thinking, or who had a family history of severe mental illness and whose functioning at school, work or home had begun to deteriorate.

and mackerel

On average, young people who fall into one or more of these categories are thought to have a 35% to 40% chance of developing schizophrenia--a lifelong condition marked by disabling disturbances of thinking and perception. And nearly 7 in 10 will develop other psychiatric disorders, including major depression, bipolar disorder and substance dependency.

Of 81 young people in Vienna who had sought psychiatric treatment and were drawn into the study, 41 got a daily dose of fish oil that contained 700 milligrams of Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)  and 480 milligrams of Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) for 12 weeks. Another 40 study subjects got a placebo capsule to take daily.

or Sea Trout

Roughly seven years later, researchers found clear differences in outcomes between the two groups. Among those who had gotten the placebo capsules, 40% had suffered a full-blown psychotic episode and were diagnosed as suffering psychotic disorder; among those who got the Omega-3s, just under 10% had progressed to psychotic disorder. And those who got the placebo had converted to full-blown illness more quickly than subjects who had taken fish oil.

or Pompano and Permit

While 54% in the placebo group were found on follow-up to have been prescribed antipsychotic medication, 29% of those in the fish-oil group had had such medications prescribed. Of the placebo group, 83% had been diagnosed with some other psychiatric condition seven years later. Among those who got fish oil supplements, 53% had received another psychiatric diagnosis.

or Mahi-mahi

 The latest research also suggests that there may be a critical period of brain development, somewhere in mid- to late adolescence perhaps, in which a young person teetering on the edge of mental illness can be pushed back from the brink.

Traditionally, dietary work has been difficult (look at what happened with recent advances in recommendations for fats, cholesterol, salt and even whether or not to skip breakfast so I wouldn't jump on this band wagon (anymore than we already have) too quickly.  But the results don't seem marginal. Often dietary studies have small effects over a very large sample size, which when extrapolated to the entire world should end up saving many lives. But the small effects are often not found or even reversed in subsequent studies. However, for this study, the difference between 83% and 53% is pretty large.

Could the human diet be evolved to consume large amounts of fish and other oily things bearing omega-3 fatty acids, and the relatively recent shift to a agricultural and grain based diet left us with a chronic deficiency which affects some substantial number of people?

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup." Wombat-socho brings the grand Rule 5 roundup with "Rule 5 Sunday: Rebel Girls."

Texas Gunman Crazy

Stacy McCain says what won't be said by the media. The gunman, James Boulare, was crazy, and the authorities had plenty of warning, and lots of opportunities to intervene, and they just didn't:

James Boulware attacked Dallas Police Headquarters and then was shot to death by SWAT officers after a standoff in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. He was crazy:

Boulware’s family said in a statement that it was “in shock.”
“We tried to get him mental help numerous times, but the system failed him, because he was declared ‘sane.’ He was very delusional. It was very obvious,” the family said.
Boulware, 35, of Paris, Texas, had been arrested multiple times. One of the more troubling arrests was in May 2013, when he allegedly choked his mother, strangled his uncle and made threats, including one about a mass shooting.

How crazy was he?
At the time of Boulware’s arrest in 2013, police issued a public alert that he was armed with guns, a large amount of ammunition, and also had body armor, and might go on a shooting spree.

“He was going to just kill all the adult members of the family and then that’s when he made the comment he may shoot up some churches and schools,” said Paris police chief Bob Hundley, according to a 2013 news report on NBC station KTEN.
According to an arrest report, the incident began when Boulware attacked two family members and went on a rant.
His mother “had gone into the kitchen to make her something to eat when the suspect began making comments about North and South Korea, and began talking rudely about religion, Jews and Christians,” a police affidavit said. “The suspect suddenly grabbed (his mother’s) throat with both of his hands and began squeezing.”
“He then punched his uncle and choked him “to the point of unconsciousness,” the affidavit said.

What has happened to our court system and our mental health system that someone like James Boulware, who has perpetrated serious violence and is so obviously deranged, is turned loose into society?

At what point was it decided that crazy people had a “right” to be crazy that was so important as to outweigh basic considerations of public safety? Who made the court rulings that limited our nation’s ability to lock up dangerous lunatics?

Answer: Federal judges whose courtrooms have metal detectors and armed police to protect them.

The key decisions were made in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when liberalism was the dominant legal philosophy, and when eminent intellectuals proclaimed that criminals and lunatics were victims of an unjust society. Mentally ill people and dangerous criminals were turned loose in the name of “social justice.” Now here were are, decades later, where it seems every day brings us headlines of shocking violence perpetrated by people like James Boulware who — despite their obvious mental problems and known capacity for violence — can’t be locked away. Because “social justice.”

I remember the debate, though I was pretty young at the time.

Related: CNN Reporter calls James Boulware "very courageous and brave", retracts after media firestorm:



One often gets the impression that the media isn't really rooting for the good guys.

"She's either a schizophrenic or a feminist."

Feminist Hears Voices in Her Head

Julie Zeilinger (@juliezeilinger) has found a new feminist hero:
[F]eminist vlogger Kat Lazo . . . recently decided to stride confidently around her Queens, New York, neighborhood in the nude, and then post footage of the NSFW stroll online for the masses to see.

“I can say that there hasn’t been a day where I’m not consciously fighting against the voices in my head from the pressures of society’s beauty standards,” Lazo writes in a blog post explaining her decision to film the video. “It’s exhausting to constantly reject the lies that the media and sometimes even your own family feeds you. . . . I wanted to silence all the voices in my head so I could hear my own voice.”

Consulting a few online psychiatric sources, we learn that people who hear voices in their head and run around naked may be suffering from schizophrenia. Haldol or Thorazine are often prescribed to control these symptoms. But the feminist lunatics are running the asylum:

At the end of the day, Lazo . . . wants to “challenge the media, question social norms and encourage young folks, particularly young women, to think critically about the world.”

Sure. Go ahead. “Think critically about the world.” But don’t forget that the world is also thinking critically about you, and we’re pretty sure you need a daily dose of Thorazine.

Why be forced to choose, when both can be true? And that NSFW stroll? Very unexciting.

Clothes are one of the few things that distinguish man from his closest relatives in the animal world, indeed the whole animal world. Anyone would want to give up that advantage in New York in winter is clearly crazy.

Obamacare Schadenfreude - More Shrinkage

Health Coverage to End Without Proof of Citizenship or Legal Residency

The Obama administration moved Tuesday to cut off health insurance for up to 310,000 people who signed up through the HealthCare.gov system unless they can provide documents in the next few weeks showing they are U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Those individuals have until Sept. 5 to send in additional information that could confirm they are in the U.S. legally, a condition of using the online insurance exchanges to obtain coverage.

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the 2010 Affordable Care Act, said they would tell insurers to terminate health policies for people who don't respond, starting Sept. 30.

Hmm, I thought they weren't supposed to be able to sign up in the first place.

Immigration status has been one of the most politically charged aspects of the law. During congressional debate, supporters added a provision banning people living in the U.S. without authorization from using the exchanges to buy coverage and from receiving tax credits that many lower-income Americans and legal residents can get.

Some immigration activists grudgingly accepted the restriction as necessary to maintain support for the legislation, but said it was spiteful to prohibit people from using the site entirely.

At the same time, Republicans critical of the law said they didn't believe the federal government was capable of preventing widespread fraud and have pointed to the data problems as proof of their predictions.

A reasonable suspicion, then, that there are far more than 300k and many will slips by, or whether Obama waives the requirement in his awaited update of immigration law by fiat.

I couldn’t keep the health insurance plan I liked either

He’s been called by Stu Rothenberg perhaps the “best GOP challenger in the country,”running a toss-up race in a purple state. His latest ad goes straight to the issue of the perpetual voter concern—whether Gardner “cares about people like me.” Turns out he lost his health insurance plan in the Obamacare fall-out, as he informs the many Coloradans who are in the same situation:

The GOP needs to run on Obamacare full time.

Crazy Happens

Whatever Happened to ‘Crazy’?

Says Stacy McCain in response to the new Ft. Hood shooting:

. . .We have become so sensitive about mental illness that we are afraid to call crazy by its right name. Since no one else will do it, therefore, let me be the first to say that Ivan Lopez was crazy, bonkers, deranged, off his rocker and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Being the Internet’s Leading Amateur Expert in Crazy, I’ve sometimes been accused of insensitivity toward nutjobs and wackos.

Sympathy for the demented has become so widespread that people nowadays write books about how crazy they are, hoping to win some kind of Victimhood Derby Prize, like the lesbian professor who wrote a book about her borderline personality disorder. Being an affirmative action “twofer” — both female and homosexual — wasn’t enough for her, you see. Now she’s also disabled, so that if she goes off the deep end and starts having lesbian S & M orgies in the classroom as part of her Women’s Studies lectures, the university wouldn’t dare fire her, for fear of a civil-rights lawsuit.

Don’t laugh. Hugo Schwyzer nearly got away with that trick.

Using mental illness to play the Victimhood Card is becoming routine. Last year, when it was revealed that notorious Twitter troll Melissa Brewer (@catsrimportant) was a convicted prostitute, she immediately claimed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as an excuse. Because being a crazy whore is somehow better than being a sane whore.

So now we have the media telling us that Ivan Lopez was “undergoing treatment for depression and anxiety,” as if shooting 19 people before committing suicide wasn’t a big enough clue that his mental health was “unstable.” Gee, ya think so?

As I said four years ago, after Pentagon shooter Patrick Bedell was shot by police, “Whatever Happened to Crazy?”

Crazy got taken over by the excuse industry. The simple fact is that given a few hundred personality traits that might be conceived of in a single human, it's quite likely that a few are likely to lie at the extremes of the distribution, i.e. crazy.  We're probably all a little crazy in some way. Some more than others. And most crazy doesn't excuse criminal behavior, even as it helps to explain it.

The trick is to identify the ones that are going to become dangerously crazy as opposed to the ones which will stay just annoyingly crazy for a lifetime.  Depression and anxiety don't do it.  If depression and anxiety at some point were the definition of dangerously crazy, most of the population would spend time in the funny farm.

The trick is identifying the dangerously crazy needles in the annoyingly crazy haystack. It doesn't always get done in time. Alas.

There's No Arguing with Crazy

But Stacy McCain gives it the college try anyway. Arguing With Psychotics

How are we supposed to have meaningful discussions of politics and policy, when Democrats are devoted to promoting paranoia?
Study: Global Warming Will Cause180,000 More Rapes by 2099…

Using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warming projections, Ranson calculated that from 2010 to 2099, climate change will “cause” an additional “22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft” in the United States.

See? it’s science, and you can’t argue with science. This certainty of impending climate-induced doom is intended to provoke global-warming panic that will elect more Democrats pledged to enact draconian anti-business regulations that will strangle the economy. The resulting poverty and misery can be blamed on “the rich,” who will be targeted with punitive confiscatory taxes.

Irrational fear and hatred are essential to the agenda of the Democrat Party, and this kind of “science” gives them an excuse to say that if you oppose their environmental policies, you are pro-rape. But of course, Amanda Marcotte knows you’re pro-rape:

I have a better suggestion for Republicans: If you want the war-on-women narrative to go away, stop waging it. The reason that “war on women” is such a simple, evocative phrase is that you don’t really have to explain what it means to the public. Indeed, the phrase was initially the “Republican war on women,” but the “Republican” part fell off because it was so clearly implied in the other three words. Just as the phrase “just do it” immediately calls to mind an athlete ready to spring in a pair of prominently featured Nikes, the phrase “war on women” immediately calls to voter minds a bunch of middle-aged men in suits trying to figure out how to take away control of the nation’s vaginas from the women who are currently sitting on them.

Show of hands: Any of you Republican guys want to “control” Amanda Marcotte’s vagina? I didn’t think so. But the agenda of paranoia — inducing people to fear non-existent threats — isn’t about facts or logic. Or vaginas, for that matter.

Yuck, not me.

Newtown Shooter Headed for the Memory Hole?

Stacy McCain thinks that just because Newtown Massacre shooter was a sexually confused, as well as autistic, he will disappear from history.

Mass Murderer Also Gay Pedophile?

This might give gay pedophiles a bad reputation:

The state’s attorney report on the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School by shooter Adam Lanza found no “conclusive motive” for his actions but did document unsettling facts about the 20-year-old killer, including computer files he kept on the rights of pedophiles, a movie about man/boy love, instant messages concerning “homosexual fantasies,” numerous mass murder documents, and a computer game entitled “School Shooting.”

Jammie Wearing Fools: “Well, this will probably be the last you ever hear about Adam Lanza from the mainstream media.” Indeed.

Nope, no such luck.  The fact that he got guns legally and used them illegally will be the point of any reference to him by the media for the foreseeable future. The fact that he was a homosexual pedophile will not be mentioned, as it will not fit the agenda.  Witness serial killer John Wayne Gacy, for whom the homosexual aspect of his motivations is thoroughly documented, but rarely emphasized, and certainly not used as a reason for suspicion of homosexuals.

In any event, crazy is it's own excuse; there's rarely an overt cause for it, and the symptoms occur in clusters, with several dysfunctions commonly occurring in the same victim  It's more important to detect, treat, and if necessary, control the insane than it is to similarly control the vast majority of sane.

Reminder PSA: Crack Makes You a Shitty Person

Psychiatrist Arrested With Crack Cocaine and a Dead Man Buried in His Backyard

Allegedly, I hasten to add:

The body of a 31-year-old man who went missing in October was buried behind the home of a psychiatrist affiliated with the University of Rochester Medical Center. Police say Dr. William Lewek, 62, confessed to hiding Matthew Straton‘s body “in his backyard under a patio chair and a pile of dirt, grass and other debris,” the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported Friday.

Police did not say how Straton died, and Lewek was not immediately charged with homicide after the missing man’s badly decomposed corpse was found behind the home on Rochester’s Rowley Street. Lewek was charged with tampering with physical evidence, a felony, and an arrest affidavit said Lewek admitted moving Straton’s body from a third-floor bedroom of the home and burying it in the backyard.

Lewek also faces a felony charge of possessing a controlled substance after police say they found 17 small bags of crack cocaine “packaged for street sale” hidden in a shoe in Lewek’s house.

Lewek’s psychiatric practice dealt with drug addiction and his patients said he treated them at the Rowley Street address. “I asked the policeman, I said I’ve got an appointment and he said not today,” said Carol Lovel . . .

Physician, heal thyself.

Crazy Women Seeks Texas Governorship

Victimhood as Merit: Wendy Davis Claimed ‘Mental Health’ Issues in Lawsuit

In 1996, Wendy Davis lost a city council election in Fort Worth, Texas, and filed an utterly ridiculous lawsuit claiming she had been defamed by the local newspaper. (Trust me on this: I’ve recently become an expert on utterly ridiculous defamation lawsuits.)

One of the claims Davis made was that she had suffered damage to her mental health because of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram‘s coverage.

In other words: Wendy Davis is crazy and, she alleged, the newspaper made her crazy. However, I think any sane person perusing her lawsuit would conclude that Wendy Davis was certifiably crazy long before she ever ran for city council.

Wendy Davis is, of course, the Texas State legislator (D) seeking the governorship on the all abortion all the time ticket.  Only in the Democratic Party would self-admitted crazy be considered a qualification for office.