Ask a Jew

I wonder how much time, money and effort went into this study:

Circumcision does not reduce sexual satisfaction and so there should be no reservations about using this method as a way to combat HIV, a study says.

Nearly 5,000 Ugandan men were recruited for the study. Half were circumcised, half had yet to undergo surgery.

There was little difference between the two groups when they were asked to rate performance and satisfaction, the journal BJU International reports.

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HRC's the change candidate.

That's change. Change is what she's done. Change is what she'll do. Make change by being change. Change. C H A N G E.

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Poor taste

From today's Observer:

2008 sees a resurgence of the female depression memoir.

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Obama v McCain?

Martin Kettle's piece on Iowa is well worth a read:

...[T]he 2008 election may yet be a watershed. If it takes the form of a Clinton-Giuliani contest it will simply intensify the toxic cycle of the past 40 years and all the demeaning Ann Coulter-Michael Moore stuff that it spawns. But if it takes a less traditionally partisan form, especially in the form of a now not inconceivable Obama-McCain contest, American politics may at last be able to wrench itself out of the destructive confrontationism of the recent past.

This is all a farce. Hillary Clinton will be the next President and was chosen by those who matter some time ago. Ask yourself why she moved to New York, who her backers are and why she was for the war on Iraq, is for its continuation and why she'd be happy to bomb Iran. She's the best Republican candidate and even the Democrats will come to like her.

It's the American electorate that scares me. Not only because Obama's blackness and Hillary's being female being presented as problems indicates that racism and misogyny are still prevalent in that militaristic, Bible-ridden country either...Americans won't vote for anything enlightened, rational, humane or compassionate.  

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The Major waits for another day.

Major Miller won't now be running tomorrow, or this week. He went lame this morning after work, with a suspected pulled muscle.

Oh well, that's racing for you. Still, I've waited two years for his return, so another few weeks (hopefully) isn't too bad.

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The Major returns

Yippee, Major Miller is a definite runner at Plumpton on Sunday in the 1.55. 

I think he'll win, but I wouldn't dream of urging you to have a bet as he hasn't run for almost two years (February 2006) because of his tendon injury. 

Nicky Henderson says he's as fit has he can be without a run, but this is very much a comeback race - the plan is to go novice chasing asap, assuming all goes well on Sunday. And the stable will be happy with a nice run round, coming back sound.

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Huckabee v Obama?

If the Iowa result turns out to be a predictor of the nominations themselves (although I'd say that Obama must now be odds on, but the status of the Republican nomimation will only start to be clear after New Hampshire at the earliest, and for what it's worth my prediction remains McCain) then it is the worst possible outcome. 

Obama might have many positives as a nominee, and as a President but, as Oliver Kamm has pointed out, he:

patently doesn't understand the world, as was demonstrated by his eagerness to talk to the leaders of rogue states without any hint of pressing them for concessions in return. 

[David] Axelrod, a senior Obama strategist, was more direct [than the candidate], linking the Pakistani crisis to the different positions that [Hillary] Clinton and Obama took on the Iraq war in 2002, when Clinton voted to authorize it in the U.S. Senate, and Obama, then an Illinois state senator, spoke out against it.

"Obama opposed the war in Iraq explicitly because he feared it would divert our attention from al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the whole region," Axelrod said. "It underscores the fact that you have to have a president who understands the world, who is going to analyze these events, and who will chart the right course, counter to the conventional thinking."

The remarks of his aide must surely imply that had Obama's views on Iraq been followed, then there would have been no incitement to the murder of Benazir Bhutto. The only other interpretation I can make of such remarks is that, in some unspecified way, the US might have been able to prevent Mrs Bhutto's murder had its forces not been engaged in opposing terrorism and autocracy in Iraq. So either Obama is committed to a view of the stimulus for Islamist terrorism (if that is indeed the force behind the assassination) that pays no attention to Islamist ideology, or he grossly overestimates the ability of the US to influence events in other (nominally friendly) countries.

In either case, I find Obama's incomprehension and inexperience alarming. As a European leftist who cares more than anything about the defence of liberal values against our totalitarian enemies, I have an intense interest in Hillary Clinton's winning the Democratic nomination.

As for Huckabee: here we go again. Another nutter (like Ron Paul) who doesn't believe in evolution. Daniel Finkelstein points out why this matters:

The reason that his support for intelligent design matters is that it is ridiculous. Who  wants a President of the United States who doesn't accept the basic principles of science, taking refuge instead in a load of mumbo jumbo?

The religious beliefs of a President are a matter of conscience, but intelligent design is not a religious idea. It is, deliberately, put as an alternative scientific theory. But it is, sadly, nonsense.

It is clearly vital that he or she be someone who accepts and understands scientific methods. By rejecting evolution in favour of intelligent design Huckabee illustrates that he does not reach scientific conclusions based on evidence.

This is a serious downside in a President, whatever his other qualities.  

UPDATE: One of the comments says it's unbecoming to insult Huckabee by calling him a nutter. I take that point. I'll make sure that I now only refer to him as a man who believes in nonsense with as much basis in evidence as the idea that fairies live in the Rose Garden.

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There is only one race for the US Presidency, says the BBC

If you haven't already read James' superb coverage of Iowa, do have a look at Coffee House.

It's certainly better than the nonsense and bias served up by the BBC, for which we are of course all forced to pay under threat of imprisonment. Last night's Ten O'Clock News on BBC1 - the corporation's flagship bulletin - decided that there was only one race, that for the Democrats. Justin Webb, the corporation's US Editor, did not consider it worth mentioning the name of a single Republican, or worth informing his viewers that there will be a Republican contender in November, too. His report was entirely focused on Obama, Clinton and Edwards. It is, presumably, beyond the conception of the BBC that the Americans might return a Republican to the White House after the experience of George W Bush, so why bother mentioning that there was a Republican contest in Iowa, too?

Webb has form. Last April,Mr Webb was being interviewed on Radio Five Live about how the US television networks were losing viewers to cable and the internet: 

There are three groups of people who don't watch the evening news any more, and they are intelligent people, young people, and right-wing people. Obviously there are some people who fall into all three categories - at least arguably [he added, laughing].

 

Right-wing people tend to watch Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, intelligent people tend to not bother with the telly at all, and young people get their news from the internet where they get it at all.

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Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

The FT reports today that:

Up-to-date figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that last May 504,000 people below the age of 35 were claiming incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance compared with 443,000 claiming jobseeker’s allowance.

The figure, which includes more than 300,000 young people claiming for “mental and behavioural disorders”, shows continuing high levels of worklessness among the young, in spite of 10 years of steady economic growth and a concerted attempt to move people off welfare and into work....Sue Christoforou, of mental health charity Mind, said: “Society is much faster paced, the workplace is more competitive, and there are more short-term contracts.”

I accept that there will indeed be some under-35-year-olds who are so mentally incapacitated that they cannot work. But 300,000? Because of short-term contracts? Such is the benefits system today, that such patent nonsense is simply accepted as a given.

As for there being over half a million people under 35 are unable to work: surely the correct word is not 'unable' but 'unwilling' - and then indulged by the state.

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Where is Lord Malloch-Brown?

David Hughes asks an aposite question at Three Line Whip:

Where is the Minister for Africa when you need him? The post-election meltdown in Kenya is producing some of the most horrific scenes to emanate even from that sad continent.  Gordon Brown and David Miliband have both been in action today, trying to exert the maximum diplomatic pressure on the Kenyan government to bring an end to the violence.

Yet from Lord Malloch-Brown, there is silence. The former number two at the United Nations was brought into the Foreign Office largely because of his expertise in African affairs. The Prime Minister even granted him the accolade of allowing him to attend Cabinet meetings, so highly - it seems - does he rate his abilities. Yet he has been nowhere to be seen or heard as this crisis unfolds.

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