Texas Pregnancy Mortality Rates Double Due to Bad UI Design

April 14th, 2018

Here’s a cautionary tale.

Two years ago, you may have heard that Texas’ maternal mortality rate had just doubled. No one was quite sure why—some blamed a recent shuttering of family-planning services, others a lack of concern for women’s health generally—but it seemed most were confident Texas was a cautionary tale. The U.S. maternal mortality rate overall had been rising for years, even as nearly every other developed country saw declines. Surely, the new numbers out of Texas portended what could happen across the country if we didn’t change soon.

It turns out that the numbers in Texas were wrong. The extent to which they were incorrect was just published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, as investigated by several researchers who went back and double-checked the cause-of-death for 147 total deaths in Texas in 2012.

Though we only now realize how flawed the data were, this isn’t entirely a recent revelation. Experts suspected that something was wrong with the data, they just weren’t sure what. The authors of that original study noted that “in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a 2-year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely.” Their suspicions turned out to be right. Instead of roughly 36 deaths per 100,000 births, the mortality rate was more like 14.6 deaths per 100,000 births.

Texas is, in fact, a cautionary tale, just not in the way we all thought. It’s been collecting data poorly for years now, and they’re not alone—maternal mortality rates could be wrong all over the U.S. Ever since some states introduced a checkbox to their death certificates asking about pregnancy back in 2003, the stats on maternal mortality have been skewed. A 2017 study concluded that this addition “appears to be the main driver of the increases in [maternal mortality rates] during the last decade.” States with and without the checkbox differ so much in reported data that we haven’t published an official national maternal mortality rate since 2007. The data just haven’t been good enough.

But they have to be better. Maternal mortality rates are still high nationally by many estimates, and understanding the extent of the problem is crucial if America is going to save mothers’ lives.

When researchers found that twofold increase in maternal mortality in Texas two years ago, they suspected it was so extreme as to be an error. Texas was one of the states that implemented a new checkbox on death certificates that asked about the pregnancy status of the deceased, and as mentioned before it was already known that states with that checkbox tend to report higher maternal death rates. This is in part because asking about whether the deceased was pregnant increases the rate at which it’s reported—when you start looking for pregnancy-related deaths, you’ll tend to find more. But it’s also because people make mistakes.

The recent paper notes that it may be a simple design problem that’s contributed significantly to the apparent rise in maternal mortality: “Texas’ current electronic death registration system displays pregnancy status options as a dropdown list. The “pregnant at the time of death” option is directly below the “not pregnant within the past year” option; this could have led to erroneous selection and could explain why pregnancy at the time of death was reported for nearly 76% of the 74 obstetric-coded deaths with no evidence of pregnancy on review.”

The authors also note that the number of death certificates being submitted electronically in Texas jumped from 63 to 91 percent from 2010 to 2012. Having a bunch of new users entering information into death certificate software may have exacerbated the misreporting.

They suggest two main solutions: better training for workers who report death information, and instead of a drop-down menu, try buttons. Separate buttons for “pregnant” and “not pregnant” force the user to move the mouse to totally different areas to make a selection, rather than clicking in a small drop-down menu where it’s easy to make a mistake and not realize it before moving on to the next question.

Texas may have had a double-whammy situation, but the problems they ran into are true of all checkbox states.

Those states that chose to implement a pregnancy checkbox on their death certificates have seen a 149.8 percent in maternal mortality (as of 2012 data). But a study from last year estimated that a whopping 90.3 percent of that change was likely due to the checkbox issues alone.

“Because pregnancy-related deaths are so uncommon, the frequency of the box being checked in error can significantly impact the maternal mortality rate reported,” Elliott Main, medical director of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, told the Washington Post.

If we assumed that the non-checkbox-adopting states showed the true rate, the study authors reasoned, the true rate would be 14.4 percent.

Lesson: Bad UI design kills! Or at least fools you into thinking someone’s been killed…

(Hat tip: Instapundit.)

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U.S., France, UK Hit Syrian Chemical Sites

April 13th, 2018

President Donald Trump orders U.S. military to attack Syrian chemical weapons sites, in coordination with France and the UK.

Here’s President Trump’s announcement:

I’m on record as stating that the United States has no compelling national interest at stake in Syria after the destruction of the Islamic State. that said, anyone predicting that Russia is willing to risk World War III over Syria is having a case of the vapors.

It’s ironic that President Trump is the one actually enforcing Obama’s foolish “red lines”…

Edited to add: Tweet showing airstrikes in Damascus:

In the video it appears to have taken out the power grid.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 1 Comment »

LinkSwarm for April 13. 2018

April 13th, 2018

Enjoy your Friday the 13th LinkSwarm! And don’t forget to finish your taxes this weekend!

  • Kurt Schlichter is not at all impressed by liberal plans to win the culture war by the rest of America magically giving up and becoming California:

    California is a bankrupt failed state that is essentially Illinois with palm trees and better weather. Outside the coastal urban enclaves where Jack and his pals mingle, drinking kombucha and apologizing for their white privilege to their baffled servants, it’s a crowded, decaying disaster. Bums wander the streets, littering the sidewalks with human waste. Crime is rising. Illegal aliens abound, more welcome in the Golden State than actual Americans. California is an example all right, but a cautionary one.

    So how did California go from conservative in the 80s to the blue hellhole it is today? The leftist zillionaires and the Democrat government unions bought the elections. It also got so expensive and so crowded here that a lot of the kind of people who made California red and not terrible moved away. Now you have a relatively small elite of really rich liberal jerks, and a large class of serfs to the Democrat welfare state – many imported for their delightful obedience and complacency – but no more huge middle class of Normals. Those Normals went east, toward opportunity.

    The liberal plan for civil war does not take into account how prosperous states like Texas went hard right in the 90s and show no sign of changing colors, and there is no mention of how Republicans hold more elected offices today than at any time in history.

    Snip.

    “If the liberals ever get their wish for a new civil war, my money is on the side with all the guns.”

  • President Donald Trump lifts Obama-era waiver for welfare work requirements.

    What happened when states no longer required able-bodied adults to work to receive benefits? Predictably, the number of able-bodied adults on food stamps skyrocketed, more than tripling since 2000, while the cost to taxpayers went up fivefold.

    Even though unemployment has since rebounded to near-record lows and more than 6 million jobs are open nationwide, these Obama-era waivers are still in place and many states continue to operate expanded welfare rolls under them.

    They only complaint I have is that President Trump didn’t restore those rules sooner…

  • “Science proves communism makes nations poorer and less healthy.” Duh. That is, when it’s not murdering people outright. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions freezes aid program for illegal aliens.
  • Cynthia Nixon is attacking Andrew Cuomo from the left. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Hyperinflation hits Iran in the wake of President Trump threatening to suspend the ill-conceived nuclear deal.
  • More on the same theme: The solution to Syria runs through regime change in Tehran:

    Khamenei has sent tens of thousands of Iranians and Iranian mercenaries to Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. His failed and murderous regime, with Russia’s help, is responsible for the astonishing casualty, refugee, and death totals in Syria. Without the manpower Khamenei’s regime provides, there would be no debate over “what to do about Assad” because Assad would be gone.

    That should have produced a winning strategy for the United States and our friends and allies: support regime change in Tehran, thereby pulling the plug on the Assad regime, depriving the Russians of cheap cannon fodder, and ending the Iranian funding of Hezbollah.

    It has long been possible to subvert the failed mullahcracy. Most Iranians detest the regime. Keen-eyed mullahs and ayatollahs know this, and know that they will cease to matter to the majority of Iranians the minute the Islamic Republic falls. They all know, because they have heard the words from Washington, that Trump has no sympathy with the regime. Unlike Obama, he does not want a strategic alliance with Tehran. He prefers Jerusalem and Jedda. As do most Iranians.

    So we should be supporting the internal opposition. Perhaps we are, but our leaders and pundits, even now, keep talking as if we must choose between a bigger war and the survival of the regime. I find that unfortunate and deplorable. Why are our leaders not openly calling for democratic revolution in Iran?

    I am all for sanctions, but too many of the sanctions advocates seem to think that the sanctions are necessary to bring about the manifest failure of Khamenei and his cohorts, when that failure is evident to anyone who looks at the country. All the banks are rupt, including the central bank. The rial is worth one one-thousandth of its value at the end of the shah’s rule. Like the Soviet Union before it, the Iranian tyranny has destroyed the whole national ecosystem, starting with the water supply.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instaopundit.)

  • Why does the left hate Israel?

    Left-leaning politicians, including leaders of the UK Labour Party, tweet stern condemnations of Israel’s shootings on the Gaza border where they were silent, or at least more restrained, in relation to Turkey and the Kurds. Academic and cultural institutions boycott Israel where they do not boycott Turkey, or China, or Russia, or America and Britain for that matter, which have done their fair share of bad things – ‘bloodletting’? – in the Middle East in recent years. That only Israel is boycotted by the self-styled guardians of the West’s moral conscience, by our cultural and academic elites, constantly communicates the idea that Israel is different. It is worse. It stands above every other state in terms of wickedness and hatred and war. BDS institutionalises the idea that Israel is alien among the nations, a pock among countries, the lowest, foulest state. It is a bleak irony that BDS activists holler ‘apartheid!’ or ‘racist!’ at Israel while subjecting Israel to a kind of cultural apartheid and contributing to the ugly view of this state, this Jewish state, as the maddest state, the state most deserving of your anger and even your hatred.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Lovely: Thieves are intercepting new debit cards and replacing the chip on them with old chips. People activate the card, unaware those thieves are using the new chip on another card to drain the cardholder’s account…
  • All the factors working against preserving the Second Amendment.
  • Remember: New York City’s strict gun laws don’t apply to members of Democratic mayor Bill De Blasio’s staff.
  • MCAT medical exam demands fealty to “social justice.”
  • Funny how liberals were silent when the Obama campaign did the same data scrapping as Cambridge Analytics did in 2016.
  • Former Texas Republican congressman Steve Stockman convicted of bilking charities and lining his own pockets. When last we checked in on Stockman, he was running a very poor senate race against John Cornyn.
  • Another day, another hate crime hoax.
  • “Movement That Demands Forceful Silencing Of All Opposing Viewpoints Unsure Why Nation So Divided.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “This court rules that Constantin Reliu is dead.” “No I’m not! I’m right here!” “No, you’re dead. Now shut up and get back on the cart.”
  • Man goes to hospital for severe headaches after eating Carolina Reaper pepper. (Confession: If I could get at least $10,000 for eating a Carolina Reaper pepper on camera, I would totally go for it. After all, I put Ghost Peppers in my last batch of salsa…)

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Paul Ryan Retires

    April 12th, 2018

    Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has announced he’s retiring at the end of his term.

    Being Speaker of the House of Representatives is a thankless job in the modern era, akin to herding 435 cats, about half of which hate you. It’s a difficult job, which is why I’m going to refrain from throwing the “Swamp Creature! RINO!” labels hurled at Ryan for not getting enough conservative legislature through the house. But there is this undeniable fact: In 1995, Newt Gingrich had 230 Republicans in the House, a narrow Republican Senate majority, and a Democrat in the White House, and got far more conservative legislature passed as Speaker than Paul Ryan has with 241 Republicans in the House, a narrow Republican Senate majority, and a Republican in the White House.

    The unwillingness of the modern Republican Party to play hardball (like refusing to pass a debt limit hike unless linked with a complete repeal of ObamaCare) has crippled the ability of the party to make legislative gains commensurate with their majority status. It is hard to tell at this remove whether Ryan’s speakership is a cause, or a symptom, of that failure of nerve.

    If I had to bet, I would guess that Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise would be the most likely choice to replace Ryan as Speaker of the House (assuming Republicans retain control in November), based less on my deep understanding of House interpersonal dynamics than the fact that he literally took a bullet for the team.

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    Instead Of Actual Content, Enjoy Some Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg Congressional Hearing Memes and Links

    April 11th, 2018

    Here is a long, thoughtful essay on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before congress.

    Ha, just kidding! Work and taxes are sucking up all my time, so have a shotgun scatter of links, tweets and memes on the same subject:

    According to sources from within Facebook headquarters, interns and staffers at the social network were training Mark Zuckerberg on how to act human ahead of his expected congressional testimony this week.

    The team of employees instructed the Facebook CEO in disciplines like smiling without looking like a robot, laughing at the correct moment, and not calling everyone he meets a “pathetic meatsuit.”

    “Try to blink every few seconds—no Mark, not that rapidly, that looks creepy,” one staffer said while teaching him how to respond to questions while appearing to be a real flesh-and-blood person with emotions and empathy. “Good, that’s—that’s almost passable, Mark. Great job. Now let’s work on getting rid of your vacant stare that’s obviously bent on world domination.”

    Staffers also had to focus on the Facebook CEO’s vocabulary. Many of the interns present were forced to continually remind Zuckerberg not to use phrases like “you stupid dumb#$%^” and “flesh-covered weaklings” while addressing members of Congress.

    “We didn’t have a lot to work with,” Facebook’s human behavior specialist told reporters. “He kept using terms like ‘assimilate all earthlings,’ ‘world conquest,’ and ‘everyone will die in a fiery death but I will go on.’ I think we’ve made a lot of progress, all things considered.”

    And here’s Ted Cruz grilling Zuckerberg.

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    Viktor Orban Wins (Yet Again) in Hungary

    April 10th, 2018

    Over the weekend, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an outspoken opponent of unassimiliated Muslim immigration, won a third term in resounding fashion:

    It was a landslide by the most exacting standards — which more or less destroys the arguments of his opponents and critics that his governing Fidesz party could win only through authoritarianism, gerrymandering, and the dominance of the media by Fidesz and its business allies. What made this landslide still more unexpected, even shocking, was that throughout yesterday the opposition parties had been growing more optimistic about their prospects of scoring an upset victory. The visiting media — to be on the safe side — were hesitating between the headlines “Opposition Wins” and “Democracy Dies.”

    Yet when the smoke of battle was clearing last night, with 80 percent of the vote counted, Orban’s governing party had won 49 percent of the popular vote and 134 seats in the 199-seat parliament. It had an almost clean sweep of the single-member constituencies outside Budapest. And it seems likely to obtain a two-thirds parliamentary majority again and thus the continued right to amend the Hungarian constitution. (All the results cited here might change marginally when the final votes have been counted.) This is as clear an endorsement as any government has received from an electorate — and it was given in the teeth of disapproval from the dominant political and cultural elites in Europe.

    That’s significant. It can no longer be plausibly argued that Orban is pushing through his “revolution” either by stealth or undemocratically. Voters knew exactly what both Orban and his opponents stood for, and they plumped strongly for him. Certain conclusions flow from that.

    The first is that democracy is vital and active in Hungary. Turnout was the largest since 1998 (coincidentally the election that first brought Orban to power). There were long queues outside the polling booths, which in some cases stayed open to ensure that no one who joined the line by the official closing time was denied the chance to vote. And the result — one party winning half of the vote — was conclusive. It simply cannot be explained away as the result of gerrymandering, since a 49 percent share of the total vote would mean a landslide in seats under almost any multi-party electoral system.

    Nor can it be attributed to the Right’s dominance of the media, which was anyway exaggerated — there were newspapers, magazines, television stations, websites, and hoardings putting across the slogans and arguments of both Left and Right opposition parties, and they were every bit as brutal as the Fidesz propaganda machine. They were not as numerous as those making Orban’s case, but enough to get the message through to the voters. It was simply that the voters preferred Orban’s message to that of his opponents.

    The second is that though Orban’s campaign was very negative, it contained some important positive messages. Yesterday I gave four reasons why he would almost certainly win here: the broad economic success of the government, agreement with Orban’s opposition to mass migration, admiration for his personal leadership qualities, and a badly divided opposition. The results bear out that analysis, to which I would add one further point: a significant number of voters agree with Orban’s criticism of the European Union as an undemocratic and overly bureaucratic body and support his broad strategy of trying to return powers from Brussels to national capitals. A defense of democracy and the demand for more of it came from the Hungarian Right as well as from its opponents. So one significance of the landslide is that it marks a positive democratic shift among voters to the kind of “national conservatism” that Orban advocates.

    Snip.

    As in other recent elections across Europe, the Left has suffered major losses and is now on the verge of ceasing to function as a standalone political force. Only eight years ago the Hungarian Socialists, supported by a left-liberal coalition partner, were the main governing party. On this occasion the Socialists won 12 percent of the popular vote and 20 seats, and the Democratic Coalition (an imperfect successor to the left-liberal party that has since disbanded) won less than 5 per cent and nine seats. Neither party has much of a presence outside the capital. They won only three of the single-member constituencies outside Budapest. (Fidesz won 81.)

    Naturally the Eurocrats are not pleased, and the usual idiots are throwing around words like “fascist.”

    For an example of the usual idiots, here’s Howard Dean:

    “He’s going to go to Poland! And Bulgaria! And Romania! And Austria! And Italy! And France! And Germany! And then he’s going to go Brussels and take back the EU! YEAAAAHHH!”

    Sorry.

    Lefty EU types have accused Orban of antisemitism, but when you research their claims, it turns that Orban’s “antisemitism” consists of fiercely criticizing George Soros. In fact, Orban has explicitly condemned antisemitism. And Orban is so antisemitic that Israel’s Prime Minister congratulated him for his win and thanked him for support of Israel:

    If you’re wondering what Orban’s views are, this piece of his in National Review from last year should help clarify his positions:

    The main threat to the future of Europe is not those who want to come here to live but our own political, economic, and intellectual elites bent on transforming Europe against the clear will of the European people.

    Indeed, it is plain to see that on this issue, the European Union is divided into two camps: unionists and sovereignists. The unionists call for a United States of Europe and mandatory quotas, while the sovereignists desire a Europe of free and sovereign nations and will not hear of quotas of any kind. That is how the mandatory migrant quota has come to encapsulate and symbolize our era. It is an important issue in and of itself, but it also possesses symbolic significance as the distilled essence of everything we find undesirable and disruptive among the nations of Europe. We cannot allow Brussels to put itself above the law. We cannot allow it to shift the consequences of its own policy onto those who have abided (as we have) by each and every treaty and piece of legislation.

    Snip.

    In Western Europe, the center Right (the Christian Democrats) and the center Left have taken turns at the helm of Europe for the past 50 to 60 years. But increasingly, they have offered the same programs and thus a diminishing arena of political choice. The leaders of Europe always seem to emerge from the same elite, the same general frame of mind, the same schools, and the same institutions that rear generation after generation of politicians to this day. They take turns implementing the same policies. Now that their assurance has been called into question by the economic meltdown, however, an economic crisis has quickly turned into the crisis of the elite.

    More important, this crisis of the elite — sprouted from the economic crisis — has now become a crisis of democracy itself. Large masses of people today want something radically different from what traditional elites want. This is the deep cause of the restlessness, anxiety, and tension erupting on the surface time and again in the wake of a terrorist attack or some other act of violence, or when we confront a seemingly unstoppable tidal wave of migration. We grow ever more apprehensive, because we feel that what happens today in Nice, Munich, or Berlin can happen in virtually any other corner of Europe tomorrow.

    EU globalists are upset because Orban is throwing more sand into the gears of their neoliberal superstate dreams. Like Brexit and Donald Trump’s election, his ascension is a direct affront to their agenda, and thus the shrill nature of their attacks.

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    Posted in Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

    Israel (Probably) Bombed Syria Last Night

    April 9th, 2018

    Somebody hit a Syrian airbase near Homs last night; we’re denying it was us, and both Syria and Russia are pointing the finger at Israel:

    The Syrian government and its ally Russia have blamed Israel for a deadly attack on a Syrian military airport.

    Monday’s attack hit the Tiyas airbase, known as T4, near the city of Homs. Observers say 14 people were killed.

    Israel, which has previously hit Syrian targets, has not commented. Syria initially blamed the US for the strike.

    The incident comes amid international alarm over an alleged chemical attack on a Syrian rebel-held town. The US and France had threatened to respond.

    US President Donald Trump said there would be a “big price to pay” for the alleged chemical attack in Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta region, near the capital Damascus. He branded Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad an “animal”.

    Snip.

    Syrian state news agency Sana, quoting a military source, reported that air defences had repelled an Israeli missile attack on T4, saying the missiles were fired by Israeli F15 jets in Lebanese airspace.

    If true, these would likely be F-15I Strike Eagles firing Israeli Popeye missiles.

    Russia’s defence ministry said that, of eight missiles, five were shot down and three reached the western part of the aerodrome.

    I would take any sort of Russian claims about Israel missiles being shot down with several grains of salt. Maybe they were, and maybe they weren’t. Either way, Russian air defense systems have not exactly covered themselves in glory in the Syrian conflict.

    Israel rarely acknowledges carrying out strikes, but has admitted attacking targets in Syria dozens of times since 2012. Its heaviest air strike on Syria, in February this year, included targeting the T4 air base.

    That followed an incursion by an Iranian drone into Israel and the shooting down by Syrian air defences of an Israeli F16 fighter jet.

    Israel has said it will not allow Iran, its arch-foe, to set up bases in Syria or operate from there, something Israel considers a major threat.

    The Israeli military said Iran and its Revolutionary Guards had long been active in the T4 base, and were using it to transfer weapons, including to Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, an enemy of Israel.

    Israel also hit a Hamas military compound in Gaza.

    One interesting aspect to the strike was that all the major new services seemed asleep at the switch while reports of the strike from sources on the ground in Lebanon and Syria went out in real time. So if you want to launch a military strike in the Middle East, Sunday night seems to be the time to do it…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »

    Texas Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides Sentenced to 80 Years in Prison for Sex Trafficking

    April 8th, 2018

    Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides may be a small fish (he lost his only district court race), but his crimes stand out for their sheer depravity:

    A Wilson County jury on Friday sentenced a former San Antonio attorney to 80 years in prison on each of the six counts he faced for coercing clients into sex.

    Mark Henry Benavides will have to serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.

    Snip.

    “This is human trafficking,” Chacon said. “He transported, coerced, threatened and made them feel they had no choice. This jury understood that.”

    Benavides was convicted Tuesday of continuous trafficking of persons and faces 25 to 99 years or life in prison. Six women he had represented in prostitution or drug cases testified he coerced them into having sex to keep them out of jail or lessen their legal troubles, and videotaped the encounters, which were shown to the jury.

    Investigators seized 246 mini DVDs that contained hundreds of videos of Benavides and the former clients engaged in various sex acts, in which he could be heard directing the women and telling them what to do and say.

    More details:

    During the trial, San Antonio Police Department detective Manual Morales testified that police found a filing cabinet at Benavides’ home containing 246 of what the detective called “pornographic DVDs” that showed Benavides having sex with women who police said were Benavides’ clients.

    Some of the graphic and sexually explicit videos were played for jurors. A video was so graphic that a female juror fainted as the panel left the courtroom last Tuesday.

    The women testified that in addition to recordings made in a motel, Benavides also had sex with them in jury and witness rooms at the courthouse.

    At least one of the victims in the indictment was a minor.

    I’m seeing various reports that Benavides’ coerced sex acts involved torture, but I am unable to find any mainstream media reports confirming those allegations, despite the fainting juror. Might have to wait for the official trial transcript…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Texas | 1 Comment »

    What Germany Needs…

    April 7th, 2018

    …is stricter van control:

    A German police spokesman said Saturday that 4 people have been killed and 20 have been injured – some seriously – after a delivery van rammed into a crowd of people in the center of Munster.

    The incident unfolded near the Kiepenkerl statue in Munster’s old town, a popular tourist area. It’s believed the van rammed into diners who were seated outside at the Kiepenkerl, a restaurant that is popular with tourists.

    AFP reported that six of the injured are in critical condition.

    I wonder what ethnic/religious group the perpetrator is a member of?

    Cue up the “We may never know the reasons for this senseless act.”

    And when will Germany have a serious national conversation on van control?

    (Shtick stolen from Dwight.)

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    LinkSwarm for April 6, 2018

    April 6th, 2018

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Today’s LinkSwarm runs the gamut from Ann Althouse to Zsa Zsa Gabor. So dig in…

  • This New York Times piece on the Islamic State is must reading for its glimpse as to just how the murderous would-be caliphate was able to hold on to and rule significant swathes of territory for years at a time. In short: Bureaucrats and taxes.

    Weeks after the militants seized the city, as fighters roamed the streets and religious extremists rewrote the laws, an order rang out from the loudspeakers of local mosques.

    Public servants, the speakers blared, were to report to their former offices.

    To make sure every government worker got the message, the militants followed up with phone calls to supervisors. When one tried to beg off, citing a back injury, he was told: “If you don’t show up, we’ll come and break your back ourselves.”

    The phone call reached Muhammad Nasser Hamoud, a 19-year veteran of the Iraqi Directorate of Agriculture, behind the locked gate of his home, where he was hiding with his family. Terrified but unsure what else to do, he and his colleagues trudged back to their six-story office complex decorated with posters of seed hybrids.

    They arrived to find chairs lined up in neat rows, as if for a lecture.

    The commander who strode in sat facing the room, his leg splayed out so that everyone could see the pistol holstered to his thigh. For a moment, the only sounds were the hurried prayers of the civil servants mumbling under their breath.

    Their fears proved unfounded. Though he spoke in a menacing tone, the commander had a surprisingly tame request: Resume your jobs immediately, he told them. A sign-in sheet would be placed at the entrance to each department. Those who failed to show up would be punished.

    Meetings like this one occurred throughout the territory controlled by the Islamic State in 2014. Soon municipal employees were back fixing potholes, painting crosswalks, repairing power lines and overseeing payroll.

    “We had no choice but to go back to work,” said Mr. Hamoud. “We did the same job as before. Except we were now serving a terrorist group.”

    Snip.

    After seizing huge tracts of Iraq and Syria, the militants tried a different tactic. They built their state on the back of the one that existed before, absorbing the administrative know-how of its hundreds of government cadres. An examination of how the group governed reveals a pattern of collaboration between the militants and the civilians under their yoke.

    One of the keys to their success was their diversified revenue stream. The group drew its income from so many strands of the economy that airstrikes alone were not enough to cripple it.

    Ledgers, receipt books and monthly budgets describe how the militants monetized every inch of territory they conquered, taxing every bushel of wheat, every liter of sheep’s milk and every watermelon sold at markets they controlled. From agriculture alone, they reaped hundreds of millions of dollars. Contrary to popular perception, the group was self-financed, not dependent on external donors.

    More surprisingly, the documents provide further evidence that the tax revenue the Islamic State earned far outstripped income from oil sales. It was daily commerce and agriculture — not petroleum — that powered the economy of the caliphate.

    They also seized land and goods from Shia, Christians, etc. and redistributed it to their followers as ‘war spoils.”

    Also this: “Mr. Hamoud noticed something that filled him with shame: The streets were visibly cleaner than they had been when the Iraqi government was in charge.”

    Read the whole thing.

  • Last week: Kevin D. Williamson leaves National Review for The Atlantic. This week: The Atlantic fires Kevin D. Williamson for wrongthink. Well, there goes my chance to snag the Sarcastic Texan Chair at National Review…
  • Black people should stop mindlessly voting for the Democratic Party says…Donna Brazile?

    “We have to stop giving up our votes. I have done just about everything in the Democratic Party but run for office – everything that they have asked me to do. I have done it. I have registered millions of people in my lifetime. I have knocked on so many doors that I cannot even see the black of my own knuckles. I have carried their water,” Brazile said during her keynote address at the Stateswomen for Justice Luncheon last week, which was organized by Trice Edney Communications.

    “I have put their platform within my heart to support. I have championed their issues. And when it came time for me to say what I believed was important, they said ‘shut up, Donna’ and I said ‘hell no, I am not shutting up,’” she added.

    Forgive me if my enthusiasm for Brazile’s truthtelling is tempered by the suspicion it comes less from deep philosophical conviction than resentment at taking the fall for Hillary’s dishonest and incompetence.

  • “Study: 70% of Europeans see rapid population growth of Muslims as a serious threat.”
  • “Anti-Mass Migration Sweden Democrats Polling First Among Young Voters.” It’s almost like a party standing against rape is more popular than the party standing for “multiculturalism.”
  • Chicago suburb Deerfield, IL passes law allowing confiscation of modern sporting rifles if they have more than a ten shot magazine. (Gun owners have already filed a lawsuit, backed by the NRA-ILA.) So remember: When Democrats state they “don’t want to confiscate your guns,” they’re lying. (Hat tip: Director Blue)
  • EPA Director Scott Pruett ends “secret science” (i.e., regulating on the basis of unpublished, unverifiable studies), and the New York Time (naturally) goes crazy. And here’s the debunking of same. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • 68% of India’s military equipment is “vintage” (i.e., old Soviet crap).
  • Apple to drop Intel? Maybe, but not until 2020. If so, does this mean Apple will build their own fab? That would be an expensive proposition, but one Apple would be one of the few companies in the world capable of affording. Or they could keep getting their chips fabbed by TSMC. (Or, the hybrid option, pay TSMC to open up a fab dedicated to producing the new chip at x number of years for y price, after which TSMC would own and run the fab, a technique Apple has used for other component manufacturers before.)
  • Man using the lady’s room at Target exposes himself to little girl. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Kurt Eichenwald pens a bold screed at the evil conspiracy to make him look foolish, mentioning Parkland kid Kyle Kover but oddly omitting a certain media figure whose initials are “K.E.”…
  • Republican Tim Pawlenty to run for Minnesota governor again, an office he held from 2003 to 2011.
  • If you view the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as Christ having “masochistic sexual relations with his own father,” then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching at Holy Cross.
  • Ann Althouse watches and annotates an episode of Roseanne so you don’t have to. However, one correction: I’m pretty sure that the Conners don’t think of themselves as “poor,” they think of themselves as “broke.”
  • Speaking of Roseanne Barr, never forget that she’s a nut case. Indeed, back in 2012 I got into a tiny Twitter spat with her over whether HAARP controlled the weather…
  • When it comes to basic technical facts about firearms, liberal gun grabbers are proudly ignorant.
  • ESPN’s revamped morning SportsCenter is losing to Peppa the Pig. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • If you ever wanted something from the Zsa Zsa Gabor estate, now’s your chance. Especially if you wanted a painting of Zsa Zsa or her sisters: she had plenty…

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