I wonder if "mayan" realized he was calling for oppo research on a four year old.

And Roberts may be a good choice. I think Bush was looking for someone who not only has a good judicial philosophy but who didn't have fish for dinner.

Yes, but he's a very rebellious four-year old.

It's remarkable that (apparently) being a genuinely nice person and displaying impeccable scholarship and intellect can still buy a bit of civility and respect in today's political environment.

I wouldn't count out incivility and disrespect just yet. I expect them to make a strong move and quickly take a commanding lead over the next couple weeks.

Well, I said "a bit."

The kid's an obvious Rovian/Opus Dei plant. Look at his eyes...that's not mischief, that pure Repug eveeil!

Does he support Bush's illegal war in Iraq and sanction shackling the women of Amerikkka in patriarchal chains of reproductive oppression?!

According to an audio clip of Barbara Boxer heard on the "Glenn Beck Show", Roberts wants to ban condoms.

So you never know about the kid.

(Link as soon as I find it)

"Surely you can't be serious about Roberts looking like Otto?"

Yes, I am...and don't call me Shirley.

TO: MAYAN
RE: OPPO RESEARCH
SUBJECT: JACK ROBERTS

1) Against women's right to choose (see attached document outlining 2/3/2005 Becky Johnson seesaw incident)
2) Ambiguous sexuality (plays with dolls per rumors circulated in 2004)
3) Security risk (needy, cannot cut own French toast)

And with the hurtin' Schumer et al are gonna be putting on Roberts, he'd better not pick this week to stop sniffing glue!

The thing that surprises me is that so many people are already discounting the filibuster. I wonder how different that possibility will look in a couple weeks?

All it needs is the tiniest toehold. It could be anything, even something made-up like the Rathergate memos. The pressure from their base will be irresistible. The courts and the filibuster is all the Left has anymore; I don't see them letting go without a huge fuss.

just random musing . . . the guy is 50 with 5 and 4 year old kids? how old is his wife?

jane sullivan roberts . . . born New York, N.Y., December 3, 1954.

One of my co-workers used to be his neighbor a couple years back. He was single into his 40's, so he married and had kids late. She also said that he's a super-super-nice man, very soft-spoken.

not atypical among lawyers -- the law is a jealous mistress. i don't know anything about his personal life. i do know he is a brilliant lawyer, a very good pick and hard to attack.

His children are also adopted.

I have to say that the dems are digging deep to find the dirt, if a 4 year old needs to be investigated.

Wait till the Dems post about his dogs. You know corgies and terriers are really man eaters.

Shorter this comments thread:

"Mommmmmyyyyyyyy, tell the loony leftist liberal traitors to stop not acting like the cartoonish stereotypes we've created of them!!! IF I DON'T GET MY CHERRY-PICKED PARANOID SOUNDBITES, I'M GOING HOME!!!"

Some other conservatives have drawn out this one looney comment to be indicative of all of "the left."

That was not my intent; I just thought it was notably nasty and interesting. And a good set-up for a joke. I believe I used the same tactic towards "the right" during the Schiavo affair.

Are we not allowed to lampoon fools for fear that it will be extrapolated to reflect a sweeping binary decision?

What else you got, Ill Non Carb?

Well, Bill, I was referring much less to your post than to comments like:

All it needs is the tiniest toehold. It could be anything, even something made-up like the Rathergate memos. The pressure from their base will be irresistible. The courts and the filibuster is all the Left has anymore; I don't see them letting go without a huge fuss.

and

The kid's an obvious Rovian/Opus Dei plant. Look at his eyes...that's not mischief, that pure Repug eveeil!

Plus the overall tone of "if the left is responding reasonably to a reasonable nominee, it must be just because they're waiting to pounce". Has it ever occurred to any of you that maybe, just maybe, since

a) This guy really doesn't appear to be that bad ideologically
b) Is obviously smart and capable

most of us are just sort of relieved that Bush didn't nominate a wingnut, and so are holding off on criticism til we learn more about the guy (like, in the, y'know, hearings and stuff, where that's supposed to happen)?

Don't worry, Ill Non Carb, once "the left" figures out how to attack this man, you'll swear he was the worst nominee Bush could'a chosen.

This guy is a Catholic and that alone is all "the left" needs to disapprove. Wait and see.

Ill Non Carb,

Have you visited NARAL's page today? Read through the Kos thread? Noted the tens of millions (on both sides) ready to be spent fighting over this nomination?

Like I said, come back in a couple weeks. Maybe I'm wrong. Hell, I hope I'm wrong. But I don't think they're all going to play nice.

I guess it's not that surprising the first real salvo came from Ann Coulter. The right isn't going to play nice either -- though Coulter is smart and cynical enough to know criticism from someone as polemic as her might actually play to Roberts' advantage.

And OT, Bill you might find this interesting: a piece on the discovery of the protein released by fat cells that is the mechanism for insulin resistance.

I have my doubts that this will lead to desirable treatments, though, because it seems likely the mechanism exists for the purpose of keeping people from getting fatter. Disabling it might cause them to exchange diabetes for greater obesity.

it seems likely the mechanism exists for the purpose of keeping people from getting fatter. Disabling it might cause them to exchange diabetes for greater obesity.

I don't understand why you come to that conclusion. Every metabolic function of fat - specifically central adipose tissue - is self-reinforcing ...

There isn't enough info in the study, but you get fat, fat cells produce RBP4, RBP4 causes or exacerbates Type 2 diabetes, the diabetic's inability to utilize insulin causes him to get fatter, and on and on and on.

Interrupting the incidence of this protein could be a step in halting the cascade of factors that cause, maintain and continually exacerbate obesity. Once you are on that spiral, it's immeasurably harder to pull out of it.

Interestingly, the protein has something to do with retinol (a form of Vitamin A) uptake, which has an impact on cellular division among other things, so I wonder what systemic functions the protein has ...

Bill, you KNOW what Kindergarteners are capable of...

I don't understand why you come to that conclusion...

My understanding is that the diabetic's fat causes him to suppress insulin usage (by producing the protein mentioned above). Now we even have the mechanism for that process identified.

Harkening back to my bodybuilding days, I believe it was explained to me that insulin makes fat out of glucose by binding together three glycogen molecules into a triglyceride (fat). This is one way insulin reduces blood sugar, which is its main function as far as your body is concerned, because glucose makes your blood more acidic and thus more toxic, which is why people who can't make/use enough insulin to lower their blood sugar go blind and get cardiovascular disease at much higher rates.

Your link seems to raise a insulin-insensitivity counter-effect: reduced glucose-induced thermogenesis, which I'm assuming is due to the receptor-based shutoff of insulin transport function that brings glucose into your cells to be used for fuel. I would further assume, however, that this is not enough to offset the direct fat production and ketosis-suppressing effect of insulin's presence.

(Insulin insensitivity is, I think, best-understood from the perspective of receptor fatigue. This is something anyone who has used a testosterone-based supplement is familiar with: no matter how much testosterone you take, within a few weeks your muscle cells stop responding to the excess testosterone and you stop gaining muscle mass. This is because your cells make fewer and fewer receptors; it's a self-limiting system.)

"In healthy humans, age, lean mass and respiratory quotient are the main independent determinants of resting thermogenesis. In contrast, insulin sensitivity and, to a lesser extent, abdominal obesity are the principal factors controlling glucose-induced thermogenesis."

Interesting that it's only glucose-induced thermogenesis that's affected; that means carb-induced. It does seem plausible that if the person continues to consume carbohydrates the secondary effect could be enough to make them continue to gain weight. I wonder if it's simply assumed the cycle is self-reinforcing because their (misinformed) dieticians tell them to reduce fat intake but keep eating carbs.

IMHO, diabetes is basically carbohydrate poisoning.

FWIW, I think we'll find out for sure which effect is stronger. Someone will probably develop and start testing a drug to suppress this protein. I don't think they'll be especially pleased with the results, though trading fat for blindness is probably a plus.

To clarify graf #3

Your link seems to raise a insulin-insensitivity counter-effect: reduced glucose-induced thermogenesis, which I'm assuming is due to the receptor-based shutoff of insulin transport function that brings glucose into your cells to be used for fuel. I would further assume, however, that this is not enough to offset the direct fat production and ketosis-suppressing effect of insulin's presence in the cell(which a drug reducing insulin insensitivity would be intended to increase).

You know, there were some things I couldn't remember offhand in that post, and so I visited a half-dozen sites on diabetes, including:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002440.htm

http://www.mamashealth.com/Diabetes2.asp

http://darwin.nmsu.edu/~molbio/diabetes/disease.html

I was struck by how many instances of "we don't know" and "for some reason" are still out there on this disease. I think in 20 years it will be widely acknowledged it is simply an excess carbohydrate issue, and exercise, Atkins, cinnamon, and green tea will be the primary prescriptions. The book Protein Power had some persuasive arguments in this regard.

I believe it was explained to me that insulin makes fat out of glucose by binding together three glycogen molecules into a triglyceride (fat)

I think if you use the google image search on "triglyceride" and "glycogen" you'll find that the two are not very closely related. As I am a chemist and not a biochemist I would have to loosely guess that the interconversion between the two in the human body would involve hundreds if not thousands of proteins, cofactors, genes, and small molecules that help regulate the entire process.

right, insulin is just the chemical messnger that tells the cell to do it

Insulin's Mechanism of Action

Well, soon afterward it became clear that one of the very first things that happened after hormone binding was initiation of autophosphorylation reactions, whereby the intracellular parts of the receptor became tyrosine-phosphorylated by the protein kinase activity of these same receptors. A phosphorylation cascade followed and started up a whole series of enzyme phosphorylation/dephosphorylation reactions which are now thought to account for the effects of insulin. Insulin's action are summarized in the next figure. The active receptor speeds uptake of amino acids and glucose, activates protein synthesis from amino acids and glycogen and triglyceride synthesis from glucose. Insulin inhibits breakdown of triglycerides in adipose tissue and gluconeogenesis in the liver. A whole series of intracellular signal substances seemed to be responsible for the many actions of insulin.

http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%203-4/Insulin's%20Mechanism%20of%20Action.htm

This one says glucose not glycogen. I've seen it both ways, but either way it's basically the same idea.

Isn't the Age of Google a magical time to be alive?

Getting back to Robert's son.
He was doing the 4 year old 'happy dance' out of view of the tv cameras. Go over to gopvixen; she's got the pictures from across the podium. Mrs. Roberts is livid, the kid's cutting a rug, and Bush is about to bust a gut.
Kids are ... kids.

thanks, ed in texas. too funny. my son does the same stuff -- is there any 4 year old boy that does not like to strike weird poses for the camera?

some video here. from the political teen.

She's not livid. The kid is not fidgety, does not have ADD, is not a disciplinary problem, etc., etc. He was DANCING! Usually, the kids just stick their tongues out at the cameras. I remember one pulling his sweater over his head and just standing there silent. They are only acting like, gasp, kids. The parents may be a tad embarssed at the time, but if they don't have a good laugh over it later, they shouldn't have had children.

The kid was dancing?!?!?!
There goes the Southern Baptist vote.
And why has a thoughtful, intelligent discussion about diabetes/obesity and genetics broken out here? I thought we didn't take kindly to that sort of thing.