I was discussing this – highly hypothetical and speculative – with friends on Facebook last night. The thing that jumps out at me about this evolving story is the role Tashfeen Malik, Syed Farouk’s wife and co-assailant. Female jihadis are not unknown but they are not common and not the norm. Everything we know – or believe we know – about the attack is that Malik was not along for the ride in this massacre, either literally or figuratively. She was a full participant in the attack. Indeed, according to several reports, during the final shoot-out she was the one firing while Farouk drove.
I’ve tried several times to write this post at greater length. It keeps not working. So I’ll be more succinct. What strikes me most about what we’re now learning about the San Bernardino massacre is that it may not be either/or, work place violence or jihadist terrorism. It may be a hybrid of the two.
NBC and the LA Times have identified Syed Farook as a suspect in the San Bernardino massacre.
The very latest on the San Bernadino rampage, including new details on the one male and one female suspects, each armed and dressed in tactical gear, killed by police several hours after the initial mass shooting.
House GOP keeps hope alive for possible Syrian refugee government shutdown.
I wanted to follow up on my post from yesterday about that study on middle aged white mortality rates. The study generated a great deal of attention when it was first released earlier this fall. And it also generated a small methodological controversy. Andrew Gelman, a Professor of Statistics at Columbia University, was one of the principal critics and published a set of revised numbers that control for the size of population groups passing through the 45-54 year age bracket over the course the years between 1998 and 2014. Before digging into the numbers, I think the overall gist is that Gelman’s findings/revisions do not challenge the overall findings of the study – a conclusion Gelman himself seems to agree with. But they change the details significantly.
Small town mayor sorry he said black people have “declared war on” white people.
I don’t say this lightly or often. But this is one of the most important studies in years in terms of understanding the current state of American politics and society. The study is the work of two Princeton University scholars, Ann Case and Angus Deaton, who analyzed vast quantities of federal government data about mortality rates across age cohorts, racial and ethnic groups and genders. They made a startling discovery. As you would expect, every age and ethnic/racial grouping has continued to see a steady reduction of morbidity (disease) and increase in lifespans for decades. But there’s one major exception: middle aged (45-54) white people. Since roughly 1998, disease and death rates for middle aged white men and women has begun to rise.
The State of Alabama started off trying to “defund” Planned Parenthood. Now they’re going to pay Planned Parenthood’s legal bills.