Patchwork

We've had psychic vampire repellent.  We've had people selling "raw water."  We've even had jade eggs that women are, for some reason, supposed to insert into their vaginas.

So the whole alt-med community has really been working overtime lately.  Which is why I shouldn't have been surprised when a loyal reader sent me a link to something called "Amino Neuro Frequency Patches."

I know how you feel, dude.  [image courtesy of photographer Alex E. Proimos and the Wikimedia Commons]

What are "Amino Neuro Frequency Patches," you might ask?  I know I did.  Here's what the website says:

ANF is a revolutionary holistic approach to pain and inflammation.  Practitioners examine the body following the nerve paths and focus on finding the root cause of the patient’s problem.  They apply ANF discs to the skin to reduce pain, remove inflammation and prevent it from spreading via the nervous and lymphatic systems.  They use the discs in conjunction with manual therapy.

I'm guessing the "manual therapy" they're referring to is writing out a check to pay for the discs, and the course you're supposed to take before you're allowed to use them.  (No, I'm not kidding; you actually have to sign up for an online course before they'll send you your patches.)

So how could this possibly work?  The website explains that, too:

It uses a combination of frequency emitting wearable devices, the ANF Discs.  Each disc is applied directly on the skin and activated by the body heat.  They transmit a unique range of frequencies through the neurons in the body.  The nervous system picks up these frequencies, starting a self-healing and self-regulating process.  By improving the nervous system signaling directly at the cellular level, the effect of the treatment is much faster and has remarkable durable results.  The ANF Therapy does not require the use of any drugs or chemicals...  The connection from the patch to the body is made through the nervous system and the seven layers of bio energy the body naturally produces, the patch providing the signal to promote cellular communication to reduce stress and anxiety while restoring imbalances, as an example.

Okay, first, let's get something clear.

Frequency isn't some kind of hand-waving, Cosmic Connection To The Quantum Energy Field concept.  (Now that I think of it, neither are "quantum," "energy," and "field.")  Frequency means the number of times something oscillates in a given amount of time.  It's measured in units called hertz, which is an oscillation per second.

So a kid on a swing has a frequency.  A guitar string has a frequency.  Light has a frequency.

Your intestines do not have a frequency, unless something is making them vibrate, which sounds painful.

Of course, that hasn't stopped people from claiming that they do.  Here's a concise list of some alleged frequencies of different things:

Genius Brain Frequency 80-82 MHz
Brain Frequency Range 72-90 MHz
Normal Brain Frequency 72 MHz
Human Body 62-78 MHz
Human Body: from Neck up 72-78 MHz
Human Body: from Neck down 60-68 MHz
Thyroid and Parathyroid glands are 62-68 MHz
Thymus Gland is 65-68 MHz
Heart is 67-70 MHz
Lungs are 58-65 MHz
Liver is 55-60 MHz
Pancreas is 60-80 MHz
Colds and Flu start at: 57-60 MHz
Disease starts at: 58 MHz
Candida overgrowth starts at: 55 MHz
Receptive to Epstein Barr at: 52 MHz
Receptive to Cancer at: 42 MHz
Death begins at: 25 MHz
Fresh Foods 20-27 Hz
Fresh Herbs 20-27 Hz
Dried Foods 15-22 Hz
Dried Herbs 15-22 Hz
Processed/Canned Food 0 Hz

The amusing thing about this is the implication that the faster something vibrates, the better it is.  If you think that's true, I propose an experiment: I'll sit for an hour listening to someone play the cello, and you sit for an hour listening to someone play the piccolo, and we'll see which one of us has a headache afterwards.

And I have to admit that I burst out laughing when I saw that a can of asparagus doesn't vibrate at all.  How this is supposed to translate into "bad for you," I don't know, although I will agree to the extent that canned asparagus is one of the most disgusting things the human race has ever created.

So once again, we have some completely unscientific horseshit being passed off as serious medical advice.  My recommendation: don't trust anyone whose knowledge of actual scientific terms convinces you that they failed high school physics.  Good rule of thumb, that.

Voodoo in the brain

I'm sure you've heard about the placebo effect, but have you heard of the nocebo effect?

If you know a little Latin, you can guess what it means.  Placebo is Latin for "I will please;" nocebo for "I will harm."  The nocebo effect occurs when you expect something to cause you unpleasant symptoms, and even though what you've consumed is harmless, you experience the symptoms anyhow.

We've known about the nocebo effect for some time.  It gained prominence due to investigations of "voodoo curses," where someone was cursed through a voodoo ritual, and lo and behold, the cursed individual sickens and dies.  Skeptical researchers don't credit this with voodoo actually working; they have come to realize that when a person thinks they're going to become ill, perhaps even die, the expected outcome manifests in the body.

[image courtesy of photographer Marie-Lan Nguyen and the Wikimedia Commons]

A recent study gives us an even better lens into the nocebo effect, and how the brain influences health.  Any medical researcher will tell you that people in clinical trials of medications will often stop taking the pills they were given, usually citing unacceptable side effects.  What is less well known is that a substantial fraction of the people who end up dropping out of the trial actually were receiving an inert substance.

So the control group, in other words.  They were taking a sugar pill, but because they expected to have side effects from the medication, they went ahead and had side effects anyhow.

The most recent study, which was published in Science last week, was the work of four researchers at the University Medical Center of Hamburg, the University of Colorado, and Cambridge University, and had the unwieldy title, "Interactions Between Brain and Spinal cord Mediate Value Effects in Nocebo Hyperalgesia," and it had a fascinating result:

People in the control group of pharmaceutical clinical trials are more likely to have spurious unpleasant side effects if they're told the medication is expensive than if they're told it's cheap.

Furthermore, they have pinpointed the areas in the brain that are responsible for the foul-up.  The authors write:

Value information about a drug, such as the price tag, can strongly affect its therapeutic effect.  We discovered that value information influences adverse treatment outcomes in humans even in the absence of an active substance.  Labeling an inert treatment as expensive medication led to stronger nocebo hyperalgesia [negative side effects] than labeling it as cheap medication.  This effect was mediated by neural interactions between cortex, brainstem, and spinal cord.  In particular, activity in the prefrontal cortex mediated the effect of value on nocebo hyperalgesia.  Value furthermore modulated coupling between prefrontal areas, brainstem, and spinal cord, which might represent a flexible mechanism through which higher-cognitive representations, such as value, can modulate early pain processing.

Which is kind of amazing.  People who experience unexpected side effects are often labeled as hypochondriacs -- i.e., that they know perfectly well they feel fine, and are making up or exaggerating their symptoms out of fear or a desire for attention.  What's really happening appears to be far subtler.  Because of an expectation of harm, the brain actually manifests the symptoms the person feels they're likely to have.  Labeling the medication as expensive increases the subject's sense of having put something unusual into their bodies, resulting in more anxiety and worse side effects.

For me, the most interesting thing about this is the interaction of the brainstem and spinal cord, two parts of the central nervous system that are usually regarded as controlling completely involuntary responses, with the prefrontal cortex, often considered the most advanced part of the human brain -- the part that is associated with reasoning, decision making, and logic.  The fact that a freakout (to use the scientific terminology) in the prefrontal cortex activates a response in the brainstem is astonishing -- and also explains why people who experience the nocebo effect can manifest actual measurable medical symptoms.

And why some of them die.

All of which brings home once again how incredibly complex the brain is.  We're living at an exciting time -- the point where we're finally beginning to understand the thing in our heads that artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky called a "three-pound meat machine."  And, apparently, how easy it is for the machine to get fooled.  Kind of humbling, that.

The girl who loves bugs

After this week, I think we all need something to cheer us up, so today I'm going to tell you about: an eight-year old girl whose passion for entomology led her to co-author an academic paper in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

Sophia Spencer, who is from Ontario, worked with Morgan Jackson, who curates the insect collection at the University of Guelph, to write the paper.  The topic is a fascinating one; how to use social media to make science more accessible and understandable to the public.  The entirely appropriate outcome: the hashtag #BugsR4Girls trended on Twitter.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The whole thing started when Sophia's mother became concerned that teasing from the other kids in elementary school would discourage her from her love for bugs.  So Sophia's mom wrote the following, to the entomological department at the University of Guelph:

The result?  The Entomological Society of Canada got wind of this, and put out a tweet that said, "A young girl who loves insects is being bullied & needs our support.  DM your email & we'll connect you!  #BugsR4Girls."

The response was immediate and overwhelming.  Sophia got tons of support from scientists, and ultimately got into a conversation with Morgan Jackson.  Together they came up with the idea of authoring a paper on the topic of how to use social media in the interests of science -- so that other children who love scientific pursuits won't have to put up with what Sophia did.  She writes:

It felt good to have so many people support me, and it was cool to see other girls and grown-ups studying bugs.  It made me feel like I could do it too, and I definitely, definitely, definitely want to study bugs when I grow up, probably grasshoppers… If somebody said bugs weren’t for girls, I would be really mad at them…  I think anything can be for anybody, including bugs.

To which I can only say: amen.

The happiest conclusion of all this is that Sophia's bullying problems at school have all but evaporated.  When her peers saw the response she got -- not to mention the amazing honor of being a co-author of an academic paper at age eight, which has to be a record -- all of a sudden, Sophia said, she's become "cool."  The kids who teased her for loving bugs now line up to take a look in her microscope and ask her to identify weird and interesting insect life they come across.

All of which supports a contention I have had for years; one of the best ways to find happiness is to discover a true passion, something that you love to do or to learn with no particular thought of utility.  I know my two obsessions -- music and running -- have pulled me up many times after bad days at work, or just general glumness.  Kudos to Sophia for persisting in the pursuit of hers -- and to Morgan Jackson, and the other scientists who responded, for making sure that a girl who loves bugs has an opportunity to fly.

Sounding the dog whistle

Given the other news this week, I think a lot of people have missed the story about a vote on a resolution in the United Nations, to wit, that countries "that have not yet abolished the death penalty... ensure that it is not imposed as a sanction for specific forms of conduct such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations... ensure that it is not applied on the basis of discriminatory laws or as a result of discriminatory or arbitrary application of the law... [and] ensure that the death penalty is not applied against persons with mental or intellectual disabilities and persons below 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime, as well as pregnant women."

The good news is that the measure passed, 27-13.

The bad news is that the United States was one of the 13.

This puts us in the company of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and China.  The Trump administration has not addressed why the United States voted "no," and at the time of this writing, there is no explanation on the State Department website.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Call me cynical, but this sounds like a dog whistle to the Religious Right to me.  The current administration has made it clear that they are determined to undo every specific protection LGBTQ individuals have, and to place the Bible ahead of the Constitution in determining the law of the land.  No surprise, given Mike Pence as vice president; he went on record as saying that prohibiting same-sex marriage was an "enforcement of god's law," and that if made legal, it would trigger "societal collapse."

My general feeling is that if all it takes to make your society collapse is giving official recognition to the expression of love between two people who happen to be of the same gender, then your society was kind of a house of cards to start with.

A significant number of the members of Trump's cabinet are evangelical; in fact, it was revealed two months ago that five members of Trump's advisory staff -- Pence, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, and Rick Perry -- attend a weekly Bible study session in a room in one of the government office buildings on Capitol Hill.  Reverend Ralph Drollinger, who runs the study group, is well known for this sort of thing; he runs Capitol Ministries, whose stated purpose is to "evangelize elected officials and lead them toward maturity in Christ."  About Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Drollinger said, "He will go out the same day I teach him something and I’ll see him do it on camera and I just think, 'Wow, these guys are faithful, available and teachable and they’re at Bible study every week they’re in town.'"

Predictably, no one in the administration sees any potential breakdown of the separation of church and state in all this.

But back to the United Nations.  I'm well aware that UN resolutions have no teeth, so even if the United States had voted to support the measure, it wouldn't have made a substantive difference in the way LGBTQ individuals, atheists, and the ex-religious are treated.  But as a symbolic gesture, it sends a hell of a message.  The fact is, we are siding with countries where I, as a blogger who has been openly critical of Islam, would be jailed and flogged at best, and at worst hauled out into the public square and beheaded.

If some member of the faithful didn't murder me first, as has happened over and over to atheist bloggers in Bangladesh.

Oh, but wait: you know what else Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, China, and the United States have in common?  They're all on the United Nations Human Rights Council.  Huh.  Funny thing, that.

In any case, I sincerely hope I'm wrong, that there was some other subtlety I'm missing that triggered the "no" vote.  It's hard for me to stomach the idea that I live in a country whose administration honestly wants to see gay people and atheists killed.  I shouldn't be surprised, however; the current favorite for Jeff Sessions's old Senate seat in Alabama is Roy Moore, who said that "Homosexual behavior is crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it."

Moore currently is leading his opponent, Doug Jones, by an eight-point margin.  So maybe it's not that outlandish after all.

So until proven otherwise, I'm sticking with my initial conclusion that all of this is about Donald Trump reinforcing his image among the Religious Right as a godly man. I suppose this is understandable enough; heaven knows his actual behavior would never lead you to that conclusion.

Soul singer

A couple of days ago, a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link with the message, "I thought I'd seen it all."

Well, I can say from painful experience, never give the universe an opening like that.  Every single time I think I've found the weirdest, goofiest claim ever, people take it upon themselves to come up with something even loonier.

This is why today we're looking at how Lady Gaga's announcement that she has fibromyalgia was her way of admitting that she'd sold her soul to the Illuminati.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

That, at least, is the contention of a group of people who evidently have been doing sit-ups under parked cars, as reported by Mariel Loveland, writing for Ranker.  These folks claim that the documentary describing the singer's chronic illness, Five Foot Two, was filled with hints about the real cause of the disease.  Loveland writes:

According to Anonymous, at one of these very same Lower East Side Clubs she sold her soul to the Illuminati for fame and fortune.  But Gaga, always one to push the envelope, reportedly went about "donating" rather than selling her soul to the organization.

Which is pretty darn generous.  I know I'd want something in return for my soul, and more than just membership in the Illuminati.  I mean, don't they have some kind of signup bonus?  Like back in the day, when you'd sign up for a checking account, the bank would give you a toaster or something.

So according to Loveland's informant, the Illuminati were waiting for her after a concert, to make her an offer she couldn't refuse.  Here's her alleged account of what happened:

…This man, a strangely ageless man in a suit, spoke to me.  He was leaning against the wall smoking, and he said to me, "I think you've got what it takes. Do you want it?"...  I asked what 'it' was I thought he was coming onto me, but he smiled and said, "Everything.  Success.  Fame.  Riches.  Power.  Do you want it all?"

Kind of tempting, that would be.  So she went for it, and sure enough, she became famous and rich and so on and so forth.  But like Faust and so many others have discovered, you can't just sell your soul to the devil and expect to get off with a slap on the wrist:

[T]his chronic pain is caused by conflicting forces battling for supremacy inside herself...  The singer allegedly wants to "rid her body of the dark spirituality" that she welcomed via "Satanic rituals early on in her career."  These dark forces allegedly cause her chronic pain...  They may give you special powers, outer beauty, talent, and wealth for a while, but it doesn’t last.

And of course, no claim of the Illuminati would be complete without a contribution from Alex Jones.  About a concert where she appeared to float upwards, followed by some flashing lights, Jones said:

They say she’s going to stand on top of the stadium, ruling over everyone with drones everywhere, surveilling everyone in a big swarm.  To just condition them to say "I am the Goddess of Satan" ruling over them with the rise of the robots in a ritual of lesser magic.

Which, I think we can all agree, is the only possible explanation for a pop singer doing something flamboyant.

Then we get to hear all about how Gaga's actual name, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, contains an anagram of the name Lina Morgana, a different pop singer who Gaga supposedly murdered, and how Gaga keeps flashing the All-Seeing Eye symbol during her concerts, either as a sign of her soulless condition or as a desperate plea for help from her fans.  The upshot is that we should all either boycott her concerts, or else rescue her from the Forces of Evil, whichever version you decided to go for.

At that point, my eyes were crossing, so I didn't get any further in the article.

I think what bothers me about all of this is not that loony people have come up with conspiracy theories.  That, after all, is what loonies do.  But here we have this poor woman, who through no fault of her own has contracted a debilitating disease, and she makes a documentary going public with her struggles, and she's repaid by raving wackazoids like Alex Jones claiming that she got her just deserts for taking up with the Bad Guys.

The object lesson here is that fame comes at a price, and I don't mean "your soul."  It means your privacy, and in a lot of ways, your chance at being treated compassionately and empathetically.  All the more reason why I'd never want to be famous, not that it's all that likely in any case.

The skulls speak

Given that everything in the news yesterday made me want to turn off the lights, curl up in a ball in the corner of my office, and whimper softly, today I'm taking a day off from more serious topics.  Ergo: we're going to look at: alien skeletons, and the DNA evidence thereof.

For years there has been buzz in the woo-woo world about the Nazca skulls -- a set of humanoid skulls with frontally-flattened foreheads and elongated craniums.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

To be sure, they're weird-looking, and demand an explanation.  The stick-in-the-mud, fuddy-duddy old scientists have claimed for years that they're humans that were practitioners of (or victims of) artificial cranial deformation, which is known to have been relatively common amongst the natives of Central and South America.

On the other hand, there are lots of people who think they're not human at all, that this is the best evidence we have for aliens.  An advanced extraterrestrial race, they tell us, visited the Nazca area centuries ago, leaving behind not only these skulls but the "Nazca lines," a set of elaborate and huge drawings, the designs of which are really only clearly visible from the air, that some woo-woos (for example Erich von Däniken) think are ancient landing strips for alien spacecraft, even though it's hard to see how you'd land a spacecraft on a landing strip shaped like a monkey.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But as far as the skulls go, scientists now have a way of settling these kinds of questions -- DNA analysis.  So last month they got samples from the Nazca skulls, and also from a mummified body from the same area, studied the DNA, and found out...

... it's human.

We skeptics are absolutely reeling with shock, let me tell you.  The woo-woos, on the other hand... well, let me put it this way: the link I posted, from Disclose.TV, gives you the impression that they were extremely reluctant to tell us the outcome of the tests.  Nigel Watson, a British UFO researcher, still thinks they're aliens, just "extremely closely related to humans."  Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, who made a name for himself a few years ago for claiming that he'd photographed a soul leaving the human body (he hadn't), also weighed in, said that "the DNA didn't come from a chimpanzee or a monkey, but it may not be human, only human-like."

Whatever that means.

The problem with taking that stance is that it fails the test of falsifiability.  A fundamental rule of science is to consider what it would take to prove your claim wrong.  If the answer is "there's nothing that could prove it one way or the other," or -- as in this case -- that any contrary evidence you get, you immediately brush aside as sorta kinda supporting your claim if you tilt your head and squint at it real hard, then you're not looking at a falsifiable claim.

In other words, it's not science, it's confirmation bias and hand-waving speculation.

In any case, for most of us, this conclusively settles the point -- the Nazca skulls, and other frontally-flattened skulls, are 100% certain to be humans whose skulls were squashed as infants, for some unknown reason.  The UFO and extraterrestrials cadre, including the devotees of wingnuts like von Däniken, are going to have to look elsewhere for evidence.

Although given their rather loose definition of the word "evidence," I'm sure they'll find something to fall back on.  They always do.

Lying to your face

My last post was about how reluctant I am to post about politics.  So, predictably, this post is about: politics.

I've been watching the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico with something akin to horror. Not just for the suffering of the people -- which is considerable -- but for the callous indifference with which Donald Trump is addressing the situation.  First responders have said that the extent of devastation is unknown at this time, but we do know that 95% of the island is still without power, almost 60% without potable water, and 72% without access to telephone service.  San Juan's mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, appealed to the federal government for help, and what did Trump do?

Chide the Puerto Ricans for "wanting everything to be done for them."  Point out how far in debt they are.    Pat himself on the back for his "fantastic response" to the disaster.

Others -- most others, in fact -- were not nearly so complimentary.  General Russel Honoré, who headed up President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was scathing.  "The mayor's living on a cot, and I hope the President has a good day of golf," Honoré said.  "The President has shown again he don't give a damn about poor people.  He doesn't give a damn about people of color.  And that SOB that rides around in Air Force One is denying services needed by the people of Puerto Rico.  I hate to say it that way but there's no other way to say it."

All of which brings up something I've mentioned before; Donald Trump lies every time he opens his mouth.  He has such a tenuous grasp on the truth that columnist Chris Cilizza has said that he's "living in an alternate universe."  Here are a few of the recent lies Trump has told, none of which he's backed down from:

• FEMA and the first responders in Puerto Rico engaged in a "massive food and water delivery."  The fact is -- and this has been confirmed by people there on site -- there's been no widespread distribution of food and water, because most of the roads are still impassable. 
• When Mayor Yulín Cruz said that what he'd said was flat out wrong, he lashed out at her, saying that evidently the "democrats had said you must be nasty to Trump."  Any contradictions between what he said and what's coming out of Puerto Rico are false, because the "press is treating him unfairly."
• His lies don't just center around the hurricane and Puerto Rico.  No, he's been lying for ages.  Another recent one centered around the proposed health care bill.  Trump said, more than once, that the Senate actually did have the votes to pass the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but there was "one senator who is in the hospital."  They didn't, and there wasn't.
• And, of course, there's been no meddling in anything by the Russians.  At a rally for Luther Strange, who lost his primary bid to take Jeff Sessions's seat in the Senate to the spectacularly right-wing Roy Moore, Trump said it was "... the Russian hoax.  One of the great hoaxes.  Are there any Russians in the audience?  I don't see any Russians."  This, despite the fact that the heads of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and the former Director of National Intelligence, all agree that there is overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in the election.
• This pathological lying is not just by Trump himself, but by members of his administration.  Apropos of the proposed tax reform bill, Gary Cohn, director of the White House Economic Council, said, "The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan."  Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin concurred, adding that the bill, if passed, would reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars.  Not to be outdone, Trump himself weighed in, saying that he wouldn't benefit at all personally from the bill.  Howard Gleckman, of the Tax Policy Center, says that all three of these are blatant lies.  "There is no plausible way Congress can fully fund all of the tax cuts in this outline while complying with its constraints on revenue-raisers," Gleckman writes.  "Businesses would receive the biggest tax cuts, which would ultimately benefit the highest income households... Tax cuts for corporations and, especially, pass-through businesses, would mostly benefit the highest-income households."  Of the benefit to the economy, Gleckman was unequivocal:  "Despite the president’s promises, it is implausible that this plan would permanently boost the economy.  Trillions of dollars in lost revenue would add to the federal debt, raise interest rates, and make it more costly for businesses to invest.  Those costs would offset the benefits of lower corporate tax rates and expensing."
• He said at a rally in Charlottesville that the U.S. had become a "net energy exporter for the first time ever just recently" -- implying, of course, that it was his policies that had caused this.  The problem is, the claim is flat-out false.  Politifact analyzed this statement from every angle they could think of, and no matter how you interpret it, it's wrong.  

And so on and so forth.  And yet... and yet... there are still people defending him.  Today I saw someone post that the well-deserved backlash Trump is receiving because of his petty, nasty, vindictive response to the Puerto Rico disaster is because "they always want to find a way to criticize the United States of America."  No, "they" (whoever "they" are) aren't criticizing the U.S., they're criticizing the President, who has once again shown himself to be a narcissistic asshole who takes any questioning of his words or actions as a personal assault.

Oh, and Puerto Rico is part of the United States of America.  Awkward, that.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So this brings us back to a place we've been before; at this point, defending Donald Trump is to side with a man who has zero respect for the truth, and lies continuously, apparently without any twinge of guilt.  He's warped people's attitude toward the media to the point that all he has to do is shriek "fake news" or "lying reporters" and they believe every word that comes out of his mouth (and disbelieve anything contrary that they see, hear, or read).

In short: supporting this man at this point is unconscionable.  I don't care what your political affiliation is, what race, what religion, or anything else.  If you are still in support of Donald Trump, you are putting yourself behind one of the worst people ever elected to public office in the United States.  And I honestly don't know how you can sleep at night.