Monthly Archives: August 2018

The damn stuff may be pretty but it’s too damn aggressive. Here, have some phrickin’ pictures.

In WaPo Charles Lane is horrified at the idea of child euthanasia:

Deliberately taking a small child’s life is unlawful everywhere in the world, even when the child is terminally ill and asks a doctor to end his or her suffering once and for all.

There is an exception to this rule: Belgium. In 2014, that country amended its law on euthanasia, already one of the most permissive in the world, authorizing doctors to terminate the life of a child, at any age, who makes the request.

For a year after the law passed, no one acted on it. Now, however, euthanasia for children in Belgium is no longer just a theoretical possibility.

Two under the age of 12.

Everywhere else in the world, the law reflects powerful human intuitions, moral and practical: that it is wrong to abandon hope for a person so early in life, no matter the illness; that it is absurd to grant ultimate medical autonomy to someone too young to vote or legally consent to sex; and that even the best-intentioned fallible human beings should not be entrusted with such life-and-death power.

In Belgium, a kind of libertarian technocracy has conquered these qualms. Euthanasia advocates insist that some children, even very young ones, may possess the same decisional capacity as some adults, and it’s therefore discriminatory to deny them the freedom to choose euthanasia based on an arbitrary age limit.

Except Lane is actually a trifle misleading. As he also states, the Belgians employ psychiatrists and other doctors in hopes of ensuring the diagnosis and prognosis are correct, and the child is as rational as a child might be. This is not ceding adult authority to children.

And I’d like to go back to his “moral intuitions.” Disregarding the questions raised by such a question, such as the discarding of rationality in favor of mysticism, my intuition is that, since the medical doctors are verifying that the children are in the grip of unendurable agony, with no hope of relief, mitigation, or cure, then prolonging their lives in opposition to their wishes has deep moral risks.

Certainly, Lane may be concerned about the “slippery slope” argument, but this is not an argument of theory, but of implementation.

And, finally, for those fans of natural morality, by which I mean those who prefer to look to nature for moral systems, I should point out that illnesses in this category in Nature, which is to say a world without human technology, would lead to a swift demise for the unfortunate victims. Someday I want to talk a little bit about the clash between social moral systems and nature’s moral system, but not today.

Gary Sargent on The Plum Line is looking forward to a Kavanaugh ruling on a subpoena of President Trump’s testimony:

The battle over whether President Trump will sit for an interview with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III could end up running headlong into the confirmation fight over Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, that’s set for this fall. …

What this means is that, in advance of Kavanaugh’s hearing, we may already know that Kavanaugh could end up being the deciding vote on the question of whether a president (Trump) can be compelled to testify to a grand jury. Now, it is possible that the current court could rule on such a matter sooner (the eight justices might deadlock, defaulting to a lower court). But it’s also perfectly plausible, depending on how long Trump’s team takes to make a decision and what happens in the courts afterward, that this could be headed for a showdown in front of a high court with Kavanaugh on it.

But this presumes the conservative SCOTUS justices will automatically vote for President Trump’s interests. But that’s not their job. Their job is to interpret the Constitution’s statements on cases brought before them, and if the Constitution does not forbid the subpoena of a President, then they should permit it unless they can come up with some overwhelming national reason to not do so.

In other words, they have a job to do and, while I don’t much care for some decisions made by the Court, I think that most or all of the Justices do vote in accordance with their understanding of that job.

The conservative faction of the Court is not, in any reasonable manner, dependent on the good graces of President Trump. They are politically independent of the whims of the electorate, just as the Founding Fathers intended.

Let’s assume the Court does rule the President must submit to such a subpoena. Then watch the storm arise for the selection of Justices through the popular vote. The conservative media will raise a firestorm in its relentless urge to politicize everything.

And, I suspect, the left will join them in the call. Ideologues hate that which is out of their control.

And that’ll become an issue of national, if understated, importance.

Equipoise:

Emails published as part of the NIH report suggest that backers of the trial expected to show that moderate drinking has a health benefit. Researchers are supposed to have what is known as “equipoise” going into a trial. That means “you are approaching a question with a completely neutral attitude,” [cardiologist and deputy director for extramural research at NIH Michael] Lauer said.

From “A huge clinical trial collapses, and research on alcohol remains befuddling,” Joel Achenbach, WaPo.

Most of my observations of the BREXIT debacle have been political in nature, but there’s more to it than that. I have to go with Dylan Matthews at Vox, as his source at Prospect Magazine seems to have disappeared:

So what happens if [British Prime Minister] May leaves [the EU] without that kind of deal [i.e., free trade]? That’s what Lis’s piece addresses. Here’s one of its extremely normal paragraphs:

4. Food will rot. We import about half of our food and feed, and 70 per cent of that comes from the EU. The bosses of Calais and Dover have warned of 30-mile tailbacks and possible infrastructural collapse. Experts have already warned that supermarkets will soon run out of supplies. (Hence the stockpiling.)

Stockpiling! A cursory look through the British press reveals that the entire nation of the United Kingdom is acting like a town on the eve of a massive blizzard. “Stockpiling is the talk of Britain!” the Economist proclaims, while raising doubts about whether people are actually piling up the food or just talking about it to be trendy. The Guardian asks readers, “What would you stockpile to prepare for no-deal Brexit?” and columnist Ian Jack observes, “As Brexit looms, stockpiling food seems the only sensible response.”

You get the feeling the Brits are about to find out what happens when amateurs are let into the cockpit. Hope they enjoy the ride. And, as May could have just ignored the referendum, this is all avoidable.

Lawyer Kenneth Jost has little use for the Republicans when it comes to the management of the Kavanaugh nomination:

Senate Republicans are neck-deep in political hypocrisy as they move toward confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh without a shred of bipartisanship or principle. With Republicans having lost any capacity for shame, the Republicans’ prime movers on judicial confirmations — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley — are adopting tactics that flatly contradict their stances on President Obama’s last two Supreme Court nominations.

Regarding nominee Elena Kagan:

Grassley, then in his thirtieth year as U.S. senator from Iowa, began his remarks by telling his colleagues that he had “always been of the opinion that the Senate needs to conduct a comprehensive and careful review of Supreme Court nominees [emphasis added].” For the Senate to fulfill its constitutional responsibility, Grassley elaborated, “we must get all of her documents from the Clinton Library and have enough time to analyze them so we can determine whether she should be a Justice.”

And, as many readers already know, the same standard is not applied to Judge Kavanaugh.

Hypocrisy is all about trust – not only for the other side of the aisle, but for the voters as well. If we cannot trust such leaders as Senators McConnell and Grassley will treat all nominees with equal gravity, but find their thumb on the scales for their ideological allies, then how can we trust them in other situations? Their duty is to ascertain whether or not Kavanaugh is fit for the position; wilfull blindness to the possible defects of his intellect and personality, their refusal to follow their own rules, strongly suggests they are unfit for their offices.

To be blunt, boot those two bums out, voters.

Representatives Sarbanes (D-MD) and Price (D-NC), in response to various problems with Big Money and gerrymandering, have put together a legislative proposal for the future. One of the facets of their proposal is public financing for smaller candidates:

Protect every American’s voice from being drowned out by big wealthy and well-connected donors, and allow citizen-funded candidates to combat Super PACs and outside groups by earning additional public matching funds within 60 days of an election.

I suspect that if this is funded from taxes rather than donations, it’ll break up on the rocks of SCOTUS. Free speech rights should include the right not to fund the speech of someone I don’t like. If it’s funded through donations, well, I suspect donations will be anemic. Why give to an anonymous fund which will fund people I may not like, when I can just give the money to the candidate I prefer?

A random selection of the endgame for plants. A leaf noted on our front step, sadly out of focus.

And this dry rose, seen at local deli Kramarczuk’s. Again, the focus of the smartphone ruins what might have been a lovely picture.

On Right Turn, Jennifer Rubin pastes^[1] the GOP for its continued support of President Trump:

The political implications of Trump’s latest confession are quite stunning. Will the rest of the GOP go along with the position that it was perfectly fine for Russia to help Trump? That would sure be a change from “No collusion” (to “Collusion, so what?!”). I don’t know how a major political party can maintain the view that hostile powers have carte blanche to influence our elections. Every Republican in elected office or on the ballot should be asked his or her view on the matter.

The notion that collusion with a hostile power is no big deal is so preposterous and unpalatable, you would think Republicans would not dare try to defend Trump on this point. But this crowd? They might just try it.

This reminds me of a recent report on the political elite of Britain of which I wrote about here. It’s beginning to appear that Putin has been trading on the lust for power of the conservative wing of the democracies confronting him, buying himself influence with cash and riding the wave of research in political marketing.

The line of strong anti-Russian hawks has finally been broken here in the United States with the election of President Trump, and the selection of John Bolton as his National Security Advisor. In Britain, as I noted in the above post, the opposition leader appears to have sympathy for Russia and President Putin, but Prime Minister May, whatever her defects as leader, at least does not appear to have that particular ill.

While this is greatly damaging to the reputation of Democracy throughout the world, there is one saving grace: Democracies change leaders. The selection of a new class of leaders can easily result in the return to the proper attitude towards Russia: an honest wariness, a willingness to punish transgressions of international agreements, such as the annexation of Crimea, and honest assessments of Russian ambitions and how they’ll impact American interests.

This is what much of the GOP members of Congress are failing to do.

¹“Pastes” was slang from, I think, my parents’ youth, meaning to destroy beyond any hope of recovery.

WaPo reports on a scandal in Japan:

One of Japan’s top medical universities has been systematically blocking female applicants from entering the school for at least eight years, local news agencies reported on Thursday.

Tokyo Medical University, a private institution consistently ranked among the country’s best for clinical medicine, has been automatically lowering the entrance exam results of female applicants for the past decade, an attempt to keep the ratio of women in each class of students below 30 percent, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. A specific coefficient was reportedly applied to the scores of all female applicants, lowering them by 10 to 20 percent.

Amazing. Of course, they have excuses for their bad behavior, including the worst: Everyone else is doing the same.

But – if I were a citizen of Japan – I’d call them traitors and boot their hairy asses right off the islands. Why? As I’ve mentioned before, nations prosper or not on the genius of their citizens, legal or not. By suppressing the potential careers of those women, they’ve deprived the nation of the genius for medicine they may have developed.

Worse yet, they were treated unjustly. Why should these women, who may have already suspected something fishy was going on, continue to have faith in their society? Unless the injustice is corrected to each and every one of them, they have every right to become disaffected.

Poor Japan. Their devaluation of women negatively impacts the entire nation. And will those responsible be held to punishment?

I know I said that I wouldn’t be reviewing Fringe shows unless they were extraordinary, and while I might not go so far as to say What To Do In Case Of Dinosaur Attack is extraordinary – it’s more of a novelty piece – it was a huge amount of fun and worth the time, at least if you like dinosaurs of the real or cinematic sort.

And, if you’re on a tight schedule, well, don’t be. Get there early and be prepared to stand in line outside.

The next in a line of special elections is coming up this Tuesday in Ohio as, due to the resignation of Representative Patrick Tiberi, the OH-12 seat in the House of Representatives has become available. According to Ballotpedia, this is a safely Republican seat, as the Republicans won the seat by 36.8 points in 2016, and previous to that margins of 40.3, 27, and 14.8; previous elections are not valid for this comparison due to redistricting. It’s been Rep. Tiberi this entire time, which may skew the results if voters connect with him, but in the end, this looks like a safe Republican seat.

So why are Speaker Ryan, President Trump, and Vice President Pence actively campaigning for the Republican candidate, State Senator Troy Balderson, and why has President Trump found it necessary to endorse Balderson?
[tweet https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1020811550771294211]

Because of this Monmouth poll result:

The race to fill the open seat in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District has shifted from a Republican advantage last month to a toss-up now, according to the Monmouth University Poll. Different voter models suggest that the race could go either way. The underlying GOP-lean of this district benefits State Senator Troy Balderson. But an increase in Democratic enthusiasm and a shift in independent voter preferences have boosted the standing of Franklin County Recorder Danny O’Connor.

That must be a shocking poll for Republicans who considered this a safe seat. Looking at the Balderson campaign website, he’s not a invoking the Trump name at all on the front page – at least not now. If he does not win, we know where Trump will go with his defense of his failure to drag Balderson across a finish line that should have been easy for a Republican who has a long record in the State House and doesn’t even appear to be an extremist, although he does sing the “no new taxes” theme song of the Republicans. He’ll blame Balderson for not embracing the Trump agenda.

But even if O’Connor fails, but only fails by a small margin, this will be an indictment by the American people of the Republican ideology of Trump, because Balderson bears the brand name on his shoulder, without a slavish devotion to Trump. So even without the name of Trump to remind independents of an ideology which is looking increasingly like madness, the polls – including the most important one, the last one – appear to show an overwhelming advantage for the Republicans going right into the shitcan.

That has to be a big red warning sign for Republican leaders who continue to act as if they’re convinced they have a winning political message for the upcoming elections.

From WaPo’s interview with North Texas sportscaster and occasional commentator Dale Hansen:

So how about now? Will you vote in the midterm elections?

I’m going to start again. Because I was wrong. I wanted the perfect candidate, and I didn’t want to be the guy who voted for the lesser of two evils. But I’ve learned that when you don’t vote for the lesser of two evils, sometimes the more evil guy wins.

In winner-takes-all elections, this is the message that every voter needs to consider.

And I loved the interview.

Salwa Samir in AL Monitor reports on an appalling subject in Egypt – female genital mutilation (FGM):

FGM was banned in the country in 2008, and in 2016 it was criminalized. Nevertheless, a 2016 survey by the UN Children’s Fund revealed that 87% of women and girls ages 15-49 in Egypt have undergone the procedure. Even after the criminalization, families in poor villages in Upper Egypt force their girls to undergo FGM, because they believe it promotes chastity.

A distressingly high percentage, given that it was banned a decade ago, and it’s beginning to look like it’s going to point up that in clashes between the law and tradition, the latter is often the victor.

Not being religious myself, I am sure I’m missing a lot of nuance, yet I’m left with this question running through my head for those who would advocate for FGM and happen to be religious: It should be clear that the human body is a gift from your deity(s), and mutilation that destroys the sources of pleasure in an often bitter life would seem to be an insult to that deity. How can you possibly hope to reside with your deity when you die after committing such a terrible crime against them?

For those wondering about circumcision, yep, it also applies. Sure, some will point at the Bible and claim it was commanded by Jehovah, but this merely underlines the question of the authenticity of the Bible.

If you feel like you’re stumbling into the spider’s web, that’s one good reason to discard divinities and look for better explanations.

Also noted in Samir’s article was the increase in the Egyptian population:

The population of Egypt has nearly doubled since 1985, which is a serious headache for the Egyptian government. In May, the government earmarked 100 million Egyptian pounds ($5.5 million) to bolster a family planning program entitled “Two is Enough.”

“Simply imparting information and increasing knowledge is not sufficient: The messaging must target the beliefs, ideas and feelings that drive behavior and that can remove social barriers and empower people to act. If we can shift these ideational factors — for example, if we can shift perceptions of what people believe other people will think of them if they use contraception or shift an individual’s belief that their peers are using contraception — then the behavior will subsequently change,” Bodiroza said.

The general thrust of Samir’s article was the use of celebrities and songs in influencing the sexual mores of the Egyptian state, which I should think should have been employed a decade ago.

A transcript of a AG Sessions speech from the Department of Justice website:

But in recent years, the cultural climate in this country—and in the West more generally—has become less hospitable to people of faith. Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack.

And it’s easy to see why. We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives.

We’ve seen U.S. Senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma—even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for public office. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips.

Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds are concerned about what this changing cultural climate means for the future of religious liberty in this country.

Under attack? How many of my readers have felt their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack? The intellectual flaw here, both in Sessions’ remark and my question, is to lump the religious into one group, rather than realistically acknowledging the differences, sometimes antagonistic, between the various faith groups, including those of no faith. Does a Christian feel threatened? A Satanist? A Jew, a Muslim, and the atheist down the street?

A mixture of answers will ensue if you ensue if you pursue persons of each group.

Given Sessions’ background, it’s not difficult to assume this is code for Christians are not as dominant as they used to be, and people are still taking seriously the idea of government not being dominated by religion! And this puts Sessions in the place of practicing subterfuge in order to promote his agenda, which appears to be Dominionist.

And I cannot take the paragraph regarding judicial & executive nominees being asked about dogma seriously. The rebuttal lies in his very words – government is not a vehicle for religion, so it is incumbent to ask if those who embody government will bring their religious prejudices into government, or if they’ll be faithful to the law of Man – not the many religions which those nominated practice.

Still, how many of the religious really feel under attack – and how many are just being stirred up by those fell power-mongers of the right?

A reader writes about disobedience to higher powers:

I spent a 30-year career working for 60,000 employee, $12 billion global financial services firm. It didn’t take long for those of us in the field offices to learn to ignore policy/procedure edicts emanating from the mothership in NYC, most of which we viewed as being untethered from reality and counter to good client service.

We knew, based on multiple experiences, that senior policy maker turnover occurred so frequently, that merely giving the appearance of partial acceptance of mandated changes was sufficient to survive until the next idiot assumed the helm.

I work for one of the larger engineering firms out there, and my group just basically does our thing and lets management tell us when that’s not what they want. We take care of our customers and prepare for the future.

And try to ignore HR as much as possible.

As part of the climate change coverage, Suchul Kang & Elfatih A. B. Eltahir present an article in Nature Communications entitled “North China Plain threatened by deadly heatwaves due to climate change and irrigation“:

The North China Plain. Map: U.S. State Department.

North China Plain is the heartland of modern China. This fertile plain has experienced vast expansion of irrigated agriculture which cools surface temperature and moistens surface air, but boosts integrated measures of temperature and humidity, and hence enhances intensity of heatwaves. Here, we project based on an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate model simulations that climate change would add significantly to the anthropogenic effects of irrigation, increasing the risk from heatwaves in this region. Under the business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse gas emissions, North China Plain is likely to experience deadly heatwaves with wet-bulb temperature exceeding the threshold defining what Chinese farmers may tolerate while working outdoors. China is currently the largest contributor to the emissions of greenhouse gases, with potentially serious implications to its own population: continuation of the current pattern of global emissions may limit habitability in the most populous region, of the most populous country on Earth. …

The North China Plain (NCP; defined here as 34°N to 41°N; 113°E to 121°E, see Fig. 1), with an area of about 400 thousand square kilometers, is the largest alluvial plain in China1,2. This region, inhabited by about 400 million, is one of the most densely populated in the world.

It’s well known that President Trump has claimed climate change is a Chinese hoax, a statement with no attribution to any known fact, and in fact risible on its face. But this threat to the Chinese heartland suddenly made me wonder:

Could climate change, given the conservative elite’s refusal to take action on it, constitute a weapon?

It’s a dark, very unlikely thought. The potential collateral damage is enormous. But for a movement with a religious, and thus potentially irrational, even eschatological element to it, it’s not impossible to believe there’s at least some potential there.

Noted during a visit to the Loring Park Arts Festival.

I wish the last one hadn’t turned out grainy, but I suppose if it’s important to me, I’d shell out the bucks for a real camera.

BuzzFeed reports on how much attention US Government officials are paying attention to the pronouncements of President Trump when it comes to the recent G7 Summit:

Shortly after leaving the G7 Summit in Canada in June, President Donald Trump tweeted to say he had instructed US officials not to endorse a statement he had agreed to just hours earlier with other world leaders. Trump was displeased with something Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during the summit’s closing press conference, which the president was following on TV from Air Force One.

But almost two months on, those instructions from Trump have never been acted upon, apparently ignored, two sources who were directly involved in the G7 process told BuzzFeed News.

US inaction means Trump effectively endorsed the final statement after all.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Fox News, reportedly President Trump’s main source of information about the world (and just think about that for a while!), had anything on this. A major search engine showed nothing. A visit to the Fox News website also showed nothing. It’s still a young story, though, isn’t it?

Not really, not generically. Steve Benen has more:

In April, for example, the president announced via Twitter that Russia should “get ready” because he was poised to launch a military offensive in Syria. White House officials found Trump’s declaration “distracting,” and proceeded “as if nothing had happened.”

A couple of months earlier, Trump asked Defense Secretary James Mattis to provide him with military options for Iran. The Pentagon chief reportedly “refused.”

Making matters slightly worse, last summer, the president published missives barring transgender Americans from military service. Soon after, the Joint Chiefs effectively ignored it, leaving the status quo in place.

Steve calls it an “alarming dynamic.” It’s well more than that.

First, it tells the observant so much about the level of incompetency in this Administration. I cannot think of similar stories for any other recent President. The inclination to hire loyal cretins and ignoramuses, as well as ideological fellow-travelers, is reinforced by this reaction by those folks who have spent their careers holding the United States together.

It sets a shocking precedent. OK, I’m not going to faint over it, as an institution as large as the Executive Branch will no doubt contradict the will of the guy at the top both inadvertently and purposefully, not to mention over legal constraints. Until this Administration, though, the purposeful group was definitely the outsiders, the extremists – just think of Col. Oliver North’s deliberate deceptions in the Iran-Contra scandal. (Col. North, USMC (retired), is now a top muckety-muck at the NRA, which is telling.) Now it’s arguably the good guys, those folks grounded in reality, who are deliberately ignoring the President. It quite probable they will get canned if the President ever notices it. It’s conceivable they could end up in court and end up convicted. And while they could be pardoned by a savvy President, it’s still a blot and a strain on honorable members of government who are trying to keep the boat afloat in the midst of a self-inflicted storm. But it’s a horrible precedent, because while we may appreciate the efforts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others to mitigate the sheer idiocy of the President, what happens tomorrow when someone we think of as competent is ignored?

This cannot come out well.

Third, what does this say about Fox News, assuming they refuse to run the story? Are they patriots under their deceptive skins? Are they just trying to keep him in power by not letting him know his power is even more limited than he’s already discovered? Or are they so confused by the situation that they’re melting down? This, by the way, appeals to my sense that those who are doing evil in the world tend to trip over their own feet and break their necks, eventually.

If this ever comes to the President’s attention, and is really true, it could cause a real shit-storm for those public servants. I’m completely conflicted over there their actions, as short-term they are doing good, but making the long-term a little less secure. Or maybe a lot less secure.

When he wakes up, no one mention both of his legs are gone!

Hands of a Stranger (1962) suffers from a central problem: the theme is a muddled mess. Gifted pianist Vernon, just coming into his own, is involved in a taxi accident, and his hands are mangled beyond repair. His surgeon, however, urged on by Vernon’s agent, performs hand transplants using those of a murder victim.

When Vernon learns, he tries to pick up where he left off, but when his new hands fail him, he flies into violent rages which result in the deaths of various people he knows or associates with the accident, including the young son of the taxi driver, who was blinded in the accident as well. Meanwhile, a police lieutenant is adding up the clues and beginning to wonder about the amazing surgeon and his patient.

Driven to madness, Vernon traps the surgeon and his own sister, threatening to kill them, but the lieutenant arrives just in time to save them from the insane pianist.

There were a lot of good elements to this movie. The acting was generally excellent, and I found the police lieutenant particularly intriguing. Vernon, played by James Stapleton, bore a passing, if distracting, resemblance to current actor Rufus Sewell, although on comparison it didn’t seem that great.

But in the end I was left wondering why had they made this movie. An entry in the horror genre? It didn’t feel like it. A cautionary tale concerning technology? Not really. The pitfalls of becoming famous? But Vernon is quite the humble chap. And what about that last frame of the movie, the message What’s Past Is Prologue? What should I make of that?

In the end, I could only shrug, because the story let the movie down.

And here it is, in case you’re wondering about it.

Rohollah Faghihi  of AL Monitor notes that the ‘young, strict conservative’ movement, previously discussed, has taken over the state broadcaster:

The recent appointments of new managers at Iran’s conservative-dominated state broadcaster may indicate that the organization is about to adopt a more hard-line position. This comes as a number of powerful moderate officials at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) have been weakened lately.

IRIB has a monopoly over domestic radio and television services, and has more than 50 channels, with the most-viewed channels being Channels 1 through 6.

Conservative Abdulali Ali-Asgari is the current chairman of the state broadcaster, and like his predecessors, is directly appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. …

In 2014, a new channel named Ofogh (Horizon) was established, focusing on “the concepts of Islamic Revolution, the Holy Defense [1980-88 Iran-Iraq War] and regional developments.”

The channel is managed by the new generation of hard-liners, who are vehemently against the Reformists and moderates. Since its inception, Ofogh has broadcast various documentaries angled against government policies — including the nuclear negotiations that led to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and indeed the nuclear deal itself. The channel has some well-known talk shows that appear to mostly pursue the single goal of weakening the conservatives’ political rivals.

The younger generation of hard-liners who control Ofogh are now determined to expand their domain to the entirety of IRIB, and in the process of doing so, eliminating moderates and other members of the entourage of parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, who has been a close ally of Reformist-backed Rouhani in recent years. For a decade, Larijani was the chairman of IRIB; his tenure ended in 2004. While he had adopted hard-line positions during his chairmanship of the state broadcaster, he gradually turned moderate upon leaving the organization.

What better way to enforce the ideology of the conservatives than to take over the state broadcaster? Well, my suspicion is they’ll end up disappointed. True believers rarely attract the masses when the masses have already had recent experience with the true believers, and given how the Iranian citizenry has shifted over the years, it’s quite probable that they’ll quietly ignore these young firebrands, having far more urgent, if mundane concerns at hand.

The 2018 version of the Minnesota Fringe Festival starts today and my Arts Editor and I will be Fringing some of the next 10 or 11 days, and no doubt it’ll impact my normal blogging to some extent. I don’t anticipate posting any reviews to UMB unless we run across something truly extraordinary early enough in its run for my local readers to see it as well.

I think there is a reviewing facility on their web site, but last time I used it people yelled at me for being too mean.

I hope you folks find time to enjoy a show or two as well.

Two days ago I received a response from Senator Klobuchar to my letter concerning the immigrant families experiencing the kidnapping of their children at the hands of the U.S. Government, and I can report she’s 4-square against it.

I recently visited the southern border in Texas, where I spoke with people who had experienced the Administration’s policy firsthand—including a mother fleeing an abusive partner in Honduras who was separated from her 10-year-old son for more than a month. I also heard from religious and humanitarian workers who are dedicating their time to help those seeking refuge in our country.

We must reunite these children with their parents immediately. Our country’s medical professionals – including the American Medical Association and the American Association of Pediatrics – have warned about the consequences of family separation, saying that it can cause irreparable harm to children that lasts their whole lives. I will keep fighting to help these families and I am an original cosponsor of a bill that would prevent this from ever happening again. I have also repeatedly advocated for congressional oversight hearings on this Administration’s immigration policies.

A form letter, I’m sure, but directly addressing my concerns in a firm and forthright manner.

A recent analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) proposed “Medicare For All” (M4A) by the free enterprise think tank Mercatus has the liberals all a-twitter with excitement. Here’s Kevin Drum:

Here’s some good news. The libertarians at the Mercatus Center did a cost breakdown of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan and concluded that it would save $2 trillion during its first ten years:

Now, as you might guess, this was not the spin the Mercatus folks put on their study. Their headline is “M4A Would Place Unprecedented Strain on the Federal Budget.” This isn’t really true, of course, since M4A would absorb all the costs of our current health care system but would also absorb all the payments we make to support it.

But Mercatus is quite consistent in saying this:

By conservative estimates, this legislation would have the following effects:

• M4A would add approximately $32.6 trillion to federal budget commitments during the first 10 years of its implementation (2022–2031).
• This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022. This amount would rise to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and continue to rise thereafter.

These estimates are conservative because they assume the legislation achieves its sponsors’ goals of dramatically reducing payments to health providers, in addition to substantially reducing drug prices and administrative costs.

And if the legislation fails to reduce payments to health providers? Costs could grow a lot more than projected. Kevin shouldn’t be complacent that Mercatus’ number is less than the projected number.

It’s a nuance worth thinking about, because it leads to more interesting questions, such as whether or not health providers will accept lower payments. That question has more texture to it than you might think. Does the legislation still utilize insurance companies, or is the health insurance industry abolished by this legislation? If not the latter, then does the legislation establish, or propose to establish, a standardized approach to health claims specification? Keep in mind that this one area often consumes one more persons in a doctor’s office, because health insurance claims are just that inconsistent.

Another thought is that a doctor’s office guaranteed a certain amount of business may be willing to accept the legislatively specified discount, much as will suppliers of more tangible objects, also known as the bulk discount.

Speaking of Mercatus, I don’t have time to analyze their result, but I do notice they don’t seem to acknowledge that earlier interventions, which are more likely under M4A, result in lower health care costs. This is another detail simply glossed over. If they calculated for that, it should be well-publicized so that the various interested parties could engage with it, tear it to pieces, and really get a good look at what that might mean for us.

Similarly, questions concerning whether M4A would impact new therapy development are also important. I see Mercatus has a study on how Medicare impacts it, but I can’t read that at the moment.