Category Archives: Uncategorized

A reader remarks on Kim Jong-un’s needs:

Interesting idea but I don’t think Kim will go for it. He obviously doesn’t care about his people or the country’s welfare. His ego requires constant stroking, not unlike 45’s. That, coupled with paranoia, is what drives him. Again, not unlike 45.

Yet his paranoia is not unjustified, given the belligerent tone of the United States and others over the decades. Add in the failure of the United States to continue agreements begun in the Clinton era, and to call him paranoid is to suggest his concerns are unjustified – an argument which I believe is unsustainable.

Intercessory prayer:

Intercession or intercessory prayer is the act of praying to a deity on behalf of others. In Western Christianity, intercession forms a distinct form of prayer, alongside Adoration, Confession and Thanksgiving. [Wikipedia]

Noted in this press release from the Center For Inquiry, which is a Freethought, or atheist, organization:

“And it is the right thing to do, is to pray in moments like this because you know what? Prayer works,” [House Speaker Paul] Ryan asserted. “And when you hear the secular left doing this thing, no wonder you’ve got so much polarization and disunity in this country when people think like that.”

“There is no evidence that intercessory prayer has any effect on earthly events, as numerous controlled studies have shown, and it won’t save anyone from future atrocities,” said Robyn Blumner, President and CEO of the Center for Inquiry. “So instead of dismissing legitimate criticism, the Speaker should work toward evidence-based solutions to the pressing national issue of gun violence.”

This press release has sparked some discussion. Eric Owens in the right-wing Daily Caller, under the headline, “Sad, Lonely Atheists Insist Prayer Is Dumb As They Stare Hopelessly Into Desolate Cosmic Abyss,” remarked:

One of the world’s largest atheist organizations has declared that praying to God or any other supernatural deity is a useless, stupid endeavor that will not lead to “evidence-based solutions.”

And that’s it. I think he’s just lazily preaching to the choir, as there’s no real argument present. Not that there’s likely to be a convincing argument, truth to be told – you believe or you don’t. The fun begins with the material that is present behind each belief system, that is, the system of belief you have towards the structure of the Universe. Ed Brayton on Patheos has a similar, if somewhat nastier, response to Owen as well.

Studies of intercessory prayer are difficult to study at double-blind standards. For one thing, there are religious groups that continuously offer up prayers for the beset world-wide, and persuading them to desist is a fool’s errand. I did a little research and found a few studies. “Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health” concludes:

It is not sensible to interpret any of the interesting results with great confidence. However, for women hoping for successful IVF treatment there are some data suggesting a favourable outcome of prayer but these data are derived from only one of the smaller trials. On the other hand, one of the larger studies suggests that those undergoing operations may not wish to know of the prayer that is being offered on their behalf. Most data are equivocal. The evidence presented so far is interesting enough to justify further study into the human aspects of the effects of prayer. However it is impossible to prove or disprove in trials any supposed benefit that derives from God’s response to prayer.

I am not qualified to interpret their results, so I’m not sure the they’re interesting enough to actually continue investigation. But it seems clear this study has no solid results for the success of prayer. I do recall reading, 20+ years ago, about a study in Skeptical Inquirer in which positive results were reported. However, this was from the perspective of several years later: one author had disowned the study, one had been jailed for fraud, and the final author refused to discuss the issue. The study was considered an example of how not to study intercessory prayer.

Philip Bobbitt of Columbia Law School has a suggestion for the North Korean situation. He published it on Lawfare:

There is, however, an available strategy that has not been considered and may promise success: a nuclear guarantee for the North Korean regime from China. If China were to give a credible nuclear guarantee to North Korea in the case of a U.S. invasion or preemptive strike against Pyongyang, there would be little point in North Korea risking the survival of its regime by developing long-range nuclear weapons. Such a policy should not be confused with the current mutual defense pact between North Korea and China, one cornerstone of which is China’s no-first-use policy. From Kim’s point of view, there is much security to be gained by such a guarantee of deterrence against the U.S. and much security to be lost if North Korea continues its present course when further technological revolutions in the U.S. render the North Korean arsenal ever more vulnerable. Our aim must be to reorient Kim Jong Un’s paranoia, making him more afraid of losing a unique opportunity for security in the eyes of his own people than he is afraid of dependence on China.

I am somewhat dubious that Kim would follow such an option. While it certainly has some positives, it also results in him being disarmed. And from history we know that Communist states do tend to be aggressive towards their neighbors, so what Kim would be doing is casting his lot with a state with an ideology that has a history of gobbling up weaker neighbors: China. China may be today’s sort-of ally, but it could easily become tomorrow’s invading force. Especially with the United States led by a vacillating idiot who has no idea how to operate in the Far East.

There are costs to having nuclear weapons, costs that exist in the diplomatic and technical sectors, and if they are large enough I could see Kim considering such a move. But the fact that they’ve clawed their way this far up the cliff of nuclear weaponry, well, you’d have to wonder if Kim would really want to give up all these gains and make himself more vulnerable to the huge country directly on their northern border.

Fascinating scenes fired by the imagination of Maurice Sendak beset the characters of Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (1986), the classic ballet as performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet. For the most part, this is as  you might have seen it on the stage in all its messy splendor, from the leggy grace of the lead ballerina, to the monsters done up in Sendak’s signature style, prancing to the classic music, although a few attempts are made to take advantage of the fact that it’s a movie.

I’m hesitant to say much more, as I’m not a ballet enthusiast (although I couldn’t resist watching this when I stumbled across it), nor do I know the story of The Nutcracker in any detail. With respect to the latter statement, I must say that the story conveyed through the ballet is somewhat vague and, lacking in interesting thematic material. I see from Wikipedia that I’m in good company:

The Nutcrackers I’ve seen have all been dull. You have a simpering little girl, a Christmas party, a tree that gets big. Then you have a variety of people who do dances that seem to go on and on ad nauseam. Technically it’s a mess, too; Acts I and II have practically nothing to do with each other. … What you don’t have is plot. No logic. You have lots of very pretty music, but I don’t enjoy it because I’m a very pedantic, logical person. I want to know why things happen. – Maurice Sendak

I still found it fun, if sometimes mystifying. Watch at your own risk.

There’s been some puzzlement concerning the about-face of Senator Bob Corker, who had declared he could not vote for a tax change bill which added to the national deficit – and then a few days later executed an about-face and announced his support for the bill without achieving any modifications which would remove the additions to the deficit. But an article in the International Business Times lays bare a possible explanation:

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the majority whip, on Sunday said a tax provision, which could personally enrich key Republican lawmakers, was added to the final tax bill as part of an effort to “cobble together the votes we needed to get this bill passed.” Cornyn was pressed about the provision onABC’s “This Week,” after an International Business Times investigationshowed that Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee suddenly switched his vote to “yes” after GOP leaders added the provision, which could boost Corker’s real estate income. A top Democratic senator, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, responded to Cornyn’s explanation by saying the language put into the bill also “would be a windfall to Donald Trump.”

As IBT first reported, the provision potentially enriching Corker, Trump and a handful of other top Republican lawmakers, was not part of the House- or Senate-passed bill, but was added by GOP lawmakers to the final bill, which was publicly released on Friday afternoon. Corker, who is not seeking re-election and is considered a crucial swing vote due to his criticism of President Trump, suddenly said he would support the final bill. He initially voted against the original bill in the Senate, which did not have the provision. Corker subsequently asserted to IBT that he did not know about the provision being added to the final bill, and he also declared he has not even read the tax bill he announced he is voting for.

Let’s step back. Waaaay back. For the conservative reader who has been sucking down the directives from President Trump about the mainstream media, sit down and think about this. Think about the possible corruption going on here. Think about the whole swamp metaphor. This is what the mainstream media does – it keeps tabs on the swamp, it keeps an eye on the behaviors of the legislative members, regardless of ideology, it keeps you up to date on what’s happening.

If you’re willing to keep up with the mainstream media.

This is what President Trump doesn’t want you to see – members of his own Party behaving badly. Do you approve of being mislead in this manner? If so, please, hit that mail button up on the right and tell me why you approve. (Don’t go off on a tangent, that just irritates me.) I am eternally mystified that any adult would buy into the fake news meme.

And thank you for the explanation.

Murmuration:

1. A flock of starlings.
2. literary [mass noun] The action of murmuring.
   ‘the murmuration of a flock of warblers’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted in a book review of A New Map of Wonders, by Caspar Henderson, reviewed by Mary Halton, NewScientist (2 December 2017, paywall):

Henderson’s own sense of wonder at phenomena both natural and manufactured is pervasive, from marvelling at a murmuration of starlings to admiring advances in solar power. Wonder, we then conclude, is a very personal experience, while scientific fact is often presented as a very universal one.

We’re all becoming reluctantly accustomed to the lies of and rationalizations of President Trump, and I say that as a political independent. Just seeing this WaPo headline, though, made me speculate what comes after that.

After Alabama loss, Trump has ambitious plans to campaign in 2018 midterms

Indeed, what might happen if Trump does aggressively campaign, and the GOP goes down in flames?

What do you think?

It was my intention all along to wipe out this evil Republican Party!

You just know it, don’t you?

There’s been a recent kerfuffle over the Mueller team gaining access to emails from the Trump Transition team, sent after the election but before he took office. If you’re wondering if Trump is on to something, consider this opinion from a real expert, published in WaPo:

Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School, said it was not at all surprising that Mueller’s team sought Trump transition emails. “It would be almost prosecutorial misconduct for them not to,” he said. He said it was also not surprising that Mueller would ask GSA for emails sent using government accounts.

“It’s not your personal email. If it ends in .gov, you don’t have any expectation of privacy,” he said.

But he said if Trump’s team had a valid legal claim, there is a standard avenue to pursue — they would file a sealed motion to the judge supervising the grand jury and ask the judge to rule the emails were improperly seized and provide a remedy, like requiring Mueller’s team to return the emails or excluding their use in the investigation.

“You go to the judge and complain,” he said. “You don’t issue a press release or go to Congress. It appears from the outside that this is part of a pattern of trying to undermine Mueller’s investigation.”

So the question becomes whether or not Trump supporters are naive enough to only get their information from President Trump and his propaganda information arms – aka fake news services. If they are not that naive, then they’ll know that the real experts – and remember, Trump is nothing more than a real estate developer – are just shaking their heads at this latest effort to mislead Trump’s base into thinking Special Prosecutor Mueller – a registered Republican – is somehow cheating.

This is part of a larger pattern that has been commented on extensively in the politically independent as well as, of course, liberal media sources. But it bears repeating that the attempts to dismiss Mueller’s investigation as somehow partisan are also tainting institutions whose political independence are critical to the continuing prosperity of our Republic. To the extent that politicization escapes from its proper corral and either taints non-partisan institutions falsely as political, or actually manages to corrupt them, our Republic is diminished and proper respect is lost to the conclusions of government. The right has spent more than a decade deprecating the conclusions of climate scientists working in government roles as politically motivated, and the result is a climate change debate unnecessarily politicized, resulting in the United States losing the leadership role it should properly exercising with gusto, and, instead becoming a pariah. This example should be a caution to us, not an encouragement to dismiss any agency producing conclusions that we find vaguely distasteful or completely unpalatable.

Our parents and grandparents were willing to swallow sour medicine when it was clear that it was needed. When will today’s conservatives admit that their lust for power has led them to the gates of Hell?

Or is it “aligning one’s model with one’s goals?” The venerable Mother Jones is touting how it’s going to stay afloat in the future in its donations solicitations letter:

But here’s the bottom line: Unprecedented economic problems for media, or unprecedented political attacks on journalism, would be bad enough on their own. But both at once—that’s a synergy so unusual and dangerous that we haven’t even begun to grapple with its implications. And those implications reach well beyond Trump: What happens when future demagogues follow this playbook? What is to stop them from leveraging an increasingly desperate media industry for visibility and power, and then using that power to knock back press freedom? It’s not hard to imagine a death spiral that ends in banana-republic territory.

This is a problem for the media—and news consumers—that can’t be fixed with more creative advertising strategies, or “do more with less” newsroom pep talks. The economics of news simply no longer guarantee the kind of deep, unflinching reporting that we’re going to desperately need. Yes, the New York Times and the Washington Post have been hitting it out of the park—but the vast majority of newsrooms are unable to follow suit. And how long will the likes of Jeff Bezos be willing to subsidize accountability journalism?

We need a different model. And as MoJo readers like you know, we’ve placed our bets on an admittedly radical idea: that journalism is a public service, not a profit center, and that its survival rests with the people it serves. You.

MoJo has been an independent, reader-supported nonprofit since 1976, because our founders knew that car manufacturers were not going to bankroll investigations of exploding Ford Pintos. Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, putting MoJo—and our supporters—on a path that others in the media are just beginning to explore.

What they call radical seems to me to be simply the alignment of the goals of their publication with their funding sources. There’s long been a tension in commercial publishing between the advertisers that often carried the majority of the costs of publishing, from news collection to delivery of the final product, because, as the letter makes clear, any significant investigation into an advertiser will be at risk of suffering pushback from the target.

By secularizing the funding source, by which I mean selecting a funding source generally indifferent to the content of the publication, that risk is removed. Finding enough subscribers is not a new risk, as a magazine has to be able to show it reaches the audience targeted by advertisers; now it must find enough subscribers willing to meet a specified price in order to fund the writers, editors, and sales force for the publication. But at least the risk of catastrophic disappearance of funding will disappear.

It’ll be interesting to see how well this works. In my mind, the free press is, of course, a public service. In a perfect world, it would be completely separate from the commercial interests that characterize the private sector, because the contamination can result in no information, or false information, on a topic. Removal of private sector interests is a step in the journey of delivering truthful news to a citizenry that depends, in part, on truthful news for its continued prosperity.

And long term readers should not be surprised at my sentiments.

Kevin Drum thinks he knows why the GOP is pushing a tax reform bill which doesn’t earn the adjective reform and has hardly had any thought given to it: demographics are pushing the GOP into irrelevance.

Republicans aren’t idiots. They can read a demographic report as well as anyone. They know their white base is shrinking and they know they’ve reached a critical point. The problem is that remaking their party is a long-term project, and while it’s happening they’re going to lose elections. It will take years to regain the trust of communities of color, and efforts to do so will alienate the whites who support them today. They could be in the wilderness a long time while this project is ongoing.

And so it never got off the ground. It was just too hard. It looked more and more as if Republicans would shamble slowly into minority party status for a long time as they struggled to remake themselves.

There’s a hidden assumption here, though, and that’s the idea that the GOP leadership is fixed, or at least has a fixed perspective. I find this dubious, given how FiveThirtyEight has documented the strong rightward slide of the GOP Congressional members over the years (for which I can’t find the link of which I’m thinking). I think that under the influence of ideologically driven radio talk show, Fox News, and other conservative outlets, the leadership, through the process of personnel turnover, has substantially changed. Indeed, I think the late Senator Goldwater was right on the mark:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

Back to Kevin:

It’s not using CRISPR – not yet approved for use within a human body – but zinc-finger nucleases (ZFN) to do gene editing. In this case, on a gentleman with Hunter Disease. Why mention it? I like the description of the actual treatment, one of the few attempts at using gene editing on a living human body, as found on D-brief, by Nathaniel Scharping:

Through an IV, billions of copies of a harmless virus loaded with instructions for two ZFN proteins and a gene to produce the correct enzyme were delivered to Madeux’s bloodstream. The virus was programmed to insert itself just into liver cells to ensure that it didn’t begin to edit anywhere else. Once a cell has been implanted with the virus, it begins to make copies of the ZFN proteins and the correct gene. The two proteins then cut apart the DNA at a specific point and insert the therapeutic gene, after which the cell’s natural repair mechanisms bind the double helix back together and the gene can get to work.

Wondering just what literally might come of Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigation? Carrie Cordero discusses this on Lawfare:

Is the special counsel’s office on a broad search for the “truth” and then charging what they can? I certainly wouldn’t put it that way. The special counsel’s office will investigate what they are supposed to investigate based on the deputy attorney general’s order and bring charges as appropriate. There is nothing in the special counsel regulations or the Rosenstein appointment order that requires the special counsel to create a narrative of what happened, or, to write a public report. The Special Counsel is an investigative and prosecutorial office; it is not a truth commission. …

What might happen with that confidential report became more interesting in light of  the Justice Department’s actions this week. As John flagged months ago, there is no requirement that the special counsel’s report be public. If we ever reach that day, I wonder, will whoever is acting as  attorney general keep the report confidential? Up until this week, that seemed more likely than not. Rosenstein has made the point at his congressional appearances—even this week’s—that: He. Does. Not. Talk. About. Ongoing. Investigations. His views on government officials commenting on closed investigations that are not brought for prosecution are well-established.

And yet, oddly, the Justice Department chose to release the intimate (not “private,” folks, if they were communicating on government-issued devices) text messages of two FBI employees before the DOJ Inspector General investigation into their conduct is complete. That leads me to wonder: Will the department find the special counsel’s final confidential report of lower public interest than the text messages?

Make of it what you will, but I thought the article was fascinating, if not entirely enlightening as to what the terminus of the investigation might appear to be.

Georgy Toloraya on 38 North attempts to discern the most important information in any adversarial relationship – what does the North Korea leadership want?

In recent discussions, North Koreans reiterated Pyongyang’s standard policy goals: reach “strategic parity” with the US by creating a credible nuclear deterrent and compelling opponents to conclude a peace treaty with the North, recognize the sovereignty and independence of the DPRK, and provide security guarantees to enable the country’s further economic development. The North Koreans with whom I spoke with argued that without a “nuclear deterrent,” the hostility of the US and many of its allies toward North Korea will sooner or later result in “crushing down” the country. However, they did nothing to dispel the suspicion that, in fact, Pyongyang might also aim at aggression and concessions extortion from South Korea if it gets a deterrent against the US.

It is my impression that policymakers in Pyongyang believe the only purpose of US policy is to liquidate the DPRK as a state or even “physically destroy” the country and its leadership. The regime does not believe that removal of North Korean nuclear weapons per se is very significant to the US, and rather sees this demand as an attempt to undermine the country’s deterrence and gain advantage for a military solution of the Korean issue or regime change by other means.

It was clear from my discussions with the North Koreans that internal debates over the country’s nuclear doctrine have not yet been settled and there is no clear picture of what a nuclear war-fighting doctrine would look like. Nor did they seem to understand that having an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability only gives rise to suspicions that the North wishes to unify Korea by force while using its nuclear capability to protect it from US interference (a common theory among South Koreans and Americans). Going forward, a declaration that North Korea does not have these intentions and a codification of this pledge in official documents might be essential along with an explanation of the country’s nuclear doctrine, which seems to have evolved considerably during the last couple of years. But these ideas, from what I heard, have not been considered by the regime.

Reports on the status of the North Korean populace are mixed – and, of course. sources must always be appraised. For example, that North Korean soldier who defected  a couple of months ago was reported to be plagued with parasites, which was interpreted to indicate that the food supply in North Korea is bad. But what if this is a false report? It would be classic propaganda by our own side, meant to manipulate popular opinion.

But how do we know?

In the end, American officials may have to decide if it’s better to try to break the regime through sanctions, or assist the regime through various peaceful means, such as food shipments. In the former case, Americans may be held responsible for the deaths of thousands – yet the latter can be considered assisting an enemy.

This is a subtle conundrum, one for which the current American administration is very ill-suited.

Not something you see every day.

https://youtu.be/6pBT8n-SNWk

Presented with little comment.

Too bad the last one’s out of focus.

Homiletics:

Homiletics is the study of the composition and delivery of a religious message such as a sermon, bible study or other type of message. The word comes from the Greek homiletikos (“cordial”), which is itself derived from the Greek word translated as homily (homilia, Strong’s Concordance #G3657) which means “discourse.” Homilia is translated “communications” in the KJV Bible translation of 1Corinthians 15:33, its only occurrence in the New Testament. [The Bible Study Site]

Noted in “After Trump and Moore, some evangelicals are finding their own label too toxic to use,” Julie Zauzmer and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, WaPo:

Johnson and the other students hanging out after homiletics class found themselves discussing the four-part definition of evangelical faith, articulated by historian David Bebbington: obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority, belief in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as the source of salvation, the necessity of a personal “born-again” conversion experience, and work to spread the Gospel.

On 38 North Jeff Baron interviews Eri Hotta, author of Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, looking for parallels to the North Korean situation. I found this description of how Japan ended up in a war it could not win fascinating:

In questions of war and peace, the common view is, a country goes to war because they think they’ll win the war. For Japan, that wasn’t the case at all. The chance of success seemed terribly small, especially to the people making the calculations, and ultimately, the decisions. But they did it anyway.

Fear was a big factor. The leaders were fundamentally people who were afraid of losing credibility, of not appearing tough enough before others in the room who were themselves arguing for a tough approach. The fear was that if they moved to put the brakes on preparations for war, it would open the way for harder line usurpers to come in and take over. That fear of usurpers pushed the leaders to champion the most aggressive policies.

Some of the answer, too, can be found in the nature of bureaucracies. For the military leaders, for the Army and the Navy, taking the tough line was the way to argue for a larger share of the budget and to defend the legitimacy of their institutions against outcomes that would have weakened them, their influence, their leadership roles in society.

It’s always hard to put the greater good ahead of your own good – or your own little tribe’s good. While Baron is wondering if North Korea is going down the same icy slope as did Japan, I wonder if it occurred to anyone to ask the same about the American leadership. After all, Trump has a big mouth and has insulted Kim on multiple occasions. Given his recent political reversals, one might expect that he can’t really afford to look soft with regard to North Korea. Then add in a military establishment that expects to be well-fed, but must occasionally demonstrate its utility, and it’s a dangerous situation.

We may end up in a war brought on by someone mainly concerned about his own prestige.

I’ve been reading this article on the DailyMail.com with some startlement. It discusses how Facebook is hijacking our lives, quoting various former FB employees. This one, with Justin Rosenstein, the developer of the ‘Like’ feature, caught my eye:

Mr Rosenstein says he has banned all apps on his phone, including Facebook, because he doesn’t trust himself not to get addicted to them.

What started as a Silicon Valley success story could end in a future where people are permanently distracted by devices from the world around them, he argues. …

Mr Rosenstein believes that the lure of social media and other apps can be as addictive as heroin and that they are having a noticeably detrimental effect on people’s ability to focus. …

He argues that the solution to the problem may be state regulation of apps, which he views on a par with tobacco advertising, to minimise any harm they may be found to cause.

Speaking to The Guardian, he said: ‘It is very common for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.

‘Everyone is distracted, all of the time.

‘One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before.

‘If we only care about profit maximisation, we will go rapidly into dystopia.’

My first reaction is that this isn’t a legal problem, it’s a maturity problem. If you find you can’t exercise good judgment while using something, then don’t use it. But should the government get involved just because something is affecting folks in a negative way that they should be able to handle themselves?

BUT. Remember Carrie Nation? Maybe not. She was an instrumental member of the movement that resulted in Prohibition, the era when the consumption of alcohol was banned in the United States. She was legendary for personally destroying the contents of bars and saloons with rocks and, later, a hatchet. But, in this context, it begs the question: why?

Because she saw drink as destructive to society, and men being unable to exercise good judgment in its consumption. (She was also a bit of a religious crazy, to be honest.)

I’m not interested in pushing an analogy here. What I’m getting at is that humanity has always had problems with self-control and discerning what is good for us – and what’s bad for us. I suppose if I were of the old-timey Christian tradition, I’d call them (or us) sinners, or maybe Epicureans in the false^[1] belief that the word means dedicated to satisfying their baser urges.

Whether or not the banning of apps^[2] – or Facebook – would work is probably something we’ll never find out, because I suspect it’ll be even more politically unpalatable than banning alcohol or tobacco. I  hope what happens is that a societal consensus will build that leans against those apps that manipulate our emotional systems for financial or political gain, and leans towards those that have positive social attributes. Such a consensus would require a governmental lead, I do suspect, but simple legislation would probably never make it through the process – and be ineffective or have unintended consequences.

And that suggests that morality isn’t a private or context-less endeavour, but one that is informed by the surrounding society, and evolves as society comes to conclusions about the issues of the day.

¹Wikipedia notes Epicurus believed “…  that what he called “pleasure” was the greatest good, but that the way to attain such pleasure was to live modestly, to gain knowledge of the workings of the world, and to limit one’s desires.”

²Really, folks, they’re just computer programs.

For those readers worried about – or hating on – the Johnson Amendment, here’s some news concerning its presence in the tax bill the GOP is currently trying to ram through Congress, via CNN:

A controversial provision that would have permitted nonprofit groups to enter politics and could have led so-called “dark money” contributions to become tax deductible has been dropped from the GOP tax bill, according to a leading Senate Democrat.

Sen. Ron Wyden gave credit to his fellow Democrats for striking the Republican proposal to roll back the Johnson Amendment — which prevents tax-exempt charities from directly participating in politics — saying in a statement that they had stopped the measure “from being jammed into any final Republican tax deal.”

“I will continue to fight all attempts to eliminate this critical provision that keeps the sanctity of our religious institutions intact, prevents the flow of dark money in politics, and keeps taxpayer dollars from advancing special interest biddings,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement.

If this tax bill does go through, at least the Johnson Amendment will remain intact. The manufactured outrage among certain preachers that they can’t remain tax-free and open their yaps from the pulpits has always appalled me, so this is a small good thing in what appears to be a recession-inducing avalanche of bad things.

I lost track of international doings lately, but I guess I’m not surprised that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem has aided Iran. AL Monitor’s Reza Marashi has the report:

After US President Donald Trump’s ill-advised decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, some headlines have noted that Iran’s hard-liners have been empowered as a result. While that may be true — and extremists in Tehran certainly claim as much — it also paints an incomplete picture. Trump’s Jerusalem fiasco has, in fact, also been a boon to President Hassan Rouhani and his administration. In other words, it has in several key ways empowered the Islamic Republic as a whole — and not any particular faction or group.

First, Iran’s political system will now have an easier time realigning its ideological and geopolitical proclivities. This will essentially solidify the executive branch as Iranian stakeholders unify against Trump’s extremist activities in the Middle East. Before the Jerusalem announcement, Tehran was more measured in playing the anti-Israel card relative to its bombast during the presidency of conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). This was because Iran’s geopolitical goal of escaping American and Israeli-led efforts to render it a pariah required tempering its ideological inclination to spout off anti-Israel tirades, which score brownie points among Arab public opinion.

So President Trump has succeeded in healing a rift in Iran, and not to forget that he also decertified Iran for the JCPOA – despite the protests of our allies, who now will probably not abide by any attempts on our part to re-apply sanctions to Iran. But sanctions was just what Trump was demanding – back then. From The Atlantic:

After months of speculation, here’s the Trump administration’s policy toward the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action: “We will stay in the JCPOA, but the president will decertify under INARA,” said Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state, referring to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. What this essentially means is that the JCPOA is safe for now, but Congress could amend existing U.S. legislation to make it easier to impose sanctions on Iran. If that doesn’t happen, Trump said, “the agreement will be terminated.”

Who knows what he wants now. Reza’s conclusion?

It’ll take a generation to regain the “soft power” we used to have – and the influence that went with it. We really need to boost this kook out of office. Too bad his Vice-President isn’t showing signs of more mature political judgment. Don’t forget this blunder on his part.

Yeah. I needed the money, too.

 The Return Of The Seven (1966) is the sequel to The Magnificent Seven (1960), but it has little to offer in comparison to its illustrious predecessor. Another group of bandits are kidnapping the men of some villages, and in the most interesting part of the story, they are laboring to build a church to honor the two sons of the rancher and leader of the bandits, dead & gone, tall and sleek as stallions, as he says.

But we learn later they were not what the bandit leader wanted, for he wanted rough, tough men in his own mold, and they were gentle men, like their mother; the church may be in their name, but in some twisted way, it’s for the bandit leader.

Not much else of thematic interest here. Lots of shooting, people falling off horses (I was actually musing on how terrified a stunt man must be when a horse is falling and he’s still astride it), a few chucking dynamite at the bad guys. Gotta say, no one seems to be able to shoot a gun straight.

Even the actors didn’t really seem to be into it all that much. But then, it was fairly boring.

Well, my conservative readers, they went and did it. Might be time to shiver in your shoes.

Net neutrality, the set of rules requiring internet service providers to treat all traffic as equal, is dead.

The five members of the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday 3-2 along party lines to scrap Obama-era net neutrality rules, returning to a “light touch” approach and ending what Chairman Ajit Pai has called the federal government’s “micromanaging” of the internet. …

“Prior to 2015, before these regulations were imposed, we had a free and open internet,” Pai told NBC News. “That is the future as well under a light touch, market-based approach. Consumers benefit, entrepreneurs benefit. Everybody in the internet economy is better off with a market based approach.” [NBC News]

The chairman appears to be quite naive. To my eye, this means every ISP is now a target of political activists, not only for influence, but for marching your favorite ideological nutcase – liberal and conservative – up the corporate ladder until they’re in a position to control their portion of the Internet.

Fortunately, I suspect this is easy enough to reverse if consumer-regressive consequences do, in fact, occur.

Steve Benen on Maddowblog has some impertinent questions in the wake of the news that Senator Grassley has decided not to move the Federal judiciary nominations of Mateer and Talley forward, despite the fact that Talley had already cleared his committee and both have President Trump’s support:

2. If Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley now realizes that Talley doesn’t belong on the federal bench, why did Grassley advance him through committee? Does this suggest Grassley failed to scrutinize the nominee thoroughly before sending him to the floor for confirmation?

3. On a related note, why exactly did every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee vote in support of Talley’s nomination?

4. Would Talley have been confirmed anyway were it not for the related controversy surrounding his failures to disclose his ridiculous published works and his marriage to the White House Counsel Don McGahn’s chief of staff?

This started after the Alabama Senatorial race terminated in Democrat Doug Jones’ favor, defeating Roy Moore, who had President Trump’s full support. I’d suggest this is a sign that President Trump’s influence is diminishing within the GOP. Granted, it was clear from the earlier contests, such as those in Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas and Montana, that Trump did not have a magical wand that cleared the way for all of his favored candidates.

But losing in the most conservative state in the nation? That may have broken Trump within the GOP, whether he realizes it or not. It’s not really in Grassley’s favor that he waited until now to start applying judgment to the nominees, given the quality of those who’ve already been nominated and confirmed, but at least we may be seeing the beginning of the end now.

So now we see one of the most important committee chaircritters actually doing his job. That’s one.

I think it has a nice graphic quality to it.