Unsightly Mental Blemishes

In NewScientist (8 July 2017, paywall), Frank Swain gives an overview of the question of whether or not it would be ethical to force everyone to adhere to some definition of normalcy, enforced through medical means. Frank gives the a posteriori answer:

Perhaps conformity isn’t as good for society as we suppose. In 2015, psychologist Jesse Harrington at the University of Maryland published a study showing that highly restrictive societies fared worse in measures of overall happiness, rates of depression and suicide than moderate ones – but then again, so did highly permissive cultures. When it comes to how much abnormality we should tolerate, then, it seems we would be best off having the normal amount.

I think the a priori answer should also be no, based on evolutionary requirements. It’s only through endless variety are we likely to improve our survival capabilities in the current and changing environments. And that last clause brings up the important point that if we define normal as the optimal condition for the current environment, what happens when (not if!) the environment changes? Chances are that the current optimal condition will not be optimal for the new environment – and that the pressure to evolve to the next optimal condition will be too great, resulting in the elimination of most of humanity.

Non-conformity is the general winning long-term strategy.

Reportedly, President Trump’s latest strategy as I write this is to let the Democrats own the ACA, let it fail, and hang it around their necks, under the mask of the Democrats having to go to the GOP to rebuild healthcare. A sound strategy?

There’s more than one risk, though. Assuming the ACA doesn’t fail – and remember that many analysts have reviewed the numbers and concluded the entire death spiral meme is false, including those at Trump’s own Health and Human Services Department – there’s the obvious risk that then the Democrats get to own the successful ACA. But this is just spite.

The real risk is that at the same time the GOP will be seen as having repudiated the ACA, refused ownership. And this is worse than it sounds because the entire reason the GOP has been trying to repeal the ACA has been entirely about the Democrats having been able to take credit for one of the largest social programs since Social Security – and the GOP feared that would make them irrelevant.

That is, the GOP has an existential fear of the ACA, of becoming irrelevant and, eventually, non-existent. And this is exactly what Trump will have embraced. He’s betting he can cause the ACA to fail, to do it without the citizenry noticing that he caused it, all against the GOP becoming an embarrassing, irrelevant political curiosity.

And, given the incompetence of the Trump Administration, well, if I were in the GOP, I’d be shaking in my shoes.

No sad story here. The gray kitty named Mayhem may be getting older and slower, but he’s still with us. And looks good on a pink towel.

Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare is aghast at today’s New York Times interview with President Trump:

Trump’s logic isn’t easy to follow here, but his core claim is unmistakeable—and “interesting” is a generous word for it: the FBI director serves the president. As a matter of constitutional hierarchy, this is of course true. But in investigative matters, the FBI director does not, or should not, serve the president by reporting to him. He serves the president by leading law enforcement in an independent and apolitical fashion. And it is fundamentally corrupt for any president to be asking him to do otherwise.

And what’s to be done?

We are in a dangerous moment—one in which the President, with his infinite sense of grievance, feels entitled publicly to attack the entire federal law enforcement apparatus, and that apparatus, in turn, lacks a single person with the stature, the institutional position, and the fortitude to stand up to him. Sessions has not done so. While Rosenstein did the country an enormous service when he appointed Mueller, he acted as an enabler of the Comey firing in the first instance and did not do himself credit yesterday. Mueller certainly has the stature, but by the nature of his position he cannot say anything publicly; he is investigating the President and thus cannot also confront him. And McCabe, who has been both able and courageous in the aftermath of Comey’s firing, is in an acting capacity.

Even more apropos would be a strong rebuke from Congress. Unfortunately, the leaders of Congress are caught up in their unethical loyalty trip.

streiff on RedState is more annoyed:

It is this kind of lack of self-discipline and the absence of the ability to self-edit that is infuriating. It damages Trump and, worse than that, it damages the ability of his administration to get things done.  Often one is left with the conclusion that Trump does this kind of stuff in a calculated way. He can’t bear the thought of things running smooth because then the media is not talking about him incessantly and if they aren’t talking about him, they are talking about someone else and his self-worth is damaged.

It’s worth noting he thinks Sessions is doing a good job, outside of the civil forfeiture disaster. I don’t know if RedState has backed Trump since the election; I seem to recall they did not back Trump during the campaign. National Review opposed Trump during the campaign, but has switched allegiances since the election.

Chris Cillizza on CNN believes Trump is wasting his time jawboning, and even threatening, the GOP Senators over the ACA repeal and replace effort:

Trump knows exactly what he is doing here. He was making sure not only Heller but everyone else in that room — the wavering or opposed senators were clustered in and around Trump and Vice President Mike Pence — as well as anyone who saw the clip replayed later knew that he had put all of the GOP senators on notice. The threat had been delivered! He was tough!

Here’s the thing: It’s not going to work. Heller knows Nevada better than Trump. (Flashback: Trump saying that the people in the state of Nevada actually mispronounce the state’s name.) Trump saying Heller better change his mind or else isn’t going to actually, well, change Heller’s mind. Same goes for Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia. Or Susan Collins in Maine.

Trump, in his own reckoning, already tried the carrot approach with senators. Now he’s going to the stick. But this is a lost cause. The Senate will vote next week. Repeal will almost certainly fail. And the Senate will move on — no matter what Trump says.

I don’t think Chris goes far enough. Trump is acting the bully, not the leader – and the Senators will remember this, regardless of whether it works or not. Come Impeachment Day, this incident will count heavily against Trump in their minds. Many of them will realize that kowtowing to Trump will result in a narrower, less democratic GOP, and leave them more and more vulnerable to a dictatorial party.

Of course, the Senate cannot initiate impeachment proceedings. But if Trump perceives this as a successful maneuver – and how can he not, given his ego-requirements? – then he’ll also try it in in the House. And while the House does not have the traditions and institutional memory of the Senate, a few incidents of this sort in the House may motivate such a move on their part as well.

Although given the troubles of the GOP members of the House in terms of popularity since Election Day, as well as simply delivering on anything at all, they may be too distracted to actually pursue impeachment proceedings.

… can be another’s art focus.

On 38 North, Henri Fèron presents an analysis of North Korean tangible, i.e., visible economic activity vs the various analyses produced based on problematic statistics, and comes to a disquieting conclusion:

A Pyongyang full of shiny, new buildings belies the assumption that the North Korean economy is about to collapse under the weight of sanctions. While there are some valid concerns about the sturdiness of these mushrooming high-rise buildings, there are too many of them and they are too central to Kim Jong Un’s propaganda to dismiss them all as shells like the Ryugyong Hotel [a failed development from the post-Soviet era]. Unlike his grandfather, who drew his legitimacy from military achievements, and his father, who drew it from direct connection with the national founder, Kim Jong Un depends much more on his governing performance and popular approval for legitimacy. It should be no surprise then that he focuses on highly visible signs of improving livelihoods, such as prestigious residential complexes. These developments appear to have been enabled by an improved economy, fueled in part by Chinese aid and trade, as well as the reallocation of conventional defense spending. If this interpretation of economic resurgence proves correct, then Pyongyang’s construction boom will be one more reason to doubt the effectiveness of current sanctions.

So we’re faced with the prospect of testing a ruling Republican party, full of aggressive second- and third- raters, with a North Korea which may be finding its stride both economically and militarily. Does the GOP have any concept of managing a problem over the long term, much as we did the Cold War, or will they childishly demand instant solutions?

I don’t know if I want to stay tuned for this one, given their remarkable reactions to the Iran Nuclear deal.

Ben Caspit on AL Monitor notes that the recent attack by three Arabs on the Temple Mount, and the teamwork of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas to calm the tensions, highlight that the greatest fear of the Israelis is not an attack by the Arabs – but by a Jewish extremist:

The attack was not the nightmare scenario that truly terrifies Israel. In fact, the defense establishment has always been less concerned about a Muslim attack on the Temple Mount, since the Haram al-Sharif is sacred to them. What they really feared was an attack by an extremist Jew in an attempt to set the Middle East and the entire Muslim world on fire, laying the ground for the War of Armageddon between Islam and the Jews and ending with the arrival of the Messiah on his white donkey. Under this scenario, Al-Aqsa Mosque would be destroyed and the Third Temple rebuilt on its site of the original Temple.

Israeli security forces have prevented several such attacks over the years. Only limited numbers of Jews are now allowed on the Temple Mount. They are restricted to small groups, certain hours and can only visit after undergoing a thorough security clearance. Although the possibility that armed Muslims might storm the compound has been taken into consideration, it was never a high priority to which to prepare. Yet, that is exactly what happened. As a result of the attack, Israel made the rare move of closing the area to Muslim prayers through the following day.

Combine true hubris, the desire to be at the center of the action (aka the Drama Queen temperament), and high powered weaponry, and it’s not a good situation. Not that I have a realistic solution, except perhaps that employed by the IDF. I doubt there’s a theological fix for the problem.

Caspit goes on to note that the Trump Administration has withdrawn from this area of responsibility, leaving it up to Israel, Palestine, and perhaps Jordan. Given the temperament of the current Administration in Washington, this is not necessarily bad – but it would be preferable to have the universally respected Kerry involved, rather than retired.

On this dormant thread we discussed how the lack of investment by States in State institutions might ultimately lead to a decline in ownership of cars. Kevin Drum analyzes a recent report linking the rise in tuition rates to declines in youthful home ownership:

As tuition and student debt go up, homeownership rates go down. The authors say that a $1,000 increase in college tuition and fees leads to a 0.24 percentage point decline in the homeownership rate for college students later in life (ages 28 to 30). Thus, the $3,578 increase in tuition from 2001 to 2009 is responsible for a decline of about 0.84 percentage points in homeownership rates among college students from 2009 to 2015. That’s about a tenth of the total decline.

A different analysis suggests the effect may be even bigger: 0.48 percentage points for each $1,000 increase in college tuition. That comes to 2.74 percentage points, which is about a third of the total decline in homeownership rates.

In other words, tuition increases can explain somewhere between a tenth and a third of the decline in homeownership among those with some college education.

So if your favorite metric for success is home ownership, then perhaps pushing down tuition rates should be on your agenda.

That brings up a topic I’d like to explore someday – the selection of metrics to measure the success of society. Does life expectancy really make sense? Do abortion rates really matter? Does infant mortality measure the callousness of society – or a society that makes every effort to save every life, even those that are unsaveable? There is often a nuanced backstory to these metrics, the same metrics that are often used like clubs to beat up competitors, be they other societies or other systems.

Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes is truly excited by a recent suit filed against the Trump campaign:

Last week, a group called United to Protect Democracy filed suit against the Trump campaign and Roger Stone on behalf of three people whose emails and personal information were among the material stolen by the Russians and disclosed to Wikileaks. The suit alleges that the campaign and Stone conspired with the Russians to release information about the plaintiffs—who are not public figures—in a fashion that violates their privacy rights under D.C. law. and intimidates them out of political advocacy.

And if the suit survives motions to dismiss …

… that means the plaintiffs will get discovery. The pleading is rich—very rich and intentionally so, I suspect—with allegations that will provide for plausible discovery requests against all kinds of actors and on all kinds of subjects. It makes reference to the President’s tax returns, for example. It names a large number of individuals, whose depositions plaintiffs might plausibly seek. One of the defendants is the campaign itself, meaning that the campaign’s agents, actors, employees, and documents, are all potentially subject to discovery. So if I’m right that the suit eventually survives that initial motion to dismiss, it will immediately become a gold mine for journalists and investigators. And it will present an intense set of headaches for the Trump forces both inside and outside of government. Think Paula Jones, but not about a single act of alleged harassment. Think Paula Jones—only about everything.

So watch this one closely. It’ll be a sleeper for a while, but If I were the Trump forces, I’d be very worried about it.

Sounds like someone has lined up a great big cannon at Trump.

From time to time I run across right-wing accusations of Obama having been this terrible person, engaged in this or that corruption involving campaign finance or the Iran Nuclear deal – yet nothing ever comes of it. You’d think if there was meat to those accusations, there’d have been credible suits, uproar, removal from office.

Nothing ever came of it.

And then this comes along for Trump. A credible, uninvolved lawyer thinks this could go places and even burn down the palace. If, indeed, it does, then this is a pivotal example of the difference between reality and fantasy – and should be studied by everyone who believed Obama was so terrible as a way to understand how they were wrong. It should be studied in the belief that one should be trying to improve oneself – not how to construct suits to destroy one’s opponents.

Hospitals are notorious for the many interruptions to the rest & recovery of their patients. Having been in one once or twice, I can testify that sleeping is hard due to the strange lighting. But I never dreamed how important it may become to have proper lighting. Linda Geddes reports in NewScientist (8 July 2017):

Up to a third of people are depressed in the weeks following a stroke, while up to three-quarters experience fatigue and poor sleep. “These symptoms can have an adverse effect on cognitive function, recovery and survival,” says West.

He presented data at the Society for Light Therapy and Biological Rhythms conference in Berlin in June, which showed that people recovering from strokes score lower for depression and fatigue, and show more robust circadian rhythms when exposed to solid state lighting. “The effect was comparable to giving patients antidepressants,” says [Anders West of Glostrup Hospital in Cophenhagen].

Hospital lighting also seems to have a dramatic effect on severe depression, which often involves a disrupted circadian clock with delayed sleep periods. At the Berlin conference, Klaus Martiny of the Psychiatric Centre in Copenhagen presented research showing that people being treated for severe depression were discharged almost twice as quickly if their rooms faced south-west in comparison with those whose rooms had a north-west aspect. Depending on the time of year, the intensity of daylight in the south-west rooms was 17 to 20 times brighter.

“These are very depressed patients who tend to stay in their rooms and isolate themselves, so they’re more exposed to differences in light intensity,” says Martiny. The 67 people in the study had been randomly assigned rooms, and those who stayed in the brighter rooms were discharged after 29 days on average, compared with nearly 59 days for those in darker rooms.

Solid state lighting follows the cycles of the sun as perceived here on Earth, starting in the morning with bright blue light, and then fading off as the day progresses. This imitation makes sense, of course, since we evolved in roughly such an environment, given locational variances.

I have to wonder how much our Western, age old belief that we are separate from the animal kingdom has contributed to the mental illnesses we now so often have to treat. It also has implications for space travel and future astro-colonialism. Will we genetically modify ourselves to properly process sunlight from, say, blue supergiants? Or will we engage in some futuristic accelerated evolution? Or will we restrict our colonial instincts to Earth lookalikes?

And, finally, what will be the backlash for the Abrahamic religions? Can a genetically modified human be an Evangelical Christian as well?

Autophagy:

Yeast is basically the MVP of lab organisms. It’s helped scientists claim five Nobel Prizes in the 21st century (2001, 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2016). Yoshinori Ohsumi, the most recent prizewinner, used baker’s yeast to identify genes crucial in autophagy, the process by which cells recycle their components. Diseases like Parkinson’s, Type 2 diabetes and cancer have been linked to disruptions in this cellular recycling process. The autophagy machinery in yeast cells is similar to that in human cells, and Ohsumi’s work, which began in the 1990s, gives scientists new targets for possible treatments. [“Everything Worth Knowing About … Yeast,” Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine (July/August 2017)]

Kevin Drum is upset about the news that the UAE manufactured the inflammatory quotes that caused Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations to blockade Qatar. Specifically:

This seems to be getting almost no attention today. Why? Do people not believe it? Does news about Qatar just not matter? Am I overestimating how big a deal this is?

This is a deliberate and calculated false-flag operation, designed specifically to create a fake casus belli. Isn’t that a massively big deal?

The how, yes, but the what, no. Wars are often ginned up using deception, such as the recent Iraq War as well as World War II. Add in that it’s half a world away, and mix in American provincialism, and it’s no surprise. It’s sad, and the UAE should be punished in some way, but the skullduggery of ambitious political leaders is as old as the hills.

Show us something new, eh?

All that said, the story is important as an illustrative example of what can happen when the Internet is overly trusted. In a sense, this is an attack on the Internet, because the less we can trust the medium, the less useful it becomes. But now we see international tensions rise because of ambition and opportunity. Is the American citizenry smart enough to understand that can happen to them as well?

Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer presents a nice summation of President Trump’s paucity of appropriate tools on Lawfare:

The clinching case against the political ethics of Donald Trump may be these and any disclosures to come about his and his campaign’s readiness to strike a bargain with a foreign government for help in his campaign and its resistance to an honest public accounting.  But at least we Donald Trump, Jr.’s suggestion of motive. For the Trump campaign, dealing with Russia was business, and for Mr. Trump, that means it was personal—in his own interest. He has wound up in this position because, lacking a conception of political ethics, he has been guided instead by the recipe for success he took with him into politics from a career of business deal-making. And this is not just what moved Donald Trump, Jr. and senior campaign personnel. His father, falsely presenting it as “standard” politics, agrees that “anyone would have taken that meeting.”

A political partnership between Russia and the Trump campaign would have nothing to do with politics as a craft or vocation. Politics ain’t bean bag, but it is also not this.

Again, illustrative of Trump’s intellectual limitations – the idea that there is a different set of ethics applicable to business vs government is beyond him.

I really have to wonder if he’d realize the question, What should be the profit margin of government? is a trick question?

Chicago Now columnist Bob Schneider has officially abandoned the GOP for the Democrats. Among his critiques of his former party colleagues:

They hate education.  Their steadfast crusade to end public education, to deny it money is an attack on our future.  I went to public schools, including a public university.  I received a good education, from dedicated teachers and professors.  That should be preserved and not torn to shreds.

I wish he had given the “why” to go with the “what”. Do they see it easier to control the ill-educated? Is it the old complaint about educators being liberals? Is this some sort of outrage at free enterprise not providing education?

Do they even know themselves?

For those of us who enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) is, on, the surface, more of the same, full of snarky attitude, unexpected dialogue response patterns, crazy action scenes, and snazzy special effects. Thematically, however, it’s somewhat different and better focused.

There are two themes. The first is easy: family. Family, defined by who cares for you and you care for, and not family in a strictly biological sense. This is useful in a world where xenophobia brings concomitant risks of devastating war.

The second theme is the meaning and/or purpose of life, from the point of view of a near-God.  This is portrayed from what appears to be the perspective of a Boltzmann Brain, which is an example of a self-aware entity arising spontaneously from a state of chaos. Often used for mind experiments involving infinite time lines, this apparently ridiculous concept takes center stage (if not under the actual name) in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, exploring the concept of a creature created in the midst of space, and how, upon gaining self-awareness, discovers the metaphysical burden of not having a purpose or meaning to its existence. The result? The suggestion that a non-social creature is unable to conceive of a life spent in the service of the community, which may seem obvious when stated in this way – but, given the alleged existence of the Abrahamic God, raises important questions with regard to its ability to function in such a position.

All that said, it’s easy enough to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Outside of some problems hearing all the dilaogue, which might be a problem with the cinema, it’s an enjoyable experience, even if Groot is not a scene stealer as he was in the first movie. But see the first one before seeing this one.

Recommended.

Balderdash:

I’ve heard some folks arguing that all Trump Jr. was doing was gathering opposition research. Balderdash (this is a wonderful word, by the way; it was originally an Elizabethan term for a jumbled mix of liquors — you know, like at a party when folks pour three kinds of wine, some beer, and half a bottle of gin into a bowl and call it ‘punch’ or something. When you drink balderdash, you speak balderdash). [Greg Fallis]

OK, dug out the bellflower yesterday (dropped three pounds doing it, too), including digging three feet down in one area and madly sifting the soil. I fear the other half of that area, where I didn’t dig all the way down, will see a return of the pest.

Coneflowers and cast-off petunias (found in a trash barrel), aye.

Littoral:

1. of or relating to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean.
2. (on ocean shores) of or relating to the biogeographic region between the sublittoral zone and the high-water line and sometimes including the supralittoral zone above the high-water line.
3. of or relating to the region of freshwater lake beds from the sublittoralzone up to and including damp areas on shore.

Noted in “Understanding Iranian threat perceptions,” Seyed Hossein Mousavian, AL Monitor:

First are the challenges of the 1980s, namely the Iran-Iraq War and separatist rebellions in Iran’s Kurdistan and Khuzestan provinces, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. The United States and allied Persian Gulf littoral states played a decisive role in exacerbating these crises, including by buttressing separatists and providing Saddam Hussein with every means of support, including ballistic missiles and chemical weapons, which were used to deadly effect. Toward the end of the war, the United States also directly attacked Iranian oil platforms and even shot down an Iranian civilian airliner.

The author is a former Iranian nuclear negotiator spokesman.

Pacific Research Institute president Sally Pipes, as reported (approvingly) by Deroy Murdock in National Review:

“I support Cruz’s and Lee’s idea,” Pacific Research Institute president Sally Pipes tells me. “Giving people the freedom to choose a plan that meets their needs and that they can afford is the best solution today.” The author of The Way Out of Obamacare added: “The American people voted in November for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. The law is in a ‘death spiral’ and needs to be replaced. …”

Bold mine. As has has been noted by numerous commentators, and, finally, the Trump Administration’s experts on it themselves, the ACA is not in a death spiral. And since Pipes leads her Institute, that casts doubt on all of their work.

Look, lies have consequences, and while there are some limited circumstances where lies must be employed, I tend to limit that to wartime, and this is not wartime. For years the libertarians have evinced concerns over the more subtle effects of single-payer systems in terms of the R&D efforts on new therapies. In my view, in isolation these are legitimate concerns, worthy of discussion and concern^[1].

But if the context is that of brazen lies, then it’s much more difficult to take the liar seriously. After all, either they’re profoundly uninformed (and, so, technically not a lie), or they are misrepresenting reality for some hidden agenda. Neither is trustworthy. And so Pipes has discredited herself. Probably time to go into retirement.

¹Although libertarians rarely, if ever, acknowledge the critical role of government-funded R&D in the development of new products, whether they’re pharmaceuticals or electronics.

In National Review, far right winger Andrew McCarthy is being dragged reluctantly to the precipice, but he wants to remind us impeachment isn’t about crime, which seems to have captured the minds of pundits on the left & right, but about the Constitution:

The standard for impeachment, the commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” is not concerned with criminal offenses found in the penal statute books and suitable for courtroom prosecution. It relates instead to the president’s high fiduciary duty to the American people and allegiance to our system of government.

Alexander Hamilton put it best in Federalist No. 65. Impeachable offenses are those

Which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.

The bickering over collusion “crimes” misses the point. If an unfit person holds the presidency, the danger to our society is that he will abuse the power that he wields. The imperative is to remove him from office. Whether, in addition to that, his misconduct also happens to violate penal statutes and be ripe for criminal prosecution is a side issue. It is a subordinate legal question, whereas fitness for the presidency is a core political issue. That is why it is rightly observed that impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one.

We are a good distance from being able to assess whether President Trump should be impeached. It is specious, though, to suggest that this is not a question worthy of exploration, or that its answer hinges on whether collusion with Russia amounts to a criminal-law violation.

Our aspiration for presidential fitness is something more than “nothing he has done is indictable.” Abuses of trust go to the core of self-determining, republican governance. It is fatuous to fret over whether they also amount to, say, campaign-finance infractions — even “major” offenses in that category, such as the 2008 Obama campaign’s acceptance of nearly $2 million in illegal contributions, are so trivial in the greater scheme of things that they are commonly settled by the payment of an administrative fine.

All politicians practice a certain economy with the truth, but flat-out lying to the American people on a significant matter is a major abuse of trust. And forfending collusion with a foreign sovereign was an imperative for the Framers.

And I liked this:

The principal duty of the president is to safeguard the nation against foreign threats to our security and system of government. If a president instead has put them at greater risk, if he has conducted himself in such a way as to raise the specter of blackmail by a foreign power, it is always appropriate to question his fitness for the nation’s highest office.

And it’s true there’s nothing in the Constitution stating the President shall be deprived of office merely for violating the law. His position is important in absolute terms. A few violations here and there may be viewed as inevitable in an organization as large as the Executive.

But it’s the accumulation and pattern which is trouble, as I’m sure McCarthy would agree. If our President is incompetent or compromised, then he should be deprived of his position. There must be the reasonable admission of trust, of predictability, in our President, as we had with Obama and Bush I (the two that seemed the most trustworthy in my lifetime; I confess I hardly recall President Carter). President Trump’s long and continual record of lies may constitute a predictable pattern, but not a good one, not something worthy of pride and continued service.

And if he doesn’t think he’s lying, then it implies an incompetence of breathtaking proportions.

Along with noting the health insurance industry has finally broken its silence on the GOP‘s replacement for the ACA, Kevin Drum has just the description of the so-called Cruz Amendment , the modification to split consumers into sick and healthy groups, and thus destroy the health care system:

But now, even the insurance companies are fed up. They have looked into the abyss of the newly-proposed Cruz Amendment, and they understand precisely what kind of hell their own industry would unleash on the world if it passes. Their letter to Mitch McConnell minces no words:

It is simply unworkable in any form …. would undermine protections for those with pre-existing medical conditions …. increase premiums …. would allow the new plans to “cherry pick” only healthy people …. creates two systems of insurance for healthy and sick people …. premiums will skyrocket for people with preexisting conditions …. millions of more individuals will become uninsured ….would harm consumers who are most in need of coverage.

The Cruz Amendment is sort of like chopping a baby in half: a solution that sounds appealing only to someone who doesn’t know what happens to babies who are chopped in half. And so I wonder. Did Ted Cruz understand the problems with his amendment when he dreamed it up, but didn’t care? Or did he just not bother to check with anyone who understood health policy before he proposed it? It’s the eternal conundrum: Evil or stupid?

When I was young and just out of college, I recall always getting the cheapest health insurance offered by my employer that I could, figuring the health of youth made this the wisest course. And I was right.

Within the limited context of myself.

But this sort of choice, taken over the entire population, no doubt pushed up premiums for those in need of better coverage, because by offering multiple options, the consumers naturally segregate themselves based on their perception of their private need. If you accept the proposition that the Cruz Amendment basically replicates the health care market pre-ACA, then by forcing the responsible parties to come out with the analyses showing how it leads to increasing premiums, then perhaps our extremist-fringe Senator Cruz has found a way to condemn the health care insurance industry, pre-ACA.

And possibly force us on a path to single-payer.

Regulations exist irrespective of your God, it seems, and Iran is hobbled by them. Alireza Ramezani on AL Monitor reports on the efforts of Iran’s administration to reduce its unemployment level from 12.6% – and one of its biggest obstacles:

Another issue of concern is the excessive red tape, which has been ignored in the government’s employment plan. Hamid Deihim, an economist at the University of Tehran, sees the red tape as a major obstacle that has made investors give up on enterprising. The World Bank’s Doing Business index for Iran got worse in 2017, dropping to 120 from 117 the year before. The index for Starting a Business also fell five units, reaching 102 in 2017. It takes Iranian applicants several weeks to have a company registered, disregarding the potential need for additional licenses from relevant organizations and ministries. This process takes only a few days in the United States and Europe, where applicants are free to have home offices. In Iran, applicants have to rent an office before starting their business, and therefore have to pay extra expenses for the establishment of a new enterprise.

Emad Azimi, the head of the Research Department at the Management and Planning Organization’s branch in Markazi province, in a May 28 op-ed in Donya-e Eqtesad urged the government to eliminate parallel and conflicting regulations when it comes to starting a new business. He said that employment can only be boosted if regulations are eased. However, measures to ease doing business in the country is a dream that can only become a reality in the distant future. As Rabiei has noted, single-digit unemployment rates require a “long-term” comprehensive solution that involves political and economic stability, elimination of red tape, eradication of economic rents and rent-seeking behavior, a skillful workforce and required investment. Thus, unemployment will in all probability continue to remain a source of concern for the authorities — until and unless the government provides a transparent competitive business environment for the real private sector to get the economy going.

Regulations are an important part of any modern economy – but they also are a portal for any old person to stick their hands in and gum up the works.

Last week our friends Kathleen and Doug came visiting, and upon touring the garden, Kathleen pointed at this:

And said, “Roundup!”

My Arts Editor suggested it was a a pretty flower, and was rewarded with a tale of horror and woe, and how only Roundup could do it in. So I took some pictures and uploaded them to iNaturalist. Their response?

Creeping Bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides):

Distribution

This plant is native to Europe and western Siberia and it has been introduced to North America, where it has become an extremely invasive weed. It chokes out other plants, and eliminating it is nearly impossible due to its multiple propagation mechanisms.

Oh, lovely. So I spent an hour digging out most of it tonight, until the mosquitoes came a-swarming and chased me inside; I’ll finish it up tomorrow.

And then gird the ol’ loins for the war of next year, I suppose.