Eric The Blue

Apportioning credit

It was John McCain!  No, the ladies, Collins and Murkowski, should be getting the credit!  How about the Democratic senators from red states who didn't yield, or Chuck Schumer, their leader, who held them together?

Well, what about the fact that it was a horrible bill, the output of a scandalously bad "process," deeply but insufficiently unpopular in the country, and that what's hard to understand is not that it was voted down but that 49 out of a hundred senators voted for it?  What were they thinking? 

That the bill they were voting for would not be enacted, apparently.  From the New York Times:

Before rolling out the new legislation, Senate leaders had to deal with a rebellion from Republican senators who demanded ironclad assurances that the legislation would never become law.

Back in the day, you voted No if you wanted a horrible bill never to become law.

I think 49 "ayes" should be attributed to embarrassment.  It's humiliating, after having heaped abuse on ObamaCare for years, to reveal that you got nothing, no idea.  Maybe, if we just keep it alive, we'll be able to cobble together something, someday, less obviously odious than what we're voting for now. 

But that's the rotten corn analogy again.  If ear after ear is worm-eaten and rotten, quit shucking: the whole consignment is bad.  

The problem for which Republican orthodoxy has no solution is that the hated "individual mandate" is what makes it possible to require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions.  Else, the pool of the insured is too old and sick, premiums are high (because private insurance is a for-profit business and too many of the insured are making claims), the relatively healthy therefore leave the pool, which makes it sicker yet, causing premiums to rise again. . . a death spiral.  It's the same problem everywhere because it's tied to the human condition and grim facts about aging, decline, and disease.  Most of the countries to which we have the closest historical and cultural ties have addressed it with national health insurance.  All in, the pool is as big as it can be.  But we have too many cowboys for that, so instead "infringe on freedom" with the mandate.  

It's terrible, the healthy end up paying for the sick!  

(Yes, that is how insurance works, but--cheer up!--you won't be healthy forever yourself.)

Collins and Murkowski should get more credit, it's true.  Also, being male, I'm not a crusader against my gender, but I agree with women who have pointed out that everything that conservative men put on "feminazis"--"shrill," "ugly," "snow flake," "stupid," "entitled," "mean," "crazed," "drama queen"--describes Trump & Co.  And, regarding McCain, here is a really nice and I think quite unknown story about him.  It's impossible to imagine anything like it in the biography of our president.

Books of the Bible: Philemon

As with Ecclesiastes, an obvious question about Philemon is: How did it get admitted to the canon of Scripture?  Ecclesiastes contradicts Judeo-Christian teaching, but, perhaps boosted by the (false) notion that King Solomon was the author, it slipped past the gatekeeper.  The subject matter of Philemon seems private and secular, but Paul wrote it, and everything in existence that was written by Paul, or that might have been written by Paul, is in the New Testament.  An extant Pauline grocery list would likely have been canonized and subjected to close scholarly analysis for what it might reveal about, say, the relationship between his actual practice and the view of the Jewish dietary laws that he elsewhere expressed.  

The letter to Philemon, however, is somewhat more interesting than a list, and scholarly analysis has revealed a dimension that would never be detected by any general reader of an unannotated translation.  The situation, if not every detail, may be apprehended from the letter itself, which is very brief.  While in prison, Paul has become acquainted with a fugitive slave, Onesimus, whose owner, Philemon, is a Christian.  Roman law, like the American constitution, provided for the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.  Paul, therefore, in order to comply with the law, is sending Onesimus back to Philemon, and he includes this letter explaining his intent and asking for clemency for the slave, who has been "useful" (Paul's word) to him.

Possibly a preternaturally alert reader might pause at this word "useful."  Since the letter indicates that Onesimus has been converted to Christianity, it might suggest that he has also assisted Paul in his missionary work.  And maybe he did.  Still, in a sentence such as--

Formerly he [Onesimus] was useless to you [Philemon], but now he is indeed useful to you and me.

--the meanings of "useless" and "useful" are opaque and the words may appear to be working too hard: there is a sense of straining.  The explanation, for most of us a retrospective one since we will have glided over the difficulty, is that in Greek "onesimus" means "useful."  So Paul is here indulging himself in a bit of word play.  It's like if, in our language, there was a rake named Randy and someone were to say of him--wink, wink--that "he is indeed randy."  

That Paul was capable of a bit of linguistic frolicking is of some modest biographical interest, since playfulness of any kind is not usually associated with his writing--or with the New Testament in general, whose central figure, though "truly human," never laughs.  Recognizing the pun also makes sense of the obscurity in the sentence quoted above.  Paul is saying that the Onesimus known to Philemon is not the Onesimus who is now returning to him.  He's transformed.  Formerly he was useless (not worthy of his name) but he is now indeed Onesimus.

More than that, however: perhaps not just this one passage, but the whole letter, is a double entendre, in the sense that it says one thing on the surface even though Paul intends for the recipient to understand something quite different.  I've set out above the surface meaning.  Beneath the surface, Paul is telling Philemon that he wants Onesimus sent back to him--that he is not to be kept by Philemon as a slave.  Usually my mind is set against any interpretation that has to it even a whiff of secret-coded-text intrigue, especially in the Bible.  These are the verbal equivalent of conspiracy theories concocted by industrious enthusiasts determined to arrive at some predetermined conclusion.  In the case of this letter, however, what I'll call the wink-wink interpretation has considerable explanatory power: it makes sense of things that otherwise seem a little odd.  For example, the punning on the name "Onesimus" carries through the letter. The sentence quoted above is verse 11 (the whole letter is a single chapter of 25 "verses").  Here are verses 20-21, the beginning of the conclusion:

Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord.  Refresh my heart in Christ.  Confident of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

The word "benefit" is a synonym of "useful" and an alternate pun on "Onesimus": that is, "I want some benefit from you in the Lord" may be construed as "I want Onesimus from you in the Lord." This does not seem to me to be much of a stretch.  Indeed, under some allegedly more natural interpretation, it is unclear what benefit Paul is expecting to receive from Philemon.  The next sentence, concerning Paul's wish that his heart be refreshed in Christ, may seem like a cant phrase, but in the context of this letter it is notable that, at verse 12, he had asserted that Onesimus was his (Paul's) "very heart":

I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart.

Thus "refresh my heart" acquires an undertone of "reunite me with Onesimus (by sending him back to me)."  And then the clincher, the last wink of the wink-wink interpretation:

. . . I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

Paul is here acknowledging, winkingly, that his real meaning is not the surface meaning.  The "more" that he expects from Philemon is the return of Onesimus.  If you don't understand it this way, then you have to account for what else Paul is expecting from Philemon, for he never plainly says.  Moreover, the indirection is not gratuitous but, considering the Roman law on the status of slaves, quite possibly prudent.  Wayne Meeks, editor of the Norton Critical Writings of St. Paul, puts it this way: 

The Roman laws governing fugitive slaves were strict, and Paul observes the legal necessities punctiliously. Anyone aiding a fugitive was liable for all damages due to the master . . . .  Above all, the fugitive had to be returned; and Paul is sending Onesimus back.  At the same time, Paul's half-stated request, the subtle pleas, the almost bantering tone of his several puns, render the legal situation so incongruous as to shatter it.

In other words, the indirection provides a prudent cover, what we now call "plausible deniability."  I don't think it's the reason the letter to Philemon was canonized, but it's nevertheless true that, compared to his doctrinal writings, this more private letter shows Paul's character in quite a favorable light.

Science > metaphors

I know there are certain go-to phrases that fall from lips--or, nowadays, from thumbs--when people have to comment publicly on bad news, like that John McCain has a brain tumor.  Cut people some slack for what they say when it's hard to know what to say, right?  Especially when, being famous and prominent, they don't have the option of saying nothing.  Here is President Obama's blandly gracious tweet:

John McCain is an American hero & one of the bravest fighters I've ever known. Cancer doesn't know what it's up against. Give it hell, John.

My mild complaint with this and a million similar sentiments concerns the implicit assumption that cancer patients are, or ought to be, spiritual warriors engaged in a struggle against a fearsome opponent.  You're permitted to be a normal human until one day, having been to the doctor, you are obliged to put on armor and take up your sword to show the world that you are a worthy foe of a great enemy.  Too much mystique.  It leads to the kind of nonsense that is wryly commented upon by patients who are amused to discover that they are suddenly "courageous" for having slept through the night.  Maybe the metaphors arise from the association of cancer with death, so that everything about it seems "deep" and "spiritual."  Actually, tumors like McCain's are things like all the other things in the world.  They have certain properties that for obvious reasons are a large topic in medical science.  The course of a disease is determined not by who is or isn't a "brave fighter" but by the underlying science of the case, very much including whether and when medical intervention occurs.  

People with good health insurance are only about as brave as the general population.  More material explanations account for their lower mortality rates.

Tweeters reply to Emily

 

Emily Nussbaum is The New Yorker's TV critic. The other evening, when the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Team Trump was investigating how far the pardon power might extend, she tweeted:

I went out for a drink. Did a thing happen?  I'm scrolling Twitter and I'm getting some impression of intensity without clear details.

Tweeted responses included:

You mean ... you put down your phone in the bar?

Our President may not be the best guy. Brb with more details.

Lmao bc ur tweet is the first one under "in case you missed out" on my feed. Twitter waxes meta:)

Yeah, Donald Trump is president. No shit. This is happening.

The monster is querying about how to go about pardoning the fam. #ImpeachTrump

You may require another.

"Intensity without clear details." You just summed up the entire Trump Admin

Should have brought back a bottle

Long story short, the White House is occupied by the cast of Arrested Development

And someone simply tweeted the jingle-pic at the top of this post as her response.  Right-wing blog sites are sociologically interesting but for intelligence and wit I recommend my Twitter friends, who are, besides Emily:

@lithub

@kathrynschulz

@BettyBowers

@jonathanchait

@JoyceCarolOates

@RepAdamSchiff

@RWPUSA

@jiatolentino

@SethAbramson

@tribelaw

 

 

Gerrymandering ==> corruption

Here is a link to the transcript of a Bill Moyers interview with law professor and tweeter Richard Painter, whom I mentioned here.  My favorite exchange:

Moyers: Did you see that Arizona's legislature, controlled by the Republicans, voted to dismantle the state's strict campaign finance disclosure laws?

Painter: [O]ne of the things that I’ve seen over many years of looking at what’s happened in different states is, when you have a political system where one party in a particular location feels they’ve got control and they can do anything they want, the corruption problem is even worse. Down in Arizona, the Republican Party’s felt very secure in their position that voters won’t bail on them regardless of what they do. So this is going to create a situation where it’s even more tempting to run to the special interests, and if the special interests don’t want disclosure then we won’t have any disclosure; because who’s going to squawk about it? And that’s not a good situation. Voters need to make it very clear, they’re going to vote for other primary challengers to these people, or they’re going to vote for a Democrat, or whatever it takes, but this system has to get fixed in Arizona and everywhere else.

Painter is surely correct about the general principle, which helps explain such diverse phenomena as corruption in big city politics (no danger of voters throwing out the Democrats) and Alabama's "luv guv" (no danger of voters punishing the Republicans).  What he doesn't mention is that, with respect to the House of Representatives, the maps are drawn with the express intent of creating uncompetitive districts.  Republicans, for example, want to cram all the Democrats in a metro area into as few districts as possible, in order that they might win as many seats as possible across the entire region.   

The above maps are all crimes against geography working overtime as congressional districts.  Consider the relatively mild case represented by the bottom-center map.  It was drawn by Republican state legislators in North Carolina and is a rather obvious attempt to create an overwhelmingly Democratic district in the Research Triangle area, so that Republicans might prevail in the surrounding territories.  You wouldn't want to have all those Democrats distributed evenly across multiple districts.  There would be competitive races that the Republicans might lose! 

Alas, sifting out Democrats tends to involve sifting out African Americans, and the district did not survive a court challenge claiming it was unconstitutionally gerrymandered along racial lines.  Turns out it's easier to sift out Democrats who do yoga and have a $12-per-day Starbucks habit.  

But, however you do it, the effect, if you can get away with it (and you usually can), is not only artificially high representation in the Congress but also, by "the Painter principle," more corruption and special interest influence.  Might a remedy be at hand?  Here's hoping the case succeeds.

Not a hero to my kids

Had a special moment with my 6-year-old this evening while tucking her into bed.  Having given her a couple kisses and wrapped her blanket around her shoulders just the way she likes, I told her I loved her, that she's my "bestie," and that I'd see her in the morning.  She said, "Dad, when you're dead, we're going to get a dog."

Husking rotten corn

 

I suggested here that Junior, by accepting a meeting with a Russian agent for the purpose of getting some dirt on Hillary Clinton, and then defending himself on the ground that the agent had no dirt, is like someone making an appointment with a known fence for the purpose of purchasing stolen goods, and then arguing that he did nothing wrong because it turned out that the fence did not have the particular stolen goods he was shopping for.  Iowahawkblog makes the same point in, I jealously admit, more vivid fashion.  Suppose my wife, snooping on my phone, discovers an evite to an orgy.  When she confronts me about it, I say, Yeah, but--good news!--when I showed up, no one was there, so nothing happened.  She's chill with that and thanks me for being "transparent."

As long as congressional Republicans remain "chill with that," there is no prospect of Trump being removed from office.  For the general principle, which is that in impeachment proceedings the party of the President determines his fate, consider the case of Nixon, as Jeffrey Toobin does here.  In 1974, Democrats were in the majority of both House and Senate.   Articles of Impeachment were adopted by the House Judiciary Committee and were poised to pass the full House, whereupon there would have been a trial in the Senate requiring a two-thirds supermajority for conviction.  Nixon resigned only when it became evident that enough Republican senators would vote for conviction to form the necessary supermajority.  He would have served out his term if all or nearly all Republican senators had been chill with--for example--him instructing his top aides to get the FBI to quit investigating the Watergate burglary.  

Trump has not lost the support of congressional Republicans, probably because he remains popular among Republican voters.  The strain is showing, however.  Lindsey Graham, John McCain, et al, pronounce each new outrageous revelation to be "problematic" and "concerning."   They are so concerned.  Their furrowed brows are a substitute for leadership and remedial action that would, however, alienate many of the nuts who vote for them.  But if things get any worse, the furrowed-brow response will cause them to lose all credibility with the reality-based majority.  So they are hoping things won't get worse.  But how likely is that?  You buy a bushel of corn at the farmer's market.  Back at the house, you start husking ears.  The first three are rotten.  So are the fourth and fifth.  For how long can you keep hoping that the next one will be edible?

Local and national news

I saw Kedi, a documentary about the cats of Istanbul, with the family at the Riverview Theatre this morning.  It was my idea to bring the kids to a Turkish language movie with English subtitles.  Claire, who is 6, said on the way home that reading is bad enough at school.  The Riverview sells a kiddie platter--small pop corn, candy pack, soft drink--and unfortunately everyone made it through theirs in somewhat less than the film's running time of 80 minutes.  I liked it well enough but sitting here listening to the sound of our cat throwing up a hairball in the next room has made me realize it may have been a touch sentimental.

Meanwhile in other news it appears that, while Donald Trump Jr may look more like his mother, he's stuck with his dad's genes in the mental and moral clarity departments.  I don't think it was bad legal advice--because legal advice is for sale--that caused him to advance a defense that has been aptly described by Mrs Betty Bowers as I went there to commit a crime but the mean Russian lady wouldn't let me.  Down the economic ladder, his soulmate is telling the cops he's perfectly innocent because, as  luck would have it, the fence was out of Toshibas. 

Dad, according to dad's lawyer, has no idea what Jr is up to around Trump Tower, personal responsibility being for poor people.

The Russia collusion story is moving fast.  I was intending to make fun of the president for arguing that the Russians may or may not have meddled in our election and that Obama should have done something once it became apparent to everyone but him (Trump) that the Russians indeed meddled in our election.  But that was yesterday's idiocy.

 

Hobby Lobby slips up

My father-in-law--bless him--told me the one about the guy who hadn't heard of a Freudian slip. His friend explained it to him.  "It's like, once, when I was going on a business trip with my boss, the ticketing agent had a tremendous set and instead of asking for 'two tickets for Pittsburgh' he asked for 'two pickets for Tittsburgh.'"

The first fellow said, "Now I get it!  Why just this morning, at breakfast, I meant to say to my wife 'Honey, please pass the eggs' but what came out was 'Marrying you has ruined my life you [insufferable nag].'"

Ho! Ho! Ho!  His daughter thinks that's hilarious!

I wonder if there is an analogous pathology relating not to misspeaking but to mishearing.  For example, you may have heard that Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts chain owned by conservative Christians who challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, has agreed to return around 5500 cultural artifacts that the company smuggled out of Iraq--clay cuneiform writing tablets that had been looted from historical sites, then sold to Hobby Lobby in mysterious deals in which the sellers insisted on anonymity (ISIS?).  In addition, the company will pay a 7-figure fine to settle the case. 

Hobby Lobby had claimed that the Obamacare provision requiring employers to offer insurance plans covering a range of basic services, including contraception, violated its free practice of religion, since birth control is against Christian precepts.  Well, how about sneaking out of Iraq with cultural artifacts secured from looters?  Maybe when God said "Thou shalt not steal" the company's wheels heard something more along the line of "Thou shalt not use an intrauterine device to prevent pregnancy, nor aid thy maidservant in the procurement of same."

H/t to Mrs Betty Bowers, "America's best Christian," who tweeted, "I wonder if the Supreme Court will now make stealing legal to, once again, accommodate Hobby Lobby's 'values.'"

Some tweeters

I'm working on a Twitter addiction that should keep me busy when not watching the Twins on television.  It's not all a wasteland.  There are a lot of smart tweeters, and earlier today I watched, only because I follow Joyce Carol Oates, this video of E. L. Doctorow lecturing on Moby Dick.  It is indeed true that the appearance of the title "character" is preceded by one hell of a prologue.

I also follow a couple of law professors, Laurence Tribe and Richard Painter.  If you haven't heard of the former, then it's unlikely you've heard of the latter, who is the "S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law" at the University of Minnesota Law School.  I wouldn't be his Twitter follower if he was tweeting about a good state in which to form a limited liability company (or whatever it is that corporate lawyers know about).  Painter worked in the administration of George W. Bush, office of the White House Counsel, where he was Bush's chief ethics lawyer.  Maybe there's a joke in there about how only a Republican would seek advice on ethics from a corporate lawyer, but Painter has shown he has principles by keeping up a steady flow of zippy tweets aimed at the very large target provided by The Current Occupant & His Gang.  When I say "zippy" I mean that they are adorned by clever additives such as referring to the Trump lodging interest nearest the Oval Office as The Hotel Emolumental.  And he doesn't limit himself to our stumblebum president.  On the Senate health-care bill:

How many people will lose insurance?  How many health co. execs will make so much $ they can run for Congress?

On campaign finance reform:

In the 1700s you could buy a seat in the House of Commons.  The founders of the USA had a different idea?  Not according to SCOTUS.

After Johnny Depp set off a mini-controversy by putting "assassination" in the same sentence as "Trump":

The 1st Amendment keeps people who joke about violence out of jail.  The 25th Amendment keeps them out of the Situation Room.

[Comment: only in theory.]

On the occasion of Sarah Palin filing a lawsuit seeking $75,000 in damages after The New York Times "slandered" her in an editorial arguing that her campaign ad featuring a gun with Democrats in the crosshairs had incited violence:

3 defenses.  Public figure must show reckless disregard for truth.  Truth.  Plaintiff's reputation not worth $75k.