Augustus' Census in Luke 2 had some interesting migration-related consequences due to its requirement of origin-based payment administration
— Lyman Stone (@lymanstoneky) December 18, 2016
Plus, it created strains on the housing stock! Babies were born in animal stalls! The rent must have been exorbitant!
— Lyman Stone (@lymanstoneky) December 18, 2016
Via outmigration of threatened families, not actual pop loss; ex Joseph and Mary's flight to Egypt. Roman free internal mobility…
— Lyman Stone (@lymanstoneky) December 18, 2016
For rents in Bethlehem, I mean. They would been sky high.
Also we would all be doomed to die in our sin forever, which has negative utility
— Lyman Stone (@lymanstoneky) December 18, 2016
Corner Stone
So what this guy is saying….is that there *really is* a Free Market Jesus?!
Gin & Tonic
Re-posted from way down at the bottom of a dying thread downstairs.
Here’s a screenshot of Alex Jones on Russian TV, with a chyron saying “Alex Jones: Trump’s Secret Weapon.” Note that the guy he’s on screen with, Alexandr Dugin, makes our Alex Jones look as sane and sober as an Ivy League professor of philosophy by comparison.
Yarrow
Want to bring up what I said below when people were talking about Trump lying.
I read somewhere that the better tactic is not to counter his lies one by one but to acknowledge the pattern. “Trump is lying again. Why does he lie so much? What is he hiding?” That kind of thing. If you get down in the weeds and try to counter each lie you’re working on his turf. Calling out the lying as a pattern and then focusing on that may work better.
He wants people to focus on each lie because then they’re distracted and looking over there while he’s over here doing something much worse. Don’t fall for it.
Chris
Related if different, “be sure to hate immigrants as you celebrate the story of a family of Middle Eastern refugees fleeing for their safety” has been a Facebook meme for the last couple of months, and one that I’m a pretty big fan of.
Adam L Silverman
The Herodian Census was done in the Spring, not the late Fall/early Winter. Its one of those quirky historical realities that didn’t make it into Luke, because Luke’s author wasn’t alive when the Herodian Census was being conducted.
hovercraft
This is good news that spreads in the spirit of x-mas.
Obama Grants 231 Pardons- Most Ever In A Single Day
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday pardoned 78 people and shortened the sentences of 153 others convicted of federal crimes — the most individual clemencies ever granted in a single day by any president. As he nears the end of his second term, Obama has issued more commutations than the previous 11 presidents combined, according to the White House.
“The 231 individuals granted clemency today have all demonstrated that they are ready to make use — or have already made use — of a second chance,” White House counsel Neil Eggleston wrote in a blog post. “While each clemency recipient’s story is unique, the common thread of rehabilitation underlies all of them.”
Of the people granted clemency Monday, 54 were serving life sentences. In the last months of Obama’s presidency, administration officials have moved quickly to rule on all the pending clemency applications. The president will continue to review clemency applications, and is expected to grant more pardons and commutations before he leaves office, Eggleston said.
Obama has used his constitutional clemency power to reduce the sentences of 1,176 people since he has been in office, according to the White House. About a third of them, 395 people, were serving life sentences. The previous single-day record of 151 commutations was set by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935. Monday’s announcement doubles the number of pardons granted by Obama to 148 people.
In 2014, Obama sought to bring attention to what his administration describes as over-sentencing in federal prisons by directing the Justice Department to prioritize petitions for commutations from nonviolent offenders who were serving longer sentences than they would receive today if they were convicted of the same crimes.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: here you go:
http://www.rand.org/blog/2016/12/beyond-the-headlines-rands-christopher-paul-discusses.html?adbsc=social_20161219_1178931&adbid=810971736153812993&adbpl=tw&adbpr=22545453
Corner Stone
@Yarrow:
I think he lacks the ability to know when he’s lying. But what the people around him want is for us to focus on each specific lie, and then when we push back they will single out one specific aspect of the criticism that may be not a fact itself but something arguable. They will then use that point of argument to discredit all criticism of anything he lies about. It’s a permanent cloud of squid ink in a muddy estuary.
Major Major Major Major
Thanks, this just made my day.
@Adam L Silverman: quiet, you.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I don’t have time to read the whole thing now. Was there a specific point you wanted me to understand from the article?
Corner Stone
Putin promises more anti-terror efforts after assassination. I, for one, feel safer already.
hovercraft
@Gin & Tonic:
He really is his secret weapon, he is spreading weapons grade stupid throughout our country.
Re-posting from downstairs.
HRA
@Yarrow:
I heartily agree! Those like him thrive on being given a reason to respond. Yes, it is as I said way back when the primaries were on of his sucking up all the oxygen so the others are not heard or noticed.
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Just a PSA type of thing.
Chris
@Corner Stone:
Yeah, I was just going to say that. “Wasn’t lies, it was just bullshit” seems to me to be Trump in a nutshell.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: The Chinese had already informed Embassy Beijing that they would return the drone before the President-elect sent his first tweet, let alone the corrected one an hour later. This is the type of information that is included in a Presidential Daily Briefing.
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: Yes, so change the subject. “Trump lies a lot. Why does he lie so much? What is he hiding? Why does he need to lie so much? Why is Trump lying?” Etc. Focus on the general not the specific. Get people to think broadly as a pattern. Don’t play on his turf and get bogged down in the weeds.
It may not work, but calling out each lie and running over there to look at that lie while he does something terrible over here isn’t working either.
@Adam L Silverman: Okay. Thanks.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: I think this may be one pull quote:
Slightly different than what you’re suggesting but allied to it.
schrodingers_cat
Anne Laurie@top
Did you get the email I sent you on Sunday?
Kthx
Yarrow
@Chris: Trump’s ability to know he’s lying isn’t the point. He does it all the time, like breathing. So call out the pattern. Get people to wonder why he lies so much. Change the discussion to that, not the specifics. Those are on his turf and you’ll lose.
Jeffro
@Yarrow: @Adam L Silverman:
Great ‘framing’ and reminder, Yarrow; great article, Adam. It’s really important to spread the word as widely as possible…the Gish Marathon won’t stop at 26.2…
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
Assuming this EVER makes it into the media…nickel bet that the general Trumpkin response is, “you bet they returned it quick – they knew Trump wasn’t gonna play around!”
The strongman cannot fail, he can only be failed…
Chris
@hovercraft:
This is what Churchill meant about a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: I don’t know if that would work. Trumpists are abandoning things they know to be true as soon as trump says something in opposition to them. Or is this more about the casual observers?
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: Yes, allied to it. I don’t know if my suggestion (which didn’t originate with me – I read it somewhere, but can’t remember where) will work. I just know what we’re doing now isn’t working and as soon as we say, “Trump lied about X and here is why it’s a lie” we’re off into the weeds where Trumpcultists argue about how high the weed is, just how soggy the ground is, perhaps that’s not really a weed. We lose that argument. Better to call out the lies as a general pattern and go from there. Get them defending why Trump lies so much, what’s he hiding, it’s a pattern, can we believe what he says? Better play from our side.
artem1s
Found a pretty interesting guide put together by some former Congressional staffers. What works and what doesn’t. It’s a great read
Indivisible: A Practical Guide To Resisting The Trump Agenda
online copy here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DzOz3Y6D8g_MNXHNMJYAz1b41_cn535aU5UsN7Lj8X8/preview
this is loading very slowly, but does eventually
pdf download and sign up for email alerts here https://www.indivisibleguide.com/
thanks to a poster over on LAG
BGinCHI
They don’t call it “the dismal science” for nothing….
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Where do you think I read about it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-drone-china_us_58594304e4b08debb78b0542
piratedan
@Corner Stone: and he never has wholesale prices…
hovercraft
Puppies !!
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: dead link
Librarian
@Adam L Silverman: Was a census really taken at all, though? The idea of having people move to where they were born is absurd and probably didn’t happen. I don’t believe that there is a shred of real historical evidence that anything in New Testament actually happened.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: One of the linked articles premii is that once people see/hear something and accept it, it’s very difficult to get them to change their minds.
I personally agree that inoculation using good info would not work on people who are obviously primed to believe BS. I also think it’s a weak starting point because we’re not talking baseball scores. However, the article suggests identifying targets that may be propagandized and get ahead of it to put the truth on record first. (If I may paraphrase my take on the article).
I am reminded of Planned Parenthood and the constant falsehoods against it. It doesn’t matter what the truth of their service is, people want to believe the propaganda.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
The problem is that morons like Lennie don’t know and or don’t care, what the “facts” are. The world according to them is whatever they ‘believe’ it to be. So when the Alex Jones of the world say that this happened because they were cowed by their dear leader, that is what they believe. Our challenge is that we are inhabiting and trying to share a country full of morons who believe that facts have a liberal bias. How do we get beyond that? Answer this question, and you figure out how we go about fixing the problem.
schrodingers_cat
Afternoon break:
They can dance! see 0 to 3.15, the number after that seems a bit soporific in comparison.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Shepherds don’t watch their flocks by night in the dead of winter. They do it during spring lambing to keep predators away.
lamh36
Christmas came early for me this year…I’m excited for the new year again! Feeling Cautiously optimistic!!
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: @Librarian: Also, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the authorities *didn’t* make people travel back to their towns of origin for the census.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: I should have been more specific: assuming it makes it into any mainstream news outlets like NYT, WaPo, or the major cable news channels. I don’t know of a whole lot of non-progressives who check out HuffPo.
patroclus
Augustus never issued a decree that required a census moving people all around the place. The Romans kept pretty detailed records and this just didn’t occur. The author of Luke may have been referring to a census decree issued by Quirinius, a governor of Syria that occurred several years after Herod the Great had died, but there is no real evidence of it. The author of Luke was writing 6-9 decades after the event and wanted to place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and he just stretched things to fit that narrative, kind of the way modern journalists do it. It’s a nice story but Jesus was probably born in Nazareth and it certainly wasn’t on December 25.
Botsplainer
Iranian government would be wise to start spinning centrifuges.
He’s in way over his head. He’s going to spark something tragic through incompetence and bellicosity, and we’ll be expected to rally ’round the President and flag because ‘Murka.
I’m not doing it this time. He can fuck off.
Corner Stone
@piratedan: But those multi-colored coats though…
Adam L Silverman
@Librarian: There was a census. Whether it was at all like the way it is recounted in the Gospel is unclear.
schrodingers_cat
@Botsplainer: Did you for the Iraq war?
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
As to the PDB, he claims he is being briefed by Flynn who is getting the briefing daily. I know you have said that Flynn is okay, but I still troubled by his dabbling in conspiracy theories. I realize that every person brings their biases to any briefing, they may not mean to, but they do, the briefers make a conscious effort not to let tis influence their brief. My concern is that Flynn as an advisor will bring more of his personal views into this, and since the moron he’s briefing doesn’t have a clue, it will be more his policy than the idiots. On balance that may be a good thing since Flynn knows more, but still, I would be more comfortable with the president getting the PBD from the horses mouth.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Hooked on phonics. It’ll clear the problem right up!
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
There was a report in the Washington Post last week about how fear and loathing of Hillary Clinton is pervasive in the Russian government, apparently because they’ve actually bought all of the crazy right-wing conspiracy theories about her and think they’re all true.
It’s scary to think that people at high levels of the Russian government might actually think that Alex fucking Jones has any kind of genuine information.
Adam L Silverman
@patroclus: The prevailing theological historiography (theolography?) is that it is the Quirinian Census to which the author of Luke is referring.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: Iran’s got a pretty sweet gig going. And pretty soon when the petro-currency grows in strength they will be having a belly dancer in every kitchen.
I propose they don’t really want to be a nuclear armed nation but keep the thread idle in their back pocket as leverage to get the goods.
hovercraft
@Chris:
Sigh.
True, but unfortunately we’ve discovered much to our detriment that the average voter is way below average.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: @Yarrow:
Adam, it’s a great article, thank you. One ‘lightbulb’ moment for me was at the end, when Paul talks about how to fight this…instead of trying to “fight the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth” or whatever, he suggested “putting raincoats on those who will be hit by the firehose”, i.e., inoculate them with the truth in advance.
This speaks to education (very generally and the teaching of critical thinking skills & media literacy specifically) as essential to maintaining democracy in modern times. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to go to college or that going to college will make you a better critical thinker (although I’m sure there is some evidence for the latter), but it does mean that critical thinking skills will only be more essential moving forward.
It also tells me that we could have used, and will definitely need moving forward, more Explainer-In-Chief moments on a frequent, regular basis. (Since the Unfit-elect is going to be doing the opposite – continuing to lie publicly, and often) PBO may have to serve as an Explainer-In-Exile until #46 takes office.
But whether it is weekly addresses of some sort, social media appearances and stunts, or even – gack – rally-type events, the office of POTUS really is the only one who can get the attention of the country and at least lay out there what’s going on, in the hopes of helping ‘inoculate’ people from this sort of propaganda assault, fake news, and FB sharing from nimrod friends and relatives.
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
There apparently was an itinerant preacher rabbi named Yeshua who got crucified by the Romans for rabble-rousing. However, the fact that there may have been an actual historical figure that the religion was built around doesn’t mean that the religion is “true,” any more than Scientology is “true” because we know that L. Ron Hubbard was an actual living person.
Major Major Major Major
@BGinCHI: I like to say “they call it the dismal science, and they’re half right.”
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: He should be getting the PDB every day that it is offered, which is every day. Not that LTG Flynn as NSA-designate shouldn’t also receive it, but the President-elect should receive it directly. This goes beyond just receiving the information. If the current process continues after the inauguration it makes it much harder for the HUMINTers to do their job. Kind of hard to get non-Americans to provide intel/info “for the greater good” because the President of the US is going to need to know this when the President of the US has publicly stated its not really important information for his decision making process.
And that’s really the key here: what is the President-elect’s decision-making process going to be? Is it going to fit into any of the standing models/typologies we teach, the hybrids that exist in real life, or is it going to be something completely new – at least for a Presidency? I cannot answer these questions.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: They want what is called the Japanese Option. They don’t want to break out, just the ability to do so in short order if all else fails and they decide they have no choice.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I’m printing this out and giving it to Lenny. I will report back to see what his reaction is. I’m almost expecting him to say that much like the stock market, the mere specter of the incoming president was enough to pre-scare the Chines into returning it. Or maybe he will say, gee, geopolitics are complicated.
Not holding my breath.
Chris
@hovercraft:
… did he, in fact, say that Flynn was okay? The only thing I recall hearing about that guy so far is that he was a loony who managed to get high enough by not letting his freak flag fly until he was running DIA. (Granted, I may be confusing Adam’s info with other things I read).
@hovercraft:
To be fair, the average voter made the right choice last month. The founding fathers just fucked him 200 years ahead of time.
(The average citizen, on the other hand… when you add up the Trumpists, the teeny fringe of far-left vanity voters, and the enormous number of people who didn’t vote… doesn’t come out of this looking good).
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: I’ve never gotten the impression they particularly want nukes either, just the ability to be “two years (or whatever) away from a nuke!”
ETA: or what Adam said which is exactly that!
Gindy51
@Adam L Silverman: Worked for me, Bernese puppy in snow.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
I wouldn’t say that — the Electoral College voters certainly could have rebelled and voted otherwise, and it would not have been the first time in our history that they did that. This result is totally on us modern Americans, unfortunately.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: What I’ve written about LTG Flynn is, essentially, the following:
1) Don’t know him, never met him.
2) That from all reports he was an excellent intelligence officer and intelligence officer in charge while working for GEN McChrystal on theater SOF operations.
3) That from all reports he has the gift/talent for seeing patterns that others miss, but that that gift/talent can be a curse as it can easily lead one into the wilderness of mirrors.
4) I wrote a response to his CNAS report for Tom Ricks at Foreign Policy (Ricks was partially responsible for getting the report published by CNAS) as a subject matter expert on cultural intelligence/operations.
5) That from all reports once LTG Flynn was placed in a position where his boss didn’t constrain the dark side of his talent – seeing patterns that aren’t there instead of patterns that others miss – he had problems and created, from all reports, a toxic leadership environment. This combined with a couple of other issues contributed to his being forced out of his command as DIA Director and into an early retirement.
6) He certainly has the intelligence and education, both civilian and military, to both understand what the National Security Advisor does and what needs to be done in order to do a good job. The question is whether his appointment to this position exorcises the demons that haunted him at his last command or whether they continue to consume him.
7) This is not an unusual thing for both military and civilian leaders. They thrive in some environments, assignments, levels of operation (tactical, operational, or strategic), but not at others. Unfortunately there is no way to know before it happens and, all to often, people who have excelled in the past wind up set up for failure because someone else missed that the position they’re given isn’t a position in which they can excel.
rikyrah
9 Things We Learned From Michelle Obama’s Farewell Interview With Oprah
The interview is another reminder why so many people love her.
If you ever wanted a lesson on living your best life, as well as “living out loud” — as our First Lady put it — it’s a must you watch this interview between Oprah and Michelle Obama.
Oprah conducted Mrs. Obama’s farewell interview Monday night, a revealing and insightful chat that looked back at FLOTUS’ eight years in the White House.
Oprah, a master interviewer, got into the nitty-gritty of it all, including how Michelle turned the White House into a more inclusive space, juggled the expectations of the First Lady job and raised daughters Sasha and Malia in the White House.
Here are nine insightful and interesting things we’ve learned:
Michelle has learned to not hold grudges or any heavy energy:
The bad stuff I just don’t hold onto,” she told Oprah.”We, as women, do it. We, as Black women better be able to do it.”
………………………………..
She is still a Black mama to Sasha and Malia:
Oprah and FLOTUS spoke at length about what it took to ensure the First Daughters turned out okay. And though Mrs. Obama admits there were challenges for the girls, she wasn’t having any of their “high class problems” as complaints
“You live in the White House,” she told Oprah about her girls. “You don’t get to complain about this.”
………………………………………………………………..
She was able to navigate the First Lady role because she was “a grown up:”
The role of First Lady had its difficulties, from setting a path without a map to handling the many expectations thrown her way. But her experience as a working woman helped. “I’ve been in the world…I have a very good sense of who I am.”
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft & @Chris: I share your concerns with Flynn, who seems like a straight-up nutter now, regardless of what he may have been in the past. Trump is a crackpot himself, and now he’s getting briefings from another crackpot. It’s crackpots all the way down, apparently!
patroclus
@Mnemosyne: Scientology likes to claim that LRH was the youngest person ever to achieve the status of Eagle Scout in the BSA (at the age of 13). I checked his actual dates and I became an Eagle Scout younger than he did (also 13 but fewer months).
Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities mentions Jesus twice, but he spends more time on John the Baptist and a LOT more time on other Jewish history.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Because you enjoy suffering.
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
@hovercraft:
@hovercraft: dead link
https://www.facebook.com/AmericanKennelClub/videos/10154369720859121/
Sorry, try this one.
? Martin
@patroclus:
So where’s your religion?
Slacker.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
I don’t think that a raincoat or umbrella is sufficient in this case, we are talking about a tsunami of half truths, distortions, fantasies, and lies of epic proportions. It’s gaslighting intertwined with gish gallop. We can try to pre-empt them, but the “truth” is so boring, the media will still focus on the fun exciting lies, because they make for a better “narrative.”
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
Combining this (nutjob for a filter) with my biggest concern about Trump not taking daily PDB’s, which is his complete lack of desire to form a question for the briefers. About anything! Anywhere!
Doesn’t he want to know what properties he has interests in that may be at most risk? I mean, even if the underlying motive is the most venal and gross thing possible, shouldn’t this person find one single thing to ask for follow ups or more info on?
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: Yeah. I don’t see how we get past the post-truth world while we still have Fox News and Rush out there. They make actual governance, for the people, impossible. On purpose. For money.
It is just whispering in a hurricane.
Those enacting the First Amendment may not have forseen this.
patroclus
@? Martin: Like Jesus (but unlike LRH), I have no desire to found a religion, so the world will just have to wait until Trump crucifies me and then a devoted band of followers deifies me several decades afterwards. But here’s a patroclus saying that should achieve divine status: “Harken unto me – Trump is a lying sociopathic proto-Fascist and Scientology is a weird Ponzi-scheme-like cult.”
Jeffro
@hovercraft: @Elizabelle:
Well…since we don’t seem to have the ability to silence Fox or Rush, perhaps we could at least try to keep a few people “dry”? Remember, most progressives don’t bite on fake news because it’s so easy to disprove. If our efforts keep even a few moderates, Rs, low-info voters “dry”, we will have expanded the base of ‘reality-dwellers’ from where it is now.
Miss Bianca
@patroclus: Yes, placing Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem had, as I understand it, far more to do with Jewish Messianic prophecy than the habits of Roman law or governance. Hence all the stuff about his being “of Jesse’s root”. He’s supposed to be the son of God, so why would his human provenance matter? Because of prophecy – all this post-mortem fluffing of the story is to ret-con Jesus of Nazareth as the proper Jewish Messiah.
Then Paul/Saul decides that appealing to gentiles is what is going to make the Jesus cult really take off, so all that stuff really doesn’t matter anymore, but at that point it’s baked into the story.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Their stupid is going to kill us all.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
I keep picturing this scene from Dr. Strangelove, we’re all in for a bumpy ride.
@Adam L Silverman:
The response was wait for it. He’s a politician. Mine was I thought that was why you voted for him, he wasn’t a politician, so he wouldn’t lie like one. Yes but he became a politician when he ran and won, so now he lies. I don’t enjoy talking in circles, or circular logic.I walked away.
I’m suffering, but I do not enjoy it. I simply am trying to remain optimistic, Lennie is not helping.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Had nothing to do with Judean Messianic prophecy as there is precious little of it. Every generation in the Kingdom of Judea, just as in the northern Kingdom of Israel before it was destroyed, had three messiahs – literally “anointed ones”. The king, the prophet, and the high priest. Messiach, messiah in English, is a title bestowed on anyone that has been sacred for one of those three positions. That’s why the elaborate ritual described in the Gospel where Jesus goes up the mountainside and encounters Aaron and Elijah is actually a description of how Judean and Israelite kings were installed into office. The soon to be installed enters a tent and the current high priest and prophet enter one set aside for each of them. When they emerge they channel, for lack of a better term, their historic forebears for the investiture ritual. So what is taken by Christians as a miracle, is simply a description of the coronation of a Judean or Israelite king.
? Martin
I will continue to trickle positive news from the breakaway state of California.
Last year we passed a law that would require crisis pregnancy centers (the ones run by religious organizations) to post notices and inform patients that the state offers birth control and abortion services. Several of those organizations sued and the case went to appeal. Apparently that was heard in Oct (I missed it at the time) and the appeals court unanimously upheld the law:
Worth noting here ‘constitutionally protected’. The California Constitution contains an explicit right of privacy:
Privacy is explicitly called out in the state constitution. It was added by ballot initiative in 1972 to reinforce Roe v Wade. The Reproductive Privacy Act passed in CA in 2002 states:
Abortions can be covered by taxpayers in CA as part of MediCal. Unlike other states, these provisions are not controversial, in fact, the state has sought to expand them. The legislature tasked the UC system to investigate whether certain early abortion procedures required a physician or could be performed by other care professionals (PAs, various nurses) and the study indicated that a number of procedures could be, so the legislature passed a law expanding abortion providers accordingly. The state then tasked UC with adding training for abortions to the nursing programs in the state to ensure that the state would have an adequate supply of trained abortion providers. This is not through private Planned Parenthood dollars, this is taxpayer funded, public university work. California has 500 abortion providers which includes public hospitals and HMOs such as Kaiser.
Federal action on abortion will not affect women’s health in California and California will continue to do the health policy work and science necessary to keep it a safe and legal procedure.
Kay
I love how we’re all pretending these two had jobs before their father ran for President. The Trump Empire apparently runs itself. None of his kids ever work, and they haven’t worked for the last 2 years. There is no real manager who can take 2 years off without being missed. He gave them all no-show jobs.
Weaselone
@Jeffro:
The problem is that the Republicans have spent the last several decades setting up a very elaborate funnel to channel their own propaganda and counterfactual information to their base. At the same time they have imbedded their base in paraffin to keep them safe from any accidental splatter of truth from other sources. The entrance to the funnel repels “liberal” facts and narratives, but all Trump and Russia had to do was turn the firehouse in that direction to make use of it. There’s no putting raincoats on these people now. Unless the hose gets shut off they’re going to continue drinking from that firehouse until they explode. The only hope is that they don’t take the entire country and planet down with them when it happens.
patroclus
@Miss Bianca: Well, it didn’t have to be baked in to the story – it was the Council at Nicaea and the discussions on or about that time about what constitutes the Christian Biblical canon that put Luke’s Gospel in and others out. And that was nearly 4 centuries afterwards. As you say, the author of Luke wanted to tie Jesus’s story to early Jewish prophecies of hailing from the House of David – and being born in Bethlehem was supposedly a historical indicator of that. The other Gospels didn’t place it there and Saul/Paul didn’t either. But if they deleted Luke they would then have had to delete Acts (they were written by the same author and how could one be canonical and not the other). So they left it in. And nearly 2 thousand years later, we still have to read inaccurate tweets about the supposed Augustan census, which may have been Quirinian, but perhaps not. Jesus H. Christ! Why couldn’t they get this stuff straight??!!
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Fascinating. I may easily have misunderstood my source material on the Messianic stuff, but I do remember that that’s how that whole “Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem cuz why” was explained to me.
Adam L Silverman
That’s how its explained. There’s just not a lot of actual Judaic prophecy on this because of how Judaism developed.
Mnemosyne
@patroclus:
Yeah, I’m more making the point that the fact that there is a historical figure behind a religion doesn’t make that religion automatically “true,” no matter how much its adherents claim it does.
And yet, somehow, Christianists get all wound up about whether or not there’s a “historical Jesus” that will prove that Christianity is Really True while ignoring the fact that we already know that there’s a historical Muhammad, historical Buddha, historical Joseph Smith, etc etc.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
And Jesus’s birth got moved from the spring to the winter because of the early Christians’ successful program of cultural appropriation.
You guys have a winter festival? What a coincidence! Our savior just happened to be born in the winter, and our winter festival is even more fun than yours! You should totally come to our party instead.
Jeffro
@Weaselone:
I think in an earlier comment, I had noted that “raincoats of truth” (lol – there’s a tag!) would be useful for “moderates, Rs, low-info voters”. I probably should have been more specific: “moderates, classic-conservative Rs – not Tea Partyers or Trumpkins, and low-info/occasional voters”. Those who have drunk the Trumpkin kool-aid are unreachable, yes.
patroclus
@Miss Bianca: The author of Luke wanted Jesus to be born in Bethlehem to demonstrate that he was from the House of David. The other Gospels don’t put the birth there and none of them made up stories about Augustus issuing a census decree. The decision-makers – nearly 4 centuries later – about what constitutes the Christian Biblical canon could have left Luke’s Bethlehem birth story out if they had wanted to. But the author of Luke was also the author of Acts and they couldn’t leave Acts out because no other book tells those stories and how could one be canonical and not the other? So, thanks to them, nearly 2000 years later, we have to read inaccurate tweets about Augustus’s census, which many have been Quirinian, about a birth that may have happened in 4 B.C.E. but maybe later and perhaps earlier.
jonas
@Librarian: The Romans took a local census of Judea in 6-7 AD after what had been the small client kingdom of Herod Archelaus was dissolved and made a province. Since the census was primarily used to assess taxes, it sparked a violent uprising. The Gospel writer Luke, however, pushes this episode back some 10 years to the reign of Herod the Great, which is an anachronism, and suggests that it was a census of the “whole world,” which simply wasn’t the case. Furthermore, nobody had to return to their city of their birth to register for a census — the Romans were interested in your homestead, how much land you had, how many individuals lived there, and what you produced on it. It would have been hard to gather that information if you had skipped town. Unless you were — ahem — trying to actually *avoid* registering for the census (and Matthew has them fleeing into Egypt after Jesus’s birth, natch). But that’s a different theory.
patroclus
@Mnemosyne: My experience in talking with fundamentalists is opposite. Most of them don’t even want to discuss the historical Jesus because they believe what they believe and that’s that. I am constantly asked why would I even bother reading about it. Jewish and Roman historians? Archeology? Why trust that? The Bible – all of it – is literally the Word of God! Who cares if it’s contradictory and sometimes historically inaccurate?
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Trump’s people won’t care. And everyone knows that Trump generally lies to inflate his ego, not to hide anything.
Right now, Trump is immunized from criticism. His supporters are amused at what he does, and willing to see what he does next. And they are protective of him, which is weird as fuck.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
They overidentify with him. They are him and he is them. That’s why they get so enraged if you don’t express deference and respect for Trump — you just disrespected them.
Brachiator
@patroclus:
Not that much is known about the historical Jesus apart from what’s in the Bible. I’m not sure what there would be to discuss with the very religious.
Contradictions are simply waved away as the mysteries of interpretation. But this is generally the case with any religious text.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Congratulations, lamh!!!
jonas
@patroclus: I guess there might be a few *super* fundamentalist-types out there that really do dismiss Biblical archaeology or academic NT Studies and what they can tell us about the historicity of the Bible, but most evangelicals at least are keenly interested in the idea that these other disciplines “confirm” what’s in the Bible. Now, what they *do* do — at least the less intellectually honest among them — is shoehorn whatever evidence they choose to look at into the Biblical narrative and claim it fits and so the Gospels are vindicated as transparently accurate historical sources. Some of the more sophisticated apologists have suggested that it’s Josephus who gets the early first century history of Judea wrong and the Gospel writers who have it right.
Calouste
@patroclus: If the Bible is the Word of God, why do some things need to be repeated 4 times, sometimes almost identically and sometimes differently? You’d think an omnipotent being would do a better job of subediting.
rikyrah
‘I’m still here’: How Valerie Jarrett defied her critics to become Obama’s longest-serving adviser
By Jonathan Capehart December 20 at 10:20 AM
“Oh, I totally disagree with that.”
“That” was the assertion in a 2012 New York Times profile of Valerie Jarrett that “if Karl Rove was known as George W. Bush’s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is [President] Obama’s spine.” Jarrett’s immediate pushback in the 20th episode of “Cape UP” explains why she is the longest-serving senior adviser to a president in a town famous for inflating egos and corrupting souls. She never forgot for whom she worked.
Make no mistake: Jarrett is very proud of her accomplishments. But she insists, as she has consistently for nearly eight years, that all of the credit goes to the boss in the Oval Office.“There isn’t an initiative that I’ve worked on since I’ve been here that he didn’t bless,” Jarrett said of the president. “If he didn’t care about the issues that I have put the shoulder to the metal behind, they wouldn’t have happened and they wouldn’t have been my priority.”
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Makes sense.
rikyrah
In Donald Trump’s Washington, corruption will be utterly shameless
By Paul Waldman
December 20 at 9:25 AM
In ordinary circumstances, an incoming administration is sensitive to political controversies that might distract it or derail its agenda. Once one emerges, everyone is on notice to be careful about keeping the controversy from turning into an outright scandal. You certainly don’t want to repeat the same behavior that drew negative attention in the first place. The only question is how to make the controversy go away as quickly and quietly as possible.
But that’s not how the Trump clan operates.
For example, one of the most difficult questions for the incoming administration concerns the president-elect’s apparent intention to use the highest office in the land as a moneymaking venture, leveraging his political power into greater wealth for himself and his family. To that end, his new hotel in Washington has been encouraging foreign diplomats to give it their business, which the diplomats clearly understand as a way of currying favor with the president, or at least avoiding his displeasure. As one said in a story that The Post broke a month ago, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”
Indeed, quite rude. And now we learn that the Trump Organization is amping up the pressure on foreign governments to put more money in Donald Trump’s pocket. Judd Legum and Kira Lerner of ThinkProgress have the details:
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
true, which is why showing disrespect towards him just makes me smile even more.
they really do think that you’re supposed to bow down to him, and subsequently THEM. You see that recurring theme as member upon member of Cult 45, step to some ‘minority’ and disrespect them.
Jeffro
@patroclus:
The devil put those dinosaur bones in the ground to try and lead us away from god, don’t you know?
How these people ever tie their shoes, I’ll never know…
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne:
He’s exactly what they envision in a strongman: loud, demanding, dominant. If you don’t express deference and respect for Trump, you’re disrespecting their whole authoritarian worldview.
Barbara
@hovercraft: I filed one of these. I fervently hope he grants it. The deeper you dig into these cases, the sadder they are. Whole families, especially young children, are traumatized for life. You don’t get to go back and spend holidays with your dad when you were a little kid.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
This would be the same hotel he’s been told he has to divest himself of prior to inauguration, right? It’s funny I must have missed all those stories screaming about conflicts of interests, and corruption, and how he is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family. Weren’t we told that Chelsea staying on the board of the Clinton Foundation was unacceptable, that the fact that the Clinton’s got rich giving speeches to people who might one day have business before the government was too much to be borne by the venerable people of the United States who are very sensitive to even the “appearance” of a conflict or corruption?
This lot is literally selling access in broad daylight, with barely a peep from these jackals.
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
Yes indeed. According to my RW dad, Elizabeth Warren attempting to hold Congress’ (not really Trump’s…Congress’s) feet to the fire with her bill enforcing the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution is not really an attempt to enforce the Constitution. It’s all about her running in 2020, don’t you know?
No word yet from dad on how he’d react if it was Hillz not-divesting and/or not leaving the Clinton Foundation, to say nothing of Chelsea selling access on a hunting trip, etc etc. Because we both know the answer on that one.
rikyrah
@Botsplainer:
truth.
Captain Goto
@Adam L Silverman: Apropos of nothing, the Rand in-house blogger responsible for that piece is an ex-journo that I am FB friends with.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I get the sense that Trump supporters think, “Well, Trump is a businessman. If he keeps making deals and getting rich as a businessman, this means that he will also succeed as the Businessman-in-Chief and make all us real patriotic White Christian Americans wealthy, too. And we will even have a few bucks to toss over to the minorities we tolerate.”
There is also an intense refusal to accept the idea that Trump should be restrained by any rules, custom or tradition. The Constitution be damned (except for the 2nd Amendment).
And there is the admiration for the outlaw, the rogue. I’ve actually heard people say, “Of course Trump is corrupt. He’s a businessman. This is how businessmen operate.” People who get taken by him are suckers who should have known better. As long as he succeeds, or appears to succeed, Trump can do anything.
But if he fails and cannot push the blame onto someone else, the sense betrayal and ultimate rejection will be tremendous.
J R in WV
@Jeffro:
They are the people for whom Velcro was commercialized!!