Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
The US has been going through a brutal period of cold and snowy weather. Usually this is the occasion when some climate change denying politicians and media figures snicker about how this disproves global warming, like the time Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, after a snowfall in Washington, DC, held up a snowball on the senate floor as evidence that climate change is a hoax.
But I have not heard, as yet anyway, any major figure say such a thing this time, suggesting that even they feel that such a statement would be ridiculous.
So, progress?
While I was generally aware that the drug fentanyl was dangerous and causing many deaths among users, it took one particular statistic for me to realize the great extent of the danger posed by it, that it kills nearly 200 people per day (which works out to about 73,000 annually) and is the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45.
Congress is debating a bill to try and deal with this problem but it has been stymied because it is running into the issue of congresspersons using one bill as leverage to get other bills passed, which can result in a stalemate where nothing gets done.
Colloquially referred to as the Fend Off Fentanyl Act, the measure proposes to implement sanctions and anti-money laundering strategies to curb the flow of the potent synthetic opioid, which generally comes into the US after being manufactured in Mexico using Chinese precursor chemicals.
…The Senate banking, housing and urban affairs committee voted to pass the Fend Off Fentanyl Act in June. But, as ABC News reported, US House member Patrick McHenry blocked it from inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act as part of an unsuccessful effort by McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, to get his own cryptocurrency measure added to the NDAA.
While one can hope that this bill manages to reduce the impact of this drug by tackling the supply side, the widespread overuse of opioids such as these points to an even greater problem on the demand side, that so many people seem to have become addicted this drug, well beyond therapeutic needs. That could be much more difficult to deal with.
The new speaker Mike Johnson has wasted no time in showing that he is as much a cynical politician as any in the GOP. Given the enthusiasm with which his election was received by the party, we should have expected no less, but it is still noteworthy.
The Biden administration had asked Congress for $104 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other causes. Spending bills have to originate in the House of Representatives and Johnson has decided to show his cleverness by passing a bill that would provide just the $14.3 billion for Israel, but require that this spending be offset by cutting the same amount from that dedicated to the IRS to hire new tax auditors in the Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier.
Johnson argues that this proves that the GOP are fiscal conservatives, a blatant lie since they have bloated the deficit repeatedly when they controlled Congress and the White House, by providing massive massive tax cuts for the rich. The Congressional Budget Office says that in reality, this bill would actually increase the deficit since the ‘saving’ of $14.3 billion on IRS agents will actually result in more than $26.8 billion of lost revenue due to inadequate auditing of wealthy people.
This bill is so obviously unserious that it will not even be brought up in the senate and president Biden has said he will veto it anyway. Johnson is trying to make the claim that Democrats prioritize hiring IRS agents over aiding Israel when the reality is that it is the GOP that is prioritizing helping the wealthy over aiding Israel. The devotion of the GOP to preserving and increasing the wealth of the already filthy rich is a marvel to behold.
Meanwhile, while he pursues these stunts, the budget deadline of November 17th is less than two weeks away.
This cartoon perfectly captures Johnson’s logic.
He delivers a powerful editorial on the latest mass shooting, this time in Maine where 18 people were killed and many others injured and condemns the weaselly response that people like the new speaker Mike Johnson give after these needless tragedies that keep happening over and over again. The suspected shooter was later found dead, probably self-inflicted.
The question of what constitutes consciousness arouses quite a bit of controversy, around what is known as ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. Here is a description of what that is.
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. It is the problem of explaining why there is “something it is like” for a subject in conscious experience, why conscious mental states “light up” and directly appear to the subject. The usual methods of science involve explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties—explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together. But even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question, Why is it conscious? This suggests that an explanation of consciousness will have to go beyond the usual methods of science. Consciousness therefore presents a hard problem for science, or perhaps it marks the limits of what science can explain. Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of consciousness: the problems of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness. These features can be explained using the usual methods of science. But that leaves the question of why there is something it is like for the subject when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present. This is the hard problem.
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Apparently the viewership for the Fox News time slot hosted by Tucker Carlson tanked after his departure. He was replaced this week by Brian Kilmeade, the doofus who used to be on the Fox and Friends morning show where his purpose seemed to be to make his two co-hosts look smart in comparison.
Every night viewers have given an unforgiving verdict on Kilmeade’s efforts: by turning off in their droves.
It’s a shame for Kilmeade, but a clue as to how he might be received had already come early on Monday.
“Join me tonight at 8 pm!” he tweeted an hour before his show started a now Tucker-free Fox News line-up. It turned out that not only did people not want to join Kilmeade, they were furious that he was going to be on air in place of their fallen hero.
“Not a chance in hell ya sellout,” was one of the more polite online responses, while someone else noted: “I’d rather watch grass grow.”
…On Monday the audience for Kilmeade, a less angry, less charismatic, apparently less race-obsessed host, was 47% of the number Carlson had attracted a week earlier, according to the Los Angeles Times.
It isn’t just that Carlson’s departure has turned off viewers. The hastily renamed Fox News Tonight show appears to have actively driven people to Fox News’ competitors, with Newsmax in particular, seeing record ratings.
The sentiment “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” has ancient roots but was perhaps most famously found in the poem The Masque of Pandora written in 1875 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who put these words into the mouth of Prometheus. How I interpret it is that if you make people mad, they will destroy themselves, saving you the bother of doing so.
I was thinking about these words while pondering the actions of three people: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Donald Trump since all three seem to be on the path of self-destruction. I am not implying that they are mad but they do seem, on the basis of past success, to suffer from an irrational overweening confidence in their own powers, and this has led to rash decisions that threaten to bring them down.
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A jury has found the Trump Organization to be guilty on all the counts of tax fraud they were charged with. The verdict came very quickly, within a day of the case being sent to the jury, a sign that they thought it was an easy decision.
A jury in New York has convicted the Trump Organization of criminal tax fraud in a major blow for the former president.
Although Donald Trump was not personally on trial, prosecutors insisted he was fully aware of the 15-year scheme in which they said executives were enriched by off-the-books perks to make up for lower salaries, reducing the company’s tax liabilities.
The 12-person jury in New York’s state court was sent out to deliberate on Monday morning after a six-week trial in which Trump Organization lawyers pinned blame for the fraud solely on the greed of longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
The former close ally of Trump accepted a plea deal earlier this year admitting fraud in exchange for a five-month prison sentence. Prosecutors laid out a case heavily reliant on Weisselberg’s testimony.
The verdict represents a serious blow to Trump and his family who rose to fame as property moguls in New York but whose business practices have long shadowed in secrecy with rumors of ill-doing.
What this means for the company is unclear, though it will clearly not be good.
Meanwhile, New York attorney general Letitia James has a pending criminal case against Trump and his family.
Get ready for the inevitable aftermath: a long whiny rant from Trump about how this is all part of a witch hunt against him even though he is the most innocent man.
Poverty is a terrible thing, and even more so when children are involved. To not be sure of where one’s own next meal is coming from or if one can pay the rent or take care of medical emergencies is bad enough but when one cannot provide those things for one’s children, it can be heartbreaking.
Children are not responsible for their economic state and so the state has a responsibility to make sure that at least that section of the population is taken care of. So the news that child poverty was cut in half in 2021 due to the enhanced child tax credit enacted during the pandemic is excellent news. It shows that government policy can do a lot ameliorate that problem.
The US child poverty rate fell by nearly half in 2021, largely thanks to enhanced child tax credits, new census data shows.
The child poverty rate fell to a low of 5.2% compared with 9.7% the year before.
Experts noted that increased child tax credits provided low-income families with much-needed resources during the Covid-19 pandemic.
…Overall, US child poverty levels have been falling for decades. Child poverty has fallen by 59% since 1993 with rates declining in all 50 states, the New York Times reported.