Sexual abuse in Orthodox Jewish institutions

Recently came news that the Roman Catholic diocese of Rochester, NY became the 20th US diocese to file for bankruptcy. The reason is of course because of the large number of lawsuits that the church has faced because of the sexual abuse by priests and the cover-ups by the church. The bishops knew about the activities of the priests but instead of taking stern action and reporting them to the secular authorities, they moved the priests around to hide the crimes. It is likely that other dioceses in the state will be forced to follow because of a new state law called the Child Victims Act, “which temporarily set aside the usual statute of limitations for lawsuits to give victims of childhood sexual abuse a year to pursue even decades-old claims” that enabled victims to bring their complaints to court.
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The pathetic Trump defenders

Trevor Noah looks at those who are trying to defend Donald Trump on the impeachment inquiry.

House Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy was particular inept in his 60 Minutes interview. But as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez points out, people like him get much less scrutiny than she does when does similar interviews.

Rugby World Cup: New Zealand vs South Africa

These two nations are two of the best rugby teams in the world, sharing the past three World Cups between them, New Zealand winning in 2015 and 2011 and South Africa in 2007. They were in the same group this year and played each other early on in the group-qualifying matches. The game highlights below are worth watching for three reasons:

  1. The high quality of play.
  2. The haka by the New Zealand team at the beginning of every game.

    The haka is a type of ancient Māori war dance traditionally used on the battlefield, as well as when groups came together in peace. Haka are a fierce display of a tribe’s pride, strength and unity. Actions include violent foot-stamping, tongue protrusions and rhythmic body slapping to accompany a loud chant.

    As you can see, it is a highly aggressive performance, designed to intimidate the opponents and gain a psychological advantage even before the game begins.
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How to struggle on $350,000 a year

For most people, earning $350,000 per year would be considered an unattainable dream that would promise a life free of financial stress. But believe it or not, this article describes how one family of four finds it hard to manage. Here’s their budget breakdown.

It is true that housing costs in the major coastal cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. are very high. Good quality childcare is also very expensive. But the things that jumped out at me for this ‘struggling to make ends meet’ family was the $70 per day for food, the $400 per month for clothes, the $500 per month for entertainment, the $7,800 per year for three vacations (though they ‘sacrificed’ by spending one week of vacation at home), and the fact that they think owning a Toyota Highlander instead of a Range Rover is being frugal.

Twitter of course had a field day, with sardonic commentary here and here.

Save the whales, save the planet?

Whales are magnificent creatures and there is always great appeal among people for saving the lives of large mammalian species. But in a paper published by the International Monetary Fund, it turns out that that increasing the whale population might also be a good way of capturing carbon.

Marine biologists have recently discovered that whales-especially the great whales-play a significant role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere (Roman and others 2014).
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The carbon capture potential of whales is truly startling. Whales accumulate carbon in their bodies during their long lives. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean; each great whale sequesters 33 tons of CO2 on average, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries. A tree, meanwhile, absorbs only up to 48 pounds of CO2 a year.
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Wherever whales, the largest living things on earth, are found, so are populations of some of the smallest, phytoplankton. These microscopic creatures not only contribute at least 50 percent of all oxygen to our atmosphere, they do so by capturing about 37 billion metric tons of CO2, an estimated 40 percent of all CO2 produced. To put things in perspective, we calculate that this is equivalent to the amount of CO2 captured by 1.70 trillion trees-four Amazon forests worth-or 70 times the amount absorbed by all the trees in the US Redwood National and State Parks each year. More phytoplankton means more carbon capture.
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Health insurance as a weapon to control workers

The cost of health insurance in the US has been steadily rising. Since most people get their health insurance through their workplace, employers have been passing on much of the increased costs to the employees in the form of high-deductible policies but it still represents a big cost for businesses. For a long time, I wondered why big business were not the biggest supporters of government-run, single-payer health care systems like Medicare For All since that would shed them of one of their biggest costs as well as rid them of all the cumbersome paperwork that accompanies it. You would think that this would be a good thing for them. So why were they not the biggest supporters? I had put it down to their ideological dislike of anything that smacks of socialism.
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We are living in a state of institutional dementia

That is what Kevin Baker argues in the September 2019 issue of Harper’s Magazine. He says that it explains why we seem to live in a state of permanent murkiness where abuses happen but are never investigated or if investigated are never resolved or if resolved the findings are buried, one after another, until we get numb and inert. He reviews how little we still know about the major deceptions carried out by the US government in the 55 years that have elapsed since the Gulf of Tonkin.
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Two major upsets at Rugby World Cup

The 2019 Rugby World Cup is being hosted by Japan right now. There are 20 nations playing and there have already been two major upsets. I thought that American readers of this blog might enjoy seeing highlights of the two games below. There has been little coverage of this tournament in the major US media, which is a bit surprising given that the US is fielding a team and is currently ranked #13 in the world, which is not too shabby. They have played just one game so far, losing badly to England 45-7.

The biggest upset was by the host nation ranked #9 that beat #2 ranked Ireland, a perennial rugby powerhouse, 19-12.


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With friends like these …

There is no question that affordable universal health care coverage is an idea that has caught on as the awfulness of the current system becomes increasingly apparent, and almost all the Democratic candidates have signed on to it. The most comprehensive plan, and in my view the simplest one to understand and implement, is the Medicare for All plan proposed back in the 2016 campaign by Bernie Sanders and endorsed by most progressives. So where does this leave those ‘centrist’ and ‘moderate’ Democrats (those being euphemisms for Democratic politicians like Joe Biden whose have strong allegiances to the business and financial world) who do not wish to alienate the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital lobbies whose profits feel threatened by this proposal? These groups come under the labels of Third Way and the Center for American Progress and are favored by the Democratic party establishment.
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